White Picket Fences. Tara Taylor Quinn

that would be so horrible?”

      “I think so.”

      “Why?”

      Randi swallowed. “Because it matters.” The admission was hard. “I don’t know why. I can’t understand it. But it matters.”

      “So how will not going to dinner with him help that?”

      “I won’t have to sit there and know things aren’t going to work out.” Randi sat up and bounced her feet on the floor.

      “How do you know it won’t?”

      “It never does.”

      “There’s a first time for everything.”

      Yesterday was certainly a case in point. “He’s a total pet freak.”

      “He’s a vet.”

      “I hate pets.”

      “You’ve never had one.”

      “I’m trying to sabotage the pet-therapy club assignment.”

      “How are you going to do that?” Becca asked, chuckling.

      “I don’t know.” Randi planted her feet solidly on the floor. “Plan A was yesterday and something went drastically wrong. I haven’t figured out Plan B yet, but rest assured, I will.”

      “Go to dinner and maybe it’ll come to you.”

      She’d never thought of that. Dinner would be an excellent opportunity to talk Zack Foster out of using college students for his little service project this semester. She had to get this settled before the students were back in session the following week; this might be her last opportunity.

      And when Zack saw the benefits to his schedule, he’d be thanking her for it.

      “DO YOU REALIZE what time it is?”

      Zack looked at his watch. Holy hell, somehow it had jumped from eight-thirty to almost midnight without his even noticing. “I’m sorry,” he said, signaling for their bill. “You probably have to work in the morning, don’t you?”

      Randi shrugged. Her shoulders, snug in the tight spandex jumpsuit she was wearing, attracted his attention. Everything about Randi’s body was tight.

      It made Zack tight, too.

      “Classes don’t start until next week, so while I have to go in, it doesn’t have to be too early.”

      He had a surgery scheduled at seven-thirty the next morning.

      “This place was great,” Randi said, pushing through the front door of the five-star Scottsdale hotel he’d chosen—before she remembered that he would probably have opened it for her. “You were right—not only was the duck à l’orange superb, but that guitar player was fabulous.”

      He hadn’t heard much of the music. He’d been too focused on hearing about Randi’s job as athletic director at a class-one university. He’d learned the inside scoop on recruiting and eligibility rules, about Title Nine’s effect on the world of sports and found out which sports brought in money at the gate. He’d guessed right on basketball, but missed volleyball by a long shot. He’d told Randi about his job, too, when she’d asked. For someone who had no fondness for pets, she certainly had a lot of questions.

      And a load of sassy comebacks, too. Zack couldn’t remember when he’d laughed so hard. Or just plain enjoyed himself so much.

      What they hadn’t talked about was the pet-therapy club.

      “So did you go immediately to Montford after you graduated from high school?” he asked Randi as he reluctantly turned his Explorer back toward Shelter Valley. Despite the lateness of the hour, he wasn’t ready for the evening to end.

      Randi shook her head. Her blond hair reminded him of Meg Ryan’s in that movie French Kiss—all flyaway and sexy as hell.

      “Actually, I wasn’t planning to attend college at all.”

      He turned to look at her. “You’re kidding, right? Your brother’s president of the local university.”

      “When I graduated from high school, I was already turning pro. There was hardly time to think about more education. Besides, I thought I had all the education I needed in order to get where I was going.”

      Something prickled the back of his neck. “Turning pro?”

      She grinned at him. “I forget you’re relatively new to town. Nobody talks about it much anymore, probably out of kindness to me, but you’re riding with Shelter Valley’s ex–child star of the Ladies Professional Golf Association.”

      Tension shot through him. “Golf?”

      “Yeah.” She nodded slowly, looking straight ahead at the dark road. “I was good at a lot of sports, but my first love was golf. I was competing—and winning—by the time I was fourteen. By twenty, I was officially on the LPGA tour and slated to break all the records.”

      Golf. He swallowed. Adjusted his big frame in the seat. Did that mean she knew Barbara Sharp? Did she know Dawn, too?

      “What happened?”

      “I was in a car accident in Florida not quite ten years ago. On my way to play the final round in a tournament with a purse of one hundred grand. I was up by five strokes going into the day and some idiot ran a red light and broadsided me two blocks from the golf course.”

      Golf. But almost ten years ago. Then she wouldn’t know Dawn. And maybe not Barbara, either.

      “You were driving?”

      “Nah, I was in a cab. The back passenger door took the brunt of the collision and I was on the other side of that door. My right rotator cuff was crushed. And so was any future I’d hoped to have swinging a golf club.”

      “I’m sorry.” He responded to the pain in her voice. And to the sick feeling he had in his own gut. She’d been a golfer.

      “You seem so cheerful,” he told her, “like nothing really bad ever came your way.”

      Turning to face him as much as she could within the confines of her seat belt, Randi took a moment to answer him. Already he knew that meant she was going to be completely serious. Randi had a tendency to blurt out the first thing that came to her mind. And it was often tempered with a large dose of her dry wit.

      “The way I choose to see things, I’m very lucky,” she finally said. There was no doubting that she meant every word. “I have a great family—the best. A job I love, a job many women spend their entire lives aiming for but never get. And I had a chance to live a dream, too. That’s more than most people have. Life on the circuit is tough. Lonely. Still, I would’ve loved every minute of that life… But I love Shelter Valley, too.”

      “So you don’t miss golf? Or get frustrated because you can’t play?” Was the woman superhuman?

      “Are you crazy? Of course I do,” she said. “Just last week I went into Phoenix to play some rounds with a couple of friends. They’re still on the circuit and wanted me to critique some problems they were having. By the last round, I was in tears. But I played until the bitter end.”

      Zack glanced at her. “Your shoulder hurt?”

      “Yeah, but not enough to make me cry.”

      Not wanting to impinge on her privacy, Zack didn’t ask any more. But he waited, hoping she’d tell him, anyway.

      And wondered if the people she’d been playing with knew Barbara Sharp.

      “I just got so tired of my head telling my body what to do—and my body not doing what it was told. My game was mediocre at best.”

      “Why play, then?” he asked, but he knew the answer. Probably the same reason he still played basketball even after he’d