by Leslie Kelly
He choked out a laugh. “Yeah. Like an ant in a sugar bowl.”
“Are you saying I’m sweet, or are you comparing me to an insect?”
“Oh, I’m certain you’re sweet, darlin’. I doubt this town has seen so much cotton-candy sweetness in one package in a very long time.” He waited for her response, wondering why he enjoyed baiting a complete stranger.
“Do you like cotton candy?”
“Love it,” he replied, narrowing his eyes and shooting her a dangerous look he hadn’t used on too many women recently. “Melts on the tongue and tastes so good.”
She swallowed. Once. Then leveled her gaze on him from behind the dark lenses. “Liar.”
“Am I?”
“Cotton candy makes you throw up and you know it.”
Her voice held a note of certainty and Johnny suddenly realized she wasn’t flirting. She was speaking fact. This time, when his eyes narrowed, it wasn’t flirtatiously, but in concentration. “How do you know that?”
“Same way I know about your appreciation for nice legs.”
He didn’t say a word.
“Not to mention your thing for ankle bracelets.”
This time it was Johnny who nearly gasped. Who the hell is she? He felt like he should know. There was something familiar, something that was nagging at him about her voice. He couldn’t really know her, could he?
“Lucky guesses,” he said, testing her.
She shook her head. “Nope.”
She lifted her hand and raised one index finger, straight up, then crooked it at him, beckoning him closer. Johnny couldn’t resist. Sliding one foot forward, he leaned as near to her as he could get without actually touching her. He nearly felt everyone else in the store shifting forward, too, but ignored them.
“How do you know?” he asked when he was close enough that the tip of his shoes came within a hairsbreadth of her bare toes. Her deep, even breaths reached his cheek.
She leaned up, almost on tiptoes, and Johnny bent closer. Her perfume, light and flowery, wafted from her warm, creamy skin. It called out to him, something in his brain recognizing the scent and making his whole body grow tense and aware, before his brain could analyze why.
His lips were mere inches from her temple, and he focused hard, trying to figure out the strange feeling of anticipation gripping him.
Then she whispered, “Because you told me. Right before you stole my favorite gold butterfly ankle bracelet right off my ankle.”
And suddenly he knew. Even before she stepped back and pushed her silly sunglasses onto the top of her head with the tip of her index finger, revealing her golden-brown eyes, he knew.
“Emma Jean.”
CHAPTER TWO
THE WORLD certainly kept spinning, and the clock probably kept ticking and the sun likely kept shining and the town of Joyful definitely kept whispering. But right here, right now, for Johnny Walker, time stopped. A decade disappeared. Ten years fell away. And he looked into a set of eyes he’d never thought to see again, though he’d seen them in his brain nearly every day since.
“Son of a bitch.”
“Hello to you, too, Johnny,” she said with a tight smile.
He didn’t return the greeting. “So,” he murmured, knowing she’d be able to hear the edge in his voice. “Emma Jean Frasier has done what she swore she’d never do—return to the pits of hell disguised as the hills of Georgia.”
“And what do I find, but the devil waiting here to greet me,” she said, her expression not nearly as jaunty as her tone.
He tsked. “Still sassy.”
She cast a disparaging glance at the spaghetti sauce can in his hand. “And you’re still a big spender. Don’t tell me—you have a hot date tonight? My, you always did entertain with style.”
He instantly remembered their one date. As her eyes shifted away from him, he knew she was kicking herself for bringing up such a loaded subject.
“Guess I should hurry right out to that field over by the Nelson place to pick a bouquet of wildflowers.”
Her quickly indrawn breath told him his jab had hit home. And suddenly, seeing a flash of hurt in her eyes, he regretted the comment. Coming back to Joyful couldn’t have been easy for Emma Jean. Not with the way she’d left. Correction…the way she’d run away.
The thought helped him thrust off the moment of remorse.
“I have to go,” she insisted, trying to push past him. The brush of her arm against his sent a jolt of hot awareness rushing through him again. As they froze, face-to-face, breath to breath, he mentally tripped again into the world of Emma Jean Frasier’s sweet, caramel-eyed stare. Without warning, his senses went on overload, filled with a sudden, quick stream of memories.
Hot summer days when it almost hurt to draw the thick air into his lungs—particularly as he watched her walk down the road in her tight shorts and tighter tops. The way the sunshine caught the sparkle of gold in her long, honey-colored hair every time she walked by.
And that one incredible night. The cicadas taking up a nighttime chorus as they sat and talked for hours. The moisture of her tears against his neck as he’d held her in his lap while she’d cried over his no-good idiot of a brother. Then the return of her good mood, the way he’d teased her into giving him one of those joyous, dimpled smiles that had stopped his teenage heart.
He almost heard the soft strains of Garth Brooks from his truck radio as they danced in the moonlight. Almost smelled the scent of her hair—lemons and tangerines, sweet and tangy, just like Emma Jean had always been. Almost tasted the sugary, slick taste of her strawberry lip gloss.
His brain tripped one step farther, into truly dangerous territory. Right here and now, in the brightly lit store surrounded by people, he heard the echo of the forbidden, sultry whoosh her satiny dress had made as it fell to the ground. And the way she’d whispered his name over and over again when he’d been buried deep inside her body, certain he’d died and landed straight in the arms of an angel.
“Johnny?”
He flinched as she spoke, losing his grip on the can of sauce in the process. They both looked toward the floor at the sound of the loud clunk. Watching the spaghetti sauce roll away, Emma stepped to the side to avoid getting her toes crunched. Johnny took the moment to get a major grip on himself.
By the time Emma looked up again, he felt much more in control. He’d thrust the mirage of memories back to the depths of his subconscious where they belonged, along with all those other stupid, dangerous teenage memories—like hot-wiring cars, putting firecrackers in mailboxes and making out with girls underneath the bleachers after cutting class. Kid stuff. Just like his feelings for Emma Jean Frasier.
If he told himself that often enough, he might actually start to believe it was true.
“Seeya, Emma Jean,” he managed to mutter, pretty damn sure he sounded almost normal. Almost sane. Almost not crazy with wanting to reach out and either pull her into his arms and kiss the hell out of her, or shake her for leaving. And for coming back. At this moment, he couldn’t say which angered him more.
She nodded and stepped away, gingerly avoiding the sauce he’d dropped. Unfortunately, however, stepping over one can didn’t help Emma save her own. Because two seconds after she moved, she slipped on something, causing her feet to fly out from under her.
Then she hit the floor, falling on her butt like a big old sack of rocks.
IF SOMEONE had told her that within her first several minutes in Joyful she’d be lying flat on the floor, with her legs askew and Johnny Walker crouched between them, Emma would have laughed in that person’s face. Particularly if also told that half the slack-jawed, gaping town would be looking on.
What’d they call this? Déjà vu all over again? Because this was, pretty much, the same position she’d been in on her last night in this town, ten years ago.
Fate, she decided, was a mean-spirited bitch with a really long memory and a twisted sense of humor.
“Em, are you all right?” Johnny asked from where he’
d hunkered down between her ankles to see if she was okay.
“No, I’m not all right,” she managed to bite out.
She’d slipped in some unseen puddle on the floor, paying such close attention to avoiding the can—and the man who’d dropped it—that she hadn’t even seen the other danger. Now her ankle and foot felt like they’d been twisted into a pretzel shape. For that matter, so did her stomach.
Not to mention her heart.
She scrunched her eyes shut, waiting for the initial rush of pain to subside. Maybe then she could deal with the fact that the first familiar person she’d seen in Joyful was the one she’d hoped to avoid altogether. And that he looked so damned good.
Johnny as a teenager had been heartthrob material. Pure wicked, honey-tongued, hunk-a-licious male. The baddest of the bad boys. The motorcycle-riding, cigarette-smoking, heartbreaking guy who’d been featured in every teen movie ever made and in every good girl’s most secret fantasies.
Time hadn’t been kind enough to tug frown lines on his lean, handsome face, put circles beneath his stunning blue eyes or gray streaks in his thick, walnut-brown hair. Gravity hadn’t sucked down that flat, muscle-striped chest and stomach. He definitely didn’t have the poochy belly and man boobs she’d occasionally—when in a vengeful mood—wished on him. He wasn’t saggy, pasty and pale. Devil take the man.
No, Johnny Walker was nothing like she’d sometimes hoped he’d be. Of course, the other times, she’d been vacillating between wanting him maimed, dead or imprisoned.
Liar. What she’d really wanted was him pining.
But, huh-uh, just her luck, he looked better than he had ten years ago. Bigger. Harder. Fully masculine in his adult body, with little remaining of the whipcord-lean youth she’d known. Definitely he had not wasted away having spent the past decade mourning the loss of the best thing he’d ever had. Her.
Nope, he was all hunky, smiling, flirty man. The jeans and leather jacket might be gone, as were the chains and silver stud earring he used to wear. But the “Yeah, I really can deliver what my eyes are promising” look was all, one hundred percent Johnny.
“Let me help you,” he insisted. “Hell, Emma Jean, I didn’t imagine you’d drop away in shock at the sight of me.”
She narrowed her eyes.
“Because I have to admit, seeing you was a definite surprise, but I don’t think I’d go swooning over it.”
His surprise certainly couldn’t match hers. She’d been so sure Johnny would be long gone. Instead, here he was, crouched between her calves, trying to ease her foot out of her sandal, as if they’d seen each other in the flesh every day for the past decade…instead of only in each other’s nightmares.
“I didn’t swoon,” she muttered. “I slipped in something.”
He just shrugged, continuing to try to unbuckle her shoe.
Emma took a moment to remember the look on his face when he’d first recognized her. She had to admit it—that expression had almost made the subsequent pain of twisting her ankle worthwhile. Surprise didn’t cut it. He’d been shocked. Stunned. And for one quick, nearly unseen instant, he’d been very, very glad.
Emma didn’t care so much about the shock. The glad, however, had almost been worth the sixteen-hour car ride which had ended with her falling on her fanny with her legs askew and the hottest guy she’d ever known in her life crouched between them. In front of the gawking shoppers in the Joyful Grocery Store, no less.
Who were all still gawking.
She sighed. Quite an entrance after ten years away. She supposed it was a vain hope to think no one here would remember her being caught in pretty much this same position on prom night.
Oh, well, at least she wasn’t stark naked this time.
As she ruthlessly shoved the hint of pleasure that Johnny was glad to see her out of her brain, she acknowledged the other parts of her body that were also sparking in reaction. My, oh my, those hard, lean hips of his were between her legs and she was looking at his thick, dark head of hair, remembering tangling her fingers in it. Suddenly she was feeling damp—down low—and it had nothing to do with whatever spilled liquid she’d fallen in.
Closing her eyes, Emma took a deep breath, trying to work up the courage to deal with her current predicament. Hmm…she was flat on her butt in public, lusting for a guy she should hate, wishing her panties weren’t so tight and her skirt wasn’t so short and her sex life hadn’t been so miserable lately that her own body would betray her in spite of the pain in her ankle. And in her heart.
Today was going onto her top ten list of bad days.
“I’m sorry, Emma Jean, your foot’s already swelling.”
Sorry for causing her to slip on some unseen wet spot? Or for breaking her heart? Not that she’d give him the satisfaction of voicing that question. No, Johnny Walker had no idea he’d broken her heart…because he’d never known it was his to break.
“Nobody calls me Emma Jean anymore,” she said, wincing as he gingerly touched her heel with the tip of his finger.
He visibly stiffened and met her stare, his deep blue eyes still incredibly dramatic against the dark brown hair. “Do you go by another name? A screen name?”
Not sure why on earth he’d care about her Internet name, she frowned and leaned over to gingerly unbuckle her sandal. “I mean, I go by just Emma now.”
“As in just Cher? Or Madonna?” he asked, his voice thick with something she couldn’t identify. She put it down to embarrassment—he couldn’t be feeling any better about the situation in which they’d suddenly found themselves than she did, particularly with the wide-eyed onlookers all around them.
“No,” she explained her patience growing thinner as her embarrassment increased. “As in just Emma Frasier. No Jean. Now, if we’ve straightened out my name to your satisfaction, would you mind leaving me alone so I can stagger to the nearest emergency room for X-rays and a cast?”
He muttered under his breath and she’d swear she caught the word “sassy” again. “I’ll take you over to the clinic,” he finally said when he saw her staring at him.
“Forget it,” she muttered. “I can get up.” She glanced around the floor. “What did I slip in?”
They both spotted a big, smeary blue puddle of sticky goo at the same instant. “Did two Smurfs battle to the death in here or something?” she said with a disbelieving groan.
Johnny tsked. “Laundry detergent. Or fabric softener. I think a little girl was trying to get some spilled juice out of her clothes.”
“Great. Welcome home, Emma, enjoy your fall,” she said.
He shrugged. “You always did know how to make an entrance.” Then his eyes narrowed. “And an exit.”
She shot him a glare, not appreciating his humor—nor his reminder of the last time they’d been together—one teeny bit.
“You’re sure it was a little girl? Maybe it was you who had to suddenly clean up his clothes…though I never figured you for a man who’d wet his pants at having to look me in the eye again.”
The insult skimmed right off his gorgeous hide. “Aww, honey, I hate to disappoint you, but you didn’t have me shaking in my shoes.” He lowered his voice. “Or needing to get out of my pants in a hurry.” His grin was positively evil. “For a change.”
Zing. Another dangerous recollection. Johnny sure hadn’t needed much urging to get out of his pants the last time they’d been together. The dog.
Before she could give into her first impulse, which was to laugh in spite of herself, or her second, which was to smack him, he continued. “It was the Deveaux kid. I don’t think she’s quite mastered the whole sippie cup thing yet.”
“So then what?” Emma asked, raising her voice and looking around the store. “Was there a run on mops or something today? Blue light special on paper towels?”
The two young cashiers, as blatantly nosy and fascinated as their customers, exchanged a look. She read it easily. Both silently ordered the other to take care of the mess. Then they each refused. She cou
ld almost predict how this one was going to end—with a game of rock, paper, scissors, loser gets the floor duty. In Joyful, some things never changed.
“Doggone, I sure wish I had a camera to get a picture for the paper,” the old man said with a snort. “I can see the headline. Star slips…”
“Enough, Tom,” Johnny muttered, giving him a warning look.
Star? Before she could even ask what on earth the old-as-dirt guy was talking about, one of the cashiers reached around her register and grabbed a disposable camera.
That was enough for Emma. Without another word, she yanked two fistfuls of Johnny’s shirt between her fingers. Using his shoulders for leverage, she pushed herself up into a half-standing, half-leaning position. She ignored the sudden rush of heat in her belly. It was almost certainly caused by embarrassment and not the warmth of his exhaled breaths against her stomach as she leaned over him.
Not his breaths. Not his lips. Not his mouth.
Definitely not.
Another giggle from the crowd made her straighten her back. Her ankle screamed in protest, but she turned and hobbled toward the door, anyway. She just couldn’t do this right now. Not after the night she’d had. Not after the month she’d had!
Emma had no problem laughing at herself when she deserved it. But this was too much. She was stressed, jobless, exhausted from driving. Oh, yeah, and penniless. Then, she’d come face-to-face with the guy who’d stolen her virginity and broken her heart.
And finally, the cherry on this particular hot-fudge sundae of her life, she ended up flat on her butt next to a big puddle of sticky blue goo in front of half the town.
Dammit, some days it didn’t pay to get out of bed. Then she remembered: she hadn’t been able to afford springing for a cheap hotel room along I-95 last night. So she’d actually been out of bed for more than twenty-four hours.
No wonder she was on the verge of tears. Not because of pain or humiliation. Not even because of the ache in her heart, and the other one between her legs at seeing Johnny Walker again. It was merely fatigue making her eyes sting and her lids flutter to keep any suspicious moisture from flowing down her cheeks.