by Gail Dayton
Swiping at her eyes once more and hoping she didn’t look too horrible, Sherry made herself walk down the hall to Clara’s door and knocked. Then she let herself in, calling out quietly to the nurse in case Clara was still asleep. “It’s me.”
“It’s my heart that’s broke, not my ears,” Clara called from the bedroom. “Come in here and talk to me before I go berserk from boredom and start grabbing for butcher knives.”
The duty nurse looked at Sherry across the kitchen island and grinned. “She’s in a mood today. Feeling pretty good, so she’s got to take it out on everybody around.”
Sherry smiled back as best she could and headed to Clara’s big sunny bedroom.
The older woman was sitting up in a cushy recliner big enough to swallow her, putting the TV remote through its paces. “How can there be so many channels and nothing on worth watching?” she grumbled, turning her cheek up for a kiss without ever quite looking away from her task.
“I don’t know.” Sherry fought to keep her voice even and failed miserably, as evidenced by the way Clara’s head whipped around.
“What’s wrong, sugar?” Clara gripped Sherry’s hand tight as she searched her face. “What happened? Is Micah all right?”
“He…he’s fine. Can I stay here tonight?”
“No, you may not.”
“Wh-what?” Shock started the stupid tears up again. Sherry tried to wipe them away before they showed.
“No. You can’t stay here tonight. I don’t know what you and that hardheaded son of mine fought about, but whatever it is, you can just march right back over there and straighten it out.”
“I tried—”
“Baloney. If you really tried, you’d be over there, not over here.” Clara waved her hand at the door. “Now go on. Get.”
Now what would she do? Something. She’d think of something. She was a grown woman. Strong. Invincible. Pathetic. Okay, so she wasn’t up to roaring just now, but she could by gosh squeak. “Can I at least wash my face before you kick me out?”
Clara sighed. “Oh, all right. I suppose. But hurry up.”
Sherry went into the attached bath thinking frantically. She had her car. She could go get her things as soon as Mike left for the club, then wait in the lobby for Bruno to bring her paycheck. She’d earned it. She needed it. But she wouldn’t take one thing she hadn’t bought with her own money. She splashed the cool water over her burning face one more time and turned off the faucet.
“Are you still here?” Clara called.
“Just leaving.” Sherry came to hug Clara, ignoring her attempts to push her away. “I love you, you ornery old woman.”
“Humph.” Clara shoved harder and Sherry backed up. “You should be saying that to my son. Your husband, remember?”
“He’s an ornery old woman?” Sherry shook her head. “I did. It didn’t seem to matter. You take care of yourself, hear me? Mind your nurse.”
Clara’s eyes narrowed. “Something’s not right here. What’s going—?”
Sherry fled before Clara could get into her inquisition, and kept going, ignoring the demands that she come back right this instant and explain what in hell was going on.
“Better get back there,” she told the nurse as she sailed past, “before she gets any more worked up.”
The next day Mike delayed his visit to his mother until after lunch, hoping that Sherry might have gone out. He couldn’t take seeing her again so soon. Mom was her usual feisty self, though since her “fainting spell” as she called it, she seemed more spirit than flesh. He talked about the club, danced around the pacemaker subject again, listened to the news relayed from the sister who’d come by that morning and finally gave up the fight with himself.
“Did Sherry go out?” He tried to sound casual, as if the answer didn’t matter. Because it didn’t.
“Well, how should I know?” Mom picked through the bowl of hard candies on the table beside her chair, hunting the flavor she wanted.
“She stayed here last night.” Mike frowned. “Didn’t she?”
“No, she did not. I told her to go home to her husband and work things out.” She plucked out a pale-yellow candy and pulled at the cellophane wrapper before stopping to stare at him. “Do you mean to tell me she didn’t?”
“I guess that’s what I’m saying. I haven’t seen her.” He ran a hand back through his hair, telling himself he didn’t have reason to worry. Women like her always landed on their feet.
“What in the world have you done, Micah Thomas Scott?”
“Me?” He threw himself from the chair. “I haven’t done anything but find out the truth. That she’s a liar and a fraud. She’s flat broke, Mom. That trust fund she’s so proud of is empty, has been for months. She came after me for my money.”
“Did she?”
He could feel his mother’s eyes boring holes into his back. He wasn’t about to turn around and let her bore them through his eyes into his brain.
“Did she really, Micah?” Mom’s voice was gentle. “Do you honestly think that, deep down inside you?”
“Yes.” He bit out the word.
“Then why do you care where she is?”
Because I was stupid enough to believe she was different. I was stupid enough to fall in love with her. But he wouldn’t say that aloud. “I don’t.”
The next few weeks proved that statement a lie. Mike quizzed Bruno about delivering her paycheck. She’d met him in the lobby of the building and waited at the elevator as if going back up when he left, according to the bartender’s story. She didn’t seem upset at the time. She smiled and thanked him for taking the trouble, but she did look as if she might have been crying earlier.
Her car was gone from the garage. All her things were gone from the apartment. Nothing else. She’d left the wedding ring in an envelope with his name on it on the kitchen bar. Everything was as it had been before. As if she had never set foot in his apartment, in his life.
Except that somehow she permeated the air he walked through. Her scent lingered no matter how wide he opened the balcony doors, no matter how hard he let the wind blow through. Even the night it rained, soaking his bed, it wasn’t enough to wash her out of his mind.
He missed her. He hated her. He loved her. He wished she had never set foot in his club. And he wished she would walk through the door and never leave again.
A thousand times a day, he shoved memories into a mental vault and spun the wheel to lock them away—her smile, the soft silk of her skin, the music of her laughter. And a thousand and ten times a day, the memories seeped through the cracks back into his brain. Mike didn’t bother fighting them at night. He was helpless against the dreams.
By the end of the month, he was getting better. His chest didn’t burn all the time. Now and again he slept through the night without dreaming of her. Then he got the letter.
Addressed to him at the club in a handwriting he didn’t recognize, the cheap discount store envelope bore no return address. Curious, Mike slit it open. The sheaf of papers inside confused him for a moment, because they came with a check attached, made out to him for three hundred dollars. Then he saw Sherry’s signature at the bottom.
His heart sped up before his brain caught on. She’d signed it Sherry Scott. She was still using his name. Three hundred dollars was the amount of the extra money he’d put in her last paycheck to tide her over until she got back on her feet. Why? Was she refusing to take money from him on principle? Or did she just want him to think so?
He was going to make himself crazy wondering. Mike tossed the check aside, not watching where it fell, and looked through the papers. He wasn’t hunting for a note from her, just…something. It took another moment to realize what he held. She’d sent him divorce papers.
Not nice, neat, lawyer-generated documents, but fill-in-the-blank forms copied out of some how-to-be-your-own-lawyer book. He could see a faint library stamp at the bottom of one page. Sherry had carefully filled in all the blanks, printing “NONE” in
large block letters in the spousal support box. And she had signed her name.
Mike grabbed up a pen and froze with it poised over the line marked with the X. His hand didn’t want to move. He forced the pen down, pressed the point into the paper, but he couldn’t make himself sign.
The papers might not be legal. He should just call his own lawyer, have him draw up something airtight. He should have done it already. He didn’t know why he hadn’t.
Because you’re still in love with her, you idiot.
He threw the pen across the room, then he shoved all the papers off the desk. It wasn’t enough. Anger still raged through him. He gripped the edge of his desk, fighting the urge to upend it. Destroying his furniture wouldn’t help anything. He had to get up, had to move.
Mike paced, trying to shake off the mood. How could he still love her after everything she’d done? How could mere paper make him want to tear at everything around him until it was as destroyed as he was? How could it still hurt like this?
Stupid, but he felt that if he signed his name to that paper, something precious would die. People talked about how divorce was a death of sorts—the death of a marriage. That wasn’t the case here. Their marriage had never been alive in the first place. It was a paper construct, built on lies.
But it hadn’t felt like paper. Not while he was in it. It felt like…happiness. Bone-deep. Could that exist on a foundation of lies? Mike stacked his fists, one on top of the other, against the wall and leaned his forehead on them, trying to clear away the anger enough to think.
Even when he’d been so besotted with Blair, his happiness had been a thin curtain over a sense of unease. Her defection had hurt but it hadn’t surprised him. Sherry’s betrayal had come out of nowhere, blindsiding him so he hadn’t been able to even drive. He’d been through this before, seen the greed and speculation in women’s eyes. He knew what it looked like, could spot it at a hundred paces. Had he ever seen it in Sherry’s? Could he have been wrong?
Mike struggled to banish the emotions clouding his memory. He had been so hurt, using his anger as a shield to prevent any more of it. Had he missed seeing the truth? He pressed his fingers against his eyes, pushing aside visions of Sherry in his bed, Sherry laughing at him across the table, and tried to summon up that last day. That last time he saw her.
She’d gone so white. Almost fallen. Could she truly have not known the money was gone?
No one less than the best actress in the world could have faked that reaction. Was Sherry that good? He wouldn’t have thought so, but…
Either it was all lies from the beginning or none of it was.
And if none of it was… Dear sweet heaven, what had he done?
Sherry ducked inside the kitchen door and leaned against the wall. Her shift had ended, but she was too tired to head out without taking a little breather first. She had a long walk back to her room, and her feet were already killing her. But she would make it. She’d made it this far, hadn’t she?
Two months without Mike. Her waitress job here at an Orlando resort, even with all the hours on her feet, the cranky customers and crying children, was a snap compared to living without Mike. But she hadn’t cried in her sleep for a whole week now. She hardly ever imagined she saw him striding with his long easy gait through the resort lobby.
She’d filled out the divorce papers and mailed them. All he had to do was sign them and file them with the court there in Palm Beach. The final steps wouldn’t require more than a little time. Surely it would be over soon.
With a sigh Sherry pushed off the wall and untied her pocketed apron. She carefully removed her tips and tucked them away before hanging the apron on the hook marked with her name on masking tape. The tips made the difference between bare subsistence and almost making a living. She didn’t dare drop a penny. She slipped out the back with a wave at the boss and started the long walk through the resort grounds to the dorm-like rooms where the employees who lived on-site were housed.
A lean masculine shape caught her peripheral vision, haunting her with its familiarity. She ignored it. Mike wasn’t here. Wouldn’t be, even if he knew where she was, which he didn’t. He’d lied to her, pretending to be something he wasn’t, then he’d accused her of doing what he’d done. He jumped to conclusions, made faulty assumptions and refused to listen to reason. She didn’t want anything to do with a man like that.
Which was another big fat lie. She loved him, and she was terribly afraid she always would.
He’d never actually told her about this woman who’d broken his heart, but Sherry could put the hints and clues together. She’d seen how men with money were pursued, not just in Palm Beach but everywhere she’d traveled. She couldn’t really blame him for his conclusions and assumptions. She couldn’t even blame him for refusing to listen. It was natural to throw defenses up high to prevent any more hurt. She’d done it herself enough times. And if he didn’t want her, then that was that.
“Do you have any idea of the hell you’ve put me through?”
Mike’s deep voice sent Sherry spinning around. He stood on the walk behind her. That single lock of rich brown hair spilled over his forehead drawing attention to his eyes, thundercloud gray in the bright summer afternoon. The tiny lines and bruised look around them spoke of strain. He stood there in his open-necked shirt and casual slacks seeming at first glance relaxed and coolly collected, but Sherry could see the intensity hovering beneath the surface. He fairly quivered with it.
And even knowing what he thought of her, she wanted to take him in her arms and soothe the strain away.
“Say something.” He took a step closer, still too far away to touch.
“What do you want me to say?”
“I don’t know. Hello, Mike. Goodbye, Mike. Go to hell, Mike. Something.” Another step. His gaze held her helpless.
Her lips curved into a momentary smile. “Hello, Mike.”
He took one more step and reached up to brush her hair behind her ear, freezing for half an instant before he touched her, then following through with his intention. “You look good.”
She allowed another half smile, holding herself rigid to keep from leaning into his brief touch. She wouldn’t be so needy. “Thank you.”
Mike looked around at the manicured lawns, the lush flowers. “What are you doing here?”
“Working.”
He closed his eyes a second before opening them again and settling into his “business face.” “Do you have a few minutes? Or are you heading to work? Could we meet later, for dinner maybe? We have things to discuss.”
Sherry swallowed down the hurt. It took her two tries, but she did it. At least well enough to sound reasonably cool when she spoke. “Is this about the divorce papers?”
Color flooded his face and receded again. He opened his mouth to speak, closed it, then started over. “Yes.”
“You could have filed them there in Palm Beach County. You didn’t have to come track me down.” She stared out over the tennis courts, unable to look at him.
“Yes.” He stepped in front of her, making her look. “I did. And it wasn’t easy. It’s taken me weeks to find you. When I learned you’d sold your car—I thought I’d lost you.”
“No big loss.” She couldn’t take much more of this. “Since you’d already kicked me out. No big deal.”
“It’s a very big deal. More than you can imagine.” Again he brushed back her windblown hair. “Have dinner with me.”
She didn’t dare. Already it was too hard to keep from throwing herself at him and begging him to forgive her, though she’d done nothing requiring forgiveness. “I don’t think so.” But she didn’t want him to think she was afraid of him. Even if she was. She feared what he made her feel. “I’m just coming off work. I’m too tired to want to go out again. Now is fine.”
He nodded. “All right.” He surveyed their surroundings again, then took her elbow, his grasp almost a caress. “There’s a bench under that tree.”
“Why not do it
right here?” Sherry balked. She didn’t want to spend any more time with him than she had to. Seeing him again made her feel like a drunk falling off the sobriety wagon. One taste and she would be completely lost.
“Humor me.” He drew her along. “It’s hot. There’s shade under the tree.”
When they reached it, Sherry plopped gracelessly down on the bench. To her supreme relief, Mike remained standing. He ran his hands back through his hair the way he did when he didn’t know what to do. Usually Clara prompted the finger combing.
“How is your mother?” Sherry asked. “Did you talk her into getting the pacemaker?”
He nodded, his mind obviously elsewhere. “She’s having it done next week. She’d want you to be there.”
“Maybe I’ll come.” Just because Mike hated her was no reason to give up the friendship with his mother. She was grateful Clara didn’t hate her, too. She needed to get this torture over with. “Do you have a pen?”
“What?” He blinked at her, then seemed to comprehend the question. “Oh. Sure.” He pulled one from his shirt pocket and handed it to her.
“Where are the papers?”
“What papers?”
“The divorce papers. The ones you want me to sign.”
“I tore them up.”
Why did he have to do this to her? “I already signed those. I’m assuming you tracked me down because you had your lawyer draw up a new set.” She’d managed to figure that out, understand his reason for being here, despite the way he turned her brain into pure carbonation. “A more airtight set. Make sure I don’t get any of your precious money.”
“I don’t care about the money. I never did.”
She believed him, but some vengeful spark flared up wanting payback. “Right. That’s why you kicked me out the minute you learned I didn’t have any.”
His head jerked up, the pain in his eyes making Sherry instantly wish she could call the words back. His pain slid into sorrow so deep her eyes burned with sympathetic tears.
“I deserve that, I suppose.” Mike sank onto the far end of the bench, dropping his head in his hands. “Damn, what a mess.”