that he accepted his dismissal so easily. So what if his smile left her insides fluttering? They weren’t teenagers anymore. First love didn’t survive an eight-year winter of neglect to bloom again at the first hint of spring.
Still, having him show up so unexpectedly had unsettled her almost as badly as seeing him at the funeral. He stirred up too many buried feelings.
His voice, the curve of his mouth, the latent passion in his direct blue gaze, made her hungry for things she shouldn’t want and certainly couldn’t have. So, rather than risk running into him again, she waited until his footsteps faded, and the clang of the outside door shutting behind him echoed down the hall, before she ventured out to retrieve her coat from the staff cloakroom.
The sky had been clear when she left for work that morning and she’d enjoyed the two-mile walk from the guest cottage at the end of her parents’ driveway and through the park to the school. Sometime since classes ended, though, the clouds had rolled in again and freezing rain begun to fall. The ramp beyond the Academy’s main entrance was treacherous with black ice.
Twice, she’d have lost her footing, had it not been for the iron railing running parallel to the path. But the real trouble started when she gained the glassy sidewalk and found it impossible to navigate in shoes not designed for such conditions.
Turning right, as she intended to do, was out of the question. Instead, with her briefcase rapping bruisingly against her leg, she lurched into the dirty snow piled next to the curb, three days earlier, by the road-clearing crews.
It was the last straw in a day which had started badly and gone steadily downhill ever since. Exasperated, she gave vent to a stream of unladylike curses which rang up and down the deserted street with satisfying gusto.
Except the street wasn’t quite as deserted as she’d thought. A low-slung black sports car, idling in the lee of a broad-trunked maple not ten feet away, cruised to a stop beside her, with the passenger window rolled down just far enough for Jake’s voice to float out. “Faculty members didn’t know words like that when I was a student here,” he announced affably. “Come to think of it, I’m not sure I knew them, either.”
“Are you stalking me?” she snapped, miserably conscious of the fact that she cut a ridiculous figure standing there, ankle-deep in snow.
“Not at all. I stopped to offer you a ride home.”
“No, thanks. I prefer to walk.”
“Oh,” he said. “Is that what you were doing when you came sailing into the gutter just now?”
“I temporarily lost my balance.”
“Temporarily?” He let out a muffled snort of laughter. “Dear Ms. Winslow, if you insist on wearing summer footwear in the kind of winter which Eastridge Bay is famous for, it’ll be anything but temporary. Stop being stubborn and get in the car before you break your neck. I’d come round and hold the door open for you, except I’m having enough problems of my own trying to get around in these conditions.”
She debated telling him what he could do with his offer, but her frozen feet won out over her pride. “Just as well you’re not inclined to play the gentleman,” she muttered, yanking open the door and climbing in to the blessed warmth of the car. “I might be tempted to knock your cane out from under you!”
“Now that,” he remarked, stepping gently on the gas and pulling smoothly out into the road, “is why some people—people who don’t know you as well as I used to—talk about you the way they do.”
“And how is that, exactly? I’m living in the guest cottage on my parents’ estate, by the way. You turn left on—”
“I remember how to get there, Sally,” he said. “I’ve driven you home often enough, in the past. And to answer your question, unflatteringly. They say you came back to town and brought a bagful of trouble with you. Are they right?”
“Why ask me? You’ll find listening to their version of the facts far more entertaining, I’m sure.”
“As a matter of interest, where have you been for the last several years?”
“At university on the West Coast, and after that, down in the Caribbean.”
He didn’t quite snicker in her face, but he might as well have. “Doing what?” he inquired, his voice shimmering with amusement.
“Well, not weaving sun hats from coconut palm fronds or singing in a mariachi band, if that’s what you’re thinking!”
“You have no idea what I’m thinking, Sally. None at all. And you haven’t answered my question. What kept you in the sunny Caribbean all this time?”
“The same thing that’s keeping me occupied here. Teaching, except the children down there were so under-privileged that working with them was pure pleasure.”
“Very commendable of you, I’m sure. How long did you stay?”
“Two years in Mexico, and two years on the island of St. Lucia after that.”
“Why that part of the world?”
“They needed teachers as badly as I needed to get away from here.”
“What?” His voice quivered with silent laughter. “You never yearned to settle down in picturesque Eastridge Bay? To follow in your sister’s footsteps and marry a fine, upstanding man of good family?”
Once upon a time I did, but you chose to put a wedding ring on Penelope’s finger, instead! “Not all women see marriage as the be-all and end-all of happiness. Some of us find satisfaction in a career.”
“But not everyone runs away to a tropical island to find it.”
“I was trying to escape the winters up here. But this town is my home and I was happy to come back to it—until everything started going wrong.” She shivered inside her coat. The rain, she noticed, had turned to snow and was sliding down the windshield in big, sloppy flakes. She noticed, too, that they’d passed the turnoff for Bayview Heights blocks before, and were speeding instead along the main boulevard leading out of town. “You’re going the wrong way, Jake!”
“So I am,” he said cheerfully.
“Well, turn around and head back! And slow down while you’re at it. I’ve spent enough time stuck in a snow-bank, for one night.”
“No need to get all exercised, Sally. Since I’ve missed the turn anyway, we might as well enjoy a little spin in the country.”
“I don’t want to go for a spin in the country,” she told him emphatically. “I want to go home.”
“And you will, my lovely. All in good time.”
“Right now!” She reached for the door handle. “Stop this car at once, Jake Harrington. And stop calling me that.”
He didn’t bother to reply. The only sound to register above the low hum of the heater was the click of automatic door locks sliding home and the increased hiss of the tires on the slick surface of the road.
Stunned, she turned to stare at him. There were no streetlights this far beyond the town limits,
