by Kay Lyons
Melissa nodded, intimidated by the enormity of the request. How could she get through to Anna when Bryan and her dad couldn’t? She moved over and sat beside the girl. “Bryan’s right, you know. You deserve better, Anna.” Melissa lifted her hand and smoothed the girl’s hair back from her face, remembering her as she used to be. Now her eyes were filled with tears, the smile gone. Amazing how time had changed them both.
“It was an—”
“Don’t. I’m not buying it, either. He hit you. He hurt you, and you’re letting him get away with it by defending him. This isn’t the girl I remember, Anna. Why?”
“Because…because I love him.”
“What about you?” She waited until the teenager looked up, confusion on her features. “What about you?” she repeated more sternly. “Do you love yourself enough to protect yourself?”
She wiped her nose. “He…he always says he’s sorry.”
“Saying you’re sorry afterward doesn’t change—”
“He hasn’t always been like this! And I’m not leaving him, no matter what you say, and if you and the doctor keep on at me, then…I won’t come back.”
She looked like she meant it, too. And the next time Anna’s boyfriend beat her she might have broken bones, internal injuries. She could die from lack of treatment. Anna’s life was at stake, just as Bryan had said.
“I won’t say anything else except this.” She nudged Anna until the girl reluctantly met her gaze. “Anna, love is meant to be patient and kind. It shouldn’t hurt. Crying from a broken heart because you’ve fallen for someone unsuitable is one thing, crying because he breaks you another. If nothing else, try to remember that, okay? And when you’re ready, know that you can come see me or Bryan and we’ll do what we can to help you help yourself.”
* * *
NEITHER OF THEM were in the mood to work after Anna left. Bryan hadn’t stopped for food, hadn’t had time to purchase the art paper, so instead they agreed to call it a day and regroup the following morning instead.
Fifteen minutes later they met up on Oak Street. By silent agreement they continued to jog, their strides matching, their rhythm synchronizing perfectly. No words, no glares. Just a good kind of companionship with no expectations.
Bryan found himself looking at Melissa instead of where he was going. At her worried expression, the way she held her head high, her shoulders back but tight. They jogged a mile or so in companionable silence. The act slowly eased the stress and tension of the day and bit by bit, her shoulders lowered as she relaxed.
“You hungry?”
A nod of her head was his answer. Veering off what had become their typical path, they continued on until he could sense her tiring, her body protesting its lack of food.
“Hot dog or hamburger?” The dairy bar was up ahead. Not exactly healthy, but it was better than nothing. “I said I’d buy you dinner, remember?”
That brought a smile to her lips. “The nitrates aren’t good for—oh, what the heck. A hot dog. With lots of mustard.”
A hundred feet or so away from the building, they slowed to a walk and took their time cooling down. The picnic tables nearby were crowded with families and teens, but while he stood in line to place their order, Melissa snagged them a bench in a prime location overlooking the Ohio River.
For the longest time they sat there and watched the boats, listened to the teens discuss their drama with overly expressive gestures. A breeze blew, carrying with it the heady scent of late-blooming roses, the musty smell of damp earth and old wood. The sun sank lower and lower into the multihued sky and still they sat there, unmoving. Not talking.
Melissa shivered. He knew he ought to get her up and back home to change out of her sweat-dampened clothes, but instead he positioned his arm along the back of the bench and scooted closer to share his heat. “Much as I hate to say it, we’d probably better head home. It’s getting late.”
“It’s peaceful here, don’t you think?”
“Beautiful,” he murmured, not taking his eyes off her.
“I remember coming here for picnics with my mom,” she continued softly, focused on the water, but unseeing. “She’d bring a blanket and let me pick a spot, and I’d walk the levy stairs all the way to the top because I didn’t want to spread the blanket at the bottom.” Her lips curled up at the corners and she laughed, the sound husky and warm and full of love. “Sometimes we had to sit with our legs spread out to keep our food from rolling down the hill.”
He smiled at the image, fighting the urge to find a blanket and picnic basket and re-create the memory for her. Instead he sat beside her, silent, willing to watch over her while the sky turned dark and the moon rose. She told him bits and pieces of her time with her mom, growing up in Taylorsville, going to the county fair he’d always missed because he had to go home to Boston to begin school.
Bryan ignored the curious glances shot their way by the workers when the dairy bar closed for the night and turned out the lights. The raised eyebrows of the parents who packed up their families and left in their minivans. The teens walked in groups, crowding the sidewalks and roughhousing on the grass. Another hour passed and then all was quiet, more peaceful than ever. Every blink of her eyelashes more beautiful.
Warning bells rang in his head, but he ignored them and tried to figure out what it was about her that drew him. Melissa was different. Unlike the women in town chasing after him because of the stupid newspaper or the prestige of marrying a doctor. Different, because she didn’t look at him and see money or looks or any of those shallow things. But what did she see? He wasn’t so sure he wanted to know.
Melissa shivered again and Bryan found himself touching her, his hand on her shoulder and upper arm, rubbing. Warming. Her soft skin drew him like moths to a light that couldn’t be dimmed. She was that light. Melissa had that inner essence some people had, indistinguishable, an aura of grace.
He’d spent many an evening with beautiful women. Dinner, dancing, partying. This was a first for him. A run, a hot dog and the river. Companionship and friendship that meant much more than satisfying his baser desires. Definitely a first and infinitely more attractive.
“Bryan, I—” She broke off the moment she turned her head and saw him watching her. He saw her expression change from memory-filled pleasure to panic-stricken fear.
Melissa sucked in a breathy gasp and something—a whimper?—escaped next. The sound burned through him. One moment he thought of how well they’d do if he’d just leave well enough alone, and the next his head lowered toward hers until she jumped up and scrambled away from him.
“Th-thanks for dinner.”
He watched her hurry away, the streetlights over her head highlighting that golden glow even more. A police cruiser approached, and once the driver spotted Melissa, it slowed. Bryan’s eyes narrowed when he heard Nathan Taylor call out to her, asking if she needed a ride. Melissa glanced at Bryan, then crossed in front of the cruiser and got in. Bryan remained where he was, watching. Hating the jealousy ripping his gut to shreds.
* * *
YOU LOOK LIKE something Nam chewed up and spit out.”
Bryan glared at Joe’s mocking reference to his stray-turned-pet and kept dribbling. “You ever going to own up to your loss and fix my shower? I did deliver your daughter free of charge.”
“Quite a baby gift.” Joe’s grin widened. “Thanks.”
He made his move and growled again when Joe managed to snag the ball from beneath his hand. Bryan ran after him, jumping a split second too late to keep the ball out of the hoop.
“Crap!”
“Rumor has it Nathan drove Melissa home last night after she was seen in the park with you. That have anything to do with your less-than-stellar mood?”
“Lay off, Joe.”
“Change your mind yet?”
“About what?”
“Mel.”
Bryan shook his head with a glare. “She’s not for me.”
“What, she’s not pretty enough?�
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“Play ball.”
“Nice enough? One of those women you can trust when you aren’t around to keep an eye on her?”
“Leave the matchmaking to the old biddies and start the play already.”
Joe tossed the basketball at him so fast and hard he wasn’t prepared. It hit his stomach like a fist, taking the air out of his lungs.
“Guess Hal could be a problem. He sure doesn’t seem to like you none.”
“That wouldn’t stop me.”
“Then what?”
He began to dribble, the steady thump-thump-thump doing nothing to soothe his frustration. No way would he tell Joe his fears of her cancer returning, so he settled on a different fact. “She’s afraid of me. She pulls away anytime I get close.”
Joe was in a defensive position, but he straightened at the words. “Seriously?”
Bryan scowled at him but nodded. “There’s a lot of baggage there, and some of it I don’t understand.” He watched his friend turn thoughtful and hoped Joe might comment. He didn’t. “What, no advice?”
“Thought you wanted to play ball?”
And with that the game began again.
* * *
SATURDAY AFTERNOON Melissa arrived at Bryan’s practice bleary-eyed and dragging from her sleepless night. Nathan had driven her home, clearly not liking that she’d been alone in the darkened park even though she’d been with Bryan. The protectiveness Nathan displayed might’ve been nice under the right circumstances, but she knew it had more to do with Nathan following her father’s example where Bryan was concerned.
Around midnight she’d given up all pretense of resting and before long, she’d scribbled two pages of potential projects for the fund-raiser. Now to set to work putting them into a semblance of order, get Bryan’s okay and start to work. But how could she concentrate after the near-miss last night?
Bryan had almost kissed her—again—and while she knew she’d done the right thing and gotten out of there fast, the thought of Bryan kissing her sent heat blazing through her body to areas still tingling from the first time. She’d had a long, lonely night and a lot of unanswered questions, the first of which was what to make of Bryan’s behavior?
He wasn’t coming off the excited high of delivering a baby, which meant what? Why would he want to kiss her knowing what he knew about her? She honestly didn’t get it. Maybe she was thinking about it too much?
Sex was sex, after all. To a guy, anyway.
He’d turned down Amanda Warner’s offer so maybe…Bryan was simply in the mood? Thought she was so desperate she’d accept any crumb of affection he might toss her way?
“I’m glad you’re here.”
She looked up and quickly smoothed her expression. Bryan stood before her in wash-worn jeans and a green T-shirt, his feet bare, his hair damp and fingered back over his head. It curled slightly at the ends, and she wondered once again what it would be like to touch before she mentally stomped the thought. Professionalism, friendship, was key.
“We said we’d work on the fund-raiser today. If you made other plans, that’s fine, I just need your okay on a few things to get started.”
“Melissa, about last night—”
She pushed by him and into the hallway. “I put together a list I want you to see.”
Keeping things all business must’ve worked because Bryan’s eyes lost some of their intensity. She couldn’t read his thoughts, but he followed her down the long hall to the reception area. Along the way she turned on all the lights so there weren’t any shadows, waited until he chose a seat and then sat across from him rather than beside him.
It was best to keep things professional. There was no reason to believe for a second she could compete with the women in Bryan’s life. She couldn’t. Nor could she ever match Bryan’s perfection and feel adequate.
What woman could live with feeling second-rate?
* * *
THE NEXT WEEK PASSED in a blur of paperwork, gossip and fund-raising chaos. Neither of them spoke of the near-kiss in the park, and an hour after they closed on Friday, Bryan bent over the art paper Melissa had squared off and stared at the two-inch portion she wrote inside of. “What am I looking at again?”
“Eat and let me finish,” she said with a grin. “The noise from your stomach is driving me nuts.”
Happy to comply, Bryan watched as she continued to work, the pen in her right hand flying over the page, pausing every now and again so she could take a bite of the food she’d insisted he heat up on the stove rather than microwave.
Finally she set the pen aside. “Phase one complete,” she drawled contentedly. “For as long as I can remember the EMTs in Baxter have had a running competition with my dad and his men. That competitiveness is going to be our first moneymaker.”
“How so?”
“Basketball. For a price, they can play against one another tournament style until we have a champion.”
“What’s that?” he asked, pointing to another square where she’d organized the groups across the page horizontally, the events vertically. “Cook-offs? You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“Hey, don’t knock it until you see the results. You think guys are competitive? You haven’t seen anything until you put Mrs. McCleary’s Irish Stew against Maddie Harper’s Vegetable Medley. Toss in the rest of the First Christian Church’s Disaster Aid Team members because they feel ignored over the fuss made over Mrs. Harper and Mrs. McCleary, and you’ve got a huge cook-off on your hands.”
“So where does all of this food go then? What if there isn’t an emergency?”
Melissa gave him a tolerant smile. “You’ve never done anything like this before, have you? Hopefully there won’t be an emergency. That way we can sell the food per plate and make even more than the entry fees charged.”
Almost afraid to ask what she’d come up with that involved the high school boys’ soccer league and the varsity cheerleaders, he pointed to the next square and received another explanation. And another. And another. The basketball tournament coincided with the cook-off, the bake sale went along with a kid’s festival featuring games and inflatables the kids could pay to play in.
“I ran into Mrs. H. this morning. She said she’d get her friends at the retirement center in on the bake sale and recommended an online company the school uses for the game prizes. I spoke with the mayor, too, and we can use the park. He’s waiving the permits and fees. Oh, and the riverboat captain said he’d furnish the boat and the crew, and that so long as we covered the fuel and insurance, we could charge whatever admission we wanted free and clear of him.”
Bryan stared down at the grid covered in Melissa’s neat handwriting and tried to suppress his excitement. If she could pull this off and get everyone involved… Was that number the—
“Yup. Enough for the estimated groundbreaking and construction start,” she told him with a proud smile. “And that’s without digging into the money you’ve got saved. I’m sure we’ll need it later to finish things up, but this will get us started, and I’ve gotten confirmed commitments from almost everyone.” Her grin widened. “I perfected a spiel about E.R. trips saved, the safety of the sports players getting care sooner and, um, told them about how important it is that stroke victims get care right away. If that didn’t work, I hit them with your grandfather’s name and how it’s his life’s dream. They caved every time. Next I’ll put together a list of local businesses, other civic groups and the like and offer them advertising in the flyers in exchange for donations while, of course, urging their individual participation for the good of Taylorsville. Work for you?”
He stared into her beautiful, silvery-blue eyes and smiled. “Yeah, it does. Melissa, you did it.”
“Pretty cool now that you can see it all spread out, huh?”
“This is way more than cool, this is incredible.”
“Don’t thank me yet. We still have to finish organizing it all.”
“You think a big gala is the way to end things?”
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“Absolutely. People around here never get a chance to dress up and show off. I say we do all the normal stuff first and play up the grand finale, let the excitement build, and then bring out the best for last. Taylorsville might be small, but it’s cliquish, and if we make it a who’s who special event, we’ll be turning people away for lack of space. You going to eat the last of the noodles?”
Bryan laughed, happier than he’d been in ages. Granddad would get his dream after all. Thanks to Melissa. “No, have at it.”
He watched her dig in and shook his head, smiling, his thoughts drifting. She ate with delicate relish, not the picky I-can’t-gain-a-pound mantra so many women held and certainly not the poor appetite of a chemo patient.
That thought sobered him quickly. He was attracted to her, no doubt about it, but it couldn’t lead to more and he had to get his act together and back off. Stop letting his attraction for her overtake his brain.
She paused, swallowing. “Something wrong?”
“No. No, not at all,” he murmured, standing. “I think I’ll get another drink though. How about you? Another water?”
“No. I’m good.”
Bryan headed for the kitchen, but along the way, he paused. “If it’s not too much, I’d like to set up a timetable for all this. It’s the end of August now. Think we can schedule these events over the next month as a kickoff to fall and plan the gala for early December? Pull the heartstrings and use the season to give incentive?”
She froze in the act of eating. “Oh, um… I don’t know. I hadn’t thought about it.”
He frowned at her expression. “You must have a date in mind?”
“No. Not—not really.”
Forgetting the need to escape and get a drink, he retraced his steps and stared down at her. “What am I missing here?”
