“Oh, wow.” There was a definite pout on Emma’s lips now. “I think I’ve just been crushed.”
Cami laughed again as they joined the crowd gathered on the sidewalk just outside the bar.
The waitress, a young woman Cami had gone to school with, took her drink order, as well as an order for hot wings.
She wasn’t particularly hungry, but neither had she eaten that day. She was more nervous than anything and eating wasn’t any higher on her list of priorities than it had been the day before.
As the first drink hit her system though, Cami felt the softening haze of relaxation begin to ease through her. At the first offer to dance, she was in the middle of the street with Dean Meyers, the Phys. Ed. teacher at the high school, and several dozen other couples, as a rousing beat filled the night.
The music faded and a round of applause for the band filled the street. Turning away from her dance partner, she was unaware of the large body that had eased in behind her.
She became more than aware of it though as his hard arms wrapped around her, and the once-rousing music turned slow and seductive as the bar lights strung across the streets dimmed to match the slower beat.
“Rafer,” she whispered, her finger clenching on the hard biceps that tensed beneath her touch.
She was aware of not just the couples in the street, but also those along the sidewalk watching. She could feel all eyes on her, watching, dissecting the dance.
“You can slap me and stalk away if you want,” he suggested, his expression hard, lashes lowered over the sapphire of his eyes.
“I told you, Rafer, I wasn’t ashamed of you,” she told him. “It’s not shame.”
“In three weeks you haven’t called,” he told her coolly.
“Neither have you.”
“You don’t answer the phone when I call,” he growled, his head lowering until he was nearly nose to nose with her.
“You would have to actually call to find out, now, wouldn’t you?” she said with a heavy, false sweetness.
His gaze narrowed on her as his hands dropped from her waist to her hips, drawing her closer to him as he placed his hand at the back of her head and pressed it to his chest.
She couldn’t resist letting him hold her.
It had been three weeks. Three long, lonely weeks.
“Any more phone calls?” he asked her as they moved and swayed to the seductive rhythm of the music.
She shook her head, loathe to allow anything to intrude on the magical moment they were sharing.
She expected him to say something more. Some kind of I-told-you-so. A reminder that he had warned her there was nothing to it. Marshal Roberts messing with her head and nothing more.
When he said nothing, she relaxed against him, luxuriating in the warmth of his body wrapping around her, filling her, drawing her closer to him.
The dance was a moment out of time. It was a slow, unconsciously binding moment, one she didn’t know how to fight.
As it drew to a close, he pulled back and stared down at her for a long, unbroken moment.
Just when she thought his head would lower that last inch and his lips would touch hers where God and everyone could see the intimacies they shared, he pulled back instead.
“Rafer?” she questioned, wondering why he suddenly seemed so distant.
“Later,” he said softly. “I’ll call later.”
She stepped to the curb as he pulled from her completely, then turned and walked away.
She watched as he crossed the street, the self confidence in his walk, the strength of his shoulders, and the lift of his head drawing more than one feminine gaze.
What the hell was he up to?
“And the gossip ensues,” Emma drawled behind her. “Not only does Rafer Callahan show up, but so does his cousin, Miss Anna Corbin.”
Cami turned to her friend, then followed the direction of her look.
Another bitter loss of her past, Cami thought, as she saw the young woman entering the bar with another familiar face.
Amelia Sorenson.
She and Cami had once been as close as sisters. Collaborators, conspirators, and cohorts, they used to say.
Until that final year in college when Amelia had broken all ties with her and that friendship has disappeared.
And people wondered why she avoided commitment like the plague.
“Her daddy let her out to play?” Cami questioned quietly in amusement. The fact that Anna Corbin rarely came to Sweetrock was no secret.
“Oh, sweetie, that so is not the end of it,” Emma drawled.
The most interesting bit of gossip was the fact that the Corbin son, and heir William, Crowe’s uncle, and James Corbin, the patriarch, were given a fierce, heated dressing-down by Miss Anna. The first of the week when he and daddy Willy were arguing with Saul Rafferty over the fact that they couldn’t run the Callahan cousins out of town.
Said to be the spitting image of her deceased aunt, Kimberly Corbin, and named for her, Anna Corbin insisted that the Corbin, Rafferty, and Roberts families were rumored to be temperamental and a pain in the ass when it came to authority. Of course, how anyone could be certain, Cami didn’t know. Her parents had hired tutors when she was young, then sent her to private schools in California and Texas until college. She was currently attending a very exclusive Eastern college and vacations were always spent in some exotic location with her family.
“Oh, really?” Cami asked, silently prodding Emma for information.
“Definitely, really,” Emma assured her. “She insisted that the Corbin family was turning into monsters where her cousins were concerned, and if they weren’t all careful, she was going to return to fix the situation herself. I hear she dropped her little bomb, then lifted that pert little nose of hers and stalked right out of the house and headed to Amelia’s. The Sorensons are rather close with the Corbins I hear.”
The last Cami had heard of Amelia, she had detested the Corbins, but that had been years ago, Cami admitted silently.
“And who was sharing all this interesting information?” Cami arched her brows as she sat on the low cement wall behind her and watched as Amelia and Anna stepped from the bar and found an empty table.
The blowup was recounted by a maid who was promptly fired, paid off, and forced to leave the county, I hear. No one said the Corbins don’t know how to move quickly or live with enough drama to create their own soap opera,” the other woman said, laughing.
“I hadn’t heard any of it,” Cami admitted.
“Because you’ve stayed locked in your room rather than joining us in the teachers’ lounge,” Emma pointed out. “But dearest, that’s just the tip of the iceberg, if the gossip I’m hearing is true. Teachers, administrators, and entire families are now discussing the past, resurrecting it, dissecting it, and coming closer by the day to rejudging the Callahan cousins.” Emma tossed her head with amused mockery. “Bastards. They should have done that, what? Twelve years ago?”
Emma wasn’t a native of Sweetrock or Corbin County. She well understood school and county politics, but that didn’t mean she agreed with any of them.
“Twelve years ago,” Cami agreed softly.
Emma’s expression morphed swiftly to regret. “Oh hell, Cami, I’m sorry. I forgot that was the same summer—”
Cami gave her head a quick shake to silence her friend. She didn’t want to hear the rest of it.
“It’s okay, Emma,” she promised her. “But the time line is right. And I agree with you. They should have thought of this then, rather than now.”
Emma sat down beside her, her hands braced on the edge of the seat as she breathed out heavily. “My parents would have had a stroke had a child been treated so cruelly in school as I heard they were. Your barons, as they’re called, have a lot to answer for, my dear.”
“They’re not my anything,” Cami sighed. “And the influence they had then was strong, Emma. It still is,
