"It's okay, I'm all right. Thanks for asking," he said, pulling himself and the bike out of the water.
Tessa didn't reply. She had one arm wrapped around her middle and he was suddenly afraid that she'd hurt herself.
"Tessa, Tessa," he said as her body seemed to shake. He dropped the bike on the ground as he came out of the water and rushed to her side. "Are you hurt?"
"I'm—I'm fine," she said, then burst into full-fledged laughter as she pointed at his head. "You have green moss in your hair."
"And here I was worried about you. Silly me."
"You should be worried. You practically killed me," she said with a grin that was so much wider and freer and more joyous than any he had ever seen on her face.
"You look pretty alive to me." He ran his hands through his hair, then winced as he pulled out some sort of weed.
"I'll be black-and-blue tomorrow," she said. "Probably won't be able to pose for any photographs for a while. I might have to sue you for lost wages."
"I might have to sue you for being so distracting."
"Excuse me?" she asked, planting a hand on her hip. "I didn't say a word. You weren't paying attention to the road. You almost hit that poor woman."
"I wasn't paying attention because I was looking at you. Besides that, haven't you ever heard of going down with the ship?"
"We were on a bicycle, not the Titanic."
"Same thing."
"It is not the same thing."
"Well, I'll give you this, you have great survival instincts." Her smile vanished abruptly, and the light went out of her eyes. "What did I say?"
"Nothing."
"Come on, you look like I just pulled the lights out of your Christmas tree."
"It's just something Grams said to me once about saving myself, surviving. Forget it."
"That's your secret?"
"I don't have any secrets," she said, flopping down on the ground.
Jimmy sat down beside her. "Sure you do. You never talk about your family. I didn't even know you had a sister or a grandmother, and I thought we were good friends."
"We should go back. You'll catch a cold. The afternoon wind can be brisk here on the coast."
He could feel the drops chilling his skin, but he was far more interested in hearing her story than in getting warm. "Why haven't you come back here before?"
She rolled her head on her neck. "You're not going to stop asking questions, are you?"
"Not until I get some answers. What happened? Did you suddenly get too famous for the old hometown?"
"No."
"Then, what?"
"I didn't want to see my family or this town because it's where everything fell apart." She let out a long breath. "When I was twenty years old, my sister slept with my boyfriend and got pregnant."
"Ouch."
"Sam did the noble thing and married her."
"After he'd done the noble thing of sleeping with her."
She sent him a sharp look. "I don't hold Sam blameless, but Alli chased after him for years. She finally caught him in a weak moment and made the most of it."
"Where were you at the time?"
"Aspen."
"I didn't mean geographically."
"Sam and I were supposed to come back here together that Christmas, but I got a chance to model in Aspen, and I took it."#p#分页标题#e#
"Bad decision?"
"Well, I lost Sam, but that modeling job got me a contract."
"And you never looked back."
"Not until now." She paused. "But I had to come home for Grams. She's the reason I'm here, not Sam or Alli. I don't care about either one of them."
"Then why were you in Sam's arms a few hours ago?"
"Sam was just being nice. He knows how worried I am about my grandmother."
"I can see that." Jimmy stretched out his legs in front of him. "So, any old feelings come back during that hug?"
"We should go." Tessa got to her feet.
"Just tell me to shut up, Tessa, I can take it."
"Shut up, Jimmy."
"You still have feelings for him, don't you?"
"You just told me you'd shut up if I asked," she said in exasperation. "Fine. I don't know what feelings I have. When I came back here, I thought Sam and Alli were happily married. But it turns out that they're not."
Jimmy felt his stomach turn inside out. When Tessa had told him that her old flame was married to her sister, he'd felt bad for her, but at least the guy was out of the running.
"Sam and Alli are getting a divorce," Tessa added.
He looked into her troubled blue eyes and had to ask. "Do you want him back?"