Dancing in the Dark Read Online Free PDF Page B

upset? Wendy was the past. Joanne was the future.
    His hands flexed on the steering wheel. Okay. Maybe she wasn’t the future. Maybe what he felt for Jo wasn’t what it should be. Maybe it was time to tell her that, before things got any stickier. Maybe...
    The tires spun. Seth felt the truck slewing toward the cars parked along the curb. He managed to recover with only a fraction of a second to spare.
    Maybe, he thought grimly, he needed to get his head together before he ended up breaking his neck.
    He put on his signal light and pulled into an empty parking space just ahead. Climbing out of the truck, Seth turned up the collar of his old leather jacket and trudged toward Tubb’s Café, just down the street.
    The café was warm and steamy, fragrant with the aromas of coffee and freshly baked doughnuts. He slid onto a stool near the window, exchanged greetings with the college kid working the counter.
    “Coffee,” he said.
    The kid poured him a mugful. Seth wrapped his hands around it, letting its warmth chase the cold from his fingers. Maybe it was irrational, but it pissed him off that nobody had thought to tell him about Wendy. Hadn’t it occurred to Gina or Alison that he’d be interested? He’d loved her, once.
    No. Damn it, no! He’d been infatuated, that was all. What nineteen-year-old kid who’d come out of nowhere wouldn’t be infatuated with a beautiful girl? Wendy had been the town’s darling. The guy she went with should have been a local product. The captain of the football team. A jock with varsity letters and a family that went back a hundred years. Instead, she’d fallen for him. No family, no background, no varsity letters on his jacket...
    There she was.
    The mug trembled in Seth’s hands. He put it down on the counter, his gaze riveted to the window. Two people had just come out of a store. A man and a woman. Howard Monroe and Wendy. She was bundled in a dark-green anorak; her fiery hair was tucked up under a knitted ski cap so that only strands of it were visible against the pale oval of her face, and her eyes were hidden behind big, dark glasses. But none of that mattered. People hurrying past didn’t recognize her, but Seth did.
    He’d have known her anywhere.
    His heart turned over as she began walking alongside her father. It was the first time he’d seen her on her feet. Until this moment, the damage she’d suffered had been confined to his imagination. Now he could see the reality of it. Instead of her former graceful walk, Wendy’s hip and knee were stiff. Her limping gait after all those years of rehab, was evidence of the severity of the accident.
    They reached her father’s SUV. Howard held out his hand, but she shook her head and said something that looked like “I can do it.” And she did, navigating the icy sidewalk toward the curb and the truck door with studied care.
    Seth’s eyes narrowed.
    Why wasn’t she using a cane? Why wouldn’t she take her old man’s hand? Why was she so damned thickheaded? She could fall. She could go down in the ice and snow and...
    And it was none of his business.
    Except it was. Wendy had meant something to him once upon a time, even if that time was long ago.
    He got off the stool, dug out a bill, tossed it on the counter and zipped up his jacket. What was the matter with people in this town? Didn’t anybody consider what it would be like for him to discover that she was back by stumbling across her?
    He strode toward the door, slapped his hand against the glass. He wasn’t going to let Wendy get away with treating him as if he didn’t matter, the way she’d done nine years ago. He’d go straight up to her, grab her and shake some sense into her. Yeah, that was it. He’d march out of here, take her by the shoulders, shake her.... God, he’d pull her into his arms, tell her that it broke his heart to see her like this, her leg hurting, her dreams shattered....
    “Mr. Castleman?”
    He looked around. The kid who worked the counter