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Digging her check from her purse, she crossed to the nearest old-fashioned, iron-barred teller’s window. “Hello—” smiling at the maybe-twenty brunette manning it, she read the girl’s name plate “—Lucy. Can you cash this for me?”
    She signed the back of the check and slipped it beneath the iron grill, then pulled her wallet from her bag to root for the identification that, given the size of the check, she was sure to need. But as she withdrew her driver’s license she realized the girl hadn’t responded and, raising her head, discovered the brunette staring at her.
    “Omigawd,” the young woman breathed. “I can’t believe it. It is you. You’re That Girl.”
    Damn. She would’ve thought the teller was too young to remember her, but apparently her fricking reputation back in high school had filtered down even to the elementary level.
    “You’re that girl in all the videos—Jack Savage’s girlfriend.”
    Ah. It wasn’t her old rep the brunette was talking about but rather her newer claim to fame. Some of the tension went out of her shoulders. “Jack and I are just friends,” she said cheerfully. “We’re not—and never have been—lovers.”
    “No kidding? Wait ’til I tell my friends I got the inside scoop straight from the horse’s mouth! This is ginormous!”
    “I’m happy to help you one-up.” She inched the check farther beneath the grill with her fingertips. “Would you mind cashing my check?”
    “Oh! Sure.” But when the teller looked at it, she frowned. “Oh,” she said, glancing back at Macy. “This isn’t drawn on us. Do you have an account here?”
    “No.”
    “I’m sorry, Ms. O’James,” she said with patent regret, “but this is something I have to have approved. Let me just get our manager, Mrs. Thorensen.”
    The young woman let herself out of the teller’s cage and Macy turned to watch her cross the lobby to a woman in a black suit presiding over an ornate desk in the corner. The manager glanced across the room at her, then rose to her feet and came over.
    Extending a hand, she said, “Macy? You probably don’t remember me, but I’m—”
    “Kelly Sherman,” she supplied, recognizing the Sugarville High class treasurer in the slightly plumper, ten-years-older woman standing before her.
    The bank manager gave her a surprisingly friendly smile for someone Macy remembered as perpetually desperate back in the day to please Liz Picket.
    Liz, who had hated Macy’s guts.
    “It’s Kelly Thorensen now. Why don’t you comeover to my desk and we’ll see what we can do about getting you your money.”
    When they’d settled themselves across from each other, Kelly looked at her and said, “Are you in town for a while?”
    “Yes. You may have heard that my cousin, Janna, was hit by a car a while back. I’m here to lend a hand until she gets back on her feet.”
    “Yes, I did hear that, and I’m so sorry. The main reason I asked, though, is we can’t cash a check of this size for a noncustomer.”
    And there was the knife in the ribs she’d expected upon recognizing the banker. She had to hand it to Kelly, though, the woman managed not to let her satisfaction show. She was clearly worlds more sophisticated than she’d been in high school.
    But then the banker grimaced with genuine regret and said, “I truly am sorry, Macy. If you’re going to be in town for a while, though, perhaps you’d like to open a savings account with us. We still have to wait for the check to clear, but the balance will of course accrue interest from today’s date.”
    “That sounds fair,” she agreed slowly. She’d run into this situation a time or two; she’d simply forgotten about them because most of her employment checks were drawn on the bank where she had her account. She blew out a breath. “I meant to take care of this before I left home, but I forgot in my rush to pack and get on the road.”
    Kelly opened a form on her computer and startedkeying in information