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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.
