She applied lip gloss and brushed the front of her “Chez Julia” T-shirt one last time. Two minutes later she had her purse and was walking out onto the sidewalk.
Justice was still there. All six-two of him. He wore a dark suit, blinding white shirt and a smoky-gray tie.
“You weren’t this stylish a dresser fifteen years ago,” she said.
“Occupational hazard.”
“Which begs the question, what occupation? But that can wait.” She looked at him, trying to reconcile the man with the teenager she’d known and loved. Well, maybe not loved, but liked a lot. He’d been her first crush. She’d wanted to tell him, to have him for her boyfriend and then he’d been gone. “What happened?”
He glanced around. “Can I buy you a cup of coffee?”
“Sure.” She pointed down the street. “There’s a Starbucks this way.”
They started down the sidewalk. A thousand questions filled her mind, but she couldn’t seem to grab any one to ask it. She was both curious and shy—a combination that didn’t make for easy conversation.
“How long have you—”
“I would have thought you’d—”
They spoke at the same time.
She sighed. “We’ve lost our rhythm. That’s just so sad.”
“It’ll come back,” he assured her. “Give it a minute.”
They reached the Starbucks and he held open the door. She paused before stepping past him.
“You’re here for good?” she asked. “Or at least a while?”
“Yes.”
“No disappearing in the night?”
“No.”
She nodded. “I didn’t know what to think. I was so scared.”
His dark blue gaze settled on her face. “I’m sorry. I knew you’d be worried. I wanted to say something, but I couldn’t.”
She saw a couple of older women approaching and ducked into the store. As she walked to the counter, she pulled out her Starbucks card, but Justice waved it away.
“I’m buying,” he told her. “It’s the least I can do after what happened.”
“Ha. Sure, bring me out for coffee instead of a steak when you’re doing apology buying.”
He flashed her a smile that was so familiar she felt her heart constrict. At the same time, she experienced a very distinct “wow—handsome guy” tingle in the area just south of her belly button. It had been so long it took her a second to recognize sexual attraction.
She was pathetic, she thought as she ordered her usual grande skinny vanilla latte. This was the closest she’d come to dating in the past five or six years. She really needed to get out more. And just as soon as she had a little free time, she would work on that.
“Tall drip,” Justice told the girl.
Patience rolled her eyes. “Very masculine. I’m not even surprised.”
He flashed her another smile. “I don’t strike you as the soy-chai-latte type?”
“No, but I’d pay to watch you drink one.”
“Not enough money in the world.”
They moved aside to wait for their orders, then took them over to a table in the corner.
“You probably want to sit with your back to the wall, right?” she asked, taking a seat that would allow him to do just that.
“Why would you think that?”
“Someone said you’re a bodyguard. Is it true?”
He settled across from her, his broad shoulders and large frame seeming to challenge the space around them.
“I work for a company that provides protection,” he admitted.
She sipped her coffee. “You can’t just say yes?”
“What?”
“The answer is yes. Wouldn’t that be easier than telling me you work for a company that provides protection?”
He leaned toward her. “Were you this much of a pain in the ass when we were kids?”
She grinned. “I’ve mellowed with age.” She raised her latte. “Welcome back, Justice.”
* * *
PATIENCE’S BROWN EYES danced with amusement, just as Justice remembered. She’d gotten a little taller and had filled out in fascinatingly female ways, but otherwise she was the same. Sassy, he thought. Not a word he would have used as a teenager, but one that suited her perfectly now. The Patience he recalled had been all attitude and blunt talk. It looked as though that hadn’t changed.
She glanced around the coffee place and sighed. “There are, what, five million of these across the country? We need something different.”
“You don’t like Starbucks?”
“No,” Patience said as she sipped on her latte. “I adore Starbucks. We own stock and everything. But don’t you think a town like Fool’s Gold should have a local place, too? I would love to open my own coffee place. Silly, huh?”
“Why is it silly?”
“It’s not a big dream. Shouldn’t dreams be big? Like I want to end world hunger?”
“You’re allowed to dream for yourself.”
She studied him. “What do you dream about?”He wasn’t much of a dreamer. He wanted what other people took for granted. The chance to be like everyone else. Only that wasn’t going to happen.
“Ending world hunger.”
She laughed. The happy sound took him back in years to when they’d been kids together. He’d been forced to lie every second of every day. He’d been discouraged from making friends and fitting in too much, but he’d defied them all, claiming Patience as his own. Even then he’d known he was different, but he’d still wanted to belong. Being friends with her had been the only “normal” part of his life. He’d needed her to survive.
His choice had been selfish and she’d paid the price for his decision. When he’d had to leave, he hadn’t been able to tell her why. Later, he’d known getting in touch with her would bring her into his world. He’d liked Patience too much to sully her with that.
So what was his excuse now? As he stared into her eyes, he knew he’d again chosen what he wanted rather than what was right for her. But he’d been unable to resist the call of his past. Maybe he’d secretly been hoping she wasn’t as good as he remembered. Now he had to deal with the fact that she was even better.
She leaned toward him. “You’ve stalled long enough, Justice. What happened all those years ago? One second you were there and the next you were gone.”
She still wore her brown hair long. He remembered the slight wave and how her hair had moved as she walked, swinging back and forth. Sexy.
He’d been too old for her then. At least that’s what he’d told himself every time he’d been tempted to kiss her. An eighteen-year-old masquerading as a sixteen-year-old, to outwit the man who wanted him dead.
“I was in the witness protection program.”
Her eyes widened and her mouth dropped open.
He let the words sink in and took a moment to study the cartoon hairstylist on the front of her black “Chez Julia” T-shirt. The drawn hairdresser was wielding scissors with comical intent.
“Are you kidding?” Patience asked. “Seriously? Here?”
“Where better than Fool’s Gold?”
“That can’t be real. It sounds like something from the movies.”
“It was plenty real.” He sipped his coffee and thought about his past. He rarely talked about it. Even his closest friends weren’t privy to the details.
“My father was a career criminal,” he said slowly. “The kind of man who believed the world owed him a living. He went from one scheme to the next. If he’d put half as much effort into working a steady job, he could have made a fortune, but that wasn’t his way.”
Patience’s eyes widened as she held on to her cup. “Please don’t make me cry with your story.”
He raised one shoulder. “I’ll do my best to stick to the facts.”
“Because they won’t make me cry?” She drew in a breath. “Okay, bad father. And then what?”
“When I was seventeen, he and a couple of buddies held up a convenience store. The owner and a clerk were killed and my dad was the one who pulled the trigger. The friends were caught and gave up my dad. Bart. His name was Bart Hanson.” Justice had been born Bart Hanson Jr., but he’d rejected that name years ago. Had it legally changed. He’d wanted nothing that had belonged to his father.
“The local SWAT team came to take him in. Dad wasn’t going without a fight. He’d planned everything and was going to take out as many officers as he could. I figured out what he was going to do and jumped on his back. I distracted him long enough for the police to get him. He wasn’t happy with me.”
An understatement, he thought. His father had cursed him, vowing to punish his son, no matter what it took. Everyone who knew Bart Hanson had believed he was more than capable of murdering his only child.
“That’s so horrible. Where was your mother in all this?”
“She’d died years before. A car accident.”
He didn’t bother mentioning that the car’s brakes had been cut. Local law enforcement had suspected Bart but had been unable to make the charges stick.
“When I testified against my father, his anger turned to rage. Right after sentencing, he broke out of jail and came after me. I was put into a witness protection program and brought here. That’s when we met.”
She shook her head. “That’s amazing, and scary. I can’t believe you went through all that. You never hinted or...” She looked at him. “Seventeen? You were seventeen? I thought you were fifteen. We celebrated your birthday when you turned sixteen.”
“I lied.”
“About your age?”
“It was part of me being in the program. I was two years older than you thought. Still am.”
He could see she wasn’t amused by the joke. “I was only fourteen.”
“I know. That’s why I never—” He picked up his coffee. “Anyway, my dad was spotted in the area. I was living with a marshal at the time. The decision was made to get me out of town immediately. I wanted to tell you, Patience. But I couldn’t. By the time my dad was caught and put away, so much time had passed. I wasn’t sure you’d remember me.”
Or that he should get in touch with her. Even now, telling her the sanitized version of his past was a lot for her to take in. She looked dazed. He’d lived it and he still had trouble believing it had happened.
“What happened to your father?” she asked. “Is he still behind bars?”
“He’s dead. Died in a prison fire.”
Burned beyond recognition, he thought. Bart had been identified using dental records. A hell of a way to go, Justice thought, still aware that he felt nothing for the old man. Nothing except relief he was gone.
The question of how much of his father lived within him wasn’t anything he was going to discuss with her. That was for the late nights when he was alone and the shadows pressed in. Patience wasn’t a part of that. She was light to his dark, and he didn’t want that to change.
“My head is spinning,” she admitted, then put down her coffee. “You know what’s really twisted? I’m actually still more surprised that you were eighteen when I thought you were sixteen than the fact that you were in a witness protection program because your father wanted you dead. I think that means there’s something wrong with me. I apologize for that.”
He smiled at her. “At least you have priorities.”
She studied him for a second, then ducked her head. “I can’t imagine what you had to go through. Here I was, feeling sorry for myself because I had this crazy crush on you. I wanted to tell you. In fact, I was going to that last day, but Ford walked up.”
He told himself the information was interesting but not important. Even so, he felt a sense of satisfaction, quickly followed by a sense of loss. He’d often wondered what would have happened if he’d just been a regular kid who happened to live in Fool’s Gold. Unfortunately his luck had never been that good.
He knew if he were a halfway-decent guy, he would walk away now. That a man like him had no place in her life. But he couldn’t leave, just as he’d never been able to forget.
“I remember that day,” he admitted. “You were acting like there was something on your mind.”
“There was. You. At fourteen, my girlish heart trembled whenever you were around.”
He liked the sound of that. “That bad, huh?”
She nodded. “I took hope in the fact that you didn’t seem interested in anyone else, but was worried you only saw me as a friend. I was determined to tell you the truth. I was also terrified. What if you didn’t like me back?”
“I did like you. But I was too old for you.”
“I see that now.” She grinned. “Eighteen. How is that possible? I’m totally freaked. I’ll recover but I’ll need a moment.” Her smile faded. “Justice, when you were just gone it was... Well, we all missed you and were worried about you.”
He reached across the table and lightly touched the back of her hand. “I know. I’m sorry about that.”
“It was like you were never there in the first place. I used to walk by the house and hope you’d show up as mysteriously as you’d left.”
He’d hoped she had done that, he admitted, if only to himself. He’d often thought of her, wondering if she remembered him. Some days memories of Patience were all that had gotten him through.