Something in the Water... by Jule McBride Page B

loved you so good in the back of my daddy’s pickup truck? Why, everybody in town knows what went down in the parking lot of Jack’s Diner, and how we drove to Charleston and got a motel room, so I could watch you getting it on with that woman. I told Joanie I hadn’t wanted to. But then, everybody knows you can be damn persuasive, Ariel. You had it bad for me, didn’t you, Ariel? Everybody in town knew you were my fantasy girl. And it made Joanie so jealous. My, oh my. How she hated you….”
    And turned all the other girls against Ariel, out of spite. On the school bus, which had picked her up at the bottom of Mountain Drive, no one had ever talked to her. Thanks to him.
    Too much of the past was flooding back. She hated him…just as she hated how she used to fantasize about a father who never came to protect her, and a mother who’d never been able to understand how the teasing was affecting her daughter. “Oh, you’re right, Studs,” she muttered, stepping toward him and offering a shy smile. She put her hands on his waist. “Maybe I did miss you more than I admit. Those stories about you and me got so out of control….” His eyes widened as she traced a pink fingernail down his chest. “But they got me to thinking…”
    “They did?”
    “But you’re married now….”
    “Uh…yeah.”
    “But we won’t let Joanie get in the way. Now, will we?” Broadening her smile, she grabbed a fistful of his shirt, then spun. “You sick bastard,” she whispered, then flattened her hand on his chest and pushed hard.
    He was facing her when he flew off the dock, and ifshe hadn’t been so furious, Ariel might have laughed. His eyes were bugging, his arms were flailing, and under the circumstances, even a saint wouldn’t be sorry that the dunking would ruin the fancy, animal-skin cowboy boots on his kicking feet. She leaped back as he hit the water, but not in time. She groaned as a freezing wave of springwater drenched her. “Twice in one day,” she muttered.
    “You could stand to lose a few pounds,” she said to Studs. “That splash could have hit Bliss Run Road. In fact,” she added as he came back up, sputtering, “I think it’s started a tidal wave. Whoa! Call in the coast guard!”
    Deciding she’d better reach the mobile lab before Studs got out—after all, he was packing a weapon—she whirled, intending to go down the dock, then saw Rex standing in front of her, a small briefcase-style kit in his hand and an uncertain expression on his face.
    “Old boyfriend?”
    She wanted to die, right then and there. It didn’t help that yet another outfit was soaked, or that it was white and she was braless. Or that Studs was having difficulty hauling himself out of the water. He was going to catapult over the side of the dock any second now, dripping like a creature from the blue lagoon.
    She wanted to laugh, but fury was coursing through her. Everything was going wrong. When he’d kissed her, Rex had seemed different. Unconnected to the town, but in under two hours, he’d been roped into her past. If only for a moment, he’d felt like a part of her here-and-now, and maybe even her future.
    He raised a hand. “Sorry. It’s none of my business.”
    “He’s not an old boyfriend,” she assured.
    Disbelief clouded Rex’s eyes.
    “You heard everything?”
    “I didn’t want to interrupt. The conversation seemed kind of…”
    Intimate.
    “But…” He considered. “When it looked like things were getting out of hand, I figured I might step in and toss him into the lake. And then…” He looked toward where Studs was sloshing in the water. “You beat me to the punch.”
    She swallowed hard, trying to fight her pique. “So, I guess you’re the kind of guy who believes everything he hears.” She paused. “Some scientist.”
    “Believe everything I hear,” he echoed, as if his mind was trying to catch up.
    Just like everyone else in this backwater that always knotted up her insides! One minute,