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“Wind’s died down. Too bad,” old Tom muttered with a wheezy, heartfelt sigh, audible from several feet away. Johnny, who’d been thinking much the same thing, couldn’t say a word.
When she turned and bent over the closed door, reaching through the open convertible roof for her purse, Johnny held his breath, along with everyone else in the place. She apparently wasn’t a complete exhibitionist, though. She kept the flat of her hand against the skirt, just below the curve of her backside, to keep from showing the world whether or not her favorite color extended to her underclothes.
Having retrieved her bag, she turned and walked toward the sidewalk. Johnny noticed her wobbling a bit on her heels and wondered if she was going to trip on the curb. No one else appeared to notice the moment of unsteadiness. But he knew he was right when he saw her cast a quick guilty look side to side, as if to see if anyone had observed her narrowly avoided fall. For some reason a smile crossed his lips at that one tiny chink in her filmy pink armor.
“Don’t stand here gawkin,” one of the cashiers said as the blonde reached the store entrance.
With a flurry of motion, a dozen pair of hands found something meaningless to do. Shaken out of his daze by the moment of uncertainty displayed by the bombshell…er, porn star…or whatever she was, Johnny walked toward the checkout counter, still carrying his spaghetti sauce. He swallowed a laugh as he watched Tom nervously grab for something, and then blanch when he realized he held a box of tampons. The man dropped the box to the floor, kicking it under the nearest shelf where it would probably remain until next Christmas when the aisles were rearranged for the holiday goods. Some lucky lady would find a dusty box of feminine products in the half-off basket come New Year’s.
He’d just stepped past Claire, who didn’t even notice him to nod hello, when he heard the young mother shriek. “Oh, no, Evie, what did you do? I have to wash it in the washing machine!” The woman swooped the child up and carried her toward the back of the store, beelining for the bathroom.
Johnny didn’t even have time to wonder what had happened before the stranger from the convertible entered the Joyful Grocery Store. She almost barreled right into him.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said, and her voice startled him. He’d expected breathy, sultry or honey-sweet tones. Hers sounded controlled, clipped, evenly modulated, with maybe even a hint of a British accent.
“No harm no foul,” Johnny replied with a shrug.
For some reason, the woman sucked in a sudden gasp of air and jerked away from him. Though she still hadn’t removed her ridiculous glasses, Johnny peered at her, trying to see why she seemed so startled. He couldn’t see her eyes, but did notice that the nose on which her glasses rested was lightly dusted with freckles. Aside from the bright pink lipstick, her face was bare of makeup, and a few more freckles dotted the high cheekbones. Not exactly how he’d picture a porn star. Then again, he’d never met one up close. So maybe freckles weren’t so unusual, even if they were damn near adorable.
“You…you…” she said.
Johnny had to wonder about that. A freckled porn star who stuttered?
She wobbled again on her heels, and Johnny instinctively reached out to steady her. He grabbed for her arm but connected with her shoulder instead. The loose cottony fabric of her blouse slid beneath his hand until his palm touched her bare skin. She was soft, pale against his dark fingers.
This time he was the one who pulled back, or, rather, he thought he did. His brain reacted, sent the message, but he had to wonder if his hand had become disconnected somehow, because his fingers were still there. On her. Sliding across the soft flesh of her nape to brush across her collarbone.
Hearing a bark of laughter, Johnny realized every set of eyes in the store was fixed on them. His hand finally remembered who was boss and obeyed his brain’s command to let her go. He took a step back, seeing the faint pink outline his touch had left on her skin, then let his gaze travel down the rest of her.
The first thing he noticed was that she was not built like a brick…well, she wasn’t stacked. He hadn’t seen many porn flicks in his life—never needed to, if truth be told—but one thing he remembered: the females starring in them appeared to be a plastic surgeon’s best friend. Not this one.
While average height, her ridiculously high heels put her at just a few inches shorter than he was. Not hippy. She was nicely curved—had some particularly fine northern curves—but was certainly nowhere near as well-endowed as he’d expect from an X-rated movie queen. So she definitely wasn’t the downright bovine creature pictured on the billboard.
But the legs. Oh, boy, the legs and that thin little strip of gold dangling above her left ankle nearly had him gasping for breath. This woman could probably have any man she wanted at her high-heel clad feet.
“Have a foot fetish?”
A rueful grin spread across his lips as he raised his eyes to meet hers, which were still hidden behind the glasses. Her enigmatic, close-lipped smile told him he’d been caught staring.
“Something like that.” When she made no move to remove her sunglasses, he leaned closer. “What about you? Doing the Jack Nicholson thing?”
She looked confused.
“Traveling incognito?” he asked, gesturing toward her sunglasses.
She shrugged. “Is it working? Am I blending right in?”
He choked out a laugh. “Yeah. Like an ant in a sugar bowl.”
“Are you saying I’m sweet, or are you comparing me to an insect?”
“Oh, I’m certain you’re sweet, darlin’. I doubt this town has seen so much cotton-candy sweetness in one package in a very long time.” He waited for her response, wondering why he enjoyed baiting a complete stranger.
“Do you like cotton candy?”
“Love it,” he replied, narrowing his eyes and shooting her a dangerous look he hadn’t used on too many women recently. “Melts on the tongue and tastes so good.”
She swallowed. Once. Then leveled her gaze on him from behind the dark lenses. “Liar.”
“Am I?”
“Cotton candy makes you throw up and you know it.”
Her voice held a note of certainty and Johnny suddenly realized she wasn’t flirting. She was speaking fact. This time, when his eyes narrowed, it wasn’t flirtatiously, but in concentration. “How do you know that?”
“Same way I know about your appreciation for nice legs.”
He didn’t say a word.
“Not to mention your thing for ankle bracelets.”
This time it was Johnny who nearly gasped. Who the hell is she? He felt like he should know. There was something familiar, something that was nagging at him about her voice. He couldn’t really know her, could he?
“Lucky guesses,” he said, testing her.
She shook her head. “Nope.”
She lifted her hand and raised one index finger, straight up, then crooked it at him, beckoning him closer. Johnny couldn’t resist. Sliding one foot forward, he leaned as near to her as he could get without actually touching her. He nearly felt everyone else in the store shifting forward, too, but ignored them.
“How do you know?” he asked when he was close enough that the tip of his shoes came within a hairsbreadth of her bare toes. Her deep, even breaths reached his cheek.
She leaned up, almost on tiptoes, and Johnny bent closer. Her perfume, light and flowery, wafted from her warm, creamy skin. It called out to him, something in his brain recognizing the scent and making his whole body grow tense and aware, before his brain could analyze why.
His lips were mere inches from her temple, and he focused hard, trying to figure out the strange feeling of anticipation gripping him.
Then she whispered, “Because you told me. Right before you stole my favorite gold butterfly ankle bracelet right off my ankle.”
And suddenly he knew. Even before she stepped back and pushed her silly sunglasses onto the top of her head with the tip of her index finger, revealing her golden-brown eyes, he knew.
“Emma Jean.”
CHAPTER TWO
THE WORLD certainly kept spinning, and the clock probably kept ticking and the sun likely kept shining and the town of Joyful definitely kept whispering. But right here, right now, for Johnny Walker, time stopped. A decade disappeared. Ten years fell away. And he looked into a set of eyes he’d never thought to see again, though he’d seen them in his brain nearly every day since.
“Son of a bitch.”
“Hello to you, too, Johnny,” she said with a tight smile.
He didn’t return the greeting. “So,” he murmured, knowing she’d be able to hear the edge in his voice. “Emma Jean Frasier has done what she swore she’d never do—return to the pits of hell disguised as the hills of Georgia.”
“And what do I find, but the devil waiting here to greet me,” she said, her expression not nearly as jaunty as her tone.
He tsked. “Still sassy.”
She cast a disparaging glance at the spaghetti sauce can in his hand. “And you’re still a big spender. Don’t tell me—you have a hot date tonight? My, you always did entertain with style.”
He instantly remembered their one date. As her eyes shifted away from him, he knew she was kicking herself for bringing up such a loaded subject.
“Guess I should hurry right out to that field over by the Nelson place to pick a bouquet of wildflowers.”
Her quickly indrawn breath told him his jab had hit home. And suddenly, seeing a flash of hurt in her eyes, he regretted the comment. Coming back to Joyful couldn’t have been easy for Emma Jean. Not with the way she’d left. Correction…the way she’d run away.
The thought helped him thrust off the moment of remorse.
“I have to go,” she insisted, trying to push past him. The brush of her arm against his sent a jolt of hot awareness rushing through him again. As they froze, face-to-face, breath to breath, he mentally tripped again into the world of Emma Jean Frasier’s sweet, caramel-eyed stare. Without warning, his senses went on overload, filled with a sudden, quick stream of memories.
Hot summer days when it almost hurt to draw the thick air into his lungs—particularly as he watched her walk down the road in her tight shorts and tighter tops. The way the sunshine caught the sparkle of gold in her long, honey-colored hair every time she walked by.
And that one incredible night. The cicadas taking up a nighttime chorus as they sat and talked for hours. The moisture of her tears against his neck as he’d held her in his lap while she’d cried over his no-good idiot of a brother. Then the return of her good mood, the way he’d teased her into giving him one of those joyous, dimpled smiles that had stopped his teenage heart.
He almost heard the soft strains of Garth Brooks from his truck radio as they danced in the moonlight. Almost smelled the scent of her hair—lemons and tangerines, sweet and tangy, just like Emma Jean had always been. Almost tasted the sugary, slick taste of her strawberry lip gloss.
His brain tripped one step farther, into truly dangerous territory. Right here and now, in the brightly lit store surrounded by people, he heard the echo of the forbidden, sultry whoosh her satiny dress had made as it fell to the ground. And the way she’d whispered his name over and over again when he’d been buried deep inside her body, certain he’d died and landed straight in the arms of an angel.
“Johnny?”
He flinched as she spoke, losing his grip on the can of sauce in the process. They both looked toward the floor at the sound of the loud clunk. Watching the spaghetti sauce roll away, Emma stepped to the side to avoid getting her toes crunched. Johnny took the moment to get a major grip on himself.
By the time Emma looked up again, he felt much more in control. He’d thrust the mirage of memories back to the depths of his subconscious where they belonged, along with all those other stupid, dangerous teenage memories—like hot-wiring cars, putting firecrackers in mailboxes and making out with girls underneath the bleachers after cutting class. Kid stuff. Just like his feelings for Emma Jean Frasier.
If he told himself that often enough, he might actually start to believe it was true.
“Seeya, Emma Jean,” he managed to mutter, pretty damn sure he sounded almost normal. Almost sane. Almost not crazy with wanting to reach out and either pull her into his arms and kiss the hell out of her, or shake her for leaving. And for coming back. At this moment, he couldn’t say which angered him more.
She nodded and stepped away, gingerly avoiding the sauce he’d dropped. Unfortunately, however, stepping over one can didn’t help Emma save her own. Because two seconds after she moved, she slipped on something, causing her feet to fly out from under her.
Then she hit the floor, falling on her butt like a big old sack of rocks.
IF SOMEONE had told her that within her first several minutes in Joyful she’d be lying flat on the floor, with her legs askew and Johnny Walker crouched between them, Emma would have laughed in that person’s face. Particularly if also told that half the slack-jawed, gaping town would be looking on.
What’d they call this? Déjà vu all over again? Because this was, pretty much, the same position she’d been in on her last night in this town, ten years ago.
Fate, she decided, was a mean-spirited bitch with a really long memory and a twisted sense of humor.
“Em, are you all right?” Johnny asked from where he’d hunkered down between her ankles to see if she was okay.
“No, I’m not all right,” she managed to bite out.
She’d slipped in some unseen puddle on the floor, paying such close attention to avoiding the can—and the man who’d dropped it—that she hadn’t even seen the other danger. Now her ankle and foot felt like they’d been twisted into a pretzel shape. For that matter, so did her stomach.
Not to mention her heart.
She scrunched her eyes shut, waiting for the initial rush of pain to subside. Maybe then she could deal with the fact that the first familiar person she’d seen in Joyful was the one she’d hoped to avoid altogether. And that he looked so damned good.
Johnny as a teenager had been heartthrob material. Pure wicked, honey-tongued, hunk-a-licious male. The baddest of the bad boys. The motorcycle-riding, cigarette-smoking, heartbreaking guy who’d been featured in every teen movie ever made and in every good girl’s most secret fantasies.
Time hadn’t been kind enough to tug frown lines on his lean, handsome face, put circles beneath his stunning blue eyes or gray streaks in his thick, walnut-brown hair. Gravity hadn’t sucked down that flat, muscle-striped chest and stomach. He definitely didn’t have the poochy belly and man boobs she’d occasionally—when in a vengeful mood—wished on him. He wasn’t saggy, pasty and pale. Devil take the man.
No, Johnny Walker was nothing like she’d sometimes hoped he’d be. Of course, the other times, she’d been vacillating between wanting him maimed, dead or imprisoned.
Liar. What she’d really wanted was him pining.
But, huh-uh, just her luck, he looked better than he had ten years ago. Bigger. Harder. Fully masculine in his adult body, with little remaining of the whipcord-lean youth she’d known. Definitely he had not wasted away having spent the past decade mourning the loss of the best thing he’d ever had. Her.
Nope, he was all hunky, smiling, flirty man. The jeans and leather jacket might be gone, as were the chains and silver stud earring he used to wear. But the “Yeah, I really can deliver what my eyes are promising” look was all, one hundred percent Johnny.
“Let me help you,” he insisted. “Hell, Emma Jean, I didn’t imagine you’d drop away in shock at the sight of me.”
She narrowed her eyes.
“Because I have to admit, seeing you was a definite surprise, but I don’t think I’d go swooning over it.”
His surprise certainly couldn’t match hers. She’d been so sure Johnny would be long gone. Instead, here he was, crouched between her calves, trying to ease her foot out of her sandal, as if they’d seen each other in the flesh every day for the past decade…instead of only in each other’s nightmares.
“I didn’t swoon,” she muttered. “I slipped in something.”
He just shrugged, continuing to try to unbuckle her shoe.
Emma took a moment to remember the look on his face when he’d first recognized her. She had to admit it—that expression had almost made the subsequent pain of twisting her ankle worthwhile. Surprise didn’t cut it. He’d been shocked. Stunned. And for one quick, nearly unseen instant, he’d been very, very glad.
Emma didn’t care so much about the shock. The glad, however, had almost been worth the sixteen-hour car ride which had ended with her falling on her fanny with her legs askew and the hottest guy she’d ever known in her life crouched between them. In front of the gawking shoppers in the Joyful Grocery Store, no less.
Who were all still gawking.
She sighed. Quite an entrance after ten years away. She supposed it was a vain hope to think no one here would remember her being caught in pretty much this same position on prom night.
Oh, well, at least she wasn’t stark naked this time.
As she ruthlessly shoved the hint of pleasure that Johnny was glad to see her out of her brain, she acknowledged the other parts of her body that were also sparking in reaction. My, oh my, those hard, lean hips of his were between her legs and she was looking at his thick, dark head of hair, remembering tangling her fingers in it. Suddenly she was feeling damp—down low—and it had nothing to do with whatever spilled liquid she’d fallen in.
Closing her eyes, Emma took a deep breath, trying to work up the courage to deal with her current predicament. Hmm…she was flat on her butt in public, lusting for a guy she should hate, wishing her panties weren’t so tight and her skirt wasn’t so short and her sex life hadn’t been so miserable lately that her own body would betray her in spite of the pain in her ankle. And in her heart.
Today was going onto her top ten list of bad days.
“I’m sorry, Emma Jean, your foot’s already swelling.”
Sorry for causing her to slip on some unseen wet spot? Or for breaking her heart? Not that she’d give him the satisfaction of voicing that question. No, Johnny Walker had no idea he’d broken her heart…because he’d never known it was his to break.
