Trouble and Treasure (#1, Trouble and Treasure Series) (29 page)

Before I could muster the courage to find
the front desk to rustle up my keys, I paused again.

This time something caught my eye.

Heels. Sparkly ones. Knock offs too, if I
was any judge.

Following the sparkle up to the legs, body,
and face, I found myself frowning as something slowly clicked into
place.

The woman who had caught my attention was
wearing a seriously tight-fitting black dress that was pulled up on
one side, and she had a small designer bag dangling off her
shoulder, likely another knock off.

Yet it wasn’t the clothes and their
trademark-infringing origins that got to me, neither was it the
sultry, dancer-like walk.

It was the hair.

The blinding blond hair that was backcombed
and had so much body you would have been forgiven for thinking it
belonged in an “80s music video.

A name came to my lips and
pushed its way out in a harsh whisper, “
Nancy
.”

Holy crap. The chick in the knock-off heels
had to be Nancy Harrison. The most popular girl in my senior class.
Voted most likely to succeed, she’d been the Prom Queen too. She’d
ruled the roost. She’d gone out with Denver and Thorne Scott –
Wetlake High’s hottest brothers. She’d also spent her reign
torturing me and the other kids who had never fitted in.

Wow.

Before I could do anything radical – like
running over to ask Nancy whether a lifetime of stilettos had
caused permanent skeletal damage – a car pulled up beside me. I
glanced to the side automatically, and then I stopped.

Well gosh darn.

Denver Scott.

The
Denver Scott.

I recognized him immediately. Of course I
did. I’d only spent the majority of English class scribbling out
his likeness on the back of my pencil case.

If Nancy had been the undisputed queen of
Wetlake High, then Denver was her king. A freaking handsome one
too.

Not wanting to be caught staring at the guy,
I neatened my luggage and then mucked around in the trunk as I
surreptitiously shot Denver a long, calculating look.

He was wearing a suit. Though it fitted him
well, it was a little too tight around the neck and pulled to the
left a bit. It was also a fairly run-of-the-mill style, and while
the fabric looked sturdy, it clearly wasn’t from Milan or
Paris.

Tucking my hair behind my ears, I reached
into my trunk and muscled my suitcase out. As I straightened, I
shot him another careful glance.

He was bigger – which wasn’t so much of a
surprise considering I hadn’t seen him since our senior year.
Denver had filled out though, grown up, and now had his fair share
of fine wrinkles around his eyes and tucked in at the edges of his
mouth. If the dim light coming in from the room in front of us
didn’t deceive me, he also had a few flecks of gray glinting out
from behind his ears.

This made me smile. I’d met too many men
who’d rolled out of bed at the tender age of twenty-five, only to
shriek at the mirror when it had dared to show them their first
hint of gray.

Some fellas didn’t handle aging well.

Some did. Denver appeared to be managing the
first wrinkles and greys of his creeping maturity in style. Though
he was hardly that old at the tender age of thirty, the point was,
he certainly wasn’t eighteen anymore.

Before I could continue my in-depth analysis
of the man, he hefted a single bag off the seat beside him, slammed
his door, and walked off.

While I craned my neck to watch, he marched
quickly across the scant lawn beyond the car park and ducked into
the main office.

I stood there a moment, pushing my teeth
into my lips, and then I hefted my luggage and followed.

Far from being angry at the prospect of my
impending school reunion anymore, I was now intrigued.

Clearly, my mother had been right. As long
as I could keep a level head and remember I wasn’t actually in high
school anymore, this could be a lot of fun. I hadn’t seen any of
these people for years. Who knew where their lives had taken them
or if they’d even made it out of Wetlake?

And far more importantly, who knew if Denver
Scott was single?

Chuckling and muttering to myself that I was
a very bad girl, I got my keys, found my room, and turned in for
the night.

Tomorrow the fun would begin. Before it
could, I had to remind myself of one thing.

I wasn’t the same spotty, goofy teenager
anymore.

I’d changed.

It was time to show Wetlake how much.