Until now.
She bit back a moan.
Every eye had been on her. The entire restaurant had watched her embarrassment, watched her endless walk to the door in defeat.
“Wendy.”
Her hand flew to her throat. She whirled around and saw Seth stepping out of the shadows.
Despair, rage, humiliation...a dozen emotions swept through her. Seth was the cause of them all.
“Get away from me!”
“Wendy, please. I know you’re upset—”
“Upset? Why would I be upset? Just because you made me look like a fool?”
“I’m sorry.”
“I don’t give a damn if you’re sorry or not.”
Seth’s hands clamped onto her shoulders. He stepped around her and planted himself in her path.
“Grow up,” he said roughly. “You’re the one who came to my table. You’re the one who caused a difficult situation to get worse.”
“What I did was grown-up. You behaved like a—a spoiled child.”
Seth’s hands tightened on her. “I knew you were there.”
“That’s why I went to your table. I just wanted—”
“From the minute you walked into the restaurant and all through dinner, I sensed you. Damn it, don’t look at me that way. Is it so crazy to think I wouldn’t know you were near me?” His mouth thinned. “But I concentrated on Jo. It was the right thing to do.”
“How nice for you both,” Wendy said with a polite smile. “Now, please, get out of my way.”
“I didn’t dare look at you. I knew I’d never stop looking, once our eyes met.”
“You know what, Seth? There are names for a man who takes one woman to dinner and—and comes on to another.” Wendy peered past him. “Where’s your girlfriend? What excuse did you give for leaving her in your truck while you came after me?”
“Jo left. She came in her own car.”
“Well, be sure and tell her I didn’t mean to upset her and that she doesn’t have to run when she sees me. The field’s clear. It has been for a long time.”
“Damn it, Wendy!” Seth’s eyes were dark with anger. “Will you listen to me?” He took a deep breath. “The reason I was less than gracious when you showed up was because of Jo.”
“Really?” Wendy said sweetly.
“She’s a wonderful woman.”
“Terrific.”
“She’s kind and generous and—”
“And she loves animals. You know what, Seth? I’m not very interested in a rundown on her character.”
“She cares for me. A lot. And...” He took a breath. “And I just broke up with her.”
“That’s too damned...” Wendy’s eyes widened. “You what?”
Seth let go of her and ran his hands through his hair, something she recalled him doing whenever he was upset.
“That’s what you walked in on,” he said grimly, “me taking half the meal to work up enough courage to tell her so long, stay well, it’s been nice but it’s over. I’d gotten just past that point when you came along.”
Wendy sagged back against the brick wall. A spurt of elation swept through her, followed quickly by the knowledge that it was wrong to feel anything but compassion for a woman she didn’t know and a man who’d once been her lover.
“I’m sorry. I had no idea...”
“She wanted...she wanted more commitment than I could give. She deserves better than that. It had become an issue and we’d been drifting apart.” It was close enough to the truth. Seth wasn’t sure what had gone wrong; he only knew that saying any more would be saying too much. “And then I got to the worst part, where I told Jo that I thought it would be best if we stopped seeing each other. I looked up and there you were, big as life, standing next to the table.”
“Seth.” Wendy put her hand on his sleeve. “I’m so sorry. I just wanted to do the right thing. I mean, I saw you and—and Joanne, and I thought about how we’d probably keep tripping over each other and that I couldn’t run away each time....”
She stopped, caught her breath as she realized what she was saying, how much she was saying, but it didn’t matter. Seth hadn’t been listening. He was looking at her in a way that made her heartbeat quicken.
“Nine years,” he said. “Nine long, endless years you stayed out of my life, and all of a sudden, here you are.”
“I came back to Cooper’s Corner, not to you.”
“Every time I turn around, you’re there.”
“Every time you turn around?” Wendy’s chin came up. “Don’t think you can lay this on me! I didn’t come bursting into your house. I didn’t follow you to the Burger Barn. And tonight, when I tried to do the...the polite thing—”
“Aren’t you going to ask me what Jo said when I told her we weren’t going to see each other anymore?”
“I am not! Frankly, I don’t much—”
“She said, ‘Is it because of Wendy Monroe? Is it because she’s back and you never got over her?’”
“I hope you told her the truth. I’d hate to think you used me as an excuse to break up with the woman.”
Seth closed his hands around her wrists. “You are some piece of work, you know that?”
“Let go.”
“You think you’re the only one whose world turned upside down when you took that fall? I’ve got news for you, lady. My world took a pretty bad hit, too, but you never gave a damn about that.”
“Okay. That’s enough. I don’t have to stand here and listen to this garbage!”
Wendy pulled free and started toward the restaurant. Seth went after her, caught her arm and turned her toward him.
“You want to get on with your life? Well, so do I. But I can’t. And if you’re honest, you’ll admit that you can’t, either.” He moved closer to her, his shoulders blocking out the night, this man who had once been her lover but who had become a stranger. “That’s what I told Jo. I said I didn’t know what in hell I felt for you, but my life has to be on hold until I find out.”
Wendy was trembling. From the cold, she told herself, surely not from the feel of Seth’s hands, from the emotions she could see warring in his eyes.
“We need to settle things, Wendy.”
“We did settle things.” Her voice was a papery whisper and she cleared her throat and started again. “We broke up.”
“No,” he said bitterly, “we didn’t break up. You broke us up.”
“It’s the same thing.”
“The hell it is! When you left Cooper’s Corner, you were my girl. Then you took that fall and you didn’t want to know me.” His hands tightened on her. He stepped closer, cupped her elbows, drew her to him. “I’ve waited a long time for answers, but, by God, I’m going to get them.”
“The answers you want belong to the past.”
“That’s the trouble,” he said gruffly. “I don’t know what’s in the past and neither do you.”
“You’re wrong—”
“Am I?”
She saw the warning flash in his eyes and she put her hands up to ward him off, but his mouth came down on hers, hard and hungry, just as it used to on those hot nights in his cold truck up on Sawtooth Mountain, and even as she told herself she didn’t want this, she felt the need for him ignite deep inside her.
He felt it, too. She knew he did, because his mouth softened on hers and his kiss became tender and sweet, and suddenly she was eighteen and he was nineteen, and nothing mattered but each other.
She trembled, moaned Seth’s name. He groaned, thrust his fingers into her hair, kissed her again and again, and she opened her mouth to his, caught up in the moment, in the memory, in a dream.
Somewhere in the distance, a door opened and closed. Voices carried on the still night air. “Good n
ight,” people called. “Drive safely.” Footsteps crunched on the snow-crusted pavement.
“Come with me,” Seth whispered against Wendy’s mouth. “Sweetheart, come with me.”
“Wendy? Wendy? Where are you?”
Lost, Wendy thought. Oh God, I’m lost!
“Wendy? Are you out here?”
“My mother,” she gasped, twisting her face away from Seth’s.
“I don’t care.” His voice was thick with desire. “Come with me.”
“I can’t.”
“Yes. You can. You can do whatever you want, sweetheart. We’re not kids anymore. We don’t need anybody’s permission to be together.” He gathered her closer in his arms. “Nothing’s changed. Not a thing, in all these years.”
“You’re wrong.” Wendy slapped her hands against Seth’s chest and pulled back in his arms. “Everything’s changed. Haven’t you figured that out yet?”
“Wendy? Wendy! Oh, there you are. I’ve been calling and call—” Gina’s eyes widened. She looked from one flushed face to the other. “Oh. I’m sorry. I had no idea... Look, why don’t you two just—I mean, I’ll drive home and you two can...”
“That’s all right, Gina.” Seth’s voice was cool. “Wendy and I were just catching up on old times. Isn’t that right, Wendy?”
Wendy lifted her chin. “Good night, Seth.”
She waited for him to say goodbye but he didn’t. He just went on looking at her while her throat constricted and her heart beat faster and faster, and then he took a step toward her, as if they were alone in the universe instead of standing on a street corner with an audience of one.
“This isn’t finished,” he said quietly.
“It was finished years ago.”
“I used to think about the kind of woman you’d grow up to be.”
“This is all very interesting, Seth, but my mother and I—”
“Your mother’s on her way to her car.”
“All the more reason for me to say good-night.”
“Not yet,” he said gruffly. “Not until we get things settled.”
“We’ll never settle anything this way. And I don’t want to quarrel whenever we see each other.” Wendy tried a tentative smile. “Can’t we just be friends?”
“Friends?” He caught her by the wrist, moved closer until they were a breath apart, until she had to tilt her head back to meet his eyes. “We have too much history just to be friends. When we talked in the diner, you handed me some garbage about knowing it was over between us. I prettied it up with how we’d only been kids. And you know what? Not a damn bit of it was the truth.”
“Does it really matter, after all these years?”
“Yeah. Yeah, it matters. I was a kid, head over heels in love, so crazy about you that I was happy to wait for you until there was nothing to keep us apart. No coaches. No crowds. No you flying off to Colorado and me staying behind. I used to daydream about it, you know? The time we’d finally be together.”
He was right, and that made it even worse. He’d never demanded anything of her except her love, and what had she given him in return? Oh God, if he knew the truth...
“Seth.” Her eyes swam with tears. “Please. Let’s just say goodbye.”
“Winning that damned medal was all you talked about, all you lived for, but I figured okay, I could understand it. I could deal with it because we had a future all planned. That was what I hung on to. What it would be like when you married me, when we settled down and had kids.”
The pain that shot through her at his words was almost unbearable. Wendy clamped her lips together, certain she was going to tell him her awful secret...certain when she did he’d hate her even more than he had for the last nine years.
Instead, she wrenched her arm free. She’d had years to prepare for this moment and she’d been doing fine until she’d been foolish enough to let him kiss her.
“That’s exactly why I broke off with you.”
“What are you talking about?”
“That future you had all planned.” She took a deep breath, dug her hands into her pockets to stop their shaking. “I lay in that hospital bed in Oslo, staring at the ceiling. You know how they say your life flashes in front of you when you’re dying? Well, what flashed in front of me was the future I wasn’t going to have.”
She dragged another breath into her lungs. The winter night was turning as frigid as the look in Seth’s eyes. She could almost feel her heart turning to ice, too.
“And that was when it came to me. The future I wasn’t going to have had nothing to do with the one you wanted. Settling down. A house in the country. Kids.” She heard her voice quaver and she curled her hands into fists, felt the sharp bite of her fingernails into her palms. “Those dreams were yours, not mine. I wanted to ski until I was too old to pick up a pair of poles. And...and I didn’t know how to tell you that.”
She saw his face go white. Don’t stop, she told herself fiercely, just keep going. She didn’t want to do this but it needed doing. He didn’t want to believe they had no future, but she knew better. How else to convince him except like this?
“What saved me then was determination. I swore that if I lived, I’d find a way to compete again. I knew you’d try to talk me out of it, and I decided to do what I had to do, for my own survival. It was better to break things off cleanly than to let them drag on. If I hurt you in the process, Seth, I’m sorry.”
She watched the color come back to his face, watched his eyes and mouth harden.
“So what you’re telling me,” he said, “is that there never was a future for us.”
“It isn’t that simple.”
“The hell it isn’t. It’s as simple as a dumb kid spinning dreams for a girl who never shared them.”
“I didn’t know, not until the accident.”
“Sure you did. That’s why it didn’t mean a damn to you when we spent weeks apart, while you were off skiing in some tournament your old man said you needed to win.”
“My father has nothing to do with this.”
“He has everything to do with it!” Seth’s eyes narrowed, and the fury she saw burning in their depths stole her breath away. “Amazing, isn’t it? There were two men in your life. Me and your father. Each of us saw a future with you in the starring role. The difference is that I wanted you for yourself. He wanted you so he could live out his own dream through you.”
“That’s ridiculous!”
“He still wants that. This damned risky surgery—”
“Don’t start that again! It’s my choice. My life.”
“Yeah. It is. And it’s a good thing you figured it out before I trapped you here, in a dull existence you never wanted.”
“No. Oh, Seth, I didn’t mean—”
She put her hand on his arm. He pulled back as if she’d burned him.
“Hey, no problem. In fact, I’m glad it’s all come out. Jo accused me of still carrying a torch for you. She said that was the real reason I was ending our relationship, and you know what? Maybe she was right.”
“Seth. Please—”
“Seeing you again set me back. Stupid, but everybody knows that old habits are hard to change.” His mouth narrowed. “I got it right the other day at the Burger Barn when I said we were just kids. We didn’t know the difference between love and sex.”
“That’s not...”
“Not what?” His words were sharp and quick.
Wendy shook her head. Not true, she’d almost said, but what was the point? He was hurting her because she’d hurt him. Until this moment, she hadn’t realized just how badly.
“Never mind. It doesn’t matter. I think we’ve said enough, don’t you?”
She didn’t wait for an answer. Instead, she began to walk away as quickly as she could manage.
Seth saw her limp, and his heart began to ache at the sight. Not all wounds were visible. Sometimes the ones nobody could see were the most painful of all.
He went after her.
“I’m not done,” he said gruffly.
“Yes, you are,” she said without stopping. “We have nothing more to say to each other.”
“I think you’ll want to hear this.”
What Wendy wanted was to find a place where she could curl into a ball and weep, but there wasn’t a way in the world she’d ever let him know that. She turned around, head high, and looked at him.
“What more could you have to say that I’d want to hear?”
That you’re still in my blood.
The words were right there, on the tip of his tongue, but Seth didn’t say them. It wasn’t true. It couldn’t be, not after the things she’d told him tonight. Still, the sight of her pale face, her eyes shimmering with unshed tears, made him long to draw her into his arms.
“Wendy.” He cleared his throat. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it to end like this.”
“No.” Her voice trembled. “Neither did I.”
“Listen.” He ran a hand through his hair, searching for words. “About this surgery—”
“Please, Seth. Not again!”
“Wait.” He reached out and clasped her hand. She hadn’t put her gloves on; her fingers were icy against his. “If you decide, really decide that you want it—that you want it, not your father—”
“He has nothing to do with it. What will it take to convince you?”
Seth gave a quick, uncertain smile. “That’s just it. I don’t know what it will take. But when you’re sure you know what you want, let me know.”
“Let you know?” Wendy tugged her hand away. “Why would I do that?”
“For old time’s sake, okay?” He took a step back. “Until then, babe, I’ll see you around.”
Babe? Babe? So much for feeling she’d wounded him. The word, his arrogance, even the way he turned and strolled off infuriated Wendy. She wanted to go after him, grab him by the scruff of his neck and shake him until what few brains he had rattled in his head.
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