1

ANGELA HARRIS placed one manicured nail between her teeth, aching to bite the scarlet enamel. She thought she'd cured herself of the habit years ago. But old ways died hard, especially when she stood outside her ten-year reunion staring at an eighteen-by-twenty-seven enlargement of a picture Jack Sullivan had taken of her at their first high school dance.

"It's like staring in a mirror, isn't it?"

Jack's deep, resonant voice drifted past the soft background music and chatter coming from the ballroom behind him. On a current of wine-sweetened breath, his words swept over her bare shoulder and caressed the sensitive shell of her ear. Her jaw slackened, releasing her captive nail from her teeth.

Show time.

"I can't remember being that person," she lied, not ready to turn and face the man who'd snapped the shot when he was a yearbook staffer and not a well-known professional photographer. Not that she hadn't spent the majority of the reunion's kick-off cocktail party staring at him. While she had given the impression of listening attentively to former classmates, she'd watched Jack do the same across the room. She studied his square-jawed face, which had hardened well with age, his emerald eyes, which still glinted with an edge of mischievous daring, and his athletic physique, which fit impressively into his expensive Italian suit. Oh, she'd seen him, all right—enough to know it wouldn't be easy to go through with her plan. Enjoyable, maybe, but definitely not easy.

But she had to get Jack Sullivan out from under her skin. There had been long stretches of time when she hadn't thought of him, hadn't romanticized the short, sweet relationship they'd enjoyed. But those times were over. For the past year, he'd been increasingly a part of her life, even though he didn't know it. She had to prove to herself, once and for all, that a long-term association with the man would be bad news.

Her plan was simple—sleep with him, prove to herself how meaningless sex would be, then move on to someone who could give her the commitment she demanded.

After all, she had a daughter to protect—the child of her best friend, Chryssie, whom Angela had adopted when Chryssie died five years ago. She tried not to think about Dani now, but how could she not, with Jack standing right behind her, his ocean-green eyes, so like Dani's, staring at her?

She gathered her resolve. Jack didn't know about Dani. Maybe he never would. But she definitely wouldn't tell him until she squelched her lasting attraction to him. "That girl in the picture and I are no longer acquainted."

"Oh, come on," he contested. "You can't have changed that much since graduation, my prairie angel."

He took a step closer when he voiced the secret pet name, and his breath singed the back of her neck. Her lids fluttered. She could feel his hands just behind her—not touching her, but wanting to. Did she really want his touch again?

Then she gazed at that damned photograph. There she stood, dressed in the prairie style she'd favored then, along with every other diligent reader of Seventeen magazine. She looked so tellingly like a prim and proper schoolmarm from the Old West. Frills and ruffles covered her from her neck to the opaque hose tucked into calf-high boots. She'd covered up more than just skin in those days. But that was a long time ago.

Do it, Angela. You have to. Your future can't begin until you close this door to the past.

"Do I look like a prairie angel now, Jack?"

With deliberate slowness, she glanced at him over her tanned shoulder. She'd practiced the look in the mirror a hundred times. Seductive, but with a hint of coyness. Would it work?

He took a deep breath. "I've spent all evening looking for her."

"Do you really want to find her?" She kept her voice low and husky. "Or would you rather discover who I am now?"

Jack's stare met hers and matched the challenge that was ten years in the making.

"Oh, I don't know. I always liked you as a brunette," he teased, twining one of the tendrils of her dramatically upswept and newly colored auburn tresses around his finger. "And your fashion sense has changed." He glanced to where the halter top of her black crepe outfit ended, leaving her midriff bare until the material resumed at her hips and ended well above her knees. "But I wonder if you're still hiding behind your clothes."

She turned away, but only for an instant. He hadn't lost his perceptiveness, that was for sure. Now, however, she knew how to distract him.

"There's not much to hide behind anymore," she quipped, smiling as his gaze dipped to her revealing neckline.

His face was inches from hers. "A woman like you doesn't need much to hide behind."

If he'd been wrong, it wouldn't have been so difficult for her to laugh.

His proximity unnerved her, but she squared her shoulders, determined. She had to grab this opportunity before she lost her courage, before the enticing scent of his cologne and the audacious look in his eyes sent her running for safety.

Since graduation, she'd tortured herself with the question, "What if?" So he hadn't known she wore a skimpy teddy underneath her prom dress, or that she'd started on the Pill two weeks before. She'd decided to give him her virginity, but he ended up giving her grief because she'd danced with a friend instead of with him.

They'd had a shouting match, which ended with Jack stomping off and Chryssie's boyfriend agreeing to drive her home. Except for graduation and a brief encounter at a college party, she hadn't seen Jack since. She had every right to ask herself, "What if," to wonder how good it would have been.

Especially after she'd discovered the secret that propelled Jack from the back burner of her heart to the forefront of her life. Her only chance to control her future and Dani's centered on permanently destroying the indomitable bond tying Jack to her.

Copyright © 1998 by Julie Leto Klapka.