McKenna Homecoming (2 page)

He opened his mouth to say hello. To start with the reason he was here—to offer an apology for being a jerk to her ten years ago. Instead he said, “You look beautiful.”

Surprise flushed Leah’s face. “Thank you, Alec. You look very nice, too.”

“It’s been a long time,” he said, reaching for a cup of punch he didn’t want.

“Ten years. Sometimes it seems like yesterday.”

“And sometimes it seems like a century ago.” He sipped at the punch—a tropical blend that slid smoothly down his throat. He hated the awkward bumpiness of small talk. But he couldn’t seem to find a way to bring the conversation around to the past. “Are you living in California still?”

“No. I’m in

transition.” She shrugged and a smile crossed her lips. “I’m staying at my aunt Bea’s house while I decide what to do next.” She stirred the swizzle stick in her drink. “What about you?”

“Working full-time in the family business. Haven’t moved too far from the old neighborhood.”

“And here I thought you were destined to become a beach bum.” She laughed, a light, musical sound. “Wasn’t that what you put in the yearbook?”

“I wasn’t exactly aiming high on the career ladder in senior year.” And up until recently, he hadn’t been much more than a glorified beach bum, except he lived far from the beach. “And did you do what you set out to do? Write the next great American novel?”

She glanced down, and the light mood evaporated. “No. I got busy and never really pursued that.”

So busy that he hadn’t heard from her since. He told himself he didn’t care why they’d lost touch. That he had been glad to have her expectations off his shoulders the day after graduation. That what had happened between them was in the past. She’d had a good reason for leaving, and he’d had good reasons for staying. Still, a part of him wondered, looking at her now, what would have happened if he’d said yes to her request. If he’d gotten on that plane and spent the past ten years with Leah instead of staying in Boston, treading the same water over and over. He’d let her down when she’d needed him; guilt hit him again.

“Your father

?”

“Yeah, I had a lot going on,” she said.

She didn’t elaborate. The days when the two of them told each other everything were far in the past. Hell, she could have another man in her life now, though a quick glance at her bare left hand confirmed if she did, it wasn’t serious.

He wanted to ask about her family, her life, her years in California, but he sensed a wall between them. Maybe they hadn’t been as close as he’d thought in high school, or maybe she had moved on—and away—from everything in her past. Or maybe he had hurt her too much for her to want anything to do with him anymore. Across the room, Alec saw Jim holding up a glass filled with amber liquid. Jim gave Alec a wave and pointed at the empty stool beside him.

Alec returned his gaze to Leah. “Well

I should let you get back to doing whatever a reunion chair needs to do.”

He’d chickened out. Damn. But how did he get from “How are you” to “I was a jerk”? He started to move away when she put up a hand.

“Actually, there’s one thing I need to do.” She picked up a paper off the table, wrote something on it, then pressed it against his chest. Her hand was warm, and even through the cotton of his shirt, he could feel her touch, as if she’d branded him. His gaze met hers, capturing those bright green eyes, looking wider, more luminous in the incandescent lighting of the ballroom chandeliers. He reached to cover her hand with his own, but hers had already dropped away.

“You, uh, forgot your name tag.” She gave him a sheepish smile.

The heat of her touch lingered, and opened doors he’d thought shut a long time ago, doors he hadn’t intended to open tonight. His mind rocketed back, flashing quick images of Leah in his arms, Leah touching him, Leah kissing him. She could have handed him the tag, but no, she’d put it on him herself. Why? Was there still something between them?

Or was he looking for a connection that didn’t exist?

“You think people forgot me?”

“No,” she said softly, her eyes dropping to the table. “I don’t think anyone forgot you, Alec. At all.”

Then she turned away, and headed for the other members of the committee. For someone so unforgettable, he felt very, very dismissed.

Leah busied herself with straightening the memory table, shifting pictures that didn’t need shifting and stacking yearbooks that didn’t need stacking. All the while, her heart beat a furious pace in her chest while the other couple hundred people in the room laughed and talked, unaware of the tension coiling in Leah’s gut.

Her hand lit on a picture of Alec from high school. The football captain, mugging for the camera after a victory. She’d snapped the image herself. The photo captured Alec’s infectious grin, his devil-may-care attitude and the spontaneous spirit he inspired in everyone around him. At the time, she’d seen him as the yin to her yang.

A mistake.

When she’d talked to him earlier tonight, she’d expected to prove to herself that their high school fling had been nothing more than a couple of teenagers thinking they knew what love was. But the minute her hand had touched his chest, she knew she’d been fooling herself. Even now, she could still feel the solid planes of his torso beneath her palm, see the surprise in his blue eyes. And feel the response in her own body.

She had missed him, more than she’d realized, and more than she’d expected.

Why had she touched him? She should have kept her hands to herself instead of opening herself to dangerous memories and desires. But knowing that didn’t make the urge to touch him again go away.

She turned and noticed him standing near the bar, talking to DeeDee Carter, one of the cheerleaders who had maintained both her figure and her perky attitude. A crowd of people surrounded them, the same kind of hangers-on that had always been attached to Alec, with his outgoing personality and capacity for entertainment. A flare of something Leah refused to call jealousy rose in her chest. She tapped the book spines into perfect alignment, but the action did nothing to soothe her, or prevent her gaze from sliding back to Alec and DeeDee. To him laughing at something she said, to the way she put a hand on his arm and gave him a smile.

What did Leah care? She had no ties to Alec. No claim to his heart. He could date—or marry—anyone he wanted.

Except he wasn’t married. She’d checked his ring finger. And cursed herself for being relieved.

He looked up, caught her watching him, and sent her a grin. She spun away, fast, to the pictures. The DJ shifted the music from a fast-paced Usher song to a ballad by Michelle Branch.

Leah’s heart stuttered. It had been their song, the one that summed up everything she’d ever felt about him, a song about holding on and letting go, and it sent a surge of memories through Leah. Of curving into Alec’s arm and letting the world disappear, of believing they could have it all, even as the very things she wanted were disappearing. A shiver chased down Leah’s back, and she knew before she even turned that Alec was there.

“That’s our song,” he said from behind her.

He remembered. That mattered more than she wanted to admit. She pivoted toward him and smiled. “I know.”

“Let’s dance, Leah.”

“I should—” She waved a vague hand at the neat, organized table.

“It’s just one dance,” he said, leaning in and lowering his voice, “not a lifetime commitment.”

So she took his hand and followed him out to the dance floor, and in that instant, she was eighteen again and looking toward a future that would never happen. To the days when the only thing on her agenda was going to college, pursuing that writing degree. The days before her father got cancer and called her, saying three simple words: I need you.

So she’d hopped on a plane, giving up everything for the chance to finally have a connection with her absent father. She’d foolishly believed Alec would come with her, or at least join her, but he never had. And she’d left him behind, along with her romantic teenage dreams.

But right now in Alec’s arms, her thoughts weren’t on the aftermath of their breakup, they were on those days before graduation, when this song had melted her heart and made her fall a little more for Alec each time she heard it. The others made room as Alec and Leah reached the floor. The raised brows and knowing grins told her people noticed the high-school sweethearts back together. Several people greeted Alec; his popularity hadn’t died over the years.

One dance, Leah vowed. One dance and she’d get Alec out of her system once and for all. But as he slipped an arm around her waist and drew her closer, she realized it might take a lot longer than a single song to forget Alec McKenna.

***

Alec hadn’t paused to think when the song had come on the sound system. He’d reacted. In the past, his impulsive nature had made for some bad choices, but as Leah stepped into his arms, he knew this time the choice had been a good one.

Her perfume in high school had been a flirty scent, something with baby powder and vanilla, but the perfume she wore now was all woman, with dark, sexy undertones and notes of jasmine. She moved easily with him as they made a small circle on the parquet floor, while the song washed over the space between them and brought him back to long, hot nights ten years in the past.

“How have you been, Leah?” he asked, trying again to find a smooth transition to the real reason he’d come. “I’ve wondered about you a hundred times since high school.”

“I’ve been fine.” But she didn’t look at him when she said it, and a flush filled her cheeks, belying her words.

Marty Maxwell danced by with his wife, leaning over to give Alec a grin. “Look at you, here five minutes and already got a beautiful woman in your arms.”

“Hey, Marty. Good to see you.” The former receiver for the football team had gained a beer belly and lost a head of hair in the past decade. “Still running the sports program over in Somerville?”

“You know it. And hey, if you ever want to come by, show the kids a few moves, I’d be glad to have you. Not often we get a star player coming by our field.”

“Sure. I’ll give you a call.”

He hadn’t touched a football in years, except for a few games of pick-up with his buddies after work. But the guys in this room still saw him as the captain of the team, the one who scored the points and the girls. Part of that was nice, but another part had Alec wondering if that was all anyone would ever see.

“Guess you still have that magic touch,” Leah said.

“Magic touch?”

“The one that makes people flock to you like pigeons to bread crumbs.”

He chuckled. “Am I the bread crumbs or the pigeon?”

She gave him a noncommittal smile.

“So, for ten years, you’ve just been

fine? Nothing more to say about the past decade?” He grinned, but inside, the brush-off answer bothered him.

“It’s a short song,” she said. “Too short for the full story.”

She had tensed in his arms, telling him the subject was off-limits. He missed those days by the creek, when Leah had been an open book. And he knew this distance was all his fault.

“We can keep on dancing,” he said. “The DJ’s here for four hours.”

She laughed. “I don’t think I can dance that long.”

“Then I’ll dance and you can stand on my feet. Just like old times.”

Leah mocked outrage. “I never stood on your feet.”

“You did too. The first time we danced together. You don’t remember that?”

“I remember prom. And the senior dance. And that terrible junior Christmas dance where everyone got food poisoning.”

“You don’t remember the Valentine’s Party in Miss McCarthy’s class?”

“Second grade? You weren’t in her class.”

“No, I wasn’t. I was in Mr. White’s class. But he got the flu and so the sub brought us over to Miss McCarthy’s room and—”

“You got cake on Kylie Simpson’s dress and she started to cry.” As the memory returned, Leah’s eyes lit with laughter. “I remember now.”

“So Miss McCarthy put on some music to distract us, and we started dancing around the room—”

“Probably because we all had a serious case of sugar high—”

“And you were afraid you were going to get trampled by Bernie Watkins, so you asked if you could stand on my feet while I danced.”

“I had totally forgotten about that.” She shook her head. “That dance didn’t last very long.”

“I didn’t have very strong feet.” He stuck out a dress shoe. “Still don’t, so I hope Bernie doesn’t show up.” She laughed. “He went to Sacred Heart, so no worries there. And I’ve gotten a little taller since second grade.”

“You have indeed.” His gaze roamed over her lithe frame. Still as attractive as he remembered, if not even more so now, with the addition of a woman’s curves, a woman’s experiences. But there was a sadness to her, too. He wished he really did have a magic touch so he could figure out what to say. “Have you been in California this whole time?”

“Yes, taking care of my father.”

“How is he?”

She stiffened. “He’s

He died. A month ago.”

“I’m so sorry, Leah.”

“It’s okay. He had a lot of good years. More than we expected.”

He saw the toll those years had taken in her delicate features, in the weariness that seemed to fill her shoulders, her words. Leah had jetted across the country, on a moment’s notice, to take care of a father who had abandoned her. At the time, he hadn’t been able to understand why. She’d given up everything without a backward glance, because that was the kind of person Leah was—committed, family oriented, planting roots wherever she went. The complete opposite of him. “You took a lot on your shoulders.”

She shrugged. “It was family. What else could I do?”

“Go to college, head for New York, like we’d planned. Focus on your own life, ” he said.

“And here I thought you’d changed, Alec.” She stepped out of his arms as the song wound to its end. “You’re still the man who puts himself first and everyone else a distant second.”

Then she turned and walked off the dance floor. She crossed the room, pushing through the double doors of the ballroom. They swung shut behind her with a heavy, firm click.