by Lauren Layne
“It’s not, but already, everyone is rolling their eyes whenever it gets mentioned,” she huffed.
“Shocking,” he muttered.
“See, that attitude is exactly the problem,” she said. “Everyone is playing like they’re too cool for a dorky reunion.”
“Wow, you’re really selling it.”
“So I was thinking,” she continued as though he hadn’t spoken. “In order to get people to come, I need to make it cool, and I can think of two ways to do that.”
“Cancel it and postpone indefinitely?” he proposed.
“I was thinking more along the lines of a celebrity cameo!”
“I’m sure Taylor Swift would clear her entire schedule,” Carter replied.
“Come on!” she said, with her trademark Caitlyn impatience. “You know people will show up if they hear you’ll be there. Whenever you do come to town, it’s only for a couple days and you never leave Mom and Dad’s. Hardly anyone’s even seen you since high school, Carter. Other than Jakey, you don’t keep in touch with people.”
Guilt flared again, because she was right. He’d never meant to be that guy who’d left his supportive hometown and barely looked back; it had just sort of . . . happened. Even when he wasn’t constantly on the road—and he usually was—his lifestyle now made the distance between Haven and Manhattan seem a lot farther than the two-hour drive.
Still, he deflected. “Using your brother’s career to get people to the reunion? You’re better than that.”
“I’m really not,” Caitlyn said. “And I get it, a high school reunion is the equivalent of a terrible made-for-TV movie, but . . .”
He waited, then rolled his eyes to the ceiling when she didn’t finish her sentence. “Go ahead. Lay your closing argument on me.”
“Trust me, I’m dying to. But Mom told me not to get involved in your personal life,” she said hesitantly.
His eyebrows went up. “Really? Because just a few hours ago I listened to her tell me her theories on the relationship between jock straps and male infertility.”
“Don’t be gross.”
“Don’t be cagey. Spit it out.”
“Let’s just say hypothetically, if I could think of a really enticing reason why you might want to come back . . .”
“I will hang up on you,” he replied, patience unraveling at his sister’s hedging.
“I keep hearing that Felicity’s coming back to town,” she blurted out.
Carter went still, a rush of memories washing over him. “Felicity?”
“Uh-huh. Remember her? The girl you were head-over-heels with in high school? The one everyone thought you were going to marry?”
Carter let out a strangled laugh, because his sister didn’t know the half of it. His childish pact with his high school girlfriend was just about the only secret he’d kept from Caitlyn over the years. A secret he’d kept from everyone, because in hindsight, it was damned ridiculous. Not to mention, it had become irrelevant the moment he’d heard Felicity had moved to LA and married some hotshot Hollywood director.
“That’s your big pitch?” he asked. “Me hanging out with my ex from ten years ago and her husband? Easy nope.”
“She doesn’t have a husband,” Caitlyn said.
Carter’s beer froze halfway to his lips. “What?”
“She’s not married anymore. Her divorce was finalized a couple months ago. She’s single . . . You’re single . . .”
Carter slowly sat up straight, setting his beer on the table. Now, that was interesting.
Very interesting indeed.
Suddenly, Carter was presented with a different version of his life. A different path, had he made different choices. And he knew do-overs weren’t a thing. Not usually.
But then people didn’t usually do what he and Felicity George had done ten years ago.
“Well played, Cait,” he told his sister distractedly. “You just got yourself a good old-fashioned homecoming.”
Chapter Two
Friday, August 7
“Son of a—”
The fact that she snapped her mouth shut before finishing the oath was as much a function of the glitter as it was years of practice biting her tongue in front of her students before a “swear,” as her boss liked to call them, slipped out.
Eyes squeezed shut, lips clamped together, Olive Dunn stood perfectly still to endure the cloud of green glitter currently seeping into her pores, praying that when it was over, the results would be worth it.
Finally, she opened her eyes and glanced down. And sighed. Not worth it.
That perky Martha Stewart wannabe on YouTube had made it look deceptively easy. But what was supposed to be a lion perfectly outlined with green glitter on the black poster board more closely resembled Slimer from Ghostbusters. Granted, Olive had always been sort of a fan of Slimer. But he wasn’t the mascot of Haven High. Pity.
“Dahm,” Olive said vehemently, mouth full of glitter. She still had a solid month before the school year started up—might as well get the “swears” out of her system now.
The curse was not without penalty. She coughed as a fresh batch of glitter particles got into her mouth, tickling the back of her throat. Still hacking, she headed to the counter and grabbed a paper towel, swiping futilely at the glitter coating her tongue.
“Dahm, dahm, dahm,” she repeated. If one were going to give in to a vice, one might as well do it with gusto.
Olive tossed the paper towel in the recycling and poured a glass of water. She swished it around in her mouth as she glared at the ill-fated art project on her kitchen table.
There went her Pinterest cred.
She’d always preferred science labs to art classes, and apparently, not much had changed in the decade since she’d graduated high school. Honestly, the fact that the glitter covered most of the poster board was a bit of a blessing. It disguised the fact she’d attempted to write “10 years!” in fancy block letters, the exclamation point sporting a distinct cock-and-balls vibe.
Which, come to think of it, was the closest she’d gotten to male genitalia in way too long.
Olive continued to swish as she tilted her head and studied the poster. Maybe the poster resembling boy parts wouldn’t have been such a bad thing. A penis poster was probably the most thrilling thing about Haven High’s upcoming ten-year reunion.
She still wasn’t exactly sure how she’d gotten pulled in last minute to help cochair. In fact, she’d been unenthused about even attending, much less hosting. Not because high school held bad memories or threatened to unearth dark secrets worthy of a Netflix miniseries. It was just that when you had a middling high school experience and lived in the same small town where most of your graduating class also still lived, a reunion seemed a bit redundant. She could see like half her sophomore geometry class just by going to Walgreens for Pepto-Bismol.
Alas, sometime in the past few years, she’d found herself becoming close friends with their senior class president, and it turned out saying no to a pregnant Caitlyn Cortez was pretty much impossible. Especially when her friend had pleaded swollen ankles and pregnancy brain. Neither were things Olive had personal experience with, but she did love to be in charge of stuff. Plus, Olive was a high school teacher at the same school she’d graduated. School spirit was sort of part of the job description.
And so, here she was, full of glitter.
Olive leaned over the sink and spit green. She set the water glass aside and bent to pull a garbage bag out from under the sink, since she was relatively sure the poster board was no longer recyclable after her sparkly addition. She shook open the bag with a snap, wondering about the best way to approach glitter cleanup. Was there a special glitter vacuum? Some sort of magic potion?
Olive made a mental note to text Kelly and ask.
She and Kelly Byrne—now Kelly Blakely—hadn’t been close growing up. But then, Olive hadn’t been close with anyone growing up. Kelly had graduated a couple of years ahead of her, and Olive had not exa
ctly been the type of sophomore that seniors brought into their inner circle, even friendly seniors like Kelly had been.
But last year, they’d been assigned as roommates at a Hudson Valley teacher conference, and they’d become fast friends. And most crucially of all, Kelly taught elementary school and was thus nearly fluent in glitter, unlike Olive’s high school biology teacher self.
The sound of a car and movement outside her window caught Olive’s attention, and all thoughts of glitter and Kelly and penis-shaped exclamation points faded.
Olive lived on the very outskirts of Haven, which meant aside from the vacant home next door, she had no neighbors. She liked it that way. Nobody to see her ABBA dance parties, or to discover that she had names for every single one of the crows that gathered in her yard every winter morning to eat the bread she bought specifically for them.
But it also meant that traffic of any kind was unusual.
She went to the window and narrowed her eyes as a black car pulled up to the curb outside the vacant neighboring house. The car was sleek and new, a sedan the likes of which wealthy, possibly scarred movie villains were driven around in.
The owners? Olive wondered. She’d never met them. Rumor had it a swanky Manhattan couple had bought the house as an escape from the city, but one of them had gotten a job transfer to London, and they’d never bothered to sell their Haven escape house.
Other than a maintenance crew that came by once a month to mow the lawn, run water through the pipes, and check for rodents or whatever, it had been more or less abandoned the entire three years Olive had lived next door.
The driver’s door opened, and an honest-to-God chauffeur climbed out, with the uniform and hat and everything. The driver reached for the handle of the back passenger door, which the passenger pushed open.
Olive’s eyes narrowed even further as a long—very long—denim-clad leg stepped out of the car.
That leg was not from around here.
She watched as the man said something to the driver, then slammed the car door shut, looking up at the house through shade-covered eyes.
Everything about him seemed vaguely expensive. He was wearing jeans, yes, but they seemed to be the cost more than Olive’s car payment variety. The black T-shirt was too sleek and well fitted to be from Walmart, and flattered a very impressive male form. The only thing marring the perfection was a sling holding his left arm immobile. Vaguely intriguing. Probably a yachting injury. That was a thing, right?
Olive’s eyebrows lifted as the chauffeur went to the trunk of the car and pulled out a sleek-looking silver roller bag and a black duffel. Enough luggage to mean that Mr. Injured Fancy was staying, at least for a little while.
That made the situation go from vaguely intriguing to need-to-know.
He may own the house, but this was her turf, and in Haven, it was simply not acceptable for strangers to remain strangers, especially when he was a man alone next to a woman alone, and she hadn’t had a chance to assess his Creep and Douche levels.
Best to do so now, when the chauffeur could serve as witness if he tried to murder her.
Olive pulled away from the window and went shooting out her front door and across her front lawn. “Excuse me. Sir?”
The man slowly turned toward her, but with the sunglasses and New York Hawks ball cap shading his face, she didn’t get a better sense of him head-on than she had from his profile.
Except that the closer she got, the more masculine he seemed.
Olive was five ten, and not the waifish model type of five ten, but a solid, I come from Viking stock type of five ten. Very few people could make her feel petite.
This man did.
“Hi,” she said, slightly out of breath from her spontaneous dash across their yards. “I live next door. And you are?”
He didn’t have to remove his aviator glasses for her to know he was giving her a slow once-over, his head tilting to the side. “Olive? Olive Dunn?”
That she had not been expecting. “Have we met?”
“I’d say so.”
He reached out and removed his sunglasses at the same moment a smile broke over his face. An irritatingly familiar smile, one she hadn’t seen in person for ten years, but one you couldn’t avoid seeing on the television anytime the New York Hawks were playing.
Haven’s golden boy had returned.
“Oh, hell,” she muttered.
He let out a surprised laugh. “Nice way to greet your old lab partner.”
“I’m surprised you even recognized me,” Olive muttered.
“Why wouldn’t I recognize you?”
The comment wasn’t meant as an insult. There was no jab in his tone, his expression more puzzled than cruel. But it stung all the same. And it irritated her that it stung. It irritated Olive that there was some tiny, ridiculous part of her that still clung to her “swan” fantasies, where the awkward teen turned into the stunningly beautiful woman, where coworkers at her swanky new job would look at pictures of her nerdy teen self with a gasp. No! That can’t be you!
But that wasn’t Olive’s story. It was never going to be Olive’s story. She’d been too big, too loud, too weird in high school. And she was too big, too loud, and too weird now.
As for him, Carter Ramsey was the boy swan who’d turned into an even more beautiful man swan. He’d been popular and good-looking in high school, and now he was professional baseball’s MVP and highest-paid player.
She didn’t want to say it was unfair, because no doubt he’d worked hard, but it was definitely aggravating.
“Well, well, well,” she said, crossing her arms and studying him. “What brings you back to Haven? Did they name a street after you or something?”
They hadn’t. She’d know. But she wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if it happened in her lifetime.
He lifted the cast-covered left arm as much as he could, given the constraints of the sling. She noticed a tattoo on the sliver of skin peeking between the end of his T-shirt sleeve and the top of the sling. It was hot. Damn it. “I’ve got a few days off.”
“Not by choice, I’m guessing, based on your sour expression?”
“Good guess, Dunn. You correctly deduced that I did not, in fact, plan to break my arm and spend the most crucial part of the regular season off the field, putzing around my hometown.”
“Ooh. Sensitive topic,” she said.
“You think?” he snapped.
She couldn’t help her grin. “Interesting. So you have changed.”
“Meaning?”
“The Carter I remember couldn’t go thirty seconds without smiling and charming everyone in his path. This one, though . . .” She waved her hand over him. “Let’s just say I’m not charmed.”
Except, if she were being honest with herself, she was. A little.
Perfect high school Carter hadn’t appealed to her in the least. Yes, he’d been good-looking, and to be fair, he’d been a nice enough guy, albeit a little self-absorbed with his own athletic glory. All in all, he’d been perfect at the expense of being interesting.
This Carter, though . . .
She studied him more closely. All the good looks were still there, but there was just the slightest edge about him. That tattoo alone signaled that the squeaky-clean Carter she remembered had grown up a bit. But it was more than ink on his arm—there were internal changes, too. Simple age and maturity, perhaps? Or resentment of his injury? Whatever the cause, she sensed a slight depth to him now that bumped his attractiveness up several notches, as far as she was concerned.
“From what I remember, you were impossible to charm,” Carter groused, unaware of her thoughts.
She snorted. “Right. Because you spent so much time trying to win me over. Clearly, I’d have fit right in with the rest of your harem.”
Though, to be fair, toward the end of their senior year, there hadn’t been a harem. Just one girl. Another of the Beautiful People, who, rumor had it, was recently single and making her way back to Haven.
“Oh gawd,” she said on a groan. “Don’t tell me. Our prodigal prom king and queen are headed for a reconciliation just in time for my reunion.”
“Your reunion? I seem to remember there were nearly a hundred of us in the graduating class.”
“I’m chairing it. Well, cochairing it with—your sister,” she said, belatedly remembering that Caitlyn Cortez was previously Caitlyn Ramsey, Carter’s twin.
“Oh that’s right. I think she mentioned that. What she didn’t mention was that the house she found for me to rent was next door to yours.”
“Now that you know, any chance you’ll . . .” She used her index and middle finger to indicate he should scamper off to wherever he’d come from. “I rather like my isolation.”
She didn’t mean to be rude, but she really did prefer her solitude. Olive was talkative, outgoing, and she loved her town and the people in it. But she was an introvert at heart—it was why she’d opted to live out here, away from the main part of town. She loved being able to be a part of the bustle when it suited her, but also have a retreat from people to think.
“Nah, I think I’ll stay,” he said with an easy grin. “From what I remember, we got along pretty well, right?”
“If by ‘got along’ you mean that I aced every single lab assignment while you couldn’t even identify a beaker from a Bunsen burner.”
Okay, that was petty.
And not entirely fair. Carter may have been a jock, but he hadn’t been the cliché stupid version from teen movies. Still, she definitely remembered him being a lot more interested in sneaking looks at his cell phone when Mr. Witte’s back had been turned than he had been in taking notes.
“It’s good to see you again, Olive,” Carter said with a friendly grin, fishing a set of keys out of his jeans pocket. “Or should I say, neighbor.”
He turned and jogged up the stepped walkway to the front steps, and Olive nearly charged after him to demand an explanation of how long he intended to be in town, as well as share her thoughts on loud music after nine p.m., when a pointed throat-clearing to her right caught her attention.
