by Janice Lynn
High school cross-country had been where he’d first met Shelby. She’d been a year older than him and had had a different set of friends, so although he’d seen the pretty brunette around school he hadn’t known her. She’d have been better off if he never had.
“No one can do everything,” he answered McKenzie.
“I’m beginning to think you do.”
“Not even close. You and I just happen to have a lot in common. We enjoy the same things.”
She shook her head. “Nope. I don’t enjoy singing.”
“I think you would if you’d relax.”
“Standing onstage, with people looking at me?” She cut her gaze to him. “Never going to happen.”
Keeping his pace matched to hers, he glanced at her. “You don’t like things that make people look at you, do you, McKenzie?”
“Nope.”
“Because of your parents?”
“I may not have mentioned this before, but I don’t like talking while I run. I’m a silent runner.”
He chuckled. “That a hint for me to be quiet?”
“You catch on quick.”
They kept up the more intense pace until they crossed the finish line. The last few minutes of the race Lance debated on whether or not to let McKenzie cross the finish line first. Ultimately, he decided she wasn’t the kind of woman who’d appreciate a man letting her win.
In the last stretch he increased his speed. So did McKenzie. If he hadn’t been a bit winded, he’d have laughed at her competitive spirit. Instead, he ran.
So did she.
They crossed the finish line together. The judge declared Lance the winner by a fraction of a second, but Lance would have just as easily have believed that McKenzie had crossed first.
She was doubled over, gasping for air. His own lungs couldn’t suck in enough air either. He walked around, slowly catching his breath. When he turned back, she was glaring.
“You were holding out on me,” she accused breathlessly, her eyes narrowed.
“Huh?”
“You were considering letting me win.” Her words came out a little choppy between gasps for air.
“In case you didn’t notice...” he sucked in a deep gulp of air “...I was trying to cross that finish line first.”
“You were sandbagging.”
He laughed. “Sandbagging?”
“How long have you been running?”
“Since high school.” Not that he wanted to talk about it. He didn’t. Talking about this particular subject might lead to questions he didn’t want to answer.
“You competed?”
He nodded.
“Me, too.” She straightened, fully expanding her lungs with air. “I did my undergraduate studies on a track scholarship.”
Despite the memories assailing him, the corners of Lance’s mouth tugged upward. “Something else we have in common.”
McKenzie just looked at him, then rolled her eyes. “We don’t have that much in common.”
“More than you seem to want to acknowledge.”
“Maybe,” she conceded. “Let’s go congratulate the guy who beat us both. He lives about thirty minutes from here. His time is usually about twenty to thirty seconds better than mine. He usually only competes in the five-kilometer races, though. Nothing shorter, nothing longer.”
They congratulated the winner, hung out around the tent, rehydrating, got their second and third place medals, then headed toward McKenzie’s house.
They showered together then, a long time later, got ready to go and eat.
* * *
The first day of the New Year turned into the first week, then the first month.
McKenzie began to feel panicky, knowing her time with Lance was coming to an end as the one-month mark came and went. Each day following passed like sand swiftly falling through an hourglass.
Then she realized that the day before Valentine’s Day marked the end of the two months she’d promised him. Seriously, the day before Valentine’s?
Why did that even matter? She’d never cared if she had a significant other on that hyped-up holiday in the past. Most years she’d been in a casual relationship and she’d gotten a box of chocolates and flowers and had given a funny card to her date for the evening. Why should this year feel different? Why did the idea of chocolates and flowers from Lance seem as if it would be different from gifts she’d received in the past? Why did the idea of giving him a card seem to fall short?
She’d be ending things with Lance the day before every other couple would be celebrating their love.
She and Lance weren’t in love. She wasn’t sure love even truly existed.
A vision of Lance’s grandparents, married for sixty years, his parents, married for forty years, ran through her mind and she had to reconsider. Maybe love did exist, but not for anyone with her genetic makeup. Already her dad was complaining about his new wife and had flirted outrageously with their waitress when they’d had their usual belated Christmas dinner a few weeks back. Hearing that his new marriage would be ending soon wouldn’t surprise McKenzie in the slightest. Her mother, well, her mother had taken up the vegan life because Beau was history and her new “‘love” was all about living green. Her mother was even planning to plant out her own garden this spring and wanted to know if McKenzie had any requests.
McKenzie had no issue with her mother trying to live more healthily. She was glad of it, even. But the woman enjoyed nothing more than a big juicy steak, which was what she ordered on the rare occasions she met McKenzie for a meal—usually in between boyfriends or at Christmas or birthdays.
McKenzie had managed both meals with her parents this year without Lance joining them. Fortunately, his volunteer work oftentimes had him busy immediately following work and she had scheduled both meals with her parents on evenings he had Celebration Graduation meetings.
“You’ve been staring at your screen for the past ten minutes,” Lance pointed out, gesturing to her idle laptop. “Problem patient?”
He’d come over, brought their dinner with him, and they’d been sitting on her sofa, remotely logged in to their work laptops and charting their day’s patients while watching a reality television program.
McKenzie hit a button, saving her work, then turned to him. “My mind just isn’t on this tonight.”
“I noticed.” He saved his own work, set his laptop down on her coffee table and turned to her. “What’s up?”
“I was just thinking about Valentine’s Day.”
His smile spread across his face and lit up his eyes. “Making plans for how you’re going to surprise me with a lacy red number and high heels?” He waggled his brows suggestively.
Despite knowing he was mostly teasing, she shook her head. “We won’t be together on Valentine’s Day. Our two months is up the day before. The end is near.”
His smile faded and his forehead wrinkled. “There’s no reason we shouldn’t be able to spend Valentine’s Day together. I have the Celebration Graduation Valentine’s Day dance at the high school that I’ll be helping to chaperone. It ends at ten and it’ll take me another twenty to thirty minutes to help clean up. But we can still do something, then we’ll call it quits after that.”
She shook her head. “You already had plans for that evening. That’s good.”
She, however, did not and would be acutely aware of his absence from her life, and not just because of the holiday.
“I hadn’t really thought about it being the end of our two months. You could volunteer at the dance with me.”
She shook her head again. “Not a good idea.”
“Think you’d be a bad influence on those high schoolers?” Even though his tone was teasing, his eyes searched hers.
“I probably would,” she agreed, just
to avoid a discussion of the truth. They would be finished the night before. There would be no more charting together, dining together, going to dances or parties together, no more running together, as they’d started doing every morning at four. Lance would be gone, would meet someone else, would date them, and, despite what he claimed, he would very likely eventually find whatever he was looking for in a woman and marry her.
Was he looking for someone like Shelby?
What was Shelby like?
Why had he still not mentioned the woman to her?
Then again, why would he mention her? He and McKenzie were temporary. He owed her nothing, no explanation of his past relationships, no explanation of his future plans.
Yet there were things about him she wanted to know. Suddenly needed to know.
“Do you want kids?” Why she asked the question she wasn’t sure. It wasn’t as if the answer mattered to her or was even applicable. She and Lance had no future together.
To her surprise, he shook his head. “I have no plans to ever have children.”
Recalling how great he was with his cousins’ kids, that shocked her. Then again, had she asked him the question because she’d expected a different answer? That she’d expected him to say he planned to have an entire houseful, and that way she could have used that information as one more thing to put between them because, with her genetics, no way could she ever have children.
“You’d make a fantastic dad.”
His brow lifted and he regarded her for a few long moments before asking, “You pregnant, McKenzie?”
Her mouth fell open and she squished up her nose. “Absolutely not.”
“You sure? You’ve not had a menstrual cycle since we’ve been together. I hadn’t really thought about it until just now, but I should have.”
Her face heated at his comment. They were doctors, so it was ridiculous that she was blushing. But at this moment she was a woman and he was a man. Medicine had nothing to do with their conversation. This was personal. Too personal.
“I rarely have my cycle. My gynecologist says it’s because I run so much and don’t retain enough body fat for proper estrogen storage. It’s highly unlikely that I’d get pregnant. But even if that weren’t an issue,” she reminded him, “you’ve used a condom every single time we’ve had sex. I can’t be pregnant.”
Not once had she even considered that as a possibility. Truth was, she questioned if her body would even allow her to get pregnant if she wanted to, which she didn’t. No way would she want to bring a baby in to the world the way her parents had.
“Stranger things have happened.”
“Than my getting pregnant?” She shook her head in denial. “That would be the strangest ever. I’m not meant to have children.”
His curiosity was obviously piqued as he studied her. “Why not?”
“Bad genetics.”
“Your parents are ill?”
How was she supposed to answer that one? With the truth, probably. She took a deep breath.
“Physically, they are as healthy as can be. Mentally and emotionally, they are messed up.”
“Depression?”
“My mother suffers from depression. Maybe my dad, too, really. They both have made horrible life choices that they are now stuck living with.”
“Your dad is a lawyer?”
She nodded.
“What does your mom do?”
“Whatever the man currently in her life tells her to do.”
Lance seemed to let that sink in for a few moments. “She’s remarried?”
McKenzie shook her head. “She’s never remarried. I think she purposely stays single because my father has to pay her alimony until she remarries or dies.”
“Your father is remarried, though?”
“At the moment, but ask me again in a month and who knows what the answer will be.”
“How many times has he remarried?”
She didn’t want to answer, shouldn’t have let this conversation even start. She should have finished her charts, not opened up an emotional can of worms that led to conversations about her menstrual cycle, pregnancy and her parents. What had she been thinking?
“McKenzie?”
“He’s on his fifth marriage.”
Lance winced. “Hard to find the one, eh?”
“Oh, he finds them all right. In all the wrong places. He’s not known for his faithfulness. My guess is that he’s to blame for all his failed marriages. Definitely he was with his and my mother’s.”
“There’s always two sides to every story.”
“My mother and I walked in on him in his office with his secretary.”
“As in...”
Feeling sick at her stomach, McKenzie nodded. She’d never said those words out loud. Not ever. Cecilia knew, but not because McKenzie had told her the details, just that she’d figured it out from overheard arguments between McKenzie’s parents.
“How old were you?”
“Four.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
LANCE TRIED TO imagine how a four-year-old would react to walking in on her father in a compromising situation with a woman who wasn’t her mother. He couldn’t imagine it. His own family took commitment seriously. When they gave their word, their heart to another they meant it.
His own heart squeezed. Hadn’t he given his word to Shelby? Hadn’t he promised to love her forever? To not ever forget the young girl who’d taught him what it meant to care for another, who’d brought him from boyhood to manhood?
He had. He did. He would. Forever.
He owed her so much.
“That must have been traumatic,” he mused, not knowing exactly what to say but wanting to comfort McKenzie all the same. Wanting not to think of Shelby right now. Lately he’d not wanted to think of her a lot, and had resented how much he thought of her, of how guilty he felt that he didn’t want to think of her anymore.
How could he not want to think of her when it was his fault she was no longer living the life she had been meant to live? When if it wasn’t for him she’d be a doctor? Be making a difference in so many people’s lives?
“It wasn’t the first time he’d cheated.”
Lance stared at McKenzie’s pale face. “How do you know?”
“My mother launched herself at them, screaming and yelling and clawing and...well, you get the idea. She said some pretty choice things that my father didn’t deny.”
“You were only four,” he reminded her, trying to envision the scene from a four-year-old’s perspective and shuttering on the inside at the horror. “Maybe you misunderstood.”
She shook her head. “He doesn’t deserve you or anyone else defending him. He doesn’t even bother defending himself anymore. Just says it’s genetic and he can’t help himself.”
“Bull.”
That had McKenzie’s head shooting up. “What?”
“Bull. If he really loved someone else more than he loved himself then being faithful wouldn’t be an issue. It would be easy, what came naturally from that love.”
McKenzie took a deep breath. “Then maybe that’s the problem. No one has ever been able to compete with his own self-love. Not my mother, not his other wives or girlfriends and certainly not me.”
There was a depth of pain in her voice that made Lance’s heart ache for her. “Did he have more children?”
McKenzie shook her head. “He had a vasectomy so that mistake would never happen again.”
“Implying that you were a mistake?”
McKenzie shrugged.
“He’s a fool, McKenzie. A stupid, selfish fool.”
“Agreed.” She brushed her hands over her thighs then stood. “I’m going to get a drink of water. You need anything?”
“Just you.”
She paused. “Sorry, but the discussion about my parents has killed any possibility of that for some time.”
“Not what I meant.”
She stared down at him. “Then what did you mean?”
Good question. What had he meant?
That he needed her?
Physically? They were powerful in bed together. But it was more than sex. Mentally, she challenged him with her quick intelligence and wit. Emotionally...emotionally she had him a tangled-up mess. A tangled-up mess he had no right to be feeling.
He’d asked her to give him two months. That’s all she planned to give him, that’s all he’d thought he’d wanted from McKenzie.
Usually he had long-lasting relationships even though he knew they were never going anywhere. He’d always been up-front with whomever he’d been dating on that point. When things came to an end, he’d always been okay with it, his heart not really involved.
With McKenzie he’d wanted that time limit as much as she had, because everything had felt different right from the start.
She made him question everything.
The past. The present. The future. What had always seemed so clear was now a blurred unknown.
That they had planned a definite ending was a good thing, the best thing. He had a vow to keep. Guilt mingled in with whatever else was going on. Horrible, horrible guilt that would lie heavily on his shoulders for the rest of his life.
“I’ll take that glass of water after all,” he said in way of an answer to her question. Not that it was an answer, but it was all he knew to say.
“Yeah, this conversation has left a bad taste in both our mouths.”
Something like that.
* * *
“Edith came in to see me this morning.”
Lance glanced up from his desk. “How is she doing?”
McKenzie sank down in the chair across from his desk. “Quite well, really. She had a long list of complaints, of course. But overall she looked good and the latest imaging of her chest shows that her pulmonary embolism has resolved.”
“That’s fantastic. She’s a feisty thing.”
“That she is.”
He studied her a moment then set down the pen he held, walked around his desk, shut his office door, then wrapped his arms around her.