Still the One (43 page)

Anger flashed through her, white-hot as lightning. There was no talking to this man—no point in trying to explain. Zack would
never be able to fully commit to her, to give her the unconditional, full-hearted love she needed. He couldn’t even listen
to her!

“This conversation is over.” Katie’s arms went rigid at her sides. “I have nothing further to say to you. I will be polite
to you in front of Gracie and everyone else. I will include you in birthday and holiday celebrations, and I will be civil
and kind. But you and I have no reason to ever have any more conversations of a personal or romantic nature. Do you understand?”

“Oh, I understand, all right. I understand more than you know. I understand that nothing really personal ever happened between
us, because there was always a third party in the room. Well, I leave you to him. I hope you two will be very happy together.”

He was the most impossible, pigheaded, insensitive man she had ever encountered. She wanted to walk away, but he was closer
to the door, so he walked out first.

It made her furious. It made her tremble with rage. It made her burst into tears after his back disappeared around the corner
in the hallway.

•   •   •

Annette sat in Katie’s new kitchen and watched her turn on the stove under the teakettle. “I understand you and Zack had a
big argument at the hospital.”

“Where did you hear that?”

“Nellie has her sources. Apparently you were overheard.”

“Great, just great.” Katie sank onto a barstool at the kitchen counter, her heart sinking with it.

“What’s going on with you two, anyway? I heard Zack proposed.”

Bev was the only person she’d told, and Bev knew how to keep a confidence. “How did you hear that?”

Annette lifted her shoulders. “Apparently someone coming down the stairs a couple of days earlier heard you talking in the
stairwell.”

Terrific. Were there no secrets in Chartreuse? “Does the whole town happen to know what kind of toilet tissue I prefer?”

Annette smiled. “That would be Charmin.”

Katie stared at her.

“Just kidding. I happen to know because I once changed a roll at your house.” She shifted, stretching her leg. “Seriously,
Katie—Zack proposed and you refused?”

“He doesn’t love me. The word didn’t even come up. He’s just trying to do what he thinks he should have done back when I had
Gracie. And I’m not going to rope him into something that he’ll resent in a year or two.”

“But…”

Katie held up both hands. “I’ve already heard the ‘people can change’ speech so many times I know it by heart.”

“Okay, okay. I’ll spare you. But I do have two things to say, and I’d like for you to hear me out.”

As if she had a choice. Suppressing a sigh, Katie nodded.

The teakettle started to rumble. “First of all, people sometimes reverse their opinions—even their most deeply held opinions.
Take you, for example. You hated Chartreuse, and you vowed you’d never live here. Well, here you are.”

“That’s not the same.”

“Isn’t it? It’s a strong belief you held as a teenager, based on your childhood experiences. As your own life experiences
accumulated, your perspective changed. The things you wanted—and didn’t want—changed. It happens to everyone. Zack is no exception.”

It made sense on the surface, but Annette didn’t know how deeply Zack was set in his ways.

“The second thing I have to say is, look at this from the man’s perspective. Zack walks into your house, and the first things
he sees are your wedding picture and Paul’s ashes on the mantel. You move into his house, and you keep the ashes by your bedside
and Paul’s things in your closet.”

“And you know this, how?”

“Gracie told me.”

Of course. Every vestige of privacy had disappeared the moment Gracie moved in.

“Then you and he start a love affair, and one day he walks in and apparently sees you wearing Paul’s shirt and going through
his things,” Annette continued. “How can he help but feel that he’s competing with a dead man and coming in second?”

Katie’s heart started to pound. “And this information came to you via…”

“Lulu. She heard the conversation you two had in the hospital closet.”

The whole friggin’ town knew every bit of her business. In fact, apparently they knew more of it than she did, and they were
putting pieces together in ways that Katie hadn’t.

The teakettle whistled. Katie got up and took it off the stove, glad to have a diversion.

“Zack thinks you’ll never love him the way you loved Paul.”

“And I won’t,” Katie said. Her eyes filled with unexpected tears. “But I could love him differently.”

“You already do.”

“I’m trying not to.” A tear spilled down her cheek.

“But you do.” Annette’s eyes were kind and warm. “And honey, it’s all right. Paul would want that for you.”

“That’s not the problem.”

“Zack thinks it is.”

“Well, he’s wrong.”

Annette put her hand over Katie’s. “Maybe you’re wrong about Zack, as well.”

Annette’s words rattled around in Katie’s head for the next three days. Zack gave her a wide berth at the hospital, then,
in typical Zack fashion, he left on a trip to Seattle two days after Gracie came home. He IM’d and texted and phoned Gracie
several times a day, but Katie heard nothing.

She thought about calling him, then decided against it. He was the one who’d left—the one who hadn’t seen fit to talk to her,
to tell her his feelings, to sort things out. If he wanted to be with her, he’d have to prove it.

Besides, she’d already written him off. Now that little Faith was here, she had far more important things to do than wonder
whether or not she’d been mistaken about Zack. Obviously she hadn’t been. If he couldn’t or wouldn’t reach out to her, she
was better off without him.

The only problem was, her heart wasn’t buying it.

Zack stood on the porch of Katie’s house three days later, clutching two bouquets of pink roses. Gracie opened the door, then
broke into an ear-to-ear grin. “Zack!” She hugged his neck. Zack hugged her back, careful of her incision. She smelled like
Oreos and baby powder. He handed her one of the bouquets.

“Thanks!” She smelled the flowers, then looked up and grinned. “You texted me just this morning, and you didn’t say a thing
about coming home. I thought you weren’t due back for two more days.”

“I know. I got homesick.”

It was true. He’d never been homesick before, had never even really thought of a place as home, but all he could do now was
think about Gracie and the baby and Katie.

Especially Katie. Gracie and he texted and Facebooked and IM’d several times a day, but he still hadn’t heard from Katie.
He’d told himself that the next move should be up to her. He should just leave her alone. If she wanted to be with him, she’d
call.

But she hadn’t. He’d pumped Gracie endlessly for information about her, and Gracie had fed him tidbits: Katie watched the
baby during the day while she worked on lessons with Annette; Katie had fixed chicken fricassee for dinner; Katie had gone
to her book-club meeting; the beauty-supply guy had the hots for Katie; Lulu was trying to fix Katie up with another porcelain-veneered
loser.

And then the news had stopped. When Zack asked Gracie about Katie, he’d learned that Katie had seen one of the messages two
days ago, and told Gracie to stop discussing her with Zack.

Surprisingly, Gracie had complied with the request.

Zack stepped into the foyer, took Gracie’s hands, and held her at arm’s length. “Just look at you, sweetheart! You’re beautiful.”
Gracie’s resemblance to Katie was more marked than ever. Her face was fresh-scrubbed, free of black eyeliner and nose jewelry.
Her hair was spike-free and a normal-looking brown, a shade somewhere between his and Katie’s. She wore jeans and a long red
T-shirt. “You look so grown up.”

Gracie shrugged. “Having a baby will do that, I guess.”

“Gracie doesn’t look like she just had a baby, does she?” Zack looked up to see Annette in the living room doorway, Dave beside
her. “That’s one of the blessings of being young—everything springs back fast.”

Zack stepped forward and kissed the older woman on the cheek, then shook Dave’s hand. “You both look terrific, too. There
must be something in the water.”

“It’s not the water. It’s the company,” Dave said, looping his arm around Annette. The warmth in the smile they shared made
Zack’s chest ache. He turned to Gracie. “Where’s the baby?”

“Sleeping. I just fed her and put her in her crib for her morning nap. She’ll be up in about half an hour.”

“I can’t wait to see her. How are you feeling?”

“Good. My incision doesn’t hurt too bad today. And get this—I got my ACT score from taking it last spring, and I got a 30!
That’s a really good score. Twenty-four is what’s required for the Louisiana scholarship program.”

“That’s terrific.” He cleared his throat. “How’s Katie?”

They all looked at one another.

Zack’s heart hitched. “What’s the matter? Is she okay?”

“She’s been pretty down since you left,” Dave volunteered.

“Yeah,” Gracie said. “She cries in her closet where she thinks I can’t hear her.”

“Yeah, I know. Into Paul’s clothes.” Zack hadn’t realized he’d muttered it aloud until Annette shook her head.

“No,” Annette said. “She gave all those away.”

Zack looked at her. “She did?”

Annette nodded. “Weeks ago. We scattered his ashes, then Katie divided his clothes and donated them to a couple of charities.
She gave the urn to Dave and me.”

Holy cow. She’d been sorting through Paul’s clothes to give them away? His heart felt like it had just sprouted wings. “Really?”

“Yeah,” Dave said. “Didn’t you notice she’s not wearing her rings?”

He hadn’t. It had completely skipped his notice. Probably because he’d tried for so long to avoid noticing that Katie still
wore them.

“She doesn’t go in the closet to cry over Paul. She’s crying over you, you moron.” Gracie rolled her eyes.

The new wings fluttered. “What?”

“She loves you.”

Dave shook his head. “I don’t understand what went on between you two.”

“I proposed, that’s what went on.”

“You must have done an awfully crummy job of it,” Gracie said.

Zack shoved his hands into his pants pockets. It
had
been pretty lame. “Yeah, well, I came back to take another stab at it.”

“Really?” Gracie’s face lit up. So did Annette’s.

“Yeah. I’ve got an engagement ring in my pocket.”

“Oh, that’s so cool!” Gracie jumped up and down. “Can I see?”

“Later,” Annette told her. She turned to Zack, her face all schoolteacher-ish and serious. “A woman needs to hear that she’s
loved. Katie thinks you don’t believe in love.”

Zack looked at Gracie. This really wasn’t something he wanted to discuss in front of his daughter. He cleared his throat.
“I, uh, have an aversion to saying empty words.”

“
Love
isn’t an empty word,” Annette said. “It’s the fullest word in the English language. And it’s a verb, as well as a noun.”

“Yeah,” Dave said. “It’s not about stardust and floaty feelings—at least, not entirely. It means you’re willing to do whatever
it takes. It means you’ll be there through bad times as well as good. It means you’ll admit it when you’re wrong and you’ll
come back even though you get ticked off. It’s a choice you make, day in and day out, despite the circumstances and how you
feel at the moment. It means this person is your best friend and the keeper of the biggest part of your heart.”

“Wow.” Gracie stared at Dave, her eyes wide. “That was beautiful.”

Annette gazed at Dave, a soft smile on her lips. “Yes, it was.”

“Maybe I should write that down,” Zack said. “Where is Katie now?”

Dave, Annette, and Gracie said the same thing at the same time. “Uh-oh.”

Zack’s chest tightened. “Uh-oh, what? Where is she?”

The three of them exchanged looks. “On her way to Italy,” Dave finally said.

“
Italy?
”

“Yes. Her friend Emma called and asked her to come do her hair for her TV special,” Annette said. “It’s being taped day after
tomorrow. She’s been pretty down lately, so we offered to stay with Gracie and Faith so she could go.”

Gracie nodded. “I played the guilt card. She didn’t want to leave me and the baby, but I told her I’d feel guilty if she missed
this opportunity. Besides, she’ll just be gone five days.”

Five days seemed like a lifetime. Zack’s shoulders drooped.

“She might still be at the salon,” Gracie offered. “She was going by to pack up her curling iron and rollers and stuff.”

It was worth a shot. Zack turned toward the door. “I’ll try to catch her. Do me a favor—call her and see if you can detain
her. But don’t tell her I’m in town.”

Bev was waiting by the door of the Curl Up ’N Dye when Zack pulled up to the curb, parking behind a pink panel truck sporting
the name “Color Me Gorgeous Beauty Supplies.” She bustled forward as he climbed out of his Volvo. “Katie left for the airport
just before Annette called. She accidentally left her cell phone at her workstation.”