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friendship we had shared and for giving me the courage to buck my family’s expectations. Maybe I was curious as to why he had come back, let alone thought that he needed a lawyer. And maybe I could help him. Osmosis, you know. I’ve picked up a lot of legal guck, albeit unwillingly, over the years.
    I rubbed my fingertips over that glowing spot on my cheek. Maybe it was all just a rationalization to have my own Dream Date Ken look at me one more time as though I was the most gorgeous woman alive.
    S, sue me.
    I was all thumbs with the dead bolt, but finally opened the door and shouted into the night, neighbors be damned. “Five minutes and not a second more!”
    He hadn’t gone far, not quite a block. The streetlight silhouetted Nick with yellow light as he turned slowly to face me. I had a sense that I surprised him—for once—and it made me cheeky.
    I tapped my watch. “Get it in gear, Sullivan. I’m already counting.”
    I saw his grin flash and felt a giddy rush that had nothing to do with champagne. He strode back to the door with startling speed and caught my hand in his before I could step away.
    His eyes shone and I could smell the tang of his cologne. Oh, it was a good one. My toes curled in my shoes and my heart went pit-a-pat. He pressed a fleeting kiss to my knuckles like an old-fashioned courtier.
    “I owe you big for this, Phil,” he murmured in that black velvet voice and I felt drunk all over again.

Chapter Two
    I was thinking that this hadn’t been a really four-star idea, after all. Lady Luck had her limits after all—or maybe it was more accurate to say that I wasn’t too sure of mine. I put on the kettle and surreptitiously rubbed my tingling knuckles, stealing a glance at Nick through my lashes as he took off his leather jacket.
    Yum.
    Naturally, I couldn’t think of a single clever thing to say. If there’s a jarring little fact of life that I could do without, it’s that people from your past can send you straight back there just by crossing your field of vision. Maybe it’s worse for people like me who’ve deliberately traveled a long way away from their past, who’ve redefined themselves and their lives. Maybe not.
    It is annoying, though.
    And it’s the reason why I had left Rosemount with nary a backward glance. Who wants to be a plump, unpopular and uncertain teenager again? Not me. Been there, done that and burned the evidence. Encountering people from Rosemount High puts me right back in Fat Philippa’s skin. There’s a lot of it to spare, but the view doesn’t much suit me these days.
    It never did really.
    But it’s tough to put distance between the kid you were and the woman you want to be when every five minutes someone is commenting on how far you’ve got to go. So, I left Rosemount and I only go back when it’s absolutely necessary.
    Which is a little too often.
    This flashback backlash was a hundred times worse with Nick, the closest I had come to having a friend in high school. The “dynamic duo”, he used to call us, but we really were the “outsiders”. I was fat and he was short—and he was bad blood, to boot, as well as a comparative newcomer. Which of course was why I deliberately befriended him in the first place.
    Once a sucker, always a sucker.
    But now he was in my kitchen, an incongruity if ever there had been one. Nick hung his jacket over the back of his chair, then stretched out his long legs and crossed them at the ankles. He was wearing jeans and suede desert boots, a teal green T-shirt that clung to his muscles and ensured I had no doubt how truly magnificent a male specimen he was.
    Funny, I never realized how warm that kitchen could be. I resolved to talk to the landlord about the heating being too high. Nick practically filled the room, which suddenly looked very feminine and too small for two people.
    I fussed with the teapot and remembered when he had suddenly grown taller. Really suddenly and really tall. He must have sprouted a foot