First Impressions

Ltd.)
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    This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have control over and does not have any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
    FIRST IMPRESSIONS
    An InterMix Book / published by arrangement with the author
    PUBLISHING HISTORY
    Harlequin Books edition / March 1992
    InterMix eBook edition / October 2012
     
    Copyright © 1984 by Nora Roberts.
    Excerpt from
The Perfect Hope
copyright © 2012 by Nora Roberts.
    All rights reserved.
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    ISBN: 978-1-101-56961-0
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To Georgeann, neighbor and friend

Chapter 1
    The morning sun shot shafts of light over the mountains. It picked up the hints of red and gold among the deep green leaves and had them glowing. From somewhere in the woods came a rustling as a rabbit darted back to its burrow, while overhead a bird chirped with an insistent cheerfulness. Clinging to the line of fences along the road were clumps of honeysuckle. The light scent from the few lingering blossoms wafted in the air. In a distant field a farmer and his son harvested the last of the summer hay. The rumble of the baler was steady and distinct.
    Over the mile trek to town only one car passed. Its driver lifted his hand in a salute. Shane waved back. It was good to be home.
    Walking on the grassy shoulder of the road, she plucked a blossom of honeysuckle and, as she had as a child, drew in the fleetingly sweet aroma. When she crushed the flower between her fingers, its fragrance briefly intensified. It was a scent she associated with summer, like barbecue smoke and new grass. But this was summer’s end.
    Shane looked forward to fall eagerly, when the mountains would be at their best. Then the colors were breathtaking, and the air was clean and crisp. When the wind came, the world would be full of sound and flying leaves. It was the time of woodsmoke and fallen acorns.
    Curiously, she felt as though she’d never been away. She might still have been twenty-one, walking from her grandmother’s to Sharpsburg to buy a gallon of milk or a loaf of bread. The busy Baltimore streets, the sidewalks and crowds of the last four years might have been a dream. She might never have spent those four years teaching in an inner-city school, correcting exams and attending faculty meetings.
    Yet four years had passed. Her grandmother’s narrow two-story house was now Shane’s. The uneven, wooded three acres of land were hers as well. And while the mountains and woods were the same, Shane was not.
    Physically, she looked almost as she had when she had left western Maryland for the job in a Baltimore high school. She was small in height and frame, with a slender figure that had never developed the curves and roundness she’d hoped for. Her face was subtly triangular with its creamy skin touched with warm color. It had been called peaches and cream often enough to make Shane wince. There were dimples that flashed when she smiled, rather than the elegant cheekbones she had wished for. Her nose was small, dusted with freckles, tilted up at the end. Pert. Shane had suffered the word throughout her