“My brain is just fine. I can’t believe you guys aren’t worried. You know how she used to be.” He rubbed his suddenly damp palms on his pants. “This would have to happen to me. It’s not enough that I had to break my leg. Now Deanie’s tracked me down.”
“Why don’t you look at this as an opportunity?” Mason clapped his younger brother on the back and steered him out the door and down the hall. Josh followed.
“It’s been a long time,” Mason told Rance as they lingered in the hallway outside the sanctuary. Inside, the sound of an acoustic guitar greeted the guests. “Maybe things between you two have changed.”
“I doubt that. The woman is crazy about me.”
“Really?”
“She can’t get enough of me.”
“Is that so?”
“She’s hooked.”
Mason pointed past him. “She’s right behind you.”
Rance whirled in time to see Deanie Codge exit the ladies’ room and come to a dead stop, her gaze hooked on him. She looked exactly the same as she had all those years ago, with her long, dark hair and her bright blue eyes. Rance’s entire body went on red alert.
He braced himself for a running tackle, but she simply smiled.
And then she walked the other way.
“Yeah, she’s still hooked, all right,” Mason said. “She obviously can’t keep her hands off you.”
“She can’t.” Rance watched her take the arm of an usher and disappear into the sanctuary without so much as a backward glance.
At least, at one time, she hadn’t been able to keep her hands off him.
Things had obviously changed. Deanie Codge wasn’t the same lovesick girl she’d been when they’d been kids. She was all grown-up now.
And she wasn’t the least bit affected by Rance, it seemed.
It’s about time. Even as the thought rolled through his head, he didn’t feel nearly the relief he should have.
“It’s time.” The announcement came from the minister who joined the three men, urging them down the hall and through a door that opened at the front of the sanctuary.
Rance took his place as best man, pasted on a wide smile and did his best to concentrate on his brothers and the ceremony taking place, rather than the woman who sat five pews away, her gaze anywhere, everywhere, but on him.
She’d changed, all right, and damned if it didn’t bother Rance a hell of a lot more than it should have.
Enough that he made up his mind then and there, that he was going to find out why. Even if it meant that he’d be the one doing the chasing. He sort of liked the idea of turning the tables on her.
If Deanie thought she’d been persistent all those years ago, she hadn’t seen anything yet.
ISBN: 978-1-4268-6336-3TEXAS FIRE
Copyright © 2005 by Kimberly Raye Groff.
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