“You and Tess are total opposites,” Durango said to Abby when they were out of earshot. “How have you stayed friends for so long?”
“Tess is something of a character,” Abby conceded. “She’s a lot of fun to be around.”
“And you’re the ground wire.”
“I guess you could say that.”
They reached the top and, just as they were going up, a camera-wielding, balding, paunchy, middle-aged man wearing Bermuda shorts, a Van Halen T-shirt and black sandals with plaid socks was coming down.
“I looked all over this damned rock and couldn’t find hide nor hair of that stupid vortex,” he was muttering under his breath.
“A vortex isn’t something you see,” Durango told him. “It’s an energy field. You have to feel it.”
The guy snorted, mumbled something about New Age fruitcakes and took off down the trail.
“Well, he was friendly,” Abby said. “Not.”
“People like him show up all the time. They’re usually from a big city. Rushed, in a hurry, looking for a short cut to inner peace. They hear about the restorative power of the vortex and they think it’s a ticket to instant enlightenment. But there’s no such thing.”
Abby cocked her head and studied him. He looked at peace and she was happy for him. “You seem to have come a long way in the enlightenment department.”
“Hey, it was either get peaceful or drive myself nuts holding on to grudges.”
“Did you have a grudge against me?” she dared to ask him.
“What do you think?”
“I’m thinking yes.”
He nodded. “I was pretty hurt at the time. I thought we were working on something special, but it turned out I was wrong. Just goes to show you how foolish teenagers can be.”
“Not totally foolish,” she said huskily.
“No?”
“I thought we were working on something special, too.”
He eyed her speculatively. “But when the going got tough and you got going…”
“What can I say?” She shrugged and tried not to let him see how much her lack of faith in him still bothered her. “I was a scared kid.”
“You’re not a kid anymore.”
“No.”
“But you’re still scared.” There was that grin of his again, more wicked than ever.
The sun beat down. The air was alive with electricity. Abby felt something then. She didn’t know if it was the famous vortex energy or if it was energy of a much more tangible kind, but her skin prickled and her nerve endings tingled.
Durango’s chest was rising and falling in a rapid rhythm that matched her own edgy breathing.
A tangle of complicated emotions skirled inside her, spiraling outward in an expanding circle, drawing her to him.
Their eyes met and the moment was straight out of some romantic movie. His gaze locked with hers and Abby couldn’t catch her breath. Her chest literally hurt with the intensity of wanting him.
The vortex was sucking her in. Pulling her down into a place she wasn’t so sure she wanted to go.
Run! Run! cried the cautious side she’d inherited from her father.
Stay, stay, inveigled her mother’s Gypsy blood.
“Durango,” she whispered.
“Angel.”
He reached for her.
She walked toward him.
He wet his lips.
She pursed hers.
He took off her hat.
She looked into his face.
Oh wow, oh boy, oh no.
And Abby just knew he would have kissed her if she hadn’t picked that moment to start sneezing.
3
WHAT IN THE HADES do you think you’re pulling, Creed?
Oh, he knew what he was doing and it wasn’t good. In fact, he had very, very bad intentions.
When Durango had first realized that the sleek-haired brunette on the steps of the Tranquility Spa was none other than Abby Archer, the teenage crush who had busted his heart by siding with their snobby, high-society community against him, his first despicable thought had been—I’ve gotta get even.
His second, more mature thought had been—I’ve gotta let it go.
Ten years had passed. He rarely thought about her anymore and he’d made a great life for himself here in Sedona. And yet a touch of that young rebel remained. A bit of his heart was still hardened against her and the collective of Silverton Heights.
He wasn’t proud of his feelings but neither could he dismiss them. He felt what he felt. Good or bad.
Yet how could he blame her for what had happened? Abby had done what she had to do in order to live with herself. She’d been a suppressed seventeen-year-old girl with a powerful father. She’d had little choice but to accept his edict. Rationally, Durango understood that.
But deep down inside he was still the vulnerable kid who didn’t quite comprehend why he hadn’t been enough for her.
Besides, his real beef had been with her old man.
And his own.
Durango grit his teeth at the memory. Although he had long since gotten over being disowned in favor of his father’s calculating trophy wife, he still couldn’t fathom why Phillip Creed had chosen to believe his stepmother Meredith’s outrageous lie that Durango had attempted to force her to have sex with him, when it had been the other way around.
Meredith had come on to him.
Durango tried telling his father the accusation was a ruse on Meredith’s part because he’d discovered she was hiding illicit business dealings at her company where his father had just bought part interest.
But his father had sunk even lower, allowing Meredith to intimidate him into involving his buddy, Judge Archer, in the private family matter. His father persuaded Abby’s dad to jail him for a week, when in a desperate bid to be heard, Durango had lashed out and vandalized one of Meredith’s warehouses.
The memory of those seven days behind bars would stay with him forever.
Let it go. Water under the bridge. He was happy now and that’s all that mattered.
Then Durango’s third and most compelling thought had been—Damn, but Abby’s hot. I’ve gotta find a way to get her into my bed.
Now, standing here atop Cathedral Rock, gazing into her soulful hazel eyes and lusting after those full cherry-colored lips, he was thinking—You still haven’t found your passion, have you sweetheart?
He could see she was lost and she didn’t even know it. His heart literally ached and his weakness for her bothered the hell out of him.
Why did he still care?
Abby was the same person she’d been a decade ago. As evidenced by the fact she had almost married that candy-assed Ken Rockford. Still kowtowing to her father, still denying her fire, still hiding from her true self.
He’d seen the depth in her from the beginning, even though she’d never seen it in herself.
The