Sarah discovered that the moment she walked out of her house early the next morning and headed down the walkway toward the three-thousand-square-foot greenhouse that housed the Green Machine. Worse, he was here. He’d traded in the old souped-up Corvette he’d driven back in high school for a brand-new gleaming black Chevy pickup truck—evidence that Houston Jericho was no longer the poorest kid in town. He’d made something of himself. But then, she’d had no doubt that he would. He’d been so dead set on showing up his drunk of a father and proving to any and everyone that while he might look like his old man, he was nothing like him. She glimpsed his handsome face through the window, his eyes trained on her, his lips set in a grim line. As if he was thinking real hard about some question and he wasn’t too pleased with the answer. As if he wasn’t any more happy to be here than she was to see him here. She pondered the notion for a few seconds as she unlocked the door latch and tried to pretend for all she was worth that his presence didn’t affect her.
