Reunited With The Billionaire. Sandra Marton

convince him to operate on you.”

      “Exactly.”

      “Do your folks know? ‘Cause when I spoke to your mom the other day, all she could talk about was how thrilled she was that you were coming home.”

      “My dad knows. My mother doesn’t. Don’t look at me that way. Don’t you think I feel guilty enough? I just think it’s best to tell her with my father there as backup.” Wendy sighed. “You have a face like an open book, Alison. You think this is a bad idea, don’t you?”

      “I sure do. You said yourself the surgery’s risky. Well, why subject yourself to it?”

      “Because I want a life, that’s why!”

      “You have one. You lived when they thought you wouldn’t. Isn’t that enough?”

      “No, damn it, it isn’t. Look, it’s hard to explain, but I’m not who I used to be. Can’t you see that?”

      “Yes,” Alison said after a minute, “I can. So, you’re home just to get to this doctor. Not because of your mom or your dad or Seth—”

      “Seth again!” Wendy flushed. “What does he have to do with this? I was eighteen. He was nineteen. Whatever we had was kid stuff.”

      “That’s not how I remember it. You guys were always together. You had plans.”

      “I just told you, it was—”

      “Kid stuff. I heard you. But I was here when we all got word of the accident. How you’d fallen on that practice run—”

      “I don’t want to talk about it,” Wendy said sharply.

      “Seth was like a crazy man. He flew to Norway on the first flight out—”

      “Stop it! That was a thousand years ago.”

      “It was nine years ago, and I’ve never forgotten how he looked, like somebody whose world had been destroyed.”

      “It was my world that was destroyed,” Wendy cried, “and I did whatever I had to do to survive.” The friends stared at each other, each breathing hard. Then Wendy turned away and grabbed the door handle. A frosty breath of snow blew into the car. “I can walk home from here.”

      “Don’t be a fool.” Alison reached past Wendy, caught the handle and slammed the door shut. The women glared at each other for a couple of minutes and then Alison sighed. “Can we continue this conversation inside?”

      No. They couldn’t, Wendy realized. All the talk about Seth and old times…the look on Alison’s face when she’d tried to explain that she couldn’t accept the path her life had taken… It had been confirmation that her original plan was the wisest one. Lie low, stay away from the old hangouts, and avoid going through this horrible little scene and the pity of old friends who couldn’t understand why she wasn’t grateful just to have survived.

      “Wendy? Are we going for that burger or not?”

      “I think I’ll pass,” Wendy said quietly. “My folks are expecting me.”

      Alison nodded. “Of course.” She put the car in gear, backed out of the parking space, then put on the brakes and glared at Wendy again. “I’m your oldest friend! If I can’t tell you the truth, who can?”

      “You don’t know the truth,” Wendy said, the words tumbling out in a desperate rush. “I’m the one this happened to. Me, not you, or the doctors, or the nurses, or the therapists with their sympathetic looks and endless exercises.” She pushed down her hood and dragged her hands through her tumbled auburn curls. “Sometimes I wish I’d died that day, instead of waking up in a hospital bed and finding out that—that…”

      “What? That you were alive? That you still had both your legs? I don’t understand you. Don’t you ever stop to think how lucky you were?”

      “I’m trying to move on, Allie. Don’t you understand that?”

      “By pretending Seth doesn’t exist? By trying to force a doctor into surgery that might do more harm than good?”

      “Seth’s got somebody. You just told me that. And the doctor will want to do this operation once he talks to me.” Wendy shook her head. “You’re right. I lived. I got out of a wheelchair I was never supposed to get out of. But this woman, the one who can’t do the things she once did—this woman is a stranger. I can’t help it if that sounds selfish. It’s the way I feel.”

      “You’re right,” Alison said quietly. “I don’t understand.” She looked at Wendy and smiled, though her eyes glittered with tears. “But I don’t have to. I’m your friend. I’ll stand by you, no matter what. Okay?”

      Wendy nodded, even though it was more than okay. The pledge, the compassion in Alison’s eyes… Wendy felt her own eyes fill. For one improbable moment, she thought of letting all the pain inside her spill out. The truth was so much more complex than anyone knew. Maybe if she shared her awful secret…

      She knew better. It wouldn’t change a thing.

      Her heart, not just her body, had been broken in pieces on a winter’s day nine years ago. Looking in the mirror, seeing her scarred, twisted flesh was a constant reminder of what she’d almost had, what she’d lost, what she’d never have again. Now she could only pin her hopes on a time when she could stare at her reflection and see a whole Wendy instead of a shattered one. Then, perhaps, the agony would turn into a pain she could live with.

      “Wendy?” Alison said softly.

      She looked up, saw the confusion in her friend’s eyes. “Yes. I heard what you said. Thank you. You’re the best friend in the world.”

      The women gave each other wobbly smiles, then Alison scraped her hand across her eyes. “If you make me cry,” she said gruffly, “and my mascara runs, I’m never going to forgive you.”

      “Too late. It’s already running.”

      “Yeah?”

      “Yeah.”

      “Yours, too, so don’t look so smug.”

      They gave each other sharp looks. Then they laughed, reached out and hugged.

      “It’s good to have you home,” Alison said, “even if it’s just for a little while.”

      “And it’s good to be here.” Wendy pulled a couple of tissues from her pocket and handed one to Alison. “Even if it’s just for a little while.”

      Alison wiped her eyes and blew her nose. She started the car again and they drove to Cooper’s Corner, turned down a familiar old street and stopped in front of a handsome house with bay windows and flower boxes that Wendy knew would overflow with pink and lavender impatiens all summer.

      She stepped from the car just as the front door opened. Her mother and father stood poised in the doorway. Then Gina laughed and ran down the steps, with Howard right behind her, and just for a moment, as Wendy went into their sheltering arms, she had to admit that home was the best place in the world.

CHAPTER TWO

      IT WAS, Seth Castleman thought, the worst possible kind of day to be wrestling with Santa Claus on a sloped, snow-covered roof.

      Almost six inches of snow had been predicted overnight, and that was exactly what had fallen. Those six inches, coming hot on the heels of an earlier storm, had been enough to make taking down the ten-foot Santa figure a nasty, fairly dangerous job.

      “I hate to ask you,” Philo Cooper had told Seth when he phoned at nine that morning, “but I can’t reach the guy who rented it to me up in Pittsfield and it’s due back tomorrow. His answering machine’s on but maybe he’s away.”

      “In Florida, if he’s got half