If You Don't Know By Now. Teresa Southwick
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He studied her with eyes that looked as if they had seen too much, as if they could laser all the way to her soul. If there was a God in heaven or any justice in the world, he wouldn’t be able to see her secret. Not now. Not yet.
“How’ve you been?” she asked.
“Fine. You?”
“Great.” Could this be more awkward?
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“Probably because I feel that way.” She brushed her hands down the sides of her jeans and took a deep breath. “Earlier, I thought I saw you. I mentioned it to Taylor Stevens, but I figured I must have been mistaken. Ever since, I’ve had this weird, déjà vu-ish kind of feeling.”
“It was me.”
“Why didn’t you come over then?”
Instead of answering he picked up one of her business cards in the holder on the ledge of her booth. “This ’N That? Maggie Benson, owner?”
“It’s my shop. I opened it in downtown Destiny five years ago.”
“What kind of shop?”
“Collectibles, antiques, crafts. Souvenirs, shirts, hats, beaded purses. I’m in charge of selling the official T-shirt for the North Texas High School Rodeo Champion ships.” She picked one up and unfolded it, displaying the back for him. Why did her hands have to shake so? “See? All the kids’ names are on the back. I also personally embroider and paint jackets and T-shirts,” she said, indicating the samples hanging from the wooden walls of the booth.
She opened her mouth to say more, then caught the inside of her top lip between her teeth. Drastic situations called for severe measures. She really did need to stop babbling. It wasn’t her job to fill awkward silences. He’d turned his back on her. Let him do the talking.
“Impressive,” he commented, gazing at the scene on the back of a jacket, as well as the other goods arrayed on the wooden walls.
“Thanks.” She met his gaze, determined to see his one-word answer and not raise him.
He leaned a broad shoulder against the corner two-by-four holding up her booth. “Surprised to see me?” he finally asked.
Try shocked. Add dumb founded, amazed, astonished, disconcerted, then toss in a healthy dose of confusion and that might just about describe what she was feeling. A little surprised? Apparently sometime during the past decade he’d taken a crash course in the finer points of under statement. He might have thrown her for a loop, but wild horses couldn’t drag the nerves out of her—in spite of the fact that they were bucking through her like a spooked stallion.
Casually, she rested a hip against the wooden ledge mere inches from where he lounged. “Why would I be surprised to see you? You went to boot camp. We exchanged some letters. You disappeared without a trace.” She shrugged, struggling for non cha lance, but very afraid she’d failed miserably. “Happens all the time.”
“I’m not much of a letter writer.”
“Really? Your last one was pretty straight for ward. You dumped me.”
Along with a girl’s first love, she never forgot the details of her first broken heart. Maggie’d wadded up the one sheet of paper and tossed it into the trash, but certain phrases were forever branded on her mind.
Getting too serious. Not fair to you. Best to go our separate ways.
But she didn’t say any of that. It was ancient history. “If I remember correctly, you said your life was too unstable for a relationship with anyone.”
“Yeah.” His gaze slid away and he stared off into the darkness over her right shoulder. A muscle in his lean cheek contracted as his lips thinned into a straight line.
“I sent one more letter after that. It came back with Return to Sender in your hand writing. Not a single word from you since. Now here you are.” She lifted one shoulder in what she hoped was a carefree, un concerned gesture.
But she was very concerned. Her returned, unopened letter had come as a shock, followed quickly by panic and unbelievable pain. She’d been a scared teenager with a small problem that would get bigger by the month—not to mention raging hormones and a romantic streak a mile wide. She’d thought she loved him and would never stop. But she wasn’t a teenager any longer. Circum stances had forced her to grow up fast. And her romantic streak had been pounded, if not into sub mission, at least into realistic expectation based on past experience.
She’d learned that love did stop.
“I shipped out right after boot camp,” he said, then raised those broad, mouth-watering shoulders as if that explained everything.
“No need to apologize,” she said.
“That was an explanation.”
“Okay. But I’m not mad.”
“Oh?” The ghost of a smile flirted with the corners of his mouth.
She tossed her head in a careless gesture that swung her red curls around her face. “Don’t be silly. I’ll admit I was miffed for a while, but I got over it. Years ago. My life is together. I’m all grown up.”
“So I see,” he said.
His lips curved up then, turning the dimples in his cheeks into vertical lines on either side of his mouth. A look glittered in those blue eyes that started a quivering inside her the likes of which she hadn’t experienced in a decade. Damn it. Ten lousy years and no man had done this to her. Five minutes with Jack Riley and she was practically a puddle of goo at his feet. Still, she hung on to her composure as if it was the last handhold between her and a five-hundred-foot drop.
She folded her arms over her breasts, just in case her white T-shirt and bra didn’t hide the way her nipples stood at attention and saluted the fact that Jack Riley was back.
“So what have you been up to all these years?” she asked, putting just the right amount of chatty interest in her tone.
His face darkened, then went blank. It was as if he’d stepped beyond the light and back into the shadows. If he hadn’t just nearly cracked a smile, she probably wouldn’t have noticed the withdrawal. But he did and she had.
He looked at her card, still in his hand. “This and that,” he said.
Well, wasn’t he just a regular gusher of information, she thought. “When did you get into town?”
“Today.”
“What brought you back?”
“Personal business.”
“Oh?”
“And a news pa per story.”
She didn’t remember ever having to yank in formation from him like an impacted wisdom tooth. But then, when they’d managed to steal time together, talking hadn’t been tops on the To Do list.
The memories churned up by that thought brought heat flaring into her cheeks. Sneaking around to meet him. The feel of his strong arms tightly wrapped around her. Kissing as if she couldn’t get enough. It had been exciting, thrilling.
She lifted her chin slightly, to study him better. She hadn’t known him very well when he’d left, and she certainly didn’t know him now. If twenty questions was the way he wanted to play, she was just the gal for it. Because she had more than twenty questions she wanted to ask him.
“What story was that?” she asked.
“An article in a syndicated newspaper advertising the dates of the high school rodeo championships along with info about the new dude ranch Taylor Stevens is opening. There was a picture, too, of Mitch Rafferty and Dev Hart with Taylor.”
“I’m impressed.”
“Hmm?”
“That