Meant-To-Be Marriage

Jarod’s adrenaline surged. “Are we speaking of the same person? She used to be a schoolteacher at Cannonball High in North Dakota.”

“Yes! She said she taught English there for a year before she came here.”

“I knew her quite well. What a coincidence that you’ve been working with her,” he murmured. “Do you have any idea where she is right now?”

The girl nodded. “California. Her best friend, Ranger King, just got married. Sydney will be back on Monday.”

Frustrated that she wasn’t here, he was forced to suppress his fierce disappointment. He needed to come face-to-face with the one woman in the world who’d become necessary to his existence.

“I’d like to leave a note for her. Do you know where she lives?”

“Sure. It’s across the parking area, cabin five.”

“Thank you, Cindy.” He shook her hand. “It’s been a pleasure to meet you.”

He walked off before she had the presence of mind to ask his name. Within a few minutes he found his car and drove over to the cluster of cabins in the distance.

So much for the element of surprise.

After penning a message, Jarod left the folded paper inside the front door screen where she would see it when she returned from California.

Once inside the car, he started the motor and took off, pressing on the accelerator as he headed back to Gardiner. By tomorrow night he expected her to call him on his cell phone.

Yet he couldn’t silence the niggling voice inside his head asking questions he refused to contemplate.

What if she doesn’t respond?

What if she doesn’t want anything to do with you?

CHAPTER TWO

THE HARDEST PART about teaching school was enduring the first three days of teachers’ meetings before you actually got to meet your students.

At seven-thirty Monday evening, an exhausted Sydney hurried out of Elkhorn High School to her car. Following the day’s meetings, the PTA had served dinner in the cafeteria. Tomorrow she would have to come early to start decorating her room before back-to-school night on Wednesday.

Two blocks away she turned into the drive of her eight-plex apartment building and parked her Jeep in one of the covered stalls. What she needed right now was a shower, then bed.

Before reaching the door of her ground-floor unit, she sensed she wasn’t alone and assumed it was one of the other tenants coming home, too. Then she heard a man call to her in a low, compelling voice.

The urgent way he said her name conjured memories that made the hairs stand on the back of her neck.

No…

It couldn’t be…

It just couldn’t…

Still disbelieving, Sydney turned around slowly, convinced the fatigue of the day had taken unprecedented liberties with her imagination.

In the growing darkness she saw the silhouette of a tall, solidly built man. At first glance she thought he bore a resemblance to the man whose memory had been her nemesis. But two things stood out that made her decide she was mistaken, that she was looking at a stranger.

For one thing he was wearing a tan suit with a tie. The man she’d once known would never be dressed in such clothes.

For another, this man with his jet-black hair and brows was beardless.

Through her lashes she studied the unfamiliar lines of a strong chin and jaw with their five o’clock shadow. He possessed a potently male mouth hinting at an aggression that made her swallow hard.

“Sydney—” he whispered, reading her confusion correctly.

The deep cadence of his voice permeated to the core of her being. Like a matching fingerprint, there was no mistaking who he was this time. The reality of his presence sent her into shock. She fell against the door helplessly.

He started to move toward her.

“No—don’t touch me!” she begged. But her protest went ignored as the flesh-and-blood man placed his hands on her upper arms to steady her. She felt their heat as if she’d pressed up against a furnace.

“I’ll let you go when you’re able to walk without help.”

Sydney’s head fell back on the graceful column of her neck. Her heart pounded in her ears.

“Come on. Let’s get you inside.” He took the keys from her nerveless fingers and opened the door.

Convinced she was hallucinating, she started to feel light-headed. Her legs refused to obey her.

The next moment became a blur. With effortless masculine strength, he picked her up in his arms and carried her into the dimly lit living room. After laying her on the couch, he disappeared.

A minute later he returned with a glass of water. Hunkering down next to her, he put it to her lips. His other hand slid beneath the gold satin of her hair to prop her head.

“Drink as much as you can. It’ll help.”

Though her head was spinning, she did his bidding before handing the empty glass back to him. He put it on the coffee table.

Between his silky black lashes, the eyes she remembered burned like hot green coals. Combined with the male beauty of his features, he was so impossibly handsome, she groaned in reaction.

When it became clear he really was here in person, her strength began to return and she carefully sat up. Another minute and she was able to get to her feet, desperate to disguise the fact that she’d been staring at him with an intense hunger he couldn’t have helped but notice.

He stood a little distance apart from her with his hands on his hips, reminding her once again what an incredible-looking man he was.

Back in Cannon, the beard had made him seem more untouchable and intimidating. Without it, he…

She rubbed her arms as if she were freezing to death. In truth she was burning up inside with so many emotions, she couldn’t name them all. But topping the list was rage and anger for his coming here to enlarge the wound that had never healed.

“I have to admit you’re the last person on earth I ever expected to see again in this lifetime…let alone here,” she began.

Jarod’s eyes glittered. “Evidently you didn’t get my note.”

Sydney struggled to catch her breath. “What note?”

“The one I left inside the front door screen of your cabin at Old Faithful.”