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“I seem to remember your eye watered for a week.” Dylan grinned as the group burst into laughter. It felt so good to be back in a place where people knew him and shared his history. In California he’d always felt like a stranger, an outsider. People there commented on everything from his accent to the cowboy boots he liked to wear, but here no one thought those things were odd. Why had it taken him so long to return to this place where he belonged?
Troy launched into another story and Dylan idly searched the crowd, tallying the familiar faces. Almost everyone in their class had made it home for the reunion. Everyone except the one person he’d been most hoping to see.
A movement to his left caught his attention. He turned and for a moment stopped breathing. Taylor Reed was making her way toward him, a vision straight out his most erotic fantasies. She still had the movie-star polish that had captivated him from the first, but her girlish beauty had ripened to womanly curves that caught the eye of every man she passed. She’d let her hair grow, so that it swept her shoulders in a dark brown cascade. But the eyes were the same, big and dark and seeming to look right down into his soul.
She stopped in front of him, her gaze locked to his. “Hello, Dylan.”
He sucked in a deep breath, inhaling the spice-and-flowers scent of her perfume. “Hello, Taylor.” The shakiness in his voice startled him. He cleared his throat and tried again. “It’s good to see you.”
The tension in her shoulders eased and she smiled. A wide grin. “It’s good to see you, too.”
He was conscious of the silence around them and knew everyone was watching. That much hadn’t changed since high school. He shifted around to bring her into the group he’d been standing with and lightly touched her shoulder.
“You remember Troy Sommers, don’t you? And Ed Offray. Gib Hartsell. Al Proctor.”
“Hey, Taylor.”
“Hello.”
“Nice to see you again.”
They fell into an awkward silence, the men staring at Taylor. She reached to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear, then smoothed the skirt of her dress, a faint flush creeping up her neck.
Dylan feared that at any moment she’d bolt. And who could blame her? You’d think these jokers had never seen a woman before. Not that he was any better. He couldn’t take his eyes off her. “Uh, would you like to dance?” he asked.
She dipped her head and regarded him through the veil of her lashes. “I’d like that.”
The DJ had just put on R.E.M.’s “Everybody Hurts.” Taylor moved into his arms and he rested his hands lightly at her waist, as nervous as he’d ever been back in high school. She felt good, her skin warm beneath the thin fabric of her dress. In high heels, the top of her head was even with his nose and his every breath filled his lungs with the exotic scent of her.
He had the disorienting sensation of being cast back in time to the only other dance they’d shared. They’d been in this same gym, after a football game. He couldn’t remember the song they’d danced to or whether the team had won or lost the game, but he could remember this feeling of sensory overload, of being filled up and over-flowing with the sight and smell and feel of her.
He’d wanted so much to kiss her then, but before he’d even worked up the nerve, the song had ended and she’d moved out of his arms.
“So I hear you’re moving back to Cedar Creek?”
Her voice pulled him back to the present. “Yes. I’m opening a law practice across from the courthouse.” He smiled. “But how did you know that? I’ve only been back in town a day.”
Her own smile was tight, never reaching her eyes. “You know how word gets around in a small town like this.”
Didn’t they both know that—too well? “Troy tells me you’re teaching here at the high school.”
She nodded. “Senior English. I came back three years ago, after a few years teaching in Austin.”
“Funny how you stayed in Texas while I went to California.”
She raised her eyes to meet his. “But now you’re back.”
“Yeah. Now I’m back.”
The song ended and they stopped moving; still arm in arm, they stared into each other’s eyes. He had the feeling she was searching for something, but he didn’t know what.
He thought he’d left all that high school awkwardness behind, but here it was, creeping in again. Grasping at any reason to keep her with him, he nodded toward the buffet table. “Are you hungry? Want to get something to eat?”
“Sure.”
He kept his hand at her back, guiding her through the crowd to the catered buffet. They filled their plates with canapés and cheese cubes, grabbed drinks from the bar and found an unoccupied table and sat. She unfolded a napkin across her lap and studied him. “You look good,” she said. “California must have agreed with you.”
He laughed. “Then looks are deceiving. I couldn’t wait to get out of there.” He took a sip of beer. “It’s good to be back home, where I feel like I belong.”
“Someone said you moved out to your parents’ old place.”
He nodded. “We’ve been renting it out since Mom and Dad died and it’s gotten kind of run-down. My plan is to fix it up again.”
“I heard about the accident after I moved back. I’m so sorry.”
Her voice was soft. Sad. The words more than mere formula. “Thanks.” He spoke around the tightness in his throat that always grabbed him when he thought of his parents. They’d died in a small plane crash in the Rockies when he was in his sophomore year of law school. He hadn’t been back to town since the funeral. Even before then, he’d pretty much left Cedar Creek behind, visiting only on holidays and for a few weeks in the summer. Now he’d moved back, partly because this was where he felt closest to his parents’ memory.
“You really are coming home, aren’t you?”
Her words startled him, as if she’d been reading his thoughts. She sipped her wine. “I guess that doesn’t surprise me. You always seemed so much a part of this place. Whenever I thought of you, I always pictured you here, settled down with a wife and two or three kids.”
So she’d thought of him? The knowledge warmed him. “It took me a few years, but I finally made it back. Without the wife and kids, though.”
“Alyson mentioned you were still single.” She picked a sprig of parsley from her plate and twirled it between her thumb and forefinger.
“I’ll confess I haven’t even come close to tying the knot yet,” he said. “I didn’t see any reason to hurry.”
He tipped the neck of the beer bottle toward her. “What about you?”
She shook her head. “No, I haven’t come close, either.” She glanced at him. “My friends tell me I’m too picky. I tell them I’m holding out for the right man.”
Her words sent a quiver through his stomach. Was she trying to tell him something or was he reading too much into her words? “I never would have thought you’d have ended up staying here,” he said.
She set aside the parsley, avoiding his gaze. “Why is that?”
“I don’t know. You were always so…sophisticated. Cosmopolitan.”
She laughed. “I may have thought I was sophisticated, but I’m sure I wasn’t.”
“Hey, it doesn’t take much to impress a bunch of hicks from the sticks.”
She regarded him through the lacy veil of her lashes. “And were you impressed?”
“Oh, yeah.” He pushed aside his half-filled plate. “I still am.” Seeing her again tonight had made him certain he’d made a big mistake when he’d never kissed her all those years ago. Did he dare try to make up for that now? He leaned toward her. “About what happened back in high school—”
She put her hand over his. “Wait.” She glanced around them. “Could we go somewhere else and talk? Someplace with a little more privacy?”
“Sure.” Suddenly he wanted nothing more than to be alone with her.
They moved apart and he followed her toward the door. They passed Alyson Michaels, who stopped in midsentence to stare. Her voice followed them out of the room. “They certainly aren’t wasting any time….”
They stopped outside, on the walkway between the gym and the main building. A few smokers huddled against the side of the gym, swatting at the June bugs that dove at them from the overhead lights. “Where do you want to go?” Dylan asked.
She glanced around them, then nodded toward the main building. “There’s some picnic tables behind the cafeteria. Let’s go there.”
He walked beside her, putting his hand at her back to steady her as she picked her way around the side of the building and across the gravel lot toward a trio of wooden picnic tables in the shadow of a live oak. They sat side by side on a table, feet on the bench, looking back toward the gym. The faint throb of the music drifted to them.
He turned his head to study her. She still had a certain stillness about her, a calm reserve he’d admired from the first day they’d met. “You haven’t told me yet—why did you come back to Cedar Creek?”
“I think…” She stared out into space, silent for so long he thought she’d forgotten the question, then she turned to look at him. “I think I had some unfinished business here.”
He let out the breath he hadn’t even realized he’d been holding. So they were finally going to talk about that. “You mean, what happened in high school. All those wild stories.”
She nodded. “I ran away from them, but I never really left them behind.”
He gripped the edge of the table with both hands. “I owe you an apology for my part in that. If I’d said something sooner—”
She covered his hand with her own. “I don’t think anything you said would have made a difference. Most people made up their mind about me the first day I walked down those halls. I was the fast girl from California.”
“Maybe so. But I still should have said something. Done something.”
She leaned toward him, the intensity of her gaze making his temperature edge up a few degrees. “Do you really want to make it up to me?”
He swallowed. “Of course.”
She angled closer, her knees brushing his. “I’ve decided I’ve let those rumors haunt me for too long. I’m ready to get them out of my system for good.”
“How are you going to do that?”
She took his other hand and rested them both in her lap. “That’s where you come in.” She traced the lines of his palm with one red-painted fingernail, sending a lightning bolt of sensation straight to his groin.
“I want to revisit the past, so to speak, and turn those rumors into the truth.”
He blinked, trying to pull his thoughts away from sex to the discussion at hand. “I don’t understand. You can’t go back in time.”
“Not physically.” She continued to stroke his palm, so that he ached to reach out and pull her to him. “I want to take all those wild stories and re-create them today.”
She lifted her head and met his gaze and his breath caught. Was it only wishful thinking that made him see desire in her eyes, or was she really saying what he thought she’d said? “You mean, you want us to really do all the things they accused us of back then?”
She nodded and wet her lips, the pink tip of her tongue darting out between her teeth in a surprisingly erotic gesture. “Before you say yes or no, there’s something else I have to tell you.”
Something else? What else could she say that would tilt his world any further on edge? He waited, not breathing.
She looked down at his hands, her touch light as a butterfly’s wing as she traced the lines of his palm. “I’m going away in a few months to begin a year-long fellowship at Oxford, studying Shakespeare. If I’m lucky, it could turn into a long-term teaching assignment.”
The words landed like a rock in the pit of his stomach. “You’re leaving?” Just when he’d found her again?
She nodded. “So you see, this would only be for a few weeks or months, then we’d both be free to move on with our lives.” She leaned toward him, her pupils dark and liquid, her lips slightly parted. “Are you willing to do it? To be my lover for real this time?”
He’d never wanted anything more. Had wanted it ten years ago, but hadn’t had the courage to admit it. “If you’re sure…”
“Oh, I’m sure.” She closed her eyes and leaned toward him, her lips finding his.
Their movements were tentative at first, each gauging the other’s reaction with feather touches and gentle caresses. But desire quickly overcame caution. He reached for her and pulled her nearer, his lips more demanding, urging her to open to him.
She responded eagerly, pressing her body against him. Her tongue teased him, tracing the outline of his mouth, then plunging in to taste him fully before retreating once more. She kissed the corners of his mouth and along his jaw, lingering at his neck, her mouth warm and moist against the pulse of his throat.
His hand moved down her back, tracing the curve of her hip, the indentation at the base of her spine, the soft fullness of her bottom. “That feels good,” she whispered, and wriggled closer.
He scooped her up, into his lap, her thigh pressed against his rock-hard erection. He felt seventeen again, hot and horny, and desperate for relief.
But at seventeen he hadn’t known what he did now. That there was pleasure in waiting, in making the moment last and letting the desire build.
She pulled at the knot of his tie, loosening it enough to undo the top two buttons of his shirt. A shiver raced through him as her fingernails grazed his chest. “Do you like that?” she murmured.
“Yeah, I do.”
She laughed, a throaty chuckle, and nipped at his ear-lobe while she unfastened another button and slid her hand all the way inside his shirt, down toward his stomach.
He pulled her more tightly against him, trying to keep her from going farther. He couldn’t believe he was so turned on, so quickly. If she kept this up, he was liable to embarrass himself, and he hadn’t done that since he was a kid.
When she tried to protest, he silenced her with a kiss, then trailed more kisses down the satin column of her neck to the tops of her breasts. A breathy moan escaped her as he traced the curve of her cleavage with his tongue and his erection jerked in response. He buried his face between her breasts and inhaled deeply. Her perfumed woman fragrance flooded every nerve with awareness of her.
He slid his tongue beneath the fabric of her dress and found the hard bud of her nipple. She moaned again as he began to lick her and he brought his free hand up her leg, to the silk edge of her panties. He smiled, glad to see he wasn’t the only one turned on so quickly. She was soaking wet and ready for him.
As he stroked her, she arched toward him, silently begging for more. He hesitated only a second before laying her back on the table and reaching down to undo his fly.
TAYLOR HAD NEVER IMAGINED that a man she hadn’t seen in ten years would be able to make her lose control so quickly. As he kissed and caressed her, every atom in her ached for him. All the doubts and fear she’d battled when she’d walked into the reunion gave way to a flood of want and need. She wanted Dylan to kiss her, to touch her, to stroke her. She needed him inside her in a way she had never needed anyone before.
She cried out in frustration when his hands left her and opened her eyes to stare up at him accusingly. But then she saw that he was unfastening his belt and she grew quiet. Soon he’d ease this tension building within her.
She sat up, intending to hurry him along, but froze as someone spoke. “Do you think anyone will see us?” a woman asked.
“Nah. There’s nobody back here,” assured a man.
Taylor grabbed Dylan’s hand and stared at him, her heart racing. He helped her to sit up again and together they stared into the darkness behind them.
Shoes crunched on gravel. A woman giggled and the man rumbled an answer. Taylor thought she could make out two darker shadows moving toward them and then away. The voices faded and the air around them hummed with silence.
Dylan began buttoning his shirt again. “That was close,” he murmured.
She smoothed her dress, avoiding looking at him. “There’s one thing I forgot to mention. As a teacher, I have to be somewhat discreet.” She slanted a glance at him. “Although, since I’m going away, I suppose it doesn’t matter so much for me. But there’s your reputation to consider. We’d have to be careful.”
“How are you going to manage that if we’re supposed to be reenacting all those things we were accused of? I seem to recall some supposedly public spectacles.”
“Don’t worry, I’ve got it all figured out.”
“Then you still want to go through with this?”
