ran into each other. It was up to her to do the intelligent thing.
Facing herself in the mirror, Eden freshened her lipstick, smoothed her hair and squared her shoulders. She would handle this like a pro, she assured herself. She would be cool, detached and assertive. Travis Conroy was nothing but a small-town nobody. She had absolutely no reason to feel intimidated by him.
All the same, as she walked out of the rest room, Eden’s heart danced a skittish little tango of fear. What she was about to do would be as difficult as anything she’d ever done in her life.
Travis lowered his lanky frame onto a Naugahyde settee, hooked his Stetson over one angled leg and flipped open the paperback. The book was a fast-paced thriller by one of his favorite authors, but today, for some reason, he couldn’t keep his mind on the plot.
Turning a page, he glanced impatiently at his watch. Nicole’s flight from L.A. wouldn’t be in for fifteen or twenty minutes. If he could get through the next couple of chapters…
Oh, what the hell!
The book dropped to his lap as he surrendered to the angst he’d held in check since his first glimpse of the woman who called herself Eden Harper.
It was over, Travis reminded himself. He’d had sixteen years to put the whole silly incident behind him. By any measure, that was time enough.
So why were his emotions churning like the agitator in an old-fashioned Maytag?
This was crazy.
Checking his watch again, Travis shifted his buttocks against the sagging upholstery and tried to concentrate on his reading. But it was no good. The past was pushing into his thoughts, crowding out his efforts to forget.
And right there on the front line was Edna Rae Harper.
Travis slumped in his seat, remembering.
It had been his senior year—the year he’d captained the team that won its second straight Class A basketball championship. Edna Rae had been a sophomore then, younger than her classmates because she’d been double-promoted back in grade school.
Not that Travis had cared one way or the other. With her frumpy clothes, her horn-rimmed glasses and her way of staring at the floor when she walked down the halls, Edna Rae Harper hadn’t exactly been his dream girl—or anybody else’s, for that matter.
Travis had never given her a second glance. In fact, he’d scarcely been aware she existed, until that May afternoon when the year-end edition of the school paper was passed out.
Between the folds of each paper, someone had slipped a photocopied letter—a letter penned in a hand as delicate and feminine as the curl of a morning-glory vine.
Oh, Travis, my darling, when will we be together again? How long must I burn like this, tossing in my bed, feeling your hands on my pulsing breasts, feeling the velvet warmth of your skin and the sweet hot wine of your lips? How long before I hear your voice murmuring in my ear, I love you, Edna Rae, I love—
”Hello again.”
Eden’s breathy contralto, coming from directly behind him, jolted Travis back to the present. He swiveled in his seat to look at her, his eyes taking in the clean square planes of her face, the taffy gold mass of her hair and the chic drape of the expensive pantsuit on her slender frame. For whatever it was worth, drab little Edna Rae had grown up to be a stunner.
“Uh, hello,” he replied, caught off guard. After the way she’d gone dashing off, the last thing he’d expected was to have her show up again.
She came around the back of the settee, eyes downcast, cheeks becomingly flushed. Travis watched her in silence, liking her walk, liking, in spite of everything, the catlike way she lowered herself onto the edge of the chair that faced him across the low table. The image of her, bolting crimson-faced out of the men’s room, stole into his mind, coaxing his mouth into a bemused smile.
“I came to apologize,” she said.
In the tick of silence that followed, Travis was aware of a jet screaming down the runway outside the window.
“Apologize? For what?” he forced himself to ask.
“For today. For this whole silly mess. I was hiding out in the rest room when I realized I was being a defensive fool, and that none of what I was feeling was your fault. I’m sorry for that.”
“There’s no need to be sorry about anything.” He mouthed the words, wondering where all this was leading. A typical woman would not apologize unless she had some agenda in mind. But then, there’d never been anything typical about Edna Rae Harper.
She stared awkwardly at her hands, looking, at that instant, more like the shy Edna Rae than the polished Eden. “I realized something else, too. In the sixteen years since that awful day at school, I’ve never told you how sorry I was for the embarrassment I caused you.”
“I…never expected you to.” Travis forced himself to meet her eyes, wishing she’d chosen to talk about something else. His classmates had ribbed him mercilessly about that damn fool letter, but at least most of them had realized he was innocent. Not so the townspeople. By the time the story had circulated through the little community, Travis’s reputation had blackened to the hue of coal tar.
“You didn’t exactly have it easy yourself, did you?” he asked, shifting the burden of conversation back to her.
Eden’s gaze flickered to her lap again. She hadn’t come back to school for the rest of the year, Travis recalled. Her mother had claimed she was sick and received permission for the humiliated girl to complete her last two weeks of schoolwork by correspondence.
“That ridiculous letter was private,” she said, staring down at her manicured hands with their pale peach nails. “I never meant anyone to see it, especially you.”
“I know that,” Travis feigned a detachment he did not feel. “How were you to know that Howie Segmiller would find the letter in your looseleaf and make copies for the whole school?”
A shudder passed through Eden’s slim controlled body. “I…I’m sorry. I was so wrapped up in my own problems that I couldn’t even think about yours. I can only imagine how much difficulty that letter must have caused you.”
Travis’s restless fingers curled the paperback into a thick roll. He’d been going steady with Cheryl McKinley, the prettiest girl in the junior class, he recalled. Three days after the letter incident, Cheryl had informed him that her parents wouldn’t let her date him anymore.
Cheryl had married a beet farmer from Sigurd and had five kids now. He had gone off to the University of Utah and met Diane.
“It’s over, Eden,” he said with a shrug. “Water under the bridge, as they say. We’re both different people now.”
“Yes…I suppose we are.” She managed a strained smile. “Whatever happened to Howie Segmiller, anyway?”
“Last time I spoke with his mother, he was running for city council in Pioche, Nevada.”
“I was hoping to hear he was doing time at Point of the Mountain!” She managed a husky little
