She Drives Me Crazy

He didn’t return the greeting. “So,” he murmured, knowing she’d be able to hear the edge in his voice. “Emma Jean Frasier has done what she swore she’d never do—return to the pits of hell disguised as the hills of Georgia.”

“And what do I find, but the devil waiting here to greet me,” she said, her expression not nearly as jaunty as her tone.

He tsked. “Still sassy.”

She cast a disparaging glance at the spaghetti sauce can in his hand. “And you’re still a big spender. Don’t tell me—you have a hot date tonight? My, you always did entertain with style.”

He instantly remembered their one date. As her eyes shifted away from him, he knew she was kicking herself for bringing up such a loaded subject.

“Guess I should hurry right out to that field over by the Nelson place to pick a bouquet of wildflowers.”

Her quickly indrawn breath told him his jab had hit home. And suddenly, seeing a flash of hurt in her eyes, he regretted the comment. Coming back to Joyful couldn’t have been easy for Emma Jean. Not with the way she’d left. Correction…the way she’d run away.

The thought helped him thrust off the moment of remorse.

“I have to go,” she insisted, trying to push past him. The brush of her arm against his sent a jolt of hot awareness rushing through him again. As they froze, face-to-face, breath to breath, he mentally tripped again into the world of Emma Jean Frasier’s sweet, caramel-eyed stare. Without warning, his senses went on overload, filled with a sudden, quick stream of memories.

Hot summer days when it almost hurt to draw the thick air into his lungs—particularly as he watched her walk down the road in her tight shorts and tighter tops. The way the sunshine caught the sparkle of gold in her long, honey-colored hair every time she walked by.

And that one incredible night. The cicadas taking up a nighttime chorus as they sat and talked for hours. The moisture of her tears against his neck as he’d held her in his lap while she’d cried over his no-good idiot of a brother. Then the return of her good mood, the way he’d teased her into giving him one of those joyous, dimpled smiles that had stopped his teenage heart.

He almost heard the soft strains of Garth Brooks from his truck radio as they danced in the moonlight. Almost smelled the scent of her hair—lemons and tangerines, sweet and tangy, just like Emma Jean had always been. Almost tasted the sugary, slick taste of her strawberry lip gloss.

His brain tripped one step farther, into truly dangerous territory. Right here and now, in the brightly lit store surrounded by people, he heard the echo of the forbidden, sultry whoosh her satiny dress had made as it fell to the ground. And the way she’d whispered his name over and over again when he’d been buried deep inside her body, certain he’d died and landed straight in the arms of an angel.

“Johnny?”

He flinched as she spoke, losing his grip on the can of sauce in the process. They both looked toward the floor at the sound of the loud clunk. Watching the spaghetti sauce roll away, Emma stepped to the side to avoid getting her toes crunched. Johnny took the moment to get a major grip on himself.

By the time Emma looked up again, he felt much more in control. He’d thrust the mirage of memories back to the depths of his subconscious where they belonged, along with all those other stupid, dangerous teenage memories—like hot-wiring cars, putting firecrackers in mailboxes and making out with girls underneath the bleachers after cutting class. Kid stuff. Just like his feelings for Emma Jean Frasier.

If he told himself that often enough, he might actually start to believe it was true.

“Seeya, Emma Jean,” he managed to mutter, pretty damn sure he sounded almost normal. Almost sane. Almost not crazy with wanting to reach out and either pull her into his arms and kiss the hell out of her, or shake her for leaving. And for coming back. At this moment, he couldn’t say which angered him more.

She nodded and stepped away, gingerly avoiding the sauce he’d dropped. Unfortunately, however, stepping over one can didn’t help Emma save her own. Because two seconds after she moved, she slipped on something, causing her feet to fly out from under her.

Then she hit the floor, falling on her butt like a big old sack of rocks.

IF SOMEONE had told her that within her first several minutes in Joyful she’d be lying flat on the floor, with her legs askew and Johnny Walker crouched between them, Emma would have laughed in that person’s face. Particularly if also told that half the slack-jawed, gaping town would be looking on.

What’d they call this? Déjà vu all over again? Because this was, pretty much, the same position she’d been in on her last night in this town, ten years ago.

Fate, she decided, was a mean-spirited bitch with a really long memory and a twisted sense of humor.

“Em, are you all right?” Johnny asked from where he’d hunkered down between her ankles to see if she was okay.

“No, I’m not all right,” she managed to bite out.

She’d slipped in some unseen puddle on the floor, paying such close attention to avoiding the can—and the man who’d dropped it—that she hadn’t even seen the other danger. Now her ankle and foot felt like they’d been twisted into a pretzel shape. For that matter, so did her stomach.

Not to mention her heart.

She scrunched her eyes shut, waiting for the initial rush of pain to subside. Maybe then she could deal with the fact that the first familiar person she’d seen in Joyful was the one she’d hoped to avoid altogether. And that he looked so damned good.

Johnny as a teenager had been heartthrob material. Pure wicked, honey-tongued, hunk-a-licious male. The baddest of the bad boys. The motorcycle-riding, cigarette-smoking, heartbreaking guy who’d been featured in every teen movie ever made and in every good girl’s most secret fantasies.

Time hadn’t been kind enough to tug frown lines on his lean, handsome face, put circles beneath his stunning blue eyes or gray streaks in his thick, walnut-brown hair. Gravity hadn’t sucked down that flat, muscle-striped chest and stomach. He definitely didn’t have the poochy belly and man boobs she’d occasionally—when in a vengeful mood—wished on him. He wasn’t saggy, pasty and pale. Devil take the man.

No, Johnny Walker was nothing like she’d sometimes hoped he’d be. Of course, the other times, she’d been vacillating between wanting him maimed, dead or imprisoned.

Liar. What she’d really wanted was him pining.

But, huh-uh, just her luck, he looked better than he had ten years ago. Bigger. Harder. Fully masculine in his adult body, with little remaining of the whipcord-lean youth she’d known. Definitely he had not wasted away having spent the past decade mourning the loss of the best thing he’d ever had. Her.

Nope, he was all hunky, smiling, flirty man. The jeans and leather jacket might be gone, as were the chains and silver stud earring he used to wear. But the “Yeah, I really can deliver what my eyes are promising” look was all, one hundred percent Johnny.

“Let me help you,” he insisted. “Hell, Emma Jean, I didn’t imagine you’d drop away in shock at the sight of me.”

She narrowed her eyes.

“Because I have to admit, seeing you was a definite surprise, but I don’t think I’d go swooning over it.”

His surprise certainly couldn’t match hers. She’d been so sure Johnny would be long gone. Instead, here he was, crouched between her calves, trying to ease her foot out of her sandal, as if they’d seen each other in the flesh every day for the past decade…instead of only in each other’s nightmares.

“I didn’t swoon,” she muttered. “I slipped in something.”

He just shrugged, continuing to try to unbuckle her shoe.

Emma took a moment to remember the look on his face when he’d first recognized her. She had to admit it—that expression had almost made the subsequent pain of twisting her ankle worthwhile. Surprise didn’t cut it. He’d been shocked. Stunned. And for one quick, nearly unseen instant, he’d been very, very glad.

Emma didn’t care so much about the shock. The glad, however, had almost been worth the sixteen-hour car ride which had ended with her falling on her fanny with her legs askew and the hottest guy she’d ever known in her life crouched between them. In front of the gawking shoppers in the Joyful Grocery Store, no less.

Who were all still gawking.

She sighed. Quite an entrance after ten years away. She supposed it was a vain hope to think no one here would remember her being caught in pretty much this same position on prom night.

Oh, well, at least she wasn’t stark naked this time.

As she ruthlessly shoved the hint of pleasure that Johnny was glad to see her out of her brain, she acknowledged the other parts of her body that were also sparking in reaction. My, oh my, those hard, lean hips of his were between her legs and she was looking at his thick, dark head of hair, remembering tangling her fingers in it. Suddenly she was feeling damp—down low—and it had nothing to do with whatever spilled liquid she’d fallen in.

Closing her eyes, Emma took a deep breath, trying to work up the courage to deal with her current predicament. Hmm…she was flat on her butt in public, lusting for a guy she should hate, wishing her panties weren’t so tight and her skirt wasn’t so short and her sex life hadn’t been so miserable lately that her own body would betray her in spite of the pain in her ankle. And in her heart.

Today was going onto her top ten list of bad days.

“I’m sorry, Emma Jean, your foot’s already swelling.”

Sorry for causing her to slip on some unseen wet spot? Or for breaking her heart? Not that she’d give him the satisfaction of voicing that question. No, Johnny Walker had no idea he’d broken her heart…because he’d never known it was his to break.