Cowboy's Caress. Victoria Pade

as new in a few weeks. And then I’m off like a rocket.”

      Deana didn’t say anything to that. She just turned up the radio and made it seem as if she were paying attention to her driving, as if she had confidence in more of life happening to thwart Carly’s plans.

      Carly sighed away the feeling of frustration that those thwarted plans left her with—a feeling she was more familiar with than she wanted to be—and laid her head against the seat.

      The sun was just rising on the June day she’d been certain would finally be her swan song to Elk Creek, the small Wyoming town where she’d been born, raised and lived almost all of her thirty-two years. Most of which she’d spent thinking—dreaming—about being somewhere else.

      But she wasn’t headed away from Elk Creek. She was headed back to it after spending the night in a Cheyenne hospital emergency room, having her ankle X-rayed.

      Luckily she hadn’t broken any bones. That could have cost her six weeks in a cast. As it was, her ankle was sprained, the tendons and ligaments were torn, but it was wrapped in an Ace bandage and she’d be able to get around on crutches. And even though it hurt like crazy, she was sure it would heal quicker than a broken ankle would have. Which meant all the sooner that she’d be able to go off on her grand adventure.

      Better late than never.

      She still couldn’t believe it had happened, though. At her going-away party, no less.

      The whole thing had been a comedy of errors. There she was, saying goodbye to friends, neighbors and relatives, ready to go home to bed for the last time in Elk Creek, when her sister, Hope, had gone into sudden, hard labor. Their mother had gotten so flustered that in her hurry to reach Hope she’d caught her heel in the hem of her dress. Carly had seen her mother’s predicament, dived to catch her and fallen herself, twisting her own ankle to an unhealthy angle while her mother had barely stumbled.

      The end result was that Hope had been taken to the medical facility where Tallie Shanahan—the town nurse and midwife—had delivered a healthy baby boy to go with Hope’s other three sons, and Deana had taken Carly to the hospital in Cheyenne. Not only had Tallie had her hands full, but she’d been afraid the ankle was broken, requiring the care of a physician—a commodity Elk Creek had been without for some time.

      “Maybe this is a sign that you shouldn’t go,” Deana said from the front seat over the music, letting Carly know her friend was still thinking about her leaving even if Deana tried not to show it.

      “It’s just a minor setback,” Carly countered.

      And she meant it, too.

      Because nothing—nothing—was going to keep her from doing what she’d wanted to do her whole life. Well, since she was seven anyway and her great-aunt Laddy had paid her family a visit and brought photographs of Laddy’s travels all over the world.

      Carly had studied those pictures until they were burned into her brain, daydreaming over them, wishing she was seeing the sights in person. Somehow, from that day on, Elk Creek had seemed like small potatoes on the banquet table of the world. And she’d made it her goal to get out into that world and feast on it all herself.

      Not that that goal had been easy to reach or it wouldn’t have taken her so long to get to it.

      First, there had been getting her teaching degree in the nearest college where she and Deana could attend economically by staying with Deana’s aunt during the process. Once that was accomplished, Carly had returned to Elk Creek to work and save her traveling money. And then, of course, there had been her involvement with Jeremy and the wrench he’d thrown into the works the past few years.

      But now all of that was behind her. She’d saved enough money to last a year or maybe more if she was careful. She’d taken a leave of absence from her job. And if she could ever actually manage to get out of Elk Creek, she was going to see everything she’d ever wanted to see and then pick her favorite city to live in. Maybe not forever, but for long enough to give herself a taste of life outside the confines of her small hometown.

      She was going to be a cosmopolitan woman.

      By hook or by crook.

      Even if it killed her.

      “It’s not as if I’m moving away permanently,” she said with a low concentration of conviction, but wanting to console Deana nonetheless. “I just want to see some things. Do some things. Meet some new people. Live outside the fishbowl for a while. Who knows? A little time away and I’ll probably get homesick and come back. That’s why I only leased my house and why I didn’t out-and-out quit my job.”

      “You won’t be back if the grass is as green as you think it is on the other side of the fence.”

      “Well, even if it is—and it probably isn’t—you know it won’t make any difference between you and me. We’ll still talk all the time, and we can write letters and E-mails and there’s nothing in Elk Creek to stop you from coming to wherever I am.”

      “It won’t be the same as living next door the way we always have.”

      Carly knew that was true. She also knew she was going to miss Deana and the way things had been since Deana’s family had moved into the house right beside her own when they were both four years old. They’d been together through everything from first kisses to burying their fathers within three months of each other.

      Carly’s leaving would mean no more seeing each other every day, sharing every detail of their lives. No more late-night binges on ice cream when one or the other of them couldn’t sleep and they padded across the lawn in pajamas and bare feet. No more consoling each other at the end of a bad date. No more double dates—good or bad. No more filling each other’s lonely hours with company. No more shared bowls of popcorn over tear-jerker movies on videotape to occupy empty Saturday nights. No more impromptu shopping trips or makeover sessions. No more battening down the hatches together in snowstorms. No more working together. No more just being there for each other when either of them needed it for any reason.

      But Carly didn’t want to think about the downside of leaving town. Instead, she did what she’d been doing to keep herself from dwelling on it since she’d finally decided to do this two months ago: she thought about San Francisco and New York. About seeing Vermont in autumn splendor. About the Alaskan wilderness. About Hawaiian beaches. About London and Paris and Rome and Brussels and Athens and Vienna and Madrid.

      About how much she’d always wanted to see it all for herself…

      “I still wish you’d come with me,” Carly said because that was true, too. She’d tried as long as she’d known Deana to infuse her friend with her own enthusiasm for seeing the world. Short of meeting the man of her dreams on the Orient Express in the middle of her travels, the only other thing that would make the trip perfect would be if Deana had the same wanderlust and they could do it together.

      But Carly could see Deana shaking her head even now.

      “There isn’t anything I want that isn’t in Elk Creek.”

      “Mr. Right,” Carly reminded.

      “He’ll show up one of these days,” Deana said with certainty. “And when he does, I don’t want to be somewhere else looking at bridges or mountains or leaves or churches or ruins or pyramids.”

      For as much as they were like two peas in a pod, this was the one area where they differed—Deana was a hometown girl through and through.

      And Carly wasn’t.

      Or at least Carly didn’t want to be.

      They headed into Elk Creek without fanfare just then. The small enclave’s main street—Center Street—was still deserted as Deana drove all the way to where it circled the town square. She turned at the corner taken up by the old Molner Mansion that had been converted into the local medical facility and stopped at the first house behind it. Carly’s house. The house her mother had left to her after her father’s death, when her mother had