First Comes Love

by Heather Heyford

  The day after, Danny bought her flowers. If there had been such a thing as a Thanks for Having Sex with Me card, she was sure he would have bought her one of those, too.

  She glanced at Alex’s hands again. They were larger than Danny’s. Broader, squarer, with a fine dusting of golden hair on their backs.

  “Have you ever knocked a man out?”

  His eyes darted to hers and away again. He took a slug of wine. “That’s a strange question.”

  She took that as a yes.

  She bet Danny had never punched anyone in his life.

  Alex had hands that could flatten a man as adeptly as they handled fine crystal. She wondered what other talents they had. A shiver zigzagged through her. She averted her gaze to the safety of the horizon.

  “Sorry. Occupational hazard of dating an attorney.”

  “Is that what this is? A date?”

  “Oh.” She felt her face grow warm. “I just assumed—”

  “As for that epiphany, I’m still hunting for mine, too,” said Alex. “They say when you find that special one, there’s fireworks. Men have given up their careers, their families, their entire lives to pursue their epiphany. I’ve read so much about wine, sampled so many kinds . . . even tried my hand at a wine blog.”

  Kerry pictured those hands dwarfing a keyboard and grinned. “How’s that working out for you?”

  “Not so good.”

  She laughed.

  “It’s still a mystery. I feel like I’ve unearthed every stone. Truth? At times I think I’ve given up on finding my epiphany, too. When it comes right down to it, how many of us are lucky enough to find ‘the one’?”

  A couple of young women rose from a park bench right in front of Alex and Kerry’s path. They were lovely, talking and smiling together, their foreheads smooth as a sheet and their upper arms still tight.

  A twinge of regret for the past shot through Kerry. Once, she had looked like that. She had thought it would last forever.

  She glanced at Alex, expecting to find him ogling them, but he didn’t even seem to notice them.

  Instead, he lowered himself onto the bench they had just vacated and patted the seat next to him.

  “Did you ever think you’d come back here, to the valley?” he asked when she had sat down beside him.

  She shook back her hair. “Hadn’t planned anything, actually. I had no preconceived notion as to how my life would turn out. It wasn’t till I interned for a judge in Portland the summer after I got my bachelor’s degree that I figured out I wanted to be an attorney like my dad and Ryan. Then I found out I was pregnant with Shay.”

  “The statie. The one who ruined you for cops.”

  “The first cop who ruined me for cops.” She laughed. “Yes, the trooper. When he bailed on me, I had no choice but to come home with my tail tucked between my legs and tell my family what was going on.”

  “What about ol’ Danny Boy?”

  She whipped her head around. “What about him?”

  “Where’s he fit into the picture?”

  “How did you know about Danny and me?”

  “Small town.”

  She gazed into her glass. “Danny’s a nice guy. You’d be hard-pressed to find anyone in Newberry who would say anything bad about him.”

  “The nicest,” drawled Alex, draining his drink.

  “He is nice.”

  A part of her still felt guilty about letting Danny down. That must be what compelled her to defend him. “Okay. You want to know how nice? When that trooper abandoned me, Danny offered to marry me and raise my baby as his own.”

  “If he’s so nice, why didn’t you take him up on it?”

  She’d lost count of the times she wished she had done exactly that. Her life would have been so much easier. Shay wouldn’t have grown up fatherless. And she would have appeased her parents, instead of making them worry all these years.

  But she wasn’t about to tell Alex that.

  “What about you? Is there someone pining over you back in Portland?”

  “At least a dozen of them.”

  “I’m serious. Do you have any long-lost loves?”

  He thought for a moment. “I think about love the way you think about wine epiphanies,” he said, rising, slipping his hands into his pockets, jingling his change, and looking anywhere and at anything but Kerry.

  Behind him, Kerry stood, too, and they continued their slow stroll in the dappled sunlight.

  “Shay’s a great kid,” said Alex, changing the subject.

  “She’s the light of my life. Things are a little bumpy right now. But adolescence is always hard with mothers and daughters. Lord knows I was a pain.”

  “Was?”

  She made a wry face.

  They stopped at a corner of the green. “Want to keep going?” Alex asked.

  For the first time, she noticed how, when he smiled, the fine lines leading from the corners of his eyes to his temples fanned out and down, almost meeting the lines that formed parentheses around his grin, and that the deep bow in his upper lip remained intact.

  “Sure,” she replied. “Who knows? Maybe we’ll find that epiphany yet.”

  “On to the next tent,” he said.

  She thought she might have felt the brush of his hand on her lower back as he moved to offer her his elbow, but maybe it was just because she had become acutely aware of his smallest gesture.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Kerry stared at the bill for three months’ day care for three children on her computer screen. Leaving that page open, she chewed her lip and pulled up her budget spreadsheet.

  Monthly Income: fee from last month’s embezzlement case

  Monthly Expense: food, electricity, water, cable—Kerry had foresworn buying anything new for herself to preserve her kids’ favorite shows—car payment, health insurance, college funds, summer day care, Chloé’s flute lessons, Shay’s boxing . . .

  Luckily, she and her kids were included in her parents’ family pool membership. It was a little thing, but every penny counted.

  This called for more coffee. She got up from her desk and went to the law firm’s reception area as she tried to think of nonessential budget items that might be candidates for the chopping block.

  Ryan, hearing the gurgle of the coffeemaker, popped his head out of his office, looking sharp in his white shirt and gray suit. “Hey, come look at these new pictures from the weekend.”

  “As soon as my coffee’s done.”

  They were shoulder to shoulder, scrolling through the photos of his kids, when his phone rang. “Not in my contact list,” he said, frowning at his screen.

  “Go ahead and answer it,” said Kerry. “Could be a referral.”

  “I’ll put it on speaker. Hello?”

  “I need an attorney. But not just any attorney. A ruthless, relentless bastard.”

  “Hold on.” With a grin, Ryan handed it to Kerry. “It’s for you.”

  She stuck out her tongue at him like when she was six years old and he was fourteen and he’d locked her out of the house and stood behind the screen door, grinning, until Kerry’s hollering brought their mother running to scold him.

  “This is Kerry O’Hearn,” she said into the phone in her most professional voice, heading for her own office.

  The caller explained that he had just been released from the hospital to learn he had been charged with reckless endangerment and second-degree disorderly conduct, was out on bond, and wanted her to plead his case.

  It would be far easier to practice family law or work for civil liberties or environmental justice. But everyone deserved a fair and robust defense.

  “How soon can we meet?” she asked.

  * * *

  School let out for the summer, but the boxing lessons continued.

  Kerry’s kids went to day care at the Community Center. On the Thursday after the wine fest when she arrived to pick up Shay, Alex pulled her aside while Shay finished stretching with the others. “Is there a
good time when we could talk?”

  She gave him a confused look.

  “About Shay.”

  “Chloé,” said Kerry, “could you roll that ball around with Ella for a minute while Coach and I talk?”

  “Come on, Ellabella,” said Chloé, headed for a blue rubber ball lying on the gym floor.

  “She’s a good kid,” said Alex, watching them.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Kerry.

  “Calm down. Nothing’s wrong. You’ve heard about the exhibit we’re preparing for.”

  Kerry’s posture relaxed. “It’s all she’s been talking about, ever since you first mentioned it. What’s there to talk abou—”

  “Waaaaah!”

  “Oh! Sorry, Ella!” Chloé ran toward where her little sister cupped her nose and cried, while the ball continued to roll a short distance before stopping.

  Alex watched as Kerry went over and consoled both girls.

  “Sorry,” Kerry said, returning to Alex with Ella on her hip. The child’s thumb was in her mouth, she was fingering a raggedy-looking, well, rag, and there were streaks running down her fat cheeks.

  Amazing how, that time he was partnered with light heavyweight champ Manuel “The Razor” Martinez in a sparring match, he hadn’t so much as winced, but a scowling, downy-haired little girl made his knees feel like jelly. “What’s wrong, Ellabella?” he cooed, wiping away a tear with the back of a scarred knuckle.

  “Nnnn.” Ella frowned even harder and hid her head in Kerry’s shoulder.

  “Shot down by a two-year-old,” he said, grinning. “Way to bruise a guy’s ego.”

  “What’s this about, Shay?” asked Kerry, patting Ella’s back, gently bouncing her, her body engaged in comforting one child while her mind focused on another. She seemed to have forgotten about Chloé, peering up at him, wide-eyed, listening. Then again, how thin could a person’s attention be spread?

  If she had managed to pry herself away from her kids once, maybe she could do it again. He forged ahead while trying to keep his voice casual. “I have off tomorrow. Is there a chance we could talk, without . . .” He jerked his head and rolled his eyes ceilingward.

  “Tomorrow?” Kerry gazed at a spot on the wall over his shoulder and blew a stray lock of hair out of her eye. “Let me think . . .”

  “I thought we could run by my house. There’s that bottle of chardonnay I bought at the wine fest you liked. It was no epiphany, but it wasn’t too shabby.”

  He pictured himself showing Kerry around his place and wondered if she liked birds.

  “I’m afraid I can’t. I have a new case I’m working on. Can’t we just discuss whatever it is right now?”

  Alex immediately berated himself for getting his hopes up. To think she would actually go home with him, so soon after they’d met! Kerry O’Hearn, uber-successful Portland lawyer and now, as he’d recently learned, close relation of wine royalty. He was such an idiot. No wonder he was still alone at the advanced age of forty.

  But then, they hadn’t just met. He’d been obsessing about her for years—though, admittedly, not in a good way.

  “Gene—Coach Lovatt—and I had the idea to stage a series of demos to get more kids to sign up for next fall. No big deal, just to introduce some techniques, show them it’s nothing to be afraid of. We tossed around some ideas for a venue and came up with the pool. With the day care taking them there twice a week, we have a built-in audience.” He went over to a desk and came back with a form on a clipboard. “I just need your signature on this permission slip.”

  He started to hand it to her, but her arms were still filled with thirty pounds of child.

  “Would you mind holding it for me?” she asked, craning her neck to look at the paper.

  Alex angled his body and stepped to within an inch of Kerry’s side while sliding the clipboard before her eyes. All the other parents had barely skimmed the form before scribbling their signatures. But then, none of them were lawyers.

  While he waited for her to scrutinize every word, he could feel the heat emanating from her body.

  “I guess it looks okay,” said Kerry after a minute. “Chloé, grab my pen from my bag, would you?”

  “You’re welcome to come watch,” said Alex.

  “I’ll try to get to one of them,” she replied around Ella’s barrette, clamped between her teeth while she smoothed Ella’s hair.

  * * *

  On the day of the first boxing demonstration, Kerry arrived at the pool ten minutes early. She slipped out of her suit jacket and draped it over the headrest in her car before she entered the packed pool area, fanning herself.

  She needn’t have hurried. Not only was she the first parent there, she might well be the only one, considering there were fewer than a half-dozen kids in the boxing class and most workers didn’t have the flexibility to skip out of work midafternoon.

  She shielded her eyes from the sun and looked for Alex or Coach Lovatt. Okay, she admitted to herself: Alex.

  Over in the deep end, a man’s head emerged from the water. He flattened his palms on the side of the pool and easily hoisted himself out, then strode toward the diving board, water sluicing off his glistening body in sheets. Alex. His board shorts rode low on his hips, even lower in the center front, revealing a snail trail of hair and washboard abs.

  He rounded up his students one by one, laughing and joking with them, and herded them over to the squared off “ring” staked out in the grass with yellow crime scene tape. It struck Kerry that outside here, with the kids, he was in his element. His usual frown was nowhere to be seen.

  Holding the demo here at the pool had turned out to be a great idea. The fun, casual setting and shiny red-leather headgear and boxing gloves made for quite a spectacle.

  Even Gerald Garrett, Newberry’s chief of police, stood off to the side in a wide-legged stance, arms folded, watching.

  And there, standing next to him, were Kerry’s parents.

  Kerry waved to them as Coach Lovatt gave a hand signal and the pop music blaring from the pool speakers cut off midsong, replaced by the theme from Rocky. That was enough to bring whoever hadn’t already left the water or their beach towel over to the ring, until more than a hundred people, mostly kids, waited to see what all the commotion was about.

  The song faded out and Coach Lovatt’s amplified voice opened the event with his usual emphasis on respect, camaraderie, and honor. Then he talked about conditioning, using the bags, jumping rope, and running.

  Meanwhile, Kerry’s parents made their way over to where she stood, watching.

  “What are you doing way back here?” her mother asked. “Wouldn’t you be able to see Shay better if you stood farther forward?”

  “I’m good.”

  The kids lined up to demonstrate the defensive technique of punch avoidance by taking turns throwing rights to the mitts on Alex’s hands, two jabs apiece, ducking in between to avoid Alex’s sideswipes to their heads, while Coach Lovatt narrated. “As you develop greater skill, you may be allowed to spar—that is, when, and only when, Coach Walker or I deem you’re ready. Given the short time since our program has started, today we have only one athlete who has earned that right, and that’s Shay. She’ll be paired with Coach Walker.”

  Kerry’s father raised his chin and peered out through lowered lids.

  Her mother put her fingertips to her lips. “They always used to say a girl’s face was her future. And you know how much Shay likes to play with makeup and that sort of thing.”

  “Shay wants to do this. She doesn’t see any connection between her appearance and boxing. Her coach’s emphasis on values has really sunk in. Those were exactly the kind of things she needed to hear.”

  The truth was, the reason Kerry had found a place at the back of the crowd was so Shay wouldn’t see her apprehension.

  She swallowed hard when Shay and Alex came into the ring wearing headgear exposing only their eyes and nose. Alex had to squat down to Shay’s height. The first time Alex s
wung at Shay, Kerry held her breath. But Shay didn’t blink before slugging him back, tit for tat.

  For the next minute, they practiced trading punches before a rapt audience, Shay giving it all she had. Alex, of course, held back, letting Shay be the star.

  Afterward, there was a smattering of applause and even a few hoots from the boys.

  Several kids crowded around Shay, wanting to try on the gloves, opening and closing the Velcro straps again and again just to hear the loud ripping sound, and fake shadowboxing in the slanting rays of the afternoon sun. Granted, they were mostly boys, but a couple of girls stayed, too, edging ever closer to Shay.

  Kerry skirted the action, trying not to let her heels sink into the grass, and made her way to Alex and Coach Lovatt.

  “You okay, Mom?” asked Alex, tossing a towel around his neck. “You look a little woozy.”

  “I’ll be fine.” She fanned her hot cheeks.

  “We’re proud of the progress they’re making,” said Coach Lovatt. “But the Community Center said we need to bring up our numbers to justify keeping the program running next year. Hopefully, these exhibitions will get more kids to sign up.”

  “There will be more?” asked Kerry’s father, who had also ambled up.

  “Hopefully, word will get around and we’ll get even better attendance at the next one.”

  Kerry’s parents waved and sought Shay’s eye to signal they were leaving, but Shay was preoccupied with helping another girl try on her headgear, while a second looked on, waiting impatiently for her turn. They asked Kerry to tell her good-bye for them and then left.

  “Well,” Kerry said, looking wistfully at Coach and Alex’s suntans, “looks like Shay’s tied up. Much as I’d like to hang out here the rest of the afternoon, I have to get back to the office.”

  “I’ll walk you out,” said Alex.