sorry, too,” he said.
“But it’s fine,” she blurted out.
He nodded. “Yeah. You’re right. It’s water under the bridge. Years ago. Not a big deal.”
“Absolutely. Over and done. We’ve both put it behind us. Derek, we can do this. We can be there for Luke and Eva. We can help make their wedding everything they deserve it to be.”
He took off his hat, hit the brim against his denim-clad thigh, then put it back on. “Yeah. That’s our job and we can do it.”
She straightened her shoulders. “We will do it.”
“Yes, we will,” he agreed.
And then they just stood there at the fence, staring at each other.
The silence stretched thin.
He broke it. “Well, all right, then. I’ll be in touch.” And without another word, he turned and left her standing there.
Feeling stunned by the whole encounter, Amy stared after Derek as he walked away from her.
Once he reached the turnaround in front of the house again, he climbed into a mud-spattered red F-150 pickup. The engine roared out, the big wheels stirring up a cloud of dust as he drove away.
What had just happened? She wasn’t sure. Had they actually forgiven each other?
Well, at least they’d said the words. And that was good, she decided. They didn’t need to talk it to death. What was there to say, anyway?
It was all in the past.
Too bad they’d come up with nothing in terms of a plan for the bachelor party. He’d said he would “be in touch.” What exactly did that mean?
Annoyance prickled through her. Okay, she got that she wasn’t his favorite person. But they did have to work together. He could have stuck around long enough to set a time and a place.
She glanced down at the papers in her hand. His numbers were right there at the top of the first page—mobile and home. Would the home number be the main house at his family’s ranch, the Circle D? She’d had that number memorized all those years ago. It was burned into her brain and she remembered it still. But this home number was different. Did he live somewhere else now?
He’d moved to the bunkhouse in April of their senior year, to give himself a little independence from his close-knit family. Back then, the bunkhouse number was the same as at the main house, but maybe they’d put in a separate line since then.
Not that she cared. It didn’t matter to her where, exactly, he lived now. She just needed to know when and where they would meet.
She shook her head at the stack of papers. If he didn’t get back to her in the next day or two, she would have to call him.
No big deal.
And really, he had said he would be in touch, right? What was she worrying about?
Forget calling him. He would call her.
And of course, that would be soon...
* * *
Amy barely got back in the door of the farmhouse before Eva was all over her. “What did he say? Is it okay between you? Was it hard, to see him again?”
“Eva.” She managed a laugh. “Cut it out. It was fine. It was years ago.”
“But you loved him.”
Oh, yes, she had. But she wasn’t going there. “It was high school. And it’s all in the past. There are no problems between us and you don’t have to worry.”
“I’m not worrying.” Her big blue eyes got bigger. “I just want to know, is the spark still there?”
Amy wasn’t answering that one. No way. She kept it light, making a show of tapping her chin as though deep in thought. “Hmm. Is it just me or are you playing matchmaker?”
Eva blushed the sweetest shade of pink. “I would never...”
“Yeah, right.”
They both burst out laughing at the same time and Eva said, “Okay, okay. I’ll butt out, I promise.”
Amy gave her friend the side-eye. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”
* * *
Derek didn’t call that evening. And he didn’t call on Tuesday.
By Wednesday, the Fourth of July, she knew she should go ahead and reach out.
Maybe a text. She wouldn’t even have to talk to him until their actual meeting.
She put his cell number in her phone, hit the message icon and started typing, whipping out five different messages and deleting them as fast as she wrote them. After the fifth attempt, she decided she would just wait another day to deal with the whole reaching out thing.
That night, she went into town with Eva, Luke and his brother Bailey, for a barbecue at their sister Bella’s house and to watch the fireworks in the town park later. That whole evening, she felt on edge just thinking that she might run into Derek.
But she never so much as caught sight of him.
The days were going by. They needed to meet up. But he hadn’t called.
And she couldn’t quite bring herself to make the first move.
* * *
By Thursday evening, as he ate his solitary dinner in the house he’d built for himself on Circle D land, Derek Dalton was feeling more than a little bit jerkish.
He’d told Amy he would get back to her. He needed to call her and set up another meeting.
But even after all these years, it still hurt something deep inside him just to be near her. She looked the same—with long brown hair showing gleams of red in the sun, creamy skin, eyes that seemed to change color depending on her mood, brown to olive green and back again, sometimes with a hint of gold.
Yeah. She looked the same. But even better, so smooth and classy. Luke had mentioned that she’d gone on to graduate school after four years at the University of Colorado. He’d said she had some high-tech accounting job and she owned her own house in Boulder.
None of that information surprised Derek. Amy had been the smartest girl at Rust Creek Falls High, put ahead a year when she was twelve, so they’d ended up in the same grade. She’d been valedictorian of their small graduating class. Her dad was a rich guy from Boulder who’d given up the rat race for a while to become a rancher in the Rust Creek Falls Valley—and then moved back to Colorado when Amy left to go to college there.
Derek
