But would it be better for both of them if she did? If she just turned around and went away again? If she had never come back at all?
Calvin walked Denise out, then came up to the counter and leaned against it, looking even better by day than he had last night. Sarah had always loved the way his dark hair curled a little bit at the nape of his neck, the faint hint of stubble that always magically appeared at five p.m., the long eyelashes on such a masculine face.
And here she'd thought she would be better prepared to see him now that the first shock was past. Good one.
"Sarah, I'm glad you're here." He ran a hand through his hair, leaving the dark strands sticking up just enough that she had to grip the edge of the cash register to prevent herself from reaching out and smoothing them down. "I was sitting in an Adirondack Council meeting today, and I was missing pretty much everything I needed to hear because I couldn't stop thinking about you. About the things I said to you last night. I was out of line. That's why I needed to come here today, needed to see you again to make sure that you don't hate me."
"Of course I don't hate you." How could she possibly hate someone she'd once loved so much? She forced herself to meet his gaze head on. "But that doesn't mean I'm backing down on the project."
He looked as tired as she felt. So much for the peaceful lake town where you could let your cares drift away. Not one of them was getting any sleep in Summer Lake.
"I didn't expect you to," he said. "Here's the thing, I know we didn't exactly see eye to eye last night."
She raised an eyebrow at that stupendous understatement. "There was practically blood."
He winced. "Again, I'm a total jerk."
"Don't be so hard on yourself," she said with a small smile. "Total might be taking it too far."
It was good to see him grin, and despite the words that had been shot out across a scratched-up table at the Tavern last night, Sarah knew she wasn't ready to lose him as a friend. Not when she'd only just found him again.
"When you said we should talk about the past," he continued, "you were right. I can see that now. We can't pretend nothing happened when we were eighteen. It's just that I swear I didn't realize it had affected me like that."
Appreciating his honesty, she found herself admitting, "Me either."
"Once we've hashed through everything, said whatever needs to be said, we can leave the past in the past. Where it belongs. You weren't the one making things personal last night. It was me, Sarah. I shouldn't have done that. I won't do it again."
He sounded so sensible now, so different from the man who had been coming at her last night, all emotion and unavoidable feelings. Sarah knew she shouldn't be wanting the intense, difficult Calvin back. But a part of her did.
Because then at least she had known he cared.
No. That was crazy. Of course she was happy that they weren't at a total impasse, that he was willing to discuss the condos with her in greater detail without it becoming a big, heated fight where one of them ended up storming out.
He cleared his throat, looking a little nervous. "So I was thinking, what if we each get one night to try to make our point about the condos?"
One night.
Her brain--and body--immediately spun away from condos and proposals and sensible discussions to other nights full of kisses, full of so much more than just kisses. When he had taken her out into the forest in the middle of summer, where it was only the two of them and the moonlight and the stars above, as they stripped away each other's clothes and lay on the soft blanket he'd brought. Where they'd made each other feel so good, so full of pleasure, so happy.
"Give me one night to remind you of everything that's good about Summer Lake," he urged her in that deep voice that had always sent shivers of need running through her, head to toe. "What do you say? Will you give me that, Sarah? And then I'll give you the same, to show me whatever you want."
Was that yearning in his voice? Or was she just imagining it was there because that was what she suddenly wanted to hear?
"When?" The word came out a little breathlessly.
"How about I take tonight and you take tomorrow night?"
The longing to be with him swelled within her, swift and overpowering, causing all of her emotions to swirl around inside her chest, right behind her breastbone. Still, she tried with everything she had to tell herself it was the businesswoman saying, "Okay, one night for each of us."
And not the flesh and blood woman inside.
CHAPTER NINE
As nervous as Sarah was about spending another evening with Calvin, she had to smile when she realized where he was taking her. "I haven't been to a football field since high school." The new coach was putting the kids through their paces when they arrived. "Funny, it looks exactly the same."
Calvin grimaced. "No kidding. We're in desperate need of an overhaul. But hey, it still does the job. And the kids still love it. The town still shows up every Friday night. One day we'll get there with something a little shinier."
Looking more carefully, she saw that the bleachers had seen better days--way better, if the rust stains on the seats and beams were anything to go by. The goalposts were pretty beaten up too. The seed of an idea flashed into her mind, a way she might be able to help, and Sarah made a mental note to think more about it later.
She took a seat on the least-dented row, only to jump up with a small shriek. It was like sitting on an ice cube. The wind had picked up since they'd left the store too, and she barely held back a shiver. "I didn't expect it to be that cold."
"Let's try this instead." Calvin laid out the blanket he'd brought over two seats. "I should have known you'd be cold, that you wouldn't be dressed for lake weather."
Sitting on the blanket, Sarah suddenly felt self-conscious, as though her dress was all wrong, the same dress she had put on that morning for an extra dash of confidence, to try to ground herself in who she really was. Only, now she was a greenhorn who didn't know how to "dress for lake weather."
"If I'd known this was where we were going, I would have changed into something else."
Obviously reading between the lines, Calvin said, "You look really good. I've always loved you in blue." But even as he complimented her, he looked irritated. "It's my fault. I should have thought this through better." He tucked the blanket up and around her shoulders and over her lap, until she was completely cocooned in thick wool. "Fortunately, I did think to bring this." He pulled a Thermos of hot cocoa out of his bag and poured her a cup.
When was the last time a man had worried about her? When was the last time a man had cared about something as simple as whether she was warm or thirsty?
"Hey, Calvin, awesome to see you out here!" one of the kids called. "Any chance you can come run some drills with us?"
Calvin grinned. "Howie, meet Sarah."
The teenager said hi, and she remembered being that young once, when the entire world was her oyster. Neither she nor Calvin had had any idea that it would all implode in the blink of an eye.
"We're just here as spectators tonight, Howie," Calvin told him. "I'll work with you guys later in the week, okay?"
But Sarah needed a little space, a little time to catch her breath and figure out an ironclad way to control her reaction to Calvin. "Go run drills."
Seeing the way the boy's eyes lit up--Calvin was clearly his hero--made her feel even more confident that she was doing the right thing by sending him out onto the football field.
"I'm here for you tonight," he said. "Not them."
But she didn't want to hold him back, not when she knew that these kids were far more important to him now than she could ever be. "I'm fine. Really. It'll give me some quiet time in the great outdoors. With helping out at the store, I haven't had much of that since I've been back." Heck, she hadn't had much of that since she'd left at eighteen. She spent most of her time inside either her office or apartment, usually in front of a computer.
For the next hour, she watched Calvin yell, laug
h, and run with the team, and she was almost seventeen again, watching him, so young, so beautiful, as he would catch a touchdown pass, grinning up at her in the bleachers where she sat just like this, under a blanket with a Thermos of hot chocolate.
But she wasn't a young girl anymore. And not only was he a man who had weathered far more than he should have--she was also making the mistake of finding him a thousand times more beautiful.
How could she not, given the way he focused completely on the kids, singling them out one by one? How the boys almost seemed to grow bigger from Calvin's attention, whether it was his hand on their elbow as he corrected a throw or because he'd just shown them exactly how to evade the defense.
Calvin had a very rare, very special gift: He made you feel like he cared. Her father had done that too; every politician did, but it was different with Calvin.
Sarah didn't like the way her thoughts were going, didn't like admitting to herself that her father's attention had almost always come with an ulterior motive, whereas Calvin simply cared because of who he was.
That was why she had fallen in love with him so long ago.
And why she was having so many problems with her feelings now.
Even when they were kids, he was the only person who had ever made her think about staying in Summer Lake. He was the only one who could have made her even consider giving up her dreams.
She shifted so suddenly on the bleachers that the blanket half fell off her lap.
Oh no. That was what this feeling was. It was happening again. All over again. Just one night with him at the Tavern--even a night that had been full of fighting rather than romance--had her crumbling, about to deviate from her carefully laid plans.
She knew she couldn't go there. Falling in love with him the first time had been easy, so natural. But doing it again would be beyond crazy.
Losing him once had hurt bad enough. It would destroy her if she let herself fall back in love and then lost him again.
This was precisely why she rarely came back to Summer Lake. Once she drove across that thin blue line into the Adirondacks, it was as if everything inside of her twisted up, turned inside out.
Calm down, she told herself, taking control of her runaway heart with an iron fist. He didn't want anything from her anyway.
Especially not love.
Taking a deep breath, she told herself that it was just a matter of mind over heart. From here on out, she needed to make sure she thought with her head, not with the erratically pulsing traitor behind her breastbone. And she needed to remember that if this project for the Klein Group went well, she would not only keep her job, but might also have the chance of making the leap to partner in the near future.
After practice broke up, he jogged over, then reached into his bag and pulled out containers of food. "Courtesy of the diner."
She eyed the food suspiciously. "How can that be from the diner? It actually looks good."
He laughed, the sound warming her more than she wanted it to. "Janet took it over a few years ago."
"You're great with those kids."
He raised an eyebrow. "Didn't you hear all the yelling I was doing? Bet the little punks are real happy they asked me to run drills tonight, huh?"
"They were. They know you yell because you love them."
"I remember when I took the job. I thought I was there to teach them sports. But that ended up being the smallest part of it. Mostly they just want someone to talk to--or to care about them enough to tell them they're acting stupid. Not all of them have someone at home to expect great things from them."
Silence fell between them, but she didn't reach for the food. Neither did Calvin.
"Look," he said, and she knew what was coming. "I'm really sorry for what I said to you that night when we were eighteen. You were just trying to help, and I--" He shook his head. "I shouldn't have lost it like that."
Shocked that the memory could hurt just as much now as it had then, all Sarah could say was, "I'm sorry I wasn't more helpful. I wish I had been. You don't know how much I wish that things had been different."
"Me too." He paused, then said, "Can I say one more thing?"
She wasn't sure she could handle one more thing. Not when it was just the two of them out here under the stars. Not when he smelled like soap and freshly mowed grass and Calvin. And not when she was holding the blanket in a death grip so she wouldn't reach for him and tell him that she was still scared and hurt and sorry she'd let him down...but that he'd let her down too.
When she finally nodded, he said, "Thanks for giving me another chance tonight."
Was that what this was--a second chance? For her to pitch her idea to him? For them to save their friendship? Or was it something bigger than either of those things?
"Same here."
"Well, that wasn't too hard, was it?" He couldn't mask the sound of relief in his voice.
Unable to shake the unsettling feeling that the reason it wasn't hard was because they had barely scratched the surface of their past, Sarah made herself smile back. "Okay then," she said, "I'm ready to hear your side of things. After all, this is your night to convince me I'm wrong about the condos."
She was surprised when he took the cup of cocoa from her hands. "Close your eyes."
But she just sat there, unable to follow his instructions so quickly. Not when there was so much trust involved in his simple request.
She'd always trusted him. The problem was, she wasn't sure she trusted herself anymore.
"Here," he said, moving so that he was sitting in the row behind her. "I'll make it easy for you." His hands came down over her eyes.
Warm. He was so incredibly warm.
"Breathe," he said, his voice low as it whispered across her skin. "I just want you to feel."
Oh, she was feeling all right--too much, in too many sensual ways--and with her sight temporarily taken away, all of her other senses came on high alert.
"I never forgot this smell," she admitted. She let the sweet night air fill her lungs. "Fresh-cut grass, the sap on the maple trees, the wind blowing in off the lake."
She wasn't stupid. She knew this was part of his plan, to make her remember everything she had pushed out of her life. She just couldn't see the point in lying about how much it affected her. Everyone had always thought she was so smart, whereas they'd been fooled by his big muscles, his charming smile. But she knew firsthand just how smart he was.
Smart enough to come at her not with facts and figures, but with sensation and emotion and memories.
The same memories she had been trying desperately to close off, to shut down.
"I always liked knowing you were in the stands," he said from behind her. Her eyes were closed now, but he didn't pull his hands away from her face. "What do you bet one of those boys on the team has a crush on one of the girls in the bleachers? From one generation to the next."
They were heading straight for the danger zone. She could feel it, skin on skin, his heart starting to beat against her back as he leaned into her and said shockingly simple things that played havoc with her insides.
She put her hands over his knuckles to slide his hands away from her eyes. But even though she was trying to put space between them, she couldn't help but linger over his touch a moment longer than was strictly necessary.
*
Calvin knew he was overstepping the line, but his problem with resisting Sarah was getting worse, not better. He hadn't brought her here tonight so that he could touch her, but he hadn't been able to help himself. Not when she was so beautiful, looking out at him from beneath the big blanket.
He needed to stop this insanity. Especially considering what he'd said--or hadn't--at the Adirondack Council meeting that morning. When they asked him if there were any building plans the council should be aware of, he'd said no. He hadn't even told his assistant, Catherine, about Sarah's plans.
For some reason, he couldn't stop himself from protecting Sarah, even though he was damn sure it was going
to come back to bite him later.
Forcing himself to move off the seat behind her so that she was out of reaching distance, he said in a gruff voice, "Tell me about the store. How have you liked working there these past couple of days?"
"You know I never planned to have anything to do with the store as an adult." She held up a hand. "But before you jump all over me again with the whole 'You're not from here anymore' rant, the truth is there are so many more facets to running the store than I ever realized."
"I'm a jerk," he said again, wishing he had never said those things to her.
"Yes, we've already established that," she said in a crisp voice. Then she shook her head. "Sorry. I didn't mean to bring it up again. I'm officially over it. For good."
But he didn't believe her, not when he could still see hurt flickering in her eyes. "Tell me about the facets."
She almost seemed surprised by her smile, by the laughter that bubbled out of her mouth. "You're so good at acting interested."
"It's not an act. I am interested."
And he was. Anything and everything she said mattered to him. They could have been talking about paper towels, and he had a feeling he'd be sitting here rapt, hanging on her every word.
"Well, beyond inventory and ordering, there's this whole layer of interaction with their customers. Not just on a business level, but on a personal level." Her eyes warmed. "My mother and grandmother really care about these women, about what they're going through with their marriages, their kids, if they're trying to go back to school, or if their husbands are looking for work. And somehow, the yarn has a place in all of that." Her face was glowing. And he wondered, did she have any idea how excited she became from talking about her family's store?
"I guess I can see how it would be something to pull people together." He gestured to the field. "Like football."
She nodded, licking her lips again. Didn't she know she needed to stop doing that already before he went and helped her out with it?
Because, damn it, it was so tempting to give in to the urge to kiss her. He had wanted to do it from the first moment he'd seen her standing outside the yarn store, had been dying to know if she still tasted the same as she had at eighteen--as sweet as sugar.