was a woman who looked back at him confidently with bright blue eyes that had so often avoided his before. A woman who walked toward him with an easy grace quite unlike the awkwardly tall, quiet mouse, who had always seemed to be hesitant or hasty, depending on the circumstances.
“Gabe,” she said softly as she came to a halt before him.
Had her voice always been so low and husky? Did he even know, could he even remember? She had always been so quiet, at least around him; Hope had said she talked all the time when they were alone, so he’d assumed it was just him she wasn’t comfortable around. He’d even asked her once, on one of those days so long ago, why she didn’t like him. She’d blushed furiously, said she liked him fine.
“Cara,” he said finally. “You’ve…changed.”
“Well, I should hope so,” she said with amusement. “In eight years. You, on the other hand, naval officer or not, are still tall, dark and ramrod-straight Gabriel Taggert, aren’t you?”
He didn’t smile; Hope had teased him far too much about the military carriage that had been drilled into him early on for him to take the echoed comment lightly. More than once he’d been driven beyond irritation by her insistence that he learn how to “unbend,” as if the way he stood or carried himself meant he was rigid and inflexible in mind as well.
“I’m sorry,” she said after a moment of silence. “I didn’t mean that in a bad way.”
He shrugged one shoulder. “You’re just repeating what she always said.”
“I know.” Something came into her voice then, a sort of regret. “I shouldn’t have said it. It took me a long time to realize she was really digging at you.”
His mouth quirked then. “Me, too.”
“I thought she was proud.” Those blue eyes, that he somehow hadn’t remembered as quite so vivid, lowered then, in a momentary reversion to the mouse of old. “I would have been,” she added softly.
The simple admission startled him, and to his surprise, moved him. “Thank you,” he said, not sure what else to say. This woman had been part of a life he’d lost long ago, yet she looked and seemed so different now that he wasn’t sure what to think of her at all.
She moved then, reaching for the small shoulder bag that matched the light green of her silky shirt. A gold chain glinted at the neckline, vanishing behind the first button. He wondered idly where it ended up, and sucked in a shocked breath as an image shot through his mind of some personal locket or charm resting gently atop breasts that were all woman.
He quashed the image instantly, feeling a bit as if he’d had a lustful thought about the proverbial girl next door. But he couldn’t deny the fact Cara Thorpe had filled out some. Nicely.
She removed something from a side pocket of the purse and held it out to him, thankfully unaware of the misfire of his imagination.
“Obviously, this is why I’m here.”
It was the postcard, he realized. And caught himself looking at it much as if it were a venomous snake he’d stumbled onto.
He couldn’t face it, not yet. So he looked at her hands instead. Long, slim fingers, neat, not-too-long nails finished with a subtle shine that spoke of care but not vanity. No ring, he noted, glancing at her left hand. Nor any sign of one that had been worn for any length of time.
She was exactly one month younger than Hope, he remembered; the two women had celebrated together at the halfway point between their birthdays every year. So she was thirty-seven now. He found it hard to believe, if she’d left mousehood behind very long ago, that she hadn’t been snapped up by some man. He couldn’t be the only one who’d noticed the curves. And the eyes. And the new, confident air.
“Maybe I shouldn’t have come here, but I thought you’d want to…see it.”
He realized at her quiet words that he’d left her standing there with that damned thing in her hand for too long. He shifted his gaze to the card. The sight of Hope’s familiar scrawl, as unruly as she had sometimes been, sent a jab of the old ache through him.
With the sense that he was breaching a dam holding back a host of pain, a dam it had taken him years to build, he reached out and took it.
She’d managed it, Cara thought. He’d taken the card from her, and she’d managed to keep from touching him in the process. That was success, progress even, wasn’t it?
And for the moment, he was staring at the postcard in his hand, focused on it with that quiet intensity she’d never forgotten. She could look at him now, couldn’t she? He’d never realize, or if he did, he’d think she was just watching for his reaction.
As, indeed, she would be.
Among other things.
Because now that she was face-to-face with him again, even after all this time, there was no denying that watching Gabriel Taggert do anything was and had always been one of her favorite activities.
She wanted to laugh at herself, as she had for so many years. She’d put girlish memories away, shaking her head in wry amusement whenever she thought of him and her own silly fantasies. But what she’d been able to do before, when she’d thought she’d never see him again, seemed impossible now that he was standing in front of her, all the six-plus feet, lean muscles, near-black hair and light-hazel eyes of him.
But she had laughed, back then. What else could you do when you realized you were a walking, breathing cliché? The only thing she hadn’t been sure of was which cliché was the worst, falling for a man in uniform…or falling for her best friend’s husband.
Not that she’d ever done anything about it. It wasn’t in her. For the most part she played by the rules, and always had. She’d gotten more adventurous as she’d gotten older—oddly, her daring streak had begun about the time Hope disappeared—but the basic code never faltered: there were just some things you didn’t do.
She’d known instinctively that it wasn’t in Gabe, either, to betray his wife or his vows. Not that he ever would have for her, anyway, even if he had been that kind of man. Not for the quiet, withdrawn little girl she’d been; no man would have cheated with the likes of her.
But even if she’d been some gorgeous, chic, supermodel type, Gabe just wasn’t that kind of man. Which, she knew, had been a big part of the attraction for her in the first place.
The problem now was, all the things she’d consoled herself with for the last eight years had been blown to bits.
It was a stupid kid thing, she’d told herself repeatedly. You just wanted what you didn’t have. It wasn’t Gabe, not really. You just wanted what Hope had, not the exact person Hope had.
She’d told herself that again and again, until she’d almost sold herself on the idea.
Until now.
Uh-oh, she muttered inwardly. She hadn’t seen Gabe Taggert in years, and yet within five minutes the old feelings were as strong as ever.
At least he doesn’t know, she told herself. She was spared that humiliation. She’d done that, at least, kept her silly feelings hidden from the man she could never have.
And you’ll keep it that way, she ordered herself sternly. Hope is still here, between us, and she always will be.
She made herself focus on the present, watching as Gabe’s face, tanned and attractively weathered from years on the water, changed as he looked at the postcard. The shock she had expected; it mirrored her own reaction. The envelope it had come in hadn’t given a clue to the jolt that awaited, and the letter of apology from the U.S. Postal Service had been wryly amusing. But then she’d turned over the colorful mountain scene, wondering who had taken some long-ago vacation she was only now learning about, to see the handwriting that had once been nearly as familiar as her own. The energetic and wild scrawl had made her heart leap before she even realized why, before