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| She'd half-expected to rush straight to him when she stepped out of the sunflowers. Had half-expected the never-healed and never-expunged love she'd felt for him to catapult her straight forward and to the devil with the consequences. But she didn't. She just stopped, her arms wrapped tight around herself to hide their trembling, a stray wisp of hair escaped from its tight knot to torment her eyes and tickle them almost to tears. In the instant when their gazes met, in the instant when they connected, she nearly forgot to be angry. Because the old spark was there. It was an electrical frisson that leaped between them , charging the honeyed air with a million watts of agitated power and heating the breeze until it stroked like raw flame across her cheeks, It was there in the way Orion held his head, in the way a slow flush of delight that could just as well be embarrassment stole across his face, in the way that same suddenly-sizzling breeze lifted the soft, fair hair around his face and stroked it with gentle fingers, turning its burnished gold to the same platinum as the sea of grass in which both of them seemed suddenly to float without weight, or substance, or the slightest tarnish of reality. She just stopped. And stood, not fifteen feet from the man who'd once held every bit of her heart before he'd made her feel as inconsequential as dirt, gazing at him through a silence that beat and pulsed around them, daring her to make the first move, say the first word, deny the hint of promise and thrill that still echoed between them. He didn't look like the man she'd seen on the TV...the man whose face grinned up at her from at least a dozen covers in the CD cabinet in the corner of her little upstairs sitting room that had been her childhood bedroom. This man who stood motionless, his breath held and one large hand splayed possessively across the gleaming tail of his red and white airplane, his lip caught between his teeth as if he was scared to death of her bore little,,,make that no...resemblance to the slick and shiny country music star she'd expected to find. This was Orion. The same Orion. Her Orion. Of course he'd grown older...hadn't they all? But it was him, all the same, with that cloud of thick and not-even-a-little-faded hair tumbling around his face the way it always used to tumble, to fall in front of pale-denim eyes that regarded her with open fear. Fear? Dottie groaned silently, to herself. After all, what did he have to be afraid of? He hadn't lived with the whispers and the innuendoes...with the knowledge that people had laughed behind his back, believing the failed engagement and the disappearance of his 'one true love' had had something to do with some misbehavior on his part. With the widely-spread rumor, created entirely out of the neighbors' imagination and entirely without any basis in fact, that a good-looking passerby had led her on, had had his way with her, and then gone on about his business when he'd finished with her. Slowly, Dottie shook her head. That wasn't the issue here. No matter what she'd done or might have done, she'd never deserved... "I never expected to find you still here," Orion said, and his voice didn't sound like the country singer's voice any more than his face looked like the singer's picture. It was low and shaky, hoarse and tight, without the slightest hint of music in it. "I never expected you to come back." That wasn't what Dottie had wanted to say, of course. Wasn't it at all, once the first, breathless hush had come to an end and she'd felt the anger begin to boil up again, stronger than before and twice as potent. But she was still working to overcome her mother's teachings. Her mother's insistence that a lady 'held her head up' at all times and didn't give in to the baser emotions. Didn't give in to emotions, or ranting or raving, or anything less dignified than a distant and faintly-accusing drawl even when she'd been backed into a corner. Even when she feared for her safety, or the safety of her heart. |
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| Back home at last after twenty years, Orion Barr must face up to a terrible secret. And it's just about to eat him alive. |
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| cover art by Bobbie Sweet |
| What they're saying about The Day After Summer: |
| "The sex is explosive - and almost burns the pages. Evelyn Starr has created a wonderful story..." - 4 hearts, Angel Brewer, The Romance Studio |
| "The sex in this book leaves little to the imagination and is very uninhibited." Jennifer Ray, The Road To Romance. |
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