Still the One

by Robin Wells

  A bead of sweat trickled down his spine. Was it possible she was right? Was it possible that keeping his distance was the bigger risk? He’d always been a loner, figuring that you couldn’t get burned if you didn’t get near the fire. Maybe always feeling cold was an even worse fate.

  Maybe Dave had been onto something, after all.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  “Annette—are you sure about this?” Katie asked for the umpteenth time four days later.

  “Yes, dear. It only makes sense.” Annette zipped her makeup bag and set it in her purse, then placed her purse beside the packed suitcase on the floor of her room in the rehabilitation wing. “Besides, I’m making such good progress that Blake says I’m likely to only need two more weeks of therapy instead of three.”

  Katie regarded her with worried eyes. “If you change your mind at any time…”

  Katie was such a mother hen. Annette smiled at her reassuringly. “I know, dear. I can call you. And if I need to, I will.”

  “Don’t wait until you need to. Call me if you feel the least bit uncomfortable.”

  “I will. But I’ll be fine. I lived with the man for thirty-two years. I’m sure I can stay with him for two or three weeks.”

  A knock sounded on the door. Dave walked in, wearing a blue polo shirt and a pair of khakis, his face freshly shaved, his hair combed. He looked fit and dapper, and he smelled like Aramis. As always Annette’s foolish heart jumped at the sight of him.

  “All set?”

  “No,” Annette said. Now, why had she said that? It had popped out automatically, the way the word fine popped out when people asked how she was doing. She guessed that was her knee-jerk reaction to Dave. She’d had an automatic no answer to his every suggestion even before they’d split.

  “Well, you better get that way.” He pulled a wheelchair from the hall and wheeled it into the room. “Your chariot awaits.”

  Annette made a face. “I hate those things.”

  “This is just to get you from your room to the car. After that, you’ll be on your own.”

  “I’ll wheel your suitcase,” Katie volunteered.

  Now that the moment had come, Annette felt a little nervous. Her palms grew damp as Dave helped her into the chair.

  A few minutes later, he opened the passenger door of his Camry just outside the entrance. Dave got her safely inside, then Katie bent and kissed Annette’s cheek. She turned and hugged Dave. “Take good care of her.”

  “I will.”

  Dave was merely giving her a place to stay; she was perfectly capable of taking care of herself. Annette opened her mouth to say as much, then promptly shut it. Good heavens, what kind of crass ingrate would say such a thing? Her mother would roll over in her grave. For the second time since Dave arrived, she realized she wasn’t accustomed to treating him with the same courtesy she afforded other people. The thought stung her conscience.

  Katie looked at Annette, then Dave. “Call me if you need anything.”

  Annette nodded.

  So did Dave. “Will do.” With a wave to Katie, Dave closed Annette’s door, rounded the car, and climbed in.

  As he started the engine, Annette felt a moment of panic. She would not—repeat, would not—let him back into the driver’s seat of her heart.

  Dave pulled the car into the driveway of a low-slung ranch house on the east side of town and killed the engine. His gut knotted with teenager-ish anxiety. He hoped Annette would approve of the place. “Sit tight. I’ll come around and help you out.” He grinned. “Just like when we were dating.”

  “Not exactly,” she said dryly. “Back then, you weren’t helping me with a walker.”

  His smile widened. “Back then, it was just an excuse to take your hand.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Like you needed an excuse.”

  “I thought I did.” She’d sat next to him in sophomore English at LSU, and he’d been smitten from day one. It had taken him two weeks to work up the nerve to talk to her. “I have a confession to make. I didn’t really forget my pen the day I asked if I could borrow one. I deliberately left it in the dorm.”

  “What if I hadn’t had an extra?”

  “I would have asked to borrow your notes. Which would have been even better, because then I’d have had to find out where you lived to return them.”

  Something flickered in her eyes. She looked away before he could name it.

  “You were so beautiful I could barely breathe in that class,” he said.

  “Well, that’s certainly changed.”

  “No. You’re just as beautiful as ever.”

  She rolled her eyes. “And you’re just as full of it.”

  Grinning, he circled the car, opened the back door and pulled out her walker, then opened her door. He held out his hand to help her up, and a rush of heat shot up his arm as she gripped his fingers. She quickly released his hand and took hold of the walker. He pulled her suitcase out of the backseat and wheeled it behind him as he walked to the porch. “You move pretty well with that walker.”

  “I can’t wait to get rid of it. I can move to a cane as soon as the cast comes off.”

  “You’re doing great.” He unlocked the door and pushed it open, wondering what she would think. He’d purchased this little place after he’d divorced Linda. The house that he and Annette had lived in had been bought years ago by a young family raising three children. He’d driven by it the other day, and noticed that they’d painted the shutters black and relandscaped the front yard—all things he probably should have done when he and Annette had been together.

  “The place needs a little fixing up,” he said apologetically as Annette stepped through the front door. She paused and looked around. The room had a sofa and a TV, and that was it. “I’m going for the minimalist look,” Dave joked.

  “You’ve achieved it.” She moved farther into the room. “Looks like Linda cleaned you out.”

  “Actually, she didn’t. Marty talked me into getting a prenup.”

  “Marty’s been a good friend to you.”

  Dave nodded. “The best. He’s my AA sponsor.”

  Her eyes widened. “Marty? I never knew him to take a drink.”

  “That’s the whole point of AA. He’s been sober twenty-seven years.”

  “Wow. And he still attends meetings?”

  “Yeah. To help newbies like me.”

  “I have to admit, I’m surprised. I always pictured the meetings full of people just holding on by their fingernails.”

  “There are some of those,” Dave said. “But most members have been sober a while.”

  “I had no idea.”

  “Yeah, well, helping others achieve and maintain sobriety is part of the program.”

  She looked at him, really looked at him, as if she were seeing him for the first time in a long while. “And you’re working it.”

  “Trying to.” He gestured down the hall. “Your room’s back here.”

  She followed him to a room with a bed, two nightstands, and a matching dresser. He’d bought a blue floral comforter for the bed and a reading lamp. He’d put the lamp on the nightstand on the side of the bed she used to sleep on.

  She smiled. “This is nice. It all looks brand-new.”

  He shrugged. “I didn’t want to keep any of the furniture Linda had picked out, so I let her take it. You were my incentive to start furnishing this place.”

  “Oh, Dave—you shouldn’t have done that.”

  “Sure I should have.” He swung her suitcase onto the bed. “Need some help unpacking?”

  “No, I can get it.”

  “Do you need anything washed? I have a washer and a dryer.”

  “No. Katie took care of my laundry.”

  He watched her pull three sets of jogging suits out of her bag and stepped forward to take them. “I’ll put these in the bureau for you.” He put the pants and T-shirts in a drawer, then returned to her suitcase. Sitting on top were three pairs of lacy black panties and three lacy blac
k bras. His mouth went dry. The thought of Annette in nothing but her undies stirred up a hornet’s nest of memories. The night they’d made love at the river. The first time they’d made love after their wedding. That time at the cabin in the woods.

  He realized he’d been standing there, staring at her underwear.

  The fact didn’t escape Annette’s notice. “Developed an underwear fetish?”

  “I’ve always had one where you’re concerned.”

  “What about Linda? Did you like her underwear, too?”

  Dave sank down on the bed. “It wasn’t the same with her. It was never the same.”

  “Is that so.” Her tone was dry and disbelieving.

  “Yeah.” He looked up and met her gaze. “I never intended to get involved with her. I don’t even remember the first time. I was in a blackout. When I came to, I was in her bed.” He looked down at his fingers. A hangnail hung in a red gash off his thumb. “I was horrified.”

  “Yeah, I bet.”

  “I was.” He needed her to believe him. “My first thought was ‘Oh, God—what have I done? I’ve got to get out of here and make sure Annette never finds out and it never happens again.’ ”

  “Failed on both accounts.” Her head tilted to the side as she regarded him. “Is that really the truth? Is that really how it started?”

  He raised his hand. “Swear to God.”

  “I hate to think how many times you swore to God you’d stop drinking.”

  “This is different. Now I believe in him.”

  The skepticism in her eyes softened for a moment. And then she lifted her chin, and it was back. “For a guy who didn’t want to get involved with Linda, you sure got in awfully deep awfully fast.”

  “When you kicked me out, I had nowhere to go. I couldn’t stay in the motel forever. She offered to let me stay there, and, well…”

  “I’m sure it was a terrible hardship.”

  “Hey—I was a total ass. A drunken, stupid, take-the-easy-path ass. I’m not trying to excuse my behavior. But I want you to know that Linda and I—well, it was never what you and I had.”

  The hard glint in her eye softened again. “How was it different?”

  “We never really talked to each other. There were a lot of awkward silences, and we didn’t make each other laugh. We just didn’t have any fun together.”

  “Not even in bed?” The skepticism was back.

  “Well, that part was exciting at first, because it was new, and she…” He hesitated. He wasn’t supposed to say anything that might hurt her or put blame on the person he was making amends to.

  “She what?”

  “Never mind.”

  “No. I want to know what she had that I didn’t have.”

  “She didn’t have a thing.”

  “You started to say something, Dave. If it wasn’t something she had, it was something she did. What was it?”

  “She… wanted me.” He looked down at his hands again, embarrassed. “It’s no excuse, I know that. But… I felt like such a failure with you. Hell, I was a failure. Every time I looked at you I saw how unhappy I made you, and I just felt like the world’s biggest loser. Linda acted like I was wonderful and clever and exciting and…” He stopped and swallowed. “Hell. She made me feel good about myself.”

  Annette stared at him. He couldn’t read her expression, couldn’t tell if it was disbelief or derision or surprise. He looked back down at his thumb. His guilt felt like that—a hangnail of the heart, raw and ugly and painful. “Of course, that didn’t last. She figured out I wasn’t much of a prize pretty quickly. And as for her—well, she never could hold a candle to you.”

  The phone rang. It felt like a reprieve. He jumped to his feet. “I’d better go get that.”

  She nodded.

  He hurried from the room, glad of an excuse to escape, aware of Annette’s eyes following him with that inscrutable expression.

  • • •

  “So you’ve been living with Zack for two weeks now. How’s it going?”

  “Okay.” Katie cradled the phone against her shoulder as she straightened her salon before it opened for the day. Her friend Emma had called from Italy, and they’d already talked for ten minutes. Emma had told her all about her family, the things they’d done on their travels, about her upcoming TV special in late October and how Harold and Dorothy planned to join them. Katie had told her about the storm, how she’d hired a contractor and begun rebuilding her home, and how she and Gracie seemed to have reached at least a détente.

  But she’d been uncharacteristically hesitant to talk about Zack. Probably because she didn’t quite know where things stood between them herself.

  “Well, aren’t you a fount of information.”

  Katie swiped the feather duster over nail polishes at the manicure station. “He’s gone a lot.”

  “How much is a lot?”

  “About five days a week.”

  “So what happens on the days he’s there?”

  “Nothing, really. Just normal stuff. We eat together.”

  “Who cooks?”

  “We all take turns.”

  “He cooks? And Gracie cooks?”

  “Yeah. Gracie does a lot of Hamburger Helper, but still, she cooks. And Zack is amazing. He never does anything halfway. He’s bought books and videos on cooking, and he takes it very seriously. He’s really good. Even Gracie thinks so.”

  “Wow. There’s nothing sexier than a man who cooks. Except maybe for one who cleans up after himself.”

  “Actually, Zack does that, too.”

  “Honey, you’ve got a keeper there.”

  “I’m not looking for a keeper.” Katie decided to change the topic. “Gracie is feeling the baby move pretty regularly now. She’s starting to a childbirth class at the hospital this week.”

  “Are you going with her?”

  “No. She says she wants to do it alone.”

  “Maybe she’ll change her mind.”

  “I hope so.” Ever since they’d moved into Zack’s house, Gracie had been less hostile, but she still kept Katie at a distance. “She’s still pretty withdrawn. She spends a lot of time alone in her room.”

  “Sounds like that leaves you and Zack with lots of time alone.”

  Too much time alone, Katie thought, running the duster over the product display counter.

  “So what do you two do when you’re not cooking and eating?”

  “Watch TV, listen to music, check out progress on my house, talk.”

  “What do you talk about?”

  “Anything and everything.” Literally. From the origins of life to politics, from their childhoods to the possibility of life on other planets. It was the darnedest thing, the way they could talk so easily to each other.

  “So is a romance blooming?”

  “No.” The word came out fast and hard.

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t want to get involved.”

  “That isn’t much of a answer,” Emma said.

  “Well, it’s the best I can do.”

  “Do you have feelings for him? Is there any chemistry?”

  Oh, there was chemistry, all right so intense it was a wonder they didn’t both burst into flames. She couldn’t spend any time alone with him without remembering the kisses they’d shared and fearing she was about to kiss him again. “Chemistry’s not enough.”

  “Ooh, sounds like a yes to me.”

  “Emma, I just don’t want to get anything started.”

  “Why on earth not? You know him well, you like him, and you have a good time together.”

  “There’s more to life than that.”

  “Yeah. There’s sex.”

  Katie shifted the phone to her other ear.

  “I don’t want to end up heartbroken again.”

  “What makes you think you will?”

  “For starters, Zack isn’t planning on staying in Chartreuse. Then there’s the fact he’s a commitment-phobe who’s never had a long-ter
m relationship.”

  “Lots of men change their minds about commitment when they meet the right woman. And you could move, or he could decide to stay in Chartreuse.”

  “Yeah, well, if we get something started and it doesn’t last, it’ll be tough on Gracie.”

  “Gracie’s nearly grown. She’ll be starting her own life.”

  “Emma, I don’t want to get my heart broken again.”

  “That’s the second time you’ve said that.”

  Katie sigh, I guess that’s the bottom line. It hurts to lose someone you love. I don’t want to risk it.”

  “Honey, you’re letting fear steer your boat. Do you want to live alone the rest of your life?”

  “No.”

  “Well, then, you’re going to have to take a chance at some point in time. And chances at love don’t come around every day.”

  That was true. After Zack, she’d waited twelve years to find Paul.

  “I want you to ask yourself, ‘When all is said and done, which will I regret more: not taking a chance on love, or giving love a chance?’ ”

  “That’s not the question.” Katie frowned. “The question is, ‘What if I take a chance and lose?’ ”

  Emma sighed. “The Katie I used to know wouldn’t look at things in those terms.”

  “That Katie hadn’t been widowed.”

  “Well, this Katie is going to end up growing old by herself if she doesn’t change her attitude.” Emma’s voice softened. “Just open your heart to the possibility.” A baby’s cry sounded through the phone. “Oops—I’ve got to go. Just think about it, Katie. And think about coming to Italy to do my hair for the special.”

  Katie hung up the phone, more confused than ever.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Gracie stood uncertainly in the hospital hallway, looking into a meeting room, where a woman with short, dark hair leaned against a lectern.

  “Is this the birth class?” Gracie asked her.

  “Yes. Come in, come in.” The woman smiled and motioned her in. Gracie took a couple of steps forward, then stopped. Oh, jeez. The participants were all couples, and they all looked twice her age.

  “Come on in.” The woman waved her arm again. Eight pairs of eyes stared at her. Gracie swallowed, squelched down the urge to flee, and slunk into the room. She sank into the first available chair at the back.