Chapter One

Fifteen years ago, Palo Alto High School

Victoria Bennett couldn't take her eyes off Ryan Sullivan, who was laughing with some of the guys on his baseball team, as she headed through the high school parking lot toward the art store on University Avenue.

None of the other girls in her tenth-grade class could take their eyes off him, either, so at least she didn't stick out. Not for that reason, anyway. Her clay-stained fingers and clothes - along with the "new girl" sign she felt like she was wearing during her first few weeks at every new school - did that with no help whatsoever from Ryan...or his ridiculously good looks.

Normally, she could have gotten over his pretty face without much trouble. As an artist, she always worked to look beneath the surface of things, to try to find out what was really at the heart of a painting or sculpture or song. That went for people, too. Especially boys who, as far as she could tell, only ever told a girl what they wanted to hear for one reason.

No, what had her stuck on Ryan Sullivan was the fact that he was always laughing. Somehow, without being the class clown, he had a gift for putting people at ease and making them feel good.

Before she could catch herself, she put her fingers to her lips...and wondered what it would feel like if he kissed her.

She yanked her hand away from her mouth. Not just because dreaming of his kisses was borderline pathetic given the utter unlikelihood of that scenario, but because she needed to stay focused on her art.

She wasn't just another tenth grader mooning over the hottest boy in school.

She was studying her muse.

Vicki had never been much interested in sculpting formal busts before. Old, dead, overly serious guys in gray didn't really do it for her. But it had only taken a few minutes near Ryan at lunch her first day on campus to be inspired to capture his laughter in clay. She wished she could get closer to all that easy joy - if only to figure out how to translate it from her mind's eye to the clay beneath her fingers.

Yes, she thought with a small smile, she was perfectly willing to suffer for her art. Especially if it meant staring at Ryan Sullivan.

The light turned from red to green and she could have picked up her pace and made it across the street. Only, she'd been having such trouble getting the corners of the eyes and mouth just right on her Laughing Boy sculpture. Knowing there wasn't a chance that Ryan or his friends would notice her, rather than leaving the school grounds, she closed the distance between them in as nonchalant a manner as she could, while surreptitiously watching him from beneath the veil of the bangs that had grown too long over her eyes during the summer.

A few seconds later, his friends high-fived him and walked away. Ryan bent down to finish packing up a long, narrow black bag at his feet, which she guessed held his baseball stuff.

What, she wondered on an appreciative sigh at the way the muscles on his forearms and shoulders flexed as he picked up the bag, would happen if she talked to him? And what would he say if she outright asked him to pose for her?

She was on the verge of laughing out loud at her crazy thoughts when she heard a squeal coming from the parking lot. In a split second she realized an out-of-control car was whipping straight toward Ryan.

There wasn't time to plan, or to think. Vicki sprinted across the several feet between them and threw herself at him.

"Car!"

Fortunately, Ryan's natural athleticism kicked in right away. Even though she was the one trying to pull him out of the way, less than a heartbeat later he was lifting her and practically throwing her across the grass before leaping to cover her body with his.

She scrunched her eyes tightly shut as the car careened past, so close that she could feel the hairs on her arms lifting in its wake. Breathing hard, Vicki clung to Ryan. Wetness moved across her cheeks and she belatedly realized tears must have sprung up from landing so hard on the grass.

The seconds ticked by as if in slow motion, one hard, thudding heartbeat after another from Ryan's chest to hers and then back again from hers to his. He was so strong, so warm, so beautifully real. She wanted to lie like this with him forever, more intimately, closer than she'd ever been with another boy.

Only, voices were rising in pitch all around her, and suddenly, the reality of what had just happened hit.

Oh my God, they'd both almost died!

She was starting to feel faint when he lifted his head and smiled down at her.

"Hi, I'm Ryan."

The way he said it, as if she didn't already know who he was, pierced through her shock. He acted like it was normal to be sprawled over a girl. Which, she suddenly realized, it probably was. For him.

Definitely not for her, though.

Her lips were dry and she had to lick them once, twice, before saying, "I'm Victoria." The words, "But my friends call me Vicki," slipped out before she could pull them back in.

His smile widened and her heart started beating even faster. Not from shock this time, but from pure, unfettered teenage hormones kicked into overdrive by his beautiful smile.

"Thank you for saving my life, Vicki." A moment later, his smile disappeared as he took in her tear-streaked cheeks. The eyes that she'd seen filled with laughter so many times during the first two weeks of school grew serious. "I hurt you."

She would have told him no, and that she was fine, but all breath and words were stolen from her the instant he brushed his fingertips over her cheeks to wipe away her tears.

Somehow, she managed to shake her head, and to get her lips to form the word no, even though no sound followed.

His laughing eyes were dark now, and more intense than she'd ever seen them. "Are you sure? I didn't mean to land so hard on you."

"I'm - "

How was she supposed to keep her brain working when he'd begun the slow, shockingly sweet process of running his hands over the back of her skull, and then down to her shoulders and upper arms?

One more word. That was all she needed to get out to answer his question.

" - fine."

"Good." His voice was deeper, richer, than any of the other fifteen-year-old boys. "I'm glad."

But as he stared down at her, his expression continued to grow even more intense and she found herself holding her breath.

Was he going to kiss her now? Had her life just turned into the quintessential after-school-special fantasy, the one where the artsy girl caught the eye of the jock and the whole school was turned upside down by their unlikely but ultimately perfect and inevitable pairing?

"One day, when you need me most, I promise I'll be there for you, Vicki."

Oh. She swallowed hard. Oh my.

He hadn't given her a kiss...but his promise felt more important than a mere kiss would have been.

Before she realized it, he was standing up again and holding out a hand to help her up, too. Instantly missing his heat, the hard muscles pressing into her softer ones, all the lies she'd been trying to tell herself about Ryan simply being a muse scattered out of reach.

"Can I walk you home?"

Surprised that he wanted to spend more time with her, she quickly shook her head.

He looked equally surprised by her response, likely because no girl on earth had ever turned him down.

"No, I can't walk you home?"

She fumbled to explain. "I'm not going home. I was actually heading over to the art store to pick up some supplies for a new sculpt - "

She barely stopped herself from rambling on about her latest project. Why would Ryan Sullivan care? Besides, she reminded her racing heart with brutal honesty, he probably had some pretty cheerleaders waiting on him. And they wouldn't need an out-of-control car to get him to lie down on top of them.

Because no matter how tempting it was to believe that she had suddenly been cast in a happy-ever-after fairytale romance, the truth was that getting that close to Ryan had been nothing more than a fluke of fate.

And Vicki remained the star of her artsy, and often lonely, move-to-a-new-town-every-year-with-her-military-family teenage life.

Only, for some strange reason she couldn't understand, Ryan wasn't running in the opposite direction yet. Probably because he felt like he owed her after she'd saved his life. After all, hadn't he just told her that he would be there for her one day when she really needed him?

"What are you getting supplies for?" He asked the question as though he were truly interested, not just acting like it because he felt he should.

"I'm making a - " Wait, she couldn't tell him what she was making. Because she was sculpting him. "I work with clay. Lately, I've been trying to capture specific facial expressions."

"Which ones?"

Never in a million years did she think she'd ever speak to him, let alone have this long a conversation. But, what shocked her most of all was just how comfortable she felt with him. Even with all of her teenage hormones on high alert, Ryan was, simply, the easiest person she'd ever been around.

And she wanted more time with him than just five stolen minutes on the high school lawn.

Her nerves were starting to back off a bit by the time she told him, "I started with all the usual expressions every artist knows best." She played it up for him. "Tears. Pain. Suffering. Existential nothingness."

His laughter made her feel like she could float all the way to the art store and back.

"Sounds fun."

"Oh yeah," she joked back, "it's a riot. Which is why I'm trying something different now." She took a breath before admitting, "I'm working on laughter."

"Laughter, huh?" He grinned at her. "I like it. How's it going?"

Being so close to the full wattage of his smile made her breath catch in her throat. In an effort to cover her all-too-obvious reaction to him, she scrunched up her face. "Put it this way, I think I've started to resemble all those other expressions."

"Even the existential nothingness one?"

As if she were watching the two of them from a distance, Vicki knew she'd always look back to that moment as the one that mattered most. The one where she fell head over heels in love with Ryan Sullivan. And not because of his beautiful outside.

But because he'd listened.

And, even better, because he'd appreciated.

"Especially that one," she replied.

He picked up her bag from the grass. "Sounds awesome. Mind if I tag along?"

Okay, so maybe the two of them didn't add up on paper, but Vicki couldn't deny that they had clicked.

"Sure," she said, "if you don't have anywhere else you have to be."

He slung his equipment bag over his other shoulder and walked beside her. "Nothing more important than hanging out with a new friend."

This time, she was the one grinning at him. In the two weeks since she'd moved to Palo Alto with her family, she hadn't done a very good job of making friends at the high school. As an Army brat who moved more years than not, she'd stopped making the effort a long time ago when she realized how hard it was to not only break into fully formed cliques, but also to maintain long-distance friendships once she inevitably left town.

Ryan made everything seem so easy, though, as if the only thing that wouldn't make sense was their not hanging out.

By the end of their trip to the art store and back, she knew all about his seven siblings, he knew she had two annoying little brothers, he'd told her what he liked about baseball, she'd told him what she loved about sculpting, and she'd been invited to dinner at the Sullivan house.

It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

The best one she'd ever had.

* * *

Present day, San Francisco

Ryan Sullivan threw his car keys to the valet as he shot past him. The young man's eyes widened as he realized that he was not only about to drive a Ferrari into the underground parking lot, but that it belonged to one of his sports idols.

"Mr. Sullivan, sir, don't you need your valet tag?"

Ryan took his responsibilities to the fans seriously and made it a point never to let them down. But tonight the only thing that mattered was Vicki. Even though a half-dozen missed connections over the years had kept them from meeting up again in person after high school, they'd kept in touch through email and phone calls.

Vicki was his friend.

And he wouldn't let anyone hurt one of his friends.

Ryan pushed through the dark glass doors to the exclusive hotel foyer and made himself stop long enough to do a quick scan of the glittering room. The Pacific Union Club wasn't his kind of place - it was pretentious as all hell - and he hadn't thought it would be Vicki's usual stomping grounds, either.

So why was she here? And why hadn't she told him she was finally coming back to Northern California after so many years in Europe?

He'd been hanging at his brother Chase's new baby celebration when her texts had come in.

I need your help. Come quick.

Ryan had cursed every one of the thirty-five miles into the city from his mother's house on the Peninsula. He'd texted Vicki again and again to get more information, and to make sure that she was okay, but she hadn't replied.

He couldn't remember the last time he'd been so worried about anyone...or so ready to do battle. Vicki wasn't the kind of woman who cried wolf. She wouldn't have sent him those texts just to try to get his attention. She was the only woman he'd ever known apart from his sisters and mother who had ever been completely real with him, and who didn't want anything from him besides his friendship.

His large hands were tight fists as he surveyed the cocktail lounge, his jaw clenched tight.

Damn it, where was she?

If anyone had touched Vicki the wrong way, or hurt her even the slightest bit, Ryan would make them pay.

He was famous for being not only the winningest pitcher in the National Baseball League, but also one of the most laid-back. Very few people had a clue about Ryan's hidden edges, but it wouldn't take much more to set him off tonight.

He grabbed the first person in uniform, his grip hard enough on the young man's upper arm that he winced. "Is there a private meeting room?"

The young man stuttered, "Y-yes, sir."

"Where is it?"

His hand shook as he pointed. "On the back side of the bar, but it's already reserved toni - "

Ryan hightailed it through the lounge and it shouldn't have been that hard to get through the crowd, but it seemed that every single person in the room either got up to buy another drink or was trying to get his attention.

When he found a subtly hidden door just to the side of the bar, he nearly knocked it off its hinges in his hurry to open it.

Ryan saw the flash of Vicki's long blond hair first, her killer curves second.

Thank God, she was here, and in one piece.

But his relief was short-lived when he realized he'd interrupted her and her cocktail companion just as the man's hand was sliding onto her thigh.

Vicki jumped off her seat as Ryan strode into the room. The terror that had been on her face when the other man touched her leg slowly morphed into relief at his arrival.

Her companion, on the other hand, was clearly surprised to see Ryan...and he wasn't happy about it, either. The man was probably in his fifties and was obviously loaded. Or at least wanted people to think he was, holding meetings in a place like this, wearing a handmade suit.

Quickly conjuring up an expression of surprise, Vicki said, "What are you doing here so early, honey?"