“Why not?”
“First, it would be rude to disappear from your welcome home party. Simone has been planning this for the past two weeks—ever since your feet hit dirt in town, and second it was Simone who asked me to bring the eggs, and third—”
She might’ve disabled his hands by sticking him with the platter of eggs, but he was far from disarmed. After all, he was carrying a backup weapon. In less than a heartbeat he’d loaded up the trusty charm gun. “Hey, girl.” He aimed a smoky look her way, one that could have felled hundreds, maybe thousands of librarians in a single shot.
Her eyes widened in surprise. “Are you supposed to be Ryan Gosling in this scenario? Since when do you follow librarian humor?”
“Since I saw your Facebook page.”
“You checked out my Facebook?” Her lips transformed into a defiant pink pucker.
“You’re not the girl next door anymore, Anna. You’re the hot librarian.”
Her eyes flashed with determination, but her mouth signaled his impending victory. Anna’s you-cannot-make-me-smile pucker was a sure sign he could.
He cocked the charm gun. “Hey, girl. When’s amnesty day at the library?”
He pulled the trigger. “’Cause I need to turn in an apology, and it’s ten years overdue.”
Her pink lips twitched at the edges. Wait for it…ha! Like a field of prickly poppies answering the call of the morning sun, her expression opened and transformed into a thing of beauty—the best smile he’d seen since the day he’d left Tangleheart, Texas.
“Twelve years if you want to be accurate.” The smile crept into her voice too.
“So you did miss me.”
Her face flushed, and her mouth flatlined. “I’m just pointing out the facts, Charlie. No apology is necessary, and I don’t mean to sound harsh, but I think the past belongs in the past.”
“Then let’s go someplace private and talk about the future.”
“You’ve got more nerve than sense, Charlie.”
“And you’ve got great legs.”
“I run.”
His gaze crawled unapologetically from her well-turned calves, up up up and around her curves, climbing higher and higher until at last it reached her big baby-blue eyes. “It shows.”
“Guess running’s my own form of therapy, so I won’t be needing your apology or your psychiatric services, Charlie. I’m over it.”
Blinking hard, he forced his attention away from her knockout body and onto her words. And when those words sank in, he said, “I’m not a psychiatrist.”
“I heard—”
“You heard wrong. I’m a pediatrician.”
“But you don’t even like kids.”
“You sure about that?” He’d always liked kids. Just wasn’t the kind of thing a guy wanted front and center on his high-school yearbook page.
Charlie “Drex” Drexler—student body president, captain of the football team, voted man most likely to break your heart, really likes small fry.
Nope. Never would’ve worked.
Anna tilted her head, surveying him. “You’ve changed.”
Finally, they were getting somewhere. Because he had, in fact, changed a great deal. And he was smart enough to realize he was going to have to prove to her that he was a different man. She wasn’t about to let him take her home with him, or anywhere else for that matter, anytime soon if he didn’t. He didn’t know much about what Anna Kincaid had been up to all these years, but one thing was certain, fantasizing about getting Charlie Drexler naked wasn’t it.
ANNA KINCAID DID NOT WISH to speak ill of the dead, nor did she wish to think ill of the dead.
Which was why she’d made a conscious effort, all these years, not to think of Megan O’Neal. The virtue attached to this plan was iffy at best, since the very fact that it required effort for her not to think ill of poor Megan, meant that on some level she did. Sticking out her chin, she beat down a gnawing sense of guilt. The principle might be flawed, but it was the best she could manage for the girl who’d ruined Charlie Drexler’s life.
And imperfect though it may have been, she’d stuck fast to that principle until this very evening, when Charlie had shown up on the Carlisle front porch, taken her in his arms, and turned her heart back twelve years.
In that instant, she’d cast aside all pretense of virtue and indulged in a heartache as raw and sore as the original had been the night Charlie left town. Tonight, when he’d pulled her close, even the knee-buckling feel of his solid chest against her cheek couldn’t stop her mind from churning through the murkiest part of their past.
If it hadn’t been for Megan O’Neal, Charlie might have taken a different road in life. All these years, conflicting emotions toward the girl—jealousy and pity, resentment and compassion—had been lying abed, twisting in the sheets, cuddling and kicking just below the surface of Anna’s consciousness. Not thinking about Megan had not blocked out Anna’s feelings about Megan, at least not completely. Trembling, she clasped her arms about her waist. Her eyes closed.