She had to admit, there was one question that haunted her more than any other. Had Dylan been aware of the payoff?
A horn blared behind her and she stomped her foot on the gas pedal, desperate to get away from the bank and all the mocking questions it conjured. Her tires screeched a complaint as she took the turn much too quickly. Another turn had her heading toward Pine Meadow’s east end. The “Bowers,” as the area had been known years ago. The wrong side of the tracks. The bad part of town. Her part of town.
She slowed the car and gulped in several deep breaths in an effort to calm her troubled mind. Being back in her neck of the woods, seeing her old haunts, somehow comforted her. And she focused all her attention on them, the narrow streets and close-packed businesses soothing her frazzled nerves.
Home. The businesses in the Bowers had been mostly small, family-owned enterprises that struggled from month to month to remain open. These people had known no other way of life. Had no other means to eke out a living. And from the looks of things, that hadn’t changed.
She turned down Cox Avenue and slowed down when she came to the building her father used to rent as his shoe repair shop. The main floor of the small building housed a coffee shop now. And seeing the frilly, faded yellow curtains hanging in the two upstairs windows, she surmised that someone lived in the tiny one bedroom apartment where she had been raised.
Heaving a forlorn sigh, she continued driving down the street. She’d played hopscotch on this sidewalk as a little girl. Jumped rope with her friends. Tess wrapped herself in the warm blanketlike memory of the love and security she’d felt as a child. Looking both ways at the four-way stop, that’s when she saw it.
Dylan’s Auto Repair.
The small, metal placard advertising Body Work dangled from below the Auto Repair sign, as if it had been added on. A second thought.
Could it be...?
“No,” came her verbal reply. Dylan Minster’s favorite hobby might have been working on cars, but he’d made it abundantly clear that he was going into his family’s banking business. Abundantly clear. Besides, a Minster would never be caught dead opening a business in the Bowers.
Still, her eyes remained glued to that sign. It seemed to call out to her. Relentless. Enticing. Like a glass of cool water to someone dying of thirst.
“Hey, there!”
Tess’s gaze whipped around to see an elderly lady standing on the corner.
“You lost?” she asked.
“Oh, no,” Tess told her. “I grew up around here. Lived overtop the coffee shop a couple of blocks back. My dad had a shoe repair shop there.”
“Well, now.” The woman smiled. “I don’t remember the shop being anything other than a coffeehouse. But I’ve only lived here seven years. Ever since I had to move in with my daughter and her husband.” Her smile widened. “Welcome home.”
“Thanks.” Tess’s tone was vague as her eyes were inexorably drawn back to the auto repair shop. Then she found herself saying, “Things haven’t changed too much.” She paused. “But I see there are a few new businesses in the Bowers...”
The hesitation had been purposeful. Tess hoped the woman would reveal some information regarding the garage across the street.
The woman chuckled. “The city council has tried every way possible to get people to stop calling this place the Bowers. They started a campaign a few years back. Wanted us to call this part of town East Meadows. That fell flat. People use what they know, I guess. And this place will always be the Bowers, won’t it?”
“I guess,” Tess said, her gaze never leaving the building she’d hoped to learn more about.
Finally the woman seemed to perceive her interest. “You know Dylan Minster?”
After several moments Tess was able to get her tongue to work. “I did. Once. A long time ago.” The curt sentences sounded rusty to her own ears.
“That Dylan fought his family, the city council and a whole army of other people when he wanted to open his garage over here.”
By over here, Tess knew she meant in this less reputable part of town.
Movement caught her eye, and then she saw him. He stood in the large open doorway of the first bay, directing as someone backed a large car out of the garage. Tess felt every nerve ending in her body come alive, alert.
Dylan Minster. In the flesh. She’d know the set of those wide, muscular shoulders anywhere, recognize the tilt of that chin. That was the man who had stolen her heart. The man who had taught her what love between two people was all about. However, he was also the man who had crushed her spirit, hurt her like no one else ever had. The man who had fathered her stillborn baby girl. Her gaze never wavered from his fine form as her mind churned with all these bits from the past.
“You know,” the woman said to her, “seeing as how you knew Dylan and all, and seeing as how you’re in the neighborhood, you ought to stop in over there and say hello.”
Tess’s voice actually quivered as she answered, “I think I’ll do that.”
Chapter Two
The broad expanse of his chest made the navy, run of-the-mill uniform shirt look not quite so run-of-the-mill. The rolled-up sleeves revealed powerful, tanned hands and forearms, the open collar, a corded neck that invited a woman’s lips to explore.
Tess started with a tiny twitch, her eyes widening. Where had that thought come from?
From the deepest depths of your memory, came a silent answer. That most sensuous of places that Dylan had awakened when you were just seventeen.
Well, she decided, such thoughts would simply have to go straight back to wherever they came from, and she’d have to shut the door on them. Lock the door on them. And toss away the key.
After checking the street traffic one more time, she inched across the intersection and then steered toward the asphalt parking lot of the garage.
She stopped the car, its engine idling softly. “Are you out of your mind?” she whispered to herself. “What are you doing?” Did she really believe Dylan would want to see her after all this time? After all the mean words they had hurled at each other?
But that seemed like a lifetime ago. They were both adults now, weren’t they?
She cringed at the question, remembering how very grown-up she’d thought she’d been at seventeen. Seventeen and pregnant.
Again, she brushed her memories of the past aside, turning the key to cut the engine. There were questions that needed answers. She really didn’t care one way or the other if Dylan would want to see her. He was going to see her.
Tess got out of her car, but it was the sound of her car door closing that had him looking her way. He called out for the driver of the big, white Cadillac to stop, and the car halted with a slight jerk.
His dark head tilted the tiniest bit and those deep green eyes of his narrowed, a frown creasing his brow.
She stopped about ten feet from him. A buffer zone of sorts.
“Hello, Dylan,” she said, reaching up and pulling off her sunglasses.
His gaze widened with recognition when she spoke, almost as though he’d known who she was, but refused to believe it until she actually addressed him. A dozen wild gypsies stomped out a boisterous jig on her nerves as she awaited his response.
Ho-ly