Cam Pratt was kissing her!

And she was kissing him back.

It didn’t matter that his face was stubbly after their long day’s work. It only mattered that his lips were parted and sweet, his breath was soft against her skin, his hand was firm but gentle on her face. And, oh, could the man kiss! It was no wonder he’d been so popular in high school….

Then it was over and she had to force herself not to strain for another one, to accept that that single kiss was going to be it.

For now…

Dear Reader,

Growing up the ugly-duckling brainiac of small-town Northbridge, Montana, Eden Perry was, unsurprisingly, the brunt of hurtful teasing. So when I started to think about her, I pictured a sort of victim. But that’s when things took a turn and I realized that she might have fought back. And that in fighting back, she might have struck out at someone who didn’t deserve it, and ended up feeling terribly guilty about it. Guilty enough that it might put a damper on returning to her hometown even though she looks a whole lot better than she did once upon a time. And if the person who didn’t deserve the harsh treatment she’d dished out just happened to be the drop-dead-gorgeous guy she now has to work with? Hmm, that just might have some possibilities….

That’s how Hometown Cinderella came to be. And while Eden doesn’t have the help of a fairy godmother, she could use one when it comes to facing our angry, wishes-he-never-had-to-lay-eyes-on-her-again hero. I think it makes for some fun for those of us looking in on them, though. I hope you agree.

Happy reading!

Hometown Cinderella
Victoria Pade

www.millsandboon.co.uk

VICTORIA PADE

is a native of Colorado, where she continues to live and work. Her passion—besides writing—is chocolate, which she indulges in frequently and in every form. She loves romance novels and romantic movies—the more lighthearted, the better—but she likes a good, juicy mystery now and then, too.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter One

“She’s here…”

Cam Pratt was in the break room of the police station. His shift had just ended and he’d brought his coffee mug in to wash when Luke Walker poked his head through a crack in the door to make his announcement.

Cam pumped some soap into the mug and glanced over his shoulder at his friend and fellow officer. “Who’s here?”

Luke Walker grinned. “Eden Perry.”

Cam screwed up his face and groaned. “Now?”

“Right now. She just walked in the door. She wants to take a look at the computer setup she’ll be using.”

“It’s four-thirty and you’re on duty, I’m not. You show it to her,” Cam said, hoping for an out.

“Uh-uh. You know it’s already been decided that this is your baby. Even if it means working with someone you have some leftover high school hang-up about for reasons you don’t want to say. And since I caught you before you left…”

Cam curled his upper lip like a fractious hound dog. Then he said, “I’ll be there in a minute.”

“You won’t recognize her,” Luke threw in just before he disappeared from the doorway and closed the door.

Cam couldn’t have cared less if he recognized Eden Perry or not. The little pain-in-the-ass—

He cut his own thought short, knowing that recalling the past would only piss him off. As it did every time he thought about it. Or about Eden Perry. Every time he’d thought about her since learning before the holidays that he’d be overseeing the work of the former hometown girl and forensic artist when she arrived.

But he’d already tried convincing his superior officer to let him steer clear of this portion of an investigation that had been ongoing for months now and it hadn’t done him any good. Luke was right—this was his baby.

Whether he liked it or not.

Whether he liked Eden Perry or not.

And he didn’t like Eden Perry. Or having to be anywhere around her, let alone work with her. In fact, when he’d returned to the small town of Northbridge, Montana, two years ago, he’d been happy to learn that Eden Perry had left for college shortly after he had and had rarely even visited since then.

But apparently things had changed for her and now here she was—back to live and hired to do an age-progression of the woman who had become the focal point of an old case that also happened to be the biggest scandal ever to rock Northbridge. And, to make matters worse, Eden Perry was also his neighbor.

“Which is why you decided to try to tolerate her, remember?” he told himself as he pumped more soap into his mug because he’d forgotten he’d already done it.

Not that he regretted repeating a step. He sure as hell wasn’t in any hurry to go out to the person he would have just as soon never set eyes on again.

But he didn’t have that option and he knew it.

On the other hand, he thought, the sooner he got this going, the sooner he could be finished with it. Finished with working with Eden Perry, even if he couldn’t be finished with living right next door to her.

But finishing with at least one thing to do with her was better than nothing, he reasoned.

And maybe after this they could just ignore each other.

“But so help me, if she shoots off her mouth I don’t care who she is or how lucky we are to have her do this, I’ll blow her right out of the water,” he muttered as he finally turned on the faucet and began to scrub his coffee cup with a punishing fervor.

“You’ll be working with Cam Pratt,” Luke Walker told Eden as she stood waiting in the outer office of the police station. “I don’t know if you remember him—”

“I remember him,” Eden said, not thrilled with that news. At all.

“From high school,” Luke Walker seemed inclined to say anyway. “You two graduated the same year, didn’t you? I know you started out in my class but then you were skipped ahead, right?”

“Right,” she confirmed a bit stiltedly. She hadn’t been—or felt—stiff before. It had just happened at the mention of Cam Pratt. And at the idea that she’d be working with him.

“I didn’t know he was on the force,” she said then. “Or even in Northbridge. Last I heard he didn’t live here.”

“He moved back a couple of years ago.”

“Ah,” Eden said as if it were an irrelevant revelation when, in fact, she had to fight the urge to recoil. “Is there a particular reason I’ll be working with Cam and not with you or someone else?”

“Yeah, Cam was a cop in the heart of Detroit for a long time. He’s had experience with the kind of stuff you do but this will be a first for the rest of us, so he was the logical choice.”

Eden nodded, hating that she was so on edge suddenly and at a loss for anything else to say to Luke Walker now that her mind was spinning in a different direction.

“I just came on duty,” Luke said then, into the awkward silence she’d left. “I should get out, do my first patrol….”

“It’s okay, you don’t have to stay on my account. Go ahead.”

“Cam will be right out. He just finished for the day so he’s wrapping up a few things. I’m sure he’ll only be another minute. Why don’t you have a seat at his desk? It’s the one facing mine.”

Eden nodded again but didn’t sit. She was too lost in thinking that of course Cam Pratt didn’t hesitate to leave her cooling her heels. After all, she was an inconsequential little nobody and he was probably still hot stuff just the way he’d been then. The Man. The guy every senior girl—except Eden—had wanted to end up with. It shouldn’t have come as any surprise that he would appear when he deigned to appear and not before. As if he were doing her a favor, which he probably thought he was—

Eden put the brakes on her runaway thoughts, shocked to have so instantly reverted to what would have gone through her head in this instance fourteen years ago.

But this wasn’t fourteen years ago….

“Are you okay? You’re kind of flushed all of a sudden,” Luke Walker said then.

He must have been waiting for her to take the seat he’d offered because he hadn’t moved, either. But she’d been oblivious to him and his voice drew her out of her reverie.

She pressed the fingertips of one hand to her cheek, feeling the increased heat of her skin. “It’s a little warm in here. Maybe the coat’s too much inside.”

“And maybe you should sit down,” he suggested again.

As she slipped off her camel hair jacket and went to hang it over the back of the chair he’d indicated she said, “I’m fine. Go ahead out on patrol. There’s no reason for you to stick around. Really. It’s not as if I’m a stranger to cop shops.”

Luke Walker acknowledged that with a raise of his chin but even as he went to the coatrack for his own jacket he kept an eye on her.

Was she making a fool of herself?

She hoped not.

It was just so amazing how one mention of Cam Pratt could send her right back to high school. Right back to being the geeky, braces-on-her-teeth, glasses-wearing, frizzy-haired, flat-chested brainiac in a grade she might have belonged in academically, but certainly hadn’t belonged in socially. Right back to where she’d been made fun of on a daily basis and then suddenly thrust into dealing with the big-man-on-campus himself. One-on-one.

And she hadn’t dealt with it well. Or in a way that she was proud of.

In fact, it embarrassed her to recall that time in her life. The time she’d spent with Cam Pratt. And how she’d behaved.

“I think maybe I’ll use your restroom,” she said suddenly, wanting to escape Luke Walker’s continuing scrutiny from across the room as he seemed to be stalling his departure. Besides, she needed a moment to get a grip on herself.

“The ladies’ room is down the hall,” he informed her, pointing with his thumb.

“Great. Thanks. Nice to see you again,” she said, subtly encouraging him to leave as she headed in the direction he’d indicated.

“Yeah, you, too,” Luke Walker called after her, giving no indication whether or not he would be on his way once she was out of sight.

Although maybe it would be better if he didn’t leave, she thought as she found the restroom and went in. Maybe it would be better if she had a buffer when she had to face Cam Pratt.

Cam Pratt.

She was going to have to work with Cam Pratt. She let that thought sink in as she closed the restroom door behind her.

Cam Pratt, of all people.

No crime goes unpunished….

Not that she’d committed an actual crime against him. But she had been wretched toward him. Wretched enough to be ashamed of herself.

Maybe he doesn’t remember, she thought hopefully. Maybe to him it was nothing. No big deal. Not worthy of recall any more than I was worthy of notice….

That seemed possible—that this was a bigger thing in her own memory than it had been to him. After all, he’d been a supreme being in high school and she’d been a complete and total nobody. A nonentity. He probably didn’t even remember her, let alone anything that she might have said to him so long ago. She was probably making a mountain out of a molehill.

This was a new day. A new page. A new chapter. And she should just take things as they came and not go in expecting the worst.

Even if that wasn’t altogether easy for her when old insecurities reared their ugly head. When offense just instinctively felt like the best form of defense the way it had fourteen years ago.

But things had changed. She’d changed, she reminded herself. And to reinforce that reminder she moved to the sole sink in the single-stall restroom to have a glimpse of the present-day Eden Perry.

Because lo and behold, the geek was gone.

No more braces—her teeth were completely straight now.

No more glasses—contacts had replaced them a decade ago and eye surgery had removed even the need for those more recently, so her ice-blue eyes were only adorned with mascara.

Her skin had cleared; in fact, there wasn’t a single blemish or red mark marring it. Instead it was smooth and creamy and even-toned with just a little blush to brighten it.

She’d grown into her arms and legs. And her head——thank goodness! Nothing was out of proportion the way it had been when she’d been all elbows and knees and skinny, scrawny body.

Her bustline had developed—there was no question that she was female now, she could fill out a bra with the best of them. Well, with the best of the B-cups, anyway.

Her hair had darkened to a burnt-sienna red—no one had called her pumpkinhead in fourteen years. And the relaxer she used eased the kinky curls into mere waves that she could keep manageable at shoulder length.

So all in all, no, she wasn’t odd-looking anymore. There was no reason she would be called names or taunted or teased or tormented. And she didn’t have to go into any situation armed for those kinds of battles.

A new day. A new page. A new chapter.

That was what she needed to keep in mind. And that Cam Pratt had likely been unaffected by the bad attitude of the mousy nerd-girl he hadn’t had any reason to think twice about when he was on top of the world. Or probably since.

Eden tugged at the collar of the white shirt she was wearing underneath a beige cardigan sweater. Then she made sure the shirt was neatly-tucked into the tan slacks she had on. Finally, she stood a little straighter, surveying the whole picture and deciding that then and now were totally different on every front.

This would be okay, she told herself. Fourteen years was a long time. Anything that had happened that far in the past was ancient history….

Except that when she left the bathroom a few minutes later and returned to the main office, every bit of that reassurance went right out the window.

What had she thought? That Cam Pratt might not remember her or how she’d treated him? That he probably hadn’t been affected?

Think again…

Because there he was, waiting for her.

And if ever Eden had seen anyone whose expression said he bore a grudge against her, it was Cam Pratt.

She stood frozen at the mouth of the hallway that had led her from the restroom to the main portion of the office, brought up short by the hard stare of the six-foot-two-inch man she had been cruel to once upon a time.

But what was she going to do? She asked herself. She couldn’t run the other way. So she took a deep breath to steady herself and managed to cross to where he was leaning one broad shoulder against the wall near the fingerprinting station, his arms clasped over a noteworthy chest encased in his dark blue uniform.

“Cam?” she said, making a firm but quiet question of his name despite the fact that there was no doubt who he was. Even if he had somehow matured into a more colossally handsome specimen than he’d been the last time she’d seen him—something she didn’t want to be aware of.

The not-bushy but slightly unruly eyebrows that matched his dark, dark brown hair pulled together only enough to let her know he was surprised by the updated version of her as he gave her a quick once-over. But unlike the approval Luke Walker had voiced when she’d first let him know who she was, Cam Pratt seemed unimpressed by the improvements. He only answered with a flat and contempt-filled “Eden.”

“Yes,” she confirmed, although it was just to have something to say.

And then it struck her that she didn’t know where to go from there. Since he obviously remembered her and how things had been fourteen years ago, she wondered if she should offer a long-overdue apology. Should she tell him she knew she’d been horrible? That in hindsight she regretted it?

But somehow when she imagined doing that it seemed to have the potential for making things even more awkward than they already were. And things were already so awkward there was a palpable tension in the air. So maybe it was better to just go from here….

She squared her shoulders and adopted the purely professional demeanor she’d used on many occasions going in to work with people she didn’t know and merely said, “I’m sorry to keep you when you were ready to leave for the day. I just wanted to see the computer I’ll be using to make sure it has the capabilities I’ll need. And if you wouldn’t mind, I’d be interested to hear where this case stands and what exactly you’re hoping I can do.”

“I’ve been ordered to be at your disposal—whenever and wherever—so I guess it’s your prerogative to keep me late.”

“Prerogative or not, I won’t do it again,” she said, formally but politely, refusing to let his antagonistic tone echo in hers. “In the future I’ll be sure I come in during your work hours.”

“Uh-huh, well, I guess we’ll see, won’t we?” he said with disbelief before he pushed off the wall and nodded toward a door. “The computer you need is in here,” he said, throwing open the door and indicating that she should lead the way.

He was just determined not to be nice. Determined for the shoe to be on the other foot, Eden thought.

But as she went through that door and entered the small room beyond it she told herself his disgust was no less than she deserved and she decided to ignore what he seemed bent on dishing out.

He followed her into the cubicle-sized space. There were computers on the office desks but the setup in this room was larger.

“I checked,” he said once they were both standing in front of the machines. “This should meet all of your requirements, memory and otherwise.”

“Good,” Eden said, glad for the opportunity to look at something other than him as she scanned for the options she liked to have available for visual imagining. In spite of his assurance.

“Right, check for yourself. I’m sure I can’t be trusted to know what I’m doing.”

“I just wanted to make certain there was a scanner and that I can connect a camera if I need to.”

He sighed audibly, as if he were keeping a tight hold on his temper. But he made no other comment. Instead, obviously in a hurry to get this over with, he obliged the second request she’d made of him by relaying the facts of the case she’d be working on. “As you know, we’re looking for Celeste Perry—”

“My grandmother,” Eden supplied, satisfied with the computer and glancing at Cam once more.

“What we know,” he continued, “is that Mickey Rider and Frank Dorian robbed the Northbridge bank in 1960. A duffel bag containing the belongings of Mickey Rider was found in the rafters of the old north bridge a few months ago. Stains on the bag were confirmed to be a match for Rider’s blood and after a search for his body, human remains were discovered in the woods not far from the bridge.”

Cam’s words couldn’t have been more clipped but Eden preferred that to sarcasm. For some reason she didn’t understand, however, she was having difficulty concentrating on much more than the color of eyes that were so deep a blue they were almost black.

“Those remains have been examined,” he was saying, “and conclusively identified as those of Rider, with a blow to the head the apparent cause of death. Frank Dorian—the man Celeste left town with—was arrested by the FBI several months after the robbery and was killed in an escape attempt before he ever got to trial. Because both robbers are now known to be deceased—and Rider possibly murdered—and since the robbery money has never been recovered, there’s renewed interest in Celeste.”

“Is there suspicion that she murdered Rider?” Eden managed to ask when she forced herself to focus on what he was telling her rather than on the scruffy five-o’clock shadow that dusted the lower half of a face that somehow managed to be rugged and refined at the same time.

“I won’t say Celeste isn’t a murder suspect,” he answered. “When the FBI had Dorian in custody and questioned him, he contended that your grandmother had had no part in the robbery, but since he was claiming at the time that his partner had taken half the money and gone off on his own, there was no indication that Rider was dead or whether or not Celeste was involved. Now everything is in question again.”

“And at the very least Celeste could have been an accessory before or after the fact,” Eden contributed even as she cataloged the length and shape of his nose—a little long with a bit of a bump in the bridge that was somehow sexy….

“Like I said, there’s renewed interest in Celeste,” he repeated.

“And my part in this?” Eden prompted, fighting to keep her thoughts where they belonged and not on him.

“When Dorian was questioned he claimed that Celeste had gained considerable weight, plus there’s a woman in Bozeman who believes she might have worked with Celeste in 1968. We have a description from her for you to work into the whole picture and she also described Celeste as heavyset—”

“Celeste…my grandmother…was as near as Bozeman? I hadn’t heard that,” Eden said, shocked and yanked by that shock from studying his sideburns—not too long, not too short.

“Yes, it seems likely your grandmother was in Bozeman and calling herself Charlotte Pierce. Does that ring a bell?”

Eden shook her head. “No, the name Charlotte Pierce doesn’t sound familiar,” she said. “And I’m sure my family told you when they were dispatched to ask, but I don’t ever remember having any contact with anyone who might have been Celeste, either. Or with anyone who caused any kind of question in my mind.”

“That information was relayed and entered into the reports,” he confirmed. “But between the weight gain and the fact that a lot of years have passed to also alter Celeste’s appearance, we thought a computer image progression might help to approximate the changes as she aged, along with what she might look like now. If we can, we want to determine if she ever did come back to or through Northbridge again—the way she told several people she planned in order to see her sons again—”

“My dad and my uncle,” Eden said even as her gaze drifted to Cam’s wavy hair worn just long enough to be combed back on top and short everywhere else.

But they were talking about her grandmother’s appearance, she reminded herself, not Cam’s.

“So I’ll have the description from the woman in Bozeman,” she said then, “and what else? There can’t be many photographs of Celeste—I’ve never seen one.”

“Because your grandfather destroyed them all when she took off. The only picture we have of her is from the newspaper article written when she and the reverend moved to town. She was in her twenties in the snapshot and showing it around hasn’t done any good. We’re hoping that whatever you come up with will be more what she might have looked like later on and may spur someone’s memory. If Celeste did come through here she might have left behind some clue as to where she was headed after that, where she might be now if she’s still alive.”

“Or if she came into Northbridge and stayed—my sisters and cousins told me there’s speculation about that.”

“Some,” Cam conceded. “And that’s it. That’s where the case stands. Except that we’re getting pressure from the FBI and from the state investigators to get things moving on this. The skeletal remains were found at the start of November. Between waiting for the results from forensics and the holiday holdups, and then waiting for you to get here, the last two months and counting have just gone down the drain.”

He said that as if it were entirely Eden’s fault and made her feel the need to justify herself.

“I was working on another case before Christmas and then I had to get back to Hawaii to pack up my house—my whole life really—and arrange to get everything here. I just arrived this morning, driving my car behind the moving van. I had to wait for the truck to be unloaded and as soon as it was, I came here because I know this needs to get underway. If there was too much of a rush to wait for me, you could have had someone else do this for you. It isn’t even my official job anymore, I’ve quit to do other things and only agreed to do this one last case because I’d be in Northbridge anyway and it seemed dumb to make anyone else come in to do it.”

“You are the authority on dumb,” he said under his breath.

No, he hadn’t forgotten a thing….

“And I suppose,” he added facetiously before she could respond to his comment, “that you aren’t curious about any of this yourself.”

Not even disgust disguised the suppleness of lips that were perfectly shaped.

“Of course I’m curious,” Eden said. “I have a personal interest—this is my grandmother. The woman who ran out on my grandfather and abandoned my father and my uncle when they were little boys. And then to think that there’s any possibility that she’s actually been here, that I could have run into her at some point or even know her? Yes, I’m anxious to do this job and see who my grandmother might be. But what I’m saying is—”

“Yeah, I know what you’re saying—that there’s something in it for you but that we should still be grateful to have you.”

He might not be hard on the eyes but he definitely wasn’t going to make this easy.

“No, what I’m saying is that I got here as soon as I could but if that wasn’t good enough, you didn’t need to wait for me.”

“Apparently we did,” he nearly sneered.

Again Eden reminded herself that he had cause to dislike her and bypassed his less-than-subtle display of it. “Well, I’m here now and I’ll get this done. Although probably not before Wednesday because I’ll need a day to get myself organized enough to find the box with my equipment and software—”

“I’m just glad to hear you don’t want to do it this minute. I’d like to get home.”

In other words, he didn’t care about her explanation, he only wanted this meeting finished.

Eden was more than willing to oblige him—a feast for the eyes or not, she was hardly enjoying this.

“I’ve seen what I came to see, I think we’re done here,” she informed him.

“Does that mean I’m dismissed?”

“It just means we’re done for now,” she said with a weary sigh.

“Good,” he decreed, walking out of the small room just like that. Without another word or a backward glance.

Maybe he had some of that stuff fourteen years ago coming, Eden thought, losing her patience as she trailed behind to return to the outer office.

He put on his coat in silence.

Eden put on her coat in silence.

And they both arrived at the door at the same time.

“After you,” he said none too nicely, sweeping a long arm toward the station entrance.

Eden took a breath and held it in order to stay her tongue, preceding him out the door and paying him no attention as she went to her compact car parked in the small lot behind the police station.

Of course, as luck would have it, she was nose to nose with his SUV.

Eden pretended not to notice.

He started his engine.

She started her engine.

And they both arrived at the lot exit at the same time.

Eden motioned for Cam to go ahead of her.

He did, turning right onto South Street.

Eden turned right onto South Street.

He went past Main Street and so did she.

He turned right three blocks after that.

And so did she.

“Oh, don’t tell me…” She moaned a split second before he pulled into one side of the double driveway she shared with her next-door neighbor to the north and she pulled into the other side.

Neck and neck they drove to the matching garages that were separated from each other by mere feet at the rear of the properties.

Eden came to a stop in front of hers.

Cam stopped in front of what was apparently his.

Eden got out of her car.

Cam got out of his SUV.

And they arrived at the rear of their vehicles at the same time.

“You live next door?” she asked, trying to keep her distaste out of her voice. And failing.

He arched an eyebrow. “Nobody told you?”

“No. In fact, I was told someone named Poppazitto owned that house.”

“Right. But I’m renting the place from the Poppazittos with an option to buy when the lease expires in two months.”

“So we’re neighbors,” Eden said, lamenting the fact more to herself than to him.

“Neighbors, but not friends,” he countered, turning on his heel and once again presenting his back to her as he walked away.

And even if it was a very, very fine back, Eden had to fight the inordinate urge to pick up a rock and aim for it.

Chapter Two

Cam had done his usual morning workout before he’d gone on duty. But he knew if he didn’t work off some of what Eden Perry had riled up in him he’d never be able to relax, let alone sleep that night. So about eight o’clock he went out the back door of his house and braved the cold January air to cross his yard to the garage.

Both his and Eden’s houses and garages had originally been built by identical twin brothers who had designed the ranch-style houses and the garages to be as much alike as the brothers themselves. Which meant that both garages were single-car sized with a second story containing very small studio apartments. Each apartment was comprised of an open space for a combined living room-bedroom, a tiny bathroom, and a bare-basics kitchen made up of a few cupboards, a sink and a section that could accommodate a refrigerator and a stove.

Cam had had plans to buy the house, garage and apartment at the end of his lease, figuring to eventually add the now-missing stove and refrigerator, and rent the place to a college kid for some extra income. Until then, it was a decent spot for his weights and other gym equipment.

But after spending even a small amount of time that afternoon with Eden Perry he thought he should reconsider buying the place at all and being right next door to her indefinitely.

He wasn’t sure he was going to be able to even live out the next two months of the lease so near to Her Royal Highness The Mighty Forensic Artist.

He slung the towel he’d brought with him over the stand that held his weights, and stripped off his sweats so he was only in gym shorts and a T-shirt. Then he started to do his second warm-up of the day, hoping that exercise would get Eden Perry out of his head. Because that’s where she’d been since the first minute he’d set eyes on her at the station today.

If there were any justice in the world, he thought as he stretched his calf muscles, she would have stayed looking the way she had when she was a teenager—hair that had been such a bright orange and so stick-out-everywhere curly that it had looked as if it belonged on a clown wig, glasses as thick as the bottoms of mayonnaise jars, braces imprisoning crooked teeth, bad skin and a body that had been as flat as a pancake with only knobby knees and pointy elbows to give her any shape at all.

Her homeliness had helped him make it through that miserable time he’d had to spend with her fourteen years ago. He’d figured that it served her right, that it was a warning of what was below the surface—foul on the outside, foul on the inside. It had seemed fitting.

But now?

Hell, now she was so damn gorgeous his mouth had nearly dropped open when she’d stopped at the end of that hallway coming back into the office.

And that didn’t seem fair….

Sufficiently warmed up, he got down on the floor for sit-ups. But that still didn’t allow him an escape from thinking about Eden Perry.

Her hair wasn’t orange anymore, now it was the color of Colorado’s red rocks when they were drenched with spring rain—a deep, warm, fresh lobster hue. And the kinky curl? That had calmed down to thick, shiny waves that fell to her shoulders.

It didn’t frame a splotchy, zitty face any longer, either. Her teenage blemishes had cleared and what she had left was skin like the petals of a pale pink rose. Dewy, soft-looking skin over high cheekbones, a delicate nose and a facial structure that had somehow blossomed into a kind of subtle elegance.

Damn her, anyway.

The braces had apparently done their job, too, because her teeth were straight. And gleaming white behind lips that were no longer chapped and uninviting. Lips that had the barest blush to them and were anything but uninviting….

He picked up the speed on the sit-ups.

But no matter how fast and furious he did them, the mental image of Eden kept assaulting him.

He’d been shocked to see her eyes. He guessed he’d never noticed them when they’d been hidden behind the lenses of her glasses. But when she’d raised them to him that afternoon? It had been hard to believe he could have ever missed them. They were blue—like a clear summer sky—but they were like looking at that clear blue sky through frosted crystal. They almost seemed transparent. And coupled with that hair? Geez, she was a knockout.

He flipped over and started doing push-ups even faster than he’d done sit-ups, counting them aloud in hopes that that would distract him from thinking about Eden. From picturing her.

But did it?

No, it didn’t. At number thirty-one it occurred to him that that was Eden’s age. And that her thirty-one-year-old body was better than it had been, too. Not centerfold better, but definitely better enough that he hadn’t been aware of her elbows or knees. Instead he’d noticed that she was a tight, compact little package, with just enough up-front. Just enough to draw his interest. More than once.

Yeah, if Eden Perry wasn’t the transformation of the century, he didn’t know what was.

On the outside.

But what about the inside? That probably hadn’t changed, he thought with some satisfaction.

The satisfaction was short-lived, however, because when he tried to think of how her bad disposition had displayed itself he couldn’t come up with anything.

He’d been the one with the bad disposition today. She hadn’t acted the way she had when they were teenagers, and he reluctantly—very reluctantly—admitted that.

Of course she also hadn’t been warm and friendly.

But then neither had he.

He’d been rude and obnoxious, if the truth be told. And she hadn’t even shot back at him.

How come? he wondered suddenly.

That sure as hell wasn’t the old Eden Perry. The old Eden Perry would have shot first. And barring that, she would certainly have returned fire. Hell, the Eden Perry he’d known would have mounted a savage counterattack.

But the Eden Perry he’d known had also been sixteen years old, he thought—again for no reason he understood. Sixteen years old and as ugly as a mud fence. And this Eden Perry wasn’t either of those things anymore.

So, what if she also wasn’t the rude, mouthy, insulting, aggravating nightmare she’d been before, either?

That would be hard to believe!

But somehow the possibility slowed his push-ups and eventually brought them to a stop.

Was it possible Eden Perry was different outside and inside? he asked himself as he moved on to the weight bench for a few biceps curls.

Eden Perry different…

Huh.

Did he buy that? Did he buy the all-business version she’d been today? Kind of wooden but not nasty or mean-spirited or bitchy?

He didn’t know. He supposed that he could concede that she might—just might—have learned to curb her tongue in the course of growing up.

But so what? he asked himself. Did that mean that she thought of him any differently than she had when they were kids?

Probably not.

And given that, did he want anything more to do with her than he had when he’d been expecting that sharp tongue to fly out and cut him like a razor blade?

No, he didn’t.

Even if she was something pretty eye-popping to look at.

He’d still keep his distance, thanks just the same, he thought.

Because eye-popping or not, better behaved or not, there was one thing Eden Perry had made clear enough to him when she was sixteen—she thought he was an idiot.

And the last thing he needed—or wanted—was to be within a hundred yards of any woman who thought of him as someone dumber than a doorknob.

No matter how she looked.

But damn, Eden Perry did look good….

Eden had changed her clothes and gone right to work on her bedroom when she returned from the police station.

By about 8:30 that night she had located her mattress pad, sheets, blankets, pillows and quilt, and made her bed so she would have a place to sleep. She’d hung shades and curtains on both bedroom windows and put most of her clothes in the closet. She’d filled the underwear drawer of her dresser and unpacked all the toiletries she would need to start the next day.

And while it may have been only 8:30, she’d been up since before dawn, driven for two hours to reach Northbridge, overseen the three movers unloading her things, and then she’d had that unpleasant encounter with Cam Pratt before laboring all evening, too. She was tired and hungry and ready to drop.

So she went into the kitchen in search of food, grateful that her sister Eve had stocked it with a few things to tide her over until she could do some shopping.

Weaving through boxes stacked everywhere, including on her kitchen table, she opened the refrigerator. Eggs, butter and cream for her coffee were its sole occupants.

She hadn’t located her pots and pans yet but she knew where to find a bowl so she could scramble an egg in the microwave. But she decided to check the pantry first.

Bread, cheese puffs—her sister knew her well—and Chinese noodle soup already in its own microwavable cup.

She opted for the soup because it was the simplest of all to prepare.

With cup in hand, she went to the sink to fill it with water. When she reached the sink her gaze automatically drifted out the window above it and went instantly to the garages nestled so close together in back.

Only it wasn’t her own garage that caught her attention. It was Cam Pratt’s. Specifically, the light that was shining through the undraped window in the space over the garage.

She knew that that space in her own outbuilding was a makeshift apartment. She intended to use it as an art studio. But she didn’t know if it was also an apartment in the other garage and if that was rented out, too, to someone other than Cam Pratt.

So she stood rooted to the spot, staring at the large rectangular window that matched hers, hoping to catch a glimpse of whoever was up there.

She didn’t have long to wait.

Within moments she saw Cam Pratt cross in front of the window and go to some kind of bar that seemed to be jammed into the doorway that led to what would have been the bathroom in her unit.

Because she was looking from a ground floor level through a second floor window, she could only see the top portions of the above-the-garage room and of the man who was in it. But that was enough to give her a glimpse of him from behind, reaching long, well-muscled arms upward and grasping the bar—palms towards him—in his huge hands.

As she watched, he began to use the bar to do pull-ups and with each one his full back and waist came into view.

Now that she knew she didn’t have yet another neighbor, what went on in that room shouldn’t have been of any further interest to Eden. But she couldn’t seem to tear herself away. Or so much as look at anything else. Instead, she stayed right where she was, eyes trained on that second floor window in the distance.

Cam was wearing a plain white T-shirt that clung damply to his broad shoulders and the V of his back where it narrowed to his waist. And although the shirt concealed the details of what it encased, the powerful swell of his arms from the short sleeves gave her a clue as to what was going on within the shirt, too. And it was noteworthy.

She was aware that cops were encouraged to keep in shape and apparently Cam Pratt took that seriously. Because he was in very, very good shape as he raised and lowered himself from that bar at the same rate her heart was beating. As if they were somehow in sync.

Up and down. Up and down. Her eyes lingered on that back. On those biceps flexing, bulging within glistening skin that seemed barely able to contain them. Up and down and up again…

The man had stamina, she’d give him that.

Stamina and strength and a fabulous physique that she had some kind of irrational urge to get closer to. To touch. To test for herself if those muscles were as solid and unyielding as they looked.

It doesn’t matter, she told herself firmly.

Because regardless of how he looked, he had two strikes against him and she was determined not to forget either of them. Not only had he been a bear to her that afternoon in response to a history that she would rather forget—strike one—but he was a cop. Strike two. And she didn’t want anything to do with another cop. Or with anything that put her anywhere near cops or crime or criminals.

No, doing this age progression of her long-lost grandmother was going to be her last foray into that world and then Eden was finished with it.

Absolutely finished.

But still, there Cam was, and if chin-ups were a televised sport she thought he would have been the star of the show.

Soup. Make the soup….

But did she?

No, she didn’t. Instead she went on being engrossed in the sight of Cam Pratt exercising, feeling warmer and warmer herself….

He’s a cop, you know what that means. And he’s a jerk, too….

But a jerk with a body of steel….

She’d just watch three more….

Three. Four.

Five.

Six.

Eight.

Ten…

She was still watching when he stopped. And she went on looking even when his big hands dropped from the bar. Even when he moved out of sight. And for a few minutes after that her eyes continued to be glued to that window. Waiting. Holding her breath.

Until she realized what she was doing.

She was tired, she told herself then. She hadn’t been mesmerized by watching Cam Pratt do chin-ups, she’d just hit some kind of wall of fatigue that had put her in a zombielike trance for a few minutes.

That’s all it was.

A night’s rest and she’d be impervious to that same display. She was sure of it.

She finally turned on the hot water and filled her soup cup.

Okay, so yes, when she had, she did glance out the window again. Once. Long enough to see that Cam had left the garage apartment and was on his way back to his house, dressed in faded red sweatpants and a white hooded sweatshirt now.

But the instant she saw him look in her direction she jolted backward, hoping he hadn’t caught her gawking at him through her kitchen window.

“And if he did see you, that’s what you get,” she chastised herself as she headed for the microwave.

The microwave wasn’t where she wanted it—it was just on the counter where the movers had left it. But she wasn’t going to reposition it tonight, so she merely jabbed the button to open the door.

The door didn’t respond and she stared at it, wondering if the oven had been broken in transit.

It actually took her a moment to drag her thoughts far enough away from the mental image of Cam Pratt that was still haunting her to figure out that the microwave wasn’t plugged in.

“Oh, brother, you better snap out of this,” she advised herself as she plugged in the appliance.

Then she put her soup cup inside and started the oven.

And that was when everything went dark.

With a weary sigh she returned to the window over the sink to see if more than her lights had gone out. They hadn’t, the lights in the alley behind the garage were still on so the blackout wasn’t a power outage. She’d only overloaded her own circuits.

She should have known better. Just about every light in the house had been on, her stereo had been playing, the iron was plugged in, so was her electric drill, and trying to use the microwave on top of it all must have tripped the breaker. Or blown a fuse—whichever the old house was equipped with.

Which she didn’t know. Any more than she knew where the breaker box or fuse box was located.

The only illumination in the house was coming from the alley lights and it was next to nothing. She owned a flashlight but she didn’t have a clue where it was and without it there was no way she would ever see the box in the basement or the attic or wherever it was.

She needed help. At the very least she needed someone to tell her where the main panel was. But who could she call to ask?

Her sister Eve was her first thought but she knew Eve was in Billings until the next day chauffeuring their grandfather.

Her cousins weren’t likely to know anything about a house none of them had ever lived in, and the previous owners had left the state immediately after the closing by proxy.

Maybe the Realtor would know.

Stumbling over packing containers and things she’d pulled out and left on the floor, she finally found her cell phone. But when she used it to dial the number she had programmed for the Realtor she only got a voice mail message that Betty would not be available Monday or Tuesday.

Which seemed to leave Eden with only one alternative.

Her house and the house next door were exactly alike.

Surely the breaker box or the fuse box was located in the same place.

And not only would Cam Pratt know where that was, he would probably have a flashlight she could borrow to find it.

Cam Pratt.

Again.

“This is just not my day,” Eden grumbled.

Maybe she should forget eating and go to bed, she thought, desperate for any other alternative. She could search the place in the morning, in the daylight.

But it was the dead of winter. In Montana. And already she could feel the temperature in the house cooling without any heat coming from the furnace. An entire night without heat could freeze the pipes. The pipes could burst. The place could flood.

Not a good thing.

So it was going to have to be the lesser of two evils and that was Cam Pratt.

Eden sighed and grumbled some more.

But in the end she resigned herself to having to ask for help.

From the monster she’d created.

Chapter Three

Before she could force herself to go next door and ask for Cam Pratt’s help with her electrical outage, Eden decided that if she was going to have to be seen, she had to make sure she wasn’t too unsightly.

After returning home from the police station she’d put on a pair of flannel pajama pants and a long-sleeved thermal-knit T-shirt so she’d be comfortable to work around the house. Since the clothes weren’t revealing, she decided not to change back into what she’d been wearing that afternoon.

But when it came to her face and hair? If she’d been about to meet up with anyone other than Cam Pratt she probably would have gone as she was—face scrubbed clean, hair stuck in an untidy ponytail.

Only she wasn’t meeting up with anyone else and she just couldn’t go without reapplying blush and mascara using her purse compact and the glow of the moon coming through her bedroom window.

Hating herself for her vanity, she also took her hair down from the ponytail, brushed it, and then pulled it to her crown once again, this time holding it with a clip rather than a plain rubber band.

Nothing fancy, she judged upon final inspection in the compact mirror, but passable.

Still dreading seeing Cam again today, she nevertheless resigned herself to it, slipped on a peacoat and felt her way to the front door to go out into the cold night, regretting that she’d put this off now that it occurred to her that it was after ten o’clock and he might have gone to bed.

If he had she was just going to freeze to death, she decided. Better that than waking him up.

He hadn’t gone to bed, though. Because once Eden had crossed their joined-at-the-property-line driveways and was walking in front of his house, she could see that not only were his lights still on, he was in his living room. In fact, he was in clear view through the undraped picture window as she climbed the four steps to his front porch.

He’d apparently showered in the time between her ogling him and now. He was dressed in a different pair of sweatpants—gray ones—and another white T-shirt that had long sleeves instead of short. Although the T-shirt didn’t cling to him with the dampness of perspiration, it did fit him tightly enough to prove the chin-ups had been worth it because the knit followed his shoulders, biceps and the expanse of his chest to great effect.

Really great effect…

Inside he was drying his hair with a towel in one hand while using the other to hold the TV listings he was scanning. He didn’t notice Eden’s approach and, once again, she couldn’t refrain from covertly watching him.

It would have been helpful if the good-looking teenage boy hadn’t grown up to be one of the hottest men she’d ever seen. And while it shouldn’t have had any effect on her, it did.

“I’m just tired,” she whispered to herself again.

He’d finished drying his hair and he draped the towel over one shoulder. But running his hands through that wavy hair, finger-combing it back on top, didn’t bolster her resistance because even that haphazard grooming gave him a sexiness that was so potent it came through the glass of the picture window and nearly knocked Eden’s socks off.

Before she could lapse into another transfixed state, she forced herself to march the rest of the distance to his door and ring the bell.

She also made sure to stare straight ahead so she didn’t give any indication that she even knew he was right there in his living room, and as a result she only saw him from the corner of her eye when he peered out the window to see who she was.

Her enthusiasm for being there was not boosted by the epithet she heard him say when he saw her. But she stood her ground, bracing for more of his unpleasantness when he opened the door.

“I’m sorry to bother you,” she said before he made it any more clear how he felt about her being there. “But I knocked out my power, I don’t know where the breaker box is and I can’t find my flashlight. I thought, since the houses are alike, you might—”

“Know where the box is and have a flashlight,” he finished for her. Sardonically and impatiently, of course.

This was getting old.

“Yes,” she said.

She half expected him to refuse. But after a moment of glaring at her yet again he pushed open his screen door and stepped aside, inviting her in.

“Thanks,” she muttered.

“I’ll put on some shoes and get a coat. I’ll have to show you where the box is,” he said begrudgingly, leaving her standing in the entry as he went the six feet to the hallway that led to the bedrooms in her house, too, and disappeared around the corner.

Eden didn’t make herself at home but she did peer from where she was into his living room.

Decorating was not his long suit.

The room was furnished for comfort not for style. There was a large brown leather sofa and matching armchair beside each other, both of them facing the television rather than angled to allow for conversation. In front of the sofa was a coffee table cluttered with what appeared to be the remnants of Cam’s dinner and a few meals before it. But other than a serviceable end table between the couch and chair, one lamp, and a television and stereo system all together on an elaborate entertainment center, there wasn’t a single knickknack or picture on the wall. There also wasn’t one book on the built-in bookshelves and Eden marveled at that fact, thinking that her moving expenses would have been considerably less had she not had boxes and boxes and boxes of books.

“I’d think it would occur to a brain trust like you to ask where something like the breaker box is in a house you’d just bought.”

He’s ba-ack….

Eden turned her head from the direction of the living room, glancing at him again as he rejoined her in the entry wearing running shoes and a gray hooded sweatshirt, and carrying a flashlight the size of a drainpipe.

“You just aren’t going to let up, are you?” she said, more to herself than to him.

“Let up on what?” he asked, pretending not to know what she was referring to.

And that was when Eden decided that they were never going to be able to merely go on from here. That awkward or not, she needed to address the events that had put this thorn in his side and apologize to him if she ever hoped for him to treat her civilly.

“I know I was awful to you when our mothers arranged for me to tutor you in physics—”

“Awful? You spent every session calling me stupid, calling me every other lousy name you could come up with to let me know you thought I was too ignorant to live. I’d say brutal is more what you were to me,” he said as if she’d unleashed something in him.

Eden hid her grimace by dropping her head and rubbing her forehead. “Okay, brutal,” she conceded, embarrassed and wishing he didn’t recall quite so much.

“You said you were amazed an ignoramus like me could even read,” he continued. “That I had no business in a kindergarten class, let alone a physics class. You asked me if you were going to get honorable mention at the bottom of my diploma because I wasn’t able to get it on my own. You—”

“I remember it all,” Eden said to keep him from going on, shoring up her courage to look at him again. “It’s the one thing that I’m mortified I did. I’d never treated anyone that way before and I never have since.”

“Am I supposed to feel special to have been singled out?” he asked.

“No. But it was special circumstances. And it wasn’t the real me and I’m sorry.”

“Who was it, if it wasn’t the real you?”

“It was a person who was out of her league being a sixteen-year-old senior. A person who was the target of what passed for humor with you older, cool people every day—four-eyes, pizza-face, metal-mouth, pumpkinhead, Halloween-hair, geek-bot, nerd-girl—”

“I don’t recall ever calling you any of that. Or even being aware of you until the tutoring.”

“But your friends, your crowd, did—Steve Foster, Greg Simmons, Frankie Franklin—they were the worst. They never gave it a rest. Even though I tried to keep to the shadows, I was still fair game that whole year. And then I came home from school one day—a month before I thought it was going to end—and my mother told me I had to tutor you, of all people.”

“Because I needed a little help. Kind of like you do right now. But I’ll bet you’re not thinking of yourself as dumber than dirt, are you? And I didn’t need the help because I was too dense to learn the stuff any other way,” he said defensively, as if he’d been waiting all these years to get that in. “I’ll grant you that I wasn’t an A student, but I was average. In everything but physics. Plus I hadn’t given it the time I should have when it came to studying. I thought I could take the easy way out. But did you just look at it like that? Not the almighty Eden Perry.”

“Almighty? That’s the last thing I thought I was. I didn’t have a drop of self-confidence or self-esteem and I was going to have to be alone, in a room, one-on-one with one of the popular people. I would have rather poked my own eyes out. I was so sure you were going to ridicule me, that I decided to—” She tried to think of how to temper what she was going to say. But the best she could come up with was, “I decided to cut you off at the knees before you had the chance to do it to me,” she finished quietly.

“A preemptive strike?” he said as if he wasn’t buying it.

“Yes, a preemptive strike,” Eden confirmed anyway. “So I went in and acted as if I thought you were… Well, you know how I acted.”

“I was already embarrassed that my mother was making me be tutored. By a girl. A girl who was two years younger than I was. But I didn’t go in putting you down. And I’d never called you names before, either, so I didn’t have that coming.”

“I know,” she said, a little amazed by just how furious he was.

“And once you saw that I wasn’t going to do it to you, why didn’t you quit doing it to me?”

Eden made another pained, embarrassed face but this time she didn’t hide it. “It was…I don’t know…I guess there was some payback in it for everything I went through the rest of the time even though it wasn’t you doing it. Plus once I’d started, I was afraid if I stopped I’d really be in for it—from you along with the rest of your clique. And that’s sort of how I am, I guess—once I dig in my heels it’s hard for me to change course.”

“So you kept it up until I felt as lousy as you did?”

Maybe he wasn’t only furious with her.

She’d assumed from his reaction to her since their paths had crossed again that he just didn’t like her. And with good cause. She’d never thought that what she’d done all those years ago might have had more impact than that. Somehow all this time she’d believed that that wasn’t possible. Her goads and taunts had been tossed at someone who she’d imagined couldn’t be hurt. But now she wasn’t so sure.

“I didn’t think anything I said would actually affect someone like you. I was a nothing and you were king of the high school world. I’ve hated thinking back on how I spoke to you, but was what I did even worse? Did I…scar you in some way?”

He didn’t like that question. He stood a little straighter, his chiseled chin raised a fraction of an inch before he said, “You left a mark but I wouldn’t call it a scar.”

Eden was concerned that he was lying. That he was covering up just how much she really had injured him, and that thought made what she’d done seem even worse.

“I’m so sorry,” she repeated. “I was never proud of what I did—in fact I was so ashamed of it that I’ve never told a single soul, not even my sisters. But I honestly didn’t think it would have any repercussions. I wondered if you’d even remember me today when Luke Walker said you were who I’d be working with.” She paused a moment and then in the name of honesty, added, “Or at least I was hoping you wouldn’t remember me.”

Cam didn’t say anything. He just let his deep blue eyes bore into her and she couldn’t tell what he might be thinking. But she could see now that the same way she still carried the wounds of other people’s words, he carried the wounds of hers and that prompted her to repeat a heartfelt, “I am truly sorry. If I could take it back, I would. And honestly, I knew you weren’t stupid. It was an awful…” She stumbled over the word he’d already found lacking and amended it to, “—a terrible, terrible thing to do and no one should have known that better than me because I was living it every day myself.”

He still didn’t say anything for a while and she wondered if her explanation and apology were too little too late. She wouldn’t have blamed him if that were the case. Certainly if one of her tormentors were standing there saying the same things to her she didn’t think it would make any difference—she still would have disliked them intensely.

But then Cam’s expression seemed to soften slightly—only slightly—and he said, “Metal-mouth, four-eyes, pizza-face, Halloween-hair and what else?”

“Pumpkinhead, geek-bot and nerd-girl, just to name a few.”

“And I got the brunt of you being called all that?”

“You could think of it as taking one for the team,” she suggested carefully, trying a tiny bit of levity to see if he’d respond to it.

And, lo and behold, he did.

He smiled. Only a little. And maybe in spite of himself. But it was a smile nevertheless.

And if he was handsome scowling, it was nothing compared to how good he looked when that face relaxed with amusement.

“Taking one for the team?” he repeated.

“You could factor in that I really was only a scared, insecure kid—not that I’m excusing my behaviour. And that I have regretted it all these years, if that helps any. And really, when all is said and done, can you hate somebody in ducky pants?”

Her second stab at a joke broadened the smile. He glanced down at her pajama pants—brown flannel printed with goofy-looking ducks.

“They’re mallards,” Cam corrected. “And I suppose I’ll think it over while I turn your lights back on.”

It wasn’t overt forgiveness but at that point, Eden decided to take what she could get.

“Thanks,” she said.

Cam nodded toward his front door. “After you.”

Eden went out into the cold again and Cam followed her as she retraced her steps, keeping her fingers crossed that peace might really have been reached between them.

The inside of her house was remarkably cooler than the inside of his and Eden knew she’d made the right choice in asking him for help.

Cam took the lead once the front door was closed behind them, using his flashlight to help navigate around and through packing boxes and debris to get to the basement.

Eden followed, happy not to be going down into the blackness of the basement alone.

The circuit box was under the stairs and one flip of the main breaker set music playing upstairs, letting them know it had worked.

“There’s a light here,” Cam said, pulling a string that turned on a bare bulb under the steps to prove his point.

Eden hadn’t realized until that moment how close they were standing. Or in what position. But they were standing very close in the small space beneath the stairs, and he’d pivoted away from the breaker box to face her.

They were so close that she had to look almost straight up at him, the way she might have tipped her head if they were about to kiss.

Which, of course, they weren’t.

But once more that strange Cam-trance thing happened and she suddenly found herself staring up into his dark eyes, thinking about what it might be like if he did kiss her. If he just leaned down a little and pressed his lips to hers.

Cam Pratt, of all people…

Then it registered that her mind was wandering again and Eden yanked herself out of it, stepping from under the stairs in a hurry.

“I’d better go turn some things off or this is going to trip again,” she said as her exit excuse, dashing up the steps far ahead of Cam.

She had turned off the stereo and some of the lights by the time he reached her, and she could hear the heat switching on.

“I really appreciate this,” she told him as he headed for the front door.

“I keep one of those lights that work on batteries stuck to the wall next to the breaker box down there so when this happens I have that option, too. In case the flashlight isn’t easy to get to for some reason.”

“That’s a fabulous idea,” she said, too effusively because she was overcompensating for calling him stupid all those years ago. She toned it down and added, “Plus I’ll be more careful about how many things I have on at once. But you know how it is when you move—I was going from room to room looking for what I needed in all the boxes so every light was on.”

He merely nodded. There wasn’t anything to say to her ramblings. But he was watching her with those penetrating eyes again as they stood at her door. Eden wasn’t sure what else to say, either.

Cam broke the silence—and the meeting of their eyes—by glancing at her pajama pants again.

“Ducky pants, huh?”

“They were my back-to-the-cold-of-Montana present to myself.”

He sighed. “Well, I guess you’re right, you can’t hate somebody in ducky pants.”

This time Eden smiled. “Does that mean I’ve been granted amnesty?”

He didn’t answer immediately. Instead he raised his gaze to hers once again and gave her a small, forgiving smile. “Yeah, I suppose it does.”

Eden wasn’t sure if she’d been carrying around even more guilt than she’d realized or if it had something to do with how bowled over she’d been by this guy from the start, but the relief she felt was like a huge, heavy weight lifted from her shoulders. And she was far more pleased than seemed warranted, too.

But she decided to simply enjoy it and smiled back at him a second time. “Thank you,” she said, meaning it.

He merely nodded and opened her door to go.

“And thanks again for help with the breaker box,” she called to his back as he walked across her porch.

He didn’t turn around, he just raised the hand that held his flashlight and said, “Anytime.”

And as Eden closed her door to the sight of that man who had so enthralled her already tonight, she was a little shocked at just how tempting it was to turn on every light in the house, hit the microwave start button the way she had earlier and trip the breaker all over again.

Just so she could take him up on that offer and get him back there.

Cam Pratt.

Of all people.

Chapter Four

“Help has arrived. Bearing coffee and doughnuts.”

Eden craned around a stack of boxes in her living room to see her sister Eve come through her front door bright and early the next morning. “I’m saved! I can’t find my coffeemaker.”

Eve went directly to the kitchen to deposit the cups and doughnut box. Once she had, she turned to Eden, who had followed her, and gave her a hug.

“I’m so glad you’re back!” Eve said just before she let go of Eden.

“Me, too. Even if these temperatures are a shock to my system after Hawaii,” Eden responded.

She took the coffee that was intended for her, curved both hands around the cup to warm them and, after a sip, sat on one of the kitchen chairs at the table.

“How was Billings?” she asked her sister as Eve sat across from her.

“It was fine. I’m sorry I couldn’t be here when you got in yesterday. I wanted to be. But the Reverend made an appointment to see his attorney and his headache doctor, and I was the only one of the grandchildren who could take him. And you know you can’t go to Billings and not have dinner with the folks and Uncle Carl and Aunt Sheila, and spend the night or everyone gets upset. So I was stuck. But I’m here now and I’m all yours for the whole day. On one condition,” Eve added.

They’d each settled on a doughnut and Eden chose to ignore the on one condition portion of what her sister had said as she took a bite of hers.

“How are the folks?” she asked after savoring the sweet fried cake.

“Same as always—good,” Eve answered. “They told me to say hi and for you to get to Billings to see them as soon as you can.”

“I will. And how is the Reverend?” They’d never called their grandfather—who had been Northbridge’s reverend until his retirement a few years earlier—anything else. He wasn’t a cuddly kind of man and had never invited anything but formality. From anyone, as far as Eden could tell.

“The Reverend’s the same, too. The man will die the way he’s lived—with a stick up his butt.”

Eden laughed at her sister’s bluntness. “Why was he seeing his lawyer and a doctor?”

“You know the Reverend—no explanations and I certainly wasn’t allowed in on either appointment. I was lucky to get a thanks for taking him everywhere he needed to go.”

“Do you think the renewed interest in the bank robbery and Celeste was why he wanted to talk to the lawyer?”

Eve shrugged elaborately as she sipped her coffee and chose a second doughnut.

“And maybe he’s stressed-out about it and that’s why he’s having his headaches again,” Eden continued to postulate.

“Hard to say. I can’t believe he isn’t stressed-out by having all this old stuff brought up again. You know that stiff-upper-lip-never-talk-about-it thing he does has to be hiding what he really feels. And having his wife run off with a bank robber? That had to have been the worst, the most humiliating thing that ever happened in his life. But of course he’s acting as if he’s above it all.” Eve took a bite of her doughnut and then said, “He says hello, too, by the way. And that he’s looking forward to seeing you again after so long.”

Eden wrinkled her nose. It wasn’t that she disliked her grandfather, but he wasn’t her favorite person, either. She certainly hadn’t been sorry that of all her family, he’d never visited her in Hawaii.

“Yeah, I think you might be in for it,” Eve said, interpreting Eden’s nose wrinkle. “The Reverend doesn’t seem particularly happy that you’ve agreed to do the age progression on Celeste. He said he doesn’t see the point in pursuing what’s long past and important to no one,” Eve finished, mimicking their grandfather’s stiff speech pattern.

“It’s important to a whole lot of authorities,” Eden said. “Important enough that if I didn’t do it they’d get someone else to.”

“I’m just warning you.” Eve brushed crumbs off her hands.

“I guess it’s good to go in knowing what I’ll have coming but it doesn’t make me want to see him more.”

Eve took a turn ignoring what Eden had said and changed the subject. “Now for my one condition as payment for my help. I want you to be my plus-one at Luke Walker’s wedding tonight.”

“Your love life is in sorry shape if I have to be your plus-one,” Eden said with a laugh.

“There’s no question that my love life is in sorry shape. But I want you to be my plus-one. I thought it would be a good opportunity for you to jump right into things again here. See some people, get reacquainted. The Walkers would have invited you themselves if they had known you would be here.”

“Why are they having a wedding on a Tuesday night?”

“The minister they wanted to perform the ceremony is an old friend of the bride and this was the only time he could get here.”

“But still, I have this whole house to put together,” Eden demurred.

“We’ll work all day and then stop, get pretty and go to the wedding. I’m not letting you hibernate. You’ve been doing that since Alika died and now you’re here and starting over and you need to do it right. Faith is coming in next week and I swear that I’m going to get you both going again if it’s the last thing I ever do.”

“Like a couple of stalled engines?” Eden asked, laughing again.

“Like a couple of cars that have been up on blocks. It was good that Faith spent all that time with you in Hawaii after her divorce but I know you both just used it to hide out from life together. Faith doesn’t know what to do with herself and you’ve thrown yourself into work since Alika died. But things have to change and now’s the time for it.”

“And you think that starts with my going to a wedding tonight.”

“It’s as good a place as any. So I RSVP’d for me and my plus-one and you’re it.”

Eve was right that Eden had thrown herself into work as a kind of protective shell to get through the last awful year and she had made up her mind to put some effort into coming out of that shell when she’d decided to move back to Northbridge. Eve was probably also right that tonight, at a wedding, was as good a place as any to start.

“Okay,” she said as if she were conceding reluctantly when, in fact, she wasn’t. “But we’d better get a whole lot of stuff done today to make up for losing tonight.”

“We will,” Eve assured. “I told you, I’m all yours.”

But neither of them was in enough of a hurry to leave the coffee they were still drinking.

Eve’s attention did seem to turn to the job at hand, though, when she glanced around at the mess. “The house is okay?” she said.

Eve had done Eden’s house hunting for her and served as her proxy at the closing.

“It’s just the way I remembered it. Unfortunately I never had occasion to find out where the circuit box is when I babysat here for the Dundees,” Eden said, going on to tell her sister about the blackout of the previous evening.

“And speaking of Cam Pratt,” Eden said when she’d finished with the entire story. “You didn’t tell me he lived next door.”

“Why? Does it matter?”

Eden couldn’t very well say it did when Eve didn’t know what had gone on with Cam years ago, so she said, “No, it just might have been nice to know. The Realtor led me to believe my neighbors would be people named Poppazitto.”

“They own the place but Cam lives there and is probably going to buy it.”

“So I’ve heard.”

Eve finished her coffee and took the cup to the trash bag in the corner. “Cam’s a good guy,” she said along the way. “He helped you last night, didn’t he?”

“Uh-huh,” Eden said noncommittally, thinking that he’d helped her out of a whole lot of rest the night before. She hadn’t been able to stop the image of him from haunting her each time she’d closed her eyes and for some reason it had made her too restless to fall asleep.

“I’ll bet he was surprised to see how you’d changed from when you used to tutor him,” Eve said, laughing at the thought.

“He didn’t seem to be.”

“How could he not have been? You’re so different you don’t look like the same person—that’s another reason I want you to go tonight, I want to be there when everyone sees you now.”

“Very few thirty-one-year-old people look exactly like they did when they were sixteen. Even Cam has changed,” Eden said, picturing him again in her mind and once more judging the changes to be improvements.

She didn’t have any idea what alerted her sister to her thoughts, but apparently something did because Eve’s eyebrows rose. “Do you have a little thing for Cam?”

“Don’t be silly. Of course I don’t,” Eden said, hoping it came out as even-toned as she’d wanted it to so she didn’t raise any more suspicions in her sister’s mind.

But whether it had or not, Eve was still not convinced. “Did you have a secret crush on him when you tutored him?” she said as if she’d just hit on a surprise of her own. “He was the big man on campus, as I recall. And you were the mousy kid who should have been a sophomore rather than a senior, who got to be all alone with him to teach him… What was it?”

“Physics,” Eden said, rolling her eyes at the fiction her sister was weaving. “And no, I absolutely didn’t have a crush on him, secret or not. I didn’t even like him.”

“Then maybe you just like him now,” Eve said, switching gears.

“Or maybe I was just saying I thought I was going to be living next door to people named Poppazitto and I’m not,” Eden said, taking her own cup to the trash.

But again Eve didn’t seem to be fooled because when Eden turned back to her, Eve was grinning. “Cam will be there tonight, you know? Luke Walker is marrying Cam’s half sister.”

“Cam has a half sister?” Eden asked, interested in this bit of news but also hoping it would distract Eve.

“That’s right, you don’t know the dirt, do you?” Eve said. “Well, Cam’s father had two daughters with the woman he left Cam’s mother for. One of them was a nightmare and she ended up dead when the meth lab she was living in exploded. But Karis—the other Pratt half sister—is nice and she came here with her sister’s baby, thinking Luke might be the baby’s father because he’d been married to her sister for a while. It turned out that he isn’t the baby’s father, but that’s how Luke and Karis got together and now Luke and Karis are adopting the baby and getting married tonight.”

If that story wasn’t a distraction, Eden didn’t know what was.

But it wasn’t distraction enough because Eve managed to go full circle and ended with, “So Cam will be there tonight and you’ll get to see him again.”

“I don’t care about seeing him,” Eden insisted, lying through her teeth when the truth was, she’d been looking out every window she passed since she got up this morning, hoping to catch sight of him. And failing. And being inexplicably disappointed each time.

“I don’t kno-oh,” Eve said, making two syllables and a song out of know. “I think there’s more going on here than you want to tell and I’ll bet it’s an old crush.”

Eden rolled her eyes again, shook her head and said, “If only you knew how wrong you are.”

At least about there being an old crush.

But a new crush?

Well, maybe not exactly a crush.

But as much as Eden hated to admit it even to herself, deep down there might be brewing the tiniest hint of something a little like that.

The wedding of Luke Walker and Karis Pratt was held at the Pratt family home. The large house had been built by the Pratt’s maternal great-grandfather, and was where the first seven Pratt siblings had all grown up.

The ceremony was short, sweet and traditional, with the bride beautiful in a white suit composed of a fitted jacket and skirt, and the groom handsome in a navy-blue suit of his own.

But not as handsome as Cam—that was what Eden thought as her gaze drifted to him from the moment he stepped up as one of the groomsmen. He and Luke’s brothers—who were also groomsmen—wore blue suits, as well. And despite the fact that the Walker men were indisputably a good-looking lot, to Eden, Cam had them all beat by a mile.

Which was not something she wanted to think.

But she just couldn’t help it. Any more than she could take her eyes off him from the wedding’s very beginning to the pronouncement of man and wife, and the kiss.

The kiss that made her recall her own thoughts about what it might have been like to kiss Cam the night before.

A recollection she shunned the minute she realized she was having it.

When the ceremony was over, congratulations were given during an informal receiving line. Then champagne began to flow, and an elaborate buffet of food and a three-tiered cake were unveiled.

After a full day of making headway putting her new house in order, Eden had showered and shampooed her hair, and slipped into a dress she’d worn to the last wedding she’d attended. It was a fairly simple, knee-length silk halter dress in an exotic print of black, brown and beige. The dress wasn’t tight but it did follow her curves nicely and bare her shoulders.

On her feet she wore her sassy and very pointy black satin mules with the jeweled flowers, golden rope cutouts and thin three-inch heels.

She’d scrunched her damp hair just enough to give it a little added fullness without frizz, added a taupe-colored eye shadow to her blush and mascara regimen, and as a finishing touch she’d slipped several hoop bracelets over one wrist.

All together she’d been pleased with how she’d looked and had left home feeling comfortable and confident.

That had been reinforced at the Pratt house where old friends and acquaintances marveled at the changes in her. But although she didn’t understand it, she discovered as the evening wore on that the approval—and maybe admiration—of only one person was what she craved. And that person didn’t come anywhere near her.

Maybe things with Cam weren’t as improved as they’d seemed the night before, she fretted as the post-receiving-line mingling got underway and Cam kept his distance. Or maybe she had read more into the night before than had actually existed. Maybe having granted her amnesty still didn’t mean that they were going to be friendly. Maybe the best that amnesty afforded her was a cease-fire and she should just be glad for that because that was really what was important in order for them to coexist in the small town.

But still, each time their glances met and he only nodded or raised a chin at her, she wished for more.

Why that should be the case, she didn’t know. And what more she wanted from him, she also didn’t know. She just wanted more.

She wanted it so much that it was alarming and it took the fun out of the occasion for her.

In fact, she was feeling so disheartened as she turned from the buffet table with a slice of wedding cake, that rather than joining any of the other guests who were chatting while they ate theirs, she went to the entryway and sat alone, one step up from the bottom.

And that was when Cam chose to seek her out. One bite into the cake and there he was, sitting next to her.

“Tired of talking?” he asked in greeting.

“No, not at all,” she answered with a tinge more eagerness than she would have liked. But she was worried that now that he’d finally approached her, he might leave her to solitude if she didn’t convince him otherwise. Then, as an excuse for exiling herself, she added, “Pointy shoes. I needed to sit for a minute.”

“Ah,” he said, in acknowledgment.

That left a lull Eden didn’t know how to fill because her mind suddenly went blank.

“So are the lights still on at your place?” he asked.

Okay, not a great conversation starter but it was more than she’d been able to come up with.

“They are, thanks,” she said. “And you’ll be happy to know that I found my flashlight today, too. Just in case.”

Ugh. She knew she wasn’t helping matters. But she just couldn’t get her brain to function.

Which was why all she could think to say next was, “Nice wedding.”

“I thought so, too.”

“Eve told me Karis is your half sister.”

“Mmm-hmm. There were two of them but the other one died.”

“That’s what Eve said. It looks as if Karis fits in, though. She seems like one of the family.”

“Yeah, we all think of her that way now. Even me,” he added in a bit of an aside that drew Eden’s glance from the bride in the distance to Cam.

“Even you?”

“I wasn’t too sure about Karis when she first showed up. Her sister had come around before that and Lea was trouble. Plus I guess I learned not to be too trusting working in Detroit. But Karis won me over.”

“Detroit?” Eden said, pleased to have something to build on. “Don’t tell me you put a branch of your family’s dry cleaning business there.”

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