Not Another Bad Date

by Rachel Gibson

  Zach grabbed the EZ-MART bag on the seat beside him and headed across part of the courtyard and into the house. As he walked past the laundry and storage rooms, the thud of shitty hip-hop music assaulted his ears from the sound system built into the house. He moved into a small room where every aspect of the house could be controlled, and he turned the system off. After living in the house full-time for three years now, he’d mastered most of the gadgets, buttons, and switches.

  “Tiffany,” he called out as he moved into the kitchen and set the groceries on the honey-colored marble counter. He heard footsteps running down the terra-cotta stairs a few seconds before his daughter appeared. Her long blond hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and she wore a blue T-shirt and flannel pants. Tiffany’s arms and legs were long and thin, and she had yet to grow into her wide mouth and big green eyes. When she did, there was little doubt she’d be as beautiful as her mother.

  A girl with dark brown hair and startling blue eyes followed in Tiffany’s wake.

  “Did you get the Coke cola?” his daughter asked as she tore into the bag.

  Zach didn’t feel the need to answer because his daughter pulled the six-pack from the sack and headed to the stainless-steel refrigerator. “Sugar, you need to introduce your friend.”

  “Oh, yeah.” Tiffany grabbed two cans of cola and shut the refrigerator. “Kendra, this is my daddy.” She moved to the other girl and handed her a Coke. “Daddy, this is Kendra. She’s new to my school.”

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Kendra,” he said as he opened a cupboard and put away the box of Corn Flakes. “Where are you from?”

  “Fort Worth.”

  “Are you a Cowboys fan?”

  “No, sir. I don’t watch football.” She popped the top on her Coke and took a drink. “My daddy used to take me to see my grandmomma in South Carolina, and we’d go to Darlington sometimes.”

  “Ah, you’re a NASCAR fan.”

  She shrugged and looked about the kitchen. “It was kinda boring.”

  “Can you believe she doesn’t like football?” Tiffany asked as she grabbed the bag of chips. “I’ve never known anyone who doesn’t like ball.”

  “I used to play on my school’s soccer team.” Kendra returned her gaze to Zach. “It’s kinda the same.”

  Tiffany gasped, and Zach laughed. “Don’t say that too loud around here,” he said, and changed the subject to save her from uttering any more unforgivable faux pas. “What brings you to Cedar Creek?”

  “My momma used to live here. She and my daddy are getting a divorce, so we moved here for a while.”

  Kendra didn’t offer more, and Zach didn’t pry.

  “Come on.” Tiffany opened the chips as she walked past her friend. “Let’s go watch a movie.”

  “I’m going to bed, so keep it down. And try to get to sleep at a reasonable hour.” Zach spoke to the girls’ backs as they headed down the stairs to what his wife had called the “theater room,” which was more like a big family room with a seventy-two-inch high-definition TV.

  Zach left the kitchen light on, but turned the others off as he moved through the house. In the living room, the leather sofas, chairs, and wooden end tables had been pushed to one side. Tiffany had obviously been practicing her dance routines, which also explained the loud music when he’d first arrived. Unlike her mother, Tiffany was not a cheerleader. Instead, she much preferred her school’s dance team. She’d inherited coordination and timing from both parents, but her fierce competition came directly from him. People had accused Devon of being competitive, but she hadn’t been so much competitive as she’d been territorial.

  He moved past the entry and down a short hall to his bedroom. The house had been built with his and hers walk-in closets, but Zach had never cared about clothes. He had a few nice suits, but he preferred hundred-percent cotton, and as a result, his closet was fairly empty. Until a year ago, when he’d finally convinced Tiffany that it was time to donate her mother’s clothes to the Junior League, Devon’s clothing had filled her closet and half of his.

  The soles of Zach’s shoes sank into the thick beige carpeting as he moved across the room to a set of dresser drawers. The headboard of his king-size bed rested between two large windows covered in green-and-blue-striped drapery. Once he’d decided to move into the house, he’d had his bedroom furniture shipped from his condo in Denver, and he’d replaced the pastel colors Devon had favored with bolder, more masculine prints. The bedroom was the only room in the house that reflected Zach’s tastes, and it was one of a very few rooms in the house he could walk into without seeing photographs of his dead wife.

  Zach stripped down to his boxers, remembered that Tiffany had a guest, and pulled on a pair of gray sweatpants. His daughter wasn’t ready to put away Devon’s pictures, and while having Devon’s green eyes watching him from one end of the house to the other was kind of weird, Tiffany found comfort in the images.

  Zach set his watch on a maple chest of drawers. During the ten years he’d played pro ball, he’d thrown close to four thousand passes and rushed for over a thousand yards. He’d been in three pro bowls, won a Super Bowl, and been voted MVP. He’d be eligible for induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in two years, and it was expected that he’d be voted in on his first attempt. He had more money than he could spend in two lifetimes and made more every day from investments. He owned memorabilia businesses, and he was coaching high-school ball for twenty-five grand a year.

  Zach moved to one of the windows that looked out the backyard and over the lighted grounds and pool covered by a thirty-six-foot-by-sixty-eight-foot retractable Plexiglas dome. He really didn’t have any complaints. His life was surprisingly good…except for his sex life. Having a teenage daughter made it very difficult, if not downright impossible, to have any sort of sex life. Out of all the things he missed about his former life, and there was a lot to miss, he missed his sex life the most.

  He pressed a hand to the cool glass window and thought about the woman he’d seen in the hospital parking lot. He thought about her nice behind and her long blond curls. He thought about the girl he’d known his senior year in college and how she’d driven him insane with just a look from those big blue eyes of hers.

  He hadn’t thought of Adele Harris in a long time, but all these years later, the memory of her was still clear. After a lifetime of knocks to the head that made it hard to remember some things, he remembered her wild hair and amazing eyes, he had no troubling remembering how she felt beneath his hands and how her hands had felt on him. He had no problem remembering the first time he’d kissed her in her dorm and the day he’d touched her through her clothes. They’d only dated for a short time, but he remembered her. He supposed it might have something to do with the fact that she’d been a virgin until the night she’d let him touch her without her clothes.

  Zach looked down at the patio and across to the guesthouse. In a lot of ways, Adele had been different from the other girls he’d dated, and he’d really loved that about her. Hell, at the time he’d thought that maybe he’d loved her.

  Now, he was older and supposed to be wiser, and he wasn’t even sure he knew what that meant anymore.

  Chapter 3

  The house was huge. Even by Texas standards. It was made of stucco and stone and had a red tile roof. Adele guessed it was supposed to look like a Tuscan villa of some sort, but it had a slight Romano’s Macaroni Grill look to it, and she got an urge for shrimp scampi. Or maybe she was just hungry from spending all night in the hospital.

  She parked her sister’s car under the portico, then moved beneath the vine-covered walk to a set of heavy wood doors with wrought-iron handles. She rang the doorbell and folded her arms against the morning chill. She’d run out of the house in such a hurry the night before, she’d forgotten a jacket.

  The moment she’d driven into the gated community, she’d felt a slight unease. It reeked of the kind of money and exclusion that had always made her uncomfortable. Like an interlop
er. It wasn’t that she herself didn’t feel good enough. She was successful and made a very good living off her writing, but being back in Cedar Creek again reminded her of growing up in the small town. Of growing up just inside the boundary between the haves and have-nots.

  As a kid, she’d been bused to schools in the wealthier neighborhoods, and she’d never really fit in. Partly because her family had been middle class, and partly because she’d lived a lot in her own head. She’d made a few friends in middle and high school, but she’d lost track of them after she’d left for UT.

  She fit in a lot better with the good friends she’d made in Idaho. She felt like she belonged there more than she ever had in the place where she’d been born and raised. But here she was, back in Texas, standing on the porch of a mansion, out of place in her coffee-stained, thin white sweater that zipped up the front.

  She’d been back in town a week. Seven exhausting days of helping her sister that had culminated in rushing Sherilyn to the hospital the night before. At least Adele had been able to wash her face and use a toothbrush she’d bought in the gift shop before she’d left to pick up Kendra.

  One side of the heavy doors swung open, and a girl with long blond hair stood just inside. “Are you Kendra’s momma?” she asked, flattening her vowels like a true Texan.

  “I’m her aunt.” The girl was very thin, and there was something vaguely familiar about her. Something Adele couldn’t put her finger on. Then again, maybe there was nothing. She was exhausted, and her mind was fuzzy.

  “I’m Tiffany.” She swung the door open and smiled, showing a mouthful of braces. “Come on in. We’re just finishing up breakfast.”

  Adele stepped inside and onto terra-cotta tiles with a Marcala medallion in the center of the large entry. Her flip-flops slapped her heels as she followed Tiffany down a hall and into the kitchen, where everything was made of marble, granite and stainless steel. Morning sunlight spilled through a large leaded-glass window, throwing odd patterns on the floor and commercial-grade appliances.

  Within a splash of white light, Kendra stood with one hip shoved into a counter. Except for the Harris eyes, she looked just like her father, William.

  “Where’s Mom?” Kendra asked, and took a bite of a Pop Tart with pink icing.

  “I had to take her to the hospital last night.”

  Kendra straightened and swallowed. “What’s wrong? Is she still there? Is she okay?”

  “She has something call preeclampsia.”

  “What’s that?”

  Adele herself wasn’t quite sure. The doctors had talked a lot about high levels of protein and dangerously high blood pressure, but Adele had not really understood the how and why of it. Only that it was very serious. She explained the best she could. “It’s something that happens in the placenta that causes high blood pressure.” Maybe. “She’s okay, but the doctors say she has to stay in the hospital for a while.” There was a good chance Sherilyn would have to spend the four remaining months of her pregnancy in the hospital, which meant Adele was going to be stuck in Texas for longer than she’d planned. A lot longer.

  “Is the baby okay?”

  “He’s fine.” For now. “Go get your stuff, and I’ll take you to see her.”

  Kendra nodded, and her fine dark hair fell across her cheek. She walked from the kitchen, her Pop Tart forgotten in her hand. Adele wished she knew her niece better and knew what to say, but she didn’t, and she felt a little guilty about that. Adele hadn’t seen Kendra since her niece’s seventh birthday, and she’d grown up a lot in six years. Her body was maturing, and she’d started to wear a little bit of makeup to school this year. Not a lot, but it wouldn’t be long until she was smack-dab in the middle of her teenage years.

  “Are you from Fort Worth?” Tiffany asked.

  Adele turned her gaze to the young girl in front of her. “No. I’m from Idaho.”

  Tiffany nodded and pushed her hair behind her ears. “I’ve been to Des Moines.”

  That was Iowa, but Adele didn’t bother to correct Tiffany. A lot of adults thought Idaho was in the Midwest, too. “Did you girls have a good time last night?” she asked in an effort to hold up her side of the conversation. She hadn’t been around teens since she’d been one herself and didn’t really know what to say to someone twenty-two years younger. What did teenage girls do these days?

  “Kendra’s gonna try out for the dance team, and I’m helpin’ her with the routines. Two girls got cut on account of gettin’ caught at a beer party doin’ keg stands.”

  Apparently teens were doing keg stands. Adele hadn’t begun her keg-standing career until college.

  “Kendra danced at her old school, but you probably know that.”

  Actually, she didn’t. Adele listened as Tiffany rambled on about her dance team and their chances of making it to nationals this year. And the more she talked, the more Adele felt there was something familiar about the girl. But that something wasn’t quite clear in Adele’s tired brain.

  “I can’t find my dance shoes,” Kendra said as she walked toward them, her sweatshirt in one hand and a backpack slung over one shoulder. Her eyes were red and her cheeks smeared with tears as if she’d just wiped a palm across her face.

  Tiffany turned on her heels and walked from the kitchen. “You probably left them in the living room.”

  Adele put her arm around her niece’s shoulders, and they followed Tiffany. “Your mom and the baby are going to be just fine. When I left, she was eating breakfast, and the baby was kicking.” Not that she’d felt any kicking herself.

  “Really?”

  “Really. She’s going to need lots of rest, but I’ll be around to help out.” They moved into the dark living room, and Adele gave her niece’s shoulder a squeeze before she dropped her arm to her side. “Try not to worry.”

  “I always wanted a little brother,” Tiffany said as she flipped a switch. Delicate wrought-iron chandeliers lit up a large room with the furnishings pushed back against the walls. The large rugs had been rolled up leaving the middle bare. “But my momma and daddy only had me,” she added.

  “I always thought it would be nice to have an older brother.” Adele moved farther into the room and glanced about for Kendra’s shoes. At the far end, a fireplace made of gold-and-brown marble dominated one wall. Columns and leaves were carved into the smooth stone, and like the rest of the house, it bordered on over the top. “A little brother would have been really ni—” She stopped in midsentence, her mouth fell open and the air whooshed from her lungs. Above the mantel, caressed by the warm glow of special lighting, Devon Hamilton stared down at her from a life-sized portrait. Her green eyes cold and her lips pressed into that I’m-better-than-you smile Adele recognized.

  Tiffany moved beside her and looked up. “That’s my momma.”

  Adele moved her mouth to speak, but no words came out. Shock hit her stomach, while hot little pinpricks spread up her chest to her face. She took one step back, then another.

  “She died a few years ago.”

  Adele stopped. Shock number two. Devon is dead? “I’m sorry,” she whispered past the clog in her throat.

  “Wasn’t she beautiful? Like an angel.”

  “Mmm-hmm,” she managed.

  “It’s just me and Daddy now.”

  Daddy. Tiffany and Kendra went to school together, which meant Tiffany was also thirteen. Which also meant…holy crap. In her shock over Devon, she’d forgotten all about Daddy. “Kendra, we’ve got to go. Now!”

  Both girls looked at her, and Kendra said, “I need my shoes.”

  “Get them another time.” Adele headed toward the door.

  “Maybe I left them downstairs.”

  “I’ll wait in the car,” Adele said over her shoulder as she moved through the entry and out the door. “This can’t be happening,” she whispered to herself. Her fingers felt cold, and she shook her hands. She twisted an ankle on the uneven cobblestones in the walkway, but she didn’t let a little thing like pain s
hooting up her shin slow her down. “Oh my God. I can’t believe this.” She hooked a right beneath the portico and moved toward Sherilyn’s Celica. At one time or another, every woman alive fantasized about running into an ex and making him sorry he’d dumped her. Adele had had those fantasies. She’d had them a time or two about Zach Zemaitis, but she’d always pictured herself sizzling hot, not looking like crap with coffee down her sweater.

  She pulled a set of keys from the pocket of her jeans. God, just get me out of here. She looked up, and the keys fell from her numb fingers at the sight of shock number three jogging up the driveway toward her. The sunlight caught in Zach Zemaitis’s hair like a halo and a pair of Oakley Thump Pros rested on the bridge of his nose. Her heart pounded in her ears as the soles of his running shoes pounded the uneven cobblestones with ease.

  Within the shadow of the portico, Adele stood frozen, afraid to breathe as he jogged up the drive. He gazed straight ahead, and with any luck, he’d run right on by without seeing her. But lately, Adele’s luck had been fairly shitty, and just before he disappeared from sight, his head turned, and he looked right at her. His footsteps slowed and stopped. He retraced a few steps backward, and a crease furrowed his brow. For several long seconds, he simply stared at her, pinning Adele with a gaze she could feel rather than see. He was breathing a bit heavy as he pulled air into his lungs, and he slowly raised a hand to his temple and turned off the MP3 built into the slim frame of his glasses. He pulled the little speakers from his ears, then pushed the black sunglasses to the top of his head. Across the distance he looked at her through the dark brown eyes that used to make her heart squeeze and her stomach ache. His brows lowered over his steady gaze, and he walked from the sunlight into the shadow. With each step of his jogging shoes, her heart pounded a little faster in her chest, and she put a hand on the trunk of the car to keep from keeling over…or passing out…or jumping in the car and locking the doors.