Met Her Match Read online

  For all that Nate was big and covered in muscle, he could certainly move! His hips began to gyrate and Terri followed him. Grinding, hunching, moving together but not touching.

  They went down, hips almost to the floor, never ceasing to move in the ancient way of a man and a woman, then they came back up.

  The music changed again. Harder, faster. The audience around them was clapping.

  Terri heard them, but she only saw Nate. Just him. It was like only he existed and no one else. Her body was doing the thing she dreamed of doing with him, had fantasized about. She was actually feeling his hands on her skin!

  When the music stopped, Nate picked her up in his arms and she put her head against his chest. She could hear applause but only he mattered. His heart, the warmth of him. The skin of his neck was against her forehead, his hand on her bare back.

  For a moment she thought he was going to carry her outside, but he didn’t. He set her down on the ground and when her feet faltered, he pulled her back against him. His hands entwined with hers. The soft, sweet warmth of them! Their hand-holding was as intimate as kisses.

  Slowly, she became aware of being watched. The people from the lake were smiling in that way they do when they think they’re seeing True Love.

  But the townspeople were frowning. A dance was one thing, but holding hands with the mayor’s daughter’s fiancé was quite another.

  Terri put a smile on her face and stepped away from Nate. “Thank you,” she said loudly, then like Cinderella, she turned to flee the ball. Prince Nate belonged to a princess, not the boat girl.

  But Nate wouldn’t let her run away. His grip on her hand was almost painful. She frowned at him to let her go, but he didn’t. Instead, he pulled her back to him in a slow dance, holding her hand over his heart, his cheek on her head.

  “Stacy gave me my ring back,” he whispered.

  Terri’s heart leaped at his words, and she worked to calm it. “Bad scene?”

  “Brutal. It hurts to hear the truth about yourself.”

  There were other dancers around them and now that they weren’t doing a show, she could think more clearly—or as clearly as she could with Nate’s body pressed against hers. “And now you expect you and me to get together?”

  “That was my hope, yes.” He twisted her full circle and drew her back, smiling in a way that said he was at last getting what he wanted.

  Terri took a breath and kept her voice low so only he could hear her. “I’ve lived my whole life with whispers about my mother being a loose woman.”

  “That has nothing to do with you.”

  “Think not? I know you’ve heard about the two boys I knocked down in high school. They were trying to rape me. They said I was like my mother and that I wanted it.”

  Abruptly, Nate stopped moving and pulled away to look at her. His eyes were very, very angry.

  Terri glanced at the couples around them. They were staring. She put herself against Nate. “Please. Not here. Not now.”

  It took him a moment but he started to move stiffly to the music. She could feel the anger in his body.

  “If you and I...if we were together I’d be known for stealing the man the mayor’s daughter was to marry.”

  “I do have free will.” Nate’s teeth were clenched in anger over her reveal of the high school incident.

  Terri ignored his words. “Our children would have double my problems. Mother and grandmother were harlots. I’d be afraid to let my daughter out of the house. A son would fight all the time. They—”

  “That wouldn’t happen.” Nate tried to pull away from her, but she held on and kept up a semblance of dancing. Her voice was low and near his ear. “And you! You’d be so hated for hurting the mayor’s daughter that you’d never get any clients. What are you going to do? Follow me around all day and pull tourists out of the water? Are you willing to go from international diplomacy to being Terri’s ‘boy’? The guy who helps her? They’d say you were my wife. Can you handle that?”

  Nate stopped moving and stared at her in horror. “This is ridiculous. You can’t let other people rule your life.”

  “We shouldn’t, but we all do.” She was aware of people staring at them. She took his hand and led him outside into the cool night air. When they were alone, she turned back to him.

  “You’ve thought about this, haven’t you?” he asked.

  “I’ve thought of nothing else since the picnic. I thought maybe...” She trailed off.

  “Thought what? That I’d come to my senses and seen how blind I’ve been?”

  “That did cross my mind.” With a smile, he took a step toward her and she knew he meant to kiss her. It’s what she’d dreamed about since the day she met him. But she stepped back. “You have to go away.”

  “No,” Nate said.

  “Not forever. Just until the town recovers.”

  “You want me to tell you what I think of this town?”

  “No.” She put her hand on his chest. “In your peacemaking career did you ever advise people to take a break from each other? To give everyone time to settle down?”

  “I don’t like it when you’re so smart.”

  “Me neither,” she said. “I hate it! I wish I could stick my chin in the air and tell them to go screw themselves. Then you and I could... We could—”

  Nate pulled her into his arms and stroked her hair. “It’s all right. Don’t cry. We’ll do whatever you want. Whatever you need.” His hand slipped down to her bare back. “You thought about our kids, did you? We Taggerts tend toward big families.” Both his hands were on her skin, his fingertips sliding under the silk at the sides. “I love this dress. Really. It’s the best dress I’ve ever seen in my whole life. Do you actually have nothing on under it?”

  She pushed hard against his chest to stand a foot away from him. “I’m serious about this. You can’t stay here. You need to leave Summer Hill now. Tomorrow everyone will be talking about how we danced together so wantonly on the same night that we broke Stacy’s heart.”

  “Actually, she looked more relieved than upset. Her father was downright jubilant.”

  “You’re making jokes but the town won’t be. They’ll say—”

  “I don’t want to hear another word about this town! Come away with me. My family will buy you a lake somewhere. You and Brody and—”

  Terri turned away and started walking.

  Nate caught her arm. “I apologize. I’ll come back in the fall and we—”

  “That’s too soon. Make it a year.”

  “Absolutely not! That’s too long.”

  “Unless you can rewrite my life, that’s half the time it should be.”

  A couple came outside, looked at Nate, then began whispering to each other as they moved on.

  “They’re friends of Mayor Hartman.” She turned away.

  “Terri, you can’t live in this fear. You can’t—”

  She spun around to face him. “What do you know about it?” She was angry. “What right do you have to judge me? My father and I have spent twenty-four years trying to show this town that we’re respectable people and you want me to throw it away in one day? Why? Because you can’t wait a few months to get what you want? And besides, maybe you’ll change your mind. Maybe I’ll be the next Stacy.”

  Nate’s face lost its anger and his hurt showed as he stepped back from her. “You’re right. A hundred per cent right. I’ll, uh... I’ll see you in a year. Maybe. Who knows what the future holds?” He put his hands in his pockets, turned his back on her and walked away into the darkness.

  Chapter 16

  “I am not going to cry,” Terri chanted to herself. “I’ll see him again. It isn’t over. I’ll—” The door to her house was standing open. She often forgot to lock it, but she didn’t usually forget to close the door.

  There was a flash of li