Cupid Scores: (Western Historical Small Town Contemporary Romance)

by Sylvia McDaniel

  Her condo was a mile away. She had to keep moving toward her home and hope she could find the hidden spare key.

  Headlights turned down the street and she dove behind shrubs, crouching, hiding, praying it wasn't the sheriff. Knowing the leaves were gone from the shrubs and very little hid her.

  A red Corvette went screaming by and she rose from the bushes. Suddenly the car slammed on the brakes squealing the tires and she saw the back-up lights come on.

  Crap, she'd been seen. She started running. Maybe if she just kept going, they would leave her alone.

  The car pulled up alongside her and the window came down. She glanced over and her heart sank like the Titanic into the cold sea. Closing her eyes, she groaned. As if her luck couldn't get any worse tonight, Max Vandenberg smiled at her. "Darlin', it's a little chilly to be out streaking. You okay?"

  "I'm perfectly fine," she retorted, continuing to run with her arms crossed over her breasts, her pride refusing to admit she needed help. Part of her wished he would go away. The rational, sane part of her screamed get in his car.

  "Out for a midnight Cupid stroll," she said shivering.

  He started laughing. "You did the Cupid dance. And if I was a betting man, I'd say the law showed up."

  What could she say. The worst night of her life had just taken a turn into complete disaster. If that damn statue thought this was funny, she'd personally knock down the God of Love. She slowed from running to walking. It wasn't like Max hadn't seen her without clothes before.

  "Get in the car," he said. "I'll take you home."

  "What? Give up my midnight stroll?" She didn't want to crawl into that fancy car with her ex-high school boyfriend.

  "Meghan, I know you're not stupid. And if anyone else comes along and sees the school librarian walking down the street naked, I think you'll be looking for a new profession. Get in the damn car."

  The sound of a vehicle motor sent her fear soaring and she knew she had no choice. Jerking open the door of the Corvette, she hopped in the sports car.

  "As much as I hate to cover up all those luscious curves, I think you need my coat. Don't want the cops seeing a naked woman in my car and ruining my reputation."

  He handed her his jacket and she gladly slipped it on. The smell of Max wafted around her and memories of the two of them surged through her and she halted the memory tape before it reached the good parts.

  He turned up the heater and she sighed with relief. Though she still hated Max, at this moment, he was a welcome sight. He put the car in drive and they pulled away just as the sheriff passed them going the other direction with Taylor in the backseat.

  "Oh no, he caught Taylor," she said watching the car.

  "Wow. Public indecency is not a charge you want on your record," he said.

  Her chest ached for her friend. How could a night so full of fun turn so bad?

  "Where did you leave your clothes?" he asked, watching the cop in his rearview mirror to make certain he continued down the road.

  "My purse, my phone, my keys, my clothes, everything is on a bench in the city square," she said, knowing he would tease her about tonight's escapade.

  He grinned. "You were doing the Cupid dance. Hey, if you're desperate for a boyfriend, I'm available."

  Shaking her head, she grimaced, hating being in this position with him. "Been there, done that, and got the T-shirt along with a broken heart."

  With a shrug, he smiled. "Second time around could be better than the first."

  "Just take me home," she demanded, wondering why he would consider dating her again. He'd been the one who left for college hating her. And she'd been angry with him as well.

  "Do you want me to go back and try to find your stuff?" he asked.

  She wanted her things in a bad way, but she feared the sheriff would catch them. As the school librarian, she couldn't be caught.

  "I don't think this car can be obscure. And I doubt the sheriff would leave my things in the park. But drive by and see if they're still there. I'll slump down in the seat," she said, thinking she was risking everything after getting away, but willing to gamble it all for the return of her purse.

  The car's engine roared in the night as he turned it around in the middle of the street toward the park and that damn superstition that created this mess.

  Slowly, he drove through the square and Meghan resisted flipping off the God of Love. She'd let herself be convinced to dance nude around a piece of rock that supposedly would find your true love. Land yourself in jail was more likely.

  Instead, it had cost her dignity. Her reputation was on the line and possibly her job.

  "Stupid statue," she muttered, trying to see her clothes as she peered out the window from the floor board. "They're gone."

  With a sigh, she shook her head wondering if she needed to cancel her credit cards and phone, and have new locks installed on her condominium.

  "What now? Do you have your keys to your condo?"

  "If I can find the extra key without my neighbors calling the sheriff," she said.

  "Where do you keep it?" he asked. "I'll find it while you wait in the car. Then I'll bring your robe out and you can put that on before you go into the house."

  She frowned as she gazed at the man she'd loved passionately in high school. The man she'd given her virginity and her heart until a costly mistake. "Why are you being so nice? You hate me."

  He shrugged. "I'm a nice guy. I'm rescuing a damsel in distress."

  Oh God. Now she would be beholding to him.

  Punching the gas, he sped through the streets of town headed in the direction of her condo.

  "How do you know where I live?" she asked.

  He flashed that million-dollar smile the cameras loved. "Looked you up when I first moved back to Cupid. Wanted to make certain I didn't buy real estate in the same area as you."

  "Ha! Like I could afford even a tenth of what you can."

  "Probably not."

  "So tell me the real reason you looked me up."

  "Because I wanted to learn where you lived. So when I asked you out to dinner, I'd know where to pick you up. Only you keep saying no. After tonight, I think you owe me a date."

  Meghan cursed. Yes, he'd asked her out several times at school, but she'd told him she had plans, she was busy. Anything to keep him from coming back into her life.

  Now, everything she feared was happening all because of that damn statue in the square. And she owed him at least one date, but no more. While they were dating, he'd run when she needed him the most and she wasn't going to give him a second chance to show her he couldn't be counted on in a crisis. She was done with Max Vandenberg football super star.

  Chapter 2

  Max located the hidden key and put it into the lock on her apartment. The door swung open, and he walked through the house and into her bedroom. Weird that he was in her room without her.

  Opening the closet door, he searched through her clothes until he found the pink, fluffy bathrobe. Some slippers lay to the side and he picked them up. That's when he saw the locket. The locket he'd given her on Valentine's day over seven years ago hung on a jewelry display.

  A burst of longing swept through him as he remembered all the thought that went into purchasing that piece of jewelry for his girl. All these years and she kept the necklace.

  His chest ached at the memory of how he saved up money to pick out what he hoped the girl he loved would like. Several months later, the same ache overcame him right at graduation, when she told him she thought she was pregnant.

  At his first mandatory college football meeting with the coaches, he'd been terrified he was going to be forced to cancel his scholarship and marry her. And he would have. He would sacrifice everything for her and the baby. But while he was gone, she'd done the most unthinkable thing imaginable. The loss still hurt when he thought of their child. Yet here he was back again.

  It wasn't that he didn't forgive her. Eighteen, scared, on the brink of the most important
time in his football career, and the beginning of her college education, faced with a life changing decision. He only wished she had included him. Together they should have made the determination. With the help of their families they could have raised the baby while attending school. No, it wouldn't have been easy, but it was their child.

  Instead, he blamed her choice partially on her parents. Eccentric, odd scientists who looked at life differently from everyone else. And he didn't judge them, but his family was more the normal Ozzie and Harriet variety.

  His fingers touched the locket and he squeezed the clasp. It opened showing both of their pictures from high school. Two innocent faces from a long time ago stared at him. Now they were different people.

  With a snap he closed the necklace, shutting off the mixture of emotions those photos evoked. Determination filled his steps as he walked out the door to the car where she waited.

  With a yank he opened the Corvette's door, and tossed her the housecoat.

  "Took you long enough," she said removing his coat and then slipping it on. "Oh slippers, thank you."

  "It took me a minute to find the robe. Meghan you could clothe the homeless," he said.

  "Probably, courtesy of a summer job. When you work for a big department store, you get first dibs on the specials," she said climbing out of the Corvette.

  Dang, he kind of hated that all those luscious curves were hidden from view. The years had been good to her and she was more beautiful now than high school.

  "Let's go inside out of the cold," she said.

  He really should go, but he wanted to spend just another moment with her before he headed home. On his way back from a training session in Dallas he spotted her hiding behind a leafless shrub.

  As they entered the house together, she flipped on a light switch. "Would you like some coffee or tea?"

  "No, I need to be going," he said. "I've done my good deed for the night and my bedtime has come and gone."

  Going behind the counter that separated the living room and the kitchen, she took a cup out of the cabinet and put the kettle on. "Sorry, I still make mine the old fashioned way."

  "It's better for you," he said.

  "Yeah, I'm going to drink some hot chamolle tea and try to sleep."

  With a shy glance she walked over to the counter, keeping the bar between them. "Thanks for picking me up. I may not seem grateful, but I do appreciate you helping me tonight."

  "No problem. Though I do expect that date."

  "Well, it can't be this weekend because tomorrow night we both have the Valentine's dance to chaperone."

  With a nod, he said, "It'll be fun."

  "If you think keeping hormone driven teenagers from slipping off and having sex somewhere in the school is exciting, your life is seriously boring."

  With a grin, he gazed at her. "My life is great. Don't forget you and I were once hormone driven teenagers."

  With a shake of her head, she sighed. "We'd still be friends if we didn't share a past between us."

  "We are friends with a past that someday we're going to discuss."

  "No, that part of our life is over and is not open for discussion. Not today, not on our date, never."

  Her reaction stunned him. Had she just buried the thought of the child they created together?

  "I'll go out with you because I feel like I owe you, but we're not discussing what happened between us. It's over. It's in the past. Let it go. Just don't think we're going to pick up where we left off. Come on, we're no longer the same people. I'm over you. You got over me the moment you pulled out of Cupid."

  For a moment he felt like her hand reached out and slapped him. His first year of college had been spent getting over her and what they'd lost. Before he came back from Austin, she rejected him, packed up and left town. In four hours he went from excitement to utter depression all because she kicked him to the curb.

  "You're recollection of our break up and my memory don't quite match."

  She held up her hand."I'm done talking about this. You need to leave."

  "We may not talk about this now or even when we go out, but there will come a day, we're going to have a sit down about what went wrong. I insist."

  Bristling in her pink robe, her green eyes flashed. "Insist all you want, but that doesn't mean you're going to get what you want. I'm not the sweet pushover that I use to be."

  He reached over and clucked her beneath the chin, raising her eyes to his level. "Honey, you were never a pushover. A master of manipulation, you knew how to get what you wanted. Don't ever think of yourself as a sweet, innocent, little girl. That's why I fell in love with you. Night."

  Not waiting for her reply, he turned and walked out the door. Soon, very soon they would discuss what happened between them. Questions he deserved answers to. The past was the past, but sometimes you needed to understand why something occurred before you could move on.

  The next morning Meghan sat with her friends at Taylor's family restaurant, holding their heads in their hands. This morning she'd awakened confused and embarrassed at the events of last night. The memory of Max picking her up and bringing her home like a bad dream.

  She'd been so certain he didn't like her and yet he'd been asking her out and not only that, he wanted to discuss the past. What was there to discuss? He'd run the moment he thought she might be pregnant.

  Thank goodness it was a false alarm, but it had shown her that they were never meant to be. And staying together and risking the next time she thought the rabbit died was for real, could never happen. So she'd shunned him, thinking they were leaving for college and it was time to end it with the boy who thought football was way more important. And for him it had been a good move.

  "What were we thinking? By the way, I have your clothes and purses."

  "Thank God," Kelsey said.

  "I thought I would spend today on the phone cancelling credit cards. What a relief." Meghan glanced up from staring in her coffee cup. "We're lucky. Last night could have ended so badly. I could have lost my job. And now I'm beholding to the one jerk I never wanted to see again."

  Her conscious twinned. Last night had been interesting - like a car accident where no one was injured, but still there was damage.

  Grinning, Kelsey bent over and whispered, "Max picked you up?"

  "He saved my naked ass," she said, her voice a growl. "At first, I refused to climb into his car, but oh no, he insisted. Reminded me, if anyone else found me, I could kiss my career goodbye. What about you? Did you walk naked back to your place?"

  Shaking her head, Kelsey glanced at her friends. "My brother's best friend Cody happened to be driving down the road. When his headlights flashed on me, I hid behind a skinny tree that didn't hide much."

  "Oh dear. If your family finds out, your brothers will lock you up," Taylor responded.

  "Cody promised me this would remain our secret, but I don't trust him. Men can't keep secrets," she said. "At any time, my phone will ring and my oldest brother will remind me of my obligations as a member of the Lawrence family."

  Laughing, Meghan leaned back in the chair. "I can hear your brother reprimanding you so clearly. Does he always keep his nose in the stratosphere? He's a bigger snob than any woman."

  "It's that whole family obligation. Keeping the name clear of any kind of scandal or disgrace. The very reason I stayed away from Cupid. The first time I act a little naughty, I get caught."

  "Well, at least you made it home safely," Taylor said. She'd worried all night about her friends. "I was afraid to go searching for you and I couldn't call you as I had your cell phones."

  "Yes, no thanks to you." Tossing her auburn hair over her shoulder, Meghan glared at Taylor. She couldn't decide if she was really angry with Taylor or herself. She'd been the one to agree to the asinine idea and then to make matters worse, Max showed up. But thank God he had or there is no telling what could have happened to her.

  "I'm sorry, Meghan. Until the sheriff arrived, we were having a good time
."

  "Yes, we were," Meghan said. "I just didn't expect it to end with us streaking down the street. I saw you in the back of his car going down the street. What happened?"

  Taylor squirmed in her chair. "The sheriff gave me a break. Your clothes, your purses, everything is in my car. I never want to ride handcuffed in a police car again."

  "Oh no. He cuffed you?" Meghan shook her head thinking how frightening that must have been. It was bad enough being naked in Max's car, even with his coat covering the top half. "You had it worse than we did."

  "I've never been more frightened in my life. Sitting in the back of a patrol car, naked, handcuffed."

  Meghan shuddered. "That would be bad."

  That would have been a career ender for herself at least as a librarian and probably even if she wanted a job working for the government. Naked scientist were probably not their top hires.

  "Instead of taking me to jail, he took me home. Since I wasn't driving, he let me go. If I'd been behind the wheel of a car, he would have arrested me."

  "Who is the sheriff?" Meghan asked. She turned to Kelsey. "You said before but I forgot."

  "My old boyfriend, Ryan Jones," Kelsey said with a laugh.

  "And now he's seen me naked," Taylor said shaking her pounding head, remembering the embarrassment of being nude.

  Kelsey sighed. "In high school, I went with him for six months. After we got into a public argument in the front yard, my family refused to let me date him. Of course, it was quite a street fight with my brothers right in the middle of it. When the sheriff arrived, my dad convinced him not to arrest anyone. But he told Ryan not to come around anymore. We were done."

  "Was that what got you a summer in Europe?" Meghan asked. Kelsey's family had always been stinking rich. Taylor's family good hard working folks and Meghans...the scientist weirdos hanging out in a small town. Working at a secret government laboratory not far from Cupid.

  Kelsey laughed. "Yes. Later, I heard he went into the military. Never saw him again." Shaking her head, she glanced at Taylor. "How's the big jerk doing?"