She drew back casually from his touch. “People do, you know.”
He shook his head. “It’s impossible. You used to look like Orphan Annie, all frizzy red hair and big eyes.”
Now she was beautiful. The idea stunned him. How could Angela’s pesky kid sister look like this?
“Gee, thanks. I think.”
“I didn’t mean…” He was thrown ridiculously off balance. Of course Rebecca had grown up. She couldn’t stay little forever.
“You expected me to look like a kid. Did you think nothing in Bedford Creek would change while you were gone, that we were all just waiting for your return? It’s not Brigadoon, you know.”
“Isn’t it?” They’d done “Brigadoon” for their senior class play. Angela had been gorgeous in a tartan skirt. Somehow Bedford Creek had always had that Brigadoon aura—isolated, hidden by its mountains, remote from his busy urban life.
“Things do change. I grew up. Angela got engaged. You can’t just walk back in and find everything the way you left it.”
The edge in her voice startled him. Rebecca had been a quiet little tomboy, all skinny legs and sharp elbows. She’d tagged after him and Angela, always wanting to be just like them, until it nearly drove Angela crazy.
“I guess things have changed.” He lifted an eyebrow. “Way I remember it, you’d no more have argued with anyone than you’d have flown off the roof.”
She smiled, the flicker of antagonism disappearing, at least for the moment. “I think I did try to fly off the porch once, using Mom’s tablecloth for a cape.”
“So you did. Are you still a tomboy?” Teasing Rebecca felt like old times, and the tension he’d been carrying around for weeks seemed to slide away. “Still falling out of willow trees?”
“Not anymore.” Her chin lifted, perhaps with pride. “I’m a physician’s assistant now. I work with Dr. Overton at the clinic.”
The mention of his old mentor’s name jolted something inside him. He had to see Clifford Overton soon, but he already dreaded the encounter. Doc would have to be told what had happened to Brett’s fellowship. And Doc would have expectations of his own about Brett’s future.
“How is Doc?”
A troubled look crossed her face, dimming the sparkle of her eyes. “Getting old.” She shook her head, as if shaking away something she didn’t want to think about. “He’ll be excited to see you. You haven’t been in touch enough.” She pinned him down with a straightforward look he remembered from the little girl she’d been. “You are here to stay, aren’t you?”
Something tightened painfully inside him. Stay? Was that the only choice left to him? He rejected that quickly. With the end of his residency he’d lost his student apartment, so coming to Bedford Creek was the logical thing to do. But as soon as he found a new fellowship, he’d be gone.
When he didn’t answer, Rebecca’s intent gaze seemed to bore into his very soul. “That is why you’ve come back, isn’t it? To take over the clinic from Doc, the way he’s always planned?”
“Not exactly.”
Coming to the Forresters had been a mistake. He should have waited to read about the party on the social page of The Chronicle. What gave Rebecca the right to put him on the spot?
“Then why are you in town?” The edge was back in her voice.
For an instant he wanted to spill the whole story and get it off his chest. The thought horrified him. Nobody needed to know Brett Elliot, M.D., once the pride of Bedford Creek High School, had sacrificed the prestigious fellowship his mother had probably bragged about in every letter to her friends.
“Just on a break.” He took a step back. It was time little Rebecca stopped interrogating him—time he congratulated Mitch and Anne and then got out of here.
“A break?” She stared at him in disbelief. “What do you mean, ‘a break’? Doc’s been waiting for you to come back.”
He fought down a wave of anger. “That’s between Doc and me.”
She didn’t seem to agree. “You have an obligation here, remember? A debt to pay.”
Her challenge stung, reminding him of too much he wasn’t ready to face yet. “My debts don’t concern you, Rebecca.”
“Everything about the clinic concerns me.” She shot the words back at him. They were suddenly on opposite sides of a chasm, glaring at each other.
“Look, if you think…” The rest of that sentence vanished when someone bolted through the archway from the living room and flung herself into his arms.
Memories flooded him. The same perfume, the same clinging hands, the same soft voice chattering a mile a minute. Angela.
“Brett! I thought I heard your voice, but I didn’t believe it. I’m so glad to see you, I just can’t believe you’re here.” She threw her arms around his neck, half choking him.
He tried to disentangle himself, but Angela’s words had pierced the din in the living room. In a moment he was surrounded.
He wasn’t going to escape the party in the foreseeable future. And over Angela’s head he saw Rebecca waiting, apparently ready to demand the answers he didn’t intend to give.
Tension tightened Rebecca’s nerves as she took a step back from the flurry of greetings. The quarrel that had flared up between her and Brett had taken her completely by surprise, and she needed a moment to think.
A cold hand clutched her heart. Brett couldn’t be backing out of his agreement. He couldn’t. She longed to push her sister out of the way, grab Brett’s arm and demand that he explain himself.
Lord, what’s happening here? We’ve waited so long for Brett to come back. You know how much Doc needs him, how much this town needs him. Doesn’t he know that?
The middle of Mitch and Anne’s party was no place for a confrontation. Still, she felt the rush of unasked questions pressing on her lips as if determined to get out.
She took a deep breath and pasted a smile on her face. She’d known the instant Brett walked in that his presence meant trouble. She’d seen him and felt as if someone had punched her right in the heart.
She pushed the thought away. Her long-ago feelings for Brett had been childish adoration, that was all. Not love. She’d been a kid. She hadn’t known what love was.
Mitch Donovan had reached Brett, grabbing his hand to shake it, and Brett’s face lit with pleasure at the sight of his old friend. Rebecca took the opportunity to get a good look at Brett, one uncolored by shock at seeing him after all these years.
Some things hadn’t changed. His hair, the color of antique gold, still fell, unruly, over his broad forehead. Green-as-glass eyes warmed as he hugged Anne Morden, Mitch’s fiancée. He was taller and broader than she remembered—his shoulders filled out the dark wool blazer he wore—and his skin was still tanned, even though it was fall.
He still had that cleft chin, of course, and his smile was the one that had devastated the girls of Bedford Creek High. It had probably devastated quite a few women since, too.
Everyone wanted to talk to Brett, the local boy who’d made good. People were proud tiny Bedford Creek High had produced a graduate who’d gone to one of the best medical schools in the country, and Brett’s mother had never let an opportunity pass to tell people how well he’d been doing.
Rebecca could slip away, unnoticed, out of the range of that smile and the memories it evoked.
She crossed the center hall to the dining room, trying