It was the same speech he gave every night, and as usual, the result was the same. There were a few squeals of feminine dismay as his spotlight lit up the interior of several cars, then engines roared to life, and a mass exodus began. Within minutes, the last taillight disappeared down the road, and they were alone.
Satisfied, Nick turned to Merry. “Now that we have the place to ourselves, where would you like to park?”
Her smile flashed in the darkness. “I thought the lake was closed.”
Unabashed, he grinned. “It is. And to make sure it stays that way, we’re going to stick around for a while. So where would you like to park?”
“Out on the point,” she said without hesitation. “Then we can see the moon rise.”
It had been their favorite spot when they were teenagers, the place where she and Thomas and he had met to swim and fish and just hang out together. There, they’d talked about their hopes and dreams and how they were all going to one day change the world. It was there that Merry had first kissed Thomas, there that Thomas had given her his letter jacket and asked her to go steady, there that Nick played peacemaker whenever they had a fight.
Driving out onto the point, he parked and cut the engine, then got out of his patrol car to join her at the picnic table the three of them had always called “theirs.” It had weathered over the years, but it still bore the initials they’d carved into it the first day of their senior year in high school.
Dropping down to a bench, her wedding dress pooling around her, Merry found the rough letters in the dark and traced them with her index finger. “We had some good times back then, didn’t we?” she said with a melancholy smile. “Remember when Thomas smuggled his pet duck into church and it started quacking right in the middle of Reverend Johnson’s sermon? I thought he was going to have a stroke right there in front of the entire congregation.”
Nick chuckled, his brown eyes dancing at the memory. “He got so upset he pulled his toupee off and the organist fell off her bench! God, I’d forgotten about that.”
“And the time Thomas climbed the tree outside my bedroom window and you distracted my mother by pretending you had appendicitis?” she laughed.
“How could I forget,” he retorted, grinning. “Joe came home early and caught Thomas hanging from the tree, and I thought we were all three toast.”
“What do you mean all three? The only punishment you and Thomas got was a stern lecture from my mother. I was put on restriction and didn’t get to see Thomas anywhere but at school for a month. It was the longest month of my life.”
Dear Lord, how she’d missed him! And she’d still gotten to see him every day at school. Now she wouldn’t be seeing him at all. He was gone, out of her life, and he wouldn’t be coming back. Just thinking about it made her want to lay her head down on the table and cry her eyes out.
But she couldn’t. Because if she did, she didn’t think she’d ever be able to stop. Not this time. The hurt was too raw, too strong, and what little control she’d had earlier was all used up.
Her eyes burning from the tears she wouldn’t allow to fall, she jumped to her feet, in desperate need of distraction. “I’m hot,” she announced. “I think I’ll go swimming.”
Surprised, Nick just blinked at her. “You can’t. The lake’s closed.”
Undaunted, she just cocked her head and mockingly arched a brow at him. “Then I guess you’ll just have to arrest me, won’t you, Sheriff?”
When she stepped out of her shoes, then reached under the full skirt of he wedding dress to shimmy out of her panty hose, Nick told himself she wouldn’t actually strip right there in front of him. She was just playing with him, pushing his buttons—and, he silently added, doing a damn good job of it. But she wouldn’t really go through with it. Not Merry. She liked to tease, but that was as far as it went. The second he called her bluff, she’d back down in a hurry.
Satisfied he had everything under control, he crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back against the picnic table to watch the show, daring her with his own arched brow. A split second later, she reached behind her for the zipper to her dress.
He stiffened, his gaze narrowing dangerously. “Don’t go there, Mer—”
For an answer, the raspy whisper of her zipper growled like a tiger in the night.
Shocked, he jumped toward her. “Dammit, Merry, don’t you dare!”
He was too late. Lightning quick, she pulled her zipper down the rest of the way, and with a silent sigh of satin, her wedding dress dropped to the ground. Between one heartbeat and the next, she stole the air right out of his lungs.
He tried to tell himself that the lacy panties and bra she wore revealed little more than a bathing suit, and they’d gone swimming enough in the past that he shouldn’t have been impressed. But the last time he’d been to the lake with her, they’d both been seniors in high school. And the woman who stood before him looked nothing like the girl from back then.
Lord, she was beautiful! He’d always known that, but seeing her now in the glow of the moon rising on the eastern horizon, she was breathtaking—there was no other way to describe her. Tall and willowy, with her dark hair swept up off her shoulders and her eyes deep, mysterious pools of sapphire, she looked like a wood nymph there in the darkness.
He wanted to reach for her, to touch, to run his hands over her to see if her skin was as soft as it looked in the moonlight, but he didn’t dare move for fear she would vanish right before his eyes. His heart slamming against his ribs, he couldn’t get over her total lack of awareness of her own beauty. He’d known other pretty women who used their looks as leverage to get what they wanted out of life, but Merry wasn’t like that. Intelligent and loyal, she had a kind, generous heart and, thanks to her mother’s teachings, was much more interested in the kind of person you were than what you looked like. And that made her even more beautiful—and even more impossible to resist.
Which was why every single man he knew, including himself, was in love with her.
“Put your dress back on right this minute,” he ordered sternly, “before somebody drives in and sees you.”
“No,” she said obstinately. “I’m going swimming.”
“Don’t even think about it,” he warned.
He might as well have saved his breath. Ignoring him, she turned and headed for the water.
He should have just let her go. It would have been the wise thing to do. It wasn’t like she was in any danger. True, she’d had too much to drink, but she wasn’t so tipsy that he had to worry about her drowning. She’d be just fine.
But even as he tried to convince himself of that, he found himself turning to follow her. It wasn’t until he felt the water lap around the legs of his pants that he realized he was still wearing his tux!
“Damn you, Mer, now you’ve done it! You owe me for this tux!”
Not the least bit perturbed, she only laughed…and splashed him. Within seconds, they were both playing in the water like a couple of kids.
Later, Nick couldn’t have said how long they stayed in the water. Merry was laughing and teasing and seemed to have forgotten, for the moment, at least, what had brought them to the lake at that hour of the night. And Nick had no intention of reminding her. If she wanted to forget, he was certainly giving her the chance to do so. But it couldn’t last, and all too quickly, her smile began to fade, her laughter to wane. Just that easily, her tears were back.
It was a warm