White Picket Fences. Tara Taylor Quinn

fine,” Randi said automatically. Then she remembered the day, almost a year before, when Becca had shown up on her doorstep, desperate, unsure, frightened. Of everyone she knew in Shelter Valley, she’d come to Randi.

      “Well… I’m home, not sick or anything, but I’m not exactly fine,” she clarified.

      “What’s up?”

      “First, you have to promise me that you won’t say anything to Will. Or anyone else, for that matter.”

      “You know you can trust me.”

      She did know that. Which was one reason she was on the phone at all. Becca was the epitome of discretion. It was Becca’s mother, Rose, who was the town gossip.

      Of course, Rose was harmless, since much of her gossip bore only a minute resemblance to the truth, and everyone knew that.

      “I’ve got a date tonight.”

      “You do?” Becca couldn’t quite keep the excitement out of her voice, but Randi gave her full marks for effort.

      “Yeah.”

      “Okay, you have my permission to go. Just be home by midnight.”

      “It’s with Zack Foster. He’s the new partner Cassie took on at the clinic last spring.”

      “Oh?”

      Randi almost smiled at the eagerness Becca was trying hard to conceal. Except that she felt so miserable smiling wasn’t currently an option.

      “I can’t go,” she muttered.

      “Why not?” There was curiosity and concern in Becca’s tone, though no condemnation.

      Randi relaxed enough to sit down on the side of her bed.

      “I don’t know, Bec,” she admitted. “I’ve only met the man once and he…he scares me.”

      “Zack? I’ve seen him a couple of times and he’s big, I’ll grant you. But a teddy bear. Besides, since when have you ever let a man frighten you? I can remember when you were barely five years old and challenging your teenage brothers, fully believing you could take them on.”

      “I could.” She did smile this time.

      “Yeah, because you had them wrapped around your sweet little finger.”

      “I could still take them on,” Randi asserted. She had learned a long time ago that the mind was a far more effective weapon than physical strength. When she’d been on the professional golf tour, before the accident that had squelched that particular dream, it hadn’t been the strength of her swing that had made her a winner. It had been the mental control and finesse that went along with her swing.

      “It’s not that Zack scares me, exactly,” she said now to Becca, staring down at the logo on her shoe.

      “When I was sitting in his office yesterday, it was almost like I’d been hypnotized. I was practically ready to agree to whatever he said. It was the oddest sensation.”

      “You like him.”

      “I like you, too, but I don’t lose my ability to think when I’m with you.”

      CHAPTER FOUR

      “THAT’S DIFFERENT. I’m a woman.”

      “Yeah?” Randi replied. “No kidding.”

      Becca ignored her sarcasm. “Did your stomach flutter, too?” she asked knowingly.

      “Yeah,” Randi answered a little more slowly. The logo on her shoe was dirty. Dirty shoes always bothered her. “But that might’ve been because I skipped breakfast.” She carried the phone with her as she went into the bathroom to take a wet washcloth to her shoe.

      “And you couldn’t stop looking at him?”

      “Maybe.” The smudge wouldn’t come off. Damn.

      “You’ve got the hots for him.”

      That was precisely what scared Randi. She didn’t know how to have the hots. And she was a little old to be finding out.

      “I’ve been attracted to a man before.” She told Becca the same thing she’d told herself at least a hundred times since she’d awoken that morning.

      “You’re speaking of Sean?”

      “Yes, mainly.”

      “Sweetie, you didn’t give a damn if you were with Sean or not. You went out with him for so long because it was convenient.”

      “I wouldn’t sleep with a man without feeling something for him,” Randi defended herself, walking to her closet for another pair of athletic shoes.

      “I’m not saying you weren’t fond of him, but there was no spark between the two of you. Will and I saw that right off the bat.”

      Which might explain why sex with Sean had been so terrible she’d only tried it with him twice. Once he’d made the initial move to her bedroom, she’d had to initiate everything else. And had found the experience more embarrassing than arousing.

      Grabbing one of the nine other pairs of athletic shoes lined up in front of her, she slipped out of the ones she had on and put them aside for bleaching.

      “Do you think there’s something wrong with me?” Randi whispered. She didn’t usually allow herself to think that way, but sometimes, in the dark of the night, she was unable to keep her fears at bay.

      “No!” Becca’s answer was emphatic. “You’ve just led an unusual life. You were an athlete from the day you were born. What choice did you have with four older brothers? You had to join in or be left in the dust. And you were good at everything you tried. You started training before you got to high school, and when most girls were experimenting with their sexuality, with boys, you were traveling on the junior professional golf circuit. You were hardly home enough to be able to graduate from high school, let alone do any dating.”

      All of what her sister-in-law was saying Randi had already told herself. But it sounded so much more reasonable coming from Becca.

      “And by the time I’d reached my twentieth birthday, I was on the LPGA tour and most men were too intimidated by me to see me as a woman. I usually knew more about sports than they did, and if a man happened to know as much, it was because he was an athlete himself, and then the fact that I might be able to beat him at his own game became a problem.”

      “Tanner Snow?” Becca named the golfer Randi had brought home for Christmas one year.

      Randi tied the laces on the shoe she’d just put on. “Yeah.”

      “And it hasn’t gotten any easier, has it, since you won the position at Montford?”

      “Probably not.” Randi hadn’t really noticed. Had she? She liked her life. Had more friends than she knew what to do with, enjoyed the time she spent with them.

      Not everyone had a strong sex drive—which was surely why she hadn’t had a better experience with Sean.

      Randi expended her physical energy on the basketball and tennis courts. And occasionally on the golf course, when she could bring herself to play a round with a rotator cuff that would never be what it was, thanks to the car accident nine years ago.

      “Will and I have always said that when you got hit, you’d get hit hard,” Becca said.

      “Got hit?” She studied the logos on her shoes. They were clearly legible.

      “Fell for a man.”

      “I’ve just met him, Becca! I haven’t fallen anywhere.”

      “Have it your way.” Randi couldn’t tell if her brother’s wife was humoring her or not.

      “So will you call