“The girl next door. The one you grew up with.” His voice grew softer. “The

one who got away.” He cleared his throat. “So to speak.”

Peter's eyes narrowed. “We're talking about Kate, right?”

He shifted in his seat. “Of course. What I'm saying is you remember Kate the way she was, and now you're seeing her as who she is. And you're trying to

decide which one is which.”

“Which one is the real Kate? I think I can tell you pretty easily.” He ticked

off his fingers. “Successful, talented, fashionable, driven, confident.” Beautiful.

Brown eyes. Out of your league. And, once she'd done with her Nitrovex proposal, out of your life. “I told her myself last weekend. Everyone grows up.

She's chosen a nice life for herself.” He took a sip of his own coffee. “She's moved on. This is just a brief stop in her old life, and then she's back to the big city.”

Lucius nodded. “Hmm. You seem a little bitter about that.”

“No, this isn't about me. I'm happy for her. She's done well. She's where she

belongs now.”

Lucius nodded. “Maybe. Can't help think that for all her success, she's still

alone.”

Peter shrugged. “Well, you keep telling me how great I am, and I'm still alone.”

Lucius nodded. “True. I'm just wondering if maybe sometimes people should try being alone together.” He pushed his coffee cup forward and began sliding out of the booth. “Now, if I'm going to be half as successful as either of you two, I'd better get over to the school. Have to order some new beakers for the lab.” He smiled.

Peter watched him leave the coffee shop. The front door dinged, and he was

gone.

Alone together. Sounded like the title of a bad pop song. But it seemed to describe his feelings about Kate. Maybe, at one time, they'd had a bit of a chance. But that was a long time ago, when they were kids. A lifetime ago. No,

two lifetimes ago. One flying high in Chicago and the other stuck in the mud of Golden Grove.

His jaw set. They were just friends. Old friends, enjoying a little time together.

He drained his cup, set it back in his saucer. Outside, his hometown bustled

along. Cars going to work, to shop, people moving along the sidewalk, talking,

laughing, couples holding hands under umbrellas.

He pushed himself up from the chair. He had work of his own to do. That's

about all there seemed to be to do anymore, about all he had left here. No family, no life, no future. He sighed, pushing open the door and stepping into the cold

drizzle.

Maybe he'd stop and grab an early dinner to take with him to the school. He

could grade some papers. There was usually some school activity most Saturday

nights. Better than eating alone. Again.

* * *

The double-thick chocolate-chip pecan pie shake had done nothing to lift Kate's

mood. She sat in a back-corner booth, the only customer in Ray's. She stirred the

shake with her long spoon, staring at it, hoping maybe Ray had dumped some kind of instant answer juice into it that would make everything become clear.

Her next meeting at Nitrovex was going to be a complete disaster if she didn't come up with an idea. John Wells had to be running out of patience. He'd

already arranged an on-line update via Skype earlier this week, where Kate had

stumbled through her presentation like she was a high school girl giving a book

report she'd just written the night before.

Which wasn't too far off. She'd been up until one a.m., trying to find a decent

angle on Nitrovex. Something, anything that would at least get Garman to the

next round of companies under consideration until she could find that one killer concept she knew was out there.

John Wells had been mostly silent. If it hadn't been for his inborn Iowa politeness he probably would have laughed in her face. Good thing this wasn't a

Chicago client or the meeting might have ended with a phone call to her boss and her flying from a twenty-second-story window followed by her laptop and the glossy pages of her proposal.

Penny was there during the conference call too, occasionally offering

suggestions. Some of them were helpful actually, but Kate had the sense that when she left they were going to both have a huge laugh over the dopey chick

who thought she could leave her hometown and make it big in the city.

And she hadn't come up with much more today.

Something was missing, and she couldn't put her finger on it. What was worse was she knew there were other companies presenting their proposals, and they probably weren't using a dancing cow in a lab coat.

Kate felt doomed. She'd then had to bluff her way through a meeting with her team at Garman, her subsequent report to Danni filled with enough platitudes

and buzzwords to (hopefully) buy her a little more time. But she needed something much more concrete to bring back to her team in Chicago on Monday.