Secrets in the Sand by Carolyn Brown

            Finally, her eyes grew heavy and she lay down, still facing him, and stared at him until she fell asleep. Darkness had filled the room when she awoke a few hours later. The bed next to Angel was empty, but she could hear water running in the bathroom shower. She groaned when she realized she had drifted off with the towel around her head. Taming her wild, curly hair would take hours.

            Clancy came out of the bathroom wearing a towel and a smile. “Good morning, or is it evening?”

            A wave of the same cologne he wore back in high school wafted across the room toward her and set her senses to reeling. He picked out a pair of pajama bottoms and a shirt from his suitcase and started back to the bathroom.

            “I believe it’s evening, or maybe even midnight,” she answered.

            “I’m starving.” Clancy poked his head out around the bathroom door. “What are you hungry for? Want to get something delivered to our room or go out?”

            “Pizza in our room,” she answered, thinking that she could just pile her hair up in a messy bun and not worry with straightening it and getting dressed.

            Clancy dressed and then came back into the room, sat down at the desk located at the end of his bed, and picked up a hotel directory. He flipped through it, stopped on a full-page ad for a pizza place, and looked up at Angel. “What kind do you like?”

            “Meat lover’s with black olives,” she answered.

            And there you go! Susan’s voice popped into her head. He doesn’t even know what kind of pizza you like, or ice cream either, for that matter, because he was too ashamed of you to take you out on a real date.

            Clancy ordered what she wanted and then ordered a Hawaiian pizza for himself, plus an order of breadsticks and extra marinara sauce.

            See, I was right! Y’all don’t even have the same taste in pizza. Patty continued to give her the con side of letting Clancy back into her life.

            That’s a minor detail, Angel argued. The bunch of you sent me on this trip to get closure. I can do it without your help.

            Clancy finished the call by asking for an order of cinnamon sticks and a two-liter bottle of root beer before he laid the phone on the desk, rolled the chair around, and propped his feet on the end of his bed.

            “Supper will arrive in twenty minutes,” he said.

            “Clancy, we can’t go back in time.” Angel propped two pillows up on the head of the bed and rested her back against them.

            “The last thing I want to do is go back in time,” he drawled. “I wouldn’t relive the past ten years for all the oil in Texas and half the tea in China. Not unless I could go back with the full knowledge I have today and redo most of it. I want to forget the past and enjoy the present, thanks to you”—Clancy caught her eye, and it seemed like he was looking right into her soul—“and have warm, fuzzy thoughts of the future. We’ve both got heartaches we need to get over. And I truly believe the place to do it is in Tishomingo. That’s where it all started, so let’s go back there and finish it, one way or the other.”

            “You’re right,” she agreed.

            Angel wondered if it had just been a dream that she’d lolled in the calm waters in her sundress and drunk wine from a crystal goblet with Clancy. Maybe after a while someone would pinch her and she’d awaken in her bedroom at the farm and smell the aroma of bacon coming from the kitchen where Hilda rattled pots and pans, and Jimmy puttered around in the garden.

            Clancy flipped his chair around and picked up the remote. “Want to watch a movie? We can pretend we’re on a date.”

            Not until you take me to the Dairy Queen in Tishomingo, she thought.

            “All right,” she said as she watched him surf through the channels until he found the one that gave him the schedule for the evening. “Something to Talk About is coming on in ten minutes. It’s a comedy with Julia Roberts,” he said.

            “I haven’t had much time for movies,” she said. “But I do like Julia Roberts.”

            “You could sit next to me for the movie.” Clancy moved to his bed and propped up the pillows like she had done. “If we were on a real date at the movie theater in Tishomingo, you would be sitting next to me.”