Seemingly of of its own volition, the Bronco steered toward home.  Sarah's hands were seized, however, with an almost uncontrollable urge to veer south toward some secluded Mexican beach.  Just for, say, the next week or so?
    Oh, geez. . .why on earth was Dean coming for a full week?  What was this, some resurgence of family devotion?  Or, she thought with a sickening thud just below her sternum, a deliberate move to torture her?  Her hands gripped  the steering wheel as she passed the little turnoff that would, could, loop her  around and send her in the opposite direction.
    She watched the loop fade in her rearview mirror.  And sighed.
    Oh, come on.  This was not like her.  Sarah Whitehouse did not run from problems.  Sarah Whitehouse faced them, dealt with them, solved them.  No matter what.  So. . .so. . . she would go home, change clothes, run a comb through what there was of her hair, and simply ignore Dean Parrish. 
   One hand clamped around the steering wheel, the other found its way to
her mouth, where she started to chew on a hangnail.  Wrecked was the only word
to describe her mental state after Drew's abrupt departure, the night before her
senior prom.  After a while, though, she forced the unhappiness into a tiny cubicle
in the farthest recesses of her brain, like an unwanted Christmas present you don't
know what to do with but you can't return, so you stuff it up in the attic,
forgotten, until some fool goes up there and unearths the damn thing and then
brings it downstairs, setting it on the coffee table like it's some great find.
    Thank you, Jennifer, Sarah thought on a sigh as she pulled into her
driveway and caught sight of the unfamiliar pickup parked in front of the house. 
Thank you so much for reminding me of what I'd worked so hard to forget.
    Not that any of this was Jen's fault.  Who knew?
    She sat for a long moment, staring out the driver's side window at what
was obviously Dean's truck.  This was no beat-up number on its last legs.  Wheels,
whatever.  The color was understated enough -- a dull silver, like her mother's
pewter candlesticks on the living room mantle -- but it was big and expensive and
clearly had enough bells and whistles to make even the fussiest boy happy.  Either
he'd done very well or he was in hock up to his butt. 
    A sudden crack of thunder startled her; she peered up at the clouds which
had been playing round-robin with the sun all day, then glanced back at the truck.
Then her house.
    Not yet.  She just couldn't.  She'd. . .just go check on the new pups first. 
Yeah.  Good plan.  She pushed open the door to the Bronco and hopped down.
    The door crashed shut behind her; she held her breath.   After a few
seconds, when no crowd appeared, she let out her breath in a little huff, then
headed across her front yard toward the kennels, the wind whistling in her 
ears. 
    The idea of seeing Dean again was wreaking more havoc with her
gastrointestinal tract by the second.  Right now, the last thing she wanted was to
be anywhere near Jennifer's wedding, let alone be in Jennifer's wedding.  An
event she'd been looking forward to, despite her grumblings, until about six hours
ago.  Now, she'd rather eat Aunt Ida's okra-and-hamhocks casserole three times a
day for the rest of her life--
    "Sarah?"
    The voice was deeper, the edge harder.  But it was his.  Still gentle.  Still
feather-bed warm.  And ingenuously seductive.  And the instant she heard it, she
knew she was in seriously deep do-do. 
    Cursing Fate, she turned around, her arms tucked tightly against her chest. 
She couldn't get a real good look at him; the light was fading quickly as the storm
approached, and he stood on the porch at least thirty feet away.  One hand, she
thought, was braced against a white trellise laden with blueberry-hued morning
glories, now tightly closed and flinching in the ruthless wind. 
    Apparently, however, he could see her just fine. 
    "Good Lord!" he shouted over the wind.  "What the hell happened to your
hair?"
    That these should be the first words out of his mouth, after all this time,
came as no surprise.  What was startling was that it was if no time had passed at
all. There he stood, like he had hundreds of times before when he'd been waiting
for her to get back from school or shopping or whatever.
    But it was very different, even so.
    Instinctively, almost protectively, her hand cupped her head.  "What's
wrong with it?" she called, simultaneously annoyed and pleased at the shock in
his voice.  "It turn green or something since I last looked in the mirror?"
    He shook his head in slow motion.  "Not green.  Gone." 
    "Oh, right."  She shrugged.  "It got to be a pain.  So I chopped it off."
    Dean now descended the porch steps, one hand anchored on the banister,
each step deliberate, careful, as if he knew she was a breath away from bolting. 
The wind whipped dust and leaves in Sarah's face, so she still couldn't clearly see
him, even as he came closer.  When he'd narrowed the gap to five feet or so, he
stopped, blatantly staring at her.  The debris finally ceased its assault 
long enough
for her to stare back.
    "You've changed, too," she said, crossing her arms again to support her
roiling stomach.
    He paused, then tried a smile.  "Yeah.  You're not the only one with shorter
hair, I guess." 
    He fidgeted with his hands like a little boy giving a speech in front of his
class, then slipped them into the pockets of pleated-front chinos.  Right there was 
a major change; a new pair of jeans was about as dressed up as Sarah had even
seen Dean get.  The pants were topped by a conservative knit shirt in a
remarkably unconservative shade of aqua, stretched across shoulders and a chest
that had broadened nicely over the years.  Another blast of wind made her squint. 
    "You. . .look good."  She had to say something.  And it was true.
    Unfortunately.
    Another smile, this one perhaps a little more relaxed.  "You, too."  Now 
he
added a brief chuckle.  "Crew-cut and all."
    "It's not that short-- "  She clamped shut her mouth, her face tingling from
his knowing smile, the gentle teasing she'd forgotten how to handle.  She used to
encourage it, though.  And give it right back. 
    Damn.  She couldn't take her eyes off his face. 
    Which was older, of course.  But. . .more mature, too, which was not the
same thing.  Age, perhaps, had made his cheekbones more pronounced, the
hollows under them accentuating a rigid jawline that might have made his
countenance severe were it not for the smile she knew came so easily and often to
his lips.  Well, used to, anyway.  His hair seemed lighter, but she couldn't tell if
the streaks were sun-bleached or premature gray, blended as they were into the
moderate style which hooded the tops of his ears and curled over the top of his
collar.  Age, again -- and an overdose of sun from summers spent as a lifeguard --
had bestowed the beginnings of crow's feet at the corners of his eyes, a faint
bracketing around his mouth.
    Time and gravity had wrought the physical changes.  What had brought
about the maturity, she had no way of knowing.  But it was there, settled into his
eyes.  Even their color seemed more intense, like everything else about him, the
gold-green she remembered now deepened to the color of damp moss. 
    She saw wisdom, she thought.  Understanding.  Maybe a little regret, but
that might be wishful thinking.  But what she didn't see -- happiness or
contentment or even satisfaction -- she found threatening in some vague,
unexplainable way.  Not vague at all, though, was an almost irrepressible urge to
skim her fingertips down his cheek.  To see if he smelled the same.  Felt the 
same.
    Tasted the same.
    Her heart now fairly thundered in her chest. 
    His smile had faded in the wake of her extended silence.  She saw him
swallow, look away for a second, then let out a short, nervous laugh.  "Damn, this
is awkward." 
    "You could say that," she allowed with a curt nod, mentally tucking away
all those thoughts of touching and feeling and tasting.
    "At least you didn't claw my eyes out," he said softly.
    She held up her hands.  "No nails.  Sorry."   Then, realizing they were
shaking, tucked them behind her back.  "Maybe some other time."
    He blew out a puff of air that might have passed for a laugh.  "Do you
think. . .would you mind if we talked for a few minutes, alone?  Before we have
to face everyone else?"
    For some reason, probably to avoid his eyes, she found herself staring at
his mouth and remembered with startling clarity just how his lips had felt on hers. 
With that, all the thoughts she'd so carefully tucked away came tumbling free.
    She snapped her gaze away from his mouth, from his face entirely,
dragging her attention to a rhododendron bush a few feet away.  But the image
wouldn't fade.  She fisted her hands -- maybe digging her nails into her palms
would serve as a reverse aphrodisiac.  Except she didn't have any nails. 
Rats.
    This was not the way it was supposed to happen.  She had expected to see
the Dean who had broken her heart.  Not the one who had stolen it to begin 
with.
    And that screwed up everything.  Big-time.
    So she forced to the surface the one memory she would cling to with every
fiber of her being, the one that would keep her heart from ever getting torn apart
ever again.  Not by Dean Parrish, anyway.
    "Hey, remember?" she said at last in a level voice, daring to look up at him
again.  "I'm just a hick from boring Sweetbranch, Alabama?  What on earth could
we possibly have to talk about?" 
    Then she reeled smartly on her heel, nearly twisting her ankle in the
process, and stalked away, huddled tightly against the wind as the clouds swirled
overhead like oil spills in water.
 

Copyright 2001 Karen Templeton-Berger.  All rights reserved.  Reprinted 
with permission of Harlequin Enterprises, S.A