Page 35 of Oops, I Fell For The Town Bad Boy!

Kane stared at her. “A dunk tank?”

“Yeah, you know what a dunk tank is, right?”

“I know what it is,” Kane said. “Are you suggesting I sit up on a platform and let everyone in Miller Creek chuck balls at me to dunk me into a pool of water?”

“Well, I wasn’t thinking of you specifically,” Taylor said with a laugh.

“It probably should be me, though,” Kane said. “That’s how we’d make the most money. I bet there are tons of people in this town who would love a shot at me.”

“Well, maybe this would be a good harmless way to give them a chance,” Taylor teased, surprised to find that after all this time, they were actually laughing about this. “Maybe once everyone in town has dunked you, they’ll be ready to let go of the past. What do you think?”

Kane shook his head. He was smiling. “I guess I think it’s as good a plan as any,” he said, reaching over with his paintbrush and daubing a bit of blue paint on the shoulder of Taylor’s shirt.

“Hey!” she protested, laughing. “What was that?”

“If we’re dunking me, you can get some paint on that old shirt,” he said. “What’s that shirt from, anyway?”

“I’m surprised you don’t remember.” She tugged down the front hem so that he could read it. “Sophomore year homecoming, remember? The theme was A Night in the Stars.”

“That’s right. All the decorations were outer-space themed,” he recalled. “I didn’t go to that dance.”

“Yeah, that sounds right. Did you ever go to any dances?”

“Nope.” He resumed painting his booth, but Taylor had been distracted from hers. She put the paintbrush she’d been holding down and turned to face him.

“Why didn’t you go?” she asked. “I mean, I knew that about you. I guess all our friends did. But why?”

“School dances seemed kind of lame to me at the time,” Kane said.

“Well, we all thought that, but we went anyway, to goof around and have fun with each other,” she told him. “Bradley was always pretty outspoken about how much he didn’t like them, but by the end of the night, he’d be out there on the floor with Maddie in his arms, and I know he was having a good time.”

“Sure,” Kane said. “He had someone he wanted to dance with. What was I going to do at a school dance?”

“You could have brought a date,” Taylor said. “Tons of girls in our class had crushes on you back then, you know.”

“But I didn’t want any of them,” Kane said.

He wasn’t looking at her. He was fixated on his painting. But Taylor felt a shiver of curious pleasure at his words.

She’d had such a crush on him when they were young. She had admitted as much to him. And when she had admitted it, it had led to him kissing her, which had led to a great deal more. Just the hint that they might start talking about those old feelings again was enough to make her feel hot.

What if they had been like Bradley and Maddie — bold enough to talk about their feelings when they were younger? What if they’d done things like go to high school dances together, unafraid to admit that they craved each other’s company? What if they had been that kind of couple?

Would they be married now, the way Bradley and Maddie were? That was hard to envision.

Would they have burned out their love affair, the way high school sweethearts so often did, so that there would be nothing between them now but a few warm memories?

Was it possible that Kane would have been with her rather than on the Chesterfield farm on that fateful night? Might the fire have been averted by the simple fact that teenage lovers craved each other’s company?

No, that was far too much speculation. There was simply no way to know what would have happened between them if they had talked about their feelings back then. Taylor couldn’t even be sure that they had felt the same things as one another. Really, it couldn’t have happened any other way than it had.

“You’re saying this whole thing is being put on by Kane McCormick?”

Taylor smiled as she undid her patient’s blood pressure cuff. “I know it’s hard to believe, Mrs. Lipton,” she said. “But he’s back now, and he wants to do what he can to make things right.”

“Well, I won’t say old Jeff Chesterfield couldn’t do with the help — though I’m surprised he accepted it,” Mrs. Lipton said. “He’s usually so stubborn.”

“Well, he’s still awfully stubborn. But he’s also smart enough to know a good idea when he hears one. And Kane does owe him amends, after everything that happened,” Taylor said. “Will you come to the farmers market? It would mean the world to me to see you there.”

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