He started slightly. Oozefest was the giant volleyball tournament held every spring at the University of Buffalo. In the mud. Students played in it. Alumni played. And last May, so had Laurel. On a team made up of old friends. Adam and some of his buddies had made up another team.
He hadn’t heard from her in more than a year. He’d had no idea that she was even in the country, much less in Buffalo, until he’d found himself with only a volleyball net and a pit of mud up to his calves between them. And after the game had come dinner. Then drinks.
Then her hotel room...
“I was washing mud from places nobody should ever have mud.” She was suddenly back in the present, her gaze delving into his. “Did we—Sorry. This is embarrassing. Did we date?”
His fingers dug again. “A few times.” Understatement of the decade.
She moistened her lips. Right above the buttoned-up neck of her sweater, the hollow of her long, slender throat worked. “Was it...serious?”
It had been for him. At the time, he’d thought it had been for her, too. For two years, they’d been together. But in the end, she’d chosen to keep her parents happy. Which meant not being serious about him.
“Not really,” he lied. He barely waited a beat and shrugged. Casually. Dismissively. “We were college kids. We had different goals. Took different paths.” All of which was true. All of which he’d thought he’d come to terms with in the years that followed. Years when there could be months and months that passed without a word from her. Months and months when he’d dated other women, when he told himself Laurel was in the past.
Then he’d get a call from her from wherever she was in Europe at the time, or a message that she wanted to talk. Needed advice. Needed to vent her frustration over a boss or a job or her parents, and he’d feel himself getting sucked in all over again and it would take months and months again before he could put her out of his mind.
And then he’d run into her last year at Oozefest. In person. And he’d faced the fact that no amount of time would ever be enough to get Laurel Hudson out from under his skin.
He looked down at her lap. “You’re sketching.”
She brushed a fingertip over the pencil lines covering the white page of the thick sketchpad. “Initially, it was Dr. Granger’s idea. Then I—” Her gaze flicked toward him then skipped away again. “I realized it was something I’d always done. I’m not very good at it, though.”
He disagreed. He’d always disagreed, telling her that she was an artist at heart, regardless of her parents’ opinion otherwise. “The first time we met, you were sketching.”
She looked disbelieving. “Was I?”
He dragged his finger in a cross over his chest then held up his palm. “Honest.”
Her lips smiled slightly. But it was the smile that lit her eyes that made him ache inside. Laurel’s eyes had always been dead giveaways. She couldn’t lie to save her soul. Everything she’d felt—good or bad, happy or sad—had always showed in her blue, blue eyes.
And he could see the truth now in those eyes that she really did not remember him.
He’d had no reason to doubt it, but there was no denying it. Not when it was right there, smack in front of his face. Same way the truth had been smack in front of him last May when she’d disappeared after their night together. Sneaking out while he’d slept.
She’d left a note. Telling him it never should have happened. That it had been a mistake.
He hadn’t understood just how big a mistake until he’d gone to Texas a month later, ostensibly to attend the wedding of his half uncle.
The wedding had just been an excuse for Adam. He hadn’t cared in the least about Gerald Robinson’s wedding. He was an uncle Adam hadn’t even known existed. But Texas was where Laurel had settled. And a detour from Paseo to Houston was worth it if he finally managed to convince Laurel they belonged together.
What she convinced him of, however, was that they did not. Because this time, when someone else had proposed marriage to her, she’d accepted.
“I think I studied art.” Laurel’s voice was so painfully cautious it managed to penetrate his grim memories.
“Art history.” His answer was so abrupt she looked startled.
He’d have to work on that.
He cleared his throat again and gestured at her sketchbook. “Always thought it was your art that’d end up in history.”
She nibbled her lip, looking disbelieving. He could have told her she’d worked at art museums around the world. That most recently, she’d been a curator in Houston. That she’d spent an unforgettable night in Adam’s arms despite her way too tardy admission that she’d been involved with someone else.
“The paths,” she said, once more interrupting his descent back into that particular snake pit. “I suppose we lost track of each other?”
People who walked through actual minefields had always had his admiration. He imagined he felt a hint of empathy for them now. “After you graduated, you went to Europe on a fellowship.”
“I did?” She tugged at the sleeve of the thin sweater, pulling it against her slender wrist even though it was already pulled down as far as it looked meant to go. “I don’t feel like I’m that adventurous.”
She had dreaded going. She’d only applied for the fellowship because of pressure from her parents. She’d never expected that she’d get it. When she had, her parents had been insistent that she take it.
And whether or not they’d “gotten along,” she’d always done what Sylvia and Nelson Hudson expected.
“You must have liked it.” His voice sounded flatter than he’d intended. “You stayed longer than the fellowship lasted.” Long enough for him to get the message that she wasn’t coming back. At least, not to him.
“What about
