The Date Next Door
Gina Wilkins

For my editor, Patience Smith, who definitely lived up to her name for this book!

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

Epilogue

Coming Next Month

Chapter One

Nicole Sawyer didn’t have to be psychic to know it wasn’t good when Brad began the conversation with, “We have to talk.” Painful experience let her predict his next words. “This isn’t about you—it’s me.”

At twenty-seven, Nic had been down this road enough to know when she was being dumped.

A few awkward but stiffly cordial minutes later, she stood on the porch of her neat frame home and watched Brad’s flashy red pickup disappear down the street of her quiet neighborhood. She was going to miss that truck, she thought wistfully. Its seats were comfortable, and the sound system was truly excellent. She had enjoyed riding around town in it, listening to the country music and classic rock they had both favored.

As for the driver…unfortunately their mutual tastes in music hadn’t been enough to keep them together. They’d been trying for almost eight months, on and off, to make it work. Brad had finally admitted defeat the day after she had canceled yet another date for work reasons.

She didn’t really need him, he had accused her regretfully. And it turned out that he needed to be needed.

Because she knew he was right, she hadn’t bothered to argue with him. Though he had tried to be tactful, he hadn’t been entirely accurate when he’d said it wasn’t her but him. It was always about her, she thought in resignation.

A car door slammed in the driveway next door, and she glanced that way. Her neighbor, Dr. Joel Brannon, stood beside his practical, ecologically friendly little sedan, studying her curiously. He must be planning to go back out that evening, she thought, or he would have parked in his garage.

She wondered fleetingly if he had a date, and if so, with whom. Not that it was any of her business, of course.

“Nic? Everything okay?” he called out.

Joel couldn’t have been more opposite from the long, lean, black-haired cowboy who had just driven away. Not particularly tall, he stood perhaps five feet ten, and his build was more sturdy than lanky. His hair was a shade somewhere between light and medium brown, and he kept it cut short because it tended to curl when it grew out. His eyes were hazel and his nose just a little snubbed, but he had a strong chin and a very nice mouth bracketed by shallow dimples.

Nic had once commented to her best friend, Aislinn Flaherty, that Joel reminded her a little of Matt Damon. Aislinn hadn’t seen the resemblance.

Because he was still waiting patiently for an answer, she prodded herself to smile and reply, “I’m fine, Joel. Thanks for asking.”

Glancing in the direction in which the red truck had disappeared, he asked, “How’s Cowboy Brad?”

“Cowboy Brad,” she replied prosaically, “is history.”

He winced. “I’m sorry. Are you sure you’re all right? Do you want to talk?”

Drawing a deep breath, she shook her head, feeling her loose dark blond ponytail brush her neck with the movement. “Thanks, but I’m on duty tonight. I think I’d rather just take a few minutes to myself before I have to change and head into work.”

“Sure. But if you need anything at all, you know where to find me.”

She nodded and turned toward her door, aware that Joel had meant the offer sincerely. He had become a true friend during the six months or so since he had moved next door to the house where she’d grown up.

It had always been easy for her to have male friends. It was trying to turn those friendships into anything more that seemed to be beyond her capabilities.

Joel straightened the knot on his tie and studied the result in his bedroom mirror. He was making a speech that evening to a civic group that met once a month at the Western Sizzlin’ Restaurant. A jacket and tie seemed to be the required uniform, though he preferred polo shirts and khakis.

Shrugging into his jacket, he looked at the silver-framed photograph on his dresser. “You always did like red ties,” he said aloud to the smiling young woman in the picture.

He didn’t feel foolish talking to a photo. He’d been doing it for so long it was simply habit now.

Turning away from the dresser, he headed for the doorway, glancing out the bedroom window on his way past. The lights were on next door, but Nic had probably left for work already. She usually left a few lights burning when she worked nights, both for security purposes and because she didn’t like returning home to a dark house.

It was a shame about her breakup with the man Joel had nicknamed Cowboy Brad, though he couldn’t honestly say it was a surprise. He had been predicting this outcome almost since the day he’d met his neighbor’s on-again, off-again boyfriend.

Brad was a decent guy with the type of dark good looks and lazy smiles that seemed to appeal to most women, but he and Nic couldn’t have been more mismatched. Though obviously attracted to her fresh-scrubbed sweetness and vibrant personality, Brad had been visibly frustrated with Nic’s stubborn independence and deeply ingrained self-sufficiency. He probably wouldn’t admit it, but Brad was a very traditional man who would be happiest with a woman who saw him as a protector and a hero.

Officer Nicole Sawyer wasn’t that woman.

Wandering into his living room, Joel picked up a small stack of note cards from the coffee table and slipped them into his inside jacket pocket. There was no need to go over his speech; it was a standard spiel about raising safe and healthy children. He had given it a dozen times before. A glance at his watch told him he still had about ten minutes before he needed to leave. Not long enough to do anything much except pace to kill time.

He found his thoughts turning to Nic again. He wondered how she felt about the breakup. As well as Joel thought he understood Brad, he couldn’t quite say the same about Nic.

He liked her very much. She was bright, amusing, generous—almost the ideal neighbor. They had often sat on her front porch or his own, taking breaks from yard work and sipping iced tea, chatting with the ease of longtime acquaintances.

Yet those casual conversations had rarely turned personal. They’d shared general information about their families and childhoods but hadn’t delved into old wounds. They talked mostly about local gossip and politics, about their jobs as a pediatrician and a police officer, about sports or television programs they both watched.

He knew she lived in the house where she’d grown up. And that she’d lived there alone since her widowed mother moved to Europe eighteen months earlier to live with Nic’s older brother, who worked in an American embassy. Nic knew Joel had grown up in North Carolina and Alabama and had moved to Arkansas after a medical school classmate offered him a partnership in a fledgling pediatrics clinic.

He had told her he’d chosen to buy the house next door to her while driving around aimlessly looking for a neighborhood that felt “right” to him. She hadn’t teased him about his method of home shopping; it seemed to have made sense to her when he said that he’d seen the For Sale sign in the yard of this house and had made an offer the next morning.

Nor had she asked, as quite a few others had, why he wasn’t interested in living in a more upscale, moneyed area—say, on a golf course or in a gated lakeside lot. Nic seemed to understand that he’d been looking for a private retreat, not a showplace—and for now, that was here.

Joel still couldn’t say whether Nic had been in love with her cowboy or had just considered him a pleasant diversion from the demands of her job. He suspected the latter, but since she wasn’t one to share her deepest feelings, he couldn’t say for sure.

He hoped she hadn’t been badly hurt. Nic was too nice a person to have her heart broken. His doctoring skills didn’t extend to repairing that particularly painful condition.

He hadn’t even been able to fix his own.

“And then he had the nerve to offer me twenty dollars to tell him who’s going to win the football game Monday night. Twenty dollars!”

With indulgent amusement, Nic watched her friend Aislinn Flaherty furiously pace the living room. Aislinn’s near-black hair was escaping its neat up-twist, so that long, wispy curls bounced around her indignant face. The midcalf-length tiered brown skirt she wore with a belted camel-colored tunic top whipped around her shapely legs with each forceful turn.

Aislinn made a habit of dressing conservatively almost to the point of blandness, but her efforts were pretty much wasted. She was still striking enough to draw more attention to herself than she would have liked.

“What did you say to that offer?” Nic asked—as if she didn’t already know.

“I told him that if I were psychic—which, of course, I am not—I would hardly sell my services so cheaply. And then I told him that if I had been psychic, I’d have known better than to agree to a blind date with him.”

“So what you’re saying is that your date didn’t go very well,” Nic drawled, smothering a grin.

Aislinn shot her a look of reproval. “This isn’t funny, Nic. It was a miserable evening.”

Relenting, Nic shook her head. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to make light of it. But you have to admit both of us have had some pretty disastrous dates lately.”

Actually, Nic had only been out twice since her breakup with Brad in July, three months ago. Neither outing had been successful enough for a second date with either guy. Since available singles were pretty hard to find in a town the size of Cabot, Arkansas, her social life wasn’t looking too promising for the foreseeable future.

“Tell me about it.” Plopping onto Nic’s brown leather sofa, Aislinn crossed her arms over her shapely chest and pouted. “I should have known better than to let Pamela set me up. She thinks it’s so funny to tell everyone I’m…well, different. But I thought I had convinced her to quit saying that.”

“You know Pamela. She thinks it’s cool to claim to know an honest-to-goodness psychic.”

Aislinn sighed gustily. She had been trying for almost all her twenty-eight years to convince everyone that she had no supernatural abilities. She just had “feelings” sometimes, she always added earnestly. Feelings that had an uncanny record of coming true. Nothing more than somewhat-better-than-average intuition, she said.

Having known Aislinn since kindergarten, Nic thought the truth lay somewhere in the middle. She couldn’t explain it any better than Aislinn—but she had learned to take her friend’s “feelings” seriously.

Aislinn shook her head impatiently. “Enough about my lousy date. How are things going with you?”

Nic unbuckled her heavy utility belt and wearily set her weapon aside. She had gotten home less than twenty minutes earlier, arriving just in time to greet Aislinn, who had been invited for an evening of pizza and gossip. “Long day.”

“The Castleberry break-in?” Aislinn asked sympathetically.

“Yeah. We found evidence that it was Mr. Castleberry’s nephew who ransacked the place. Kid’s an addict with a record of B and E, but Castleberry couldn’t believe the boy would rob the only relative who has stood up for him during the past few years. I think I finally convinced him that there’s no room for love or loyalty when drugs take over someone’s life.”

“I had a feeling it was a male relative. I guess I watch too many of those TV crime shows, despite you making fun of me for it.”

“Yeah. Probably.” Stretching, Nic rose from the chair she had fallen into to listen to Aislinn’s account of last night’s unsuccessful date. “Why don’t you order the pizza while I change out of my uniform? Help yourself to something to drink—I’ve got sodas and wine in the fridge.”

It was one of the many benefits of being friends for so long, she thought as she emerged from a ten-minute shower and climbed into a pair of purple plaid cotton drawstring pants and a lavender baby T-shirt. She didn’t have to stand on formality with Aislinn or bother to entertain her every moment. Leaving her collar-length naturally blond-and-brown hair to dry in a tousled bob, she slid her feet into purple slippers and wandered into the kitchen to rejoin her friend.

Aislinn sat at the kitchen table with a glass of white wine and the morning newspaper, which Nic hadn’t yet had a chance to open. It didn’t surprise her that Aislinn had bypassed the headlines and was reading the comic strips instead. Aislinn tended to shy away from crime reports. She never said why, exactly, but Nic suspected it was because Aislinn got too many unsettling “feelings” when she read those grim accounts.

“So did you finish that monster cake today?” she asked, opening the refrigerator to take out a diet soda for herself. “The funky blue one?”

“It isn’t blue. It’s aquamarine.”

“Whatever.” Nic carried her soda to the table and helped herself to the sports pages as she took a chair across from Aislinn. “It looked blue to me.”

“Trust me. The bride would be very upset if the cake she ordered to exactly match her bridesmaids’ hideous aquamarine dresses came out too blue. It matches exactly. And, yes, I finished it.”

“How many hours did you put into that one?”

“More than I want to count,” Aislinn replied with a groan. “I never again want to see another aquamarine frosting rose.”

“The cake really should have been horribly ugly,” Nic commented as she glanced over the football scores. “But somehow you made it look really nice—at least, from what I could tell when I saw it yesterday.”

Visibly pleased, Aislinn smiled. “Thanks, Nic.”

The doorbell rang, and Nic pushed away from the table. “That’ll be the pizza. I’ll get it.”

Glancing over the recipes in the food section of the newspaper, Aislinn nodded absently.

Five minutes later, Nic entered the kitchen again, eying her friend quizzically. “Were you especially hungry when you ordered? Since when have we eaten two pizzas in one night? And why is the second one pepperoni? We always get mushroom and black olive or extra cheese.”

Aislinn folded the paper and shrugged. “I just thought we might need extra tonight. If there are any leftovers, we’ll divvy them up for cold pizza breakfasts tomorrow morning.”

“Sounds good to me.” Nic figured it was a good thing she liked cold pizza for breakfast, since it was a safe bet there would be leftovers. Pepperoni wasn’t her favorite—or Aislinn’s, either, for that matter—but it was food, which pretty well fit her criteria for a meal. She’d never been a picky eater.

She had just set two plates on the table when someone tapped on the back door. She knew that tap. A smile spreading on her face, she moved to respond.

As she had guessed, Joel Brannon stood on her doorstep, his own smile a bit weary but as infectious as ever. There were slight shadows beneath his clear hazel eyes, evidence that he’d been working long hours lately—not that there was anything unusual about that.

“Hi, Joel.”

“Hey, Nic,” he responded in his pleasant, deep Southern drawl. “I brought back your car vacuum. Thanks for letting me borrow it. I’m buying one to replace my dead one this weekend.”

Accepting the small appliance from him, she nodded. “You’re welcome.”

He glanced past her and noticed her friend still sitting at the kitchen table. “Oh. Hi, Aislinn. It’s nice to see you again.”

“Hi, Joel. Have you eaten? Nic and I were just about to have some pizza and we have more than enough if you want to join us.”

Though he looked tempted, Joel said, “I wouldn’t want to intrude.”

“We really do have too much just for the two of us,” Nic assured him with only a glance at Aislinn. “You would be doing us a favor to eat some of this pizza.”

“Well, since you put it that way…” He closed the door behind him and sniffed the air appreciatively. “Hmm. Smells like pepperoni. My favorite.”

Nic didn’t even bother to look at Aislinn that time. She simply reached into the cabinet for another plate.

After a ten-hour day at work, it felt good to relax with warm pizza, cold wine and a couple of attractive women—even if one of them made him nervous and the other frequently made him crazy.

Joel glanced at Aislinn Flaherty—the one who made him nervous. And it wasn’t just because she was drop-dead gorgeous with her glossy black hair, flawless fair skin, rich chocolate eyes and curvy figure that her bland layered clothing couldn’t conceal.

He hadn’t spent much time with her, knowing her only because she was a fairly frequent visitor to his next-door neighbor, but there was something different about Aislinn. He couldn’t explain it, exactly. He actually liked her—but sometimes when she looked at him, he had the unsettling sensation that she could see right through him. Much more than he was comfortable revealing.

Nic, on the other hand, was so different from Aislinn that it amazed him sometimes that they were such good friends. There was nothing in the least fey about practical, down-to-earth Nicole Sawyer. Blunt and impatient, Nic was a good cop, a great neighbor and a loyal friend—but not someone he would want as an enemy.

Aislinn interrupted his thoughts with a friendly smile. “Nic and I have been doing all the talking this evening, Joel. I’m afraid we haven’t given you much of an opportunity to say anything.”

“I’ve been too busy eating,” he replied, indicating his nearly empty plate. “I missed lunch today and I was starving.”

“Then it’s a good thing we ordered so much, isn’t it?” Nic commented, glancing at Aislinn as she spoke.

Aislinn shrugged, but she didn’t look away from Joel. “Was it a rough day for you?”

“More long than rough. There’s a virus running through several of the local day-care centers, so my waiting room was full of cranky, dehydrated kids.”

Nic shook her head. “You’ve just described my worst nightmare. I’d almost rather face an armed crack addict than a room full of sick, whiny toddlers and their hysterical mothers.”

“The toddlers were whiny,” he conceded, “but none of the mothers was actually hysterical. And I’ve got to admit I have absolutely no desire to strap on a gun and face an armed crack addict.”

Their respective professions were the basis of a series of running jokes between them. Joel conceded without hesitation that she could probably take him down despite her smaller size.

He was as easygoing as she was intense, as mild-mannered as she was fiery-tempered. He wasn’t really intimidated by her, since he knew the kind heart and generous spirit behind her posturing—but he didn’t particularly want to make her angry, either.

Aislinn was still looking at him—not rudely but with what appeared to be concern. “Perhaps you’re just tired, but there seems to be something bothering you. Is there anything we can do?”

He didn’t know how she did it. Maybe, as she insisted, she was simply more intuitive than most people, better able to read facial expressions and body language.

“There’s something bugging me a little,” he admitted, “but I’ll work it out.”

The way she studied his face made him wonder if she could actually read his mind. But of course she couldn’t, he assured himself a bit too quickly. Her extrasensory talents, if that’s what they were, seemed to be more precognitive than telepathic. Not that he believed in stuff like that, of course.

“Nic and I are pretty good at brainstorming,” she said. “Why don’t you try us?”

“Yeah, Joel,” Nic seconded. “Aislinn and I are always dumping problems on each other and usually we come up with some sort of solution. We’d be happy to talk about what’s bothering you if you want to discuss it. If not, just tell us to butt out and we’ll change the subject.”

He had always found it easy to be with Nic. Comfortable. He liked the way she treated him. Like a regular guy. Not an eligible bachelor-doctor. Or worse—a tragically romantic figure. Women usually classified him as one or the other, sometimes an uncomfortable combination. Nic simply saw him as her neighbor and friend.

Maybe she would understand the dilemma that had been weighing on him for the past couple of weeks….

“What happened?” she asked encouragingly. “Is it one of your patients?”

“No, nothing like that. It’s—this is going to sound pretty silly,” he said with an irritated shake of his head.

“Try us.”

He looked into the two inquiring faces turned toward him and sighed.

“My high school class back in Alabama is having an informal fifteen-year reunion in a couple of weeks. They’re attending the homecoming football game, which is against a big rival, and then having several activities and a dance the next day, followed by a farewell breakfast on Sunday morning. I’m just dreading it, that’s all.”

Aislinn’s expression didn’t change in response to Joel’s revelation. Nic looked surprised, but he couldn’t blame her for that. He doubted that she had expected a mere high school reunion to be his dilemma. But then, she didn’t know the whole story.

“A fifteen-year reunion?” she repeated.

He nodded. “Our class secretary was Heidi Pearl. Heidi Rosenbaum now. If it were up to her, we’d get together every year. Thank goodness the class confines her to having reunions only once every five years.”

“Did you go to the last one?”

“Yeah.” He figured his tone gave her an indication of how awful that had been.

Nic shrugged. “Last I heard, there’s no law that says you have to attend high school reunions. I’m not sure I’ll go to my ten-year reunion next summer. I’ve got better things to do than to sit around with a bunch of people I barely know now, talking about embarrassing adolescent memories. Aislinn’s the only friend I held on to from high school, and she and I see each other often enough.”

“Yeah, but I’m kind of expected to go. I was the class president.”

“Of course you were,” Nic murmured.

He gave her a mild look, then added, “Besides, Heidi works for my dad. There aren’t any excuses that would hold up to her daily inquisitions.”

“She sounds kind of scary.”

“Trust me. She’s terrifying.”

Nic chuckled, then shook her head. “Still. You should just tell them you aren’t interested this time.”

“I wish I could.”

“Why can’t you?”

“You wouldn’t understand.”

“Try me,” she said again.

“I think she will understand,” Aislinn said, making him wonder if she had somehow already guessed his quandary. Good intuition, he reminded himself. Nothing more.

The funny thing was, he thought maybe Nic would understand. One of the few women in the small-town Arkansas police department where she worked, she was well accustomed to trying to meet everyone else’s expectations.

“Judging from past experience,” he said, trying to choose his words carefully, “if I go, I’ll be greeted with cloying sympathy and treated like some kind of tragic hero. If I don’t go, everyone will be even more convinced that I’m an emotional basket case.”

“You? A basket case?” Nic’s eyes were wide with surprise beneath her fringe of blond-streaked bangs. “You’re, like, the sanest, most normal guy I know.”

“Yes, well, I wasn’t in such good shape the last time my class got together, five years ago. My wife, Heather, had died only a few months earlier, and I—Well, I guess I wasn’t ready for a reunion of all my old high school friends.”

“Heather was in your class?” Aislinn asked, her slightly husky voice warm with compassion.

He nodded. “We were typical high school sweethearts. We went to the prom together, were voted ‘cutest couple,’ that sort of thing. We attended different universities, but we stayed together despite the odds against long-distance relationships. Then I went to medical school and she to graduate school—again, different schools, different states. We got engaged during Christmas break of our third years but waited until we felt financially ready before we got married.”

He took a sip of his soda before adding tonelessly, “Six months later, she was killed in a car accident. Broadsided by a semi with bad brakes.”

Chapter Two

Nic had known, of course, that Joel was a young widower. He had mentioned once that his wife died in a car accident, but she hadn’t asked for any details, nor had he volunteered any.

He hadn’t been in any relationships during the months she had known him, and she had wondered if he was still grieving for the wife he’d lost. Now that she knew how long Joel and Heather had been together, she understood exactly how hard that loss must have been for him.

“I’m sorry,” she said, not knowing what else to say.

It seemed to be enough. He nodded. “Anyway, I made the mistake of attending the reunion before I’d completely worked through my grieving, and it was a…rough experience. Too many painful reminders, too much emotion and sympathy from my classmates. I was a mess by the time it was over and I didn’t do a very good job of hiding it.”

“That’s understandable,” she assured him. “It would have been a difficult ordeal for anyone.”

He searched her face as if trying to tell whether she really did understand. Apparently satisfied with whatever he saw there, he nodded again. “The thing is, that was five years ago. I’ve come a long way since then. I’ve made peace with my past. I’ve made a good life for myself here and I consider myself a generally happy guy.”

“That’s the impression I’ve always had of you.” Actually, she considered him the most laid-back and easygoing man she knew. She’d often envied him his ability to take things in stride, handling the pressures of his job with apparent ease.

“It’s not an act,” he assured her. “That’s really the way I feel, for the most part.”

“That’s good then, right? So your old friends should be pleased to see you doing so well.”

Joel squirmed a little in his chair. “I’m just not so sure they’ll see it that way. I’m afraid they’ll still view me as the man I was rather than the one I’ve become.”

“A legitimate concern,” Aislinn agreed.

Nic shrugged. “So don’t go. Send your best wishes to all your old friends, tell them you’re doing great but you’re too busy with work to join them this time.”

“That would probably be best, of course…”

“But it isn’t what you want to do,” Aislinn translated from his expression. “Why not?”

Looking rather sheepish, he replied, “I think it’s a pride thing.”

If there was anything Nic could understand, it was a “pride thing.” She had been accused on plenty of occasions of having entirely too much pride for her own good.

Comprehension clicked in her brain. “You don’t want your old friends to think you can’t handle another reunion. You’re afraid if you don’t go, they’ll think it’s because you’re still too wounded and vulnerable. That’s what you meant by basket case.”

Wincing a little at her choice of adjectives, he nodded. “I guess that’s it. The only way to convince them that I’m really okay seems to be to show up and prove it. But…well, it still won’t be easy.”

Aislinn seemed to have a sudden brainstorm. “What you should do,” she said earnestly, “is take someone with you. You know, like a date or something. That way everyone can see that you’re okay, and the attention won’t all be focused on you.”

“Take someone with me?” The suggestion seemed to startle him. “I hadn’t even thought of that.”

“What better way to demonstrate that you’ve moved on?” Nic asked, seeing the logic of Aislinn’s idea. She hoped she wasn’t coming across as insensitive to Joel’s loss—but he was the one who had said he’d put the past behind him. And tact had never been her strong point, unfortunately.

Joel didn’t seem to take offense at her wording. Instead he appeared intrigued by her reasoning. “I wouldn’t want to make any pretense about a relationship that doesn’t exist. No fake romances or anything like that.”

Nic exchanged a wince with Aislinn before replying, “Oh, agreed. Ick. Just introduce your companion as a friend and leave it at that. The others can make what they want out of it.”

Still looking thoughtful, Joel toyed with a pizza crust on his plate. “It’s a good idea, but I wouldn’t know who to ask. Unless…is there any way I could talk you into going with me, Nic?”

Nic could almost feel her jaw drop. “You would want me to go with you?”

“Well, you would be the logical choice,” he replied. “We’re friends. We have a good time together. If I asked someone else, I’d have to get into sticky explanations, whereas you already know the whole story. I heard you tell Aislinn earlier that you could use a few days away from work. I know attending someone else’s reunion is hardly an ideal vacation, but I’d make sure you have a good time. And I’d owe you big-time.”

He had spoken so quickly that she’d had a hard time following him. But it all came down to the realization that he was asking her to accompany him to his high school reunion. The fact that she had concurred with Aislinn’s recommended plan didn’t make Joel’s invitation any less startling. “I, uh—”

Embarrassed now, he lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “Never mind. Bad idea. I can’t blame you for not wanting to have anything to do with this.”

“Well, it was our idea,” she conceded, motioning toward Aislinn, who was watching them in silence.

“Yeah, but you weren’t volunteering to be the attention deflector. I understand.”

“Isn’t there anyone else you can take?”

“Not really. Like I said, I don’t want to go through a bunch of explanations again, nor do I want to give anyone the wrong idea by asking her to my reunion. It wouldn’t be fair for me to risk using anyone just for the sake of my own pride.”

There was that word again. Pride. The one argument she understood best.

Maybe she couldn’t really understand Joel’s dilemma in its entirety, especially since she had never viewed him as a “tragic figure” herself, but she could understand his need to prove himself to other people. She’d been doing that herself for most of her life.

“Okay,” she blurted. “I’ll go.”

Aislinn murmured her approval of Nic’s impulsive acceptance.

Joel blinked. “Um—you’ll go?”

She nodded before she could talk herself out of the rash offer. Joel was a friend, she reminded herself, and she didn’t have many real friends. Friends came through for each other. “I’ll go if you really think it will help you out. But I warn you, I’m lousy at parties and social events. You might very well regret asking me when I embarrass you in front of all your old schoolmates.”

His smile made a funny little shiver run down her spine. “Not possible.”

It wasn’t the first time she had noticed how attractive he was. Not even the first time she’d found herself reacting rather dramatically to that attractiveness. Only natural, of course, with her being a normal single woman and Joel being so darned sexy. But she neither expected—or even wanted—anything to develop between them.

She liked having him as her friend. And from painful experience, she had learned that nothing ruined a great friendship faster than trying to turn it into more.

The mental warnings she had been trying to ignore since she’d accepted his offer began to clang more loudly, harder to discount now. As much as she disliked social events, as much as she dreaded attending a reunion of strangers who would be studying her with curiosity, she was beginning to worry that the greatest peril inherent in this scheme wasn’t making a fool of herself or embarrassing Joel.

It made an interesting—and frustrating—dilemma. By doing Joel a big favor in the name of friendship, was she taking the risk of damaging that relationship that had become so special to her during the past few months?

Declining the ice cream Nic offered for dessert, Joel left not long after the discussion about his reunion. Aislinn lingered to help Nic clean up the remains of their dinner.

“It was nice of you to agree to help him,” she said when she and Nic were alone.

Nic looked at her friend suspiciously. “Why do I get the feeling that you somehow manipulated me into agreeing?”

“I had nothing to do with it. He needed your help, and you came through—as you always do for people you care about.”

Nic closed the dishwasher door with a little slam. “Because I’m a sucker, right?”

“No. Because you have a good heart,” Aislinn said loyally. “And because there’s very little you wouldn’t do for your friends.”

“Yeah, well, I might have gone a little too far this time. I don’t suppose you knew what he was going to ask me to do?”

“No. I just had a feeling there was something you could do to ease his mind—and I knew you would do it.”

“But…a high school reunion, Aislinn. With a bunch of strangers even Joel doesn’t seem too enthusiastic about. Can you imagine how awful that’s going to be?”

“It would have been worse for him to go alone. We can both understand why he wouldn’t want to be treated as an object of pity. And you and Joel are such good friends that he knows you’ll probably have a good time despite the awkwardness of the situation.”

“I’m sure that’s why he thought I’d be the one to take with him. Because we get along well without having to worry about any complicated undercurrents between us,” Nic said lightly, wanting to make sure Aislinn wasn’t getting any wrong ideas. “And, of course, he’s hesitant to take another date because he doesn’t want to lead anyone on—apparently that’s a problem for a single doctor.”

“Especially one who looks like Joel,” Aislinn murmured.

A mental image of crowds of hopeful women chasing after Joel made Nic scowl. “I guess that’s why he was comfortable asking me. He can be confident that I see him as a pal, nothing more.”

“Hmm.”

Nic frowned more deeply. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It didn’t mean anything,” her friend replied innocently. “I was just responding to you.”

Though she was still suspicious of Aislinn’s tone—they had been friends for too long to deceive each other easily—Nic decided to just let it go for now. For some reason, she felt as though they were edging a little too close to potentially dangerous territory.

“Maybe you’ll have a good time,” Aislinn said after the silence had stretched a bit too long.

“And maybe I’ll win the lottery and become the country’s newest multimillionaire—which would be even more miraculous since this state doesn’t have a lottery,” Nic shot back. “But I’m going, okay? And Joel is so going to owe me after this. Big-time.”

“I’m sure he’ll be happy to pay up,” Aislinn said, now looking just a bit too bland.

Once again Nic decided to let the comment pass without response.

“You’re sure you don’t mind doing this?” On the Friday morning of Joel’s reunion, he stood with one hand on the open trunk of his car, studying Nic’s face. He had just placed her bag inside with his own, but he was giving her one last chance to change her mind about accompanying him to his hometown.

She settled the issue by reaching up to place her hand next to his, pushing down to close the trunk with a decisive snap. “It’s too late to change our plans now. I’ve already arranged to take off work today. I’m not expected back until Monday morning.”

“Still, you could do something with your time off that would be more fun than bailing me out of a jam.”

“Dude, we’ve had this conversation a dozen times in the past two weeks. Now get in the car before you talk me into changing my mind.”

Chuckling ruefully at her tone, Joel opened the passenger door for her, then walked around to slide behind the wheel. “I really do appreciate this, Nic.”

“Look,” she said, snapping her seat belt. “let’s just agree that you’ve already thanked me enough, okay? There’s no need to keep doing so all weekend.”

“Okay. But I am grateful,” he added in a mutter.

She sighed heavily, making him chuckle again.

They left his car in the parking deck at the Little Rock Regional Airport and went through the lengthy process of checking in and going through security. Joel had insisted on buying Nic’s ticket, though she had offered to pay her own way.

This trip was on him, he had informed her. It wasn’t as if it would have been her first choice of a long-weekend destination.

It wasn’t a long flight from Little Rock to Birmingham, Alabama, and the time passed quickly. Too quickly, as far as Nic was concerned. As determined as she was to do everything she could to help Joel out this weekend, she was in no real hurry to get started.

A man with clear hazel eyes exactly like Joel’s met them at the airport in Birmingham. As he and Joel greeted each other with warm smiles and hearty slaps on the shoulder, Nic studied Ethan Brannon curiously. Not so much the Matt Damon resemblance here, she decided. Ethan’s face was more sharply planed than Joel’s, a bit harder, even when he smiled.

He was smiling when he turned to her, taking the hand she offered when Joel introduced her casually as his friend and neighbor. But this smile was different from the one he’d shared with his younger brother, she saw immediately. This was the polite, rather cool smile he might offer a stranger he didn’t quite know whether to trust.

Still, his tone was friendly enough when he said, “Nicole, it’s a pleasure to meet you. Joel’s told me about you. You’re the police officer, aren’t you?”

“Yes, I am. And please call me Nic. Everyone does.”

He nodded and turned back to Joel. “Let’s get your bags.”

“We’ve got them.” Both Joel and Nic had packed light for the weekend, stuffing everything they needed into wheeled carry-on bags. Joel had teased her about bringing so much less than he’d expect from a woman, but she’d gotten the impression he wasn’t particularly surprised. “Let’s go.”

Nic sat in the backseat of Ethan’s SUV, giving the brothers a chance to catch up during the hour-long drive to their parents’ house in small-town Danston, Alabama. She watched the interaction between them during the trip, making several private observations.

Ethan was very much the older brother, she decided. A little bossy. A bit too concerned about Joel’s well-being, as if it were his responsibility to make sure younger brother was okay.

Nic knew that dynamic all too well, having an older brother of her own. Paul had displayed a tendency to go overboard with advice about her life, too, until she had rebelled at twenty and informed him in no uncertain terms that she didn’t need his guidance, even if it meant she had to make a few mistakes along the way.

She wondered if Joel had ever had that talk with Ethan. After all, Joel was thirty-three, long past the stage when Nic had asserted her independence.

Maybe the difference was that Ethan was a bit more subtle about it than Paul had been. He wasn’t openly snooping or issuing advice, just asking questions and wondering aloud why Joel had made certain decisions—such as moving to Arkansas when he could have had a thriving practice in Birmingham or Atlanta.

“If you’d wanted a small-town practice, you could have stayed in Danston,” he added, letting his voice rise just enough to turn the statement into an implied question.

“I needed to get away from Danston,” Joel replied with a shrug, and though his tone was unemotional, his simple words expressed a great deal.

Ethan must have picked up on that implied message. He let the subject drop. “So, Nic,” he said, “what bribe did my brother use to talk you into coming to his reunion with him?”

She laughed. “No bribe. Just lots of manipulation. And he does owe me a favor after this.”

“No kidding. I still live here in town and I don’t go to my reunions.”

“The difference is that no one expects you to,” Joel muttered.

“No. The difference is that I don’t particularly care what anyone else expects of me,” Ethan returned smoothly.

Joel let that pass.

“We’re almost to my parents’ house, Nic,” Ethan said, looking at her in the rearview mirror. “I’m sure you’ll be glad to stretch and freshen up.”

“I’ll be staying at a motel, won’t I?”

“Are you kidding? Mom’s got the guest room all ready for you. She’s been fussing over it for days.”

“Oh, I didn’t want her to go to that much trouble.” Nic frowned at the back of Joel’s head, knowing he had deliberately withheld that bit of information from her. “I told you I would be perfectly comfortable in a motel or at the resort where the rest of your out-of-town classmates are staying.”

“Stay by yourself at a motel? Mother would have a fit. She’s pretty old-fashioned that way. And we’ll be spending enough time at the resort as it is. You wouldn’t want to be stuck there with my old friends while I’m visiting with my family. This way we can leave together when things get boring—as I’m sure they will.”

Nic twined her fingers more tightly in her lap, regretting—not for the first time—that she had ever let herself get talked into coming along.

Chapter Three

Nic was not a particularly tall woman. Five feet six inches in her sensible work shoes, she was usually several inches shorter than the men she confronted daily on the job. She stayed slim and muscular through a combination of regular exercise and overactive metabolism. Yet still she felt as though she towered over Joel’s mother, Elaine Brannon.

Elaine reminded her vividly of the delicate porcelain figurines her grandmother had collected, and which Nic had been sternly forbidden to touch. Elaine might have stood five feet two on her tallest days and was hardly large enough to cast a shadow. Though neither of her sons topped six feet, she was dwarfed between them, her impeccably made-up face glowing with pride as she gazed up at them.

As Ethan’s had earlier, Elaine’s smile changed when she turned to greet Nic. If a smile could be gracious and suspicious at the same time, this one was.

Nic was almost amused. Apparently this family worried that Joel would be the target of unscrupulous gold diggers or doctor groupies, even though she knew he had told them that she and Joel were just friends. Even if they incorrectly suspected there was more to their relationship, did they honestly think she looked like either of those types? She wore just enough makeup to satisfy her mother. There was no expensive “product” in her casual, easy-to-maintain hairstyle. She couldn’t show cleavage if she tried, since she didn’t particularly have any.

Joel saw her as a pal, not a potential romantic partner—and that was exactly the way she wanted things to remain. Much less messy all around.

The woman’s tiny hand was icy-cold in Nic’s. “Welcome to our home, Nicole,” Elaine said with practiced Southern charm. “My husband hasn’t returned from work yet, but he’s looking forward to meeting you.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Brannon. It really wasn’t necessary for you to put me up, you know. I could have stayed in a motel.”

Elaine shook her ash-blond head. “What kind of hosts would we be if we sent you off to a motel? I’ve prepared the guest room for you and I hope you’ll be comfortable in it.”

“I’m sure I will be,” Nic lied politely, though the privacy of an anonymous motel room sounded very nice at the moment.

“Come on, Nic, I’ll show you to your room so you can freshen up,” Joel offered, motioning toward the stairway that curved upward behind them.

She followed him gratefully, aware that both his mother and brother were watching as she and Joel climbed the stairs.

The average-size four-bedroom house was fashioned in a vaguely Colonial style with gleaming wood floors, wainscoted walls and reproduction light fixtures. It was warm and welcoming, not too formal for Nic’s tastes and yet attractively decorated. Framed family photographs adorned almost every inch of the walls of the upstairs hallway.

She stopped at a large family portrait, recognizing a much younger Elaine immediately. Elaine had aged very well, looking barely different now. A man stood beside her, and it was obvious where Ethan and Joel had gotten their similar features. “Is this your father?”

“Yes. That’s Dad—Lou Brannon. He should be home soon. I think you’ll like him.”

“I’m sure I will.” But her attention had turned to the children in the photo.

Ethan and Joel were easy enough to spot; neither of them had changed significantly since toddlerhood, apparently. Yet it was the other child whose image held her riveted, another boy, this one little more than a baby, perhaps a couple of years younger than Joel. “This little boy…”

“My younger brother. Kyle.”

Sadness filled her as she realized the significance of his never mentioning Kyle to her before. Studying the happy, innocent face in the photo, she bit her lower lip.

“He died in a flash flood twenty-eight years ago. He was almost two.”

Though Joel had spoken without emotion, Nic knew him well enough to understand that his rather flat, even tone was an attempt to hide exactly how strongly he did feel about the loss of his younger brother. “I’m sorry.”

“I barely remember him,” Joel replied with a slight shrug. “I was just four myself. He was with his nanny when her car was swept into a flooded river. The car was eventually found, but neither the nanny’s nor my brother’s bodies were inside. They were never recovered.”

Nic thought of the woman she had met downstairs, and her gaze turned back to Elaine’s face in the portrait. She looked so young, so proud of her attractive family. Nic couldn’t imagine what she had gone through when she’d lost her youngest child.

“I’m very sorry,” she said again.

He nodded and motioned down the hallway. “The guest room is at the end of the hall—next door to the room where I’ll be sleeping.”

She couldn’t resist pausing to look at several more of the family photographs, amused by the images of Joel as a gap-toothed, towheaded little boy, self-conscious in front of the camera. Oddly enough, Ethan looked almost as somber and responsible as a child as he did now. Had he been born an old soul? The mental question made her smile, as it sounded more like something Aislinn would ponder than herself.

Her amusement faded when she studied the photographs of a more mature Joel. Eagle Scout, high school graduate, college graduate, medical school graduate—all of his accomplishments had been recorded and displayed in this family hall of fame. It was during high school that he began to be accompanied in many of the photos by a strikingly lovely redhead. Tall, curvy, intelligent-looking, the woman seemed to be as at home within those frames as Joel and his brother and parents.

“This is Heather,” she murmured.

“Yes.” He glanced at a wedding photo of himself and his late bride. “This was taken six months before she died.”

It was a good thing, Nic mused, that she didn’t have any romantic designs on Joel. It would be hard to compete with the memory of this supermodel-beautiful woman.

The Brannons had certainly known their share of tragedy, yet the general impression she received from this neatly crowded photo gallery was of a close, generally happy clan. Her own family had also suffered loss, she thought with a fleeting memory of her father’s last cancer-racked days. And they, too, had been able to put the pain behind them and move on with their lives, though of course it had been difficult for her mother.

That life could be hard and often unfair was something Nic had learned a long time ago. She had decided to concentrate as much as possible on the positives, a philosophy she knew she shared with Joel. So why did his old friends seem determined to focus on his tragedies rather than his accomplishments? Or was that situation mostly in his own imagination?

She supposed she would be finding out soon enough. They would be meeting his old classmates in less than three hours. Swallowing hard, she looked away from the photograph of beautiful Heather Brannon and followed Joel into the guest room.

“Joel told us you’re a police officer, Nicole. That must be a challenging career for a petite young woman like yourself.”

It was one of the first comments orthodontist Lou Brannon made after being introduced to Nic. She recognized his tone. He was one of those people who was equally fascinated and dismayed by her career choice. His only knowledge of the job probably came from television and crime novels, and he couldn’t imagine why anyone, especially a woman, would want to spend every day pursuing criminals and other lowlife.

“I enjoy it,” she said, as she always did to such comments. “And it pays my bills.”

They were standing in the den, chatting for a few minutes with Lou and Elaine before Joel and Nic had to leave for the pregame gathering of his classmates.

“It’s such a dangerous and unsavory job,” Elaine fretted. “I can’t imagine why any young woman would want to do it.”

An awkward moment of silence followed that comment. Nic finally responded with a simple, “I like it.”

“And she does it very well,” Joel said in an attempt to smooth over the slight tension his mother’s remarks had left between them. “She’s received several commendations just in the relatively short time she’s been on the force.”

Being no more comfortable with Joel’s compliments than his mother’s criticisms, Nic abruptly changed the subject. “What time are we supposed to leave for the reception?”

He checked his watch. “Pretty soon. We’re meeting at Chucky’s Bar and Grill at six for drinks before the seven-thirty kickoff. Chucky’s is less than a mile from the football field, so everyone’s going to caravan over after drinks.”

“How many were in your class?”

“Just under a hundred. Not exactly a big school, so we all pretty much knew each other.”

Elaine smiled mistily—something which must have taken quite a bit of practice, Nic decided with a dose of cynicism. “Joel and Heather were so popular and outgoing that their classmates all knew them and loved them. Especially Heather. I don’t believe she ever said an unkind word about anyone in her entire life.”

Nic could hardly make the same claim. She pushed her hands into the pockets of the black twill slacks she wore with a black-and-purple color-block turtleneck sweater and waited silently for Joel to announce that it was time to leave. She was greatly relieved when he did so almost immediately.

“Sorry about my mother,” Joel said as he guided his father’s borrowed car away from his parents’ home. “Sometimes she speaks without really thinking about how it sounds.”

“Your mother has been perfectly nice to me,” Nic assured him blandly.

He shot a skeptical glance her way. “I saw the way you looked when she talked about your job. You were biting your tongue until it almost bled when she said she couldn’t imagine why you’d want to do it.”

“Why any ‘young woman’ would want to do it,” Nic corrected him, giving up the pretense that it hadn’t bothered her. “Insert well-bred in front of young, of course, because that’s what she really meant.”

“Mom’s just kind of traditional, that’s all. She’s modern enough to defend your right to pursue any career you want and your capability to perform the job well—but she’s old-fashioned enough to think of being a cop as a man’s work. She would probably have reacted the same way if you’d said you were a firefighter.”

Gazing out the side window at the small-town scenery passing by, Nic twisted her fingers in her lap. “You said your wife went to graduate school. What did she do?”

“She earned a Ph.D. in psychology. She was a family counselor.”

“I suppose your mother approved of that career for a woman.”

“You really did take offense, didn’t you? I’m sorry, Nic, but I hope you don’t believe she meant to insult you.”

Nic shook her head and forced a smile. “Forget it. I wasn’t really offended. It isn’t the first time anyone’s suggested I was crazy for wanting to be a cop.”

Which was the truth, of course. Her own parents hadn’t exactly cheered when she’d announced her intention to enter the police academy. Her overprotective big brother had been even less enthusiastic, worrying aloud that her small size would put her at risk.

She had long since convinced her family that she was doing exactly what she wanted to do—and doing it well. Other people had mocked or criticized her job, and she rarely took offense. So why had it been different with Joel’s parents?

“My mom doesn’t think you’re crazy, okay? She just doesn’t know you yet.”

And wasn’t sure she wanted to, Nic added silently. Elaine had obviously been trying to decide just how far Joel’s friendship with Nic went. And she hadn’t been at all certain she wanted her son the doctor to be involved with a cop.

It was clear that Nic and Joel were going to have to remind his family, especially his mother, that they were only friends.

Chucky’s Bar and Grill might have sounded like a dark, smoky dive, but the place was well lit, decorated in cheery, bright colors and openly welcoming when Joel escorted Nic inside. Country music played in the background, almost drowned out by the sounds of laughter and conversation, and beer foamed in thick glass mugs being distributed by black-aproned waitresses of assorted ages.

Approximately forty people had gathered for the reunion, mostly in their early thirties, of course. Nic saw at once that this was no highbrow country-club crowd, for the most part, at least. Most of them looked working-class, a few sporting the mullets and tattoos one might expect in a small Southern town. Almost everyone wore red, an observation that made her realize abruptly that Joel wore a bright red long-sleeve polo shirt with khaki slacks.

“Let me guess,” she said. “Your team color was red.”

“Red and white.” He shrugged a bit sheepishly. “I suppose I forgot to mention it. It’s just habit for me to stick on a red shirt when I watch the Cardinals play.”

“The Danston Cardinals?”

He grinned. “The lifeblood of this town. Danston’s social and cultural life revolves around the school—athletics, music, drama, dances. And tonight’s game is against our archrival, another small town that feels exactly the same way about their team, the Penderville Pirates.”

Nic could certainly understand a heated rivalry. She enjoyed sports and she was a fierce competitor herself on the department softball team. For that matter, she had been known to execute some pretty impressive—and highly illegal—tackles during games of flag football. She might not be looking forward to the rest of this reunion, but she was always in the mood to watch a spirited football game, even between two high school teams.

“Joel! You made it.”

The squeal had issued from a woman with blond-highlighted hair sprayed into a stiff, too-cute spiky style. The right colors of makeup had been applied a bit too heavily. Cushiony cleavage spilled out of a scoop-neck red sweater, and ample hips were buttoned into stretchy jeans. Splashy jewelry dangled from her ears and wrists and glittered on red-manicured fingers. Yet the woman’s smile was warm and generous as she gazed up at Joel with unmistakable pleasure. “It’s so good to see you. You look wonderful.”

He bent his head to brush a light kiss against her cheek. “Thanks, Heidi. And you look radiant as always.”

Heidi blushed rosily. “You certainly inherited your daddy’s charm. Unlike your older brother, I might add.”

Joel chuckled. “Ethan was born grumpy. But he’s a good guy.”

“I didn’t say he wasn’t. He just doesn’t often bother with the little pleasantries.” She turned then toward Nic, her round face alight with visible curiosity. “Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friend?”

“Of course.” Joel reached out to pull Nic a bit closer, resting one hand lightly at the small of her back. “Heidi Rosenbaum, this is my friend from Arkansas, Nicole Sawyer.”

Heidi’s manicured hand was impossibly soft when she placed it in Nic’s unpolished, slightly more callused hand. “It’s nice to meet you, Nicole. You’re from Arkansas? So I assume you didn’t attend Penderville High.”

A bit confused, Nic shook her head. “I went to school in Cabot, where I still live, next door to Joel. Why?”

Heidi motioned toward Nic’s sweater. “Purple and black are the colors of the Penderville Pirates. The team we’re playing tonight.”

Suppressing a groan, Nic managed a wry smile. “I didn’t know. But I promise I’ll cheer like crazy for the Cardinals.”

Heidi giggled. “Good. They’re going to need all the support they can get.”

“Heidi!” someone called from another part of the room. “Come tell Jessica who was Student Council secretary our senior year. I think it was Janet, but she thinks it was Kelly.”

Heidi rolled her eyes. “Of course it was Kelly,” she called back. “And if she wasn’t having a baby in Birmingham even as we speak, she would take a piece out of your hide for forgetting that.”

Turning back to Nic, she confided, “Kelly was very proud of being elected that year. She’d run and lost three times before.”

“Oh.” Exactly what was Nic expected to say in response to that tidbit?

“Anyway, you wouldn’t be interested in that. Would you like a glass of wine? The house white isn’t too bad here.”

“Actually, I’d rather have a beer,” Nic replied, eying a tray full of invitingly frosty mugs.

“Oh.” Heidi blinked once or twice, as if surprised by Nic’s answer, but then she smiled at Joel. “Your friend knows what she likes, doesn’t she?”

Nic’s left eyebrow rose quizzically. Just what was that supposed to mean?

Another shout came from the group sharing memories on the other side of the room. “Heidi—who was historian?”

With a dramatic groan and a shake of her head, Heidi murmured an excuse to Joel and Nic and left to join her other old friends.

“Heidi knows everything there is to know about this class. Past, present—and probably future,” Joel murmured into Nic’s ear.

“You know what I said about her sounding a little scary when you told me about her? Turns out I was right.”

Joel laughed and nudged her toward the bar. “Let’s get you that beer. Then I’ll introduce you to some really scary people.”

Nic couldn’t remember ever wanting a drink more.

Chapter Four

Nic could almost feel the eyes trained on them as she and Joel crossed the room to the bar, Joel returning greetings along the way. There was open curiosity in those eyes, combined with speculation about her role in Joel’s life. She knew she looked much different than the stunning redhead they remembered with him. And while she rarely fretted about her appearance, taking for granted that she looked okay, she was well aware that she wasn’t the beauty Heather had been.

Not that it mattered, of course. She’d resigned herself years ago to descriptions like “cute” and “pleasant.” She’d even learned to be satisfied with that image, though cuteness wasn’t exactly an advantage in her job. And since she wasn’t competing with the memory of a tall, gorgeous redhead for Joel’s romantic interest, there was no reason for her to mind the comparisons.

Two beefy, eerily identical men with shaved heads and goofy smiles approached them a few minutes later, simultaneously slapping Joel on the back hard enough to slosh the beer in his just-filled mug. “Joel Brannon,” they bellowed in perfect unison. “It’s good to see you, man.”

Somehow, through some process Nic couldn’t imagine, Joel correctly identified each twin as he greeted them. “Hey, Ernie. Hey, Earl. How’ve you both been?”

Ernie answered, “We’re doing great. Me and Kay have three kids now. Earl and Cassie have two. Hellions, the lot of ’em.”

Laughing at the affectionate summary, Joel introduced Nic. The Watson twins greeted her much the way Heidi had—warmly but with open curiosity about her relationship to their old friend.

Introductions out of the way, Joel asked, “Are you guys still working in your dad’s heat-and-air business?”

“Running it now,” Earl corrected. “Dad retired last year.”

“Yeah? How’s he doing?”

“He’s loving the leisurely life,” Ernie said. “Fishing, hunting, playing dominoes over at the VFW. Driving Mom crazy.”

Joel laughed. “Good for him.”

“Hey, you remember the Penderville game our senior year? When you threw that sixty-yard pass to Gonzalez?”

Groaning, Joel took a sip of his beer before answering, “We lost—35 to 14.”

“Yeah, but that was one hell of a pass.”

“Sure impressed the cheerleaders,” Ernie said with a waggle of his heavy eyebrows. “’ Specially the captain of the squad.”

Earl cleared his throat and punched his brother in the ribs. He might have tried to be subtle about it, but he couldn’t have been more obvious—and Ernie got the message. His round face reddening, he muttered, “Uh, sorry, Joel.”

Joel’s expression didn’t change. “No problem. As I remember, impressing the captain of the cheerleading squad was my top priority that year. Might have explained why I was such a mediocre athlete.”

The brothers responded with weak smiles and a quick, awkward change of subject. It was no stretch for Nic to figure out who the captain of the cheerleading squad had been.

Heather’s shadow hovered behind them through the rest of the reception as Joel worked the room, casually introducing Nic as his friend from Arkansas, ignoring the questions in his old schoolmates’ faces. It was so obvious that everyone was carefully avoiding any mention of Joel’s late wife, which made it all the more apparent that they were thinking of her. Quite naturally, of course, since she had been a prominent member of their class.

Saying little, Nic watched them interact with Joel. There was no doubt that he was well liked and respected. Several of the other guests cornered him with medical questions, both about themselves and their children, but he handled it with practiced ease. He had a little more trouble handling their sympathy, which was always implied and sometimes almost blatant in soulful looks or syrupy tones.

She could see now what he had meant when he’d said he was tired of being treated like a saint or a pity case. Everyone was simply trying too hard to keep from reminding him of his loss. They even seemed almost apologetic about mentioning their own spouses or children, as if he might resent them for having what fate had taken from him.

She wondered how much worse it would have been if he had come alone. Would they have tried even harder to make up for Heather’s absence, making the situation even more uncomfortable than it was?

As reluctant as she was to admit it, he had been smart to bring someone with him. And considering everything, she supposed she had been the right one to ask, since she understood his predicament so well. But she still thought her original idea had been the best one—to send his regrets and skip this whole reunion thing.

“You might have told me,” Nic said when she and Joel were in his car again, headed for the football game, “that I was wearing the colors of your team’s rival.”

He gave her a ruefully apologetic look. “Sorry. I honestly didn’t remember what their colors are.”

Resigning herself to being seen by the home crowd as a representative of the enemy team, Nic pushed a hand through her hair and settled back into her seat. At least she liked football; she was sure she would enjoy the game.

Joel’s friends surrounded them at the stadium, everyone insisting on sitting together, one Watson couple on Nic’s left, the other at Joel’s right. Heidi sat on the bleacher bench in front of them, beside her necessarily taciturn husband. She turned frequently to chat, her attention barely on the game.

Nic did her best to watch the plays, but it wasn’t easy when everyone around them kept asking overly casual questions designed to elicit information about her and Joel. Heidi was the worst offender, of course, even though she was so polite about it that it would have been hard to get annoyed with her. All of her questions were phrased to seem as though she was simply trying to be gracious to Nic, showing interest in getting to know her better.

Nic answered each question briefly but civilly, giving away as little personal information as possible. As quickly as she could, she turned the subject to the game. “Your coach has an obsessive fondness for the standard I formation, doesn’t he?” she commented to Joel. “Seems like he could change it up a bit more.”

“He’s been running that same formation since I played for him fifteen years ago,” Joel replied.

“He should be using number twenty-three more. The kid’s a natural running back. He’s got the speed.”

“That’s what I’ve been saying,” Earl agreed fervently. “Number twenty-three is my wife’s nephew, Kirk. He’s just a sophomore, but as soon as he gets a little better at tucking the ball more securely, he’s going to be a force to reckon with. If Coach gives him the chance. Coach tends to focus on the same few players every game—the ones whose parents are the most vocal and active in the booster club, of course.”

“Now, Earl, that’s not fair,” Heidi complained. “My Davey plays a lot, but it certainly isn’t because his father and I are so active in the booster club.”

Earl gave Nic a look that seemed to say, See what I mean?

Deciding discretion was called for, Nic said, “There’s room on a winning team for a lot of talented players.”

“So you know football?” Earl asked with interest. “Who’s your favorite pro team?”

“Kansas City,” she replied promptly.

Ernie gave a derisive hoot, leading to a spirited debate about pro football that morphed into a discussion of college teams and the much-maligned bowl-series system. The conversation was periodically interrupted when they all jumped to their feet to cheer on a good play by the Cardinals, in which Nic enthusiastically participated. By halftime, she and the Watson twins were great pals, much to Joel’s apparent amusement.

“Not many women know football as well as you do,” Earl told her, jerking a thumb toward the pleasantly plump woman at his other side. “Cassie would rather be hitting the flea markets and antique malls than watching a game.”

His wife nodded her lightly graying brown head decisively to agree with that statement.

“I’ve always liked sports,” Nic replied. “Comes from trying to keep up with my older brother, I guess. I felt as though I had to be as good as he was despite my smaller size.”

“You play any sports now?”

“I’m on a softball team. And I play a little flag football. An occasional game of Ultimate Frisbee.”

Earl looked impressed. “Yeah? So what do you do? You a P.E. teacher or something?”

“I’m a police officer for the Cabot Police Department.”

“You’re a cop? Hey, Ernie, did you hear that? Nic’s a cop.”

Ernie looked as surprised as his twin. Everyone else within hearing distance—most notably Heidi—had also turned to stare at her. As if, Nic thought, she had announced she was a circus geek or something. What was so odd about her being on the force?

“A police officer,” Heidi repeated, twisting almost completely around on her bleacher seat. “I never would have guessed that of you. You’re so…well, little. Isn’t that a detriment in your job? Isn’t it dangerous for you?”

“Not really. I’m well trained—and Cabot is a small town. Not exactly a hotbed of crime.”

“You seem to be forgetting that guy who shot at you with a shotgun last month,” Joel murmured.

His friends’ eyes widened. “A shotgun?” Heidi repeated with a gasp.

Nic gave Joel a chiding look. “It was just loaded with rock salt. And old Mr. Barnett couldn’t hit the side of a barn anyway. He didn’t even come close to peppering me.”

“And you…um, enjoy that work?”

Why did people keep asking her that, as if she would be crazy to admit that she was satisfied with her job? “Yes,” she told Heidi firmly. “I do like it.”

“Oh.” Looking a little flustered now, Heidi glanced toward the football field, where self-consciously proud fathers escorted their shivering, scantily dressed daughters across the patchy grass. Seemingly relieved to seize a new topic, she trilled, “Oh, that brings back memories. I was a homecoming princess our senior year, you know. And Heather was queen—remember, Joel?”

Everyone around them went quiet as Joel murmured, “I remember.”

Of course Heather had been homecoming queen, Nic thought with a sigh. And of course Heidi had brought her up again just as Joel seemed to be relaxing a bit and enjoying the present. She didn’t believe Heidi was being deliberately cruel, simply clinging to the treasured memories of her high school days—but still, the mood changed after she spoke.

Maybe Heidi realized what she had done. Swallowing visibly, she looked at Nic again. “What were homecomings like at your school, Nicole? Did you participate?”

Nic shrugged. “I was never a homecoming princess, if that’s what you’re asking. I was always too much of a tomboy to be interested in fancy dresses and tiaras.”

And, no, she hadn’t been a cheerleader. Nor had she attended college or earned a doctorate degree or become a family counselor. She had never been a striking beauty and she doubted sincerely that her classmates thought of her as perfection personified.

She rather pitied any woman who aspired to be the next Mrs. Joel Brannon. Who could possibly compete with the memory of Saint Heather?

Whether Joel sensed her discomfort or was struggling with similar feelings of his own, he quickly turned the subject back to one that made her more comfortable—sports. Nic was pleased when the Watson brothers eagerly cooperated.

Letting Heidi and the other wives talk about homecoming fashions, Nic threw herself into the conversation about football and the upcoming basketball season. She was much more comfortable talking with the guys, she assured herself. After all, she had always considered herself one of them.

Joel wondered what he had been thinking when he’d asked Nic to accompany him to his reunion. He’d been so concerned about his own dread of the event that he hadn’t given enough consideration to how awkward it would be for Nic.

He’d thought that making it clear they were only friends would take some of the pressure off her while still sending a message that he had a good life now. A full life, not a sad and lonely one.

He had imagined there would be some questions about Nic and him. After all, they were both single, and she was pretty and personable. Fascinating, actually, with her straightforward manner and her spunky individuality.

Some of his old friends probably thought he was crazy for not making a move on her. Or perhaps they thought he was still too tied up in his grief to consider being with another woman.

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