though.
Until…
Lo and behold, there was a freaking icy patch. That her skipping steps skidded right over. The momentum pulled her feet out from under her as if she was on a swing, suspended in midair.
Which Sydney was, both legs extended, until she landed.
Hard.
Right on her butt. The, ah, well-padded part, thankfully, not her tailbone. It still sent waves of pain straight up her spine. As well as through the wrist where she’d tried to catch herself.
Ow. Ouch. Even with the ice already melting into wetness soaking through her pants, Sydney didn’t move. She sat and caught her breath. It took a few shaky, hitching attempts to get it back on track. Things hurt, but didn’t require medical attention. If it’d been summer, Sydney would’ve sat there for a good five minutes, collecting herself and letting the pain subside.
But not only was she getting wetter by the second all along her legs—and getting colder—Sydney saw that when she flung out her arm to catch herself? She’d let go of the bag. Trash was strewn around her in a splash zone of disgustingness.
Unless she did require an ambulance, that had to be picked up ASAP. Chestertown was stringent about their historic downtown. They knew that tourists kept the town alive. And tourists came to see a beautiful, historic vision of what life looked like back in the 1700s—albeit a thousand percent cleaner.
The trash codes were both simple and extravagant. Simple? Keep the area in front and behind your property clean. Extravagant? If any trash was reported or seen, the fines were three figures. By the third offense? That popped up to four figures.
The fact that Sydney was in the alley didn’t save her. The alley was cobblestoned. Had quaint architecture and window boxes and little silver plaques identifying what historical happening occurred on the seventh freaking cobblestone from the crosswalk.
So she rolled onto her knees. Flexed a few things in abominations of yoga poses, and then settled onto her shins, rolling her wrist gently back and forth.
“Welcome back, Sydney. I see you’ve gotten…comfortable.”
Oh, crap.
Sydney slowly looked from the black leather pencil skirt up to the red cashmere sweater topped off with a diamond solitaire pendant in a circle of more diamonds.
The only thing worse than running into your high school nemesis while you were dressed very much down? And her being dressed like she’d just walked out of Bergdorf’s in Manhattan? Was doing so with a pile of wadded-up paper towels by one knee and a slimy assortment of dead worms by the other.
“Nora,” she said with the merest incline of her head in greeting.
“I see you’ve gotten…comfortable back in your old stomping grounds.” The tip of a leather boot poked at the trash bag. “You know, I think my most vivid memory of you would be the eight hundred times you swore up and down that you were escaping to bigger and far better things than this tiny town.”
Damn.
The zing was deserved. Sydney had repeated that assertion pretty much every time she opened her mouth from age thirteen on. And here she was, more than ten years later, working in the family store again.
At least, that’s what it looked like on the surface.
Looks could be deceiving.
Gathering the shreds of her pride, in the haughtiest tone she could muster, Sydney said, “I did get out. I traveled. Had experiences. Met people who had experiences beyond living in the same town for seven generations. I gained a world view far more broad-reaching. I lived, Nora.”
“Oh, don’t go all Katharine Hepburn on me. Your family brags about you endlessly. I’m well aware of the ‘fabulous adventures of Sydney Darrow.’”
“Then why are you hassling me?”
It genuinely didn’t make sense. Yes, she’d had a knee-jerk ugh in reaction to seeing Nora. But Sydney didn’t actively hold a grudge against her. Certainly wouldn’t have launched the first attack, given the opportunity.
Nora tossed back her perfectly styled raven hair. It literally rippled over her shoulders. “You may have packed on a few pounds on that globe-trotting diet of yours, but your skin’s sure gotten thinner. I’m not hassling you. You are back home. And you’re looking pretty comfy sitting in that trash, rather than scrambling to get out of it.”
Comfy was stretched out on a pink-sand beach in Hawaii. Or nestled in for a nap on a hammock under a banyan tree. Or even the oh-so-comfortable warmth of Alex’s embrace.
Despite the cold, Sydney put her other hand down on the slick cobblestone. Because she was reeling at that