Summer After Summer
Ann DeFee

Thanks to Jeanne and Bobby Schnuriger—

to old friends and new friendships. Bobby, you wanted

your name in a book—so here it is!

And to my hometown—Seguin, Texas.

Contents

Summer 1973

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Summer 1993

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Summer 2007

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Summer 1973

Chapter 1

“Jasmine Boudreaux! You girls watch out for snakes now, ya hear?” Mama’s honeyed drawl drifted over the languid green river to the wooden raft where I was sunbathing with my three best friends—Bunny Bennett, Mary Alice Cunningham and Misty Stewart.

Although we were as different as the four points of the compass, we’d been best buddies since our first day in kindergarten. Mary Alice was thoughtful, sensitive and more than a little religious. Bunny, the wild child, was on the opposite end of the spectrum. And Misty was our version of intelligentsia, bouncing back and forth between arcane ideologies. One day you’d find her quoting Ayn Rand; the next she’d be reading Karl Marx.

And speaking of dichotomies—I was a walking, talking Gemini. Although I was the most pragmatic member of our group, I was naive enough to fall for every practical joke in the universe.

I was fairly sure Mary Alice and I were the only two virgins in our senior class. I say that tentatively because virginity, or lack of it, was one of the few things we didn’t discuss.

“Bucky said he saw at least half-a-dozen moccasins in the river last night, and you know how those nasty things like to get up on that old dock to sun.”

“Yes, Mama, we’ll be careful,” I replied, although I didn’t bother to open my eyes. Through some strange quirk of fate, Bucky was my brother. He was a junior at the University of Texas and he was absolutely positive he was the grand pooh-bah of the Western world. Truth be told, he was a pain in the rear.

Bunny sat up and engaged Mama in conversation—an exceptionally bad idea since my mother loved to talk.

“Miz Boudreaux, did my mom call?” Bunny could put on the thickest Texas accent you ever heard. And this was one of those occasions.

“No, honey, she hasn’t. What do you want me to tell her if she does?” Mama had to yell in order to be heard.

“Just remind her I’m spending the night here, if you would. Not that she really cares where I am.” That last sentence was meant strictly for our ears.

“Sure thing, honey,” Mama agreed. “Jazzy, we’re eating at the country club so you girls go to the Pink Pig for supper. I’ll leave some money on the kitchen table.”

In Meadow Lake, Texas, population 8,631, the Pink Pig Burger Emporium was the “happening” place. “Happening,” that is, if you were into junk food, teenagers and the occasional redneck—“happening,” of course, being a relative term.

Growing up in a small south Texas town when your daddy’s the police chief presented some challenges. Everyone, and I do mean everyone, thought it was their job to report my every move. Swear to goodness, if I’d been audacious enough to utter the f-word, Mama would’ve known about it before I closed my mouth.

Every weekend, the kids had this ritual where we all circled the Pink Pig, cruised to the park on the other side of town, came back around to check out the movie theater, swung by Garcia’s Pizzeria and then completed the circuit with a trip back to the PP. Round and round we went in a relentless circle of teenage hormones.

I was so busy thinking about life in the high-school zone that I almost missed the fact that Mama was still dispensing advice from the shore.

“Misty, you watch out and don’t get sunburned. With your red hair, you could blister right up.” Mama was well into her drill-sergeant routine.

“Yes, ma’am,” the redhead in question yelled as she rolled over and smeared more baby oil on her exposed stomach. “Maybe if I get my freckles to run together I’ll be able to tan. What do ya think?” she asked, even though we all knew it was a rhetorical question.

Misty had been trying to tan since the fourth grade and she’d never progressed beyond the burn, peel and freckle stage. I, on the other hand, had the skin of my Cajun ancestors and by the end of the summer I was as brown as a berry. It was one of those things that made her crazy.

One of the benefits of living in a small town was that you could have lifelong friends. We’d shared everything—our thoughts, our dreams and on occasion our communicable diseases. The only exception to the “share and share alike” rule was boyfriends. But that’s a story I’ll get to later.

Bunny’s dad owned a tractor factory, which employed half the people in town. She was our bouncy blonde. The bouncy part came naturally; the blondeness was courtesy of a bottle.

The Bennetts were filthy rich and loved to flaunt it. Mrs. Bennett’s diamonds rivaled the crown jewels. And that marble mausoleum Bunny called home was totally sterile.

Misty’s parents were professors. They had to be book smart or they wouldn’t be teaching at the college. However, I thought their general IQ was questionable. Sometimes they treated their only child as if she’d just popped in from another planet.

Mary Alice was a total sweetheart. A bit clueless in the fashion department, but one of the nicest people you could meet. Her dad was a Holy Roller preacher—need I say more?

So now you have an idea why we spent so much time at my house. My parents were cool, most of the time anyway, plus we had a ski boat. And for some unfathomable reason Misty had a major-league crush on Bucky. Just thinking about Misty and Bucky doing anything erotic exceeded my yuck factor.

We were freshly minted high-school graduates and feeling invincible. Actually, that wasn’t quite the truth, at least for me. I was terrified. In a moment of insanity I’d applied to the school of architecture at U.C. Berkeley—that’s in California—and to my amazement I was accepted. It seemed like a good idea when I was filling out the application, but California, good grief!

What was I thinking?

“Jazzy! You’re daydreaming again.” Misty put her thumb over the lip of her Coke bottle and pretended to spray me. “I have a rumor to spread.”

“Wow,” the rest of the group said in chorus. Misty was usually the last person to hear anything. Not that she was ditzy; she just didn’t pay much attention to gossip.

“My mother was on the phone talking to Dean Patrick. She was whispering, but I got the drift of the conversation. Sandy Sorenson is getting married. Her daddy’s on the faculty, you know.” She paused for dramatic effect. “Sandy has to get married!”

“Sandy Sorenson,” Mary Alice whispered. “Oh, my God, she is so beautiful.”

Sandy was in her freshman year at the University of Texas, and rumor had it she’d taken the campus by storm.

“Who’s the guy?” Not that I was prone to telling tales, but I figured we might as well get all the facts.

“I don’t know. When Mom saw me she went into the laundry room and closed the door.” Misty frowned. “Isn’t it awful that Sandy has to get married?”

Her comment sent me into my women’s lib mode. “Why would anyone ‘have’ to get married in this day and age? Please!” Talk about making me crazy. We weren’t living in the 1950s. I Love Lucy and its archaic view of sex was nothing more than a TV rerun.

I was about to continue my rant when I noticed that Bunny was curiously silent. Usually she was the first to jump in on a good story.

Mary Alice piped up instead. “A baby needs parents who are married.”

Our sweet little friend was getting annoyed. Normally she was fairly open-minded, but on the topic of babies and pregnancy her church background came to the fore.

“Billy Tom said he’s ready for tonight,” Bunny commented. That girl was the queen of the non sequitur, and this was a subject that definitely needed to be changed.

So Sandy Sorenson took a backseat while we discussed our upcoming adventure. Although it took some world-class wheedling, we’d finally convinced our buddy Billy Tom to help us get drunk for the first time. As a group, we had a well-earned reputation for being “goody-two-shoes”—no booze and no pot. Since we were all heading to college, we decided to take a walk on the wild side…in a safe environment. And you couldn’t get much safer than being with Billy Tom. It wasn’t so much that he was benign; it was the fact that we had a ton of blackmail material on him.

“He paid some guy five bucks to buy us three six-packs. That’s four apiece.” Bunny was our soiree coordinator. “I’m not sure any of us will be coherent after four beers.”

Neither was I, but I was certainly no expert. Most of the kids went out to the river to drink and neck and God only knows what else. Daddy was well aware of the kegger parties and periodically sent a deputy to patrol the area. Needless to say, I had never attended one. If my daddy had caught me there, I would’ve been grounded until I qualified for social security, and that wasn’t in my game plan. I had people to see and places to go.

“What did you tell Charlie we were doing tonight?” Mary Alice directed her question to Bunny. She was referring to Bunny’s boyfriend who was, unfortunately, the love of my life. But that was a secret I wasn’t about to share with anyone, not even my best friends, or to be more specific, especially not my best friends. Charlie, darn his hide, treated me like his buddy.

Charlie Morrison and Bunny had been a couple for almost a year, and in my opinion it was an ill-fated liaison. The Bennetts despised him, more than likely because he wasn’t rich and his family wasn’t socially prominent.

When Bunny and Charlie first started going out, her parents made the mistake of issuing an ultimatum, which was like waving a red flag at a bull. Tell the girl she couldn’t do something, and she went full steam ahead. So all year she used her friends as an excuse to get out of the house.

I’d known Charlie’s parents almost my entire life and I thought they were fantastic. They owned a fishing camp/restaurant down the road from our house. Looking back, I suppose it was little more than a beer joint but Mrs. Morrison’s Friday Night hush puppies and fried catfish bash was famous throughout the county.

I’ll never forget when I met the Morrison twins. It was my first day of school and Mama made a huge production about me riding the school bus. That was also the day Bubba Hawkins decided to make my life a living hell.

To give it a nice spin, he was a big, fat bully, and like all tyrants he homed in on the vulnerable. What he hadn’t expected was Charlie Morrison. After Charlie and Colton, his fraternal twin, got through with Bubba he never bothered me again. That was the day I fell in love with Charlie.

When we were in elementary school, the Morrison twins and I spent most of our summer days playing cops and robbers in the pecan orchard by the river. Colton was a great buddy, but even then I knew Charlie was special.

It seemed like my entire life consisted of a collage of Charlie memories. He risked life and limb teaching me to water-ski—I wasn’t the most coordinated person in the world. And when I got my learner’s permit, he instructed me in the art of driving a stick shift. Again, a scary proposition.

But it was in the pecan orchard on a sultry summer night after our freshman year that he truly stole my heart. That was my first kiss, and what a kiss it was. My life would never be the same. Too bad the feeling wasn’t reciprocated. Darn it, the idiot never kissed me again!

“I told him I was busy. He got all snotty. He’ll just have to deal with it. It’s not like we’re joined at the hip,” Bunny groused.

If Charlie wanted to stick to me like glue, I’d have been a happy, happy girl. But he was a passion I needed to ditch because obviously it didn’t have a chance in H-E- double toothpicks of going anywhere. We were another Romeo and Juliet, except Romeo wasn’t enamored of Juliet.

So there I was, a seventeen-year-old virgin (in more ways than one) planning to sneak off to the drive-in with a bunch of girls to slurp suds. And we were going to pull off this great misadventure in Billy Tom’s ’57 Plymouth that didn’t even have a working radio.

How pitiful was that?

Chapter 2

“Shake a leg, you guys!” Bunny commanded.

We were doing our hair and makeup while she was issuing orders. That girl was Simon Legree in a Shirley Temple body.

Misty’s head was on the ironing board while Mary Alice tried to press her friend’s long curly hair into submission.

“I hate you, you know that.” Misty was referring to my Cher hair that was long, straight and very black.

“Tough titty said the kitty, but the milk’s still good,” I retorted. “At least you have boobs.” A good offense makes the best defense.

“Enough of that!” Bunny yelled. When had she started taking lessons from Mama? “We have to get going or we’ll miss Billy Tom.” She was on a roll. “We’ll take my car to the Pink Pig and he’ll pick us up there.”

Bunny had a cool red VW convertible. We loved to cruise around town in that baby. I had a rusty Ford station wagon and Misty and Mary Alice were sans wheels.

The Pink Pig was situated so you could drive in a circle around the building. Bunny made one perfunctory loop, but it was early so our audience was limited. Darn it! She parked under the awning next to one of the speakers and punched the call button. Did I mention we had the top down for maximum exposure?

“Can I take your order?” A tinny voice came from the speaker.

“Four burgers, four orders of fries, two Cokes, a Dr Pepper and a chocolate shake,” Bunny answered, pushing the off button. Then she made a face at me. “I think it’s disgusting that you can drink milk shakes and never gain an ounce.”

“It’s one of the few advantages of being tall enough to play with the Boston Celtics,” I said. Much to my chagrin I was almost five feet ten inches, stick skinny and as flat as a board. In fact, I could stand sideways behind a telephone pole and you wouldn’t see me. Why I ran around with three curvy, baby ballerinas was beyond me.

“Jazzy, Jazzy!”

“Oh, God, it’s Petey, the band geek. Whatever you do, don’t you dare call him over here.” Mary Alice slid down in her seat.

Petey had a massive crush on Mary Alice. Unfortunately, she thought the poor guy was a dork.

I wasn’t very good at obeying commands so I ignored her. “Hey, Petey, how’s it hangin’?”

True, Petey Renfro was a band geek, but he was also my good friend. I was the drum major and he played a tuba that was almost as big as he was. People said we looked like Mutt and Jeff. So what? He made me laugh, and best of all he was my sidekick on band trips.

He scurried over to the car and vaulted into the backseat. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see that Mary Alice had slipped farther down in the front.

“My cousin’s coming to town tomorrow and I’m having a pool party. Please say you’ll come. We’re doing it out on our patio and the Pink Pig’s gonna cater,” he cajoled.

Petey’s mom was the party diva of Meadow Lake, so without a doubt the get-together would be a blast.

“You guys are invited, too,” he casually told my friends. His cavalier attitude toward Mary Alice didn’t fool me for a minute. Petey was counting on me to drag her along. Unreciprocated love flat-out sucked, and I considered myself an expert on the subject.

We had to lie through our teeth to get rid of Petey when Billy Tom finally cruised by to pick us up. Although B.T. drove one of the funkiest cars in town and it was awfully hard to miss, we didn’t have much choice. He was probably the only person we could coerce into assisting us with our little adventure, and we were smart enough to know we had to have a sober driver.

So we ditched Bunny’s car at the back of the parking lot and piled into B.T.’s junk-mobile. Our blackmail material on him was really juicy. That boy wasn’t about to squeal, not if he knew what was good for him.

Considering it was Friday night, privacy at the drive-in was at a premium. Although the parking lot was a sea of cars, I’m sure there weren’t more than ten people actually watching the movie.

Wonder what everyone else was doing?

The minute Billy Tom pulled the Plymouth into a spot on the back row he started complaining. What the hell was he doing? His old man was gonna kill him. Jazzy’s dad would throttle him. God, he’d be dead before he even got to graduate.

“Good Lord, Billy Tom. You’re more nervous than a cat in a room full of rocking chairs. Chill out,” I ordered. Whining was one of my pet peeves—especially when the whiner was a six-foot-two-inch wide receiver on the football team.

“If my folks find out about this, my ass will be grass and my old man’ll be a power mower,” he moaned. “I don’t know why I let you talk me into something this stupid.”

How about because we could manipulate him? “Don’t worry, no one’s gonna find out, so shut up and hand over the beer,” I ordered. For some reason I was feeling brave. In unison we each took a can and popped the top.

Misty was the first to take a sip. She spit it out almost before it hit her mouth. “This stuff tastes like cat piss!”

It took a lot to rile up Billy Tom, but her comment did the trick. “You guys didn’t give me enough money to get the good stuff. And they’re hot ’cause I don’t have a cooler! You’re damn lucky you have me to drive you around,” he mumbled.

“Don’t worry about it, we’ll drink them anyway.” Mary Alice used her most soothing voice. That’s what I loved about her; she was always a peacemaker.

And drink them we did. By the time I was halfway through the first can, the taste started to be tolerable. The second one was pretty good and after I finished the third, I was the brewski queen of south Texas. Oops! On the fourth, my nose went numb.

“I can’t feel my nose.” I was trying to act serious, but a bout of giggles ruined the effect. Fortunately, we were all happy drunks. Everything was hysterically funny. Then we began to sing. Bunny and Misty were cheerleaders, so they led us in multiple renditions of the school fight song. They even knew the third and fourth verses.

We were making so much noise they could’ve heard us in the next county. So much for discretion. That’s when the dog doo hit the fan. I knew we were in a pile of trouble when Charlie Morrison jerked open the car door.

“What’s going on?” He didn’t shout and somehow that made his question more ominous.

“Angelique!” That was Bunny’s real name, but Charlie was the only one who could get away with calling her that. “Get out of the car. What do you think you’re doing?”

Although Bunny hadn’t had as much to drink as I had, she didn’t appear to be in any condition to tell anyone anything. So I did what any good friend would do. I elegantly removed myself from the front seat—okay, I did a face plant, but I recovered nicely—and went toe to toe with Charlie.

“We’re just having a few drinks.” I might’ve been able to pull it off if I hadn’t ended the sentence with a hiccup.

Charlie raced fast boats and competed in water ski-jumping contests. He was tall, tan, blond and lanky. Plus, he had the most gorgeous green eyes I’d ever seen. Everyone agreed that when he grew into his body he’d be heart-stopping, drool-inducing, movie-star handsome. I already thought he was. And did I mention I was head over heels in love with him?

“Jazzy, I’m disappointed in you. I figured you had better sense than to get involved in this kind of shenanigan.”

Uh-oh, usually he called me Sunshine. And when had he perfected that school-principal glare? Enough was enough. He wasn’t my daddy, and he sure wasn’t my boyfriend—damn it!

“I thought you were seventeen, not thirty-seven,” I retorted. “Where do you get off telling us what to do?” I was getting louder with every word, and by the time I finished my rant we’d acquired a substantial audience.

“Get back in the car.” He gently pushed me toward the open door. “B.T., you haven’t been drinking, have you?”

“Nope.”

“Why don’t you give me your keys? Colton will take you home.”

Colton had joined the crowd and was standing around gawking. Who could blame him? We were creating quite a spectacle. Billy Tom evacuated that car like his pants were on fire, throwing Charlie his keys on the way out.

“I’m going to drive these nitwits home,” Charlie said.

“Nitwits, I’ll give you nitwits.” I was itching for a fight.

But instead of taking me on, he laughed. “Get back in the car, Sunshine. You’re going home.”

Did I mention that unreciprocated love sucks?

It took me all of three minutes to get over being mad, and then we continued our group giggle all the way to the river. There’s probably nothing worse than being stuck in a car with a bunch of tipsy teenage girls, but Charlie soldiered on.

“Oh, my God! I’m gonna pee my pants,” Misty exclaimed. She was laughing so hard that tears were pouring down her face. Her comment wasn’t terribly funny, but at the time I thought it was hysterical.

As we drew near my house, Charlie cut the lights and the engine. He didn’t want my daddy to catch us. He’d always had the tendency to be the knight on the white horse, the protector of the young, the weak, the stupid.

We rolled through the gates and stopped under a low-hanging bougainvillea. Fortunately, we were spending the night in the guesthouse so there was at least a fifty-fifty chance we wouldn’t wake up my parents.

“I think I’m gonna be sick.” Misty put her hand over her mouth and lunged for the door.

We all leaned out to watch Misty retch. The fragrant night air suddenly reeked of recycled Lone Star and Pink Pig burgers.

“Oh, crap. I’m puking petals,” Misty squealed as she stared at the disgusting puddle by her feet.

We were so busy watching Misty that we missed the newest arrival. When I heard that voice I knew we were busted.

“What’s going on out here?” It was Bucky—my sanctimonious, pain-in-the-butt brother.

“I’m puking petals,” Misty announced. It was not one of her finer moments.

“Don’t be stupid. That stuff came from the bougainvillea,” he said, pointing to the flowers hovering over us. For some unknown reason, Bunny and I decided that was especially hilarious. The next round of giggles left us rolling in the grass.

Charlie and Bucky were not amused. When I finally got myself under control and glanced up, they were standing over us like a couple of condescending guardian angels.

I still can’t believe I reverted to a grade-school mentality, but I did with a vengeance. I stuck out my tongue and came up with the pithiest comment I could, considering I had a beer-soaked brain.

“And a nanny, nanny, pooh, pooh to you, too.”

It was immature and stupid; however, I did get in the last word.

So there!

Chapter 3

“Oh, my God! I’m dying.” My head was in the toilet so I wasn’t sure anyone heard me. “I’m puking my guts out,” I wailed.

“Here,” Bunny said, handing me a bottle of Coke. “This’ll make you feel better.”

“Nothing will make me feel better.” At least nothing short of a permanent adios, and I wasn’t ready for that. I flopped on the cold linoleum floor. “Why are you so perky?”

Her answering smile was enough to make me want to deck her.

“I didn’t drink that much.”

“Yeah, well.” I was on the verge of coming up with a great answer, really I was, but my brain short-circuited when my tummy did another barrel roll.

“You’d better get well, PDQ. If you back out on going to the party, you’re dead meat,” Bunny threatened.

“Yew!” Why did she have to mention dead meat? Or any kind of meat, for that matter?

It took a six-pack of Cokes and a sleeve of Saltines before I truly thought I could make it through the day. Now I was at Bunny’s house doing what I did best—providing cover for my friend.

“You know your sneaking around is gonna to get us both in trouble,” I griped as Bunny searched the bottom of her closet. “If your parents catch you going out with Charlie when they specifically told you not to, you’ll be grounded for life. And if by some miracle you get out of the house before you’re twenty-one, they’ll never let you see me again.”

Bunny seemed oblivious to my complaints as she continued to look for something. When that girl got focused on a goal, she got focused. And her single-mindedness always seemed to get me in trouble.

“Here it is,” she crowed triumphantly, holding up a Scarlett O’Hara corset, minus the laces.

“What do you mean, here it is?” I was lounging on the bed getting a really bad feeling about this. But I consoled myself with the fact that I was bigger than she was, and I could overpower her if push came to shove.

“I found this in my mother’s closet.” She waved the offending piece of lingerie in my direction. “I know, I know. You don’t wear a bra. But for tonight, you’re gonna be the sex goddess of south Texas. We’re doing a makeover.”

“Like hell,” I snorted. “You’re not about to get me into that thing. It couldn’t be more than a size two and I’m a ten.”

“Size is not a problem. And yes, you are going to wear it. Since we’re leaving from here, you won’t have to sneak past the Baptist brigade.”

She was referring to my parents—pillars of the Baptist church and ardent opponents of anything that smacked of sexy.

“So get this on while I find the dress I have in mind. Just you wait till I get you all dolled up!” She tossed the instrument of torture at me.

Did Bunny really believe I’d strip down and put that thing on? “No way. I’m perfectly happy in my current state.” Unfortunately, my resolve wasn’t nearly as tough as Bunny’s, and eventually I capitulated. Darn it! I needed to work on my backbone.

“Hold your breath. I’ve almost got the hooks done up.” She was pulling and tugging to fasten me into the Merry Widow.

Poor, poor Scarlett. I suspect the infamous Southern belle was a bitch because her corset had restricted the flow of blood to her brain.

“Stay right there while I get this sundress on you,” Bunny instructed, holding up an emerald-green, low-cut dress with spaghetti straps. After she waved the little scrap of material, she turned me away from the mirror.

“I can’t wear your clothes. I’m at least eight inches taller than you are, and I’m at least twenty pounds heavier.”

Now that was something I hated to admit.

“Exactly,” Bunny said smugly as she yanked the dress over my head and somehow managed to get it zipped. She put her hands on her hips and circled me.

“Don’t you dare look in the mirror,” she admonished as she grabbed the stool from her tulle-covered vanity. “Sit there.” She pointed at the bench. “I’m going to do your hair and makeup.”

After she finished working her magic, she stepped back to admire her creation. At best, I usually gave the makeup process a lick and a promise. A little powder, a swipe of mascara and a dab of lipstick, and I called it good. Not tonight.

I could subdue her, I thought as I sat in a fragrant cloud of Aqua Net and Estée Lauder awaiting the verdict. Bunny walked around me humming some inane tune.

“You are gorgeous! Absolutely fan-tab-u-lous. I’ve outdone myself this time.” She broke into an immense smile and turned me around to check my appearance in her cheval mirror.

“Holy cow! I’ve got boobs.” Did I ever! They were falling out of the top of the dress for God and everyone to see. As short as the skirt was, it looked like my legs went on forever.

The problem was that Bunny’s little dress barely covered the essentials. I didn’t know whether to pull it up or pull it down. As for the rest of it, Bunny was right. I was gorgeous. Could I possibly be a swan?

“Your parents would have a cow if they could see you. You are one bitchin’ chick!” Bunny exclaimed.

She was right. Mama and Daddy would stroke out if they set eyes on me. I loved them dearly, really I did, but being a good girl was tiresome sometimes. I sympathized wholeheartedly with all the preachers’ kids I knew. Living in a fishbowl was hell.

“It shouldn’t take long for your transformation to hit the grapevine.” Bunny giggled, then went into her Captain Bligh impersonation. “Don’t touch a hair on your head. I’ll get dressed and we’ll get rolling.”

When Bunny was right, she was right. Being a foxy mama was quite a high. What was Charlie going to say? And why did I care? Could it be because I was obsessed with someone I couldn’t have?

Conversation ceased when we walked into the party. Guys I’d known since kindergarten stared at me, their mouths hanging open. Pretty cool, huh?

I was reveling in my new state of glamour when Charlie showed up.

“Hey, Sunshine. You’re looking mighty good,” he said, putting his arm around Bunny’s waist. It wasn’t a bad reaction, but it wasn’t especially good, either. What did I think he was going to do, ditch Bunny and declare his undying love for me?

Get real.

I’d driven to the party with Bunny, so I hoped I wouldn’t have to hitch a ride home. That was getting old. And seeing her with Charlie was even more depressing.

“Jazzy, I’m glad you came. I’ve been waiting for you.” Petey grabbed my hand and pulled me across the room. He was the only guy who was immune to my new attractions. The whole sexy thing was fun, but normalcy was good, too.

“I’ve got someone I want you to meet. My cousin is here from Dallas. I told you about him, remember?” Petey kept tugging on my hand. I could have easily pulled him to a halt, but everyone was staring. So I went into docile mode and followed him.

Petey halted in front of the most gorgeous guy I’d ever clapped eyes on. This person was related to Petey— band-geek Petey?

The hunk had dark hair and ice-blue eyes. Oh, wow, was that a deadly combo.

“Jazzy, this is my cousin Clint Whitworth. Clint’s going to be a sophomore at Southern Methodist.”

Only Petey would call SMU Southern Methodist.

“Clint, this is my friend Jazzy.” Petey was grinning as if he’d just won a jackpot. “Her name is really Jasmine but we all call her Jazzy,” he explained, and continued to stare at us as if he was expecting something exciting to happen.

“Miss Jasmine, you are beautiful,” the Adonis said, taking my hand and kissing my palm.

I was almost afraid I’d faint dead away. I didn’t know whether the dizziness came from lust or the waist-cincher that was restricting my blood flow.

“Let’s find a quiet place to get to know each other.” Clint guided me through the crowd to the pool, where we sat in lounge chairs and talked. We interrupted our conversation only to raid the buffet and dangle our feet in the water. It seemed we had everything in common. We enjoyed the same music, books, school subjects, and we even saw eye to eye on politics.

Clint told me he’d just finished his freshman year and that he planned to go to law school. When I explained I wanted to be an architect, he didn’t laugh. I even confided that I’d been drawing houses since I was in elementary school. Very few people were privy to the information that I got off on the idea of designing homes.

Although it was the 1970s, male chauvinism was alive and well in Meadow Lake, and women were not encouraged to step outside the few professions deemed acceptable. Even the school counselors said I should reconsider my choice. What did they know?

Clint, however, said he thought it was a great idea. And that alone sent him to the top of my favorite-people list.

This newfound comradeship was very cool. It felt like I’d known him forever. Petey grinned like a kid in a candy store every time he looked at us. Discretion wasn’t exactly his middle name.

“Cousin Petey is a matchmaker,” Clint said. “He’s been trying to introduce us for over a year. He claims we’re made for each other.”

“Really?” Sounds lame, I know, but what else could I say to his comment?

“Yeah, imagine that.”

What did that mean?

I glanced around and didn’t see either Charlie or Bunny. Darn it! “This has been great, it really has, but it looks like Bunny went off with Charlie so I need to hit up someone for a ride home.” I wasn’t hinting for him to take me home, honestly I wasn’t. Uh-uh.

“I’ll take you whenever you’re ready to go.”

I hated to admit my social shortcomings to a college guy, especially one with Paul Newman eyes. “Midnight is my curfew,” I finally admitted, although it took a few false starts for me to get it out.

“Oh.” Although he looked a bit nonplussed, he recovered quickly. “I’ll tell Petey we’re going.”

And that’s how we ended up parked out by the river in his new Datsun 240Z.

“Petey showed me this place. I thought since we had half an hour to kill, we could talk.”

If that was his euphemism for necking, it seemed like a great idea to me. I couldn’t think of anything I’d like better than to get into a good lip-lock with him. Obviously Charlie would be my first preference, but that wasn’t going to happen. Not now, not ever.

“Sure,” I said.

So there we were, sitting in the moonlight with the cicadas creating their own brand of soft music. It was romance at its best—if you discounted the damned stick shift between us. I leaned my head back against the soft leather seat and fantasized about what would happen next.

Guess what? Nothing happened, because Clint kept yakking on and on about freshman English.

Freshmen English! I was about to melt into a puddle of hormonal angst and he was analyzing Hemingway?

Enough was enough. If he wasn’t going to make the first move I’d have to take matters into my own hands.

Ignoring everything ladylike that Mama had tried to drill into my head, I launched myself at him.

It took about half a second to realize I’d made a terrible mistake.

As a virgin I wasn’t familiar with erotic sounds; however, even I knew that a yelp wasn’t a harbinger of lust.

After he disentangled our body parts, he planted a kiss on my forehead. Nope, that definitely wasn’t lust.

“Um, Jaz, um, there’s something I need to tell you.”

If it was possible to die from embarrassment, I was about to expire on the spot. By that time I had managed to wiggle back into my seat. Something was drastically wrong.

“What?”

He sighed as if the weight of the world was on his shoulders. “I’m sorry. I should’ve told you sooner.”

Oh, my God, he thought I was too skinny, or maybe he thought I was butt-ugly. Or worse, I had a stray piece of spinach in my teeth.

“Told me what?” I managed to squeak.

“I, uh…” He paused. “Crap, this is hard.”

This time I didn’t interrupt him.

“I have a good friend who’s a guy.”

So what? “Some of my best friends are guys.”

He stared at me in amazement and then lapsed into a heartfelt chuckle. “Sometimes I forget about life in a small town.” He gave me one of those looks that said hey, dummy, I’m saying something important here. “He’s a really good friend.”

Oh. My. God! If they gave out stupidity awards I’d have a blue ribbon. “You mean you’re…” Somehow I couldn’t finish the sentence, especially considering the fact that I’d almost ravished him.

“Yeah, I am.” He leaned over the console and looked me in the eye. “I’ve really enjoyed being with you tonight. I hope we can be friends.”

“Sure, I’d love to be your friend.” He was smart, he was funny, he was a great conversationalist—and unfortunately, this major dreamboat wasn’t interested in girls.

If that didn’t beat all!

Chapter 4

“Jazzy, is he as scrumptious as I heard?” Misty plopped down on the dock where I was sunbathing. “Can you believe that nerdy Petey has a cousin who looks like a movie star?”

She scooted to the edge of the dock and put her feet in the water. “And I was having dinner with my parents! Are you going to see him again and does he have any friends?”

Oh, yeah, he had friends. But I wasn’t planning to share that even with my good friend. Whether he told anyone or not was his business.

I glanced up from painting my toenails and gave a heartfelt sigh. “He was, uh—he was nice.” I shook my head, pondering the abominable luck I had with boys. That led me straight back to Charlie and my unrequited love. I hated that term. It sounded like something out of a Jane Austen novel.

Oh, Mr. Darcy, my love for you is unrequited.

“So, are you going to see him again? Is he coming back anytime soon?”

“Get a grip, Misty,” I snapped. Uh-oh, losing my cool was a big mistake, especially with our budding attorney. I was never grumpy, not even when it was that time of the month. Now Misty would definitely know something was up.

“What?” She had that crafty look I hated so much.

“Nothing.”

“Don’t you nothin’ me, girlie. You’re keeping a secret and I want to know what it is.”

“Hey, y’all.” Those dulcet tones came from Bunny.

I was saved by my bleached-blond friend. She strutted down to the dock in the shortest, tightest pair of cutoffs I’d ever seen. “Aren’t those uncomfortable?” I had to ask.

“Nope.” She slipped her sandals off and sat down on the dock. “Let’s go riding.”

Cruising was our favorite hobby. Of course, in Meadow Lake, cruising was one of the few things a kid could do for entertainment.

“Sounds good to me,” Misty said. “I don’t have to be home for dinner until seven.”

“And I don’t have to go to work until tomorrow.” In my summer gig as a lifeguard, I worked a couple of days a week. It was a hard job—yeah, right—but someone had to do it.

“Where’s Mary Alice?” Bunny asked.

“Her dad’s holding a revival meeting. She told me they’re going down to the river to do some baptizing,” Misty answered.

Bunny laughed. “I guess riding around with us is out, huh?”

“Yep.” Mary Alice missed quite a few things the rest of us called fun.

Even though it was hotter than hell, we had the convertible top down. We were willing to sacrifice anything in the name of being “cool,” and believe it or not, that included scorched thighs.

We circled the Pink Pig several times. At three o’clock in the afternoon the pickings were slim.

“I have an idea,” Bunny said.

It wasn’t so much what she said as how she said it. The way my skin prickled, I knew we were heading for a mess of trouble. But before my good sense could issue a stern warning, Misty piped up.

“What?” she asked.

Bunny wore her “we’re gonna be oh, so grounded if anyone catches us” grin.

“We’re going skinny-dipping in the park.”

“No!” I shouted, almost causing her to run into a stop sign.

“Why not?” Bunny put on her affronted act.

“Because my daddy’s the police chief and if we get caught I’ll be a hundred and ten years old before I’m allowed to leave the house again.”

“Don’t worry about it. I have everything under control.” She turned the car toward the park.

Misty didn’t say a word. She was probably wondering whether she could survive jumping from a moving vehicle, because if that girl got nabbed with her drawers down in a public place, her parents would hustle her off to a boarding school that would make Oliver Twist’s look plush.

Our friend batted away our objections as if they were pesky gnats. So off to the river we went, the three of us like lemmings to the sea.

The park had a long winding roadway between the golf course and the water. River Road was popular with the high-school crowd for a couple of reasons—most of which made my daddy cranky. The Indy 500 wannabes used it to hone their racing skills, and the “parkers” favored the secluded areas to do whatever it was lovers did, not that I was an expert on that, being a virgin and all.

For this particular exploit we had to have privacy. My bare butt was not appropriate viewing material.

Bunny pulled into the small lot adjacent to a picnic area at the end of the drive. At that time of day, in that heat, the chances of running into a family were pretty slight. Anyone with a lick of sense was inside enjoying the air-conditioning.

“You guys coming? You’ll love it.”

Bunny was out of the car and halfway down the hill before Misty and I could decide what to do. Darn it, she started flapping her arms up and down making clucking noises. Who could ignore a challenge like that?

“I hate being manipulated,” I muttered. And that’s what my friend was doing, in spades.

“Me, too,” Misty admitted. “But I can’t seem to resist.”

“Yeah,” I said as I unfolded my long legs from the backseat of the very small car. Please God, don’t let one of Daddy’s patrolmen do the park loop and check on Bunny’s car.

Okay, Bunny was right. Shucking your clothes and skinny-dipping was decadence at its best. It was a cross between being naughty and feeling liberated.

“This is nice. But I’m still worried about snakes,” I said as I rolled over to float on my back. The only way a cottonmouth water moccasin could bite you was to latch on to a small appendage, and I had two small appendages that I did not want bitten, and we weren’t talking about fingers.

I’d always thought floating was as close as you could get to being back in the womb. It was very quiet and it gave you a serene sense of weightlessness.

“Who’s that?” Misty hissed.

I felt my tranquility take a nosedive. I jackknifed in the water just in time to see my so-called friends swimming as fast as they could toward the other side of the river.

“Hey, you!” It was a male voice. An irritated male voice.

Oh, great! It was none other than Eddie Troyer, Daddy’s newest patrolman.

Fortunately, I was far enough out in the water that he probably didn’t recognize me. Unfortunately, he was standing next to our pile of clothes.

Darn it all!

When I trained as a lifeguard I did a lot of underwater swimming. With Patrolman Troyer hot on my tail, I was certainly glad I’d learned how to hold my breath for an extended period of time.

“What are we going to do?” Bunny asked.

The three of us were crouching in the bushes as we watched the cop prowl up and down the opposite bank.

“Oh, God,” I moaned. “He probably thinks we’ve drowned and he’s gonna call my daddy. They’ll bring a boat out and drag the river. We have to let them know we’re not dead.”

“No,” Misty whined.

“Wait, wait, wait.” Bunny seemed to be the only one whose brain was still working.

“He has to go back to his car to report this, right?”

“Yeah.” I could almost see where she was going with this.

“When he climbs back up the hill, we race across, grab our clothes and hide in the bushes downstream.”

“That might work.” And if it didn’t, the rookie was going to get an up-close and personal preview of my ass. But as repugnant as that seemed, I didn’t have a better idea.

“I’m in.”

“Me, too,” Misty reluctantly agreed.

She didn’t sound all that sure, but neither was I, so we were even.

The minute Eddie turned his back and trudged up the hill, we were in the water swimming like we’d jumped into a pool of piranhas.

Bunny was the first out of the water, first to grab her shorts and first to disappear into the bushes. I was right behind her. Panic and adrenaline made me very fast.

“What are we going to do about your car?” The vehicle question was something that had occurred to me the minute my brain started working. How could we explain the car? We certainly couldn’t drive past Patrolman Troyer, waving blithely on our way out.

We’d found sanctuary behind some wild grapevines. I had my underwear on, Bunny was already in her shorts and halter top, and all Misty could manage to do was sit there and moan.

“Not to worry. I have an idea,” Bunny announced—not for the first time.

It was a good thing she did; I was considering turning myself in and facing the consequences.

“You guys stay here while I sneak over to the parking lot,” Bunny instructed. “I’ll take that little cart path behind the eighteenth hole. As soon as he wanders off, I’ll hop in the car and sneak away. Then he won’t see me leave—and if he does, at least you guys won’t get caught.”

“So what do we do?” Misty asked.

“You guys walk back to the clubhouse and call someone dependable to come and get you. If anyone asks why my car was at the park, I’ll play dumb.”

“That might work.” It sounded half-baked to me but at least it was a plan. And that surpassed anything I could suggest.

“It’ll work. We just have to stick together. Skinny-dipping, are you kidding? We’re nice girls. That’s our story. Deal?” Bunny put out her hand.

“Deal.” I slapped my palm on top of hers. This was one of the benefits of sisterhood. All for one, and one for all.

“Do you think Bunny got away?” Misty whispered as we approached the clubhouse.

I’d lost my shoes somewhere, and even worse, Misty’s bra had vanished. Add that to the fact her T-shirt was wet, and we had a big problem.

“Before we go inside you need to pull your shirt out and fan yourself. Maybe it’ll dry a little.”

“Aargh!” Misty apparently hadn’t noticed the way the cotton was molded to her chest. “I can’t go in there, not like this.” She made wild waving motions with her hands.

“I agree. You hunker down over there in the lawn chair. I’ll see if they’ll let me use their phone.”

“Who are you going to call?”

That didn’t take much thought. I planned to call my best buddy. “Charlie will get us. He’s the only person I really trust.”

Wasn’t that annoying? The one person I felt I could turn to in a crisis was my good friend’s boyfriend.

“What have you girls gotten yourselves into now?” Charlie barely managed to control his chuckles when he asked the question.

All I’d had to tell him was that we needed a ride and he was on his way to retrieve us. No questions, no comments, just a “hang on, I’ll be there in a few minutes.” Thank goodness!

Misty’s wild red curls had dried into a mess that resembled a Bozo the Clown wig, and heaven knows what I looked like. The term “raccoon eyes” came to mind.

“Is this gonna burn up the grapevine?” he asked.

Misty and I answered simultaneously. Her answer was an emphatic no. I was a bit more circumspect with my “I hope not. God, I hope not.”

Our answers brought another round of laughter from our chauffeur.

“Here we are.” He pulled up behind Misty’s house. “Are you okay?”

“Yep. Jaz, I’ll call you. Thanks, Charlie,” she said before she dashed toward her back door.

Charlie turned to me, a serious expression on his face. “Is your daddy gonna meet us with one of those bad-cop looks?”

“Not if we’re lucky,” I said with fervor.

“Lord, you’re enough to give a guy gray hair.” He punctuated his assertion by rubbing the top of my head.

“Do you remember the time in the fourth grade when Hooter Thompson knocked me off the jungle gym and you gave him a black eye?” I’d wanted to ask that question for years. It was the defining moment, the moment I knew for certain that I was head over heels in love with Charlie, and my feelings hadn’t changed much in the intervening time.

He glanced at me and laughed. He was no doubt wondering why I’d brought up an event that occurred years before. “I remember. I was grounded for a week when the principal called my dad. Why are you asking?”

“No reason.”

Charlie hesitated, looking as if he was about to press the issue and then decided against it. “Okay,” he said before he started the car.

On the drive to my house, our conversation was strangely stilted. I was contemplating how he was always there for me and how much I loved being around him. He was probably thinking I was a major-league nitwit.

Charlie parked beside our guesthouse. “Let’s stroll down to the dock so you can tell me what happened. If I’m about to have another Hooter Thompson experience, I’d like to be prepared.”

He was out of the car and around to the passenger side before I could get my butt in gear.

“Come on, Sunshine. You’ve got some ’splaining to do.” He put his arm around me and for a brief moment I imagined what it would be like if we were a couple.

That would be my idea of heaven; too bad Charlie didn’t feel the same way.

A couple of days later, I was in the middle of one of my favorite fantasies when the star attraction pulled his boat up to the dock.

“Hey, Sunshine, you want to take a spin?”

Of course I did. I’d go to the moon with this guy.

I was halfway in the boat before I bothered to answer. “Sure. Where are we off to?”

He reached into the cooler and brought out an icy Coke. “I’m starving so I thought we’d head down to Slim Jim’s for a burger.”

“Good.” Slim’s had the best French fries north of the Rio Grande. It was the best of all possible worlds; I could enjoy something fattening and also spend a couple of hours with Charlie.

“Where’s Bunny?” Why did I have to ask that?

“I don’t know. I have a feeling there’s something going on, but she’s not talking to me about it.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, really.” He paused, then grinned. “I guess you could say things are pretty dicey with us right now.”

Chapter 5

Our gang managed to dodge the bullet—sort of.

Daddy kept giving me the “look.” I knew he knew what we’d been up to; fortunately he couldn’t prove it.

Too bad! This was my last opportunity to be a carefree kid and I intended to take advantage of every minute. Yeah, I realized we were being childish, but our tiny bit of hell-raising was our version of asserting our independence.

Summer in Meadow Lake had always had a magical quality—it was sun and fun at its best. And July was truly our summer, a time and place that could never be replicated.

It’d been almost two weeks since our skinny-dipping escapade. I cringed at the thought of what would’ve happened if the patrolman had caught us butt naked. Darn it, I was not about to let Bunny talk me into another debacle. And if I believed that, I was delusional. She was charismatic, mischievous and irresistible to mere mortals.

That’s how she managed to snag me for our next escapade. I protested, a little, but it was to no avail. We were heading off to toilet-paper Mr. Hargrove’s house, and that antic was guaranteed to land us in a pile of trouble. Not only was he our high-school principal, he was also one of the grumpiest guys in town.

“I certainly hope you bought that stuff at different stores,” I whispered as I jumped into Bunny’s car. The backseat was filled with rolls of toilet paper.

“Even better, I raided the janitor’s closet at Daddy’s factory. They’ll never be able to trace it to us,” she assured me as we rolled quietly down the road. Our covert mission required maximum darkness—read the middle of the night—so we all had to sneak out. I felt like a cat burglar in reverse as I crept out of my house and met Bunny down the road.

I was afraid Mary Alice would chicken out, but there she was, standing on the corner with Misty.

“Good grief,” Misty exclaimed, batting the toilet paper out of the way. “Where did you get this junk?”

“I liberated it.”

“You stole it,” Mary Alice squeaked.

“No, you ninny. I’ll eventually inherit Daddy’s business, so in essence I own everything in that building. Toilet paper and all.”

Even I realized that was a bit of a stretch. But who was I to criticize? I was in the process of giving Daddy gray hair. Thank goodness Bucky was working as a camp counselor. Brother dearest was the biggest tattletale in the world, and Daddy really didn’t need to hear about this stunt.

We cruised past the Hargroves’ house several times before we came up with a definitive game plan. We didn’t have a ladder—which was probably just as well—so we’d have to make do with papering the bushes.

Total silence was a necessity for successfully completing our mission, and pulling that off would require a miracle. When Mary Alice got in a bind she turned into a giggle box. That wasn’t good when you were committing a misdemeanor. Misdemeanor or felony, it wouldn’t make a whit of difference to Daddy—breaking the law was breaking the law.

The alley was dark, the town was silent, and other than the odd insomniac and the night clerk at the 7-Eleven, we were the only people up and out. Mary Alice gave another maniacal giggle, managing to wake a dog in the process.

“Stop that,” Bunny hissed as she crept into our potential victim’s yard. “I have an idea. We can do this tree.” She indicated a small mimosa. “Jazzy, since you’re so tall, Misty can get on your shoulders and she can throw the toilet paper at least halfway up the tree.”

That stopped me in my tracks. “What’s this ‘we,’ kemo sabe? Looks to me like Misty and I will be doing all the work.”

Bunny waved her hand in the air. Sometimes that girl really annoyed me.

“Come on, let’s do it.” Misty dragged me through the hedge and headed straight to our target—a poor, innocent tree.

“Kneel down and I’ll get on. Then you can stand up,” she instructed me.

“Sure, I bench-press a hundred and ten pounds all the time!”

“Come on, don’t be a spoilsport,” Bunny said. “I’m too short to do this and so is Mary Alice. We have to finish up and get out of here.” She had a roll of toilet paper in each hand.

It was nice of her to remind me I was the only Amazon in a bevy of petites. Uh-huh!

I got down on my knees and allowed Misty to straddle my shoulders. The tricky part would be getting up.

“Hey, you guys, give me a hand,” I hissed to my coconspirators.

We were making more noise than a Ringling Brothers circus. I was positive someone had already called the cops, so when Misty fell off my shoulders and we landed in a heap of arms and legs, I knew we were busted. It didn’t come as a surprise when the front porch light went on.

“Beat feet,” Bunny yelled, dropping the incriminating paper.

Running sounded like one of the best ideas I’d ever heard; too bad Misty was sprawled across me.

“Get up,” I demanded. Then I pushed her off and scrambled toward the hedge. Yay for adrenaline and the flight response! I was well hidden in the leafy foliage before my compatriots made it halfway to safety.

By the time we tumbled into Bunny’s car, every dog in the neighborhood was barking. The Bennett family must’ve had some larcenous genes lurking in the background. The way she pulled her car out of the alley, sans lights, was pure genius.

“I about busted a gut.” Mary Alice lapsed into a fit of giggles. “I can’t believe we did that.”

Neither could I. Had I totally taken leave of my senses? Oh right, this was the goody-two-shoes club’s summer of mischief—innocent, of course. And if I could talk Daddy into buying that one, I was shoo-in for an Academy Award.

“Where are we going?” Misty asked. She’d obviously recovered her sense of speech. From the moment I pushed her away, until we were well out of the danger zone, moaning had been her only form of communication.

“We’re going to the truck stop,” Bunny answered, whizzing down Main Street.

The only place in town that was open twenty-four hours a day was the truck-stop restaurant on the interstate.

“I’m hungry for some pecan waffles,” the princess of our misadventure informed us before she launched into a boisterous sing-along with Carole King.

“Running from the law makes you hungry, huh?” I asked. My pesky sarcasm reared its ugly head again. I was beginning to doubt our friendship, and that made me sad.

“Yes, ma’am,” she said, gracing me with the dimples that had turned boys all over the county into slobbering idiots.

Bunny was drowning her waffles with syrup. “Are you over your snit?” Her question was directed at me.

“Beg your pardon?” I asked, emphasizing the question with my famous arched eyebrow. Bucky taught me that trick, and I had to admit it made an effective statement.

“So, how does Charlie feel about you going back East to school?” Although Mary Alice, the inveterate peacemaker, was attempting to head off a spat, her choice of questions left a lot to be desired.

“Charlie has nothing to do with where I go to school. I haven’t discussed it with him. And it’s really none of his business.” Bunny punctuated her assertion with a hair flip.

Sometimes that girl was a real bitch. As I watched her, I tried to remember why we were friends. To be totally honest, it was one of those situations where you intellectually acknowledge a person’s faults, but for some reason you choose to ignore her shortcomings.

But when it came to her cavalier attitude toward Charlie, she pushed all my buttons. In all probability it was a good thing we were about to scatter to the four winds.

College would be a new beginning for all of us, and I wasn’t sure our friendships would survive.

Chapter 6

I think I mentioned I was employed—sort of. That is, if you called sitting by a pool sipping Tab and watching kids play Marco Polo a job. At any rate, every other afternoon and on Saturday mornings, I was a lifeguard at the Meadow Lake Resort where Charlie and Colton gave ski lessons to the debutantes from Houston whose parents owned summer mansions. I referred to those airheads as Bimbos in Bikinis—not that I was jealous of their bosoms or anything.

The days I worked were high on my “look forward to” list, because I could hang out with Charlie. Every so often Colton would join us. Although they were twins, they were physically as different as night and day. Charlie had the looks of a blond surfer boy while Colton resembled a young Clint Eastwood.

They were both handsome guys, but there was something about Charlie I found irresistible. What’s it about sexual chemistry? People through the millennia have asked that question and the answer’s always eluded them.

So I continued to pal around with Charlie. We’d talk for hours. At times it felt like we were on a date. On other occasions, it seemed more like a therapy session, especially when he lapsed into a discussion of Bunny.

There was obviously more than a little trouble in paradise; in other words, they were fighting like cats and dogs. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. I wasn’t surprised, but I really didn’t want Bunny to be hurt. And more importantly, I didn’t want Charlie hurt.

But Charlie and Bunny’s relationship had nothing to do with the day my world went to hell. It started out innocently. I was doing a Saturday-morning shift at the pool. Charlie had some private ski students and Bunny was in San Antonio with her parents.

“Hey, Sunshine.” Charlie strolled over to my lifeguard stand. My heart did its usual flip-flop. Darn it, I wished it would stop doing that.

“Would you do me a favor?”

Anything, especially if it involved lots of kissing. That thought deserved a mental slap. “Sure. What do you need?”

“I have a private client coming up from Houston for a lesson this afternoon and Colton’s busy so I’d like you to drive the boat.” Charlie and his brother made money team-teaching water-ski lessons. One of the twins would drive and the other one would get in the water to assist the student.

“You might remember the guy. His parents own a house out on the island. In fact, I think you dated him a couple of times.”

“Are you talking about Stuart Redding?”

“Yeah.”

Boy, did I remember that jerk! “I had one date with him.” And a team of wild horses couldn’t have forced me back into a car with that pervert. He was one of those rich kids who thought a country bumpkin would be an easy lay. One quick jab, and that notion was dispelled!

“He’s not very nice.”

“What did he do?” Charlie was about to segue into his white-knight routine. No telling how he’d react if I told him about my Stuart encounter.

“Oh, nothing much.”

“Are you positive?”

“Yeah. What time do you want me?” I’d been driving a ski boat since before I had a vehicle license, so this would be a no-brainer—plus Stuart was afraid of me.

“Let’s say three o’clock.”

“Okay.”

Later, as I looked back on our conversation, it struck me as ironic that a simple little request could have such a profound impact on my life. My shift was over and I was sipping a Coke when a flashy new Corvette roared up and screeched to a stop. The driver was Stuart “I’m nothing but trouble” Redding.

We’d been on the water almost an hour and Stuart still hadn’t managed to get up on the skis. It usually took a six-year-old kid about three tries before he was up and away. I wasn’t positive, but I suspected Stuart was a pothead and that affected his coordination.

I’d made the boat stop and start about two dozen times and the guy still couldn’t do it. Billy Tom, who happened to be our spotter, and I were placing bets on how soon Stuart would give up.

I felt terrible for Charlie. He’d been in the water so long he probably looked like a California raisin. And that wasn’t the worst of it. Even over the rumble of the motor I could hear Stuart cursing. From the snippets I overheard, I knew he’d disparaged Charlie’s teaching methods, my driving, the river, the weather and God only knows what else. Yep, he was something, all right.

“Charlie’s swimming back to the boat,” Billy Tom said.

I cut the engine so Charlie could hoist himself safely onto the rear platform. He heaved his skis aboard and sat there for a few minutes with his head in his hands. Then he grinned at me, brightening my day.

“Hey, Sunshine. You up for one last try?”

“Sure.” If he’d asked me to jump off the bridge I would’ve done it. I would’ve run with scissors if he’d suggested it.

“I suspect he’s a lost cause, but I’m gonna try one more thing. If I get him up, give it enough gas to keep him in an upright position, okay? Go down the river where it’s not quite so crowded. I’m leaving my skis here, so after he goes down help him into the boat and come back to get me. I don’t think he’ll stay up very long. Is that okay?”

“Uh-huh.”

Charlie jumped back in the water and paddled over to his student in preparation for another try. When he gave the thumbs-up, I hit the gas and much to my surprise whatever Charlie did worked.

“He’s up,” Billy yelled.

“Thank goodness,” I muttered. The whole thing was getting old.

“Give it more gas. He’s a pretty big guy.” Billy said. “I want to keep him up as long as possible.”

“I do, too.” I made a wide, gentle arc into the river. Our passenger did not need to get fancy. Experienced skiers preferred the smooth water outside the wake. Novices, on the other hand, were safer within the confines of the boat wave.

“How’s he doing?” I shouted to be heard over the roar of the engine.

“Fine,” Billy said, and then amended his assessment. “Uh-oh. He’s out in the smooth water. I wonder how he managed that?”

Yeah, how did he do it? It took some measure of control to jump the slight swell created by the boat, and control wasn’t his forte.

I decided the derelict Two Mile Bridge would be a great turning-around place. We could go under the bridge and I’d slow down to allow our student to sink into the water. Then we’d retrieve him and this fiasco would be over.

Too bad it didn’t happen that way. Not even close.

“Stop, stop, stop!” Billy screamed. “Stop! Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God!”

It was the desperation of his last “Oh, God” that prompted me to jerk back on the throttle, stalling the engine.

“What?” I launched myself from the driver’s seat and ran to the rear of the boat.

I looked toward where our student should’ve been, but there was no one in sight. The only thing I could see was the yellow nylon ski rope stretched out behind us.

“He hit the bridge pillar.” Billy put his hands on his head and rocked back and forth. “Oh, my God! Shit! He hit the bridge!”

“He did what?” I wanted to smack Billy. “What? What did he do?” Surely Billy was wrong.

“He hit the bridge,” Billy Tom moaned. “He smacked into the concrete!”

My heart flapped around like a landed bass, but I somehow maintained enough awareness to know we had to do something.

“Pull in the rope, Billy! Right now!” My tone of voice must have penetrated his building panic, because he did as I instructed.

I turned the boat around and slowly motored back to the bridge. Please, God, please, God, please, please, please—Billy had to be wrong.

“There he is.” Billy spotted Stuart’s orange life vest. “Damn! Damn! Damn! Look at his neck.”

One glance at the unnatural angle of his head and I about lost it. He had to be dead. With all that blood in the water, he had to be dead.

Dead!

I motored up next to the body and Billy was in the water almost before I cut the engine. He was now issuing orders. I, on the other hand, was but an inch from pure terror. “I’m going to take him to shore,” Billy called. He had Stuart in a rescue hold and was swimming to the riverbank.

“Drive over to that dock and see if someone’s home. We have to call the cops,” he shouted.

I wanted my Daddy. He could make everything better, I told myself. But could he really?

I barely had the boat stopped before I was out of it and sprinting up the hill, praying that someone would be home.

“Help us,” I screeched, beating on the door. My guardian angel must’ve been working overtime. Thank you, God!

Mrs. Thompson was a tiny woman with steel-gray hair. “Take a deep breath and put your head between your legs,” she told me.

After she was sure I wasn’t going to pass out, she asked, “What’s the problem?”

Somehow between sobs, I managed to spit out my story. By that time, Mr. Thompson had joined us. He was the one who called for the rescue units.

Mrs. Thompson was a retired nurse and she ran with me to where Billy Tom had laid Stuart on the grass. Regrettably there was no need for medical assistance. She confirmed my worst suspicion; Stuart was not returning to his good life in the Corvette lane.

“Someone has to go downriver to get Charlie.” My teeth were chattering like castanets, making it hard to get the words out.

“Charlie?” Mr. Thompson asked.

“Yeah, he was teaching Stuart to ski and he dropped off in the water over that way.” I nodded toward Charlie’s location.

Looking back on it, I think I scared Mr. Thompson half to death. The way he jumped into his boat and sped off, he must’ve thought he was about to find another dead body.

It seemed like an eternity, although it was probably just a matter of minutes before he returned with Charlie.

“Oh, Charlie.” That was all I could say before I broke into tears.

“It’s okay. I promise, it’ll be okay.” He sank down on the grass where I was huddled in one of Mrs. Thompson’s blankets.

Damn, I was cold.

“Listen to me,” Charlie commanded. “It wasn’t your fault.”

He enveloped me in an embrace. He was warm. He was safe. And my world had just imploded.

“Sweetheart, are you all right?” Much to my surprise, Daddy was sitting on the ground next to me. Where had he come from?

I looked up and was astonished to see a fleet of fire and police vehicles.

“I’m taking you home.” Daddy pulled me to my feet and propelled me in the direction of his cruiser. “Come on, boys, I’ll drive you home, too. Tomorrow will be plenty of time to talk about what happened.”

Chapter 7

It had been two days since the accident, but every time I closed my eyes there it was, running again and again like a bad movie. Stuart’s eyes were open and sightless, and his ear almost touched his shoulder. Would I ever be able to get that sight out of my mind?

All my life I’d been the queen of guilt—I felt guilty, or perhaps a better word was responsible—about situations that were way beyond my control. For instance, I felt horribly guilty when Mary Alice didn’t have a date for the junior prom and I did. He happened to be a total dork, but he was still a date.

Then there was the case of the taco stand that went out of business. Somehow I convinced myself that if I’d stopped there more often, the guy might still be around. In general, the guilt was annoying but bearable. This fiasco had taken it to a new plane.

“I got some of your favorite sweet rolls at the Dixie Delite.” Mama was standing in my bedroom door holding a bakery box. She was doing her best to cheer me up. In fact, my parents were spoiling me rotten. On one level, it was nice. On another, it was making me crazy. Instinctively, I realized I had to get out of bed and face the situation. However, knowing and doing were two entirely different things.

“Thanks, Mom. I’m going to take a shower. I’ll be down in a few minutes.”

I could tell by the smile on her face, she was delighted that I was slowly, but surely, coming back to life. My mood was actually rather strange. Sometimes I felt perfectly fine and then it would hit me like a brick. I was to blame for a person’s death. That’s when I’d plunge into depression.

I trudged to the shower. Even when things got really bad, there was something rejuvenating about an orgy of hot water.

Before I made it down the stairs, I heard voices in the kitchen. Could that be Charlie? I hadn’t seen him since the day Daddy took him home to help explain the situation to his parents. He had to be feeling as bad as I did. So why hadn’t I called him?

Although Daddy said the official coroner’s decision was an accidental death, and there wouldn’t be an inquest, I was sure the Morrisons were worried silly. Their boat and their son were involved.

However, he hadn’t been driving the boat. I had.

“Hi, Charlie.” He was sitting at the table with my mother, munching on a sweet roll.

“Hey, Sunshine. You’re looking better,” he replied between bites.

That exaggeration required a very unladylike snort. “Better than what?” I was wearing my rattiest shorts, my hair was wet and pulled up into a ponytail, and I didn’t have on a dab of makeup.

Mama put a glass of milk and a pastry on the table in front of me. The combination of warm cinnamon and sugar jump-started my taste buds. All of a sudden, I was ravenous.

By the time I’d plowed through three Dixie Delite specials, I was stuffed.

“I see your appetite’s returned,” Charlie teased. “Why don’t you ride down to the dam with me?”

“Okay.”

“Mrs. Boudreaux, we’ll be back in a little bit.”

Mama had always been impressed with Charlie’s manners. The guy could charm the birds out of the trees, and regardless of their age, people of the female persuasion were particularly susceptible to his charisma.

“That’s fine,” Mama said. She likely would’ve agreed to anything that got me out of the house.

“How are you feeling, really?” Charlie asked after he parked in a gravel spot near the river.

For some inexplicable reason he entwined his fingers with mine.

“I guess I’m okay. How are you doing?”

He shrugged. “I feel like crap. He was my responsibility. I knew he couldn’t ski, and I also knew he was the kind of guy who’d take dangerous chances. I should’ve told him to get lost, but I didn’t.”

Charlie looked so sad I reached out to touch his cheek. “Neither one of us is to blame. You didn’t have any idea he’d act that stupid. And I was being careful, I know I was. That’s what my brain says, anyway. My heart tells me something different.”

He nodded. “That’s why I wanted to talk to you. Only someone who was there would understand.” We stared at each other for a long time before Charlie continued.

“I feel so responsible.” I felt a tear trickle down my cheek. “He died. He’s not here anymore and that’s heartbreaking.”

“Sunshine.” Charlie traced the path of the tear with his finger. “Please don’t cry.” He put his arms around me. “It’s my fault. I should’ve told him to go home.” He rubbed my back.

“It was an accident,” he said. “Honestly it was. I’ve been worried about you. I didn’t see it happen, and later he was covered up with a sheet. I’d never met him, so I didn’t have any personal connection with him.”

“I didn’t really know him, either. The one date we had was a disaster. He kept wanting to put his hands where I didn’t want him to, and when he wouldn’t take no for an answer I kneed him in the, uh, you know.”

“You kneed him?” Charlie asked with a chuckle.

“Guilty.”

“Oh, boy,” he said with a grimace. “Remind me not to make you mad.”

His comment broke the oppressive mood that threatened to overwhelm us. “Come with me,” Charlie said.

Once we got out of the car, he pulled me to the base of the dam. I thought we were going down to the water; however, he made a right turn before we got to the concrete.

“This is my secret spot.” Charlie gestured at a bower of green hidden by a large willow tree. “I come down here when I need to meditate.”

He was wearing a sheepish little-boy expression that made me fall more in love with him than ever.

“The only other person who knows about this place is Colton. But I brought you here because I suspect you need a retreat.”

How did he know that was exactly what I was craving? And how, in all the years of playing in this meadow, had I missed this heavenly space? I wasn’t sure whether it was the lush greenery or the breeze dancing through the trees that made it so extraordinary, but whatever it was, I sensed that I’d been brought here for a reason.

“Would you like to talk?”

That was like asking a lion if he’d be interested in a wildebeest snack. The funny thing was, we didn’t talk; we simply relaxed and watched the water.

Charlie was reclining in the grass with his hands behind his head. “Are you ready to go to California?”

That was a good question, and one no one else had bothered to ask.

I grimaced, pondering my many misgivings, my middle-of-the-night fears. “I’m kinda scared. It’ll sure be different. Are you and Colton still planning to go to UT?”

“Yeah.” He levered himself up on one arm. “There are two of us and money’s tight, so we couldn’t get very exotic in our choice of schools.”

After that, we talked, we laughed, and we shared memories from our childhood. It was an afternoon I’d remember forever, one of those rare and idyllic moments. As we discussed our college futures, I was surprised to discover that Charlie wanted to be a doctor. We’d been friends forever, but I didn’t know that. And Charlie was totally enthusiastic about my dream of becoming a world-class architect. His unconditional acceptance was another reason I loved him.

I was hunched over with my chin on my knees when Charlie started playing with my ponytail. As far as I was concerned, he could do that all day.

“You have beautiful hair. It feels like silk.” He emphasized his point by gently removing the rubber band and sifting the strands through his fingers.

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