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profile. “Mindy said you phoned her to bring you some more clothes. By the time I cooled down and came home, you were long gone. You wouldn’t even answer your damned phone at college!”
    â€œI never wanted to see you or talk to you again,” she murmured, turning her eyes to the parking lot ahead.
    â€œSo your roommate told me.” He pulled the car into a parking space at the airport terminal and cut the engine. His dark eyes narrowed on her face, traveling down to her plunging neckline and remaining there so intently that she folded her arms self-consciously over the gap.
    Was he remembering, too, she wondered? Remembering what had happened after Jimmy Martin ran away?
    She could still hear Russell’s voice, the quiet fury in it that cut like tiny whips ashe’d dragged her trembling body in the damp towel wholly into his arms.
    â€œMy God, you’ve been begging for this all summer,” he’d growled, holding her mercilessly even as she struggled, “why fight me now?”
    And he’d bent his head. And even now, a year later, she could still feel the hard, cruel pressure of his mouth as it took hers, the humiliation of a kiss without tenderness or consideration or warmth. It had been, as he meant it, a punishment to hurt her pride as much as her soft mouth. When he’d finished and she was shaking like a leaf from the shock of it, he’d thrown her away from him. And the words he’d used to describe her as he strode out of the bath house had left her crying and had sent her running from Currie Hall before he came home.
    She swallowed nervously, avoiding his intent gaze.
    â€œI couldn’t forget,” she whispered, “what you called me. It wasn’t true, any of it, and…!”
    â€œI know.” His big hand touched her cheek, gently. The back of his fingers were cool against the heated flesh. “God, Tish,we were so close! I knew better, even when I accused you, but the sight of you and Martin…I lost my head. I wanted to hurt you, and that was the only thing on my mind.”
    Unconsciously her lips trembled. “You succeeded.”
    His fingers touched that full, soft mouth lightly. “I know. I could feel your mouth trembling under mine.”
    Her face went scarlet at the words. Until that day, she and Russell had been like brother and sister. She’d followed him everywhere as an adolescent. Even when he went to dull livestock auctions, she endured the smell of cattle and horses and sweat and smoke just to be near him.
    It had been like that all through school; she had bragged about her bigger-than-life adopted brother to the other children when they teased her about being a sharecropper’s daughter. Even though Russell had bought her new clothes, the children remembered the flour-sack dresses she once had worn, and threw it up to her. All she had to do was threaten them with Russell, and knowing his temper, they’d shut up. But that was childhood. And now, she wasn’t a “sister” anymore…
    â€œA year,” Russell remarked absently, “and you’re still terrified of me.”
    She swallowed down a hasty denial and brushed at a stray lock of dark hair. “Please,” she said quietly. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
    He lit a cigarette and sat smoking it until the silence descended on them like a fog. “It’s damned hard to face a problem by walking away from it, Tish,” he said finally.
    Her chin lifted proudly. “I don’t have any problems.”
    â€œThank you for that stoic testimony, Saint Joan, and shall we both pray for rain before the flames hit you?”
    Her face became a bright red and the laughter welled up inside her and burst like a summer storm. Russell’s dark eyes glittered with amusement, and the years fell away. Quite suddenly, the antagonism she’d felt was gone like a shadow before sunlight.
    â€œOh, Russell,