If someone had told her that within her first several minutes in Joyful she’d be lying flat on her back, with her legs askew and Johnny Walker crouched between them, Emma would have laughed in his face. Particularly if also told 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.
As a teenager, Johnny had been heartthrob material. Pure wicked, honey-tongued, hunk-a-licious male. The baddest of the bad boys. The motorcycle riding, cigarette smoking, heart-breaking 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, 100% 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, 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 General 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.
"I know this is only a March release but I think I’ve already found my favorite book of the year in Leslie Kelly’s She Drives Me Crazy. This is such an outstanding book on so many levels that it’s hard to mention them without giving away one of the many surprises found between the pages." Recommended Read -- Missy Andrews, Fallen Angels Reviews
