she cried as her purse hit the sidewalk upside down and the contents spilled everywhere. “Oh, no!”
Ray dropped to his haunches and snagged several escaping pennies, dimes and quarters. Molly crouched, too, balancing precariously on the platform heels. She grabbed the purse and righted it, shoveling as much back into it as she could.
“Sorry,” Ray muttered, not sorry at all. He hadn’t meant for her purse to spill—hadn’t meant to literally run into her, but it was better than the clumsy, choreographed collision and fake apology he’d planned. He picked up a lip gloss that rolled to rest against the toe of his shoe. The tube was pink with red letters proclaiming Sweetest Strawberry.
He stared at it, then at her lips. So that was why she’d always tasted like that. A scent memory fed him flashes of them kissing and laughing and rolling around in bed. A spear of lust hit him in the groin. He groaned.
Molly lifted her head and he fell right into her dark eyes, just as he had the first time he’d met her. He swallowed and dragged his gaze away from hers, quickly checking on the P.I. The man was waiting for the light to change with his phone next to his ear. He spoke urgently as he squinted at the two of them. When he realized Ray was looking at him, he glanced behind him, as if considering retreating. But he stayed put. Barny. The lowlife’s name was Barny Acles.
Ray turned back to Molly as her expression morphed from blank through surprise to irritation. Her head jerked slightly backward and she wavered on those silly heels.
“Ray?” she whispered, her face blanching. Then she shook her head and laughed shortly. “Sorry,” she said, closing her purse and rising. “For a moment there, I thought you looked familiar.” She slung the straps of her purse over her shoulder and smoothed the front of her skirt.
Ray stood, too. “Hi, Molly,” he said lightly. “Sorry about—” He gestured vaguely.
“Ray?” This time the word came out as a hoarse whisper. “Ray Storm?” She looked up at him as if working to convince herself that her vision wasn’t playing tricks on her.
He nodded, smiling. But inside, he steeled himself. As soon as she decided that it really was him, she was going to do one of two things: slap him or turn on her heel and walk away. Hell, she’d probably do both. “It’s me.”
She shook her head and kept on shaking it—slowly and steadily. She took a step backward and angled her head. He watched a muscle twitch in her jaw. Her pale skin began to regain its color, starting with splotches of pink in her cheeks. “So you’re not dead,” she said tightly. “I should have known.”
He held his breath. This was the deciding moment. To his surprise, she didn’t slap him. She merely executed a spectacular pirouette and walked away.
“Molly, wait.” He reached for her arm.
She jerked away and squared her shoulders. That gave him enough time to jump in front of her. “Come on, Molly. Let’s talk. Catch up.”
She whirled back to face him, the sudden dampness in her eyes catching the late-afternoon sun. He felt a pang in his chest.
“Catch up?” she echoed. “No. I don’t want to catch up with you. So if you didn’t die, I guess that means you just up and left. Went back to wherever it was your family lived. It must have been nice to have someplace to go to escape the inconvenience of Katrina.”
She swiped at her cheeks. “I’m not crying about you,” she said defiantly, her chin going up another millimeter. “It’s just—even after eight years, I still hear about someone I knew who died in the flooding. Or somebody I thought was dead shows up.”
That last had a bitter flavor to it.
She gestured, open-handed, toward her eyes. “It’s kind of an emotional roller coaster.”
“Let me buy you a cup of coffee,” he tried.
She glared at him. “Congratulations on living through the storm, Ray Storm.” With that, she turned on her heel and flounced off.
Ray watched her until she entered a drugstore. Then he looked back at the neutral ground, but Acles had disappeared.
MOLLY HENNESSEY CLOSED the front door behind her and took a deep, shaky breath. She set the bag from the drugstore on the kitchen counter along with her purse, then held out her hands and watched them quiver.
Ray Storm was the last person in the world she’d expected to see today—or ever. She still had nightmares about the last time she’d seen him—the day before the storm. The day she’d realized that the only reason he’d slept with her was to get evidence that her brother was skimming federal grant moneys from the Louisiana Disaster Avoidance Task Force, or LDAT. Stupidly, she’d given him every last bit of information she’d known.
She hadn’t heard a word from or about Ray since Katrina. She hadn’t lied when she’d said she’d thought he was dead. In the chaos that reigned once the flooding started, thousands of people were left wondering about friends, neighbors and family. A significant fraction hadn’t made it. She’d grieved for Ray until anger finally replaced the sadness. Anger at him for using her teenage rebelliousness and her self-righteous outrage at her brother’s thievery to get evidence against him. Anger at him for making her fall in love with him.
No. Not in love. She shook her head as she headed for her bedroom to change, kicking off the heels. It had been a hard lesson to learn at age eighteen that the man she’d given her virginity to had used her to get proof of the discrepancies she’d found between funds received and funds used for the LDAT program. Once he had them, he was practically out the door.
Then, as soon as Katrina had hit, he’d disappeared. She’d feared the worst. Now she knew. Of course he hadn’t died. He’d just escaped back to wherever he’d come from. He’d deserted New Orleans. He’d deserted her. He didn’t deserve her love.
But damn, he’d looked great today. Really great. Same thick black hair, same dangerously dark eyes and the same crooked smile that had never once failed to melt her heart. His lanky body had filled out in the past eight years. He was still lean, but in a hard, silk-over-steel, grown-up way.
Then he’d had the gall to offer her a cup of coffee—to catch up. Catch up! Like coworkers who’d lost touch. Her fingers curled into claws. If she had a do-over and longer fingernails, she’d claw his eyes out for walking out on the devastation and sadness of the storm. For walking out on her.
She closed her eyes and tried to banish that first shock of recognition when she’d looked up from her spilled purse. But the darkness behind her closed lids made a nice canvas on which to display his handsome face.
It had taken her a long time to get over his callous betrayal. She’d been only eighteen. He’d been her first lover. She remembered the tender surprise and chagrin on his face when he’d realized that.
She’d grown up a lot during the past eight years. She’d dated some pretty fine men, but no matter how much she cared about them, she’d never been able to commit to the long haul. The memory of Ray’s crooked, dimpled grin always got in the way.
Okay. That was enough thinking about Ray Storm. It was Wednesday night and she had a date—with herself—to watch her favorite cooking competition show. She needed something for dinner that was portable, satisfying and yet with zero calories.
