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don’t want any . . . trouble.” She managed to avoid Davy’s kick, all the while staring at Boone.
    Stop staring at Boone.
    “NBT, I think you need to wake up and smell the chlorine.” His smile broadened, teased, as he glanced at a sopping wet Hoffman and his assailant, now subdued by a couple of Connie’slawyer pals who had taken to the pool after the duo, pulling them out before Hoffman got more than a mouthful of water. Another cop, one PJ didn’t recognize, was cuffing the attacker. “What do you know about Jack Wilkes going after Ernie?”
    PJ’s mouth opened. “You aren’t seriously blaming me for this. I don’t even know Jack . . .”
    “Wilkes. Really? You’ve never met Trudi’s husband?”
    Trudi . . . her best friend from school, cohort in the Great Shaving Cream Incident? The one PJ left crying on her front steps, afraid she might be pregnant with Greg Morris’s baby? “Trudi is still around?”
    “And married to Slugger over there.” Boone twirled his sunglasses between two fingers. “Haven’t you kept in touch with anyone?”
    PJ had no words for that. She’d been . . . Well, after being the girl whose reputation preceded her, it didn’t take much to find a delicious freedom in reinventing herself all over the globe. Or at least North America.
    “No one I wanted to keep in touch with,” she said tightly.
    “Hmm . . . maybe there were people who wanted to keep in touch with you.” He gave her a look up and down that left no question as to his meaning.
    He hadn’t changed one arrogant bit.
    Except for the suit coat. And his freshly barbered dark blond hair, so short she had the urge to touch it, compare it to the long curls that once ran through her fingers like ribbons. The slightest fragrance of cologne lifted off him, evidencing a man instead of a ruddy high school boy. Okay, so he’d changed a lot .
    But only in a way that could mean trouble. For she knewwhat Boone did to her. She had the scars   —and a tattoo   —to prove it.
    “Boone, I’m not the same person who left Kellogg. I’m . . . different.”
    “I’m sure you are.” He gave her a look that, in a different time and place, would turn her common sense to a puddle of desire, and shortly thereafter, she’d be climbing onto the back of his motorcycle.
    Run. The smart side of her brain fairly screamed it.
    No. She wasn’t going to leave town because of Boone   —or his lies   —again. Ever.
    “Since when did you become a cop   —if that’s what you are?” It seemed that Connie or even her mother might have given her the slightest heads-up on that piece of trivia.
    His face shadowed, a darkness that she didn’t recognize, but he chased it away with a shrug. “Decided it was time to pick a side.”
    “You look good in a suit. What are you, undercover?”
    “Detective.” But her words seemed to rock him for just a second, as if he hadn’t expected anything but claws from her. His smile dimmed, his voice low. “Okay, I just need to know. Not a Christmas card, not a birthday greeting   —you erased yourself off the planet and out of . . . everyone’s life. And now you’re here, as if blown in by the wind. Why, PJ, why didn’t you come back sooner?”
    Like on strings, PJ’s eyes traveled to the tenth green, reviving a memory that produced some heat against her cheeks. “You know why.”
    He looked away, and in the silence that stretched between them, she heard the regrets that neither wanted to voice.
    Finally Boone said, “Time heals all wounds.” It came out softly and with what sounded like hope in his tone.
    “Some wounds can never heal.” PJ pulled Davy across the patio toward the country club.
    She hadn’t expected Boone to follow her to the gate. He stood there, catching it as it swung shut behind her. “It’ll be different this time, Peej. I promise.”
    She didn’t turn at his words and managed to coerce Davy up the stairs and into the building before her vision