“Sure,” she replied, and tried not to read into the way his chin lifted or the way his massive chest expanded. “Let me go up and grab those shoes.”

He nodded. Though she didn’t turn around, she could feel him watching her, even through the brick walls of the house as she climbed the stairs and threw on the ballet flats that were now just slightly damp. When she came back down, Leith was still leaning against the truck, arms across his chest.

He gestured to her purse. “You carry that suitcase everywhere?”

“It’s got my laptop in it. So, yes.”

He grunted. “Mind if I go back to my place so I can take a shower first?”

His place? This was moving too fast again, but she wasn’t about to let her minor panic show. “Not at all.”

He went around to the driver’s side door and nudged his chin toward the passenger seat. “Get in.”

“I can’t believe your dad is letting you drive his car when you just got your license last week.”

“He’s not.” Leith waggled his eyebrows. “Get in.”

So she did. Both back then—before he’d been grounded for a week for taking out the Cadillac without his dad’s permission—and today.

She clicked on the seatbelt, settled in. He threw the huge truck in reverse, backed out of her driveway with more speed than necessary, swerved the vehicle around, made a huge arc, and aimed it . . . right into the driveway of 740 Maple.

The truck stopped with a screech. He put it into park and whipped out the key. She sat there, mouth agape, looking first out the window at the tiny brick house with the metal window awnings, and then back at Leith.

With one arm crossed behind her seat back, he gave her the slowest, sexiest grin she’d ever seen. “Hey, neighbor.”

Chapter

4

The look on Jen’s face was absolutely priceless as she sat in his passenger seat and hugged that gigantic green bag to her chest. She looked like she’d been lured into a stranger’s windowless van with the promise of candy. Leith threw back his head and laughed.

“Relax,” he said. “You can wait here. I’ll just be a minute.”

But it took him a few moments to actually pull the door handle and swing his legs out, because he’d been sitting next to her for about 3.6 seconds, and he didn’t want to move away quite yet.

Shower. Yep. That’s what he needed to wash away the surreality of this whole situation.

He left her there in his truck, with those bright green eyes he’d almost forgotten about impossibly wide, and her mouth slack and open, ready to . . . say something. He’d probably get it when he returned to the truck; Jen had never been one to back down from saying anything she wanted to say.

He jogged into Mildred’s house and took the stairs two at a time, stripping off his grimy shirt as he went. He kicked his boots and socks and jeans into a pile in the hallway, and ducked into the cramped bathroom that looked like a bushel of peaches had exploded inside it. The shower curtain was frilly and dusty, but the water that hit his chest was refreshingly, wonderfully cold on such a hot, strange day.

Jen Haverhurst was outside. Sitting in his truck.

Jesus.

Watching her walk toward him on the driveway, the way her legs moved under that dress . . . He’d never seen her wear high heels before. When they’d been together it’d been all shorts and flip-flops and sneakers. She’d smelled of sunscreen and sweet girl sweat after a long day waiting tables. Whenever they made out or had sex, the ChapStick on her lips would transfer to his, and he would spend half the night lying in his bed, rolling his lips together to bring back the flavor.

Today—even though he’d glimpsed her half-naked through the window last night—she looked exactly as he’d expected, and yet entirely different. Better.

But the truth was, he had no idea what sort of person she’d become. Likewise, she couldn’t claim to know him anymore, either.

How much had he changed, when it came down to it? How much could he have been allowed to change, given the fences that had been erected around his life in this valley? The thought threatened to level him as he pulled on a clean T-shirt and jeans, and shoved his feet back into his mud-caked boots.

The second he opened the truck cab door, she started in on him, just as he’d predicted. “You live here? Right next to the house I’m renting? How the hell did that happen?”

He slid behind the wheel, averting his face so she couldn’t see his shit-eating grin. Then he turned to her and shrugged. “Fate is weird.”

She tucked a glossy piece of dark hair behind her ear and stared back at him with that wide-eyed look of hers. “Is that what this is? Fate?”

He had one hand on the wheel. The other, holding the truck key, froze halfway to the ignition. It was just a split second—a flicker of a fly’s wings—but there it was. That. That shuddering, overpowering, nameless thing that had overcome him one night a thousand summers ago. That thing about her that had flipped his brain from, “Hey, I can’t wait to tell my best friend Jen about that,” to “Wow, Jen is amazing and gorgeous and you want to be a lot more than just her friend.”

With a hard, sharp shake of his head, he cranked the key and the truck rumbled to life. He said, as he backed out of the driveway so he wouldn’t have to look at her, “I don’t know what this is.”

Jen settled deeper into the seat. “I thought I heard someone pull in here last night.”

“Yeah, I was out of town until late.” And then I saw you, half-naked. God help me, I can’t get it out of my mind. Change the subject. “So how much do you remember about the games?”

“Oh, gosh,” she said to the window as she watched the rounded hills and thick trees of Gleann pass by. “Bits and pieces. Nothing about the organization or anything, nothing that I need to know now, of course. But I remember the pipes and drums, that sound echoing everywhere. I remember the pretend sword fights and sneaking beers with you after sophomore year. I remember people in lawn chairs watching little girls in tartan dancing on a stage. But most of all I remember sitting at your dad’s feet watching the heavy athletics. He explained all the events to me. I wish I remembered all the details.”

Leith nodded and found it difficult for the tightness in his chest.

“I’m scared to ask, but . . . your dad?”

He cleared his throat. “Died. Three years ago. The old guy held on five years more than they gave him.”

“I’m so sorry.”

He was so glad he was driving so he wouldn’t have to see her face. Wouldn’t have to witness what would surely be the kind of pity that made him want to gouge out his own eyes.

“I’ve gone through all the stages,” he told the road with a practiced and perfected shrug. “Anger, denial, all that jazz.”

The truth was, if Gleann reminded Leith of Jen, Gleann was Da. The fact that Da wasn’t here anymore gave Leith perhaps the biggest reason to get the hell out, but it also packed him with some pretty terrifying guilt for up and leaving a place that had embraced him so completely. A place that Da had chosen to love as much as his homeland.

“Okay,” Jen said. “That’s good. He was such an amazing man. I remember that everyone loved him.”

He blew out a breath and turned into the fairgrounds, which were nothing more than a large, undulating field butting up against Loughlin’s cattle pasture. A row of barns, also owned by Loughlin—because what in Gleann didn’t the old farmer own?—lined the back side of the grounds, and it was there that Leith aimed his truck, gritting his teeth at every hole in the field his big white baby found.

“How have the games changed since I’ve been here?” Jen asked in such a sunny manner he knew she was trying to turn the tide of the conversation away from his father. For some reason it made him feel worse, so he flashed her a smile and draped one forearm over the top of the wheel.