holding on to the younger man’s camera arm. At closer range, he didn’t look particularly dangerous. All the same, she’d learned to be wary.
Oddly enough, it was his eyes she noticed most as the two men came closer. They reminded her of the icy fjords she had seen on her one and only trip to Scandinavia.
“Hey, get off my back, man, I was here first! Miz Sullivan, what do you think about the book—”
“The lady has no comment.” By that time both men had reached the gate at the foot of her front walk.
The younger man wore a headband and a ponytail. Attempting to elbow his pursuer away, he whined, “Hey, butt out, old man, this is my story.”
“There’s no story here. The lady says you’re trespassing. You want a story? Try the county courthouse. Oldest one in the state. Fascinating history.”
By now they were halfway up the walk, almost at her front steps. Sarah Mariah had had enough. “I’m calling the sheriff,” she warned, and turned to go inside. That’s when her foot caught the board she’d been repairing. She flung out her hands to catch herself, and the hammer flew across the porch and landed at the feet of the man with the ponytail.
“Jeeze, lady, you don’t have to get physical, I can take a hint.” He backed away, muttering under his breath.
Sarah was hurting too much to care what was being said. She hadn’t actually seen stars, but close enough. Rubbing her forehead where she’d struck the edge of the screen door, she tried to assess the damage. The very last thing she needed when she was in klutz mode was a pair of witnesses.
The younger man was halfway down the lane. He was shaking his head. The older man came up onto the porch. “Are you all right? That was a pretty serious crack you took.”
Up close, he was even better looking. She had learned the hard way not to trust men who were too good-looking. This one wore the shadow of a beard, which might or might not be a fashion statement. There was a certain watchful quality about him, as if he weren’t quite sure of his welcome.
Smart man. “Who are you? What do you want?”
“You’ve forgotten already? It’s only been, what—twenty years?”
“Have we met?” She tried to ignore the pain, but both her eyes were beginning to water. Even so, if she had ever met this man before, she would have remembered. His was not the kind of face a woman could ever forget.
Although on closer examination, there was something about him. Something about his eyes…pale gray, set off by thick black lashes and eyebrows. Where had she seen such eyes before?
He seemed almost to be waiting for her to recognize him, but at the moment her head hurt too much to think. “Twenty years?” she repeated. “I’m sorry, but—”
“More like twenty-two, I guess. Rocky Waters, Mrs. Sullivan. And you were Miss Anonymous Jones. The king was having a bad hair day, remember?”
Rocky Waters, Rocky Waters, Rocky…
Oh, blast and tarnation. “The tea and cream cheese.”
“Managed to salvage my shoes, but you know what? You’re going to have a beauty of a shiner. Maybe if you put something on it before the swelling starts?”
“The swelling,” she repeated, sounding almost as dazed as she felt. It was partly the crack on her forehead, partly the fault of the man standing before her.
To think of all the hours she’d wasted after that one brief meeting thinking about him. Daydreaming. Creating wild, adolescent fantasies about someone she’d met only once, and then in the most embarrassing circumstances. Seeing him now, years later and out of context, it had taken a few minutes to connect. He looked more than ever like one of those dark, dangerous Black Ops heroes in her favorite romantic suspense novels.
God knows what she must look like after a day of wrestling grapevines—with one eye rapidly swelling shut.
No point in hoping he hadn’t noticed. Taking her by the arm, he said, “You took a real whack there. Let’s go inside—you’d better sit while I get a towel and some ice. Don’t suppose you have an ice bag, do you?”
“An ice bag?”
“Thought not. You don’t look like the type.”
“What type?” Pain was beginning to radiate from her eye socket all the way down to her jawbone. Momentarily dazed into compliance, she let him lead her inside. “Straight through there,” she said, her voice now little more than a strained whisper. He pulled out a kitchen chair, and she lowered herself carefully, then watched as he removed a tray of ice from the avocado-green refrigerator, a relic of the last time her great-aunt had modernized her kitchen.
“Hangovers. Bet you’ve never had one in your life, have you?”
“No—actually, yes.” There were a lot of things she’d never done and now probably never would, but he didn’t have to know it. “Clean towels are in there.” She pointed at the drawer where she kept kitchen linens. “Why are you doing this? Why are you even here?”
Rocky took the time to crack the ice with a meat tenderizer he found in a drawer along with three emergency candles, a ball of string and a few dozen rubber jar rings.
Why was he here? Good question. He’d set out with honorable intentions—mostly honorable, anyway. Warn the lady of what was in the pipeline. Help her with a preemptive strike, but only if she thought it would help defuse the situation.
As for him, part of the problem was that he’d been unable to motivate himself into getting back to writing after Julie’s death. If the senator’s daughter needed his help, he would give it his best shot.
If not…no problem. He’d warn her of what to expect because he’d seen too many victims blindsided after a tragedy by having a camera and a mike shoved in their face unexpectedly. Warn her, wish her luck and leave.
At the moment, however, he didn’t think she was in any shape to hear what he’d come to say. “Here, hold this against your face.”
She took the ice-filled towel and placed it gingerly against her eye. “You were a lot younger then,” she said. “I seem to remember that our whole conversation was like something out of Alice in Wonderland.”
“Right. We were both younger. So…how’s Toto?”
“Still in Kansas. Wrong story.”
He grinned, managing to look both raffish and kind. “Just wanted to be sure you didn’t have a concussion. Want to count my fingers?” He waggled them in front of her face.
“Not really. Are you here for any particular reason? Nobody just drops in because they happen to be in the neighborhood. There isn’t any neighborhood, in case you failed to notice.”
Sarah wondered if she’d broken the skin. Along with the throbbing, her eyebrow was starting to sting. “You’re hovering,” she grumbled. “I hate it when someone hovers. If you have something to say, then say it and leave. Please.”
“I came to warn you about the book.”
She
