child, Jamie thought, studying his serious little face. She assumed he laughed occasionally, but she had yet to hear it. He gazed up at her as if waiting for her to do or say something interesting, making her feel oddly self-conscious. “Um…so how are you, Sam?”
“Good,” he answered, then fell silent again, still looking expectantly up at her.
She was thinking about bursting into a song-and-tap-dance number—just to keep from disappointing him—when Bobbie McBride’s familiar voice came from behind her. “There you are, Sam! Why did you run off from me like…Oh, hello, Jamie.”
Feeling much the way the teenagers who’d greeted her earlier had probably felt, Jamie responded politely to her former teacher. “Hello, Mrs. McBride.”
Bobbie shook a finger at her. “I’ve told you to call me Bobbie. We’re colleagues now. And I still owe you a big debt of gratitude for rescuing my grandson.”
Since Bobbie had already telephoned Jamie to express her thanks, Jamie saw no need to go over it all again now. To change the subject, she smiled at the rosy-cheeked toddler in the seat of Bobbie’s shopping cart. “Hi, Abbie. How are you today?”
“Moo,” the tot replied clearly.
“We’ve been playing the animal-sounds game,” Bobbie explained. “Abbie just told you what a cow says.”
“Of course she did. That’s very good, Abbie.”
The little girl laughed and clapped her hands. Her more serious-natured brother tugged again at Jamie’s shorts. “I got a new book,” he said when he had her attention.
“Did you? What is it?”
Sam reached into his grandmother’s cart. “This one.”
“Berenstein Bears.” Jamie nodded approval. “I’ve always enjoyed their stories. This looks like a good one.”
“It’s about Brother Bear and Sister Bear spending the night at their grandmother’s house,” Sam volunteered.
“Yes, I see. I’m sure you’ll like it.” She gave the book back to him. “Do you like to read, Sam?”
Bobbie, who wasn’t known to be quiet for long, answered for her grandson. “Sam’s always got a book in his hands—just like his daddy when he was a boy.”
“All that reading certainly paid off for Trevor,” she murmured. Jamie had once considered Trevor McBride the smartest boy at Honoria High. She’d also thought him the most attractive guy in Honoria. Remembering the way he’d looked the other night, with his neatly brushed dark blond hair, his serious blue eyes, his clean-shaven, strongly chiseled chin and cheekbones, she reminded herself that she hadn’t changed her opinion about either of those things.
Bobbie abruptly changed the subject. “I’d like to have you to dinner. Our way of thanking you again for coming to Sam’s rescue.”
“That’s very kind of you, but it isn’t—”
“Are you free tomorrow evening? Seven o’clock?”
“Well, I—”
“Good. We’ll look forward to seeing you then. Come along, Sam. We have to be going.”
Sam was still gazing up at Jamie. “You’re coming to dinner at Grandma’s house?”
Jamie couldn’t help wondering if anyone had ever successfully turned Bobbie down. “It seems that I am.”
“Will you sit by me?”
“I would be delighted,” she assured him.
Bobbie looked from her grandson to Jamie. “He certainly seems taken with you. He’s usually shy with strangers.”
“Sam and I are pals, aren’t we, Sammy?”
He nodded and Jamie was pleased to see a shy smile playing at the corners of his mouth. Maybe she would even hear him laugh before the dinner party ended.
“Moo!” Abbie shouted gleefully, unwilling to be ignored for long.
Pushing the cart, Bobbie instructed Sam to follow her to the checkouts. He did, but he looked over his shoulder at Jamie until he was out of sight.
“Odd child,” she murmured, shaking her head in bemusement. She supposed he came by it honestly. The McBrides were a notoriously offbeat family, though Bobbie and her husband Caleb seemed to be the least scandal-prone of the bunch.
EXPECTING BOBBIE TO ANSWER her doorbell the next evening, Jamie was caught momentarily off guard when Trevor opened the door, instead. She recovered quickly, regarding him with a faint smile she knew he would have trouble interpreting. “Hello, handsome.”
She had always enjoyed flustering him, which probably explained why she tried to do so as often as possible. She figured it was as good a way as any to keep him from realizing how often he flustered her.
She had suffered such a huge crush on him when she’d been a teenager, a crush she’d hoped at times that he shared. She had made no secret of her attraction to him, and she’d done everything possible to get his attention. It had shattered her secret daydreams when he had told her on the night before his graduation that he wouldn’t be seeing her anymore. He’d said they were too different—in age, in goals, in everything—and that there was no reason for them to pursue anything that couldn’t go anywhere. He had graduated and gone off to the East Coast for college and law school, and then had settled in Washington, D.C., with a wife from a suitably aristocratic Virginia family.
Even she didn’t know quite how she felt about him now, though her stomach still fluttered when he looked at her in that serious, searching way of his. Much the same way his son looked at her, she thought suddenly, realizing now why she’d reacted so strongly to young Sam.
A lot of things had changed since the last time she and Trevor had been together. The three-year age difference no longer mattered, and the very different career paths they had chosen to pursue had somehow led them back to the same place. She was becoming increasingly curious to find out what else had changed since he had so awkwardly let her down before.
Trevor chose to acknowledge her teasing greeting with a rather formal, “Good evening, Jamie. Please come in. Mother’s in the kitchen putting finishing touches to dinner, but she’ll be out soon.”
She sauntered past him, giving an extra little flip to the vented skirt of her short, sleeveless sheath dress—just in case he was looking at her legs. She could hear several voices coming from the living room, and she turned to Trevor to stall for a moment before joining the others. “It was nice of your mother to invite me to dinner.”
“Are you kidding? You’re the family hero. Mom would have liked to have a parade in your honor, but she settled for a dinner party.”
Jamie wrinkled her nose. “I tried to tell her it wasn’t necessary to make such a big deal of this. I really didn’t do anything all that spectacular.”
“You saved my son,” he said gently. “If Mom had insisted on a parade, I’d have gladly helped her plan it.”
Had
