One True Love

by Barbara Freethy

  "Name?" Rocco asked.

  She thought for a minute and decided to go with something new -- to match the soon-to-be-new Maggie. "Crystal," she said. "My name is Crystal Scott."

  "How fast can you run, Crystal?"

  She could get through all twelve aisles at the supermarket in less than eight minutes. Seven if she skipped the cosmetics aisle, which she usually did. "Um, I'm not sure."

  "How far do you usually run?"

  She mentally estimated the distance between the couch and the refrigerator times fifty trips a day. "It depends."

  "On how much time you have?"

  Or how hungry, bored or depressed I am. "Exactly," she replied.

  He looked her up and down. "All right. I guess we'll have to find out what you can do." Rocco snapped his fingers, and a young woman who couldn't have weighed more than eighty pounds soaking wet sprinted out of the inner office. "Lara will show you where to change. I'll meet you in ten minutes." He turned to leave, then paused. "Make sure you fill out the section on health restrictions and sign the release form."

  "Release form?" she echoed faintly.

  "In case you pass out or have a heart attack or something, you won't hold us responsible."

  No, she wouldn't hold them responsible. They weren't crazy. She was.

  Rocco disappeared through the double doors, but before they closed, Maggie heard him call out to someone.

  "Serena, baby," he said. "Work it now. Work it hard."

  Serena. Maggie stretched her neck to catch a glimpse of Serena, but the doors slid shut, and she was left with Lara, Hans and a clipboard full of release forms. But Serena Hollingsworth was inside those double doors, and Maggie couldn't give up now. She was too close to finding out exactly what she needed to know.

  * * *

  "Nick. I don't want to know what you've done with the house. I don't want to see it." Lisa crossed her arms in front of her as Nick pulled the car away from the baseball diamond and headed toward the beach. They'd dropped off Mary Bea at her birthday party and Roxy at the movies, and for the next two hours they would be completely on their own. Lisa wanted to return to Maggie's house, but she knew that wasn't Nick's intent. She couldn't stand the thought of seeing their house again. In fact, she felt almost panicked at the thought. Why the hell hadn't Nick moved in all these years?

  "Did you see Dylan make that catch?" Nick asked as he maneuvered his way through the afternoon traffic. "The kid is incredibly athletic."

  "He does seem very good at baseball. Must be the Maddux in him. I don't remember Keith being a great athlete." Lisa paused. "I'm serious, Nick, I don't want to go to the house."

  "It's not the house. It's our house."

  "We're divorced. I signed the house over to you years ago."

  "Semantics."

  Lisa sighed. "Okay, bottom line -- what's it going to take to get you to drive me back to Maggie's house?"

  "A miracle." He flashed her a cocky grin. "Think you're due?"

  "As a matter of fact, yes." Lisa sat stoically in her seat as the scenery grew more familiar. She remembered the Frosty Freeze where she and Nick had shared an ice cream. She remembered the library, the bookstore, the car wash, the deli, all the little stores and malls she'd frequented. She remembered the wide four-lane boulevards, the glorious palm trees, the blue-blue sky, the color of which Nick always said he saw in her eyes.

  She looked at each street sign, each storefront with a bittersweet sense of longing. These streets were not the streets of just her marriage, but of her childhood as well, her youth. She remembered going to the pizza parlor after the football game, eight people piled in a Volkswagen bug. She smiled at the memory, almost surprised that she still had good memories, after all the bad that had come later.

  Nick turned off the main boulevard and drove through a middle-class suburban area, where the houses were older, the lawns a bit faded, a neighborhood where children's bikes and skateboards were parked precariously on the sidewalks and lawns, where people still watered their grass on a Saturday afternoon and washed their cars with good old-fashioned elbow grease.

  Finally, Nick pulled into the driveway of a small frame house with a big front porch and a large oak tree that made the house seem smaller than Lisa remembered. Otherwise, it looked exactly the way she'd left it. The porch swing still hung from two rusty chains that creaked with the breeze. She couldn't count the times she'd sat in the swing, sometimes to escape the southern California heat, sometimes to listen to Nick play the guitar, sometimes to watch the birds build their nests in the sturdy branches of the trees.

  They had rented the house at first. When one of the elderly owners had died, the remaining spouse had offered it to them for a steal. They'd felt like the luckiest couple on the face of the earth. They were married. They had a home. They were expecting a baby. They thought their life together would be happily ever after.

  "What do you think?" Nick asked, as he shut off the engine. The tightness in his voice told her any answer would probably be the wrong answer. He was itching for a fight. She could see it in the tension of his shoulders, hear it in the coldness of his voice.

  She looked away from his penetrating eyes and focused on the house. "It could use a new coat of paint."

  "The salt from the ocean tears the paint right off. I put a new coat on a few years ago, but it didn't last."

  Great, they were talking about paint. They'd once made love in every room of the house, and now they were talking about chipped paint. She waited for him to say something more, but now that they had arrived, he seemed strangely reluctant to even get out of the car.

  "Why are you doing this, Nick?"

  For a moment she didn't think he would answer her, then his words came stiff and unyielding. "You never looked back, Lisa, not once. I watched you from the window. You just got in your car and left."

  "How would you know? You were drunk the day I left."

  "I was drunk, deliberately drunk, because the tequila was the only thing that took the edge off, that kept your knife from plunging all the way through to my heart." His voice faltered for a moment, then gained strength. "I'm not proud of the way I behaved, yelling at the doctors and at you. I just hurt so damn much. And you wouldn't talk to me. You wouldn't look at me."

  And she couldn't look at him now. She couldn't bear to see the pain in his eyes, the accusation.

  "You're doing it again." He pulled her chin around with his hand, his gaze revealing more anger than hurt. "Tuning me out. I hate when you do that. I remember that night, about a week after the funeral. You practically jumped out of your skin when I accidentally touched your breast, as if the feel of me was so repulsive you couldn't stand it."

  Lisa clapped her hands over her ears. "Stop it!"

  "Why? It's the truth. I came to you wanting, needing, and you walked away."

  Lisa heard the bitterness, the anguish, the accusation in his words, in his voice. She couldn't deny what he was saying, but whereas he had drunk to escape, she had closed off every emotion so she wouldn't feel anything. "I couldn't make love to you," she whispered. "I know you wanted a release from all the tension, but I couldn't give it to you."

  "A release?" he asked in amazement. "That's what you thought I wanted? My God, we'd just lost our daughter. You were so distant, so cold. I didn't want a release. I wanted you. I wanted to feel your heartbeat beneath mine. I wanted to be with you, so I wouldn't feel so damn alone."

  Lisa sucked in a breath of air, suddenly feeling as if she were suffocating. Nick had always been passionate and personal, unafraid to talk about the most intimate details of their life. At one time, she'd thought it good that he was so willing to tell her how he was feeling, but after -- after it happened -- she had hated his desire for conversation. She hadn't wanted to talk about any of it. She had felt like a failure, and talking about it only made her feel worse. Nick had kept pushing, and she'd kept withdrawing, until they were both angry. Finally, they'd given up.

  Nick threw open the doo
r, letting a blast of fresh air into the car. "We're here. We might as well go in."

  "So you can prove to me -- what?"

  "I don't know. I just think you should see the house."

  "When she -- when it happened," Lisa amended, "everyone wanted me to forget, even you. My mother told me to think only of the good times and to go on with my life. She said I'd have other babies." Lisa's mouth trembled, and she fought back a wave of emotion. "She said someday I would understand why it had happened." She shook her head in bewilderment. "I've never understood."

  "You did forget."

  "No!" she yelled. "I didn't forget. How can you forget when a part of you dies?" She stared down at her hands, subconsciously twisting the engagement ring around her finger. "But I did move on, Nick. I wish you had done the same thing."

  "If you've truly put everything that happened in the past behind you, why are you afraid to go into the house?"

  She couldn't answer his logic, so she gave up. "Fine. I'll go into the house. I'll look in every room. But I won't relive that night with you. I won't talk about what happened or why. Not now. Not ever."

  Lisa stepped out of the car just as a bird swooped across the yard and lit on one of the lower branches of the tree. Her heart stopped. The first robin of spring.

  It's too early," Lisa whispered, turning to see the same stunned expression on Nick's face.

  He looked into her eyes. "They haven't been back since Robin died."

  "No."

  "Yes. That spring they built their nest, but something happened, and they never came back. Don't you remember?"

  She shook her head. "I don't remember."

  "You put them out of your mind like everything else, but I couldn't. It seemed so symbolic, that god damn empty nest. I used to sit out there in the late night and the early morning, staring at that nest, wondering why they were gone -- wondering why Robin was gone."

  Lisa watched as the robin flew from branch to branch, as if it weren't quite sure where it wanted to be.

  "Are you trying to tell me that what happened had something to do with the birds abandoning their nest?"

  "Your mother thought it meant something."

  "Well, she would. If the robins left that spring, it's because they found a better place to go. It didn't have anything to do with what happened."

  "Then how come the robin has come back now -- with you?" he challenged.

  "It's not with me." But was it? Lisa remembered the robin in L.A., the one she'd seen outside her office building. No, it couldn't be the same bird. Los Angeles was a hundred and fifty miles away. She strode briskly toward the house. "I thought you wanted me to see the place. I'm here, so let's go."

  "Fine." Nick followed her up the steps and unlocked the front door. He motioned her inside. "After you, milady."

  His voice faltered.

  "Oh, Nick." Her eyes filled with moisture as she remembered.

  "This is our palace, milady," Nick said with a grin as he carried her up the stairs, her wedding gown trailing over his arm and down to the floor of the porch. "I'm the king and you are my very beautiful queen." He lowered his head and kissed her warmly on the mouth.

  Lisa sighed with pure pleasure. She had just married an incredible man and was about to be carried over the threshold into her very own home. She didn't think she could be any happier. "If this is a dream, I don't want to wake up."

  He looked into her eyes with a seriousness she hadn't expected. "It's not a dream. It's reality. It's us. I've wanted you forever, since Maggie brought you home in the seventh grade.''

  "You sure waited long enough to ask me out. Like six years.'' She punched him on the arm. "A little slow, weren't you?"

  "I was afraid of you, afraid of the way you made me feel, like I was out of control, like I was starving for something I couldn't have."

  "You made me feel the same way." She traced his face with her fingers, loving the feel of his strong jaw, his smoothly shaven face. It was the first time she'd felt the silkiness of his skin. Usually he wore a five o 'clock shadow by three o'clock in the afternoon. "Did I tell you that I love you, Nick Maddux?"

  "Yes, but keep saying it." He paused. "I love you, Lisa Maddux."

  "I like the sound of that." And she did, not just because it was Nick's name, her married name, but because it wiped away the traces of her past, her mixed heritage, all the uncertainty, the anticipation of rejection that had filled her every waking moment. She knew who she was now. And she liked who she was.

  Nick struggled to open the door without dropping her. Finally, he got it open. "This is it.'' He carried her over the threshold and gently set her down on her feet.

  She looked around and gasped in amazement. There were flowers everywhere, bouquets on every available table, filling the room with the scent of roses, gardenias and jasmine. "You did this?"

  He laughed and shook his head. "Are you kidding? This has your mother written all over it."

  Lisa frowned, knowing her mother was a hopeless romantic, a believer in everything magical and mystical. "Do you mind?'' she asked somewhat anxiously.

  Nick shook his head. "How could I mind? Don't you get it, Lisa? I love you no matter who your father is, no matter what your mother does, and no matter what you do. I'm never going to leave you. So you better get used to having me around for the next fifty years. You and I -- we're bound for life.''

  "Lisa?" Nick's voice brought her back to painful reality.

  The room was no longer filled with flowers. In fact, the sofa was new, and so was the armchair. The coffee table was covered with sports magazines. There were no rose petals. There was no love left in the room. At least she didn't think so, until she turned and stumbled into Nick's arms.

  His hands clasped her shoulders to steady her. "Careful."

  "I didn't realize you were standing so close to me."

  "I was going to tell you to watch the edge of the carpet. It's easy to catch your foot in it. I've been meaning to do something about it."

  She heard his words, but they weren't registering. She couldn't concentrate on the carpet when her face was just inches away from his, when she could feel his warm breath blow across her cheek, when she could see the old scar that ran across the edge of his chin.

  "Lisa?" he asked, his eyes gazing into hers.

  She didn't understand the question. "Nick?"

  He touched the side of her face with the back of his hand, a tender caress that drew goose bumps along her arms. She silently willed him to move away, at the same time praying that he wouldn't. His gaze dropped to her mouth. She licked her lips in helpless anticipation.

  Slowly, he lowered his head, giving her enough time to plan an escape from a high-security prison, when all she really needed to do was take one step backward. But she couldn't move.

  When his mouth finally touched hers, she felt like a volcano had just erupted. The heat of his mouth set her heart on fire. His tongue slid along her lips, teasing her until she opened her mouth and he slipped in a kiss so deep, so personal, so intimate she forgot for a minute that they weren't married anymore, that she had no business kissing him.

  By the time she remembered, Nick was already pulling away, removing her arms from his neck, and setting her aside, as if she were unwanted, as if she had instigated the kiss instead of him.

  "Go ahead, look around," Nick said briskly. "I have to make a phone call." He disappeared into the kitchen, slamming the door behind him.

  Lisa sat down in the armchair, stunned by Nick's actions and her own passionate response. She told herself it was the house, the memories that had made her kiss him back. She certainly didn't feel anything for him -- not any more, not after everything that had happened.

  A wave of painful guilt followed her rationalization. She was engaged to marry Raymond. She had no business kissing her ex-husband, no right to feel so -- so completely overwhelmed by a man she didn't love anymore.

  Damn Nick anyway!

  When her pulse had steadied and she'd
caught her breath, Lisa stood up. She knew she couldn't leave this house until she'd walked down the hall, looked in the bedrooms. Maybe it would be better to do it on her own, without Nick hovering beside her.

  The first door she came to was their old bedroom. The door was ajar, and she pushed it all the way open. The room was the way she remembered -- yet different. As usual, Nick hadn't made the bed, and his clothes were tossed over the exercise bicycle instead of hung neatly in the closet. The painting over the bed was new, as was the dresser and the night tables. The furniture appeared handcrafted, and she took a step closer to look at it.

  Running her hand over the smooth wood of the dresser, she wondered where Nick had bought it. The detailed ornamentation on each corner of the dresser was incredible.

  "Like it?" Nick asked.

  She turned to see him standing in the doorway, an inscrutable expression on his face. He looked more distant than she'd ever seen him. Yet only minutes ago, they'd been in each other's arms. She looked back at the dresser, preferring the safety of a conversation about furniture than one about themselves.

  "It's beautiful," she said. "Where did you get it?"

  "I made it."

  "You did?" she asked in surprise.

  "Yeah." He smiled somewhat cynically. "Didn't think I had it in me, huh?"

  "I didn't think about it." She glanced at the dresser one last time, then moved away. "You got rid of the bed, I see."

  "The day you left." His eyes darkened with bitterness. "It seemed appropriate."

  Discussing their bed was the last thing Lisa wanted to do, so she moved purposefully toward the door, edging past Nick, who didn't make it any easier for her to get by. Once in the hall, she squared her shoulders and headed toward the second bedroom. She didn't know what to expect -- a crib, baby toys, the mural they'd painted together. She wasn't sure she could bear to see any of it.

  The door was closed, but the cool knob turned easily in her hand. She felt like she was opening a door to the past, a door she should have kept closed. But now that she was here, now that she was so close, she couldn't do anything but move forward.