Still the One (23 page)

His mouth moved over hers. Zack’s hands slid from her waist to her back. Her arms somehow wound around his broad shoulders.

She could feel the hard length of him, and it set her on fire. She moved against him, fitting her torso to his, her blood
hot and fevered. She stood on her toes and wrapped her right leg around both of his, arching her spine, needing to get closer.

She couldn’t get close enough. She wanted to touch his skin, to be naked underneath him, to feel him plunging into the part
of her that ached to be filled. Desire, ravenous and mindless as wildfire, scorched through her. She needed… she wanted…

“Katie!”

Oh, dear lord. It was Iris Huckabee, her next appointment. Alarm shot through her.

“I—I’ve got to go.”

“Okay.” He didn’t turn her loose.

“Katie?” Iris screeched again, her voice like metal rubbing against metal.

“Seriously,” she whispered to Zack. “I’ve got to go. The longer it takes for us to come out of this closet, the worse this
will look.”

“Why do you care?”

“Because…”
She felt like she was cheating on Paul.
A sense of shame snaked through her.

“Dorothy, do you know where Katie is?” Iris shrilled.

Oh, God. Dorothy would know they were still in the closet together.

“Be right with you, Iris,” Katie called, breaking away from Zack. “I’m getting some towels.” She burst through the door, then
realized she didn’t have any towels in her hand.

Thankfully, Zack followed her, carrying a stack of towels.

Iris’s painted-on eyebrows rose above her cat-eye glasses. “Who’s this?”

“I’m Zack Ferguson.” He smiled at the woman, then turned to Katie and held out the towels. “You really should put the towels
on a lower shelf.”

She followed his lead, grateful for the excuse. “Thanks for getting them down for me.”

“No problem.” As she reached for the towels, he whispered, “See you tonight.”

“No.” She couldn’t. Her emotions felt like a scraped knee.

She was aware that Iris was watching them avidly. Dorothy had pushed the hair-dryer helmet up and was following the exchange
as well.

She turned and carried the towels to her stylist station. “It’s my book-club night,” she said as casually as she could. And
if it hadn’t been, she would have found some other excuse. “Can Gracie stay with you tonight?”

“Sure.”

“Good. Thanks for stopping by.” As soon as he left, she’d explain to the two women that Zack had dropped in to discuss arrangements
for Gracie.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Zack said pointedly.

Not if she could help it. She needed some time to gather her wits and work through her tangle of emotions.

He mercifully moved toward the door. She turned to Iris and motioned to her chair. “Have a seat.”

She heard the door open, and although she didn’t turn around, she knew the exact moment Zack left the salon. She felt the
air change, felt it lose its charge and fizz, felt it flatten like a left-out soda, returning to the way it had been before
he’d walked in.

“Good job, Mrs. Charmaine. Now turn around and go back the other direction.”

Annette squinted against the late-afternoon sun shining through the window of the physical therapy room, then tightened her
grip on the wooden bars on either side of her. It was hard to believe that the boy who’d been such a lackadaisical student
as a teenager had turned into such a drill sergeant of a physical therapist. “I’m tired, Blake. I’ve been walking this cattle
chute for half an hour.”

“And you’re doing great. Let’s see you do it again. And this time, put more of your weight on that leg.”

Annette scowled. “You’re an unconscionable slave driver.”

“Unconscionable.” Blake shook his head and laughed. “Only an ex–English teacher would use a word like that.”

“Humph.” Annette rested her weight on her good leg and slowly turned around. “If you’d studied your vocabulary words half
as much as you studied your football playbook, you might even know what it meant.”

“Ow!” Blake clutched his chest. “You got me with that one.”

She took a step forward on her new knee and winced. She was amazed at how much an artificial joint could hurt. “I think you’re
getting back at me for giving you a C on your book report on that Lindbergh biography.”

Blake’s eyes widened. “You remember that?”

“I most certainly do.” It was funny that she could remember the topics of most of her students’ biographical book reports.
She’d always learned a lot more about the students than the subjects they’d reported on. “You spelled his name with a
u
instead of an
e
.”

Blake laughed. “Spelling never was my strong suit.”

“I’ll say.” She grimaced as she took a step.

He folded his arms across his chest and watched her. “As it turns out, it’s a good thing I spent more time on football than
English. If it weren’t for football, I wouldn’t be here with you today.”

“And wouldn’t that be a tragedy,” Annette muttered, taking another painful step.

Blake laughed. “It would be, actually. You’ve got to work through the pain to get better, and you need someone to make you
do it.”

Annette was sure there was a lot of wisdom in the statement, but she hurt too much to contemplate it right now. “I fail to
see the connection between torturing me and football.”

“Well, if it weren’t for football, I wouldn’t have gone to college. And if I hadn’t played, I wouldn’t have gotten injured,
and then I never would have gotten interested in physical therapy. And since I know what it feels like to be hurt, I can relate
to my patients.”

“Humph!” She took a pain-racked step and winced. “You relate about as well as you spell.”

“Is she giving you a hard time again?”

Annette’s head jerked toward the sound of Dave’s voice. He was leaning in the doorway, his lanky frame filling it. The sight
of him turned her heart into a pattering fool.

“Again? She never lets up,” Blake complained.

“Don’t I know it.” Something in Dave’s lazy grin made her stomach flip-flop. “How’s she doing?”

“Well, she needs to put more weight on that leg, but overall, she’s doing great.”

“Glad to hear it.”

“You two are talking about me as if I’m not even here,” Annette complained.

“That’s because I want actual information,” Dave said. “If I ask you, all I’ll hear is how Blake is trying to kill you.”

Blake laughed. “You’ve got her number, all right.”

“I should. I was married to her for thirty-two years.”

Before he’d humiliated her in front of the whole town. Everyone knew he’d cheated on her, and they’d no doubt speculated on
why. Her abilities or the lack thereof in bed probably had been dissected and discussed ad infinitum. It was one of the reasons
she’d moved to New Orleans. She couldn’t stand the embarrassment—plus the ever-present fear of running into Dave or that tart
he’d taken up with.

It had been awful, trying to avoid them. She’d had to look for Dave’s car in the parking lot before she dared go in the grocery
store or drugstore or café. She’d begun to feel like a fugitive hiding from the law.

And then there was the whole issue of how everyone treated her. Her friends were sympathetic at first, but they didn’t know
what to say, and conversations grew stilted and awkward. After a while they started skirting around her, as if she were tainted
with something contagious. She probably made them uncomfortably aware that their husbands could light out after fresh tail,
too, if they took a notion to, she’d thought bitterly. After all, men remained attractive in their fifties, while women just
seemed to grow invisible.

A nurse poked her head into the room, her forehead creased like an oriental fan. “Blake, I need some help!” Her tone was urgent.
“Mrs. Anston fell. I don’t think she’s hurt, but I can’t get her off the floor.”

“I’ll come help,” Dave offered.

“Thanks, but only staff and relatives can physically assist residents,” the nurse said. “You can stay with Mrs. Charmaine
while Blake’s gone, though.”

Annette started to say that Dave was no longer a relative and therefore wasn’t qualified to help her, either, then realized
she would only be delaying getting help to poor Mrs. Anston.

Blake headed for the door. “I’ll be right back,” he called to Dave. “Just keep her walking the ramp.”

“Will do.”

A feeling of awkwardness settled over her as she found herself alone with Dave. He’d stopped by every day over the past two
weeks—sometimes twice a day—and although she didn’t want to admit it, she’d begun to look forward to his visits.

Although God only knew why. The man had broken her heart, ground it to bits, and stomped it into dust. She hated the fact
that she was starting to expect him to appear. Hadn’t she learned the hard way not to expect anything from Dave? If she didn’t
expect anything, she wouldn’t be disappointed when he let her down.

She hauled herself down the ramp as fast as she could. “You don’t have to stay. I’m fine.”

“I gave my word.”

“Oh, and that means something?”

“It does these days.”

She turned at the end of the ramp. She knew he’d gotten sober, and from everything she’d seen and heard, he had changed his
ways, but she just couldn’t—or was it
wouldn’t
?—accept it.

Wouldn’t,
she reluctantly acknowledged. She didn’t want to accept it. His personal transformation had come too late for her. She was
being harsh and cold and judgmental and she knew it, but she couldn’t seem to help herself. She forced her left leg forward.
“What are you doing out here, anyway?”

He lifted his shoulders. “Seeing how my best girl is doing.”

My best girl
. It was a phrase he’d used when they’d first started dating. In light of his infidelity, it rankled. “I might have been the
best, but I wasn’t the last, was I, Dave?”

“No.” He shook his head, his eyes filled with a forlorn angst. “And that’s a mistake I’ll regret till my dying day.”

“You only regret it because your second marriage didn’t last.”

“Annette, what Linda and I had…” He ran a hand across his balding pate. “It wasn’t really a marriage. It never was. Not like
with you and me.”

“Oh, like it was so good between us?” She was glad to feel a surge of anger, glad to have the heat to hide behind. “The nights
you didn’t come home, the drunken arguments…”

He blew out a sigh. “You deserved a whole lot better.”

“Damned right.”

Dave smiled. “You never used to curse. It’s a good sign. Maybe you’re starting to get some of that anger off your chest.”

A fresh spurt shot into her bloodstream. “It’s not like a backpack I can just take off, David. It’s not something concrete
and finite. It’s like a polluted well. Like systemic poison. Like a bad infection. It runs all through me. It’s crippled me.
It’s wrecked my life.”

“I know, sweetie. I know. And I’m so, so sorry.” He spoke in a low, gentle tone, the same tone he’d used to soothe their colicky
baby when they’d taken turns holding him and rocking him all through the night. The memory hurt worse than her knee.

“Infections can be cured,” he continued. “Crippled parts can be rehabilitated. It takes time and work, but it can be done.”

And he thought he could help her do that? “You can’t fix me, Dave. You broke my heart. You’re the breaker, not the fixer.”

He lifted his shoulders. “Maybe I can be both.”

“No. You can’t.”

“Well, I figure I’ll keep coming around and let you take potshots at me until your poisoned well dries up. You’ll feel a lot
better if you let go of your anger.”

“
You’ll
feel a lot better if I do.”

“Yeah. You’re right.” His head bobbed agreeably. “But this is about you.”

She gave a derisive sniff. “It was never about me.”

“Well, now, that’s where you’re wrong.” His voice was maddeningly calm. “I wasn’t perfect, but I always loved you.”

I always loved you.
The English teacher in her analyzed the comment. Was that past tense, or did the adverb
always
make it present and future tense, too?

To Annette’s relief, Blake reappeared in the doorway. “Is Mrs. Anston all right?” she asked.

Blake nodded. “She’s going to have a bad bruise, but nothing’s broken and she’s able to walk.” He looked at Dave. “How did
Mrs. Charmaine do?”

“She walked back and forth four times while you were gone.”

“Wow. You must have really inspired her.”

Annette huffed out an exasperated breath. Dave grinned. “Don’t know about inspired, but I riled her up pretty good.”

“I’ll have to try that,” Blake said.

“Don’t bother. I’ll come back tomorrow and do it for you.” Dave gave that familiar little wink and ambled toward the door.
“See you later, sweetheart.”

Sweetheart? How dare he sweetheart her!

But before she could voice an objection, the door closed behind him. It popped open a second later. “By the way—you look really
nice in that shade of blue.”