by Robin Wells
Being around Katie and Gracie had started him thinking. Maybe he was going at things all wrong. Maybe there was another side to life, a side he’d deliberately avoided. Maybe Katie was right about relationships and connections. Maybe he could even move his headquarters lock, stock, and barrel to Chartreuse.
He might not be able to tell Katie the three little words she wanted to hear, but he could give her some concrete evidence that he wanted to be with her and that he intended to stick around for the long term.
He got to the top of the stairs. “Kate?” he called again.
The door to her bedroom was open. He pushed through it and then jerked to a stop.
She was sitting on the floor of the closet, her back to the door. She wore a large man’s white dress shirt, the cuffs flopping over her wrists, and she was clutching a gray T-shirt to her face. Earbuds in her ears were attached to an iPod. Several boxes marked “Paul” were open around her.
He abruptly stepped back, feeling as if he’d been slapped. As if a big pitcher of cold water had been dumped on his head. As if someone had punched him in the chest while kicking him in the kidneys, knocking all the wind out of his lungs.
Turning on his heel, Zack hurried down the stairs. His heart took the express elevator.
Damn it. Katie might be sharing his bed, but apparently her heart was still pining for Paul. Had she been fantasizing about her husband while she was making love with him? Was that “I love you” meant for Paul?
His throat felt like he was wearing an overly tight tie. At the very least, Katie was conflicted. Maybe that explained why she had tried so hard to cover up by saying she loved him. His fingers dug into his palm. He headed down the stairs and to the kitchen, where he snatched his car keys off the counter, his stomach curling into a hard fist.
To hell with this. This was why he didn’t do emotion. This was exactly why he never let women get close. All that muck his parents had rolled around in—anger and hurt and jealousy and blame—well, that was not for him. He didn’t do deep attachments, not with Katie or anyone else. He was out of here as soon as Gracie had her baby and got her life settled.
That was the plan, and he seldom deviated from a plan, once he’d formed one.
Except, in this case, he’d been ready to change the plan.
He scrubbed his hand down his jaw as he stormed out to his car. Jesus, what a sap. He’d never thought he’d turn into one of those touchy-feely guys. And yet, he never thought he could feel anything as deeply as what he felt for Katie.
Apparently, though, she wasn’t over her husband. He didn’t want to be all gaga over her if she was hung up on someone else. He didn’t want to just be a substitute. He didn’t want to be second-best.
He wanted Katie to feel about him the way she’d felt about her husband, damn it. He wanted to have what they’d had—a real-deal, heart-and-soul, in-with-both-feet, whole-enchilada, forever-and-always, equally matched, lover-lovee relationship.
He wanted it all. He wanted everything and more.
And if she couldn’t give him that, he wanted nothing at all.
Katie pulled the buds out of her ears and shrugged out of Paul’s shirt. Their favorite song no longer made her feel like she could hear him singing along, and his clothes had lost their mojo. She could no longer smell Paul’s scent, could no longer feel his presence. This time she didn’t bother to put Paul’s T-shirt back in the plastic baggie; she just placed it on top of the other clothes and folded over the flaps on the top of the last box.
She’d donned the shirt and pulled out the T-shirt as a kind of Auld Lang Syne while sorting through Paul’s things. She’d asked Dave and Annette if they wanted any more of their son’s belongings—she’d let them help themselves to his things after his death—and they’d declined. They’d suggested that she give Paul’s clothes to two different charities in New Orleans: the Salvation Army and Bridge House, an alcohol treatment facility that ran a used-clothing store. She’d equally divided the belongings, and Bev’s husband had offered to pick up the boxes and deliver them to the charities.
Dispersing Paul’s ashes at the lake had been an emotional experience for Katie, Annette, and Dave. Katie had cried, and so had Annette. The three of them had hugged, and then Dave had wrapped his arms tightly around Annette, and Annette had squeezed him back.
They’d needed the closure, Katie thought. Annette and Dave had been estranged at the time of Paul’s funeral. They’d needed to comfort each other and grieve their son together.
And as for herself… well, it had been difficult and emotional, but she was glad she’d finally done it. There was only one thing left to do.
Drawing a deep breath, she eased the wedding rings off her finger and crossed the room to her wooden jewelry box on the dresser. With shaking hands, she opened the bottom drawer and set the rings inside. The diamond twinkled against the black velvet.
“Good-bye,” she whispered.
Her throat felt swollen as she closed the box. She inhaled deeply, then headed for the door.
It was time to move on. Paul was gone, and she needed to make space in her life for a new beginning.
Around four that afternoon, Lulu eyed Katie in the salon mirror. “Why do you keep checking your crackberry every two minutes?”
Trust Lulu to catch her doing something she’d hoped no one would notice. It was a good thing she was wearing gloves so Lulu wouldn’t notice she wasn’t wearing her rings.
Katie placed her BlackBerry on the counter of her workstation and picked up the bowl of strawberry-blonde highlights she was applying to Lulu’s red curls. “No reason.”
“Yes, there is. There’s only one reason a woman keeps checking for messages like that,” Lulu said. “You’re hoping to hear from a man.”
Across the room, Rachel nodded.
“That’s right,” said Josie, who was soaking her fingers in the manicure bowl.
Everyone stared at her. “What happened, honey?” Lulu pressed. “Did you and Zack have a fight?”
“Why would they fight? Nothing’s going on between them.” Rachel looked up from the manicure station and gave a broad wink.
Lulu, Rachel, and Annie all giggled. Katie focused on stirring the highlighter, her fingers tight around the wooden-handled brush. Aside from Bev, whom she’d sworn to secrecy, Katie hadn’t admitted to anyone that she and Zack were romantically involved. Katie didn’t want it public knowledge before Gracie knew, and she didn’t want Gracie to know until Katie had at least an idea where the relationship was headed. After Zack’s reaction to this morning’s pronouncement of love, it appeared to be going directly south.
“How long are you going to keep pretending you and the hunk are just friends?” Lulu asked.
Katie picked up a piece of Lulu’s hair and slathered it with highlighter. “I bet your husband wishes you’d concentrate on your own love life the way you’re fixated on mine.”
Everyone laughed.
“Was that an admission that you’ve got a love life?” Lulu asked.
“It wasn’t an admission of anything.”
Besides, she might not have a love life anymore. She’d been trying to call Zack since early afternoon, but he hadn’t picked up. She’d texted him and e-mailed him, and she’d still gotten no response. Which was highly unusual. They’d fallen into the habit of touching base several times a day. Apparently the L-word had been a bigger gaffe than she’d realized.
After getting Lulu highlighted, blow-dried, and out the door, Katie picked up her phone, strode into the storeroom, and called Gracie.
“Hey, sweetie. How was school?”
“Okay.” The teen’s voice didn’t sound okay. She grew sullen whenever the topic of school came up, and she was getting more withdrawn with every passing day. Gracie would talk freely about her classes—especially biology and chemistry, which she loved—but she refused to offer any information about her social life or the lack thereof. Katie had tried to talk to her. She’d told her how she’d been ostra
cized at school because of her mother’s reputation. Gracie had remained close-lipped and hadn’t offered to share any of her own experiences.
“Do you have a lot of homework?” Katie asked.
“Yeah. Tons. What’s for dinner?”
“I don’t know. It’s Zack’s turn to cook.”
“Gonna be kinda hard, considering he’s in Vegas.”
“What?”
“He texted me and said he’s in Vegas. You didn’t know?”
She didn’t. He hadn’t said a word. In fact, just yesterday he’d said he planned to be in town all week. Katie’s stomach plunged to her toes. “I, uh, forgot,” Katie said, not wanting Gracie to know anything was wrong. “Did he say how long he’ll be gone?”
“Maybe three weeks.” She heard Gracie chew something that sounded like a carrot.
“Three whole weeks?”
“That’s what he said.” Another crunch sounded through the phone. “I thought you knew.”
“I, uh, didn’t realize he’d be gone that long.”
Katie hung up, feeling as if she’d eaten a bag of green apples. Her hand shaking, she dialed Zack again. To her surprise, this time he picked up.
“Hi, Kate.” It was his poker voice, the one that went with his poker face. It was completely inflection-free. “What’s up?”
Anger joined the fear churning in her belly. “You tell me.”
“What do you mean?”
How dare he act like nothing was amiss! “Gracie says you’re in Vegas.”
“Yeah. Something unexpected came up.”
“Something that’s going to last three weeks?”
“Maybe.”
Katie blew out an exasperated breath. She didn’t want to play any games. “Zack—what’s really going on? Is this about what I said this morning?”
“What did you say?”
“You know exactly what I said. All the talking… while we were…” Was he trying to get her to say it again? She’d be damned if she would. It was hard to keep her voice from shaking. “Just tell me straight out what’s going on.”
A long sigh blew through the phone. “Look, Kate… this whole thing with you and me… I think we need to take a breather.”
“A breather.” Funny how the word breather stole all the air from her lungs.
“Yeah. I’m just not… I just don’t…” He blew out another harsh breath. “I think we need some space.”
“I see.” He was doing it again—the same damned thing he’d done that summer. As soon as she told him how she felt, he shut down and backed away. She whipped around, paced six steps across the tiny room, then turned around and crossed the room again. Anger vied with hurt for top billing, duking it out inside her like rival prizefighters. Anger won. “Well, there’s probably about two thousand miles of space between Vegas and Chartreuse. I hope that’s enough for you. Because as far as I’m concerned, you can just stay there. Permanently.”
“Come on now, Kate.”
“You obviously can’t handle closeness, so I want to give you all the space you need.” She clicked off the phone and burst into tears.
Bev came into the storeroom five minutes later to find Katie sitting on the washer, crying.
“Katie, honey—what’s wrong?”
Amid a fresh spate of tears, Katie told her.
“Oh, sweetie.” The older woman pulled Katie to her bony chest and patted her back. “He’s running scared,” Bev said. “He just needs some time.”
“I don’t know, Bev. He sounded awfully distant.”
“He’ll be back.”
“I don’t know that I want him back. This is what he always does. I don’t want a man who runs away every time we get close.” She burst into new tears. “I want a man who loves me back. A man like Paul.”
“Oh, sweetie.” Her hands on Katie’s shoulders, she drew back and looked at her. “Putting Paul to rest this morning had to be so rough on you.”
It had been. But not nearly as rough as she’d feared, because at the time, she’d thought she had a future with Zack.
Bev pulled a tissue out of her pocket and handed it to Katie. “You know, this is all new territory for Zack. It’s hard to break lifelong patterns, sweetie.”
“What’s so hard about letting someone love you and loving them back?”
“My guess is he thinks you’re going to jerk the rug out from under him once he puts his heart out there. It’s what he saw growing up.”
Bev was right, but that didn’t make it okay. Katie dabbed at her eyes.
“When you think about it, he’s made a lot of concessions already. He’s moved to Chartreuse, he’s taken in Gracie, he has the two of you living with him. He even took in Annette for a while. My guess is he needs some time to process it all before he moves to the next step.”
“He could just tell me that.”
“Oh, honey, men are strange animals. They hate to admit to the slightest weakness.”
“Caring isn’t weakness.”
“Yeah, well, from everything you’ve told me, Zack thinks it is. He thinks it gives you power over him.”
“I don’t want power. I just want love.”
And the really frustrating thing was, she was pretty sure Zack loved her. After all, how could he act so considerate and attentive and kind if he didn’t love her, at least a little?
What was so awful about what she’d said, anyway?
A fresh spurt of anger shot through her. “Why does he get to set the limits on what is and isn’t allowable in our relationship?”
“He doesn’t. And I suspect that’s a lesson he’s learning right now. My guess is he’s even more miserable than you are.”
“I hope so.”
Bev gave her an encouraging smile. “This will all work out, honey.”
“I don’t know.” Katie’s heart felt as if it were tied to a concrete block. “Love isn’t just a feeling; it’s a choice. You have to want to be in a relationship. I don’t want to love someone who doesn’t want to love me.”
Bev patted her back. “You’ve had a rough day. Why don’t you go home and spend some time with that daughter of yours? I’ll close up here.”
Katie gave her a grateful smile. “Thanks, Bev.”
“Don’t mention it.” Bev gave her a hug. “And Katie—things will work out.”
But Katie wasn’t so sure. She knew what it was like to be wholly loved by a man, and she wasn’t willing to settle for anything else.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
“Don’t forget your lunch,” Katie said, holding out a brown paper sack a week later.
“Thanks.” Gracie took the sack and stuffed it into her book bag. It made her uneasy, having Katie do things for her that her mother used to do. She didn’t even think about her mother very much anymore, and that made her feel guilty and confused.
A lot of things confused her. For one thing, she didn’t know what was going on between Katie and Zack. They must have had a big fight, but neither of them admitted it. At least they weren’t mad at her. Zack texted and called her all the time, and Katie was kind and caring and, well, Katie-like. Katie seemed awfully sad, and Gracie found herself trying to cheer her up.
Gracie’s feelings about the baby were all jumbled up, too. She fluctuated between feeling excited and tender to feeling resentful and scared to death. She was more than a little horrified at the way the baby was changing her body. Her breasts kept getting bigger and heavier, and her stomach was getting these weird red lines that made it look like a road map. Was she going to be deformed for the rest of her life?
And then there was the whole giving-birth thing—God, that was beyond terrifying. And what about being a mother? Would she be able to calm the baby when it cried? Would she be able to change the diapers without puking?
And what about her own life? She’d hoped to someday find a cool guy and fall in love. Would anybody ever want to date her if she already had a baby? And what about college and a career? She’d been thinking she might wan
t to be a doctor, but that took a lot of school and studying and work, and she didn’t know how she’d do that and raise a child.
She was confused about other things, too. She had these dark thoughts she was ashamed to admit, even to herself. She was angry, and she didn’t even know at whom. She sometimes felt like the baby was a big parasite just leeching the life out of her. Sometimes she even wished the baby would die and she could just be a normal seventeen-year-old, and then she’d hate herself for having such an awful thought.
Katie handed her a fruit cup and a spoon. “I forgot to put these in your lunch.”
“Thanks,” Gracie muttered, sticking them in her bag.
“It’s too bad the school food is so rotten.”
The school food wasn’t the problem. The problem was the kids in the cafeteria. She’d steered clear of the place ever since the first day.
Just the thought of that day made her kinda sick. Gracie had carried her tray of spaghetti through the cafeteria only to find all the tables at least partially occupied. Everyone had gawked at her as if she were some kind of freakzoid.
She’d finally just sucked up her fear and plopped down in a spot. Ignoring the girls already seated at the table, she’d picked up her milk carton and started to open it.
“Hey, you’re in my seat.”
Gracie looked up to see a brunette with deep-set eyes standing beside her, her hand on her hip, a lunch box dangling from her wrist.
“I didn’t see a reserved sign,” Gracie commented.
“But I always sit there!”
“Not today.” The milk carton opened too hard, and chocolate milk splashed all over Gracie’s baggy white shirt.
“What a slob.” The girl huffed out a disgusted breath and looked at the plate of spaghetti on Gracie’s tray. “You know, you really shouldn’t eat those carbs. They’ll make you even fatter.”
Gracie’s face burned as the girl stalked off. “I’m not fat,” she called after her, loud enough to stop conversations across half the room. “I’m pregnant.”