Sloane barely tasted the fried catfish he had ordered and partially demolished. The fish was overcooked and bony, and not tasting it was a blessing. Out of the corner of one eye he could see Elise finishing a salad and talking to the man she was sitting with.
Lord, she was still beautiful. He had meant what he’d said to her. She had barely changed at all. It was as if she had been caught in a time warp, suspended like Sleeping Beauty, waiting for someone or something to come along and awaken her to the real world once again.
He gave a cynical snort at the last thought. How could she reawaken to the real world if she’d never been in the real world? Miracle Springs was a time warp. There was nothing here to make a person grow older. Nothing but heat and humidity and a mercilessly plodding progression of days that stretched into infinity until…
“Sloane?”
Sloane lifted his head to gaze at his son, and for a moment he felt caught in the time warp, too. There he was at age fifteen. The same face, the same color hair, the same lithe body. He blinked and cleared his mind.
“How do you like the seafood platter?” he asked, finally.
Clay nodded, surprised his father would want to know. “Well, I like it, but I don’t know what I’m eating.”
Sloane released a long, slow breath. Everything was new to Clay, even the very food he ate. His son had survived fifteen years on vegetables and whole grains like a damn milk cow. Before anger could overwhelm him, Sloane allowed the calm voice of reason to intervene. There was nothing wrong with vegetables and whole grains. Most of the country would be better off following the same diet. He took a deep breath, lifting his fork to point at different things on Clay’s plate. “Shrimp, oysters, some kind of fish—probably catfish—hush puppies.”
“Hush puppies?”
“Hush puppies. I’ll take you fishing for hush puppies someday, Clay.”
Clay, who had already eaten one of the fried corn-meal nuggets and recognized the taste, smiled at his father. He wasn’t used to Sloane’s warmer side, and he found he liked it. “You mean I can go fishing in the middle of a cornfield?”
“You’re a Tyson. Around here that means you can do just about anything and get away with it.”
“That should be interesting.”
They lapsed into silence once more, and it continued until the end of the meal.
Several tables away Elise tried to concentrate on Bob’s monologue. It was a useless exercise. She was as acutely aware of Sloane’s presence as she would have been if he’d been lounging across her table. She could see him out of the corner of her eye, silently finishing a meal he clearly didn’t relish. She had noticed one brief exchange with Clay, and then nothing more. Curiosity was the least of the emotions she was feeling, but she did wonder what relationship Clay had to Sloane. Whatever it was, it wasn’t a comfortable one.
She had carefully avoided Sloane’s eyes again after their impromptu toast. She was sure that he had been able to read the turmoil of her emotions in that one gesture. It would be just like Sloane to assume he had scored a point. She could almost hear his thoughts. Well, little Elise never married. There she sits, growing older by the moment, just waiting for the right man to come along and claim her. There she is, just ripe for a brief love affair.
Her own thoughts startled her. Was she imagining Sloane’s words or were they her own? Was she indeed ripe for a brief love affair?
She continued to nod at Bob at the appropriate moments and smile when necessary, but her mind was otherwise engaged. It only made sense that seeing Sloan would resurrect the feelings she’d carefully put in storage all those years ago. That didn’t mean she was still in love with him; that didn’t mean that she was even attracted to Sloane anymore. What it meant was that she was a woman who had denied herself one of the basic pleasures of life for too long. Feelings long repressed tended to make themselves known eventually. Sex was just one more factor to sort out in the jumble that was her life right now.
Having talked herself into accepting her feelings for what they were, Elise hazarded a glance at Sloane. He and Clay were standing to leave, and Sloane was watching her. There was nothing covert about his gaze. He was daring her to notice him, to respond to his departure in some way. Without considering consequences, Elise lifted her hand and motioned for Sloane and Clay to come to her table.
When they were standing beside her, she gave them both her warmest smile. Already Bob had stood for the introductions. “Bob Cargil,” she said, her voice steady, “I’d like you to meet Sloane Tyson and Clay…”
“Tyson,” Sloane supplied. “My son.”
Elise nodded as if that only made sense. She would puzzle out Sloane’s and Clay’s relationship later.
Bob and Sloane shook hands, but Elise noticed that Bob did not extend his hand to Clay. “Sloane’s back in town for a visit,” Elise continued, her intonation making the statement a question.
“Actually I’m back for the next year,” Sloane explained to Bob. Elise knew that the explanation had been for her.
“It’s nice to meet you,” Bob said, his voice coldly polite. “I know most of the Tysons. I went to school with your Uncle Jack.”
Sloane nodded. “It’s almost impossible not to have gone to school with somebody from my family.”
“Jack was a real hell-raiser, as I remember,” Bob said.
“One of the three black sheep in the family. My father started the tradition, so I hear.” Sloane’s smile left no doubt about the third black sheep’s identity.
Elise interrupted before they could go on. “Well, it’s good to have you here, Sloane, Clay,” she said. “I’ll look forward to seeing you both around.” She wondered at her own words. They had sounded like an invitation.
Obviously Bob thought so, too. “Miracle Springs is so small, we’re bound to run into you, aren’t we, Elise?”
She nodded, but she couldn’t keep a small smile from framing her even white teeth. Bob as protector. It was a role she had trouble imagining. She raised her eyes to Sloane’s, and for a moment their gazes locked. Then he inclined his head and turned to make his way out of the dining room with Clay following him.
“Black sheep,” Bob scoffed as he took his seat. “From what I’ve heard, Sloane Tyson was the blackest sheep ever to attend Miracle Springs High. And I wouldn’t be surprised if that son of his plans to set a new record.”
“Clay seems like a very sweet boy,” Elise protested. “Not rebellious at all.”
“What do you call that ponytail? And did you see what he was wearing? A Save the Whales T-shirt in the Miracle Springs Inn dining room!”
“Do you really think it was any less appropriate than the way those kids over there are dressed?” Elise pointed to a table where two teenagers sat with their parents. The girl was wearing a flowered Hawaiian shirt and enough brightly colored plastic necklaces and bracelets to add five pounds to her weight. The boy was wearing a conservative blue polo shirt but his hair stood up in neatly arranged spikes all over his head.
“Tourists,” Bob said.
Although Miracle Springs depended on tourism for some of its income, the local people looked down on sightseers who thronged to the area in the summertime. Elise knew that Bob’s use of the word “tourist” was a step away from profanity.
“Keep an open mind about Clay,” Elise warned, knowing all the while that she was asking the impossible. “He may be in one of your classes this fall. If you let yourself, you might enjoy getting to know him.”
The look on Bob’s face rivaled Sloane’s for cynicism.
Clay was endlessly fascinated with television. Sloane was not. Tonight as Sloane sat in the tiny living room of the house they were renting and listened to the television blare, he thought he would go crazy with unreleased energy.
He had got exactly what he’d bargained for. He’d wanted a safe, small-town environment for his son. Clay needed a secure stopping place between the unreal world of the commune where he’d been raised and the dog-eat-dog world of urban America. Sloane had known that life in Miracle Springs wouldn’t be exciting or challenging for himself. But he’d forgotten what it felt like to have the pressure build up inside him until he knew he was a walking time bomb.
What had he done as a teenager when he’d felt this explosive tension? He remembered crazy things. He’d gone skinny-dipping in the ice-cold water of the springs, driven his uncle’s pickup at eighty miles an hour over sandy paths in the turkey oak and pine wilderness of the Ocala National Forest, taken a pup tent and a case of beer to some sweetly scented orange grove south of town and spent the night seeing how much of the illegally purchased beverage he and his buddies could consume. Just because those things were different.
Then there had been the other way he’d eased his restlessness. Elise.
“Clay, turn that thing down!” Sloane stood and lowered the volume himself before Clay could even move a muscle. Sloane hit his fist lightly on the top of the television. “I’m sorry,” he said contritely. “I think I just need some fresh air.”
“Did you want to go for a walk?”
Sloane nodded his head, and Clay stood, his eyes flickering back to the screen.
“You’re in the middle of your show. I’ll go by myself,” Sloane told him. Clay, without a change of expression, sat down again.
Outside, the air still held the day’s heat. Despite the recent drought, the humidity was high, and Sloane could feel it shimmer around him. He had grown used to the crisp, bracing air of New England, and this steam bath felt strange and unpleasant. As he walked, Sloane paid little attention to the direction his footsteps were taking him. He crisscrossed Faith, Hope and Charity, grimacing at the ridiculous street names.
Years before, Miracle Springs, to get its share of Florida’s billion dollar tourism business, had decided to go all out on a publicity campaign. Sloane remembered that he had been about eight years old when the city fathers had decided to change the street names to attract more attention. In addition to the three main streets downtown there was a Love Lane, and two others roads were called Grace and Mercy. Luckily, the town council had run out of inspiration at that point— or else they had run into opposition from citizens who wanted no part of the sham. The rest of the county had been spared from suffering the embarrassment of the people who lived in the center of town.
Back on Hope Avenue, Sloane began to head away from the springs. His steps slowed, and he paid careful attention to his surroundings. There was a house missing here, a new house there, but essentially Hope Avenue hadn’t changed much. Mayor Biggs’s house had just been painted, a real estate office had been opened in the home of a childhood friend. And then there was Elise’s place.
Sloane stopped pretending that he had been going anywhere else. He was standing exactly where he had meant to stand, standing where he had stood countless times before. For a minute he could almost pretend he was seventeen or eighteen, waiting on the sidewalk for Elise to come down the steps and join him. Now there were no parents to disapprove of his visit. Only Elise, who would probably disapprove just as much as her parents ever had. Sloane looked up at the two-story frame house and considered his next move. He could go home again, or he could walk up to the front door and hope she was home alone.
And then what would he say? Hello, I just dropped by for a chat? Hello, I thought we could catch up on seventeen years? Sloane felt a surge of disgust at his own ambivalence. He couldn’t remember a moment since leaving Miracle Springs when he’d felt so disoriented. He felt like a teenager; he was acting like a teenager. Sloane Tyson, a man who had no tolerance for weakness in himself or others, stood on the sidewalk and wondered exactly what had brought him to such a state.
There had been no parting kiss when Bob dropped her at her front door. He seemed to have taken Sloane’s presence at the inn as a personal insult, an insult for which he blamed Elise. Considering Bob’s mood for most of the evening, Elise hadn’t been surprised when he’d taken her key, unlocked her door and said a chilly good-night. Then he had got in his car and driven away.
Now, Elise undressed leisurely in her bedroom with the lights off and the windows and shades wide open to capture whatever breeze was stirring. It was too late to catch the beginning of anything on television, too early to go to bed. She knew if she tried to read, the words would blur in front of her.
She pulled on a long summer nightgown of cool white cotton and sat on the bed, taking the pins out of her hair. It fell almost to her waist, and she brushed it absentmindedly as she thought about the evening.
She had finally faced Sloane. It hadn’t been as hard as she had imagined; she had handled herself with aplomb. She was not a confused adolescent. She was Elise Ramsey, popular teacher. She could think of no other description that was flattering. Spinster. Old maid. Unclaimed treasure.
What was wrong with her? From what corner of her mind had the self-doubt emerged? She had nothing to be ashamed of. Whatever her life lacked in excitement, she could at least be proud of the respect with which she was held in Miracle Springs.
Somehow, tonight, respect seemed a poor substitute for something else.
Her thoughts were interrupted by a series of knocks on her front door. Elise stood, dropping her brush on the bed, and then reached for the robe that matched her gown. The cotton was sheer, but not sheer enough to be revealing, and she gathered it around her as she hurried down the steps.
Sloane was just turning to leave as she opened the door. For a moment they stared at each other, both surprised. Elise, who’d felt perfectly modest in the gown and robe, now felt unclothed. Sloane, who’d convinced himself he knew what he was doing, felt tongue-tied.
“Well, I didn’t expect to see you here,” Elise said finally, pulling the robe a little tighter.
“I didn’t expect to be here,” he murmured, taking in the picture she made with her black hair falling over the delicate white fabric. His body’s reaction was unmistakable and he felt a surge of anger at its betrayal. He forced himself to speak calmly. “Would you believe I was in the neighborhood?”
“That’s one excuse that always holds water around here. Everything’s in the neighborhood.” She frantically searched her memory for the appropriate etiquette. There was none. Sloane seemed to be waiting for something, and finally, she shrugged. “Would you like to come in?”
“Yes.”
Elise stepped back and opened the door wider. Sloane brushed past her, and Elise felt crowded by his presence in the hallway. Sloane had always been big, and although her height was almost average, he’d always made her feel tiny and fragile. She wondered if he enjoyed having that effect on women.
“Are you here to pass the time, Sloane? Or did you have a reason for coming?”
“I had a reason.” Sloane turned and without asking for an invitation, made his way into the living room. Elise had no choice except to follow. “Are you alone?”
“I always dress this way for company,” she chided him gently.
“Bob what’s-his-name left early,” he said with satisfaction.
Elise felt small flickers of anger beginning to kindle. “No concern of yours, is it?”
“Only that I don’t want to make small talk with him.”
“You never were much good at small talk.”
“I never wanted to be.”
Elise realized that Sloane was still standing. “Sit down,” she said as graciously as she could manage. “Would you like iced tea? I’d offer you coffee, but it’s too hot even to think about it.”
“Nothing, thank you.” Sloane sat on the sofa, and Elise chose an overstuffed chair across the room, arranging her gown and robe around her as she sat. She was suddenly conscious that her feet were bare. That small intimacy seemed like one too many.
“Did you have a nice dinner?” she asked, simply because it was the only thing she could think of to say.
“Does the Miracle Springs Inn serve nice dinners?”
“You have to know what to order.”
“Obviously I didn’t.”
Elise fidgeted in her seat. “How does Clay like living here so far?” she asked after a few moments of silence.
“We haven’t been here long enough for him to form an opinion.”
This time the silence stretched for a full minute; Elise realized she found it unbearable. Sloane was staring at her and even in her agitation, she couldn’t miss the cool, male appraisal. Finally she stood. “This is awful,” she said with heartfelt honesty. “Even if you don’t want tea, it’ll give me something to do while we talk or don’t talk.” Without another word she marched into the kitchen, and Sloane, with a slight smile, followed her.
“I didn’t come to make you uncomfortable,” he said, standing in the doorway as she moved gracefully around the old-fashioned kitchen.
“Didn’t you?”
“Actually, I lied a little while ago. I don’t know why I came.”
“Sloane Tyson? Unsure of himself?” Elise heard the challenge in her voice, and it surprised her. All day she’d dwelt on the fact that Sloane had not forgiven her for her actions of seventeen years before. Now she realized that she had never forgiven him.
He went on as if she hadn’t spoken. “I guess I’d like to put the past to rest. We’ll be seeing each other; this town is too small to hide in.”
Elise nodded. “All right. How do you propose we do that?”
“We could catch up on each other’s lives.”
What a deadly game that would be. Sloane would tell her of his fame, his success, his loves. And she would tell him of endless years of caring for a petulant mother and teaching English. Then Sloane would be vindicated, knowing that he’d been right when he’d told her that Miracle Springs would strangle her, cut off her life’s blood and her spirit’s sustenance.
And yet she wanted to know about him. She wanted to know what he’d done and who he’d become. She wanted to know exactly whom she would be dealing with for the next year.
“All right,” she conceded. “You go first.” She held out the glass of tea and Sloane took it politely. Elise leaned against the sink and Sloane leaned against the stove. They measured each other across the narrow space.
Sloane began. “Seventeen years is a long time to cover.”
“I know some of it. I heard you got married and divorced. I know about your success as an author.” She weighed her next words and decided to go ahead. “I’ve read all your books. You’re very good.”
“I’m surprised you’ve read them.”
“Why? Didn’t you think people in Miracle Springs might be interested in philosophy or sociology? I particularly liked the one you did comparing the problems of Vietnam veterans and those who resisted the draft. I find your viewpoints stimulating. But then, I always did.”
Sloane held out his glass in a mock salute. “Touché.”
“No one likes to be patronized, Sloane.”
“Was that what I was doing?”
“I think so, yes.”
Sloane sipped his tea. “What else do you know?”
Elise shrugged. “That’s about it.”
“When I left here I traveled out west.”
“I know that’s what you’d intended.” She knew because she’d intended to go with him. Even now she felt a pang at the lost opportunity. Especially with the real Sloane Tyson standing mere inches away, overwhelming her tiny kitchen.
“I hitchhiked for a while and then I ended up with a group of people in the Destiny Community. Have you ever heard about them?”
Elise drew designs on her foggy glass as she tried to remember. “Clay said something about a Destiny Ranch today when I was talking to him at the springs. It rang a bell but I can’t remember why.”
“Same group. But seventeen years ago they were a traveling commune. They sold food and provided medical care at rock festivals.”
“Sort of a hippie Red Cross. Now I remember. And you got involved with them?”
“It was a way to see the country. When we weren’t traveling we stayed at one of their five farms. I met lots of different people. All kinds. For a kid hungry for new experiences, it was wonderful.”
“And then?” Elise looked up.
“I got tired of the scene.” Sloane smiled at his own lapse into sixties vernacular. “Drugs were plentiful and I got tired of seeing people freaking out. There were always good, stable people with real ideals trying to keep Destiny on an even keel, but there were crazies, too. One day I realized I was having trouble telling the difference.”
Elise tried to imagine a life like the one he was describing. “It sounds… colorful.”
“It was that.”
“Your books are so knowledgeable about the counterculture. Now I understand where you got a lot of your ideas. It wasn’t all impersonal research.”
“No.” Sloane finished his tea and set it on the stove. “When I turned twenty I decided to go back to school. Goddard College in Vermont had a program that was liberal enough to interest me. I was liberal enough to interest them, and they gave me a good-size scholarship. Then I went on to Boston University and finally Harvard where I was given a job as a professor of sociology.”
“You’re still there, aren’t you?”
“I’m on sabbatical for a year. Actually I don’t teach many classes. They give me lots of time to write and do the lecture circuits.”
“And you like Boston?” Elise wondered just how long she could make her final swallow of tea last. The glass was a useful device for keeping her hands busy.
“I live in Cambridge near the campus. Yes, I like it.”
“Where does Clay fit into all this?” Elise realized her glass was finally empty and set it down, folding her arms.
“Now that the conversation is rolling, do you think we could go back to the living room?”
Elise nodded and followed Sloane back through the house. They resumed their original seats, and suddenly they were both wary again.
“Clay,” Sloane began, “is my son by a woman in the Destiny community. We had a short… relationship, and when I moved on she didn’t see any point in letting me know she was pregnant with my child.” His voice had turned bitter.
“How could she do that to you?” Elise imagined that the anger she felt was nothing compared to what Sloane must have experienced when he discovered he had a son.
“She didn’t do it to me. You’d have to understand Destiny to understand how it happened. Pregnancy and childbearing were thought of as natural functions— impersonal natural functions. Everyone liked the idea of children, although how many people actually liked kids, I can’t say. Most of the women there got pregnant at one time or another. The children were raised by the community. Family ties weren’t forbidden, but they weren’t encouraged. As it happened, Willow, Clay’s mother, was a die-hard supporter of the Destiny concept. Since everyone was supposed to help raise the kids, no one thought to make a point of whose child Clay was. He never knew; I never knew. Only Willow knew.”
Elise sensed the emotion behind the clipped words. “And how did you find him?”
“Destiny’s time came and went. Their numbers dwindled. They sold one farm, then another. Eventually what was left of the community settled on their New Mexico ranch where, as near as I can tell, Clay has been since he was a toddler. Finally, even that property had to be sold several months ago. There was only a handful of people left at the end. Seven of them were kids under the age of sixteen.”
“And Willow contacted you?”
“Willow had been gone for years.” Sloane put his hands behind his neck as if to ease the tension there. “The authorities were called in, and the kids whose parents weren’t on the ranch were put in foster homes. Eventually they traced Willow to California. She’s married with a new baby. Her husband’s an accountant. He didn’t want Clay; Willow didn’t want Clay. She told the authorities to find me.”
Elise couldn’t think of one thing to say. Obviously, however, her eyes betrayed her feelings.
“Yes,” Sloane said softly, “it was the surprise of a lifetime.”
“I’m sorry. You’ve been cheated so badly.” Elise cast about for words to better console him, but found none.
“Clay’s the one who’s been cheated. A mother he never really knew, a father who doesn’t have the faintest idea how to be a parent.”
“Then you’re finding it difficult?”
“We’re getting by.”
“Clay seems like a nice boy. I think he’ll be a son to be proud of.”
“Your turn, Elise.”
Elise was jolted by the back-to-business sound of Sloane’s voice. She realized that her sympathy had made him cautious. Evidently the atmosphere had warmed up too much. She tried to sound matter-of-fact. Actually there was so little to say about her life that there was no other way to sound.
“After you left I commuted to the University of Florida and got a degree in English education. I’ve taught at the high school ever since.” She searched for details to make her existence sound less dull. “I like teaching, and that part of my life has been more than satisfying.” Damn, why had she said that? She might as well have announced that the rest of her life had been anything but.
“You never married.” Sloane’s face was carefully blank, but Elise could read his thoughts anyway. There was no point in trying to pretend.
“No. I lived here with my mother until she died last month.”
“This house hasn’t changed a bit. It’s exactly the way I remember it.”
“Mother got more and more rigid as she grew older. Change frightened her.” Elise tucked her feet under the folds of her gown and crossed her arms in an instinctive gesture of self-protection.
The gesture wasn’t lost to Sloane. He was torn between wanting to comfort her and wanting to rage at her for sacrificing her life for the whining, peevish woman who had given birth to her. “Did she ever love you for it, Elise?” he asked finally. “Did your sacrifice ever make her love you?”
Elise could feel the blood drain from her face. How could he? How could he take her life and reduce it to a pathetic quest for maternal love? Seconds passed as she tried to force words past the lump in her throat. “I think you’d better go,” she said finally. Her voice was as cold as his words had been.
“Not until you answer me. I want to know if staying here was worth it for you. I’d like to think it was. I’d like to think your life hasn’t been a waste, that you got something important from remaining in Miracle Springs.”
“None of this is your business.”
“I wish to God that were true.” Sloane stood and for a moment Elise thought he would leave. Instead, he began to pace the length of the room. “I made it my business seventeen years ago. I haven’t forgotten what we meant to each other; I haven’t forgotten you.”
He heard her quick intake of breath, and he stopped to search her face. “Don’t get the wrong idea,” he said with his familiar cynical smile, “I haven’t been carrying a torch. When you refused to go with me, it destroyed whatever we’d had. Except…” His voice trailed off.
“Except what?”
“Except that I wanted to be completely free of this place. I wanted to leave without another thought. Instead, you kept a part of me behind with you. I’ve felt the pull all these years. I’ve never been able to forget Miracle Springs the way I’ve wanted to forget it.”
“And you blame that on me. Convenient.” She was surprised that she was capable of such cold sarcasm. Inside she felt wounded, bleeding.
“You were the only person in this town besides a few relatives who ever meant anything to me.”
“You have a funny way of showing me I was once important to you.” Elise stood, too. She felt much too vulnerable sitting while he towered above her. “You come into my house and demand to know if I’ve wasted the last seventeen years of my life. You haven’t written or called or visited me in all those years, and yet you believe you have the right to answers.”
“We both know I have the right.”
Sloane was facing her now, and they were only inches apart. “Get out,” she said, as calmly as she could manage.
“Believe it or not, Elise, I want to know you were happy. I’d like to know I was wrong when I told you that you were throwing away your life.”
She wanted nothing more than to tell him that he had been wrong. She wanted to pull out warm, happy memories to flaunt in his face. But warmth and happiness had been missing from her life. Except for her students and Amy Cargil, no one had really touched her in seventeen years.
“I’m exactly what you see, Sloane. An old maid schoolteacher living in a house that hasn’t changed since you left. My mother died a bitter woman unable to reach out to anyone or appreciate anything that was done for her. I’ve spent my whole life giving love and not getting much in return.” She lifted her head a notch.
“But there’s something you can’t see, too,” she continued. “I’ve taken more risks than you’ll ever take, even though I stayed in Miracle Springs and you went off to see the world. I’ve given love, with absolutely no guarantee of having it returned. And I don’t regret one instant. I may be weak. I may be afraid of change. But I’m not afraid to give myself. Can you say the same?”
She had summed up the totality of his life in a few sentences, just as he had done for her. Sloane was shocked at her insight and more shocked that she would use it on him. Perhaps she didn’t think that she’d changed, but this one change was obvious to him. The Elise Ramsey he had known would never have fought back so effectively. Silently he applauded her courage.
“No,” he admitted, “I can’t say the same. I’ve lived for myself.”
“Has that made you a happy man?”
“Does such an animal exist?”
“I’d like to think so.”
“That’s always been one of the differences between us.”
Elise could feel her anger melting away. For a moment Sloane’s voice had lost its chill, and she could hear the echoes of the young man she had known and loved. Was it possible that Sloane was still vulnerable? That he too was searching for that elusive something that made life worth living?
“I think if you give up on happiness, you do yourself a great disservice,” she said softly. Unconsciously she leaned closer to him. “I’d rather spend my life looking for it and not find it than give up the search and miss it when it’s right in front of my nose.”
Sloane resisted the temptation to cover the distance between them. He could smell her sweet fragrance, a faint, floral smell that reminded him of orange blossoms and night-blooming jasmine. He felt something twist inside him, something that hadn’t moved in years.
He’d wanted plenty of women, but this feeling was different. It angered him.
“And if you had to reach out for this so-called happiness, Elise, could you do that now? Could you leave safety to find love?” His voice was cold again.
“You’ve never forgiven me, have you?” Elise took a step backward. The warmth she had begun to feel died. “I was young and afraid. And I felt a tremendous sense of duty to my mother. You never understood fear or duty. We were so different.”
Sloane shrugged. “It was a long time ago.”
“I’ve never forgiven you, either.” Elise found his eyes and held them. “All I asked for seventeen years ago was a little time. I wanted the summer to help my mother adjust to my father’s death. I’d have gone with you in the fall. Nothing would have stopped me.”
“I didn’t believe it then and I don’t believe it now. But why are we torturing each other about an adolescent love affair?” Sloane looked at his watch. Both of them knew the gesture was a ruse. “I’ve kept you up long enough.”
Elise wanted to protest. Now that they had begun, they needed to finish. But she didn’t let her feelings show. “I won’t say I was glad to see you,” she said honestly. “I hope the next time we meet we’ll have a more cordial conversation.”
“I doubt that we’ll be having many conversations at all. I’m working on ideas for a book while I’m here, and I’m going to be busy.”
“Then the best of luck,” she said with exquisite self-control. She wanted to shout at him, rage at him for running away before they could finally, once and for all, put an end to their past. “Please tell Clay I’ll be looking forward to seeing him at school.” She turned and found her way to the hall and the front door.
Sloane’s face was a mask. He followed her, trying not to notice the graceful femininity of her walk or the sensuous veil of hair that shimmered under the lights in the hallway. Why had he come? Better yet, why had he reacted so strongly to her? He always understood his own motivations, but his reasons for this visit to Elise were a mystery. Miracle Springs was already weaving its cloying spell around him. He’d be damned if he’d be its helpless victim.
“Good night, Elise,” he said as he stood in the open doorway. Against his will he searched her face for a clue to what she was feeling. But her face was carefully blank.
“Good night, Sloane.” She waited a split second, and then added, “If you ever decide you’d like to finish this conversation, I’ll be available.” She smiled a little, knowing she had effectively had the last word. Even if Sloane never came back, she had made it clear that she knew he was the one who had lacked courage this time. With a small flourish she closed the door in his face.