Nate was laughing. “I think I would have to.”
“Dad said you’re staying at the lake. Do you like it there?”
“Very much. I cleaned out an old shed today.”
“I thought you were going to rest. Did you see the prototype for the business cards I emailed you?”
“Sorry,” Nate said. “I didn’t have time to open the attachment. What do you know about the people here at the lake?”
“Not much. It’s a separate community from the town, but there’s a lot of money there. I’m really hoping to get some new clients at the fair. I know Mr. Rayburn has sold several houses in the last year. I’d like to decorate them.”
“I hear you went to school with his daughter.”
“Terri?” Stacy said. “I did but I never knew her very well.”
“Oh?” Nate asked.
Stacy hesitated. “She’s a very pretty girl, isn’t she?”
“I guess,” Nate said. “Was there something bad between you two?”
“No.” Stacy’s voice had a coolness to it. “I wasn’t a Mean Girl and I didn’t ostracize her from my gang if that’s the insinuation.”
With a chuckle, Nate stretched out on the bed, phone close to his ear. “Never thought you could be anything but your perfect self. I’m just curious about this place, is all. Since you went off and left me here alone, the least you could do is tell me about it.”
“Guilt!” There was laughter in her voice. “Poor Nate. Three weeks’ vacation with nothing whatever to do so I should feel sorry for you.”
“I guess I could ask someone else.” His voice was sexy, teasing. “There was a woman named Jenkins who seemed to like me.”
“Red hair from a drugstore box? Just so you know, there isn’t anything on her body that’s real and her husband owns some big company. He would make a formidable enemy.”
“Are you sure you weren’t a Mean Girl in high school?”
“Okay, you win. I take it you want to know about Terri. She and I weren’t friends in high school because she was never there. She left the grounds as soon as class let out, and she was never in any extracurricular activities. She made okay grades but I don’t think she spent much time studying. We all felt sorry for her because she had so much work to do.”
“But I get the idea that something happened. Something traumatic.”
“In the ninth grade, Terri was suspended from school.”
“For what?”
“For injuring two boys.”
“Two of them, huh?” Nate was grinning.
Stacy didn’t join his humor. “The boys said she went crazy and picked up a rope from gym class. She swung it around and hit one of the boys in the ribs and he went down hard. I think she jumped the other one. For weeks, it was all the school could talk about.”
“Was she a hero or was she ridiculed?” Nate was no longer smiling.
“Sorry, but Terri was the object of laughter. The boys were popular and Terri was always an outsider. The boys were taken to a hospital to be checked out.”
“Terri was suspended but what happened to the boys?”
“Nothing. The principal—who was a great football fan, I might add—said their injuries might have damaged them for life and that fear was enough punishment.”
“They didn’t miss so much as a practice, did they?” Nate said. “I bet that at the next game they were back on the field being safely slammed into by two-hundred-pound teenagers and not by some skinny girl.”
“I’m sure it was very unfair,” Stacy said. “When I get back, maybe you and I can get to know the whole Rayburn family.”