Sierra, California -- May 1977

The front screen door slammed with a bang. Danielle Harcourt’s rubber-thonged feet flip-flopped across the yard, through the grape arbor, past the barn, and down the dirt path that led to Angel Creek.

Familiar voices floated like butterflies on the warm breeze as Dani neared the bottom of the hill. Her dog Buddy ran ahead of her, barking happily in his zeal to join their friends for one of their first outings since the warm weather had begun. Dani picked up her own speed as well, and her braid swished gaily across her back. She smiled at the thought of graduating from high school in just a few weeks. Then she realized Buddy had stopped, and the new cadence of his barking signaled a warning.

“What is it, boy?” Dani slowed, cautiously rounding the last manzanita bush on the trail. At first she saw nothing, but her ears picked up the distinctive rattling sound. She froze. Her heart slammed into the back of her chest. The snake, less than two yards away, coiled its long scaly body to strike. Buddy continued to bark with unfettered ferocity, oblivious to his own danger as he put himself between his mistress and the rattler. Dani remained as still as the stone the snake had been sunning itself upon and fought her rising panic. She’d almost rather get bitten herself than see her pet hurt.

The shovel seemed to come out of nowhere, falling like a guillotine to decapitate the rattlesnake’s head. Dani screamed and fell backward onto her bottom in the sandy dirt. She took a long shuddering breath that turned into a strangled sob. Buddy licked her face. She wrapped her arms around the little dog.

“You okay, Dani?”

Wade Stevens loomed above her, blocking the sun with his body. One large hand grasped the wooden shovel handle. She blinked up at him and managed a quivering smile, all the time wishing it had been another who’d rescued her.

“I’m fine.”

Her gaze searched behind Wade to locate the person who made an appearance each night in her dreams. She scrambled to her feet and sidestepped Wade to fling herself into Ken Moody’s arms. Ken held her for a moment. Dani clung to him, burrowing against the warm, spice-scented skin of his bare chest. When he released her, she felt a little dizzy and weak in the knees.

She stared with morbid fascination as the snake’s headless body writhed in the dirt, demanding attention and respect even in the throes of death. Buddy growled and circled the carcass.

“I’d slay dragons for you, m’lady.” Wade spoke the words softly and in earnest. From the brooding expression on her best friend’s face, Dani knew she’d hurt his feelings. She had a knack for it. Pangs of guilt flickered through her, yet she couldn’t feel sorry for seeking Ken’s comfort.

“My hero,” she said, sending Wade a gentle smile. His lips curved into a grin, but she could detect a lingering sadness in the deep blue of his eyes. She’d seen it countless times before, though she was reluctant to dwell upon its meaning.

“Gawd,” JeriAnn Murphy exclaimed, coming up beside her stepbrother Ken. She pointed at the rattlesnake. “It’s hee-uge.”

Dani laughed as she brushed the sand from the seat of her cut-offs. She headed for the creek, taunting the others, calling them slowpokes as she broke into a run. Within minutes, a boisterous water fight ensued. Dani claimed victory for the girls’ side until Wade launched a salamander at JeriAnn. The shrieking girl ran out of the shallow water only to collapse in giggles on the creekbank. Ken followed, his faded jeans wet, heavy, and drooping precariously across his narrow hips.

Ken settled next to JeriAnn on her beach towel. A ridiculous spurt of jealousy went through Dani as she watched them, then a splash brought her around. Wade plowed through the water toward her, holding another brownish-green salamander. She stepped backward into a deeper pool.

Wade’s mouth kicked up in a grin. “Where are you going, Dani?” His golden brows rose in playful challenge. He thrust the slick, wide-eyed amphibian into her face. “You and I used to catch salamanders all the time.”

Dani’s eyes crossed as she met the little creature’s gaze, but she stubbornly refused to retreat another inch. “I’m not a tomboy anymore.” She again glanced Ken’s way. Her main motivation for such a change was in the form of the lean, dark-haired young man now reclining next to JeriAnn.

“Yeah, I noticed.” Wade moved closer, demanding her attention. Dani poked him in the ribs when his gaze traveled across her bikini top.

“Stop that.”

“What?”

“Looking at me like that. Sheez, you’re my best friend.”

Wade chuckled. “Best friends can notice these things too.”

“‘These things’?” Dani repeated, looking down at what she considered to be a poor excuse for a bosom.

Wade laughed again and lowered the salamander into the water, setting it free. “What about me?” he asked, straightening his tall frame. His gaze searched her face, wistfulness lurking in its depths. “Notice anything different?”

She studied him, but Wade’s muscular, sun-baked physique was nothing new to her. Many girls considered him the best-looking guy in their senior class. He’d been captain of the football team two years in a row, voted most valuable player in basketball, led the track team to a first place finish in last month’s invitational...and so the list went. Wade had lettered in almost every sport at Sierra High. This year he’d been elected senior class president and, more recently, prom king. As if those accomplishments weren’t enough, he would also be giving the valedictorian speech at their graduating ceremony.

“Well?” he prompted.

Dani’s gaze traveled down her best friend’s torso. Golden hair glistened on his chest, narrowing to a V that disappeared into the waistband of his cut-off jeans. Creek water covered him below the hips. Wade certainly had a powerful build, but there was only one person who could make Dani’s heart beat faster. She stole another glance at Ken. He was engrossed in conversation with JeriAnn.

Sighing, Dani turned back to resume her assessment. The hair on Wade’s head was golden-blond, wavy and a little long. He had a strong-looking face with an aquiline nose and a square jaw covered with stubble.

“You’re growing a beard?”

He reached up to stroke his chin. Some boys in the twelfth grade never needed a razor, but she knew Wade shaved every day. He frowned. “Not on purpose.”

“Then what?” Impatience grew inside Dani. She wanted to go sit on her beach towel in the sun, near Ken.

“I thought maybe I looked older.” He shrugged in the characteristic way Dani recognized all too well. She wanted to groan aloud. Somehow she’d succeeded in disappointing him again.

“Don’t you think I look more mature?”

“Sheez, Wade. You’ve looked mature since seventh grade.” And now he had the age to go along with his adult appearance. He’d turned eighteen three weeks earlier, a few days ahead of Dani.

“My skin’s getting pruney.” She held up her hand as proof.

“You look good pruney.” Wade’s gaze held hers for several seconds until she looked away. He took her hand and squeezed it. “You’re beautiful, Dani.”

She rolled her eyes and laughed off his words as she pulled her hand back. “Let’s get out of the water.”

***

“Do you remember the first summer we dammed up the creek?”

The four of them sat on towels covering the warm sand while Wade passed them each a bottle of cola from his cooler. He answered Dani’s question, meant for Ken.

“Yeah. It gave us enough water to swim in till nearly August.”

“I wouldn’t say it was enough to swim in,” Ken said, taking a swig of pop, “but it came up to our necks if we sat down.”

“And then just around the boulders,” Dani added. “Everywhere else was too shallow.” She pointed to the two large slabs of granite that leaned toward each other in the creek. In the early springtime water rushed around all sides of the rocks, but now, with summer rapidly approaching, the two boulders contained the current. “Inside it’s like a cave.”

JeriAnn nodded. “Ken took me in there last year, but I didn’t like it.”

“It’s a cool place on a hot day,” Wade said, “and Buddy’s never found a snake in there.”

Dani shivered at the reminder of her recent ordeal. She watched Wade drain the last of his soda. He loved to chug it.

“Tarantulas maybe,” he went on, “or scorpions—”

JeriAnn gasped and the two teenage boys laughed.

“When we were kids we found an old metal barrel that was cut in half the long way.” Ken drew in the sand with his index finger to show JeriAnn what he was talking about. She leaned close to him and watched. “We plugged up the hole in the lid and pushed it in the creek. We couldn’t believe it actually floated.”

“Dani was the first to get in,” Wade said.

“Because I was the smallest.”

“She still thinks that’s the reason.” Wade exchanged a mischievous look with Ken. He turned to JeriAnn. “We were sure it would sink—”

“And it was only March—” Ken added.

“And the water was damn cold,” Wade finished.

“What?” Dani cried, disgusted. “Why do I always find out about these things later, after you two have laughed about them for years?”

“‘These things’?” Wade repeated, glancing again at Dani’s small breasts. “I’m not laughing about those.”

Dani felt her face glow red, and she took a swing at Wade. “You rat!”

He deflected her slap and grinned. “We pushed her way out in the current, didn’t we?”

Ken nodded. “With no paddle or nothin’. She had to row with her hands.”

“And that water was damn cold,” Dani said, failing to suppress her own grin at the memory. “But I showed you two,” she pointed at the guys, “when you realized I was having fun and you were on the bank, yelling at me to give you a turn.”

“She stayed out there longer than was fair,” Ken told JeriAnn. “By the time she finished her little ride, the bottom of the barrel was leaking and it was gettin’ dark.”

“We had to wait till the next day to try it,” Wade admitted.

“Serves you jerks right,” JeriAnn said, taking Dani’s side as she often did.

“Now we’re jerks?” Ken looked crushed.

“You guys were always jerks,” Dani said, poking Ken. She waited for him to respond in kind, but he didn’t. Lately he’d acted distant and aloof, and it had been a long time since he’d really teased Dani. She missed their camaraderie.

“What happened to the boat?” JeriAnn asked.

“It rusted through after a couple of years, and we had to take it to the dump,” Wade replied. “But those were good times, huh?”

Dani smiled at Wade and nodded, then glanced Ken’s way again. “The best.”

“Oh, I’m turning pink!” JeriAnn pulled the bra cup of her bikini top down about an inch, and the boys turned their attention on her. Dani offered suntan oil and Ken offered to rub it on his stepsister’s back.

“How about you?” Wade asked Dani in a low tone, scanning her exposed skin with more interest than she thought appropriate.

“You know I don’t burn. That stuff just gives me a darker tan.”

“You’re so lucky, Dani.” JeriAnn sighed as she rolled onto her stomach and Ken began to smear excessive amounts of oil on her fair, freckled skin. “I wish I were dark complected like you.” Dani watched Ken study a lock of JeriAnn’s strawberry-blonde hair before pushing it off her shoulder. “Everyone can get a better tan than me.”

“Pale skin is nice, too,” Dani said, noticing that Ken sure seemed to like it. She felt another stab of jealousy, though she knew JeriAnn and Ken shared a special bond. Their parents had been married about a year, and both adults were rumored to be alcoholics. George Moody, or Old Man Moody as he was referred to in Sierra, claimed the inauspicious title of town drunk. He seldom got past the bar in Bootjack, a tiny town a few miles this side of Sierra. Ken’s childhood had not been a happy one. His natural mother had left when he was still in elementary school. From what Dani knew of JeriAnn, the girl hadn’t fared much better.

Ken tossed the bottle of suntan oil back toward Dani. Wade caught it. Before she could protest he’d squeezed some into his palms and knelt behind her to rub it onto her shoulders and back. She had to admit it felt good. Wade had a gentle touch, a lot like her father, who hadn’t rubbed her back since she’d started wearing a bra.

“You got sunburned once, Dani,” Wade said. “You even blistered.” His hands were still on her back, though the oil should have been distributed evenly. “Right across here.” His fingertips traced a line across the tops of her slick shoulders. “Your nose and cheeks too.”

“Once.”

“You peeled,” Ken put in.

“Like a snake,” Wade finished, and Dani grimaced.

“Don’t you two ever stop?” JeriAnn chided. “Poor Dani is going to have nightmares about that snake. I’m going to have nightmares.” The sound of little yips brought them all around. Buddy napped in the shade, his small brown body twitching from some canine dream.

“The mutt’s even havin’ nightmares,” Ken said with a laugh.

Dani stood up so Wade’s hands would slide off her. She unbuttoned her denim shorts and wiggled out of them. “If we’re going to lay in the sun awhile, I don’t want tan lines.” She wore last year’s faded suit. Dani could feel Wade’s gaze wander over her hips and thighs. She wished Ken would look at her that way...and she wished Wade wouldn’t.

The guys left their towels to continue the dam construction begun earlier. Dani watched them amble off. She could remember when the shovels they carried were bigger than they were. So long ago. Such good times. She sighed and flopped down on her belly next to JeriAnn.

“I wish it could stay just like this.”

“Me too.” JeriAnn’s voice sounded as wistful as Dani felt. “I don’t know what I’m going to do when school’s out, but I can’t stay in that house. I don’t know why my mom and George ever got married. All they do is fight.”

“You and I could get an apartment together.” Dani was surprised to hear the suggestion come from her own mouth. She hadn’t been thinking about moving out until the end of summer.

“Really, Dani? I thought you were still thinking about college.”

“I don’t know. Dad wants me to go to Fresno State. If I go anywhere, it’ll be to Reno where my sister Darcy lives. But I still don’t know what I want to major in.”

“I thought you liked taking pictures.”

Dani nodded thoughtfully. “I do. But I’m tired of school.” She propped her head on her hands and watched a procession of ants cross the sand toward one of the empty pop bottles. She recalled how she, Ken, and Wade had driven tiny die-cast cars through the sand in this same spot. That had been a long time ago.

“Wade’s still going, isn’t he?”

“I guess so.”

“You guess so? I thought he told you everything.” JeriAnn rolled to her side to face Dani. “He sure likes you.”

Dani shrugged. “We’re good friends.”

“But not good enough to go to the prom together?”

“I don’t go to dances. Never have.”

“Why not?”

“JeriAnn, I distinctly remember having this conversation before.”

“And you never gave me a good explanation then either. Gawd, Dani, Wade’s so popular. Half the girls at school would give their left boob to go out with him, and you turn him down.”

Dani laughed at that. “Wade likes boobs, so that would be a dumb thing for a girl to do.”

“You’re doing it again.”

“What?”

“Changing the subject.” JeriAnn sat up and crossed her legs Indian-style. “Didn’t you want to see what it was like to go to a high school dance, just once? And with the prom king, no less.”

“No.”

“With someone else?”

The girl was getting way too personal. Dani had yet to confide her dreams about Ken with anyone other than Wade. She certainly wasn’t going to tell Ken Moody’s stepsister how much she cared about him. “I said I don’t dance.”

“No, you said you don’t go to dances.”

“Same thing.”

JeriAnn shook her head. “I just don’t understand you, Dani.”

“I don’t understand me either.”

The redhead snorted. “It won’t work this time. I’m gonna keep pestering you until you tell me. Why don’t you go to dances?”

“I don’t like to.”

“Is it because you never learned how to dance?”

“Do you promise you’ll get off my back if I tell you?”

“I promise.”

Dani blew out a breath and looked away from her friend. She supposed she could tell JeriAnn part of the reason. She’d get no peace until she did. “The first dance was in seventh grade, no band or anything, just records. I had planned to go, though I wasn’t really excited about it, not like the other girls were. The dance was supposed to start right after school. When the bell rang, I went to the bathroom. I could hear lots of girls coming in, giggling and talking about who they were going to dance with, stuff like that.” Wade’s name had come up more than anyone’s in the girls’ bathroom that afternoon.

“Then they started oohing and aahing over the new dresses they’d brought to change into. I just wore a pair of jeans and a peasant blouse.” She hadn’t asked her parents for a new outfit, hadn’t even thought about it. Besides, she only wore a dress when she absolutely had to.

“I opened the stall door and came out, and everyone got real quiet. Then one girl said, ‘Hey, Dani, where’s your dress?’ I told her I didn’t have one, and they all started laughing. They said I couldn’t go to a dance dressed like that. So I got out of there and caught the bus home.”

She could still remember how humiliated she’d felt. She’d decided she didn’t want to go to dances, not ever. When she learned Ken avoided them too, it only increased her resolve.

She could also remember how upset Wade had been. When he’d finally gotten her to tell him what had happened, he’d wanted to know the names of all the girls who had laughed at her.

“Why didn’t you go to the prom?” Dani asked JeriAnn.

The other girl’s gaze dropped to the ground. Her curls fell around her shoulders as she seemed to focus on the pattern in her beach towel. “No one asked me.” Sadness tinged her voice, and Dani felt her pain. It was one thing not to care about going to a dance, but quite another to want to go and not be invited. JeriAnn was very pretty, but as far as Dani knew, the girl hadn’t gone out with anyone since she’d moved to Sierra.

“I think Wade was hurt you wouldn’t go with him,” JeriAnn said.

Dani blew out a breath and nodded in agreement. “But he ought to know better. He’s asked me to dances and stuff before.” She turned to look at the person in question. Wade alternately bent over and straightened in the water, hauling up large rocks to add to Ken’s gravel pile. The muscles in Wade’s back and arms played under his golden skin. He had the kind of looks that caused women of all ages to take a second glance. Although he didn’t brag about his girlfriends the way other guys did, Dani figured he’d lost his virginity years ago—probably their freshman year when so many of the upper-class girls had vied for his attention. He never discussed his love life with Dani, and she was grateful for that. She didn’t need the reminder that she didn’t have one.

“You’re lucky to have him,” JeriAnn said, then added, “for a friend.”

“You’re lucky to have Ken.” Dani’s gaze had strayed, as always, to Ken. Both girls were silent a moment.

“I don’t know about Ken anymore,” JeriAnn said quietly.

“What do you mean?” Now they were on Dani’s favorite subject.

“He’s been so strange lately. It’s hard to get him to talk to me about anything. Our folks have been drinking a lot, and Ken and the old man have had some horrible fights. I think he’s ready to get out, too.”

“Ken, leave?” Alarm coursed through Dani. The other girl nodded forlornly. “But where would he go?” She couldn’t imagine Ken anywhere but in Sierra. Surely he could work more hours at the service station in town and get his own place. He wouldn’t actually leave, would he?

“I don’t know where he’d go, I only know he’s fed up with all the drinking and fighting and—and everything.” There was a little catch in JeriAnn’s voice.

“But—” Dani stifled her own urge to cry. “He can’t go.”

Both girls watched Ken and Wade move rocks and gravel in the creekbed to form a narrower current, creating larger pools of water around the boulders. Dani’s worried gaze settled once again on Ken Moody, the object of all her desires. He was shorter and leaner than Wade, olive-skinned with dark brown hair and brown eyes. He didn’t have any hair on his chest, and only recently Dani had noticed dark fuzz above his upper lip. His hair was straight and shoulder length. He parted it in the middle and tucked it over his ears.

Some of the kids at school called him a hippie, and although it was true he was on the wild side, he wasn’t like the crowd to which he’d gravitated. That group drank hard. Ken never drank, Dani was sure of that. She knew he despised what his father had become.

The three of them—Dani, Ken, and Wade—had grown up along Angel Creek. It had been natural for them to spend time together; they were the same age and in the same grade at school.

Dani and Wade had always been there for Ken when things got bad. Wade lived on the other side of the creek, but Dani was Ken’s closest neighbor, and he’d often come over at night, knocking on her bedroom window. She’d open it and he’d crawl through. He’d stay awhile, sometimes even until morning, sleeping in the adjacent twin bed. Her parents slept on the other side of the house and never knew.

Ken’s reliance on Dani and Wade had changed when George Moody remarried. Now there was JeriAnn, and Ken didn’t have to go very far to find comfort from a friend. There was an old shack below the Moody place; it had been a favorite hideout when they were kids. Dani knew that’s where Ken and JeriAnn went when the fighting got bad.

She glanced at JeriAnn. The girl’s troubled expression surely mirrored her own. As her friend watched Ken and Wade build their dam, Dani noted an intensity in JeriAnn’s blue-gray eyes that she hadn’t seen there before. It made her uneasy, but she couldn’t put a finger on why. She knew she couldn’t hold anything against JeriAnn; she was the closest female friend Dani had ever had. Though Dani often felt envious of the bond JeriAnn shared with her stepbrother, she understood it.

Her gaze slid back to Ken and Wade standing knee-deep in the creek. Wade turned and caught her eye, lifting his shovel in salute. Dani and JeriAnn waved back. Wade grinned and held the shovel to his shoulder like a baseball bat. He swung hard. The spade hit the surface of the water, splashing the girls on shore. JeriAnn shrieked. Dani threw a handful of sand in Wade’s direction. He laughed and returned to his project.

Dani gazed at the two young men in the water. She adored them both for different reasons. Her best friend had always been Wade...but it was Ken she loved.