of both their futures could hinge upon what was said in the next fifteen minutes. Callie Magruder, he thought with an odd tightening in his throat. The girl he’d left behind.
She’d filled out some in the past ten years, the promise of youth blossoming into all the right curves and softness. Nothing to write home about maybe, not after the movie stars and models he’d dated in New York, yet there was an air about her, a blend of common sense and genuine caring that made a man linger. You could talk to Callie. What was more important, she listened.
“Callie?” he said quietly, trying not to startle her.
No such luck. She went still—no, more like rigid—her knuckles turning white where she gripped the broom. Slowly she turned to face him, her features as pale as if she’d just seen a ghost. He noticed that she still wore her brown hair long and straight. The jeans hugging her slim hips, as threadbare as her sleeveless denim shirt, looked like they might have survived some other era. So much about her was exactly the same, yet something he couldn’t quite put a finger on made Callie seem suddenly a stranger.
An angry stranger.
He told himself that it was no real surprise that she wasn’t overjoyed to see him, but for some reason, her scowl really bugged him. Maybe she felt she had issues with him, but then, don’t forget, he had some of his own with her. He was here on a mission, he told himself sternly, and he had to get to it. By fair means or foul, he’d get her consent. “Got a minute to talk?”
“Leave me be, Lucky Parker,” she said calmly enough, and all too coldly. “Go spread your mischief on your side of town.”
A far-from-auspicious start.
Still, Luke wouldn’t be where he was today if he ever backed down from a challenge. “Luke,” he corrected. “Nowadays, folks have taken to using my given name.”
She gave him a look as if he’d just made the speech in a foreign language.
“I’m thirty-two years old,” he said with a shrug. “Being called Lucky was kid’s stuff. It’s time I grew up, don’t you think?”
Callie wasn’t about to tell him what she was thinking. She held tight to the broom, half to prop herself up but more to hide how her limbs were trembling. All well and good to forget the man when she didn’t have to see him, but here he stood, all six foot two and broad, muscled shoulders of him. Lucky—excuse me, Luke—Parker in the living, breathing flesh. Lord, but she’d let herself forget how truly gorgeous one man could be.
Judge a man not by how he looks, she could hear Gramps chiding, but rather by what he does.
“Besides,” he added, a hard edge creeping into his tone, “I can’t say I’m feeling particularly lucky these days, anyway.”
She tilted her head to the side to study him. “You have your youth, money and health. How much good fortune does one man need?”
“You could say luck is in the eyes of the beholder.” He shrugged, glancing back over his shoulder. “Listen, Callie, can we go somewhere else to talk?”
Following his gaze, she noticed every eye in the shop was on them, each female reduced to speechlessness, their mouths formed in frozen, silent Os. They all knew who Luke was, of course, but few could hazard a guess as to what he could want with Callie. The brief time she’d spent with him that long-ago summer had been as clandestine as it had been idyllic. His approaching her now, right here and like this, must come as a shock to virtually every man, woman and child in the parish.
And make no mistake, it would be all over town in an hour.
“You’ve got nothing to say that I want to hear,” she told him, hoping he’d take the hint and leave before he made matters worse.
But she’d forgotten that this was Luke Parker. Left to run wild as a boy, he’d never quite gotten used to heeding the word no.
“You may want to hear this,” he said, this time with his usual cockiness. “Don’t worry, I talked to Mamie. She said it’s okay for you to take your break now.”
Turning her back to him, Callie busied herself with sweeping imaginary hair. “Yeah, well, no one asked me if it was okay.”
He laughed, a sound she’d once lived for, but which now made her as bristly as the broom in her hands. “Some things never change, Cal. You always did want to do things the hard way.”
“Everything changes,” she told him through gritted teeth as she propped the broom against the wall. “Even silly little Callie Magruder.”
He eyed her speculatively. “Nah, I’ll bet my last nickel you’re still the same good sport you’ve always been.”
Good sport? After so many years of absence, of silence, this was what he came to say? Not wanting him to see her resentment—or worse, her hurt—she busied herself with shoving the combs and brushes into her station drawer. “What do you want, Luke?”
“Ah, that’s my Callie. Right to the point. No time to waste on pleasant social discourse.”
“So that’s what you call this? Pleasant discourse?” She didn’t bother to keep the sarcasm from her tone.
“Why, I imagine it could be just about anything you want it to be. You set the tone, Cal. I’ll take my cue from you.”
Her fingers curled around a brush handle, the urge to fling it at him nearly overwhelming. He had to know what his presence did to her. Heck, danged near every lady in the salon, with their front-row seats to the action, had to know she was fit to bursting with unreleased tension.
Yet there he stood, acting as if the past ten years had never been.
Loosening her grip on the brush, she carefully set it in the drawer. “I’m real busy,” she said in what she hoped was a calm, measured tone as she slid the drawer shut and turned to face him. “Surely there’s some other girl in this town you can bother.”
“Five minutes. I swear it. C’mon Callie, what can be the harm in that?”
Plenty, she knew, yet she found herself staring back at him, even while knowing better. Lounging against the chair, hip propped against it and his arms crossed casually at his chest, he wore his patented grin, that come-on-you-know-you-want-to call to mischief she’d found so hard to resist.
“Why are you badgering me?” she asked abruptly. “What are you up to now?”
He shook his head, his blue gaze clouding. “To find that out, I’m afraid you’ll have to come with me.”
Chapter Two
Callie was curious, as he’d no doubt anticipated, but she had no time for his shenanigans. “I’ve got two more customers, then the long trek home and supper to get on the table,” she told him, betraying her exasperation. “I mean it, Luke Parker. You just move on now and leave me be.”
He held up a hand, fingers splayed. “Five minutes?”
“You’re not gonna let this go, are you? You’ll just keep at me and at me until you get what you want.”
She’d expected a
