Hometown Wedding

Clutching her heavy briefcase, Eden hesitated. She could feel her veneer of Manhattan-bred confidence wilting like a plucked begonia in the midsummer sun. Even after sixteen years, the prospect of bumping into him was enough to make her want to crawl back onto the plane and fly wherever it would take her.

She might have been tempted to do just that. Except that for the moment, her feet seemed to be stuck in cement.

She stood gaping like a schoolgirl, her eyes taking in the lanky grace of his six-foot-two-inch height, the crisp, coffee brown curls, the face she had once giddily compared to a sculpted Rodin bronze.

He was older than she remembered—leaner and sharper, the creases sun-bronzed into permanence at the corners of his eyes. But aside from that he looked the same as he had in high school; and as the old humiliation burned through the locked doors of her memory, Eden realized that time had done nothing to heal its caustic sting.

Why Travis Conroy of all people? Why here? Why now?

Even after all these years, he was the last person she ever wanted to see again.

Gathering her wits, Eden turned to slip off in another direction. But no, it was too late. He had spotted her. His eyes flickered in recognition. The hand holding the paperback dropped to his side as the old awkwardness crept over them both.

There was no way out.

Forcing herself to take the offensive, she strode toward him. “Hello!” she exclaimed with a brazen grin. “This is quite a surprise!”

“Yes, it is.” His smile was forced, revealing only a flicker of the dimples that had sent girls into rapturous twitters. “Edna, isn’t it? Edna Rae Harper?”

As if he could forget.

“It’s Eden,” she said, trying not to squirm as his eyes took in her beige linen pantsuit and her smartly coiffed pageboy, which had grown considerably blonder with the years. “I, uh, had my name legally changed after I left Monroe.”

“Eden.” He chewed the name experimentally, like someone tasting sushi for the first time. “I don’t recall seeing you down there in quite a while.” His voice was a stranger’s, cool and formal. But then, what else could she expect? Sixteen years ago, her little faux pas had been the scandal of South Sevier High School, and Travis Conroy had been its innocent victim. He was probably reliving it right now and grinding his teeth.

“I don’t make it home very often,” she said, shifting her emotions into neutral. “New York’s a long way, even to fly. But my mother’s having surgery in a couple of days. I wanted to be with her and to stick around the house until she’s on her feet.”

“That shouldn’t take long. Your mother’s a tough lady.” He had turned and begun to walk at an ambling pace up the concourse. Feeling awkward and uncertain, Eden moved along beside him. The awful possibility flashed through her mind that somehow he’d been sent here to pick her up—a harebrained idea if ever there was one. The last thing she needed was three hours alone in a vehicle with a man whose presence was a scathing reminder of the worst day of her life.

Whatever he was doing here, she would ride the bus as she’d originally planned. For that matter, she would hike the full 180 miles in her high-heeled sling pumps before she would-”So, how are you getting home?” he asked cautiously.

One glance at his face confirmed Eden’s suspicion that he’d only inquired out of politeness. “The bus,” she said. “It’s all arranged.”

“You’re not serious.”

“I’m quite serious. Mom isn’t up to driving this far to meet my plane, and I can’t rent a car because there’s no place down there to return it. I’ll be taking a cab to the bus depot, and from there—”

“Look,” he cut in, his brown eyes crackling with impatience. “The bus doesn’t even leave Salt Lake till seven or eight, and it stops at every two-bit town on the road. You won’t get home till after midnight. Why don’t you—”

“As I said, it’s all arranged.” Eden turned away with a smile of breezy dismissal and veered for a second set of rest rooms that lay just across the concourse. “Bye,” she said, flinging him a last backward glance. “Nice seeing you again.”

Bravado still intact, she swung through the rest-room door and collapsed against the wall. Her heart drummed a wild tattoo against her ribs as the fiery blush she’d always hated crept into her cheeks.

This was ridiculous, Eden lectured herself. She was almost thirty years old, and she’d spent the past eight years surviving the jungle world of New York publishing. To be thrown out of kilter by the memory of a silly high-school crush…

But why work herself into a froth? Travis Conroy’s reasons for being at the airport obviously had nothing to do with her. All she needed to do was make herself scarce for the next few minutes. By the time she reappeared on the concourse, he was bound to be gone.

The long flight had given her a headache. Fumbling in her purse for aspirin, she dumped two tablets into her hand and washed them down with a swallow of tap water. Her reflection flashed in the mirror as she stepped away from the sink, triggering a brief pause to study what Travis Conroy. had seen.

The fluorescent tubes glared down on light hazel eyes, artfully lined and shadowed, framed by a square-jawed face and crowned by a sleek, golden cap of chin-length hair. Eden had done everything possible to change her image since high school, but somehow it wasn’t enough. She had never quite broken clear of dateless, bookish Edna Rae Harper, whose romantic fantasies had colored the drabness of her life. She’d seen proof of that today when the object of those fantasies had recognized her on sight.

She leaned closer, drawn by a tiny dark mascara smudge at the corner of her left eye. Only after she’d dabbed it away with a moistened fingertip did Eden notice something else reflected in the glass—the line of urinals on the opposite wall.

For the space of a heartbeat she stood frozen, unable to believe what she’d done. Then a flush echoed from inside one of the stalls. The sound catapulted Eden into a panic. Snatching up her briefcase, she bolted out of the men’s room like a spooked jackrabbit, high heels skittering on the polished tile.

Travis Conroy was standing exactly where she had left him. He didn’t say a word—but then, he didn’t have to. The subtly condescending quirk of one black eyebrow told her exactly what he was thinking.

She plumbed her wits for a clever comment that would put him in his place. Coming up with nothing, she shot him a look of sheer malevolence, executed an abrupt left face and stalked indignantly into the women’s rest room.

Slamming into a stall, she pressed quivering hands to her hot face. Now she knew why she didn’t come home more often. All she had to do was get off the plane! All she had to do was breathe the thin mountain air, and she turned into Edna Rae again—bashful, clumsy, humiliating herself at every turn!

By the time she’d finished in the stall and washed her hands, Eden had calmed down some. She had no business behaving like an adolescent, she chastised herself. She was all grown-up now. It was time she started acting that way.

Monroe, Utah, was a small town, and she planned to be there for nearly a month. As matters stood, she had a choice. She could settle things with Travis Conroy here and now, or she could repeat the same idiotic performance every time they ran into each other. It was up to her to do the intelligent thing.

Facing herself in the mirror, Eden freshened her lipstick, smoothed her hair and squared her shoulders. She would handle this like a pro, she assured herself. She would be cool, detached and assertive. Travis Conroy was nothing but a small-town nobody. She had absolutely no reason to feel intimidated by him.

All the same, as she walked out of the rest room, Eden’s heart danced a skittish little tango of fear. What she was about to do would be as difficult as anything she’d ever done in her life.

Travis lowered his lanky frame onto a Naugahyde settee, hooked his Stetson over one angled leg and flipped open the paperback. The book was a fast-paced thriller by one of his favorite authors, but today, for some reason, he couldn’t keep his mind on the plot.

Turning a page, he glanced impatiently at his watch. Nicole’s flight from L.A. wouldn’t be in for fifteen or twenty minutes. If he could get through the next couple of chapters…

Oh, what the hell!

The book dropped to his lap as he surrendered to the angst he’d held in check since his first glimpse of the woman who called herself Eden Harper.

It was over, Travis reminded himself. He’d had sixteen years to put the whole silly incident behind him. By any measure, that was time enough.

So why were his emotions churning like the agitator in an old-fashioned Maytag?

This was crazy.

Checking his watch again, Travis shifted his buttocks against the sagging upholstery and tried to concentrate on his reading. But it was no good. The past was pushing into his thoughts, crowding out his efforts to forget.

And right there on the front line was Edna Rae Harper.

Travis slumped in his seat, remembering.

It had been his senior year—the year he’d captained the team that won its second straight Class A basketball championship. Edna Rae had been a sophomore then, younger than her classmates because she’d been double-promoted back in grade school.

Not that Travis had cared one way or the other. With her frumpy clothes, her horn-rimmed glasses and her way of staring at the floor when she walked down the halls, Edna Rae Harper hadn’t exactly been his dream girl—or anybody else’s, for that matter.

Travis had never given her a second glance. In fact, he’d scarcely been aware she existed, until that May afternoon when the year-end edition of the school paper was passed out.

Between the folds of each paper, someone had slipped a photocopied letter—a letter penned in a hand as delicate and feminine as the curl of a morning-glory vine.

Oh, Travis, my darling, when will we be together again? How long must I burn like this, tossing in my bed, feeling your hands on my pulsing breasts, feeling the velvet warmth of your skin and the sweet hot wine of your lips? How long before I hear your voice murmuring in my ear, I love you, Edna Rae, I love—