“Because of that run-in with Cole earlier,” Gina said. “She really was shaken by that. He came within seconds of bumping face-to-face into their son.”
“It might have been best if he had,” Karen said. “I think she’s just postponing the inevitable.”
“Maybe so, but as much as I wish she were here, I am not going to let it spoil tonight,” Lauren said. “Now, get moving, you guys. I’ve been living on lettuce a long time now. I haven’t had a decent barbecue in years, and I am ready to pig out, no pun intended.” She herded them toward the fancy sports utility vehicle she had rented for her visit.
Twenty minutes later Lauren turned into the parking lot at the school where they had shared some of the best times of their lives. Known far and wide as the Calamity Janes, the five of them had stirred up more trouble than any graduate before or since. Cassie had been the ringleader, but the rest of them had willingly gone along with whatever mischief she devised.
Now Karen lived on a ranch, Lauren was in Hollywood, Cassie was still struggling to keep her son a secret from his father and Emma was a hot-shot attorney in Denver. Like Emma and Lauren, Gina was considered one of the class success stories. The daughter of an insurance agent and a high school secretary, in high school Gina had earned much-needed spending money by working as a waitress right here in town. Now she owned her own very exclusive restaurant in New York. By anyone’s standards, it was a rags-to-riches story.
If only they knew how close it was to turning around the other way, she thought with a sigh as they approached the football field that had been turned into giant picnic grounds for the night. A stage had been set up under the goalpost at the north end, a pit for the roasted pig was at the opposite end and in between were rows of tables with every kind of food imaginable, all catered by the town’s restaurants. Huge galvanized steel tubs were filled with ice and crammed with soft drinks and beer.
Classmates had already staked out spots for themselves by tossing blankets on the ground, but at the moment nobody was sitting. Everyone was milling around greeting people they hadn’t seen since graduation ten years before.
Suddenly Gina felt an elbow being jammed into her ribs. “Hey,” she protested, turning to face Lauren. “What was that for?”
The woman who had been declared most likely to succeed because of her brains, not her now-legendary beauty, gestured toward the bleachers, where a lone man sat, legs stretched out in front of him, elbows propped on the bench behind. He looked aloof and out of place. He also happened to be handsome as sin, but in the last few days Gina had sworn off the type. If she never met another sexy charmer, it would suit her just fine. In fact, at the moment, Bobby’s disappearing act had made her view every male with healthy suspicion.
“Who, pray tell, is he?” Lauren asked. “He’s definitely not one of us. Nobody we went to school with could improve that much in twenty years, much less ten.”
Gina forced herself to give the stranger a closer inspection. True, he was gorgeous, in a citified, sophisticated way. Even in jeans and a chambray shirt—which looked brand-new from this distance—there was no mistaking the man for a cowboy. He was too polished, his chestnut hair a little too carefully trimmed, his complexion a little too pale, his cheekbones a little too aristocratic. He all but shouted that he was some Yankee blueblood.
“Well?” Lauren prodded. “Do you know him?”
Gina was certain she’d never seen him before, but that didn’t seem to stop her heart from doing a little lurch or her stomach from taking a dip. It was possible he was someone’s husband, sitting on the sidelines because he felt uncomfortable among all the strangers. She didn’t think so, though. She had the uneasy sense that his penetrating gaze was locked directly on her. Not on Lauren, who tended to captivate any male in a room, but on her, Gina Petrillo, with the untamable hair, too-wide hips and a ten-year-old sundress she’d snagged from the back of the closet in her old bedroom.
Lauren, ever confident from years in the limelight, didn’t seem to notice that the man’s attention was elsewhere. She grinned at Gina. “Only one way to find out.”
Gina wanted to tell her not to go over there, to steer as far away from the man as she could, but she knew the warning would only draw a hoot of laughter. There wasn’t a person born who could intimidate Lauren once her curiosity was aroused. That confidence was something new. In high school Lauren had been as shy as she’d been brainy. The adoration of millions of fans had given her self-esteem a much-needed boost.
Gina deliberately turned her back on the scene and went in search of a desperately longed-for beer. She had just tipped up the can for a long, slow swallow when she heard Lauren say, “Oh, here you are. Gina, sweetie, this incredibly gorgeous man is looking for you. Aren’t you lucky?”
Gina’s stomach plummeted as she slowly turned to face them. With every fiber of her being she knew she wasn’t the least bit lucky. Never had been, and certainly not lately. No, this man was not looking for her because he’d been dying to get her recipe for fettuccine.
“Gina Petrillo, Rafe O’Donnell,” Lauren said, relinquishing him to Gina with a broad wink and then abandoning the two of them as if she’d just accomplished the matchmaking success of the century.
Gina recognized the name with a sense of inevitability. She forced herself to look straight into the man’s unreadable topaz eyes. There was little point in pretending that she didn’t recognize the name. Nor did she have to work very hard to figure out what he was doing here. She was not going to let him rattle her, though. She would remain cool, calm and collected if it killed her. She refused to let him think for a second that she was harboring any sense of guilt.
“A long way from home, aren’t you, Mr. O’Donnell?”
“As are you, Ms. Petrillo.”
“No, this is my home,” she said firmly.
“And New York?”
“Where I work.”
“Not any longer, if I have anything to say about it.”
She gave him a wry look. “Then I guess the battle lines are drawn. It’s a good thing you’re not either judge or jury. I might be quaking in my boots.”
“You should be, anyway. I’m very good at what I do.”
“And what is it that you do, Mr. O’Donnell? Condemn people without a trial?”
“Get at the facts, Ms. Petrillo. That was the whole purpose of that deposition you skipped out on.”
She regarded him with indignation. “I didn’t skip out on anything. Check your appointment book. I rescheduled.”
“Without my permission.”
“Your secretary didn’t seem to have a problem with it.”
“Yes, well, Lydia sometimes forgets who’s in charge.”
If it had been anyone else under any other circumstance, Gina might have grinned at his resigned expression. Instead, she said only, “You must find that extremely annoying.”
“Mostly it’s just an inconvenience,” he corrected.
“Yes, I imagine chasing halfway across the country after bad guys like me must play havoc with your schedule.”
To her surprise, he chuckled.
“You have no idea,” he said. “I had really big plans for this weekend.”
“Oh? A ball game with the kids? Maybe a charity event with the wife?”
“No kids. No wife.”
That news set off totally inappropriate little butterflies in Gina’s stomach. To her deep regret they seemed to be doing a victory dance. She refused to let him see that he could disconcert her in the slightest way—especially not in that way.
She studied