Dream girl walking.
The corn-silk hair she’d crimped as a teen whipped long and naturally straight behind her, maybe because straight hair was the current fashion, but he rather hoped it was because she’d finally realized she was goddamn beautiful in her own right. A white cotton dress with spaghetti straps slipping off bronzed shoulders conjured sensuality from innocence, and the curve of her hips, backlit by a setting sun, shamelessly reminded him he was a man who’d been buried in the books for far too long. His heartbeat hesitated and then kicked up with the wind that carried the familiar scent of her vanilla soap.
Eschewing the vanity of perfume, Anna had always opted for natural scents and handmade soaps. To his way of thinking, her fancy soaps might be a natural, organic vanity, but they were a vanity all the same. Yet year after year, he’d bitten back the urge to point out the flaw in her reasoning simply because he flat-out loved the way she smelled.
The way she smelled.
The way she shook back her hair when she laughed.
The way she moved.
And unlike times past, today he wasn’t the only one taking notice of Anna. An overfed blue jay pecking the corncob bait on the railing of the Carlisle front porch paused to crane its neck and jabber a compliment as, with downcast eyes, Anna sideways-climbed the tricky steps. On second thought, maybe it wasn’t the steps that were tricky, maybe it was balancing those eggs while wearing high heels. High heels that showed off a pair of amazing gastrocnemius muscles. All he really knew was that he wanted Anna to look up. And when she saw him, he wanted her to smile.
Raking a hand through his hair, he waited for the moment of truth. Anna reached the top, stepped onto the porch, looked up, and stopped dead in her tracks. Helpless to contain the excitement welling inside him, he grinned—quite possibly beamed—at her. Anna’s mouth, on the other hand, didn’t roll out of its peppermint-pink bow. Her ridiculously blue eyes didn’t crinkle at the edges, and she didn’t offer so much as a glimmer of the smile that had hounded him for more than ten years. If she had, he might’ve never recovered the breath to speak. “Hello, Peaches.”
“Charlie.”
His worst fear had been that the Anna of his boyhood would tromp up the steps and rage at him, and he’d prepared himself for the worst. Or so he’d thought. What he hadn’t prepared himself for was this. This neutral look on her face. This indifferent demeanor. It was as if Anna simply didn’t care one way or another that he’d returned to her with an open mind, determined to find out what he’d missed. It was as if the girl who’d looked up to him, who’d, let’s face it, worshipped him, didn’t care one way or another that he’d come home.
His chest deflated…briefly. But he was never one to stay down for the count. “Care to dance?” He grabbed her by the hand, pulled it high above her head and twirled her beneath his arm.
“Damn it, Charlie,” she muttered as they both lunged for the plate of deviled eggs.
Triumphantly he held out the rescued eggs. “No harm done.”
“To the eggs.” She arched a matter-of-fact brow and made a quick survey of each high heel.
He set down the plate on the porch swing and moved in close. One hand found her hip and the other grazed her palm, and magically her arm rose with his. Her body canted forward until he could feel the brush of her warm breasts against his chest. Her knees buckled ever so slightly as he pulled her against him. She was trembling at first, but then she steadied. Her heart beat against him, keeping time with his own, and their breathing synchronized—as if their bodies knew how to talk to each other even if they didn’t.
He swallowed hard. Man up, Charlie.
She shifted positions, bringing her hips in line with his, and by now, at least one part of him needed an admonishment to man down. “About that dance.”
Sliding out of his arms, she quickstepped back, almost tumbling off the steps in the process. She skirted him, retrieved the platter off the porch swing and stuck it in his hands. “Welcome home, Charlie. The eggs are for you.”
“You remembered.”
Her nose scrunched up. “What?”
“Deviled eggs are my favorite.”
“Are they?”
“C’mon Peaches, don’t be mad.”
“Stop calling me Peaches. Mad about what?”
He squinted at her. She squinted back with no trace of animosity. Surely she wasn’t going to let him off the hook that easily. He refused to accept this display of equanimity as truth. She was either mad and covering it up by playing it cool, or she had amnesia, and amnesia was the least parsimonious explanation for her behavior he could think of. “Look, Anna, can we go somewhere private and talk?”
Shaking her head emphatically, she said, “No way.”