Teresa Southwick - If You Don't Know By Now

She opened her mouth to say more, then caught the inside of her top lip between her teeth. Drastic situations called for severe measures. She really did need to stop babbling. It wasn’t her job to fill awkward silences. He’d turned his back on her. Let him do the talking.

“Impressive,” he commented, gazing at the scene on the back of a jacket, as well as the other goods arrayed on the wooden walls.

“Thanks.” She met his gaze, determined to see his one-word answer and not raise him.

He leaned a broad shoulder against the corner two-by-four holding up her booth. “Surprised to see me?” he finally asked.

Try shocked. Add dumb founded, amazed, astonished, disconcerted, then toss in a healthy dose of confusion and that might just about describe what she was feeling. A little surprised? Apparently sometime during the past decade he’d taken a crash course in the finer points of under statement. He might have thrown her for a loop, but wild horses couldn’t drag the nerves out of her—in spite of the fact that they were bucking through her like a spooked stallion.

Casually, she rested a hip against the wooden ledge mere inches from where he lounged. “Why would I be surprised to see you? You went to boot camp. We exchanged some letters. You disappeared without a trace.” She shrugged, struggling for non cha lance, but very afraid she’d failed miserably. “Happens all the time.”

“I’m not much of a letter writer.”

“Really? Your last one was pretty straight for ward. You dumped me.”

Along with a girl’s first love, she never forgot the details of her first broken heart. Maggie’d wadded up the one sheet of paper and tossed it into the trash, but certain phrases were forever branded on her mind.

Getting too serious. Not fair to you. Best to go our separate ways.

But she didn’t say any of that. It was ancient history. “If I remember correctly, you said your life was too unstable for a relationship with anyone.”

“Yeah.” His gaze slid away and he stared off into the darkness over her right shoulder. A muscle in his lean cheek contracted as his lips thinned into a straight line.

“I sent one more letter after that. It came back with Return to Sender in your hand writing. Not a single word from you since. Now here you are.” She lifted one shoulder in what she hoped was a carefree, un concerned gesture.

But she was very concerned. Her returned, unopened letter had come as a shock, followed quickly by panic and unbelievable pain. She’d been a scared teenager with a small problem that would get bigger by the month—not to mention raging hormones and a romantic streak a mile wide. She’d thought she loved him and would never stop. But she wasn’t a teenager any longer. Circum stances had forced her to grow up fast. And her romantic streak had been pounded, if not into sub mission, at least into realistic expectation based on past experience.

She’d learned that love did stop.

“I shipped out right after boot camp,” he said, then raised those broad, mouth-watering shoulders as if that explained everything.

“No need to apologize,” she said.

“That was an explanation.”

“Okay. But I’m not mad.”

“Oh?” The ghost of a smile flirted with the corners of his mouth.

She tossed her head in a careless gesture that swung her red curls around her face. “Don’t be silly. I’ll admit I was miffed for a while, but I got over it. Years ago. My life is together. I’m all grown up.”

“So I see,” he said.

His lips curved up then, turning the dimples in his cheeks into vertical lines on either side of his mouth. A look glittered in those blue eyes that started a quivering inside her the likes of which she hadn’t experienced in a decade. Damn it. Ten lousy years and no man had done this to her. Five minutes with Jack Riley and she was practically a puddle of goo at his feet. Still, she hung on to her composure as if it was the last handhold between her and a five-hundred-foot drop.

She folded her arms over her breasts, just in case her white T-shirt and bra didn’t hide the way her nipples stood at attention and saluted the fact that Jack Riley was back.

“So what have you been up to all these years?” she asked, putting just the right amount of chatty interest in her tone.

His face darkened, then went blank. It was as if he’d stepped beyond the light and back into the shadows. If he hadn’t just nearly cracked a smile, she probably wouldn’t have noticed the withdrawal. But he did and she had.

He looked at her card, still in his hand. “This and that,” he said.

Well, wasn’t he just a regular gusher of information, she thought. “When did you get into town?”

“Today.”

“What brought you back?”

“Personal business.”

“Oh?”

“And a news pa per story.”

She didn’t remember ever having to yank in formation from him like an impacted wisdom tooth. But then, when they’d managed to steal time together, talking hadn’t been tops on the To Do list.

The memories churned up by that thought brought heat flaring into her cheeks. Sneaking around to meet him. The feel of his strong arms tightly wrapped around her. Kissing as if she couldn’t get enough. It had been exciting, thrilling.

She lifted her chin slightly, to study him better. She hadn’t known him very well when he’d left, and she certainly didn’t know him now. If twenty questions was the way he wanted to play, she was just the gal for it. Because she had more than twenty questions she wanted to ask him.

“What story was that?” she asked.

“An article in a syndicated newspaper advertising the dates of the high school rodeo championships along with info about the new dude ranch Taylor Stevens is opening. There was a picture, too, of Mitch Rafferty and Dev Hart with Taylor.”

“I’m impressed.”

“Hmm?”

“That was a whole bunch of words strung together. Two whole sentences if I’m not mistaken. Compound sentences. Be still my heart.”

He tucked her business card into his shirt pocket. “Military training.”

“What about it?”

“Takes all the fun out of—” He stopped, his gaze dropping as if he’d revealed too much. Then all he added was, “Communication.”

“I guess I’d never make it in the military. Too communicative.”

“Magpie,” he said.

That one word wasn’t enough to tell her if he was being thoughtful, wistful or just plain sad. His expression was wiped clean of emotion. What was he thinking? Feeling? Anything? The Jack she’d known had been easy to read—once she’d gotten past his rebellious, bad-boy facade to find the gentle, caring teddy bear underneath. That guy had worn his heart on his sleeve, as much as any teenager could. She’d been able to read him easily. But they hadn’t connected until the last couple of weeks in his senior year, after he’d already signed his recruitment contract.

If he hadn’t gone into the army, what would have happened? she wondered. Would they be together now? Or would some tart have stolen his heart? Her stirring memories of his not-very-well-concealed emotions swung the flood gates of her curiosity all the way open.

“So, tell me what you’ve been up to,” she repeated casually.

“I travel a lot. I’m never in one place very long.”

“Why?”

For the second time he ignored a direct question. But this time he grinned, his first genuine no-holds-barred smile. The effect was enough to knock Maggie on her backside and she couldn’t make herself care that he hadn’t answered her. If there’d been a spot light on his mouth at that precise moment, the resulting brillisant glare off his straight, white teeth would have folks blinking their eyes and reaching for their sunglasses. God help her, she was reaching for her heart and hanging on to it with both hands.