Not Another Bad Date (7 page)

“It’s okay. It’s okay,” she’d told her sister over and over when everything was clearly
not
okay. But she hadn’t known what else to say. What to do besides stand there and watch and wait and hold it all together.

Tears slid from behind her lids, and she opened her mouth to gasp for air. She sobbed past the clog in her throat, and all the fear and sorrow and anger that she’d kept inside for her sister’s sake tore at her lungs, and she cried into her hands. The last two hours had been the worst hours of her life, and as she’d stood there helpless, trying to be strong for Sherilyn, she couldn’t help but hate William Morgan more than she already did. It should have been him there. Holding his wife’s hand and fighting for his baby. Instead, he was off acting like an idiot and boning his young assistant.

Adele took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Her tears slowed, and she rubbed her hands across her wet cheeks. As she dug around in the console between the seats in search of a Kleenex, she reached in her purse for her cell phone. Sherilyn being Sherilyn had a little pack of tissues in the console, and Adele pulled one out of the package as she flipped open her phone.

It was half past three, and she was a little late picking up Kendra from her dance party. She dried her eyes and blew her nose, and instead of calling Kendra, Adele dialed her sister’s old home phone number in Fort Worth, where William still lived. The answering machine picked up after the fifth ring.

“This is Dr. William Morgan,” he began, and in the background a female giggled, “and Stormy Winter.” Bitch. “I am indisposed at present,” William continued. “Please leave a brief message and a telephone number where you may be reached.”

It was so like William to leave a pompous message while his girlfriend giggled in the background. A-hole.

Beep.

“William, this is Adele. I’m calling to tell you that…” She paused. The last thing Sherilyn needed was for the a-hole to call and upset her. Besides, he didn’t deserve to know. “I just called to tell you to go fuck yourself,” she said, and closed her phone. Okay, so that wasn’t very mature. But Sherilyn was right. It felt good.

She glanced into the rearview mirror and groaned out loud. Her eyes were red and the skin beneath splotchy. There was no way that she wanted to knock on Zach’s door looking like crap. Yet again. She flipped open her phone and tried Kendra’s cell. If she could get Kendra to wait for her outside…perhaps at the end of that long driveway…but Kendra didn’t answer.

Sherilyn had a little baggy for garbage stuck on the gearshift, and Adele tossed the Kleenex inside as she eased off the brake. She pulled back onto the road and dug around in her purse for her sunglasses. She tried Kendra’s cell three more times before pulling into the gated community.

“Damn.” She sighed and shoved her black sunglasses onto her face. She tossed the cell phone onto the passenger’s seat and drove around some fancy-schmancy clubhouse before turning into Zach’s cobblestone driveway. She’d thought about calling Kendra from the hospital to tell her she’d be late, but she hadn’t wanted to worry her niece since there wasn’t anything anyone could do. In hindsight, she should have so that a parent could have dropped Kendra off at home.

Two Mercedes and a Ford truck were parked beneath the portico, and Adele parked her sister’s car beside the truck. She tried Kendra’s cell one more time as she grabbed the blue Hard Tail hoodie that matched her sweatpants and shoved her arms inside. No one answered, and she was forced to get out of the car and move through the walkway to the front door. The hooded sweatshirt had a red star and black wings across her breasts, and she zipped it halfway up her chest. Her sweats were nice, but nothing fancy. Nothing to make a man regret he’d dumped her, but her eyes looked like crap, so a killer outfit would have been a total waste.

She stepped onto the porch, settled her glasses, and knocked. But really, who cared if she looked horrible—yet again—she told herself. She didn’t care what Zach Zemaitis or anyone else thought about her. Zach was a jerk. In fact, people were jerks. Her brows lowered, and she was somewhat taken aback by her cynical attitude. Somewhere in the past few weeks, she’d lost her usual optimism.

The door swung open and Zach stood in front of her, tall and ridiculously good-looking, but with Zach it had always been more about his confidence that hit women like a testosterone fireball than his looks. It had always been more about the cockiness that he backed up with enormous talent that drew women to him. Or at least it had been for her.

“I’m so sorry I’m late,” she said as she gazed at him through the dark lenses of her glasses. “I was at the hospital and there was a problem and…” And why would he care? “I should have called to let someone know I’d be late. Sorry.”

He wore a white long-sleeved T-shirt advertising Moose Drool beer on the front and down one arm, Levi’s, and black flip-flops. And if she’d been a weak woman, she would have been tempted to breathe into her hand and check her breath.

“Kendra’s in the pool,” he said, dragging out the vowels to the end of next week.

“It’s what…fifty-five degrees?” Although in some states that was considered balmy for November.

“Fifty-seven, and the pool’s covered in winter.”

Of course. “Could you tell Kendra I’m here.”

His gaze lowered to the wings on her hoodie, then rose slowly to her eyes. “Come in.”

“I’ll wait in the car.” She turned and pointed to the Toyota. “Just tell Kendra that I’m—”

“What are you afraid’s gonna happen?” he interrupted her.

She turned and looked at him. “Nothing.”

He took a step back into the house, and she could barely see him through her sunglasses. His voice came out of the shadows, low and almost rough, “Then come in, Adele.”

“Are you always this bossy?”

He shrugged. “Are you always this difficult?”

“Fine.” She folded her arms beneath her breasts and walked into Zach’s house. He shut the door behind her, and she followed him through the entry and into the living room.

“Have you gone on your date with the red-haired guy?” he asked over his shoulder.

“Cletus? Yes.” Unlike the last time she’d been in the house, the expensive furniture and rich rugs were in place. She kept her gaze pinned on Zach’s wide shoulders and the back of his blond hair touching his neck so she wouldn’t make full eye contact with the big portrait of Devon staring down at her. Wherever Devon was buried, Adele was sure she was spinning in her grave. After everything Devon had done to keep Zach and Adele apart, here she was, in Devon’s house with Devon’s husband. Adele might have taken a moment to enjoy that delicious slice of irony if not for the fact that she didn’t want to be there any more than Devon would want her there.

“Wow. The guy works fast.”

“The date was nice.” Right up until he’d turned into a jerk.

“It would never work out you know.”

Yeah, she knew that. She was cursed. “Why? Because he’ll bruise like a peach?” She followed him into the kitchen. “And I figured out that you weren’t talking about me slugging Cletus, by the way.”

He opened a refrigerator and pulled out a plate of sliced tomatoes, pickles, and lettuce. Several high-pitched screeches from somewhere outside penetrated the house, and Zach winced. “You used to be quicker.”

“I used to be a lot of things.”

“I remember.” He shoved the plate at her, and one corner of his mouth turned up into a smile. “I remember a lot of things about you.” With her hands full, she was unable to stop him as he reached for her sunglasses and pushed them to the top of her head. “I remember your eyes, turquoise except when they turn a deeper blue.”

He’d been the first man to tell her that her eyes got darker when she got turned on. She remembered they’d been in his truck the first time he’d said it. He’d been kissing her mouth and touching her through her clothes and she’d wanted to eat him up.

“So tell me, honey,” he said just above a whisper, “what’s got your beautiful eyes so sad?”

A plate of veggies separated his stomach from hers, and she didn’t think to ask why he’d shoved the plate at her. For a few brief moments, she forgot he was a jerk. She was a woman who hadn’t had a decent date in years, and he was a man. An incredibly hot man with a soothing Southern accent that touched the places deep in her soul. The hot itchy places that wanted to be soothed.

Adele’s lips parted, and she took a breath. It would have been easy to unload her problems on his big shoulders.

“Life’s not so bad,” he said.

Showed how much he knew. “My life sucks.”

“Why?”

So many reasons. “My sister is in the hospital fighting for the life of her baby, and it should be her husband holding her hand. Not me.”

Zach lowered his gaze to Adele’s mouth. “Where’s her husband?”

She was so disconcerted by his attention to her mouth that her brain got a little fuzzy, and she blurted, “Off boning Stormy Winter somewhere.”

Confusion wrinkled his brow but he didn’t look up. “Stormy Winter?”

“His girlfriend.”

“Ah.” He slid his brown gaze back up to hers. “Stripper?”

Adele smiled. “His ‘assistant.’”

A door opened, and Zach looked up past Adele. “Shit,” he said through a groan.

“I thought you might need some help,” a female voice said, followed by the click of heels on the stone floor.

Zach returned his gaze to Adele’s and replaced her sunglasses on the bridge of her nose. “Thanks, Genevieve, but I found a helper. You shouldn’t have troubled yourself.”

Behind the lenses of her glasses, Adele closed her eyes.
Please God, not Genevieve Brooks.

“It’s no trouble,” Genevieve Brooks assured him as she stepped into the kitchen.

“Why am I holding this plate?” Adele finally thought to ask.

“In just a minute, I’ll need you to carry that outside.” Zach turned and walked back to the refrigerator, and Adele lowered her gaze to the back of his Levi’s. His wallet made a bulge in one pocket, and he bent forward slightly to pull out a big tray of hamburger patties and hot dogs. “You can grab the buns over there on the counter, Genevieve,” he added as he shut the door.

The heels of Genevieve’s pumps tapped across the tile as she moved to the counter. She was as tall and lean as Adele remembered, and she wore a white blouse, beige pants, and cardigan. Probably St. Johns. Several ropes of pearls circled her slim neck, and she wore a diamond the size of a marble on her ring finger. “Those girls are going to be starving,” Genevieve said. She grabbed the buns, then turned to Adele. “Hello. I’m Genevieve Brooks-Marshall. Lauren Marshall is my stepdaughter.” Genevieve’s makeup was understated and perfect, and her black hair was cut into a straight bob.

Adele assumed Lauren was on the dance team. “Kendra Morgan is my niece,” she said.

“One of the new girls?”

Adele nodded as Zach walked past her through the kitchen, and she followed him into the dining room. “I’m obviously interrupting your dinner plans,” she said to his back. “So, if you’ll just show me where to set this, I’ll grab Kendra, and we’ll leave you to your guests.”

He opened one of the French doors, and Adele stepped out onto a terrace. “What was your name?” Genevieve asked as she joined them.

“Adele Harris.” Adele waited for any sort of recognition from the woman with whom she’d gone through twelve years of school, but there was none. Adele wasn’t all that surprised.

Zach closed the door, and the two women followed him down a set of stone steps to the lower terrace and cobblestone courtyard. It was a clear November day, and Adele felt like she’d stepped into a fall issue of
Better Homes and Gardens.
Beyond the courtyard, sunlight fell on an expanse of pruned gardens, sculpted shrubbery, and a lawn that separated the main house from two smaller dwellings.

To her left, girls from Kendra’s dance team swam and jumped into a full-sized pool enclosed in steamy glass. Adele obviously wasn’t the only late parent.

She followed Zach toward a turbo-sized barbecue set into a stone island and past several tables set with yellow tablecloths. Between the tables were five commercial-grade patio heaters, each warming up the twenty feet around them. Adele set her plate next to a bag of chips and pasta salad on a long table. A man wearing a ball cap stood next to the monster-sized grill. The second woman standing beside him laughed at something he said. As Zach approached with the tray of meat, the guy in the cap opened the big chrome lid and scraped the grill with a wire brush.

Adele didn’t belong there and planned to make a quick getaway. She turned toward the pool, and the closer she walked to the enclosure, the more she was able to see that she’d either been mistaken about the time, or there were a lot of late parents. She opened the glass door and the smell of chlorine and the sound of high-pitched laughter hit her like a brick to the head. She spotted Kendra hanging on to the side of the pool and knelt on one knee beside her. “Am I late?” she asked above the noise, and pushed her sunglasses to the top of her head.