One

      Conor Kavanagh had been antsy ever since he heard Ellie Porter was back in town. In spite of the many celebrities and moguls who vacationed here, Silver Glen, North Carolina, wasn’t all that big a place. Chances were he’d bump into her sooner or later.

      The notion gave him goose bumps. But not the good kind. Ellie Porter was part of his past. A fantasy. A regret. A deep hurt he’d buried beneath layers of indifference. He didn’t need the ghost of girlfriends past to tell him he’d messed up.

      Hell, he’d made more mistakes in his almost-thirty years than a lot of people made in a lifetime. But he liked to think he’d learned from them. Besides, Ellie wasn’t an old girlfriend. At least not in reality. He’d kissed her once, but that was it.

      In the privacy of his imagination, however, he’d done a lot more. Ellie had featured in his adolescent fantasies on a nightly basis. He’d been head over heels, hormone driven, wildly in lust with her. Everything about her reduced him to shivering need.

      The smell of her hair. The dimple in her cheek when she smiled. The way her breasts filled out a sweater. Even the tiny gap between her two front teeth had charmed him. He would have given his family’s entire fortune for the chance to spend one night with her. To lose himself in her soft, beautiful body and show her how much he cared.

      But Ellie Porter and her twin brother, Kirby, had been his two best friends in the whole wide world. So Conor had kept his daydreams to himself, and never once had he let on to Kirby that he thought of Ellie as far more than a pal, even after he’d finally kissed his buddy’s sister.

      She’d been popular in high school. A long list of guys had panted after her. Probably even entertained the same fantasies that kept Conor awake and hard at night. Each time she went out with a new date, Conor suffered. He wanted to be the one to hold doors for her and put an arm around her in the movie theater and walk her home on warm, scented summer nights.

      But though he and Ellie had shared an undefinable something that went beyond mere friendship, Ellie had disapproved of Conor’s risk-taking. Her rejection of an integral part of his personality had ended anything romantic almost before it began.

      He’d often wondered what might have happened if the Porters had stayed in Silver Glen. Would Conor ever have persuaded Ellie to give him another chance? It was a question with no answer. And now they had both moved on. Ellie was married. Conor was still the guy who pitted himself against danger to prove he was alive.

      Loud laughter at the table behind him startled him out of his reverie. The Silver Dollar Saloon was a rowdy place on the weekends. His brother Dylan owned the upscale honky-tonk. It wasn’t unusual to see the second-born Kavanagh behind the bar dispensing drinks and advice and jokes along with the pretzels and booze.

      Dylan was