He took the newspaper she held out, winced as he scanned the headline. “‘Hometown Hero,’ huh? I guess nothing much has changed around here if this is what passes for news.”
“What did you expect?”
He studied her for a long moment. Nikki refused to shift her feet or cross her arms. She didn’t want to appear annoyed or impatient, just disinterested. Anything else might suggest she had some residual feelings for Colin, and nothing could be further from the truth. There had been a time when she’d loved him more than she’d ever thought possible, but that time was long past.
“I don’t know what I expected,” he said at last.
She forced a polite smile. “Do you plan on staying long?”
He shrugged. “A few days, anyway.”
A few days. She exhaled slowly. Whatever the reason for his return, he’d be gone in a few days and her life would settle back to normal again. Still, his presence here now made her uneasy. “Well, it was nice seeing you. Enjoy your stay.”
She started past him, halting abruptly when he reached out to put a restraining hand on her arm. The touch burned her skin, and she pulled away as if he had branded her with a hot iron.
“I need to talk to you, Nicole.”
She forced herself to swallow the fear that lodged in her throat. Why was he doing this? After more than five years of silence, why did he suddenly want to talk? Had he somehow found out—
No. She trampled that thought before it had completely formed. Whatever his reasons for coming back now, they were undoubtedly as selfish and self-centered as the reasons for everything else he’d ever done.
“I know I owe you an explanation,” he said.
She shook her head again. “Five years ago, I might have agreed. But too much time has passed for it to matter anymore.”
“Do you expect me to believe that you never think about what we meant to each other?”
“I don’t care what you believe, but I don’t spend my days reminiscing about our short-lived marriage.” She didn’t have time to think about what they’d once had or what might have been. She was too busy dealing with the reality of what was.
“I think about it,” he said. “A lot.”
The intensity in his eyes made her heart stutter. She steeled her resolve. “Is there a point to this, Colin?”
“I don’t want you to think that I didn’t care.”
“Why would I think that? Because you petitioned for divorce before our first anniversary? Or maybe because you made love to me the night before you walked out on me forever?”
She thought she saw a flicker of something in the depths of his green eyes. Hurt? Regret? She dismissed the thought.
“I had my reasons.”
“I’m sure you did.” She couldn’t quite mask the pain and bitterness that tinged her words. He had shattered her heart when he’d walked out on their marriage, and she couldn’t pretend otherwise. “I imagine it was quite inconvenient to be legally tied to a woman who lived halfway across the country.”
“Dammit, Nicole. I’m not going to let you believe our marriage was an inconvenience.”
She shrugged, as if it didn’t matter. As if this conversation didn’t bother her. As if his easy disregard of their marriage vows didn’t still hurt.
“All I’m asking for is a little of your time. Half an hour.”
The last thing she needed—or wanted—was to spend a single minute more with him, never mind thirty of them.
“Please, Nicole.”
She closed her eyes, willed herself not to respond to the quiet plea in his voice. She wanted to say no—firmly and finally—and walk away. But she couldn’t deny that there was a part of her that was curious to know why he’d tracked her down. After five years, there was still so much that she didn’t know. So much that he didn’t know.
“Half an hour,” she relented.
His quick smile did crazy things to her pulse again.
“Why don’t we go somewhere to grab a coffee?” he suggested.
“There’s a little café across the street,” Nikki told him. “I’ll meet you there after I make a quick phone call.”
Colin hesitated, then nodded.
Nikki waited until he was out of earshot before digging her cell phone out of her purse. She exhaled a sigh of relief when a familiar voice answered at the other end.
“Arden, I need a favor…”
It was only as he reached for the door of the restaurant that Colin realized he still held Nikki’s newspaper in his hand. He glanced at the headline again.
“Get out of town for a while,” Detective Brock had advised. “Go somewhere quiet. Keep a low profile.”
Good advice, but how the hell was he supposed to keep a low profile when the local media still believed he was some kind of superstar?
Colin knew better. The reality was that he’d failed at everything that had ever mattered. He’d failed as a player and a coach, and he’d failed to be the kind of husband Nikki deserved.
He shoved the paper into the garbage can and headed toward the counter, wondering if his careful planning had been compromised by that seemingly harmless headline.
He’d put his plan into action forty-eight hours earlier. The first step was a flight from Texas to Maryland, where he’d reserved a room in his own name at the Baltimore Courtland Hotel. He’d taken a cab from the airport to the hotel and checked into his room, with explicit instructions that he did not want housekeeping services. After unpacking some clothing and toiletries, he’d taken another cab to the bus terminal and paid cash for a ticket to Washington, D.C.
In Washington, he’d picked up the rental car his agent, Ian Edwards, had reserved for him. Then he’d found a small roadside motel, paid cash for the room and crashed for a few hours before driving through to Fairweather yesterday morning, where he’d checked into another Courtland hotel under Ian’s name.
He wasn’t convinced the circuitous route and subterfuge were necessary, but after what had happened in Austin he didn’t want to take any chances. If someone was looking for him, trying to track his moves, they’d be concentrating on the Baltimore area.
Unless they happened to pick up a copy of the Fairweather Gazette.
He’d told no one of his plan to return to Fairweather. It was just his bad luck that he’d run into Traci Harper as soon as he’d arrived in town yesterday afternoon. Traci was an old high-school friend, now a reporter with the Gazette. He should have anticipated that she would somehow turn a chance encounter into a news item.
His only consolation was that it was unlikely anyone outside of this smack-in-the-middle-of-nowhere town read the local rag. Few of his associates even knew he’d grown up in Fairweather, which made it the obvious place for him to find solitude and anonymity.
Or maybe what he’d really wanted to find was Nikki.
He took the two steaming mugs to a vacant table near the window, where he could see her.
He hadn’t let himself think about her until he was on the plane; he hadn’t been able to think about anything else since. After more than five years, he wouldn’t have expected that she’d figure so prominently in his thoughts.
Maybe it was the realization that he could have been killed, the stark reminder of his own mortality. Whatever