by Robin Wells
Before he’d humiliated her in front of the whole town. Everyone knew he’d cheated on her, and they’d no doubt speculated on why. Her abilities or the lack thereof in bed probably had been dissected and discussed ad infinitum. It was one of the reasons she’d moved to New Orleans. She couldn’t stand the embarrassment—plus the ever-present fear of running into Dave or that tart he’d taken up with.
It had been awful, trying to avoid them. She’d had to look for Dave’s car in the parking lot before she dared go in the grocery store or drugstore or café. She’d begun to feel like a fugitive hiding from the law.
And then there was the whole issue of how everyone treated her. Her friends were sympathetic at first, but they didn’t know what to say, and conversations grew stilted and awkward. After a while they started skirting around her, as if she were tainted with something contagious. She probably made them uncomfortably aware that their husbands could light out after fresh tail, too, if they took a notion to, she’d thought bitterly. After all, men remained attractive in their fifties, while women just seemed to grow invisible.
A nurse poked her head into the room, her forehead creased like an oriental fan. “Blake, I need some help!” Her tone was urgent. “Mrs. Anston fell. I don’t think she’s hurt, but I can’t get her off the floor.”
“I’ll come help,” Dave offered.
“Thanks, but only staff and relatives can physically assist residents,” the nurse said. “You can stay with Mrs. Charmaine while Blake’s gone, though.”
Annette started to say that Dave was no longer a relative and therefore wasn’t qualified to help her, either, then realized she would only be delaying getting help to poor Mrs. Anston.
Blake headed for the door. “I’ll be right back,” he called to Dave. “Just keep her walking the ramp.”
“Will do.”
A feeling of awkwardness settled over her as she found herself alone with Dave. He’d stopped by every day over the past two weeks—sometimes twice a day—and although she didn’t want to admit it, she’d begun to look forward to his visits.
Although God only knew why. The man had broken her heart, ground it to bits, and stomped it into dust. She hated the fact that she was starting to expect him to appear. Hadn’t she learned the hard way not to expect anything from Dave? If she didn’t expect anything, she wouldn’t be disappointed when he let her down.
She hauled herself down the ramp as fast as she could. “You don’t have to stay. I’m fine.”
“I gave my word.”
“Oh, and that means something?”
“It does these days.”
She turned at the end of the ramp. She knew he’d gotten sober, and from everything she’d seen and heard, he had changed his ways, but she just couldn’t—or was it wouldn’t?—accept it.
Wouldn’t, she reluctantly acknowledged. She didn’t want to accept it. His personal transformation had come too late for her. She was being harsh and cold and judgmental and she knew it, but she couldn’t seem to help herself. She forced her left leg forward. “What are you doing out here, anyway?”
He lifted his shoulders. “Seeing how my best girl is doing.”
My best girl. It was a phrase he’d used when they’d first started dating. In light of his infidelity, it rankled. “I might have been the best, but I wasn’t the last, was I, Dave?”
“No.” He shook his head, his eyes filled with a forlorn angst. “And that’s a mistake I’ll regret till my dying day.”
“You only regret it because your second marriage didn’t last.”
“Annette, what Linda and I had…” He ran a hand across his balding pate. “It wasn’t really a marriage. It never was. Not like with you and me.”
“Oh, like it was so good between us?” She was glad to feel a surge of anger, glad to have the heat to hide behind. “The nights you didn’t come home, the drunken arguments…”
He blew out a sigh. “You deserved a whole lot better.”
“Damned right.”
Dave smiled. “You never used to curse. It’s a good sign. Maybe you’re starting to get some of that anger off your chest.”
A fresh spurt shot into her bloodstream. “It’s not like a backpack I can just take off, David. It’s not something concrete and finite. It’s like a polluted well. Like systemic poison. Like a bad infection. It runs all through me. It’s crippled me. It’s wrecked my life.”
“I know, sweetie. I know. And I’m so, so sorry.” He spoke in a low, gentle tone, the same tone he’d used to soothe their colicky baby when they’d taken turns holding him and rocking him all through the night. The memory hurt worse than her knee.
“Infections can be cured,” he continued. “Crippled parts can be rehabilitated. It takes time and work, but it can be done.”
And he thought he could help her do that? “You can’t fix me, Dave. You broke my heart. You’re the breaker, not the fixer.”
He lifted his shoulders. “Maybe I can be both.”
“No. You can’t.”
“Well, I figure I’ll keep coming around and let you take potshots at me until your poisoned well dries up. You’ll feel a lot better if you let go of your anger.”
“You’ll feel a lot better if I do.”
“Yeah. You’re right.” His head bobbed agreeably. “But this is about you.”
She gave a derisive sniff. “It was never about me.”
“Well, now, that’s where you’re wrong.” His voice was maddeningly calm. “I wasn’t perfect, but I always loved you.”
I always loved you. The English teacher in her analyzed the comment. Was that past tense, or did the adverb always make it present and future tense, too?
To Annette’s relief, Blake reappeared in the doorway. “Is Mrs. Anston all right?” she asked.
Blake nodded. “She’s going to have a bad bruise, but nothing’s broken and she’s able to walk.” He looked at Dave. “How did Mrs. Charmaine do?”
“She walked back and forth four times while you were gone.”
“Wow. You must have really inspired her.”
Annette huffed out an exasperated breath. Dave grinned. “Don’t know about inspired, but I riled her up pretty good.”
“I’ll have to try that,” Blake said.
“Don’t bother. I’ll come back tomorrow and do it for you.” Dave gave that familiar little wink and ambled toward the door. “See you later, sweetheart.”
Sweetheart? How dare he sweetheart her!
But before she could voice an objection, the door closed behind him. It popped open a second later. “By the way—you look really nice in that shade of blue.”
Her skin prickled with pleasure, even though she longed to throw something at him. Dad-blast that man, she thought as the door swung shut behind him. Dave had a way of getting to her like no one she’d ever known.
“This book club is so much more fun than the one I used to belong to,” Lulu said, settling on the red sofa in Anne’s living room. “We never had margaritas and nachos at the library. Our book selection is spicier now, too.”
“So are some of our members.” Anne grinned as she handed Katie an enormous, salt-rimmed glass. A kindergarten teacher, Anne was a sparrow of a woman, tiny and trim, with a pixie haircut. “You’ve had a lot happen since our last meeting.”
That was putting it mildly. Katie’s face heated as she thought of the kiss in the closet that afternoon. She took a long sip of her margarita.
“I saw Zack at the Chartreuse Café the other day. My heavens, but he’s gorgeous,” said Sheila, a baby-faced blonde who worked at the post office.
“He was gorgeous as a teenager, too,” said Nicole, a slender stay-at-home mom with sleek black hair sitting on the love seat.
Katie looked at her. “You knew him back then?”
“Not really, but I sure wanted to. I had a powerful crush on him. He was staying with Bruce Langdon’s family.”
“Oh, yeah,” Lulu said. “Arnie Langdon was the mayor. He owned the m
arina and the boat repair shop. Apparently they didn’t earn enough to keep up with his wife’s spending habits, though. He got caught dipping into the city till and was run out of town a few years later.”
“His son Bruce was a total jerk, but Zack was tall and mysterious and unbelievably cool.” Nicole sighed dreamily. “I used to go to the marina all the time, just to watch him.”
“I didn’t know that,” Katie said.
“Yeah, well, he didn’t, either.” She reached for a nacho on the pepper-themed platter and gave a wry grin. “He never paid me the time of day.”
“Now we know why,” Sheila said. “He had his eye on Katie.”
“Oh, he wasn’t interested in me like that,” Katie said. “We were just friends.”
“With benefits, apparently,” Anne said.
The other women snickered.
“No!” Katie protested. “It was totally platonic, until the night it… wasn’t.”
The women all laughed. Anne lifted her glass. “And what a night that was!”
Katie took a sip of her margarita to hide her discomfort. They were just teasing, but it bothered her all the same. She and Zack had shared something special, and the ribald comments demeaned it.
Sheesh, she really needed to lighten up. There was no point in getting all defensive. She couldn’t seem to help it, though. That kiss today had stirred up a lot of old, buried emotions. Or maybe not so buried, she thought guiltily. From the way her feelings had so quickly flared to life, maybe they’d been smoldering under the surface all this time.
Which was just unacceptable. She twisted her wedding ring. She couldn’t have been harboring feelings for Zack while she was with Paul. She’d loved her husband with her heart and soul.
“Well, there’s nothing platonic about the way he feels about you now,” Lulu added. “I’ve seen the way he looks at you. His eyes eat you up and lick the crumbs.”
“Oh, yeah.” Nicole fanned her face. “Just looking at the two of them gives me a hot flash.”
Katie picked up her margarita glass and took another long swig. “Nothing is going on.” Not if you discounted two kisses and enough sexual energy to run the local power plant. But that didn’t matter; she couldn’t change the past or who she happened to be attracted to. What mattered was what she did or didn’t do, and from this point forward, she was not going to get involved with Zack.
She didn’t like the way he interfered with her memories of Paul. It was bad enough that she could no longer smell Paul’s scent on his clothes, but now she was having trouble picturing his face. When she lay in her bed at night, it was no longer Paul she fantasized about.
Zack had played too big a role in her life already. He was going to leave, and she didn’t want him superimposing himself on her memories of her marriage.
Her head was starting to swim from the tequila. She leaned foward and lifted a cheese-and-jalapeño-covered chip from the nacho platter. “He’s not going to stay in town, you know. When Gracie has the baby and turns eighteen, he’ll head back to Vegas.”
“No reason you couldn’t go with him,” Nicole said.
“Yes, there is. Nothing is going on!” Katie’s tone was more strident than she intended.
Bev came to her rescue by changing the topic. “Who wants to open the discussion about the book?”
“Oh, let me make another pitcher of margaritas before we begin.” Anne scurried to the kitchen.
“Is Gracie looking forward to school?” Lulu asked.
“It’s hard to tell,” Katie said. “I think she’s nervous. It would be rough enough starting at a new school in your senior year, but when you’re pregnant, too…”
The women all nodded. “Why doesn’t she just earn a GED?” Nicole asked.
“She wants to take biology and chemistry, and those classes have labs.”
“It takes a lot of nerve to go to high school pregnant,” Sheila said.
Bev grinned. “Fortunately, that’s one thing the girl is loaded with.”
“Chip off the old block,” Sheila teased her.
Not really, Katie thought. She’d left town when she’d discovered she was pregnant. “Gracie puts on a brave front, but at heart, she’s just a scared kid—a kid who had her world shattered when the only parents she’d ever known were killed.”
“The poor thing,” Nicole said. The other women murmured sympathetically.
“Will she and the baby live with you after she gives birth?” Sheila asked.
Katie nodded. “For a while, anyway. Until she turns eighteen in February, at least.”
“And then what?” Nicole asked through a mouthful of chips.
“I don’t know.” Katie shifted uneasily in the armchair. “I hope she decides to stay and finish school and maybe go to college nearby.” Bringing up the future seemed to set Gracie on edge and set back the tenuous relationship they were beginning to develop. “I saw a therapist and she advised me not to push Gracie. She said I need to let her take things at her own pace.”
“A baby and school—that’s a lot to handle,” Nicole said.
“A baby and anything is a lot to handle,” Lulu added.
Katie’s heart pressed against her ribs. She wished she’d had the chance to find out.
Anne returned with a fresh pitcher of margaritas. “What did I miss?”
“Nothing, Katie didn’t tell us any more about the hunk,” Sheila said.
“That’s because there’s nothing to tell,” Katie retorted.
“Just wait,” Lulu predicted. “There will be.”
And that, Katie thought as she reached for her margarita, was exactly what she would not allow to happen.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“I’m not going to be able to make the meeting next week,” Zack said into his cell as he paced outside the bookstore a week later under a gray and threatening sky. Through the window, he could see Gracie angrily stride toward the back of the store.
They’d had an argument as he’d driven her from her job to town to pick up a copy of Fahrenheit 451, which was the senior summer reading assignment. She’d badgered him about applying for her driver’s license tomorrow. She still had a week to go before the agreed-upon month was up, and he’d told her she had to wait. She’d gotten angry and called him some names that by rights should move the whole process back another month.
Forming a relationship with Gracie was like climbing a mountain of ice. If things stopped moving forward, they started backsliding. He’d been out of town again last week, and it had caused a setback. Which was why he was canceling his plans to be gone for most of next week.
Overhead, lightning crackled in the sky. “I don’t like the idea that you’re putting other clients ahead of me,” said the man on the other end of the phone, who happened to be the president of Waterkey International Electronics in Seattle.
“I’m not postponing because of another client. I have a family situation.” Family. The word felt weird in his mouth.
“I didn’t know you had any family.”
That makes two of us. “Look, I’ll e-mail you the whole proposal, and my team will teleconference with you if you have any questions. I’ll be at your board meeting a week from Tuesday.”
He and his client discussed a few specifics, then ended their conversation. Zack sighed as he closed his phone and gazed up at the ominous-looking sky.
He could run the nuts and bolts of his consulting business from anywhere, but there were certain things that required his presence—things like proposal presentations, site inspections, board of director meetings, and zoning commission hearings. He could make Chartreuse his home base, but he still had to travel. He was going to have to leave Gracie and Katie more than he wanted to.
The thought of Katie made his pulse skip. There was something about the woman that just grabbed his heart and messed with his head. Not to mention the way she made him end up doing things he’d determined he wouldn’t do again—namely, kissing her.
He couldn’t even exp
lain how it had happened. One minute they were talking about their daughter, and the next they were kissing like teenagers.
They’d both kept their distance since the last encounter at the retirement home, but the tension between them was almost palpable. His thoughts were taking a disturbing new twist. He’d always sworn he’d never settle down, but now the possibility was tugging at the corners of his mind.
He’d never thought people could change at such a fundamental level. Whatever you were, you were. Circumstances changed, but not human nature.
Or could it? Now he wasn’t sure. One thing was for certain: He needed to stay the hell away from Katie until he figured it out. It wouldn’t be fair to make any moves on her unless he was one hundred percent, absolutely sure he could give her what she needed, wanted, and deserved.
Fortunately, keeping his distance hadn’t been hard, because she’d been avoiding him as if he had swine flu. They’d talked on the phone about arrangements for Gracie, but Katie had been emitting touch-me-not vibes since that close encounter.
Lightning zigzagged across the sky again. Zack pulled open the door to the bookstore, jangling the cowbell on the door. The air-conditioning was a welcome relief from the muggy August heat.
Dave sat on a stool behind the counter. He smiled and held out his hand as Zack walked in. “Good afternoon.”
Zack shook it. “Afternoon. Looks like we’re in for some weather.”
Dave nodded. “We’re supposed to get a heck of a storm.”
Gracie ambled up with a paperback copy of the Ray Bradbury book and a handful of manga magazines. “Can I borrow these?”
“Sure,” Dave said.
“I’ll buy them for you,” Zack said.
Gracie looked at him dismissively. “Dave said I could borrow anything I wanted.”
“That’s very nice of him, but you don’t want to take advantage of his kindness. This is a bookstore, not a library, Gracie.”
“It’s okay. I want her to have them. My treat,” Dave said.
Zack blew out an exasperated breath. Gracie plunked down the twenty Zack had given her for the book. Dave made change, and she tucked the book and magazines into that enormous ratty purse on her shoulder. “Thanks.”
