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Settled at her usual table near the kitchen of her mom’s restaurant, Annie Sullivan ate the last of her omelet and opened the local paper to the sports section. Even though she and major league pitcher Tyler Townsend, a hometown boy, had been apart for a long time now, it was a habit she hadn’t been able to break. She kept hoping that one day she’d see his name in print and it wouldn’t hurt. So far, though, that hadn’t happened.

Today, with the baseball season barely started in mid-April, she was expecting nothing more than a small jolt to her system from the local weekly. Instead, her jaw dropped at the headline at the top of the page: Star Braves Pitcher Ty Townsend on Injured Reserve. The article went on to report that after pitching just three games, the baseball sensation from Serenity would be out indefinitely following surgery two weeks ago for a potentially career-ending injury to his shoulder. He’d be doing rehab, possibly for months, and he’d be doing it right here in town. He was, in fact, already here.

Clutching the paper in a white-knuckled grip, Annie had to draw in several deep breaths before she could stand. Shouting for her mother, she headed straight for the restaurant kitchen, only to be intercepted by sous-chef Erik Whitney.

Regarding her with concern, Erik steadied her when she would have dashed right past him. “Hey, sweetheart, where’s the fire?” he asked.

“I need to see my mother,” she said, trying to wrench free of his grasp.

“She’s in her office. What’s wrong, Annie? You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.”

Though she’d poured out her heart to Erik as a teenager, right this second she was incapable of speech. Instead, Annie simply handed him the paper.

Erik took one look at the headline and muttered a curse. “I knew this was going to happen,” he said.

Annie stared at him, her sense of betrayal deepening. “You knew about this? You knew Ty was back in town?”

Erik nodded. “Since the day before yesterday.”

“Mom, too?”

He nodded again.

Now it was Annie who uttered a curse, made a U-turn and headed back to the table to grab her purse. What had everyone been thinking, conspiring to keep something this huge from her? Especially her mom, who knew better than anyone the damage secrets, lies and betrayal could do.

Erik stuck with her. “Come on, Annie, don’t blame your mother for this. Go to her office. Talk to her,” he urged as she stormed past him through the kitchen. “She was just trying to protect you.”

At the door, she turned and asked angrily, “So I could be blindsided, instead? Ty had surgery two weeks ago, Erik! He’s been in town how long—a couple of days? A week? It’s not as if this happened yesterday.”

“I’m sure Dana Sue thought it wouldn’t make the paper here before she had a chance to tell you.”

“Forget the stupid newspaper. We’re talking about Serenity in an age of cell phones and the Internet,” Annie said incredulously. “Gossip spreads in minutes, and around here Ty’s big news. Heck, even you knew, and you’re not tapped into the grapevine. You all knew before one word of this hit the paper.”

“Helen’s tapped in and I’m married to her, to say nothing of working for your mom. Not much gets past the Sweet Magnolias. And in this case, they all knew what was going on the instant Maddie found out Ty had to have surgery.”

“Which begs the question,” Annie said bitterly. “Why didn’t anyone think I had a right to know?” A thought suddenly struck her. “That’s where Maddie went a couple of weeks ago, isn’t it? She went to be with Ty when he had his surgery.”

Erik nodded. “Look, it’s not about you deserving to know,” he said reasonably. “You’ve been pretty touchy about anything to do with Ty for quite a while now. Nobody’s known quite how to handle it.”

Okay, that was fair. In fact, Annie totally understood the dilemma. She and Ty had been together on a casual basis during her senior year in high school and for a couple of years after that. Since their mothers, Dana Sue and Maddie, were best friends, she and Ty had been friends forever, as well. The ties binding them had been tight on many levels.

And then it had all unraveled. Annie supposed the breakup had been as inevitable as the fact that they’d fallen in love in the first place. After all, a superstar professional athlete had beautiful women falling at his feet in every city. How was Annie, the quiet hometown girl struggling every day to beat an eating disorder, supposed to compete with that, especially when she was still in college?

The official disintegration of their relationship had dragged out over an entire year, partly because neither of them had known how to dash all those parental expectations that they’d marry and live happily ever after.

For months they’d seen the handwriting on the wall, but they’d both been in denial. When tensions had been running especially high, they’d tried to avoid coming back to Serenity at the same time. On the rare occasions when family get-togethers couldn’t be avoided, they’d tried to deal with the awkwardness with carefully orchestrated polite indifference. They’d both understood how a bitter split could potentially damage the lifelong friendship between their mothers, and they’d wanted to avoid inflicting that kind of collateral damage. At least they’d agreed on that much.

Of course, all of that was before the real damage had been done, before Ty’s infidelity had become public knowledge in the worst possible way. After that, all bets had been off. There’d been no more pretense that things had ended amicably.

Fortunately, neither her mom nor Ty’s had asked too many questions once the facts were out there. It went beyond sensitivity. Annie suspected Dana Sue and Maddie had made a pact years earlier to leave the two of them alone. Goodness knew, the Sweet Magnolias, as Dana Sue and Maddie and Helen had been known since high school, meddled in everyone else’s lives, but over the years they’d barely mentioned Ty in Annie’s presence or her to him. More recently, the silence had been deafening.

Annie supposed their current avoidance of the subject was part of the same old pattern, though she was in no mood to cut them any slack this time. Didn’t they think she’d care that Ty had sustained a serious injury? Didn’t they know what it would do to her for him to be right back here, in her face every single day? Couldn’t they at least have warned her?

As she started out the door, Erik tried once more to stop her.

“Wait!” he commanded. “Come on, Annie. If you won’t talk to your mother, talk to me. I swear I’ll just listen. You can rant and rave all you want.”

She regarded him with a bleak expression. “There’s nothing to say.” Ty had as much right to come home to Serenity as she did, even if it would turn her life upside down.

“Where are you going?”

She shook her head. She honestly didn’t know. Not to work, that was for sure. She worked at The Corner Spa, owned by her mom, Helen and Ty’s mom. Maddie, in fact, ran it. Annie didn’t want to face her right now, either. Though they both tried, it had been awkward between them ever since the breakup. Now it would be a thousand times worse. She wasn’t sure she could bear another of Maddie’s pitying looks.

Ironically, Annie worked at the spa as a sports injury therapist and personal trainer. Armed with her degree as a physical therapist and two years of experience at a sports injury facility in Charleston, she’d had the idea to add a physical therapy component to the spa’s services.

And while the spa was open only to women, there wasn’t a doubt in her mind that Ty intended to do his rehab there in the off-hours when no one else was around. He could be counting on his stepfather and former coach, Cal Maddox, to oversee his rehab, or even the spa’s other personal fitness instructor, Elliott Cruz, but Annie suspected that sooner or later someone was going to suggest she get involved. She was the one with the expertise in sports injuries, after all.

Just the thought of seeing Ty again was enough to make her want to throw up. It had been years since she’d won her battle with anorexia, and though she’d never been bulimic, right this second any thought of food made her nauseous. The little bit she’d already eaten churned in her stomach.

Even as the dark thoughts registered, Annie gasped. No way! she thought fiercely. She was not going to let Ty’s return send her back into the kind of self-destructive eating pattern that had nearly killed her. She was stronger than that. And he was a pig. In fact, that might have to become her mantra, one she repeated at least a dozen times a day.

“I am strong, and Tyler Townsend is a pig!” she said aloud, testing it.

Yes, indeed, that ought to keep her from backsliding. And if she felt herself slipping on either front, well, she could always take an extended vacation somewhere far away from Serenity until Ty’s shoulder had healed and he was back to his glamorous, self-indulgent lifestyle, the lifestyle he’d chosen over her.

Satisfied with her plan, she considered going to work, after all, but concluded it might be a bit too soon to test herself. Instead, she called the spa and asked Elliott to take any of her appointments he had time for and to cancel the rest.

“I’m taking a mental health day,” she informed him, falling back on an excuse she hadn’t used since high school.

“Ah, you heard about Ty,” he said, sounding sympathetic. “Anything I can do?”

“Has he been sneaking in there after hours?” she asked, hating the fact that there were virtually no secrets in this town except those kept from her.

“Just a couple of times,” he admitted. He hesitated, then added, “I’ve started working with him, but he’d do better with you.”

“Hell will freeze over before that happens,” she said heatedly.

“Think about it, Annie,” Elliott urged. “His career’s on the line, and he was once your friend.”

“He was more than a friend and he blew it,” she retorted, unyielding. “Will you deal with my appointments today or not?”

“Of course I will,” he said. “I’m sorry you’re hurting.”

Annie sighed. “I just wish I knew if I’m more hurt because Ty’s back or because everyone apparently conspired to keep it from me.”

“A little of both, I suspect,” Elliott said. “Do something totally spontaneous today, something a little crazy. Blow off some steam. You’ll feel better.”

Annie considered the suggestion, then dismissed it. The only thing that might make her feel marginally better would be having Elliott—or anyone else—agree to punch Ty’s face in. She smiled at the thought and suddenly knew exactly where she needed to go—to the one person who might actually do that for her.

Ten minutes later, she was sitting on a stool behind the counter at her dad’s hardware store on Main Street, while he waited on a customer. Ronnie Sullivan had a history of being quick-tempered and protective. This might work to her advantage today.

As soon as they were alone, her father surveyed her intently. “You don’t look so good, kid.”

“You could make me feel better,” she suggested.

“By punching Ty’s lights out?” he guessed, proving he, too, had been in on the town’s worst-kept secret. “I don’t think so.”

She sighed. “Why not? He deserves it.”

Ronnie laughed. “No question about it, but can you imagine the ruckus that would stir up between your mom and Maddie? They’d be forced to take sides, and so would Cal and I. Then Helen and Erik would be drawn into it, and eventually the entire town would likely follow suit. Pretty soon, everybody would have to wear buttons or ribbons to declare which side they’re on. Sorry, sweetie, it just wouldn’t be good for business, and in the end, you’d be consumed by guilt for stirring it all up.”

Despite herself, Annie chuckled at her dad’s logic. It was true: Serenity did have a tendency to take sides, and there was no way this feud between her and Ty would stay quiet for long, even without her dad beating Ty up for her. And, damn her soft heart, she would feel guilty about it.

“I guess I’ll just have to deal with this,” she said morosely.

Her dad pulled a stool up next to hers and studied her with a frown. “Is there anything else I can do to help?”

“You can tell me why men are such idiots,” she said. The question wasn’t rhetorical. She really wanted to know.

“Hormones and a lack of common sense,” Ronnie said at once. “Just look how I messed things up with your mom for no good reason. Weigh that against how long it took me to make things right. Idiocy definitely played a role in that.” He slanted a look at her. “You want to talk about what happened? I know it’s a touchy subject, but you’ve never said a word about how you felt when things blew up and all Ty’s dirty laundry was spread all over the tabloids.”

“I think my feelings are pretty obvious without dissecting them,” she told him.

“Sometimes talking does help.”

She shook her head. “Not likely.”

“Sweetie, I know how badly he hurt you, and if I really thought it would help, I would punch him.” He hesitated, then added, “I also know how important his friendship was to you for a long time before that. Do you really want to lose that, too?”

“I lost our friendship a long time ago,” she said mournfully. That, as much as anything else, was what had broken her heart. “I just have to face it, Dad. It’s over. Not just the relationship, but also the friendship. I’ll never be able to trust Ty again.”

“Your mom learned to trust me again,” he reminded her gently.

“Not the same,” she said.

Her dad was right about one thing, though. Cheating was something he and Ty had in common. The big difference was that Ronnie had recognized his mistake after one careless, irresponsible slip. Ty not only hadn’t acknowledged it, he’d compounded it by cheating over and over until he’d finally gotten caught. He had a three-year-old son as proof of his infidelity.

Annie might have been able to get past the cheating with enough time, but that precious little boy? No way. Any babies Ty had were supposed to be with her, not some gold digger who’d slept with Ty a couple of times, then dumped her kid with him in exchange for a big payoff when he wouldn’t marry her.

Oh, Annie knew all the gory details. Not because Ty had told her, but because they’d been tabloid fodder for weeks. Obviously if Ty was home, so was his little boy. Now everyone in Serenity who’d been living on Mars when the story first broke would know just how big a fool she’d been to give her heart to some hotshot sports superstar.

Worst of all, despite everything—the betrayal, the hurt, the humiliation—she still loved him. And that made her an even bigger idiot than he was.

“You need to call Annie,” Maddie told Ty after seeing the headline about his return in the Serenity newspaper. “It was crazy to think we could keep your being back here quiet for long.”

“Don’t you think Dana Sue probably filled her in?” he said, torn between dread and anticipation at the thought of speaking to Annie. Their relationship had ended really badly, and it had been all his fault. “Besides, Annie doesn’t want to talk to me. She made that plain three years ago.”

“When Trevor was born,” his mother guessed.

Ty nodded. He loved his son to pieces, but he knew that Annie would never in a million years get past the fact that he’d not only cheated, but fathered a child with someone else. There wasn’t an explanation in the world good enough to make her see past that one huge mistake.

Claiming that they hadn’t been exclusive certainly hadn’t worked. Reminding her of the countless times they’d talked about how reasonable it was to date others while she was still in college and he was on the road with the team had only backfired.

“That didn’t include getting another woman pregnant,” she’d retorted, her eyes filled with the kind of hurt he hadn’t seen since her mom had kicked her dad out for cheating when Annie was fourteen. “How am I supposed to forgive that?”

“I don’t know,” he’d told her, defeated. “I honestly don’t know.”

Truthfully, he still didn’t. But when he’d been injured, the one bright spot had been the chance to come back to Serenity and maybe take a stab at making things right with Annie. He could have done the rehab anywhere, had the best trainers in the world working with him, but he’d refused every option the team had proposed, packed up Trevor and come home. He wasn’t entirely sure why making amends to Annie was so important right now, but it was. One of the lessons he’d learned the hard way was that friendships were more valuable and lasting than casual sex. Too bad he’d had to lose his best friend before he’d figured it out.

Now that he was here, though, he had no idea what the next step should be. Maybe his mom was right. Maybe it just needed to start with a phone call.

“Does she ever mention me?” he asked, looking for some sign that Annie’s attitude had mellowed.

Maddie shook her head. “Certainly not to me. Can you blame her?”

“I suppose not.”

“I so wish things had turned out differently, Ty. You two—”

“Are over,” he said flatly. “Her decision.”

“If you honestly believe that, then why did you come back here?”

“I thought it would be good for Trevor to spend some time with his family.” That, at least, was true. His son needed more stability than he could get even from the most doting nanny and a dad who was on the road for days—sometimes weeks—at a time.

His mother studied him skeptically. “Really? And that thought only occurred to you after I mentioned that Annie had moved back home?” Before he could respond, she continued, “Because it certainly didn’t cross your mind during the off-season last year, or the year before that.”

“Coincidence,” he claimed.

“Oh, Ty,” she chided. “At least be honest with yourself. You’re here because of Annie. Why bother denying it, at least with me? Now, what are you going to do to make things right?”

He glanced across the table and saw the lingering disappointment in his mother’s expression. That was as hard to take as losing Annie. After the way his dad had cheated on his mom and the way Ty had hated him for it, surely he should have behaved more responsibly. Instead, he was apparently a chip off the old block, after all.

“I have no idea what I can do,” he admitted.

“Well, you need to come up with a plan. The two of you are bound to cross paths. Not only is this a very small town, but our families are connected. Dana Sue and I are friends. We’re in business together. Annie works for me, for heaven’s sake.”

Ty winced at the complicated mess he’d managed to create. “I’m sorry, Mom. If this is going to become some big thing between you and Dana Sue, I can go somewhere else for rehab. There are plenty of facilities in Atlanta.”

“No,” she said, backing down at once. “Having you back home is such an unexpected joy for me and for your brothers and sisters. It’s giving us a chance to spend time with Trevor, too.”

She drew herself up. “Dana Sue and I will figure out a way to deal with this,” she said confidently. “We’ve been friends a long time, and we’ve always known that something might come between you and Annie. That’s why we tried so hard to stay out of it.”

“How about you and Annie, though?” he asked worriedly, wishing he’d thought his decision through before disrupting everyone’s lives. Coming back had been selfish, he could see that now. “She’s been like another daughter to you, and you work together. It’s going to freak her out knowing I’m around. What if she quits just to avoid me?”

“Annie’s more mature than that,” Maddie said with certainty. “She’s a strong young woman. She’ll cope.”

“What if it, you know…?” He hesitated, then voiced his greatest fear, the one that had nagged at him since the day they’d parted. “What if she goes back to being anorexic?”

Maddie regarded him with dismay. “No, Ty! She won’t do that.”

“She could, Mom.” He shook his head. “What the hell was I thinking? The stress of Ronnie taking off is part of what triggered her eating disorder in the first place. She felt like her life was a mess, and food was the only thing she could control. Now, having me in her face could do the same thing. I’d never forgive myself if that happened.”

“It’s not going to happen,” Maddie said emphatically. “She was just a teenager when she got so sick. She’s twenty-three now. It’s been years. Believe me, Dana Sue and Ronnie know all the signs. Annie still sees Dr. McDaniels from time to time. They’ll be all over her if there’s even a hint that her anorexia is back. Besides, she didn’t fall apart when you two split up, so there’s no reason to think she will now just because you’re here in Serenity.”

“I suppose.” Still, he couldn’t help worrying about Annie. She’d never been half as tough as she’d wanted everyone to believe she was. He was one of the few who’d seen her vulnerability way before she’d been diagnosed with anorexia. She’d looked up to him, trusted him, talked to him…fallen in love with him.

Then he’d betrayed her. And for what? A string of casual flings that had meant nothing. He’d wanted to prove he was hot stuff. Hanging out with groupies had been a rite of passage into the big leagues. All the guys liked to unwind after the games. There were always eager women around.

Unfortunately, it had taken too long for him to realize just how empty and meaningless all that was. Compared to what he had with Annie—the real deal, he knew now—it was just sex and a few laughs with women who liked to brag they’d hooked up with a baseball player.

To his very deep regret, Trevor’s mom had barely stood out from the crowd. When they’d met after a road game in Cincinnati, she’d struck him as shy, with her big brown eyes and corn silk hair. She was quieter than most of the others, less aggressive. She’d actually been able to hold up her end of a conversation. Ironically, he’d seen a vulnerability in her that had reminded him of Annie.

The next time he’d been in Cincinnati, Ty had seen Dee-Dee again, spent three nights with her. On his third trip to town, she’d told him she was pregnant.

The news had hit him like one of his own fastballs in the gut, left him slack-jawed and sputtering. He realized he didn’t even know her last name.

Nor could he be sure the baby was his. He wanted proof, insisted on it, which set off their first huge fight. Dee-Dee, whose last name turned out to be Mitchell, was insulted he would even ask. He was appalled that she thought he was so stupid he wouldn’t.

Struggling with years of conditioning to take responsibility for his own actions, Ty had turned to a buddy on the team for advice.

“You in love with her?” Jimmy Falco had asked.

“No,” Ty admitted. “I barely know her.”

“Then you wait. You get a paternity test. If the kid turns out to be yours, you go from there.”

Dee-Dee had been furious when he’d told her the plan. She’d threatened to go to the tabloids if he didn’t marry her immediately. Despite all the potential for very public ugliness, Ty held firm. That was when he should have gone to Annie and confessed everything, but he’d waited. And, of course, the news had leaked out.

By the time Trevor was born, any faint feelings he might have had for Dee-Dee were dead and buried. The positive paternity test didn’t change that. In court, he acknowledged being the boy’s father, relinquished custody to Dee-Dee with visitation rights for himself, arranged to pay child support, and even agreed to a generous lumpsum payment to get Dee-Dee her own place, a two-bedroom condo in a very nice building.

Two months later, he’d opened the door to his hotel room on a road trip to Denver to find Trevor in a basket on the doorstep, and Dee-Dee nowhere in sight. In an instant, he took on the role of single dad.

Because of the prior arrangement and Dee-Dee’s disappearance, it had taken a year of wrangling in court to change their custody agreement so that he had sole custody. He’d struggled to balance parenthood with a physically demanding career that took him away from home too often. Finding a nanny he’d trusted had been a nightmare, but eventually he’d found Cassandra, an older woman who’d raised four children of her own and doted on Trevor as if he were one of her own grandchildren. To Ty’s amusement, she treated him as a son who’d gone astray and needed firm moral guidance. Cassandra had been a godsend for both of them.

In the meantime, the whole thing had played out in the tabloids. He imagined that Dee-Dee had gotten a pretty penny for the inside scoop, to say nothing of what she must have gotten for tipping off a photographer before she left the baby outside his hotel room.

And it had all hit the fan before he’d been able to work up the nerve to tell Annie about any of it. He’d been the worst kind of coward.

What Annie thought of him—what he thought of himself—didn’t matter, though, not as long as she didn’t fall back into her old anorexic eating pattern. He didn’t think he could handle that. Hurting her was bad enough. He’d never be able to live with destroying all the progress she’d made, the normal, healthy life she was leading.

Then, again, maybe he was exaggerating the pain he’d caused her. Maybe she’d made peace with what had happened, considered herself lucky to be rid of him. She could have moved on by now. It was certainly what he deserved, but the thought depressed him just the same.

Because Annie Sullivan had slipped into his heart about a million years ago, and she was still there…despite everything he’d done to show her otherwise.