warmth of the historic brick building, protected from the passing cars and steady stream of pedestrian traffic on the adjacent Main Street. “First of all, it’s not like we had a lot of options, since concerned parents were staking out local hotels to make sure high school students didn’t end up there. So if we wanted to be together and avoid detection, we had to go with the more rustic Plan B.”
She took a deep, bolstering breath. “Second of all, I was very much on board with what was going down. I knew the risks...yet still wanted the rewards.” Wanted you. “And you did, too.”
His memory clearly jarred, he favored her with a half smile that sent tingles soaring through her.
“What happened back then was mutual,” Shelley continued softly. “You and I both enlisted the help of all our friends to cover for us. We both planned that rendezvous down to the last detail.”
“I remember,” he said thickly.
“Then you should also remember that in the weeks leading up to that night, I didn’t feel in the least bit shortchanged by the rustic setting of the campground. On the contrary, I was certain that making love to each other for the very first time on senior prom night was going to make it all that more special.”
It would have bonded them together for an eternity. Just as the abrupt cancellation of their highly romantic plans had flung them apart for what felt like forever.
Shelley swallowed a lump in her throat. “But for a lot of reasons we chose not to go down that path.” Her heart had been trampled on, and she had been humiliated in front of all their friends. “So you have to quit talking about prom night,” Shelley insisted. “It does neither of us any good.”
“Can’t help it,” Colt returned just as stubbornly. “I’m a guy who likes to rectify his mistakes.”
“Or see what it would have been like on the road not taken?” Shelley retorted.
Colt shook his head, refusing to be dissuaded from his trip down memory lane. “Seeing you again, being with you, has brought it all back.”
For her, too.
He sifted a hand through her hair and continued huskily, “Wishing I had followed through on all my promises to you—”
And made love to me, Shelley guessed.
“—is all I can think about.”
She couldn’t help it: she’d been fantasizing, too. And although they were both single again now, she was also a mom with parental responsibilities to fulfill—and a myriad of personal financial problems to sort out. She could not afford to be an impetuous romantic anymore. Nor could she take the kind of emotional gamble he proposed. Especially knowing he could shut her out again at any time.
“Then think about something different, Colt.” Shelley put her hands on his chest and pushed him away. “Because what we planned for that evening is never going to happen. All we can be from this point forward is friends. Good friends, but...” She stopped in midsentence, blinked, sure her eyes were playing tricks on her.
But there he was at the other end of the alley. The exact person she’d been trying to find.
* * *
“TULLY.”
Shelley’s gasp rang in the alley as her ex-husband, the man Colt had loathed from the first moment he’d set eyes on him, strode toward them.
“I heard you were looking for me,” Tully Laffer said.
Several inches shorter than Colt, clad in plaid shorts, coordinating polo shirt and deck shoes, expensive sunglasses shading his eyes, he looked more ready for a party on his parents’ yacht than an evening in a small West Texas town.
Colt knew the polite thing to do would be to excuse himself and let the two exes talk in private. However, he wasn’t feeling particularly well mannered. He never did when Tully was around.
Fortunately, Colt noted, Shelley was focused totally on her ex—and not his dubious attitude. She stormed toward Tully, hands knotted at her sides. “Did you take out a line of credit against my parents’ house?”
Tully took off his sunglasses and hooked them in the front of his shirt. “I needed collateral to get the loan to start my adventure-tours business.”
Shelley looked as though she wanted to punch him. “Then your business better pay me back. Pronto.”
Tully shoved a hand through his thinning, sun-streaked hair. “I’d like to. Really, I would, Shel.”
“But?” Shelley continued to stare down her ex.
Colt couldn’t say he blamed her. It appeared her ex-husband was just as much an irresponsible party boy now as he had been when she had met him.
Tully gestured impotently. “I never quite got the biz off the ground. I mean, I went to a lot of the places I was going to offer packages on, like Belize, Aruba and Tibet, but it’s a lot more work getting things arranged than I bargained on.”
Shelley stepped backward, her body nudging Colt’s in the process. “You knew what the property settlement was at the time of our divorce, that you had no claim to that house I inherited.”
“Technically, yeah. But when I went to apply for the loan and the property turned up in my name, too, they said I could use it.”
“So you decided to commit fraud?” Colt asked, feeling bereft when Shelley moved slightly to the left so she was no longer touching him.
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