ROWNING WITH INDECISION, COREY HESITATED IN FRON OF the mirror in her room and studied her appearance. The black jersey jumpsuit she’d decided to wear had narrow black shoulder straps attached to the bodice with a pair of golden loops, a scooped neckline, and a low back. It clung to her figure like a soft glove, ending in a gentle flair at her ankles, but she wasn’t certain if it was too dressy for dining next to the kitchen, or perhaps too casual for this house. It would definitely make a good impression on Spencer though…Spence!

Angry at herself for even considering his reaction, she stepped into a pair of flat-heeled sandals, clipped on a pair of gold disks at her hears, and snapped the wide gold cuff she’d worn earlier onto her wrist. She took a step toward the door, then a step back toward the mirror to check her face and hair. She was wearing her hair down tonight, loose around her shoulders; she no longer had to worry that Spencer Addison might think she was too young for him. She needed a little more lipstick, she decided, and quickly applied some. She glanced at her watch and could not believe how late it was. It was fifteen minutes after eight. She had just taken exactly twice as long to get ready as she had the night of the last Orchid Ball in Houston. Thorounghly disgusted, she turned her back on the mirror and marched to the door.

The little room by the kitchen was not the dark cubbyhole Corey had imagined, but rather a cozy alcove behind the kitchen that had a large, semicircular booth in it surrounded by tall windows that looked out on the darkened lawn. Corey heard her mother’s voice as she rounded the corner, and she was already smiling at the sound when she walked into the room.

And saw Spence.

He was sitting at one end of the booth, his left arm stretched casually across the top of it, grinning down at Corey’s mother, who was seated on his immediate left. Corey’s grandmother was next to Corey’s mother, facing the kitchen doorway, and Joy was seated next to her. The table had been set for five people. Four of them were already there. He was staying to eat with them.

Corey’s smile froze, her step faltered, but she recovered just as her grandmother saw her and announced her arrival to the gathering. “Here’s Corey, now. You’re late, dear. My, you look nice tonight! Is that a new outfit?”

Corey felt like sinking through the floor. The implication was that she’d dressed especially for the occasion, which of course she had, and she was horribly certain that Spencer had noticed.

Spencer Addison had definitely notices how she looked.

At the moment, what he noticed most was that her entire body had stiffened when she saw him sitting at the table. She hadn’t expected him to be there, Spence realized. And she didn’t want him there. The realization baffled and hurt him.

He watched her moving toward the booth with that same easy grace she’d had as a teenager, and he smiled at her. In return, she smiled through him, and he had a sudden insane impulse to get up out ot the booth, block her path, and sya, Dammit, Corey, look at me! He still could hardly believe that this cool, composed young woman who seemed to scarcely remember him was the same Corey Foster he’d known.

One thing hadn’t changed about her, Spencer noted – she still lit up a room when she walked into it. Within moments after she slid in across from him and started talking with the others, the entire atmosphere at the table seemed to brighten. At least that much about tonight was the same as it had been so long ago. Except, in those days, Corey had been glad to see him.

An image of those days danced in his mind… recollections of an adorable kid with a camera around her neck who popped up at his tennis matches. “I got a great shot of your first serve, Spence.” It had been a lousy serve, and he’d said as much. “I know”, she’d agreed with that infectious smile of hers, “but my shot of it was just great.”

He remembered the times when he’d gone over to the house unexpectedly. She had been so glad to see him the, her smile dawning like sunshine. “Hi, Spence! I didn’t know you were coming over.”

And then, one day, when she was about fifteen, he looked around and saw her walking toward him across the back lawn, her honey-colored hair blowing around her shoulders, sunstreaked and glinting in the sun, her eyes the bright clear blue of a summer sky. A golden girl – all sparkle and zest, long legs and laughing face. She had been his golden girl from that day on – changeable, constant, glowing.

Even now, he could see her standing beneath the mistletoe, her hands clasped behind her back. She was sixteen and looking very grown up.

“Don’t you know it’s bad luck not to honor the Christmas traditions of your friends in their homes…”

He had hesitated. “Are you certain you’re old enough for this?”

Of course, he’d known she had a fierce crush on him, and he’d known the time would come when she would grow up, grow out of it, and grow away from him. It was natural, inevitable that boys her own age would replace him in her heart. It was right that should happen.

He’d expected it, and even so, it had bothered him a little when it happened. More than a little. He hadn’t even seen the change coming until the night she asked him to be a kissing partner in an experiment. God, he had felt like such a pervert for what he’d done to her that night, and even worse for what he had wanted to do to her – to a seventeen-year-old girl!

His golden girl.

He’d forgotten about her Christmas dance, and that was all it took to sever whatever feeble feelings she had left for him. She went with someone else, a last-minute substitute, which was what he had been. According to his grandmother, she went with someone closer to her own age “and a far more suitable companion for an innocent girl” than Spence was. Corey was so involved with her own life by then that she hadn’t even bothered to say anything to him at his grandmother’s funeral a few months later. Diana had excused her by saying Corey had an afternoon date. She hadn’t bothered to attend his wedding either, even though she could have brought her date…

The conversation swirled around him at the table as one course followed another, and he participated now and then, but with only half his attention. He preferred to watch Corey when she wasn’t looking at him, and since she never glanced in his direction for more than a moment, he had plenty of opportunity. He was genuinely surprised when dessert was served; he’d eaten without tasting his food, and he certainly didn’t want any dessert.

What he did want he could not have: just this one night, just for this one meal, he had wanted it to be the way it had been the last time he had had dinner with her family. That was the night Diana has asked him to volunteer to take Corey to her school dance. She had a new man in her life by then – Doug somebody – and several others, as well.

Spence had already been relegated to least-important man in her life, but at least she’d still been able to spare a smile for him. The fact that she now found him completely dispensable in his own damned house at his own damned table was worse than annoying; it was terribly disappointing. And he knew exactly why it was. He’d been looking forward more than he wanted to admit to seeing her again, to having her happy family around him again. When he’d seen her coming across the back lawn earlier today, with her sun-streaked hair blowing in the breeze, he’d thought… He’d thought a lot of stupid, impossible things.

“Uncle Spence?” Joy’s puzzled voice cut through his thoughts, and Spence looked at her. “Is something wrong with your glass?”

“My what?”

“Your water glass. You’ve been staring at it and turning it around in your hand.”

Spence straightened in his seat and prepared to pay attention to the present and forget the past. “I’m sorry. My mind was on something else. What have you all been talking about?”

“The wedding mostly, but we’re all bored with that subject. Anyway, everything’s all taken care of.”

Corey sensed instinctively that Spence was about to join in the conversation, and since she was more comfortable not having to talk to him, she tried to keep everyone focused on Joy. “We’re not bored with the wedding at all,” Corey said quickly. “And even though you think everything is taken care of, there are always last-minute details that people forget. Sometimes they’re really important.”

“Like what?” Joy asked.

Corey thought madly for something to discuss that hadn’t already been covered. “Well, um… did you remember to apply for a marriage license?”

“No, but the judge is going to bring it with him.”

“I don’t think you can do that,” Corey said, wondering if Angela, in her preoccupation with making the wedding into a social extravaganza, had failed to handle the more mundane, less showy details. “I’ve been a bridesmaid in several weddings, and you always have to apply for a license in advance, then there’s a waiting period of a few days, oh – and blood tests.”

Joy shivered at the mention of blood. “I get faint at the sight of needles, so I don’t have to have one. The judge who’s performing the wedding is a friend of Uncle Spence’s, and he has the right to decide. He said I didn’t need one.”

“Yes, but what about the license and the waiting period?”

Spencer spoke for the first time in fifteen minutes, and even though Corey was braced for the sound of his deep voice, it still did funny things to her heart. Nostalgia, she was learning, was not a feeble force. “It’s all taken care of,” he said. “There’s no waiting period in Rhode Island.”

“I see,” Corey said, looking away from him the instant he finished speaking. Rather than try to think of another topic, she did what the others were doing and began to eat her dessert. Unfortunately, Joy wasn’t interested in her own slice of cheesecake; she was interested in Corey and Spence. “It’s funny,” she said, looking from Spence to Corey and back to Spence, “but I thought you two used to be good friends.”

Spence was so annoyed with Corey for treating him like an insignificant nonentity that he abruptly decided to make his presence, and his feelings, known. “So did I,” he said curtly. He had slammed the conversational ball directly into Corey’s court, and with amused satisfaction, he noticed that the “gallery” of three all turned to her to see how she was going to return it.

Corey lifter her head and met his challenging look. Mentally she reached across the table and flipped his plate into his lap, but all she did was smile and shrug. “We were.”

“But you don’t seem to have anything to say to each other,” Joy said, looking baffled and a little disappointed. The gallery looked to the right at Spence, then to their left, at Corey, but Corey had cleverly eaten a bite of cheesecake, effectively forcing Spence to deal with that issue. “It was a long time ago,” he said flatly.”

“Yes, but Uncle Spence, only two days ago you were upset because Corey delayed her flight for a day. I started thinking maybe there’d been a – like, relationship – between you two when you were younger.”

Now, when he didn’t want Corey’s attention, he got it. In fact, he got everybody’s attention. Corey lifted her brows and gave him a serenely amused look that managed to convey that he deserved whatever embarrassment he suffered in a conversational confrontation that he had provoked. The other three spectators waited expectantly. “I was not upset because she delayed her flight,” Spence said. “I was upset because I thought she had canceled her trip.” They continued to look at him until he was prodded into a half lie. “Corey is an excellen photographer, and she was aprt of the ‘deal’ your mother made with the magazine to cover your wedding. It was a legal, binding contract. Naturally, I expected Corey to honor her commitments.”

Corey’s mouth dropped open at that enormous piece of hypocrisy, and her mother, who sensed Corey’s impulse to throw her cheesecake into Spence’s face, rushed to the rescue. “Corey always honors her commitments,” she told Joy with gentle firmness. “She has very strong feelings about that.”

“Actually,” Corey added, heading off what she felt certain would be another probing question from Joy, “Spence was a friend of the whole family’s, not of mine in particular.”

Corey was pleased with that explanation, and Joy looked satisfied, but unfortunately Corey’s grandmother was neither. “I don’t think that’s entirely true, Corey.”

“Yes, Gram,” Corey said in a warning voice, “it is.”

“Well, maybe it is, dear, but you were the only one in the house who wallpapered your bedroom with his pictures.”

Corey wanted to kill her, but at the moment all she could do was argue on a technicality. “I did not wallpaper my room with his pictures.”

“That room was a shrine to Spencer,” the elderly lady argued. “If you’d lit candles in there, people would have prayed. Goodness, you even had photograph albums filled with his pictures under your bed.”

“Then what happened?” Joy asked.

“Nothing happened,” Corey said, aiming a quelling look at her grandmother.

“You mean, one day you just – just stopped caring about Uncle Spence and took down his pictures? Just like that?”

Corey gave her a bright smile and nodded. “Just like that.”

“I didn’t know it could happen that way,” Joy said somberly. “A person can just stop caring – for no reason?” For the first time since her questions had begun, Corey had the feeling that Joy wasn’t merely curious, she was troubled.

Corey’s grandmother obviously noticed the same thing and attributed Joy’s anxiety to bridal nerves. Patting Joy’s clenched hand, she offered reassurance: “Corey had a very good reason, dear. One you will never have, I’m sure.”

“She did?”

“Yes. Spence broke her heart.”

Mentally, Corey threw up her hands and yielded to the inevitable. Short of gagging her grandmother with a napkin and dragging her out of the booth by her ankles, Corey knew there was nothing to stop what was to come. Torn between misery and mirth, she waited for her dignity to be sacrificed on the altar of truth, for the sake of a nervous bride-to-be. Since she couldn’t prevent it, and since she knew Spence was also going to suffer some unpleasant moments, she leaned back, folded her arms, and decided to enjoy his discomfort. He looked completely flabbergasted, Corey noted with some amusement, his coffee cup arrested halfway to his mouth.

“I did what?” he said irately, and actually looked to Corey as if he expected her to come to his rescue by denying it. In answer she lifted her brows and gave him an unsympathetic shrug.

“You broke her heart,” Corey’s grandmother asserted.

“And just exactly how did I do that?” he demanded.

She gave him a deeply censorious look for failing to own up to his wrongdoing and retaliated by addressing her answer to his niece, instead. “When Corey was a senior in high school, your uncle asked to take her to the Christmas formal. I’ve never seen Corey so excited. She and Diana – Corey’s sister – shopped for weeks for just the right gown to dazzle him, and they finally found it. When the big day arrived, Corey spent most of it in her room primping. Then, just before Spence was due to arrive, she came downstairs. My, how she sparkled in that gown! She looked so beautiful and grown-up that her grandpa and I had tears in our eyes. We took pictures of course, but we saved some film so Corey would have pictures of Spence with her.”

She paused for a sip of water, letting the suspense build, and Corey had the fleeting thought that her grandmother had a previously undiscovered flair for high drama. Poor Joy was on the edge of her seat, frowning at her uncle for whatever he’d done to spoil such a night. Spence was frowning at Corey’s grandmother, and Corey’s mother was frowning at hre plate. Corey was beginning to enjoy herself.

“Then what happened?” Joy implored.

Corey’s grandmother carefully put her glass where it had been, then she lifted her sorrowful gaze to Joy. “Your uncle stood her up.”

Joy turned a look of such disbelief, such accusation on Spence that Corey almost pitied him. “Uncle Spence,” she breathed, “you didn’t!”

“He did,” Corey’s grandmother averred flatly. Spence opened his mouth to explain, but she wasn’t through with him. “It broke my heart the way Corey kept watching for him at the window. She could not belive he wasn’t coming.”

“And so you missed the formal?” Joy asked Corey, displaying the sort of appalled sympathy that only females are capable of feeling for each under those particular circumstances.

“No, she did not,” Spence said.

“Oh, yes she did.”

“I think you’re mistaken about that and some other things,” Spence said, his jaw tight with annoyance at being made to look like an even bigger villain than he’d actually been. “I did stand Corey up that night,” he said, addressing his defense mostly to his wide-eyed niece. “I forgot I was supposed to take Corey to the dance, and I went to Aspen for the holidays instead of going home to Houston. It’s obvious now that I shouldn’t have let my grandmother handle my apology, but she was very upset and very insistent. I’m guilty of those two things, but the rest of the story you just heard” – he hesitated, searching for a respectful way to say Corey’s grandmother was completely wrong – “isn’t the way I remember it. Corey already had a date for the dance, and she already had her gown, but her date had to cancel at the last minute. The other boys she knew who would have taken her already had dates of their own, so Diana suggested I offer to take Corey, which I did. I was not a volunteer, I was a recruit, and the only reason Corey wanted to go with me was there wasn’t anyone else available – except for her very last choice, which was whoever she called in as a last-minute substitute for me. I,” he finished bluntly, “was her next-to-last choice.”

Having had his say, he gave Corey’s grandmother a conciliatory smile and say, “My memory isn’t greatest either, but I have a very clear recollection of all that because I felt very badly when I realized I’d forgotten about the dance. I was very relieved when I was told that Corey went with someone else.”

“You would have had a clearer recollection,” Gram informed him smugly, “if you had been there, as I was, when she went upstairs in that beautiful blue gown – the gown she bought had to be royal blue because that was your favorite color – and took it off. I don’t know what gave you the idea you weren’t her first choice, but I do know that if you had heard her crying herself to sleep, as I did that night, you would never forget the sound of it either. She was beyond heartbroken. It was pitiful!”

although some of what he’d heard didn’t make sense, as Spence stared at the elderly woman, he knew instinctively she was telling the truth. His niece knew it, too. Filled with shame, he looked at their accusing faces while his mind tormented him with images of his golden girl coming down the stairs in her royal blue gown and waiting for him at the windows. He thought of Corey crying herself to sleep in a bedroom filled with his pictures, and he felt physically ill. He didn’t know why she’d invented a story about needing a substitute date for the dance, but when he looked at Mrs. Foster, who was avoiding his gaze, one thing was obvious: everybody had known how Corey felt about him back then, but him.

He looked at Corey, but she had leaned her elbows on the table and covered her face with her hands, and he couldn’t see her face. His jaw tight with self-disgust, he glared at his water glass, thinking of the barb he’d thrown earlier about honoring commitments. No wonder she couldn’t stand the sight of him!

Across the table, Corey looked between her fingers at the stricken expression of Spence’s face and then the satisfied smile on her grandmother’s, and the whole scenario was so beyond her worst imaginings that she had an uncontrollable impulse to… giggle.

“Corey,” Spence said, lifting his eyes to her covered face, prepared to take whatever verbal flogging she wanted to give him. “I didn’t know. I didn’t realize-“ he began awkwardly, and to his horror, her shoulders started to shake. She was crying!

“Corey, please don’t-!” he said desperately, afraid to reach for her and make things worse.

Her shoulders shook harder.

“I’m sorry,” he said in an aching voice. “I don’t know what else to say-“

Her hands fell away, and Spence stared in disbelief at a pair of laughing blue eyes that were regarding him with amused sympathy, not animosity. “If I were you,” she advised in a laughter-choked voice, “I’d leave it right there and say good night. If Gram isn’t convinced you feel guilty enough, this could actually get worse.” Her transformation from cool stranger to his enchanting ally was so sudden, so undeserved, and so poignantly familiar that Spence felt a surge of pure tenderness pour through him.

He slid out of the booth, gave Corey’s grandmother a wink, and held his hand out to Corey. “In that case, I’d rather do my groveling outside, and deprive her of the opportunity to witness it.”

“I really ought to let you do it,” Corey said with that infectious smile he’d always loved, “but you’re already too late. I’d already forgiven and forgotten the whole thing. In fact, I shipped those old photograph albums here with some of my equipment and supplies. I intended to give them to you. So, as you can see, there’s no need to go outside or grovel.”

Spence put his hand firmly beneath her elbow. “I insist,” he said with quiet implacability.

Joy slid out of the booth behind Corey. “I guess I’d better spend some time with Mom and Peter and their guests.”

Mrs. Foster waited until the three were well out of earshot. “Mother,” she said with a sigh, “I cannot believe you did that.”

“I only said what was true, dear.”

“Sometimes the truth hurts people.”

“Truth is truth,” the elderly lady said smugly as she eased her way out of the booth. “And the truth is that Spencer deserved a thrashing for what he did that night, and Corey deserved an apology. I accomplished both tonight, and they’re both better off for it.”

“If you’re hoping that they’ll fall in love now that you’ve cleared the way, you’re very wrong. Corey is the living example of ‘once burned, twice shy’. You’ve said that a hundred times about her.”

“Well, that’s the truth, too.”

“Do you think,” Mrs. Foster said, her mind shifting away from Corey and Spence and back to the basic problem, “you could just think about the truth, and not say it quite so often?”

“I don’t think so.”

Mrs. Foster stepped aside so that her mother could precede her down the hall. “Why not?”

“I’m seventy-one years old. I don’t think I should waste any more of my time on words that don’t mean anything. Besides, at my age, I’m allowed to be eccentric.”