Missy Snowdon…
Her chest suddenly tight, Susannah stared down at the telephone messages. She struggled to keep her face impassive.
Surely she’d heard wrong. Or else Rachel had remembered wrong.
For one thing, Missy Snowdon had left Texas years ago. She’d gone to Hollywood, or maybe Vegas…one of those cities that act like magnets on women who are mostly made of collagen and silicone and bleach.
For another, Missy Snowdon wasn’t the volunteering type. She was a player, not a worker. A taker, not a giver.
“Um…” Rachel tilted her head, obviously unsettled by something she saw in Susannah’s face. “I hope I didn’t do the wrong thing. I never would have let her sign up if she hadn’t said she was your friend. If that’s not true—”
“It’s okay,” Susannah said. “It’s true. We were…we went to high school together.”
She couldn’t bring herself to speak the word friends. Once, she’d thought so, but…
As she’d said, Missy Snowdon was a taker. And what she’d taken from Susannah was Trent.
Rachel still looked worried, her brow furrowed. “Are you sure? The class is observing in Restorative this morning. I could go over and pull her out—”
“No, no, don’t be silly. We don’t have so many volunteers that we can afford to chase one away.”
Rachel nodded. She knew what a struggle it was to fill the positions.
Susannah managed a smile. “I should get to these phone messages, I suppose. I can’t stay long today.”
“Oh, of course, what was I thinking? Call Dr. Grieve first. Then Mrs. McManus. Be sure to leave Des Barkley at the Daily Grower for last. He wants an interview about the peach party, which is good, but you know how he talks.”
Susannah nodded. She knew.
It wasn’t easy, but somehow she got through the stack by noon. Some of it really was urgent. Some of it was downright boring. But at least it kept her mind off other things.
Like Trent.
And Missy Snowdon.
Susannah wished she’d had the nerve to ask Rachel how Missy looked. Back in high school, Missy had been the fairy princess, with a waterfall of blond hair and round, lash-heavy blue eyes. But the looks had been deceiving. Underneath all that innocent beauty beat the heart of a tiger.
For Missy Snowdon, a day without risk was a day without sunshine. She shoplifted trinkets she could easily afford, cheated on tests she was sure to ace anyhow. She ignored stop signs and streetlights, even when she had all the time in the world, gaily waving her beer can at every policeman she passed.
And boys…she could have had anyone in the school, from the greenest freshman to the married principal himself. But she had been picky. She wanted only the best. And only the ones who were already taken.
Like Trent.
Susannah tapped her pen against the calendar blotter. Finally, she stood up, unable to resist temptation any longer. Forget playing it cool. She had to see Missy for herself.
It would probably make her feel much better. Surely another decade of bleaching, boozing and bed-hopping had taken its toll. If there was any justice in this world, Missy probably looked a rode-hard fifty, and that would be a sight for sore eyes.
Susannah made her way to Restorative, passing from the relative quiet of the administrative wing to the noisy corridors of the clinic. Though she hurried, it was the lunch hour, and the trail was a bit of an obstacle course.
When she reached the small room where special restorative nurses were feeding the patients, she realized she was too late. The volunteers didn’t hang out in any of the working areas. They would be intruding. They just stood to the side, observed quietly, then moved to a classroom for further discussion.
Darn. Susannah had lost her chance to do this the easy way. Of course, as the coordinator of volunteers, she had every right to poke her head into the training classroom and summon Missy Snowdon up for inspection any time she wanted. She had the power around here, not Missy. For once.
But she didn’t want to use it. What would be the point? If she treated Missy badly, it would only prove that she still held a grudge, which would make her look pathetic. Their troubles had happened nearly eleven years ago, practically in another lifetime. They’d barely been out of high school, for heaven’s sake. High school dramas had no power here, in the real world.
Just when she almost had herself convinced, a low, throaty laugh came from the west wing. The sound went right through her brave facade, like a dart busting a cheap balloon.
It had to be Missy. Because Susannah suddenly felt insecure and jealous and angry as hell.
She looked down the hall and saw a blonde woman moving toward her, flanked by two handsome, white-coated doctors who bent over her as solicitously as they would any critically ill patient in their care.
Susannah instinctively turned her head away, pretending to read a flyer at the nurses’ station while the trio floated by, still laughing. She caught only a momentary flash of Missy, but that was enough.
Damn it. The woman was more beautiful than ever, still a princess in her candy-pink pinafore, still sashaying her hips as if she walked to secret salsa music. Still flashing the wide white smile that dazzled quarterbacks, traffic cops, algebra teachers—and apparently surgeons—into instant enslavement.
“Ms. Everly?” Evelyn Marks, the charge nurse, had returned to the station and sounded surprised to see Susannah standing there. That made sense. This wasn’t Susannah’s part of the building.
“Sorry…I mean Mrs. Maxwell.” Evelyn smiled. “I guess I gotta get used to that.”
Susannah looked up just in time to see Missy and the doctors disappear onto the elevator. She turned to the nurse, who had been a casual friend for years. “Me, too, Evvy.”
Evelyn, a bouncy, round mother of six daughters, three of whom were also nurses at the center, grinned. “You look tired. How’s married life treating you?”
Susannah hesitated. But, like everyone else, Evvy knew the situation, so there was no point pretending to be a dewy-eyed bride.
“Well, it’s…tricky,” she admitted, opting for at least a degree of honesty.
Evvy laughed, but Susannah’s ears were tuned to the tinkling sound as the elevator doors slid shut.
Missy was gone. For now. But even as Susannah breathed a sigh of relief, she knew she’d been a coward. And it was only a temporary reprieve. Sooner or later, she’d encounter her old nemesis face-to-face.
More importantly, so would Trent.
* * *
TRENT HAD his bulky work gloves on, and he’d just arranged the chain saw, pole pruner and baling cord under one arm and the old wooden paint ladder under the other, so naturally his
