“All that promise, Camp. Whoo-whee, did you deliver.”
Campbell jolted, his head smacking against a stuffedgamecock nailed to the wall by its scrawny neck. A ragged maroon feather floated to the floor as his pupils adjusted to the light, the woman beside his booth swimming into focus.
Just his luck.Screwing-on-the-cotton-pressTammi had tracked him down.
“Hey,” she said, settling into the seat across the way when he didn’t move fast enough to accommodate the pointed look she aimed by his side. “Where ya been hiding? Haven’t seen you since baseball practice. And you know me, I’ve been looking.”
His lips twitched in that familiar way. He couldn’t stop the response any more than he could stop wishing the woman sitting across from him was?—
“Why the frown, Camp?” Tammi’s purple-tipped nails danced across the table, skimmed his arm from wrist to elbow, then retreated. “Aren’t you glad to see an old friend?”
“Honestly, I was justwaitingfor a drink and a little company.”
Tammi preened, wiggling in her seat, her bosom bouncing beneath a tank top better suited to summer than late fall. “Drinks coming up,” she said, flagging down a passing waitress like she would a cab on a busy street. “Bourbon and Diet Coke and…”
“Scotch. Neat,” he murmured, realizing he should have stayed home, ignored the restlessness that had set in after he tucked Kit and John Nelson into bed. Restlessness fueled by staring out his bedroom window and seeing a spark of light coming from Fontana Quinn’s cottage.
Letting him know she was awake.
And willing.
“Where’d you sail off to, sugar?”
Campbell circled back to find Tammi leaning in as far as the pockmarked slab of wood allowed, her cleavage getting a generous boost. Catching his gaze, a satisfied smilespread across her face. She tossed a batch of bleached-blonde hair over one shoulder and reached for his hand. It took every ounce of control not to pull away.
“Remember when we used to go two towns over just to buy beer from that run-down country store? The ornery old coot who owned the place charged us three times the going rate but never once asked for proof of anything. Sold us cigarettes too—Pall Malls, disgusting things.” She gave his hand a squeeze. “We had some code name, didn’t we? One we used in class and in front of our parents.”
“Grampa’s,” he said, wondering why he’d held on to that tidbit for fifteen years. What a waste of prime real estate.
“That’s it!” Her expression softened, the way a woman’s does when caught in the middle of a memory. “Afterward, we’d go down to the river with a truckload of blankets and food, that transistor radio with the bent antenna spitting out whatever station we could find. Mostly country, which we hated. And you, you could always set the best fires, Camp. I swear, they near to burned all night, throwing light clear across the lake. Magic, those nights. The freest times of my life.”
She caught his gaze, her eyes the same golden-brown ones he’d cherished for a month or two in the spring of 1981, the only change a few tiny creases shooting from the corners. The same eyes that had met his beneath that tangle of branches she seemed to treasure.
What startled him was how much she remembered—the wayshe remembered. The weight she placed on their time together.
To him, it had been nothing more than fun and games. Sex every day, when sex was all he could think about. Without commitment. Without obligation.
It called to mind every single thing he feared if he let himself get involved with Fontana.
“Why”—he dropped his voice and leaned in—“why doyou, I mean those were great times and all, I enjoyed them, enjoyedyou, but…” Campbell broke off as the waitress delivered his drink, which he grabbed with a hand that had begun to tremble.
Tammi waited until they were alone—bless her—to release a shrewd smile and an explanation.
“Why do I hold those memories close? Oh, Camp, the biggest thing I had to worry about was getting caught sneaking in my bedroom window after you dropped me off and whether my mother had remembered to press my cheerleading skirt the night before. I was a perfect size six without a wrinkle in sight. Secretary of the senior class, president of the home ec club. At the top of my game, the world at my fingertips.”
Her nails clacked against her glass in time with her accomplishments, one, two, three, four. “And baby, oh baby, I had dreams. I know that’s hard to believe now, but I did. Big, impressive dreams. Not a single one involved a curl and dye on Main Street.”
“I never meant”—he took a sip, the cheap whiskey tasting like shit but oh-so better than nothing—“to hurt you. To leave you expecting...more. More than I could give.”
Tammi wiped a smudge of crimson lipstick off her glass. “What are you, Camp? Almost thirty-three? Birthday coming up in a couple of weeks, right? October twenty-first.”
He nodded, running his pinky along a scar in the table. Could it get worse? She remembered hisbirthday.
“Did you think I wouldn’t? That date is etched in my brain.” She crunched ice between her teeth. “A woman thing, I guess.”
“I don’t know yours. April? August? Honest to God, I have no idea.” He dragged a finger through the dew streaking his glass, lifted it to his lips, and sucked. Then wished he’d checked the move when Tammi hissed a breath and wiggled back in the booth.
Autopilot. He was on autopilot. Flirting when he didn’t evenwantto. Talking to Tammi like he hadn’t since those hot-and-getting-hotter days—when their lives had been as settled as snowflakes in the bottom of a glass globe.
