Always Page 2

  The plea was doomed to failure. In less than a minute Rhys managed to separate himself from his adoring fans. Meghan sensed his approach. When the dark slacks entered her peripheral vision and stopped beside her table her heart sank. Still desperately hoping for a miracle, she kept her gaze on the pledge cards she was needlessly shuffling.

  "Hello, Meghan."

  The breath she had not known she was holding fluttered out of her like a deflating balloon. Slowly, her expression carefully controlled, she raised her head and felt a jolt as her gaze collided with that silvery stare. "Hello, Rhys."

  "It's been a long time.''

  "Yes."

  "Wait a minute!" Quincy jerked to attention beside her. "You mean you know this broad?"

  Rhys flicked him an annoyed look. "Yes. And don't call her that. Try to remember you're in Texas now, okay?"

  "Oh, what? Broad's an insult down here in cowboy land?"

  "As a matter of fact....yes," Rhys replied, never taking his eyes from Meghan.

  The station manager had followed Rhys and he stepped forward, his face animated. "Well, now, isn't this a surprise. Meghan, why didn't you tell us you knew Mr. Morgan?"

  She shrugged. "It didn't seem important. Besides, I didn't think he would remember me.''

  "I remember," he murmured, and Meghan's heart gave a thump.

  She ducked her head and studied her fingers; if he was waiting for her to comment on that he was in for a long wait. She had no intention of discussing the past with him. Not now. Not ever.

  When the awkward silence threatened to stretch out Rhys turned to Dennis. "Meghan and I go way back. We attended college together at the University of Texas eight years ago."

  "Really?"

  He chuckled at Dennis's doubtful look. "Yeah. I got a late start at college, after I got out of the marines. I was a twenty-six-year-old senior when she started her freshman year at the University of Texas."

  "Oh, I see. Well, then, that explains the age gap."

  "I never would have guessed that you had gone into television broadcasting," Rhys said, turning back to Meghan.

  "I haven't."

  "Meghan works for Jacobson and Howry. They're the public-relations firm we hired to help us with the telethon," Dennis explained. "Although I have to admit I'd steal her away if I could. She's the most efficient, organized person I've encountered in many a day."

  He beamed at Meghan fondly. She gave an silent groan and prayed he would shut up. She might as well have asked for the moon.

  "Meghan not only handled all the advertising and promos, she organized and coordinated the whole shebang. Been working on the project for months. I swear, you could give this young woman a can of worms, and she'd have them marching in tight formation in no time."

  "Is that right?" Rhys mused, watching her. "Interesting. But I'm still confused. Weren't you majoring in physical education?"

  "I changed my major."

  "Why? You were always so gung ho for sports. Especially baseball. At UT you used to spend a lot of time in the batting cages, as I recall."

  She still did on occasion; there was nothing like hitting the cover off a hardball to work off anger or frustration, but Meghan was not about to admit that to Rhys.

  She gave him a shuttered look and shrugged again. "Times change. People change."

  His eyelids lowered partway and that silver gaze made a leisurely survey of her. One corner of his mouth twitched. "I'll say."

  The soft murmur sent a prickle up her spine. Annoyed, Meghan shot to her feet and gathered up her purse and the pledge cards. "It was nice to see you again, Rhys," she lied. "But if you'll excuse me, I've got a million things to do."

  "Meghan, wait."

  She stopped, holding herself stiffly, her fingers clenching around the stack of cards. She gritted her teeth when he turned his patented beguiling smile on her.

  "Look... Why don't you let me take you to dinner? Quincy could arrange someplace special where we would have some privacy. I'd really like to talk to you some more."

  "No. I'm sorry, I can't." She offered no explanation, nor did she try to infuse her voice with the slightest hint of regret to soften the refusal. "Goodbye, Rhys." Giving him an abrupt nod, she walked away.

  "Well, I'll be damned. I can't believe she turned you down. Who the hell does that little nobody think she is?" Quincy fumed, but Rhys barely heard him.

  She had changed all right, he mused, watching the subtle sway of Meghan's tight, little bottom. His eyes traveled downward over the smart, coffee-colored linen suit to shapely, well-toned calves and trim ankles and the three-inch pumps that tapped over the tiled floor. In more ways than one.

  He'd never even seen her in a skirt before. In college her regulation uniform had been jeans and a T-shirt. Back then her hair had been cropped short and mostly hidden under that old Houston Astros baseball cap she'd worn all the time. Now it cascaded around her face and shoulders in a mass of fiery curls.

  The Meghan he'd known had kept her fingernails clipped and her face scrubbed and shiny. Even so, she had been attractive, in a wholesome kind of way. She still was, only now she looked like she had just stepped from the cover of Cosmo—sleek and smart and put together, a model of the self-assured nineties career woman.

  One of her front teeth was still slightly crooked and she still had the bluest eyes he'd ever seen, but otherwise there was precious little left that he could see of the tomboyish, dreamy-eyed, eighteen-year-old virgin she had been eight years ago.

  "Hey, Rhys, my man. What're you looking so glum about? I mean, bell, so what if she turned you down? She's not your type, anyway."

  Rhys turned his head and fixed his manager with a cool stare. "Oh, yeah? And just what is my type, Quincy? The models and starlets you're always throwing at me?"

  "Fine. Hey! You're a superstar, son," he blustered, clapping Rhys's shoulder. "You can have any female you want, so I see that you get your pick of the best. And you gotta admit, it doesn't hurt your image one bit to be seen with a string of the world's most beautiful women. Now, your little friend there is cute. I'll give you that. That is, if you like the girl-next-door type. But c'mon, man, get real. She's not your kind of woman."

  Rhys's gaze swung back to where Meghan stood on the other side of the studio talking to a plump, dark-haired young woman. For some reason, Quincy's comments irritated him. He felt like telling him he didn't know what he was talking about and to just shut his damn mouth.

  But he wouldn't. Because the hell of it was... eight years ago Rhys would have agreed with him.

  Chapter Two

  The instant Meghan entered her apartment she dropped her purse and briefcase, kicked off her shoes and collapsed on the living-room sofa. Resting her head against the cushioned back, she released a gusty sigh. What a nightmare of a day.

  She closed her eyes and rubbed her temples, rotating her fingertips in slow circles to ease the tension headache that had been plaguing her for the last few hours.

  The cause of her headache was easy to pinpoint. Rhys Morgan.

  This time her sigh was a trembly exhalation. Of all the rotten luck, to encounter him again after all these years. It had taken everything she had to face him. To be reminded of her own folly was painful and humiliating, and she fiercely resented Rhys for doing so.

  Whenever she thought of how foolishly she had behaved, Meghan wanted to curl up into a ball and hide. That was why she tried never to dwell on the past. Rhys's sudden appearance, however, had brought it all back, stirred up all the memories, and she could not seem to shut them off.

  As though it were yesterday, she could recall every detail of their meeting, every sensation, right down to the late afternoon sun on her face, the rattle of the chain-link fencing in the wind, the smell of dirt, its grit underfoot. That scene, and many others that had followed over the succeeding months, were etched permanently in Meghan's memory.

  That fateful day she had been in her favorite place on the entire UT campus—one of the batting cag
es on the athletic field.

  Meghan had been at the university only two weeks and was so homesick she thought she would surely die of it As always when anything bothered her, she worked through her feelings by taking out her hurt or anger or—in this case— despair, on a baseball.

  Fighting back tears of self-pity, she had been whacking ball after ball with all her might, putting her whole one hundred and eight pounds behind every swing. Each time, the bat cracked against the ball like a rifle shot and sent it hurtling out into the field.

  She had just hit another bullet and had paused to sniff and swipe at her damp cheeks with her forearm when, from the adjacent cage, someone said, "Hey, Slugger. You're choking the bat a little. You'd do better if you'd loosen up some."

  Meghan stilled. Muscle by muscle, her Whole body stiffened. Nobody, but nobody, criticized her technique. She had been playing baseball with her three older brothers and their cousins since she was a toddler. She'd hit her first homer at age five. In high school, she had made the girls' Texas all-star team and she'd had a .340 batting average. Who the heck did tins jerk think he was?

  Squaring her shoulders, Meghan turned to give the poor, ignorant, unfortunate boob the tongue-lashing he deserved, but when she encountered slumberous silver eyes, fringed with the most incredible lashes she'd ever seen on a man, she froze. Then he smiled—a slow, devastating smile that shut down her breathing on the spot.

  The searing words she had been about to utter flitted right out of her mind. All she could do was stare, while her head spun and her heart thumped and banged like the engine in an asthmatic old jalopy.

  Standing in the adjacent batting cage, wearing faded jeans and an old sweatshirt, with a bandanna tied around his head like a sweatband, his black hair lifting in the slight breeze, was the best looking man Meghan had ever seen.

  And he was definitely a man—a real man—not a college boy. That fact registered on Meghan in some instinctive, primal way that had nothing to do with conscious thought or analytical reasoning; that part of her brain was as numb as the rest of her body.

  She could not have been more stunned if she had been struck by a lightning bolt. She tingled all over. When her breath returned it fluttered through her parted lips in little pants, and she was awash with strange, new feelings. Effervescent bubbles seemed to dance in her blood as it pumped through her body at an alarming rate. The pressure that filled her chest was both painful and delicious.

  For Meghan, the world outside the two batting cages ceased to exist. It was as though the two of them were encased in a bubble; she heard nothing, felt nothing, saw nothing but the gorgeous hunk on the other side of the fence.

  In all her eighteen years, Meghan had never once felt the sting of Cupid's arrow. She had not had so much as a mild crush. A thorough tomboy, she had sailed through her adolescent years unscathed, sublimely indifferent to the opposite sex and disdainful of her school friends' giggling raptures over boys. Their dramatic, heart-wrenching romances she had viewed with utter disdain.

  Meghan had never been able to figure out what all the fuss was about. Sports were a lot more fun than boys. Besides, all the males she knew between the ages of ten and twenty-five were cretins.

  The specimen standing in front of her was no cretin though. He was wonderful.

  "Are you all right?"

  The concern in Mr. Wonderful's voice, along with his sudden frown, got through to Meghan. She blinked and snapped her mouth shut, turning scarlet to the tips of her ears when she realized she had been gaping.

  "I... I'm fine." She swallowed hard, then blurted, "Who are you?"

  "My name's Rhys Morgan. I'm a student here, same as you. Only this is my last year." He stepped closer to the fence, his bat propped loosely over his shoulder. His gaze ran over her in quick appraisal, and a faint smile twitched his lips. "I think probably this is your first. Right?"

  Meghan nodded slowly.

  He waited several seconds, but all she could do was stare.

  "So... what's your name? Or is that a secret?"

  "Oh! It's, uh... it's Meghan. Meghan McCall." Becoming suddenly aware of her appearance, she snatched off her Astros cap and raked her hand through her short-cropped curls to fluff them up.

  The action was a totally feminine reflex. She didn't even notice that she'd done it, but had any member of her family witnessed the move they would have fallen over in a faint. Meghan had never in her life given two hoots for how she looked. She never bothered with makeup, and the only dresses she owned were those her mother insisted she wear to church. Her idea of a fashion statement was the old Astros cap she wore constantly. Usually she whacked off her own hair when it began to get in her eyes. As long as her jeans fit and were reasonably clean she was happy.

  "You've got a pretty wicked swing there, Meghan McCall. You must play a lot of baseball."

  "Yes. That is.. . I used to. Now I just practice batting for fun or when I, uh.. .when I need to... well, you know, work out a problem or, uh.. .just unwind."

  "Yeah, I know what you mean. Me, too."

  "Really?" she said, brightening. That they should have that in common seemed wonderful to her.

  "Yep. Nothing like hitting a few for what ails you." He took a practice swing, and her heart fluttered as she watched the play of muscles in his arms and shoulders. "So...what's bothering you now?"

  The question caught her off guard, and she sucked in her breath and stepped back. "N-nothing!" she said too quickly. "I... I just—"

  "C'mon, Slugger. Those tears aren't for nothing."

  Instantly Meghan wiped her cheeks, her face flaming again. Rhys pretended not to notice.

  "I never could stand to see a lady cry. I confess, that's why I spoke up. Besides, listening to those sniffles was throwing off my timing," he teased. His beautiful silver eyes gently coaxed. "You wanna talk about it?"

  "I... you'll think I'm silly."

  "No I won't." He waited a few seconds, then urged, "C'mon. Gimme a try."

  She stared at the ground and made a circle in the dirt with the toe of her sneaker. Finally she peeked up at him through her lashes. "I guess I'm homesick," she said in a tiny voice. Feeling sick to her stomach, she braced for his laughter, but it never came.

  "Ahh, I see. First time away from home?"

  Meghan looked up and searched his face. His expression held no trace of amusement or condescension. She nodded.

  "It's tough, isn't it? I remember my first time. I was fresh out of high school when I joined the marines. All during my

  senior year I'd been straining at the bit, ready to get out and see the world." He chuckled and shook his head wryly. "All through boot camp all I wanted was to go home to my grandmother. Even among all those guys, I was so lonesome I thought I'd die."

  "Really?" Meghan gazed at him with wonder, and in that exact moment she lost her heart.

  From the instant she had set eyes on Rhys, the attraction she felt for him had been pulling her closer and closer to the edge of some unknown, yawning chasm. His empathy was the lure that drew her the final step, and as she stared at that handsome face she tumbled head over heels into the abyss of first love.

  "Yeah. But after a while you get over it. You make a few friends, get used to new surroundings, new routines, and first thing you know, life's not so bad. You've just got to give yourself time.''

  "I... I guess you're right. I mean, I wanted—want—to go to college. It's just that I miss my family."

  Meghan's family was a close one. Closer than most. In addition to her parents and three older brothers, there were her Aunt Dorothy and Uncle Joe and her cousins, Elise, Erin and David, who had always lived just a stone's throw away from her own home. Though her brothers and cousins wore all married now and had, with the exception of Travis, scattered to the four winds, they visited and called often.

  Growing up, Meghan had always dreamed of escaping the boring sameness of Crockett, the East Texas town in which she and all the other McCalls and Blaines had grown up. Now
that she had, she longed for the familiar comfort of the sleepy little town and the old Victorian house that was her home, with an intensity that was painful.

  "Yeah, I can understand that. But take my word for it, if 11 get bettor. What you need is to meet new people."

  Meghan answered with a wan smiles. She tried not to stare, but she could not seem to help herself. Just looking at him was pure pleasure, even if it did make breathing difficult.

  "Do you live on campus?" Rhys asked.

  Meghan nodded and told him the name of her dorm.

  He checked his watch, then looked around. The sun hung low in the west and mauve and orange clouds streaked the sky. "It'll be twilight soon. Look, I've got to go grab a bite to eat before I go to work, so how about I walk you back to your dorm. It's on my way."