lose much sleep over the whole business.”
“Didn’t I?”
A hundred yards or so ahead, the illuminated dome of the hotel reared into the night like a beacon. Why didn’t she run toward the refuge it promised? Why did she let his question provoke her into having the last word and thereby reveal the misery she was feeling? “Well, you’re married, aren’t you?” she said, flinging the rebuke in his face. “You’ve got two children, both already in school, which explains how you’ve been keeping busy since the last time I saw you. I’d call that getting on with your life without wasting too much time on regrets.”
“And that upsets you, Imogen?”
“Not in the slightest,” she said loftily, her bedraggled pride finally coming to the rescue. “Why in the world would it?”
“I can’t imagine,” he said, a suggestion of sly humor in his voice. “Especially since I’m neither married nor the father of those boys you met.”
“But Patsy said she’s their aunt, which makes you—oh, dear!” The laugh she manufactured to try to cover her embarrassment sounded pathetically like the bleating of a distraught sheep. “How very silly of me.”
“Right,” he said, so smugly she could have slapped him. “I’m their uncle.”
“Well, it was a natural enough mistake on my part,” she said, wishing she could disappear in a puff of smoke before she humiliated herself further. “Sean was a year behind me in school. It never occurred to me he’d be the one to settle down and get married so young.”
“Wrong again, Imogen. He tied the knot with his high school sweetheart, Liz Baker, when they were nineteen, and Dennis was born six months later.”
She’d had one shock too many in the past hour. That was the only excuse she could offer for her next incredibly tactless remark. “You mean, they had to get married?”
The look he turned on her, half pity and half disgust, made her cringe. “We mortals who come from Lister’s Meadows tend to make mistakes like that, Imogen. Our animal appetites get the better of us—not that I’d expect someone of your refined sensibilities to understand that.”
Oh, she understood—more than he’d ever know!
But what good would it do to say so at this late date? Casting about for an escape from a situation growing more fraught with tension by the minute, she saw they’d finally drawn level with the Bnarwood’s entrance. Wanting nothing more than to rush up the steps and disappear through the front doors, she forced herself to observe the social niceties ingrained in her from birth. “Well, it was a pleasure seeing you, Joe, and I’ve enjoyed catching up on all your news. Perhaps we’ll run into each other again some time.”
Any other man would have taken the hint, shaken the hand she extended and left. Not Joe Donnelly. He looked first at her hand, then at the floodlit facade of the hotel, before zeroing in on her face with that too-candid, too-observat gaze of his. “Are you telling me you’re staying at the Briarwood or just trying to get rid of me before someone you know sees the kind of company you’re keeping?”
“I’m staying at the hotel.”
“Why? What’s wrong with staying at home?”
“My mother is away for a couple of days, and I didn’t want to put the staff out.”
“Why did she go away when she knew you were coming?”
“Because—” She stopped and drew a frustrated breath. “You ask too many questions, Joe Donnelly.”
“I guess that means you aren’t going to let me buy you a drink while you fill me in on what you’ve been up to since we last saw each other?”
“Thank you, no. It’s been a long day, and I’m rather tired.”
“In other words, your life is none of my business.”
She looked him straight in the eye. “As a matter of fact, it isn’t.”
He held her gaze an uncomfortably long time. “Fine. Sorry I bothered you. It won’t happen again.”
Then he did exactly what she’d wanted him to do—turned and strode back the way he’d come. Left her again, without so much as a backward glance. And she, fool that she was, felt her heart splinter a little, as if a piece of glass lodged there for years had suddenly broken loose.
Her strength seemed to drain out through the soles of her feet. She sank to the edge of the hotel lawn, afraid she was going to faint. Apparently, so did a couple who passed her. “Looks as if she’s had one too many,” the woman remarked, giving her a wide berth.
Imogen didn’t care. She had only one thought, to hide herself behind the closed door of her room before she confronted the emotions sweeping through her. Not shock. She was past that. And not the thunderstruck notion that, after all these years, she was still in love with Joe Donnelly. That was so clichéd as to be laughable.
No, what terrified her was the feeling of having her back to the wall as destiny finally caught up with her. She had run for years. But in coming back to Rosemont, she had tempted fate too far, and it was about to demand a reckoning.
The phone was ringing as she let herself into her room. It was Tanya, calling for an update.
“You’re overtired,” she said, when Imogen tried to describe the foreboding gripping her. “It’s a long enough flight from Vancouver to Toronto, never mind the drive you had to face once you landed.”
But Imogen remained unconvinced. She was realizing too late that it wasn’t possible to dig up selective parts of the past. It was an all-or-nothing undertaking, and she hadn’t bargained on that, at all.
Patsy was stretched out on the couch, watching the eleven o’clock news, when Joe got home. “Hi,” she said, turning off the TV. “How was your evening?”
“Just peachy!” He flung himself down beside her and scowled at the blank screen. “Did you get the boys home okay?”
“Of course I got them home okay. What’s put you in such a lousy mood?”
“I’m not in a lousy mood.”
“You could have fooled me,” she said, subjecting him to uncomfortably close scrutiny.
He squirmed under her gaze. “For Pete’s sake, stop looking at me as if I’ve just broken out in spots! I’m not one of your patients.”
She let the silence spin out for a while, then said, “I gather your hot date with Imogen didn’t pan out.”
“It wasn’t a date.”
“Gee, you could have fooled me. The way you went racing after her, anyone would think—”
“Can it, Patsy!”
Her voice softened. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know she was that important to you.”
“She’s not.” He slouched against
