My Stubborn Heart

by Becky Wade

  “I’m going to work on my game before next week.”

  “Is that right?”

  “Well, yeah. I’ve got to redeem myself.” They reached his truck and stood facing each other.

  “I’m glad you’ll be back,” she said. “I’ll be happy to take more of your money. There’s this Coach purse I’ve been wanting. . . .” The edges of her mouth lifted until she was grinning in outright challenge.

  “Better plan on paying for the purse with your own money.”

  “I’d rather spend yours.”

  He glared.

  “Bring it on,” she said.

  “I will.”

  “I’ll have to see it to believe it, mister.”

  He shook his head. The antique lover was a card shark who also liked trash talking? He moved to get into his truck, then paused, gripping the door handle. “Do you have any other abilities I should know about before I go and make a fool of myself again?”

  “I can play golf.”

  “Seriously?”

  She shrugged, as if to say, Try me and see. She didn’t look strong enough to drive the ball farther than fifty yards. But after tonight . . . well, he supposed it was possible.

  He climbed into his truck. “G’night.”

  “Good night, Matt.”

  He started the car, turned on the lights, and eased down the driveway. In his rearview mirror he could see Kate standing where he’d left her, shoulders hunched against the cold. Strange woman. It kept him off-balance, this ability she had to surprise him. The way she was still knee-deep in his business every time he turned around. How she looked at him without ever seeming frightened, without ever giving the indication that she was willing to back off and leave him alone.

  He wished she’d go inside and get out of the cold. She was small and the air must be cutting right through her. He kept watching her in the rearview mirror, but she still hadn’t moved. She just stood there in the dark, long hair blowing, until the bend in the road stole her from view.

  chapter five

  Kate showed up for sleep that night and found sleep absent. She snuggled deeper under the covers and curled into a near-fetal position. She tried her yoga breathing techniques. She forced all her large muscle groups to relax. When none of that worked, she did what every Generation Xer does with the unanswered questions keeping them up at night.

  She Googled them.

  After clicking on her bedside lamp, she settled her laptop above the mound of her quilt-covered thighs. As if in greeting, it bathed her in green computer-screen light while it booted up.

  The longer she lived at Chapel Bluff, the less she used her computer. Email, the news and information online, and even her eBay sales kept waning and waning in importance and urgency.

  When Google’s web page popped up, she typed in Removing hair dye and hit Enter. Myriad results surfaced.

  The first subheading that caught her eye read Hair Color Gone Bad? That would, in Morty’s case, be an affirmative. Below that it stated Correct or remove it at home.

  Well, good. She’d actually thought that hair dye would be impossible to remove and that Morty was destined for an electric shaver.

  She followed links, studied various products, and read reviews. It appeared that bottles full of chemicals, a special brush, and rubber gloves were going to be involved.

  High cringe factor ensued when she envisioned herself using said products on Morty. She hardly knew the man. But since she’d sold out to him at the merest mention of the word spa, she was undoubtedly going to be the second person in the two-person job of removing his hair dye.

  She only hoped she could break the news to Morty that Velma hated his hair and then accomplish the necessary beauty treatments without fatally crushing his ego.

  Kate went back to Google’s main page, her fingertips hovering on the keys. An image of Matt as he’d looked earlier when she’d walked him to his car flashed into her thoughts, growing in size and focus until she could see every detail diamond-bright and clear. . . . The hard contour of his cheekbones. The moonlight that had caught and glittered in his dark, guarded eyes. The strands of brown hair raked by the wind.

  Her fingers twitched eagerly. She knew she shouldn’t do it. But she really, really wanted to. Would it be so terrible? She’d just take a little tiny peek, just browse around a bit. She shouldn’t and yet—

  Fingers flying, she typed in Matt Jarreau and hit Enter.

  Google’s response page immediately sprang up, with matches one to ten of over . . . 1,500,000. Her heart sank. She scrolled slowly down. The first hit was an encyclopedia entry about him. He was . . . ah . . . entered in the encyclopedia? Then a hit identifying Matt as one of the legends of hockey. Biographies. Quotes. An article about a famous goal he’d made in the Stanley Cup playoffs. Stats. NHL stuff. Another article. ESPN.com. Pictures that could be viewed.

  This was only page one. There were still more than a million other matches.

  She tilted her head back, thumping it against the brass headboard. For long moments she simply stared at the pitched ceiling of her attic room.

  The words she’d just read—encyclopedia, legend for goodness’ sake, Stanley Cup—were like a bucketful of icy reality in the face.

  From the moment she’d met him she’d known a romantic relationship with him was never going to happen. So why dredge up more evidence of that fact?

  Why? Because her body insisted on getting all jumbled up with excitement every time he walked into a room. That’s why.

  She felt like a cautionary example in one of those Ten Really Idiotic Things Women Do–type books. There’d be a bad driver’s-license-type picture of her with a caption that said, “Don’t obsess! Don’t drive by your ex’s house. Don’t read letters from your boyfriend’s old girlfriends. Don’t stray into bridal websites if you aren’t engaged. And definitely don’t pine after your gorgeous contractor who’s out of your league. These behaviors are futile! You’re inflicting pain on yourself! Stop!”

  She should close down the Internet immediately. But she still—stupidly—wanted to read more. The biographies, at least. Before her traitorous fingertips could act, she lifted her hands up and out of the danger zone.

  The Matt she knew—their contractor, the man who cooked dinner in their kitchen, the loner—that guy was already intimidating and daunting enough. She didn’t need all these websites to heap amazing upon amazing upon amazing. Better to let him tell her his own version of his biography, if he ever wanted to.

  With tremendous self-control, she shut down her computer and slid it under her bed, out of reach. Once she’d killed the light, she burrowed deep under her quilts. For long quiet minutes she lay there, watching the black trees sway against the night sky beyond her windows. All right. So he’d once been an over-the-top famous hockey player. These days he was a grumpy hermit. Maybe that brought him out of the category of men who only dated supermodels into the category of men who dated regular human women.

  She snorted at herself, at the foolish bent of her thoughts. Angrily, she socked her pillow and then rolled onto her opposite side.

  She might be a hopeless romantic, but she wasn’t a stupid one. Matt Jarreau didn’t even exist in the same stratosphere that she did. He was way more talented, rich, and famous. Plus, he was fatally handsome and she no longer let herself harbor crushes on guys that looked like he did.

  They were just friends!

  She intended to continue working hard every day to keep her feelings for him strictly platonic. But the more she was around him, the better she got to know him, the more difficult it was.

  The next day was the day of The Big Garage Sale, the day when one man’s trash would become another man’s trash.

  They’d been sorting items for days. They’d borrowed card tables on which to display their wares. They had a money box ready for making change. They had color-coded price tags. They’d advertised. They were as prepared for their sale as any aspiring garage sale hostesses since the beginning
of time.

  Congratulating themselves on their savvy, they’d scheduled the sale to start at eight but knew to expect the avid treasure-trollers to arrive at seven.

  They came at six. From that moment on, their perfectly planned garage sale descended into anarchy.

  As one exhausting hour tumbled headlong into the next, the respective jobs of Kate and “the girls” grew more distinct. Gran welcomed everyone with smiles and cheerfully answered questions about the merchandise. Kate and Velma haggled over prices. Peg ran the cash box.

  The best things they had went fast. But the worst things went, too. Pairs of old and battered high heels. A grimy can opener too nasty to be believed. A toilet plunger circa 1960. It was the perfectly fine middle-of-the-road stuff that was passed over as if it had cooties. Kate tried valiantly not to view this odd circumstance as a metaphor for her dating life.

  They’d planned to close things down at four, but the hands on her watch clicked all the way to five before the final stragglers drifted off.

  She, Gran, Velma, and Peg were left surrounded by a minefield of junk. Objects tilted crazily against the barn walls, lay jumbled across the card tables, and littered the lawn like soldiers felled in battle.

  Looking at the enormity of the mess, Kate’s emotions sagged with exhaustion. Had she sat down at some point today? Not that she could recall. Had she eaten anything? She vaguely remembered a few Styrofoam cups of coffee, two donuts, and a bottled water.

  “I think we put on a fantastic sale,” Gran said.

  “It went really well,” Kate agreed.

  “Some of those people were so gosh darn cheap!” Velma looked deeply offended. “I wanted to tell a few of them to take their dollar ninety-nine and shove it!”

  “Well, we raised a wonderful amount of money.” Peg counted out the last few bills and made a notation on her pad of paper. Somehow, Peg’s gray bob still fell in a sleek and orderly line and her pale peach lipstick still shone. Which was some kind of miracle, because Kate knew she looked like she’d been dragged behind an eighteen-wheeler.

  “Three thousand four hundred and sixty-two dollars,” Peg announced.

  “That’s marvelous!” Gran clasped her hands together, big rings clacking. “Thank you, everyone.” She went around, teary-eyed, hugging them all, telling them that she couldn’t have done it without them, murmuring about all the extras she could now afford for the renovation.

  In the distance, Kate heard a car approaching. She’d tell whoever it was that the sale was over. They were all beat and they just couldn’t—

  The car rounded the bend and she saw that it wasn’t a car at all, but a white Ford truck.

  Her heartbeat did a crazy little hitch and leap. Matt. It was Saturday and she never saw Matt on Saturdays or Sundays.

  “Why, it’s Matt coming,” Gran said.

  “Well, thank goodness,” Velma said. “Looking at that boy always gives me a little pick-me-up, and I sure could use one right now.”

  All of them watched as he turned the truck around and backed in so that the bed was nearest the mess. With easy grace, he swung down from the cab wearing a black long-sleeved Dri-Fit shirt, jeans, and dark gray running shoes.

  “Matt!” Gran greeted him with a brief hug. “How nice to see you.”

  “Beverly.” He nodded to the rest of them. “How’d it go?”

  “It went beautifully,” Gran answered. “The last of the buyers left just a few minutes ago so we were able to total up all the money. And we did very well. Better than I could have hoped.”

  “Good. I’m glad.” He gave the remnants of their sale a long, evaluating look. “You planning on donating all this?”

  “Kate, what was it we’d decided?” Gran asked.

  “We thought we’d give it to the Salvation Army,” Kate answered. “They have a truck and you can schedule a pickup.”

  “I’ll take it over there for you,” he said. “That’ll get it out of your way.”

  “Are you sure?” Gran asked. “I wouldn’t want to trouble you.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “You already work so hard for us, I certainly don’t expect you to work on the weekends.”

  He shrugged. “I know.”

  “Tall, a hottie, and willing to lend a hand!” Velma crowed.

  Matt glanced at Velma, his brow knit with a mixture of confusion and distaste, as if she’d just announced I’m a transvestite or Bend over and moon us.

  As the older ladies giggled and continued to dote on him, Kate watched Matt’s discomfort grow. He shifted from foot to foot. Looked at his watch. Glared at the ground. Finally, long before the ladies were done fussing over him, he turned and simply went to work taking flattened cardboard boxes out of his truck bed. “All right, all right,” he grumbled. “Now all of you go inside and let me do this.”

  “Thank you again,” Gran said.

  “Sure.”

  “Maybe we can just help pack up—”

  “Go.”

  “But—”

  His head came up, his eyes blazing. “Go inside,” he growled. “Take a break. And let me load my truck in peace.”

  That sent them all, except Kate, scurrying.

  She watched him pop open more boxes. Maybe because she was so tired, so hungry, and so desiring of nothing but a hot bath, the sight of him extending help to them struck her with an enormous wave of gratitude.

  “You too.” Without looking at her, Matt motioned with his head toward the house.

  “Yeah, right.” She grabbed the nearest empty box and started filling it. “You should know me better than that.”

  He stopped what he was doing to frown at her. “You look worn out.”

  She raised her eyebrows, nearly disintegrating into hysterical laughter. “That’s a shame, since I spent the day splurging on beauty treatments.”

  His expression didn’t even flicker.

  “Maybe I should ask for my money back.”

  “Come on, Kate, you know I like to work alone. Go on.” Again, that emphatic motion of his head toward the house, as if he were shooing an annoying dog.

  Sometimes it was embarrassing to be so stubborn, but she couldn’t trot off and let him clean up their garage sale alone. She just flat couldn’t. “Nope, I’m helping. I may look terrible, but I’m fine.” Before he could say anything else she went back to work, quickly reaching for things and stuffing them into her cardboard box. “See, I’m catching a second wind. You’re stuck with me.”

  “Okay, so here’s what I wonder.” Kate sat beside Matt in his truck as they made their second and final trip from Chapel Bluff to the Salvation Army drop-off location.

  When Matt didn’t respond she prompted him with, “What’s that, Kate?”

  “What’s that, Kate?” he said.

  “Everyone has garage sales on the weekends. And then right afterward everyone does what we’re doing and hauls the stuff that didn’t sell to Goodwill or the Salvation Army, right?”

  “Right.”

  “So I wonder what the people who work at the Salvation Army are really thinking when they see this stuff coming.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Well, they must look at all the trucks stuffed with all these garage sale leftovers and think, ‘You know what, people, thanks—but we’d be a lot better off without all your crap.’ ”

  There was a beat of silence, and then Matt looked across at her and smiled.

  He smiled. An easy smile, genuine with amusement. Quickly come and gone, and yet it dazzled her completely. It was the first smile she’d ever seen him give anyone.

  “I mean,” she said, fumbling for her line of thought, “I mean this is stuff so . . . so unpalatable that no one wanted to pay a dollar for it.”

  “In some cases no one wanted to pay twenty-five cents for it,” he said.

  “Exactly.”

  “Something to think about.”

  “Something to think about,” she murmured.

  “Kind of kills the sense of
charity I’d been feeling.”

  Kate laughed.

  He smiled again, this time straight ahead at the road.

  They lapsed into silence, which left Kate time to marvel over those two smiles. She’d made him smile. Twice!

  Strange, that amid that proud feeling of accomplishment, she suddenly felt God nudge her to say something to him about his wife.

  Terrible idea, she thought. I’ve only just got him smiling!

  Go on, God seemed to be saying. Bring it up.

  It had become more and more difficult for her recently to talk to him and pretend she didn’t know anything about the tragedy he’d been through. It reminded her of the elephant jokes she and her dad had told each other when she was little. . . .

  How do you know there’s an elephant in your refrigerator?

  The footprints in the Jell-O.

  Well, his past had become the elephant in the room with Kate every time she spoke with him. Big and hard to ignore.

  She was too scared to attempt to talk to him about it while looking at him face-to-face. But the two of them were driving along together facing forward with the hum of the engine between them. Talking about it seemed like a possibility. The nudge gradually became an urge. Another few miles passed under the tires until the urge became an almost physical pressure pushing its way up her throat.

  Say it, God insisted.

  “I heard about what happened to your wife.” She didn’t blurt it out. Still, without preamble or anything else to cushion them, the words sounded impossibly abrupt. They fell like pieces of sharp metal between them, bald and heavy.

  Matt’s jaw tensed and his fingers tightened on the steering wheel.

  She waited, but he didn’t say anything. “I wanted you to know that I’m so sorry,” she said.

  He didn’t respond for a full minute. Kate’s chest got tighter and tighter with each painfully awkward second. She was tempted to rush into the void and fill it with words, but she forced herself to wait.

  “Who told you?” he finally said.