Yet he couldn’t silence the niggling voice inside his head asking questions he refused to contemplate.
What if she doesn’t respond?
What if she doesn’t want anything to do with you?
CHAPTER TWO
THE HARDEST PART about teaching school was enduring the first three days of teachers’ meetings before you actually got to meet your students.
At seven-thirty Monday evening, an exhausted Sydney hurried out of Elkhorn High School to her car. Following the day’s meetings, the PTA had served dinner in the cafeteria. Tomorrow she would have to come early to start decorating her room before back-to-school night on Wednesday.
Two blocks away she turned into the drive of her eight-plex apartment building and parked her Jeep in one of the covered stalls. What she needed right now was a shower, then bed.
Before reaching the door of her ground-floor unit, she sensed she wasn’t alone and assumed it was one of the other tenants coming home, too. Then she heard a man call to her in a low, compelling voice.
The urgent way he said her name conjured memories that made the hairs stand on the back of her neck.
No…
It couldn’t be…
It just couldn’t…
Still disbelieving, Sydney turned around slowly, convinced the fatigue of the day had taken unprecedented liberties with her imagination.
In the growing darkness she saw the silhouette of a tall, solidly built man. At first glance she thought he bore a resemblance to the man whose memory had been her nemesis. But two things stood out that made her decide she was mistaken, that she was looking at a stranger.
For one thing he was wearing a tan suit with a tie. The man she’d once known would never be dressed in such clothes.
For another, this man with his jet-black hair and brows was beardless.
Through her lashes she studied the unfamiliar lines of a strong chin and jaw with their five o’clock shadow. He possessed a potently male mouth hinting at an aggression that made her swallow hard.
“Sydney—” he whispered, reading her confusion correctly.
The deep cadence of his voice permeated to the core of her being. Like a matching fingerprint, there was no mistaking who he was this time. The reality of his presence sent her into shock. She fell against the door helplessly.
He started to move toward her.
“No—don’t touch me!” she begged. But her protest went ignored as the flesh-and-blood man placed his hands on her upper arms to steady her. She felt their heat as if she’d pressed up against a furnace.
“I’ll let you go when you’re able to walk without help.”
Sydney’s head fell back on the graceful column of her neck. Her heart pounded in her ears.
“Come on. Let’s get you inside.” He took the keys from her nerveless fingers and opened the door.
Convinced she was hallucinating, she started to feel light-headed. Her legs refused to obey her.
The next moment became a blur. With effortless masculine strength, he picked her up in his arms and carried her into the dimly lit living room. After laying her on the couch, he disappeared.
A minute later he returned with a glass of water. Hunkering down next to her, he put it to her lips. His other hand slid beneath the gold satin of her hair to prop her head.
“Drink as much as you can. It’ll help.”
Though her head was spinning, she did his bidding before handing the empty glass back to him. He put it on the coffee table.
Between his silky black lashes, the eyes she remembered burned like hot green coals. Combined with the male beauty of his features, he was so impossibly handsome, she groaned in reaction.
When it became clear he really was here in person, her strength began to return and she carefully sat up. Another minute and she was able to get to her feet, desperate to disguise the fact that she’d been staring at him with an intense hunger he couldn’t have helped but notice.
He stood a little distance apart from her with his hands on his hips, reminding her once again what an incredible-looking man he was.
Back in Cannon, the beard had made him seem more untouchable and intimidating. Without it, he…
She rubbed her arms as if she were freezing to death. In truth she was burning up inside with so many emotions, she couldn’t name them all. But topping the list was rage and anger for his coming here to enlarge the wound that had never healed.
“I have to admit you’re the last person on earth I ever expected to see again in this lifetime…let alone here,” she began.
Jarod’s eyes glittered. “Evidently you didn’t get my note.”
Sydney struggled to catch her breath. “What note?”
“The one I left inside the front door screen of your cabin at Old Faithful.”
She put a hand to her throat. “When did you do that?”
“Saturday.”
Saturday she’d been told he was ill, yet seeing him she realized he’d never looked healthier.
“I—I’d already moved out and was at my parents’.”
I had the greatest breakdown of my life by driving over to Cannon to see you. But you weren’t there, and you’re not ill. What’s going on?
He grimaced. “When I didn’t hear from you all day today, I had a talk with Chief Ranger Archer. He told me you’d accepted a teaching job here, so I called around until I found you.”
Shock still held her in its grip. “I—I can’t imagine how you even knew I was a ranger.”
“It’s a long story,” his voice rasped. “I came as soon as I could.”
She stared at him in utter bewilderment. “What do you mean?”
He cocked his dark, attractive head. “The day you left Cannon you said, ‘I can’t stay, and you can’t come, can you?’ At the time, I couldn’t give you an answer.”
That moment had been so excruciating, she experienced physical pain all over again remembering it. For him to be so inhuman as to remind her of it—
Anger consumed her.
“So now you’ve decided you can?” she mocked in raw agony, remembering the kiss he’d given her that had said “goodbye forever.”
She backed away from him. “If you thought it would be safe to take a vacation from the Lord with me, then you never knew me,
