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A masculine laugh, full of joy and amusement rang in her ears. For a second, Julia thought she had fallen eleven years into the past. But there it was again.
Not daring to breathe, she turned slowly, almost hoping she was just imagining it. She looked across the tables and saw him. The apple fell from her hand and clunked into the bin.
Frank stood across from her. She put her hand to her throat in shock. His raw masculinity at age twenty had matured into solid manhood, his shoulders broader, his arms thicker. His dark hair curled over his ears, one wave falling over his forehead. His face had hardened but his dark eyes crinkled with amusement.
Frank was leaning on a vegetable stand, listening to an older man who was obviously telling a funny story, thanks to the amused faces of the surrounding shoppers. Frank clapped the older man on the back and turned away, a smile on his face.
He saw her. The smile vanished, leaving a stunned expression to match hers. Instead of freezing, he moved. Toward her.
She panicked. What could she say to him? What would he say to her? She took a step backward, automatically searching for an escape.
But Frank was coming, cutting around the customers and tables with the grace she remembered. He stopped next to her. “Julia?” he asked, his voice full of disbelief. Good, so she wasn’t the only one.
“Frank, well, my goodness! How in the world are you?” Her tone had enough sugar to frost a wedding cake. Light and friendly, light and friendly, she decided.
He didn’t cooperate with her game plan and reply in an equally frothy manner, saying, What brings you back to the Azores? Or Gee, Julia, how many years has it been? Instead, he stood silently staring at her. Almost as if she were a ghost popping up through the floor.
“Frank?” She touched his forearm and he jumped as if she’d shocked him. She was shocked too and jerked her hand back.
Oh no. Why that futile spark of attraction, after all these years? She looked away desperately.
“Julia. Your husband is here with you?” He casually scanned the crowd for an American man, but his question was far from casual.
“My husband?” She wasn’t thinking clearly, all the red flags distracting her. “No.”
“No, he is not here, or no, you have no husband?”
“Oh, Franco,” she whispered. He no longer fit his boyish nickname.
“Tell me, Julia. Which is it?”
“I have no husband.”
Triumph flared in his eyes, quickly banked into a neutral expression. She resented it. As if she were a prize horse unexpectedly put up for auction.
“What about you? Any wife?” She meant it for turnabout, but he took it for interest, his mouth curling into a victorious smile.
Maybe it was interest. Oh, of course it was. She was dying to know if there was a Duchess Mrs. Franco Duarte, or whatever they were called in Portugal these days. She’d never quite picked up the naming system that could leave a person with four last names.
“No wife. Yet.”
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