Twenty years was long enough to invest in a fantasy that she was beginning to believe was never meant to come true.
The following morning, as she did on the rare Saturday mornings when she wasn’t working, Lindsey made a haphazard attempt at housework, zipping through the house in which she’d grown up, a dust cloth in one hand and a broom in the other. She’d inherited the three-bedroom house three months ago, when her father had passed away after a lengthy illness. He’d died on the Monday after New Year’s Day, a sad holiday this year—just as Christmas had been, since he’d been becoming weaker and weaker. Lindsey’s many friends in Edstown had made sure she’d spent little time alone during the holidays.
Her older brother, B.J., a career military man, had insisted that the house should be Lindsey’s as she’d spent the past two years living there and taking care of their father. Even though she’d argued that she’d done so only because she wanted to, B.J. had refused to accept part ownership of the house, settling, instead, for a portion of the modest insurance settlement.
During the past couple of weeks, Lindsey had been thinking about putting the house on the market. When it sold, she would insist that B.J. accept part of the proceeds. She could take a job in a bigger market— Little Rock, Atlanta, maybe Dallas—where she could start a new life. She had the credentials, the ambition, a few connections. There was nothing holding her here now.
Nothing at all, she thought with a wistful little sigh.
Her doorbell rang just as she finished running the vacuum cleaner in the living room. Glancing down, she wrinkled her nose at her appearance. Oversize green T-shirt, baggy denim shorts, fuzzy purple house shoes. Her hair stood in messy red spikes around her smudged face. She looked like an orphan from the cast of Annie, she thought with a shake of her head. Hoping her caller was a salesperson or a close pal rather than her minister or the mayor’s wife—neither of whom she was expecting—she opened the door.
As it had for the better part of twenty years, her heart tripped when she saw Dan Meadows on her doorstep. As she had since she’d gotten old enough to understand the meaning of the word “pride,” she hid her reaction behind an impudent grin. “Well, hey, Chief. Whazzup?”
Dressed in an oatmeal-colored cotton sweater and a pair of faded jeans, he eyed her skimpy attire. “Lose your calendar? It’s the first week of March, not the middle of summer.”
“I’ve been cleaning,” she said with a shrug.
“Ah. That explains your new perfume. I thought you’d switched to Eau d’Pine.”
Wrinkling her nose in response to the bad joke, she opened the door wider and motioned for him to enter. “Since the place is clean, you might as well come in.”
“How could I resist that gracious invitation?” Pulling his right hand from behind his back, he handed her a wrapped package as he passed her. “Happy birthday, Lindsey. Sorry it’s a day late.”
Kicking the door closed behind him, she studied the pretty paper and the jaunty bow. “No way you wrapped that. It’s too pretty.”
“You’re right. I had it wrapped at the store.”
“It’s almost too fancy to open.”
He grinned. “What makes you think there’s anything inside? Maybe the pretty package is all I got you.”
“And maybe you’re full of hot air.”
Laughing, he ruffled her hair—exactly the way he had when she was a kid tagging at his and her brother’s heels. His nine-inch advantage over her five-foot-three height made it even easier for him to treat her like a kid. “Just open the present, princess.”
His use of the childhood nickname made it difficult for her to keep her smile in place. “Yeah. Sure.”
With the ease of someone who’d spent a lot of time in this house during the past twenty years, Dan settled on the couch, an arm draped across the back, his legs stretched in front of him. His chestnut hair tumbled over his forehead, ending in a fringe just over his dark brown eyes. He looked tired, and there was a slight touch of gray at his temples now, but Lindsey could still see traces of the handsome teenager he’d been in the roughly good-looking man he had become.
She sat in a nearby chair, the gift in her lap. Though she usually ripped into her presents at light speed, she opened this one with excruciating slowness—just because she knew it would drive Dan crazy.
“You’re going to have another birthday before you get into that,” he complained, as she’d known he would.
“I want to savor the moment. You’re usually giving me grief instead of presents.”
“I give you grief? You’re the gung-ho reporter who stays on my heels all the time looking for a hot lead—as if there’s all that much to report in Edstown.”
“Just doing my job, Chief.”
“Yeah, well, you sure as hell make it tough for me to do mine sometimes.”
Because this was an old and generally unproductive argument, Lindsey let the comment pass as she peeled the last bit of paper away from the box. A moment later she swallowed a lump in her throat so she could say, “Dan, it’s beautiful. Thank you.”
His smile was just a bit smug. “Do I know what you like or what?”
Yes, he knew what she liked—when she was twelve. She had collected unicorn figurines from the time she was a little girl until she’d gone off to college. Her room had been filled with them, the walls covered with unicorn posters. Now Dan had bought her a blown-glass unicorn for her twenty-sixth birthday. Somehow he’d completely missed the fact that she was no longer the little girl he’d known so long ago.
Her heart aching, she set the unicorn—a perfect symbol for hopeless fantasies, she reflected glumly—on the coffee table. “Have you had lunch? I was just about to eat.”
“As a matter of fact, I’m starved. What’ve you got?”
“Sandwiches.”
“Just what I had a craving for,” he drawled.
With a weak laugh, Lindsey led the way into the kitchen. They spent the next half hour munching ham-and-Swiss-on-rye sandwiches, pickle spears, and raw vegetables with ranch dip. During the casual meal, they talked about her brother—Dan’s best friend since adolescence—and their mutual friends in Edstown. She asked about his parents, who were, as usual, spending the winter at an RV park in southern Texas; he assured her they were fine, that he’d spoken to them only the day before.
There were a couple of subjects they carefully avoided, such as the arsonist who’d been eluding the local authorities. And then there was the one topic neither of them ever mentioned—Dan’s bitterly unpleasant divorce two and a half years ago, barely six months before Lindsey had moved back to take care of her father. Even if Lindsey had wanted to bring up his marriage debacle—which she didn’t—Dan would not have cooperated. He’d forbidden everyone to even mention his ex-wife’s name in his presence.
“So, anyway, the noise Mrs. Treadway reported hearing outside her window was nothing more than a broken tree branch tapping against the glass. Unfortunately, by the time we managed to find that out, Jack and I were wet to the bone, covered in mud, half-frozen, and we’d narrowly escaped being midnight snacks for Mrs. Treadway’s rottweiler.”
Lindsey winced even as she laughed at Dan’s wryly told anecdote. “So you had a close encounter with Baby, did you?”
He all but shuddered. “Baby missed biting me in a very sensitive area by an extremely narrow margin. I swear I felt his hot breath right on my—”
“I get the picture,” Lindsey said quickly. There were some mental images she wasn’t prepared to deal with right now—Dan’s