Rumor Has It

She found a pair of kitchen shears in a drawer and sliced through the leather flap that held the book closed. Carrying the diary into the living room, she settled herself at one end of the couch to read.

The entries began with her arrival in Cedar Creek.

Well, we’re here, and all I can say is it’s hot and dusty and looks like a set out of some old Western movie. The only kids I’ve seen so far are wearing boots and jeans and cowboy hats and they all stared at me when I rode by on my bike and didn’t say anything.

Well, I didn’t say anything to them, either. Next time I will. We’re here and I have to make the best of it. Dad is always saying things like that, as if clichés are going to make everything all right.

Anyway, I do want to fit in here. I want to make friends. I’m sure things will be a lot easier when I start school next week.

She flipped over a few pages, past entries about shopping with her mother and arranging her room. Finally she found an entry written after the first week of school.

I’m really tired of everybody staring at me as if I’m from another planet. You’d think they’d never seen cool clothes before. There’s this one particular girl, Alyson. She’s a cheerleader and she and her friends think they are so “all that.” She makes a face at me every time I go by….

There is one boy, though. He’s on the staff of the literary magazine. His name is Dylan Gates and he is sooooo cute!!! And he writes the most awesome poetry.

She read on, about her growing friendship with Dylan. She and Dylan ate lunch together in the cafeteria. She and Dylan worked on a project in chemistry class. Dylan let her borrow his history notes when she was out sick.

I think Dylan must be the sweetest guy in the entire world! She smiled, the feelings rushing back as if it all happened yesterday. She would never have admitted to it then, but Dylan had been her first big crush. She’d have given anything to really be his girlfriend, but he’d never given the slightest hint that he’d wanted to be anything more than a friend.

She flipped through a few more pages of boring entries about homework, television shows and records. It might be fun to share some of this with her students sometime, to show how things had changed and how much they’d stayed the same.

I hate this place!!!! The words were bold and underlined three times. Apparently the cause of all this angst was the annual senior camping trip. Taylor hadn’t wanted to go, but Dylan had talked her into attending. If only she’d listened to her gut and stayed home, none of the rest would have happened.

Today I found out what everyone really thinks of me. Saturday night, after everyone else went to sleep, Dylan and I stayed up talking. It got colder and colder and we kept putting wood on the fire, until we ran out of wood. It was so cold, I knew I’d never sleep, so Dylan invited me into his tent with him. We were both wearing so many layers of clothes, it was completely innocent. We only wanted to get warm. But the next morning, when Mr. and Mrs. Healy got up and found us, they had a cow. You’d have thought we’d committed murder or something. We tried to tell them nothing happened, but they wouldn’t believe us.

By the time our parents came to pick us up, the Healys had calmed down some. Thank God my mom and dad believed me when I told them Dylan and I didn’t do anything in that tent—or out of it—but sleep. I figured most of the kids didn’t know what happened and by Monday everything would blow over. I should have known better.

She scanned the pages, her stomach in a knot. It was all there: the jeers from other students, the whispers, the rude propositions from some of the bolder boys. She stared at the words at the bottom of one page, the writing cramped and small. Dylan wouldn’t even look at me. I felt so awful.

She closed the diary, blinking back tears. That had been the beginning of the end. Every day a new rumor developed. She and Dylan had been caught showering together in the boys’ locker room. She and Dylan had been skinny-dipping at the old gravel pit. By unspoken agreement, they avoided each other, hoping this would scotch the rumors, but the gossip escalated. When she left school, everyone was sure it was because she was having Dylan’s baby.

What would have happened if she’d found the strength to face up to those rumors? If she’d had the courage to tell Dylan how she’d really felt about him? Would they have had a normal high school romance and its inevitable end as they each moved on to other interests? Would she have lived the rest of her life without this sense of having left something back there unresolved?

Instead she’d spent the last month of her senior year in a home schooling program, graduated, gone off to college and gotten her teaching degree. She’d vowed never to return to Cedar Creek.

But four years later, when she’d seen an opening for a teacher here, she’d felt a rush of nostalgia for all the things she had liked about the town: the slower pace of life, the lovely old courthouse square and the sense of being connected to history, the chance to really get to know your students in and out of school. Her parents had long since relocated to Arizona, so Taylor had had no reason to even visit Cedar Creek since she’d left for college.

She couldn’t explain why she’d been so drawn to a place where she’d suffered so much, but in the end she’d decided the best way to put the past behind her was to face her demons head-on.

Things hadn’t worked out quite the way she’d hoped. Sure, she loved teaching and she’d made a few friends, especially Mindy. But that sense of belonging—of home—she’d hoped to find was still missing. To the town, she would never stop being an outsider with a wild reputation—an outsider who never fit in.

So when the opportunity had come up to study for a year in England, she’d jumped at it. Maybe she’d be happier in a place where the past everyone was interested in wasn’t her own.

She looked at the diary again. Would things be any better in Oxford if she took her old problems with her? Had she really faced her demons? All of them? Mindy’s scornful words came back to her. Some people are still stuck in high school. It’s pathetic. Then how pathetic was it that Taylor had let the events of ten years before shape her life? How else to explain her inability to encourage any kind of lasting relationship with a man? It wasn’t as if she hadn’t had opportunities. She’d dated quite a few perfectly nice men. But none of them had measured up to the ideal she had in her head.

An ideal that had been firmly fixed since she’d developed a crush on Dylan Gates. Whether she wanted to admit it or not, she had spent ten years comparing every romantic relationship with the one she’d imagined she and Dylan would have had.

She might not wear her hair the same way she had in high school or dress like a perpetual teenager, but, emotionally, part of her had never grown past those angst-ridden months at Cedar Creek Senior High.

She set aside the diary and folded her hands in her lap. If she attended the reunion and saw Dylan again, would that break the spell he held over her? Would she be able to see him as an ordinary man and not some unfulfilled fantasy?

Somehow she sensed it would take more than a mere meeting to get her moving forward again. She needed some way to prove to herself that the “might have been” she’d imagined could never have been at all.

Maybe you two can pick up where you left off, for old times’ sake. A shiver raced through her as she recalled Alyson’s words, followed by a rush of heat. Well, why not? Why not exorcise those old demons by making the rumors come true? Since everyone believed they’d had such a good time back then, why not enjoy themselves now?

The more she thought about the idea, the better she felt. Sure, it would be risky, but maybe she needed a little more risk in her life. She’d been playing it safe for the past ten years. Maybe it was time to take the kinds of chances she’d relished in her younger days. Turning lies into truth would be sweet revenge.

And it might be exactly what she needed to shake Dylan out of her system for good. After all, everyone knew fantasy didn’t live up to all the hype. A few days or weeks with Dylan were bound to prove they would never have made it as a couple. Puppy love like that never lasted. Once she’d confirmed her suspicions, she’d be free to go out and find the real love she deserved. She’d head to Oxford with a world of new possibilities filling her thoughts, instead of the same worn fantasies.

But would Dylan go for it? Would he be interested in a sexy fling “for old times’ sake”?

2

BY SATURDAY EVENING, the reunion committee had transformed the Cedar Creek High School gymnasium into a tropical garden with trickling fountains, Tiki torches and banks of flowers. Swags of tiny white lights wound among tall palms and glittered overhead like stars and candles flickered in the center of dozens of small white tables.

The class of ’93 and their spouses, dates and significant others moved in ever-changing groups between the buffet tables at one end of the room and the dance floor at the other, the hum of their conversation rising and falling like an idling jet engine.

Taylor paused at the entrance to the gym, heart in her throat. How would she ever find Dylan in this crowd? She craned her neck, trying to see around a group of chattering couples. Dylan could be anywhere. What if she didn’t recognize him?

No, she was sure she’d recognize him. She would never forget that smile. The memory warmed her.

But what if he didn’t smile when he saw her? What if he didn’t want to see her and turned away? She swallowed, fighting sudden nausea.

“Taylor! What are you doing standing there like a deer in the headlights?” Grady Murphy threw his arm around her shoulders and dragged her into the room. He smelled of bourbon and some overly sweet cologne.

“Um, hello, Grady,” she said, extricating herself from his grasp.

“Now that you’re here, this party can really get going.” He grinned, already glassy-eyed, though the reunion had officially started only an hour ago.

She crossed her arms over her chest and glared at him. She’d deliberately dressed provocatively, in a black knit dress that clung to every curve and revealed a generous amount of cleavage. Tonight she intended to begin living up to her reputation as Cedar Creek High School’s most infamous girl-about-town. But that didn’t mean putting up with ogling drunks.

“Sugar, you look good enough to eat,” Grady drawled.

“Too bad, sugar. You don’t look very appetizing to me at all.” Chin up, she strode past him, toward the bar. She needed a little liquid courage for what she was about to do.

A hush didn’t exactly fall over the crowd as she passed, but she was conscious of heads turning her way and a few whistles and sly comments. Men grinned and elbowed each other, while women narrowed their eyes and shook their heads. Taylor ignored them all and asked the bartender for a glass of white wine.

She resisted the urge to drain the glass in one gulp and turned to once more survey the crowd while she sipped demurely. As her eyes adjusted to the light, she could make out familiar faces. She spotted Alyson in a belly-baring sarong skirt and crop top, her ponytail and breasts bouncing as she danced to Alan Jackson’s Chattahoochee with a tall, balding man Taylor recognized as Mark Wilson, the nasty yearbook editor.

Grady had transferred his attention to the buffet table, where he appeared to be having a cocktail-weenie eating contest with a beefy former football player whose name Taylor couldn’t recall. Milly Stefanovitch, another former cheerleader, waddled into view, looking as if she might give birth to twins at any moment.

Taylor shifted her gaze to the tables at the back of the room and her breath caught as her eyes came to rest on a pair of broad shoulders in a gray suit coat. The man turned his profile toward her and Taylor’s wine sloshed against the sides of the glass as her hand shook.

Ten years had changed Dylan Gates, transforming him from good-looking youth to heart-stoppingly handsome man. His frame had filled out, his face weathered, with a few fine lines fanning out from his eyes and a firmer jaw. The man with him said something and he laughed, his lips parting to reveal even white teeth and the smile that had won Taylor’s heart the very first time she’d seen him.

He stood hip-cocked, his tall frame relaxed, radiating strength and unmistakable sex appeal.

Taylor drained her wineglass and set it aside on an empty table, her eyes never leaving him. Her heart pounded and heat curled through her. She’d imagined all kinds of emotions upon seeing Dylan again, except the one that rocked her now: she wanted Dylan Gates. Wanted him bad.

DYLAN STOOD WITH a group of former football players, listening as Troy recounted the team’s attempt to spy on the cheerleaders in the girls’ locker room after a game. “Their coach, Georgia Hoffman, found the holes we’d drilled in the shower walls,” Troy said. “She waited until someone stuck an eye to the hole, then let loose with a blast of Right Guard.”

“I seem to remember your eye watered for a week.” Dylan grinned as the group burst into laughter. It felt so good to be back in a place where people knew him and shared his history. In California he’d always felt like a stranger, an outsider. People there commented on everything from his accent to the cowboy boots he liked to wear, but here no one thought those things were odd. Why had it taken him so long to return to this place where he belonged?

Troy launched into another story and Dylan idly searched the crowd, tallying the familiar faces. Almost everyone in their class had made it home for the reunion. Everyone except the one person he’d been most hoping to see.

A movement to his left caught his attention. He turned and for a moment stopped breathing. Taylor Reed was making her way toward him, a vision straight out his most erotic fantasies. She still had the movie-star polish that had captivated him from the first, but her girlish beauty had ripened to womanly curves that caught the eye of every man she passed. She’d let her hair grow, so that it swept her shoulders in a dark brown cascade. But the eyes were the same, big and dark and seeming to look right down into his soul.

She stopped in front of him, her gaze locked to his. “Hello, Dylan.”

He sucked in a deep breath, inhaling the spice-and-flowers scent of her perfume. “Hello, Taylor.” The shakiness in his voice startled him. He cleared his throat and tried again. “It’s good to see you.”

The tension in her shoulders eased and she smiled. A wide grin. “It’s good to see you, too.”

He was conscious of the silence around them and knew everyone was watching. That much hadn’t changed since high school. He shifted around to bring her into the group he’d been standing with and lightly touched her shoulder.

“You remember Troy Sommers, don’t you? And Ed Offray. Gib Hartsell. Al Proctor.”

“Hey, Taylor.”

“Hello.”

“Nice to see you again.”

They fell into an awkward silence, the men staring at Taylor. She reached to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear, then smoothed the skirt of her dress, a faint flush creeping up her neck.

Dylan feared that at any moment she’d bolt. And who could blame her? You’d think these jokers had never seen a woman before. Not that he was any better. He couldn’t take his eyes off her. “Uh, would you like to dance?” he asked.

She dipped her head and regarded him through the veil of her lashes. “I’d like that.”

The DJ had just put on R.E.M.’s “Everybody Hurts.” Taylor moved into his arms and he rested his hands lightly at her waist, as nervous as he’d ever been back in high school. She felt good, her skin warm beneath the thin fabric of her dress. In high heels, the top of her head was even with his nose and his every breath filled his lungs with the exotic scent of her.

He had the disorienting sensation of being cast back in time to the only other dance they’d shared. They’d been in this same gym, after a football game. He couldn’t remember the song they’d danced to or whether the team had won or lost the game, but he could remember this feeling of sensory overload, of being filled up and over-flowing with the sight and smell and feel of her.

He’d wanted so much to kiss her then, but before he’d even worked up the nerve, the song had ended and she’d moved out of his arms.

“So I hear you’re moving back to Cedar Creek?”

Her voice pulled him back to the present. “Yes. I’m opening a law practice across from the courthouse.” He smiled. “But how did you know that? I’ve only been back in town a day.”

Her own smile was tight, never reaching her eyes. “You know how word gets around in a small town like this.”

Didn’t they both know that—too well? “Troy tells me you’re teaching here at the high school.”

She nodded. “Senior English. I came back three years ago, after a few years teaching in Austin.”

“Funny how you stayed in Texas while I went to California.”

She raised her eyes to meet his. “But now you’re back.”

“Yeah. Now I’m back.”

The song ended and they stopped moving; still arm in arm, they stared into each other’s eyes. He had the feeling she was searching for something, but he didn’t know what.

He thought he’d left all that high school awkwardness behind, but here it was, creeping in again. Grasping at any reason to keep her with him, he nodded toward the buffet table. “Are you hungry? Want to get something to eat?”

“Sure.”

He kept his hand at her back, guiding her through the crowd to the catered buffet. They filled their plates with canapés and cheese cubes, grabbed drinks from the bar and found an unoccupied table and sat. She unfolded a napkin across her lap and studied him. “You look good,” she said. “California must have agreed with you.”

He laughed. “Then looks are deceiving. I couldn’t wait to get out of there.” He took a sip of beer. “It’s good to be back home, where I feel like I belong.”

“Someone said you moved out to your parents’ old place.”

He nodded. “We’ve been renting it out since Mom and Dad died and it’s gotten kind of run-down. My plan is to fix it up again.”

“I heard about the accident after I moved back. I’m so sorry.”

Her voice was soft. Sad. The words more than mere formula. “Thanks.” He spoke around the tightness in his throat that always grabbed him when he thought of his parents. They’d died in a small plane crash in the Rockies when he was in his sophomore year of law school. He hadn’t been back to town since the funeral. Even before then, he’d pretty much left Cedar Creek behind, visiting only on holidays and for a few weeks in the summer. Now he’d moved back, partly because this was where he felt closest to his parents’ memory.

“You really are coming home, aren’t you?”

Her words startled him, as if she’d been reading his thoughts. She sipped her wine. “I guess that doesn’t surprise me. You always seemed so much a part of this place. Whenever I thought of you, I always pictured you here, settled down with a wife and two or three kids.”

So she’d thought of him? The knowledge warmed him. “It took me a few years, but I finally made it back. Without the wife and kids, though.”

“Alyson mentioned you were still single.” She picked a sprig of parsley from her plate and twirled it between her thumb and forefinger.

“I’ll confess I haven’t even come close to tying the knot yet,” he said. “I didn’t see any reason to hurry.”

He tipped the neck of the beer bottle toward her. “What about you?”

She shook her head. “No, I haven’t come close, either.” She glanced at him. “My friends tell me I’m too picky. I tell them I’m holding out for the right man.”

Her words sent a quiver through his stomach. Was she trying to tell him something or was he reading too much into her words? “I never would have thought you’d have ended up staying here,” he said.

She set aside the parsley, avoiding his gaze. “Why is that?”

“I don’t know. You were always so…sophisticated. Cosmopolitan.”

She laughed. “I may have thought I was sophisticated, but I’m sure I wasn’t.”

“Hey, it doesn’t take much to impress a bunch of hicks from the sticks.”

She regarded him through the lacy veil of her lashes. “And were you impressed?”

“Oh, yeah.” He pushed aside his half-filled plate. “I still am.” Seeing her again tonight had made him certain he’d made a big mistake when he’d never kissed her all those years ago. Did he dare try to make up for that now? He leaned toward her. “About what happened back in high school—”

She put her hand over his. “Wait.” She glanced around them. “Could we go somewhere else and talk? Someplace with a little more privacy?”

“Sure.” Suddenly he wanted nothing more than to be alone with her.

They moved apart and he followed her toward the door. They passed Alyson Michaels, who stopped in midsentence to stare. Her voice followed them out of the room. “They certainly aren’t wasting any time….”

They stopped outside, on the walkway between the gym and the main building. A few smokers huddled against the side of the gym, swatting at the June bugs that dove at them from the overhead lights. “Where do you want to go?” Dylan asked.

She glanced around them, then nodded toward the main building. “There’s some picnic tables behind the cafeteria. Let’s go there.”

He walked beside her, putting his hand at her back to steady her as she picked her way around the side of the building and across the gravel lot toward a trio of wooden picnic tables in the shadow of a live oak. They sat side by side on a table, feet on the bench, looking back toward the gym. The faint throb of the music drifted to them.

He turned his head to study her. She still had a certain stillness about her, a calm reserve he’d admired from the first day they’d met. “You haven’t told me yet—why did you come back to Cedar Creek?”

“I think…” She stared out into space, silent for so long he thought she’d forgotten the question, then she turned to look at him. “I think I had some unfinished business here.”

He let out the breath he hadn’t even realized he’d been holding. So they were finally going to talk about that. “You mean, what happened in high school. All those wild stories.”

She nodded. “I ran away from them, but I never really left them behind.”

He gripped the edge of the table with both hands. “I owe you an apology for my part in that. If I’d said something sooner—”

She covered his hand with her own. “I don’t think anything you said would have made a difference. Most people made up their mind about me the first day I walked down those halls. I was the fast girl from California.”

“Maybe so. But I still should have said something. Done something.”

She leaned toward him, the intensity of her gaze making his temperature edge up a few degrees. “Do you really want to make it up to me?”

He swallowed. “Of course.”

She angled closer, her knees brushing his. “I’ve decided I’ve let those rumors haunt me for too long. I’m ready to get them out of my system for good.”

“How are you going to do that?”

She took his other hand and rested them both in her lap. “That’s where you come in.” She traced the lines of his palm with one red-painted fingernail, sending a lightning bolt of sensation straight to his groin.

“I want to revisit the past, so to speak, and turn those rumors into the truth.”

He blinked, trying to pull his thoughts away from sex to the discussion at hand. “I don’t understand. You can’t go back in time.”

“Not physically.” She continued to stroke his palm, so that he ached to reach out and pull her to him. “I want to take all those wild stories and re-create them today.”

She lifted her head and met his gaze and his breath caught. Was it only wishful thinking that made him see desire in her eyes, or was she really saying what he thought she’d said? “You mean, you want us to really do all the things they accused us of back then?”