THE CABIN was quiet, her room dark and fragrantly cool with wafts of mountain air floating through the open window. Outside, the moon-silvered darkness was alive with the chirping of crickets and the rustle of countless unseen creatures—soothing sounds that normally lulled her. But not tonight. Or last night. It was two days since the town picnic and Joey hadn’t been able to stop talking about his new friend Bobby Smith, about Miss Crayden, the schoolteacher, who’d given him a slate and piece of chalk, about Nettie Phillips’s sugar cookies, and about the way he’d almost fallen into the creek. And Emily hadn’t been able to stop thinking—thinking about how it had felt to lie upon the thick spring grass with Clint Barclay’s arms around her, the sun glinting off his hair, the sizzling taste of his kisses sending wave upon wave of heat all through her blood. She tossed and turned as the stars burned brighter and deeper in the sky. Deliberately she turned her thoughts elsewhere, letting other matters crowd through her head.
