her things were packed, carried her suitcases to her car, a cute little bright yellow Volkswagen bug, and then said he’d follow her.
“All the way back to Magnolia Falls?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said, opening the door to his banker’s car, a sedate black four-door sedan.
“Why? You don’t trust me to really go back there?”
“Well…” he hedged, standing in the bright sunshine filtering down through the trees. “No. Not that. I just…I mean, we’re both going to the same place, right? We might as well drive together.”
“I’m twenty-four years old, Joe. I can find my way back to town by myself,” she insisted.
“Of course. I know that. I just…”
“Don’t trust me to actually come back. What do you think? I’m going to stand here and tell you I will, and then take off in the other direction? You think I’m a liar and a coward?”
“No. Really, I don’t,” he said, closing his car door and coming over to her, where she didn’t want him, not anywhere near her. “I just think it was a bad situation, and I’m sorry, about everything, and I know how important it is to your family to have you back, so…”
Not to him. To her family. Just as she suspected. He probably hadn’t given her a second thought, not in the way she wished he would.
“And what about you? With everything that happened, I mean?” she asked, before he could think she was asking about him and her. “Let’s say, with Kate being married. How are you with that?”
“I hope she’s happy,” he said, and seemed to mean it.
Could he possibly? He’d been crazy about her sister since the moment she’d met him. He’d followed her back to Magnolia Falls after graduation, taken a job at the local bank and settled down there, becoming as much a part of the town as Kathie and her siblings, who had been born there. His mother had left some silly retirement village someplace near Atlanta to go there, and when it had been time to move his grandmother into a nursing home, they’d brought her to Magnolia Falls, too. This was a man who’d been sure of himself and his future with her sister.
“Kate seems really happy with Ben,” Joe added. “I see them around town every now and then. I just ran into Ben yesterday, at the town picnic, as a matter of fact.”
Which meant…what? That they were buddies now? That it didn’t hurt at all, thinking about Kate married to someone else?
Kathie stared at the face of the man she’d dreamed about for years and couldn’t detect the first hint of what was going on inside of him. That was one thing about Joe that had always kept her guessing. He wasn’t a man to show easily how he felt. He could be dying inside, and she wasn’t sure she’d ever know it.
Was that how he felt now? Like he was dying inside?
Or was he over the whole thing?
Kathie didn’t see how that could be possible. Five years together didn’t just disappear into a puff of smoke, not what they’d had. They were meant to be together. Everyone had said so. And Kathie had ruined it by throwing herself at Joe and confusing him, until out of guilt, he’d confessed what had happened to Kate.
That was all it had been. Kathie was sure of it. Guilt, confusion and a few stolen kisses.
Not love.
Not anything like that.
And now he stood there in front of her saying Kate seemed happy and acting like he and Kate’s new husband were the best of friends?
No way Kathie was buying that act.
“Are you ready to go?” Joe asked.
“Yes, but there is no way you’re following me all the way back home, like I’m sixteen and can’t be trusted in a car by myself,” she said.
“But—”
“No. No arguments.” She wasn’t going to be treated like a child. “Go on. I’ll see you there.”
He followed her!
That infuriating man tried to follow her all the way home. She’d speed up. He’d speed up. She’d slow down, and he would, too, from his spot three cars behind her on the highway.
She finally made it back to the apartment she used to share with her younger sister, Kim, a place she’d been paying rent on for months, even though she wasn’t living there, because she wouldn’t leave her sister in the lurch like that. Besides, living at the boarding school, she had practically no expenses, so she could afford it. She hadn’t done it because she hadn’t been able to stand the idea of not having a place to come home to one day. Really, she hadn’t.
Kathie parked on the street in front of the big old house now cut up into apartments. Joe pulled in behind her, getting out of his car, slamming the door behind him and stalking over to her side.
“Did you know you were going ninety-one miles an hour back there at one point?” he bellowed. “I didn’t think this little thing you drove could go ninety-one miles an hour, but it did.”
“What do you mean, Joe? Were you following me or something?” She blinked up at him, as innocently as she could manage, considering the fact that she was furious.
“No,” he claimed.
“Oh. You just happened to be three cars behind for the last four hours?”
“I…I just wanted to make sure you got home okay,” he said.
She was about to lay into him again when she heard a quick blast of a siren behind her. It was her brother. He pulled in, in his police cruiser, right behind Joe and was out of the car in seconds, grabbing her and hugging her and swinging her around in his arms.
“It’s about time you came back home,” Jax said, flashing the megawatt grin that had had women falling all over themselves to get to him for more than a decade. “God, I’ve missed you. We all have. I’m so happy you’re home.”
She gave him a big hug, once he put her back on her own two feet on the ground. “I missed you, too.”
Then she realized he’d just happened to drive down this street at exactly the right moment to find her getting out of her car. Not that it was the first time her big brother had just happened to drive along at exactly the right moment. He’d made a habit of it during her teen years.
Plus, there was something about the look that passed between him and Joe, as Jax said, “We can take it from here, Joe.”
“Wait a minute,” Kathie said, then turned to her brother. “How did you know the minute I pulled in?”
He shrugged easily. “Just lucky, I guess.”
“No, that’s not it.”
“Okay, I might have had some friends watching for you,” he said. “You know me. I’m always watching out for you and Kim, even Kate.”
“And
