Kitabı oku: «Courting His Favourite Nurse», sayfa 2

Chapter Two

The hair rose on Anne’s arms as she stared at Jack who was holding two plastic bags with take-out containers inside. He smiled that straight, white, signature smile. Bart barked once, and pranced excitedly around in a circle as if they were old friends. Traitor.

“I have it on good authority that your mother likes her buffalo wings hot.” He raised one of the bags.

“Just like her men,” Anne repeated her father’s favorite line and rolled her eyes. Obviously, Dad wanted to make sure his main squeeze got her favorite meal and Jack was merely a conduit.

Jack grinned and nodded as if he’d been schooled by the master. “Just like her men,” he repeated. “Oh, and coleslaw without mayo, which was a little harder to find.” He raised the other bag.

“Skinny slaw,” she said, at a loss for anything else to say. Her father’s sweet gesture made Anne smile even though it had put her in a most uncomfortable position. Should she take the food and close the door? Even by her dodge-the-past-at-all-costs standards, that would be cold.

“May I come in?”

How could she refuse? Anne hated to cook, knew that inevitably Beverly would get hungry, yet hadn’t planned or stocked up for a single meal, and something in one of those bags smelled fresh and heavenly.

“Of course,” she said, breaking the awkward pause. “Come in.” How was she supposed to play this? As if he hadn’t broken her heart or helped her betray her best friend? Or as if he was once a great friend whom she’d adored, and had laughed and cried with more than any other person on earth … but who’d drifted away? Still undecided, she scratched her forehead and put on her best hostess face.

She showed Jack to the kitchen where he unloaded the bags on the counter and immediately paid his respects to Bart, who sniffed his hands excited by the scent of chicken. Jack glanced around the room as if recalling being here a thousand times long ago. “Did they remodel?”

Anne nodded. Since she’d moved out, her mother had added French Country flair to their sturdy ranch-style home. They’d knocked down a wall and opened up the flow of the kitchen into the family room. Now they had a block wood island, and trendy glass-fronted white cupboards with granite countertops, and shelves with canisters and spices lining the walls. Plus a state-of-the-art gas stove with a gazillion burners for Beverly’s love of cooking, and a two-foot-long tilted rack for all of her international cookbooks. Trying her best to avoid facing Jack, she spotted the perfect place to put Jocelyn’s flowers on the antique wood sideboard, deciding to do it later.

“I’ll go get my mom,” she said, turning, but her mother and Jocelyn were coming to them.

“I could smell the food all the way down the hall. Jack, you shouldn’t have,” Beverly said, smoothing the pillow’s impact on her hair. “But I’m really glad you did.”

He wiped his hands on his khaki slacks and shook hers as if he hadn’t seen her in months. “I couldn’t let the big guy down.” He winked at her mother. “He was worried Anne wouldn’t fix you dinner or, worse, that she would.”

A mischievous glint graced his eyes, and if Anne weren’t so busy feeling conspired against, and a bit like an outsider, she might have laughed along with everyone else.

“Har har. Hey, I may be a lousy cook, but I’d never let my mommy go hungry. I remember how to dial for takeout. Was just thinking about doing it, too.”

She opened a cupboard and got down some dishes. Beverly insisted on setting the utensils on the table with her one good hand, making several extra trips in the process, Bart dogging her every step. Jocelyn took drink orders and Jack, well, he stood there looking gorgeous with his late afternoon stubble and super-starched pale blue pin-striped shirt that hadn’t a hint of a wrinkle.

He must have felt her studying gaze when he used his thumb to scratch his upper lip and glanced at the floor.

How was she going to share a meal with him and act casual? If he subscribed to the popular fallacy that time healed all wounds, she had some news for him. She sighed, then took her place at the table, deciding to beat everyone to the fresh-from-the-oven garlic rolls.

“Why do you volunteer with the fire department?” Anne had acted more like a journalist than an old friend throughout dinner. In between her barrage of questions, all neatly superficial, Jack had noticed she only picked at her food.

“California’s broke. Whispering Oaks depends on volunteers to make up for the shortage of firemen, and I guess it’s my way of giving back.”

Anne didn’t need clarification on what he was giving back for. How many times had Brianna been rushed to the hospital in an ambulance? The fire department had been first on scene the day she had collapsed at school, and at their prom …

“Sort of like the same reason you became a nurse,” her mother said.

“Brianna,” Anne said.

Okay, so she’d go first at naming the elephant in the room.

“Brianna,” he repeated just before taking a large swallow of his iced tea.

Her gaze met and held his for the briefest of moments, just long enough to confuse him and make him wish he could read her mind.

Seeing Anne’s eyes dance away each time he’d tried to engage them, gave him a clue that it wouldn’t be easy to convince her to spend some time with him. Just the two of them. He definitely needed to deliver that apology.

As dinner wound down, Jack decided to go for it, to take the sneaky route and make his move in front of an audience. If he hadn’t already committed to meeting the latest in a long string of computer-arranged compatible-dates.com, and if he hadn’t cancelled on this particular lady before, he would ask Anne out for coffee tomorrow night. Now, he needed to come up with something else, and fast.

“Anne, you feel like going for a hike to Boulder Peak for old time’s sake this Saturday morning?” he said, knowing it had once been one of their favorite places to hang out.

She blinked a half dozen times and wiped her mouth before answering. “Oh, that sounds great, but I can’t. I’m taking Mom to get her hair and nails done. Right?” His spin ball got deflected with the precision of Venus Williams.

“We can do it another day,” Beverly said, a sheepish look in her eyes as she took a dainty bite of wing.

“But you want to look nice when Dad comes home. You told me yourself.”

“I can take her,” Jocelyn piped in.

The expression on Anne’s face could be described as mortified, but Jack decided not to focus on the negative. She could protest all she wanted, but apparently the team was on his side.

He smiled. “Then I’ll pick you up at eight.”

Friday evening, Anne propped up her mother’s arm, made sure everything she could want was within reach, and armed with her mother’s long grocery list, she set out to do some shopping. Bart sat in the family room attentively at Beverly’s side watching over her.

On the drive home odd tidbits from life elbowed their way into Anne’s mind. She drove down familiar streets, each with a memory attached, and having spent so much time with her mother and spoken to both her brother and sister yesterday, everything seemed to invite reflection.

She hadn’t minded getting knocked off the pedestal when Lucas had come along. She enjoyed having a brother … at first. Mom kept calling her the “big girl,” even though she wasn’t sure she liked the new title or what it meant. As Lucas got older, she discovered she could make him laugh, and Mom was happy about that, so she did it a lot. He was a good laugher back then. Now? Not so much.

Though they hadn’t seen each other in three years, they occasionally spoke on the phone and emailed back and forth on a regular basis. Lately, Lucas’s take on life seemed so cynical, and it worried her. She missed her brother and couldn’t wait to see him. Besides, the sooner he got home, the sooner she could go back to Portland and her new job.

She cruised past her old grammar school and its single-story 1950s blah architecture, the place where her mother still taught fourth grade. A thousand more memories crowded her head. How many times had she defended Lucas when he’d gotten into trouble there? Early on they’d teamed up and stayed united when it was apparent Lark could do no wrong. Maybe he could use someone in his corner these days too, and she shouldn’t rush off right after he got here.

Coming home put a bittersweet taste in her mouth with so many landmarks holding memories. She drove past the park where she used to play and thought how when Lark came along she’d been five and it felt as if Mom had sent her to school just so she could be alone with her little brother and baby sister.

When Lark was a baby, she had fluffy white hair, and she didn’t have to say one word to get Mom and Dad to smile, all she had to do was be there. Anne learned if she read her books out loud, Dad would clap his hands, so she read everything she could find aloud, and knew early on the importance of being a high achiever.

So why was Lark the one in med school?

She huffed a breath and glanced toward the sky. Let it go, Anne. You’re thirty and you’re an adult. If you want to go to medical school, you can apply. Truth was, she liked being a nurse, and back when she’d taken the MCATs and had scored well, her parents simply didn’t have the money or the desire to take out humongous loans. She couldn’t blame them. When Lark was ready to apply to college, they owned their home and Dad’s Great Aunt Tessa had left him a windfall in her will. If there was one thing Anne had learned, it was that life wasn’t fair and timing ruled the day and it was a futile task to try to figure out why anything worked the way it did.

What more proof did she need than her best friend dying shortly after her eighteenth birthday, just before graduating?

She drove past the Whispering Oaks Gymnastics Center, which used to be nothing more than a huge garage with mats, and remembered her mother waiting for her during class. It occurred to her that when her mother was her age, she had already had three kids. Not that Anne wanted three kids, but the possibility of a boyfriend at thirty would be nice. Her dating history had been anything but a success, with the last real relationship ending over a year ago. Somewhere along the line she’d figured her miserable excuse for a love life was likely because somewhere deep inside she still carried a torch for Jack.

Must all thoughts lead back to Jack?

The streets seemed more crowded than when she’d left, and there were strip malls on far too many corners. There seemed to be fewer trees, too. At least the surrounding hills hadn’t changed. She’d missed them. In the distance she could see Boulder Peak jutting its rocky nose above the hilltop, and immediately tried to divert her thoughts away from the invitation to hike there. With Jack. Jack. Again, thoughts about Jack.

What would it be like to spend time with him? She’d much prefer to dodge the whole thing, but everyone had plotted against her and she’d had no way out. Maybe she could sprain her ankle between now and tomorrow morning?

And speaking of Jack, wasn’t that him heading into TGI Fridays with a pert redhead by his side?

She slowed down as she drove past one of the three main restaurants in town feeling like a stalking teenager. Her heart raced as she looked closer. At least he wasn’t holding the woman’s hand. So what was the deal about asking her to go hiking?

Time marches on and she’d been gone for a while now, so she couldn’t exactly hold a grudge if Jack had a girlfriend. She groaned over getting swept up in the crappy moment. Why did she feel like she was in high school again mooning over the jock that got away? Sure, Jack, take the good ol’ buddy hiking, buy the redhead dinner. Now thoroughly confused, she hit the gas and headed for the market.

A half hour later, she parked the car in the garage and entered through the kitchen with the bags, where Bart met her. “Good boy. Did you take care of mommy?” His tail thumped the nearby counter.

She put everything away, grabbed a bottle of water from the refrigerator and took a swig. Mom was asleep in the recliner in the family room, so she plopped down on the same couch from which she used to watch Buffy, glad they hadn’t gotten rid of it with the remodel.

Mom had apparently fallen asleep watching some reality show about crab fishermen, and the narrator’s voice sounded just like her father’s. Loud. Friendly. Baritone. Maybe that’s why her mother smiled in her sleep? Anne hoped Dad was getting used to his huge cast and lack of independence. He’d seemed restless and impatient earlier today when she’d visited him, which didn’t bode well for when he came home after the weekend.

Something pushed against her back. She pulled it out as she took another drink. Grandma’s fancy embroidery decorated a small lacy pillow Anne had seen her entire life: Good things come to those who wait.

She wouldn’t dare call her grandma corny, but so far the catchy saying hadn’t panned out. Her fingers traced the precision stitches.

Just how long was a girl supposed to wait?

The next morning Anne glared at her puffy eyes and sallow complexion. Would Jack notice if she put on some mascara? For hiking? She imagined sweat getting into her eyes and the black smudges under her lids when she rubbed them in the glaring sun. Maybe not.

What would they talk about? Would everything focus around Brianna? She wasn’t sure she was ready to talk about her personal life with him, wasn’t sure he deserved to know anything. Why had she agreed to go hiking? Oh, right, she’d been bamboozled into it.

If she kept things superficial, she might bore him to death, then maybe he’d leave her alone so she could finally forget him.

Concentrate on the hiking, Anne. The hiking.

The doorbell rang. One last pat of her uncooperative hair then she jogged down the hall to answer it. It wasn’t Jack, and the disappointment surprised her. Why work up a perfectly good case of jitters for nothing?

Jocelyn greeted her wearing workout gear with a warm-up jacket, her hair in a high bouncy ponytail. They hugged in greeting. “I thought I’d bring Bart along while I walk my dogs.”

Bart must have heard his name since he came bounding down the hall, pads slip-sliding around the corner.

“He’d love it!” Anne knelt to get face-to-face with the dog. “You want to walk?” He knew the word and tossed his head in excitement, letting out a dog-styled squeal. “Let me get his leash.” By now, he’d worked himself into a frenzy, whining and prancing around in circles.

“I’ll help your mom get ready for her appointment when I get back,” Jocelyn said as she trotted off with three dogs pulling her down the street.

Anne waved goodbye and watched for a few moments. She smiled then immediately stopped as she caught a glance of Jack’s car coming up the tree-canopied street, releasing a new flock of butterflies in her chest. Should she stand there and wait for him to arrive and park, or go back inside? Adrenaline pumped through her veins, another unwanted reminder of what Jack could do to her. If she stood here gawking he’d be able to tell how nervous she was. If she went back inside, she ran the risk of him seeing her and wondering why she didn’t wait for him. Make up your mind, Anne, go inside or wait out here.

Maybe the most important question was: After all these years, why could Jack still make her act like such a scatterbrain?

Chapter Three

Jack arrived at Anne’s house just before eight with a backpack filled with water and sandwiches, and an unnerving pulse thumping in his chest. White clouds scudded across the soft blue sky thanks to typical Whispering Oaks weather, as spring sunshine warmed his shoulders on the walk to her door. He needed a deep breath to calm down, to put things into perspective. This was just a hike with an old high school friend … whom he’d happened to fall for and put on the spot a long time ago. Hell, no one felt guiltier about that than he did. If he worked things right, maybe today he could broach the subject, and apologize. Maybe, finally, they could start fresh, see where it led.

He knocked three times, and she opened the door as if she’d been standing right on the other side.

“Hi,” he said, the sight of Anne forcing him to either jump into action or stand there like a tongue-tied idiot. “Ready for a workout?” he asked, having gone the animated route, sounding more like a male cheerleader than the contrite dude he’d imagined.

“Sure!” Evidently his fake pep was contagious.

Anne looked great in shorts and cross trainers. Her greeting smile competed with the bright sky, and he was extra glad she’d worn her hair down.

She glanced upward. “Looks like a great day for a hike. Hold on a sec while I say goodbye to my mom.”

He took the opportunity to give himself a stern talking to. No expectations. Just be yourself, then tell her you’re sorry. Sorry about everything.

When she returned, her bubbly façade seemed to have worn off. Had Beverly, with all her good intentions, put too much pressure on her and made this out to be more than a hike? He could only guess. She gave him a solemn glance as she closed and checked the lock on the front door. Putting on her sunglasses she started down the brick pathway to the steps across the lawn. On the walk to the curb, he liked how the sun seemed woven through her nutmeg-colored waves, and was so distracted he almost missed a step. Dude, get a grip.

He rushed to open the car door for her. “I guess we’ve got a lot of catching up to do.”

She paused before getting into the car. “I thought we were hiking,” she said, and he’d have given a hundred dollars to get a look behind her Hollywood-large sunglasses to try to read this mood shift. His fishing expedition wasn’t going to be nearly as easy as he’d hoped. In all honesty, could he blame her?

Suddenly feeling more like being on one of his computer-arranged dates instead of hanging with his old friend, he started with the usual superficial banter as they drove off. “So, how do you like living in Portland?”

“It’s great,” was all she said, glancing out the passenger window.

“It’s a shame about what happened to your parents, huh?”

She sighed. “Thank goodness it wasn’t worse.”

Could the conversation get any more stilted than this? He decided to back off and see how things played out as he switched on the radio.

Fifteen minutes later, by the time they’d reached the parking area and he hadn’t made much headway with breaking Anne’s icy barrier, the familiar sight of their old hiking grounds made him grin.

“Remember?” he said, only now realizing how tight his jaw had gotten with her silence.

She nodded, a tentative twitch to her lips that he interpreted as a smile.

He shrugged the backpack over his shoulders. “I’ve got water if you need it.” He tried not to stare at her smooth legs that had shaped up nicely since her track days. “Just holler if you want to take any breaks.”

“Sounds good.”

He led the way to their favorite trailhead, and they set off.

An hour and minimal conversations later, they’d hiked to the top of Boulder Peak. He’d purposely held back and let nature do the job of loosening up Anne.

From this vantage point, to the east, he could see the overly developed valley suburbs of Los Angeles; to the west, the bedroom community roofs hugging the surrounding foothills. Thanks to some recent rain, there were tufts of green between the boulders. This was the view he’d longed for. This was the special place he, Brianna and Anne had often hiked to.

“I’d forgotten how gorgeous it is up here,” Anne said, showing the first signs of her old self, her hair floating on the breeze and covering her cheeks.

She came and stood by him and together they revered the panoramic view for several more seconds. It was clear enough to see sparkles from the ocean far in the distance. This gave him the opportunity to smell her flowery soap or body lotion or whatever it was. All he knew was that he liked it, and he liked having her near.

Jack hated feeling like Anne was a stranger, and so far she hadn’t made things easy, so on a whim he grabbed her hand. “Hey, I want to show you something.” He tugged her toward another outcropping and around its corner. His eyes scanned the surface of the rock wall until he found it. He used his palm to rub away dust and debris. “Look,” he said, pointing to a fading circle with three sets of initials inside—his, Brianna’s and Anne’s, and below in tiny letters, BFF. Best friends forever.

“I make a point to come up here once in a while, and I found this last year.” He stood smiling at the names, completely aware how close by Anne was.

“She had a great smile, didn’t she?” Anne removed her sunglasses so she could wipe her brightening eyes.

“She did,” he said, flushed with mixed-up feelings about the woman standing next to him fighting off tears.

“I think it’s great that you come here. She deserves not to be forgotten, you know?”

His throat tightened. “I don’t get the same feeling when I visit her grave. It’s just a plot. But here, we have memories, don’t we?” He didn’t want to come off foolish, not after all these years. Not to Anne. So he swallowed against the emotion balling in his chest. God, he’d made a mess of things back then, but how could he have known what was about to happen to Brianna?

The sun made Anne’s eyes glisten as she looked on the verge of crying. This wasn’t what he’d intended, he didn’t want to wallow in sadness, not with Anne. They’d already lived through enough of that for a lifetime, and right now a change in mood was in order. “For being such a great cheerleader, she sure was a klutz, wasn’t she?”

Anne blurted out a laugh and it brought a rush of relief. “Remember the time she got so excited cheering you on at league finals that she fell over the railing?”

The snapshot in time, so clear of him sprinting for the finish line, seeing Bri jumping and screaming then flipping over the bar and landing on her butt right on the track, made him bark a laugh. Anne joined him as the welcomed laughter broke down another barrier between him and his old friend.

He tossed her a bottle of water and opened one for himself. They drank and smiled at each other, the first genuine smile of the day. It felt great.

“Remember the cave?”

She nodded, leading the way to their favorite hiding place. Fifteen minutes later, on another peak with an equally gorgeous view, they entered the shallow cave. Sheltered from the sun and constant wind, he sat on a rock with his feet propped on another. She sat across from him on another outcrop, and he tossed her a granola bar.

“How do you like teaching?” she asked.

“I never thought I’d say this, but I really like it.”

“When did you go back to school?”

“Long story.”

“I’m interested. Tell me,” she said taking a bite.

He wasn’t about to shut her down after it had taken so long to get her to loosen up. Maybe if he went first, she’d tell him something about herself.

“Okay, then. First, I kicked around Europe for a while. I found jobs where people paid me under the table, then I hired on as a deckhand on an American yacht in Italy and sailed around the Mediterranean and wound up in Greece but I couldn’t find any work, and I couldn’t speak the language, so when my money ran out, I had to come home.” He chewed the last of his granola bar. “My dad wouldn’t let me freeload, so I got a job at Starbucks and went to school to become an EMT.”

“You were a barista?”

“A damn good one, too. Remind me, and I’ll make you a mocha cappuccino sometime.”

She gave a smile that took him right back to high school, a smile that included a taste of challenge. He’d missed that look more than he’d realized.

He got out an apple, rubbed it on his shirt and took a bite. As an afterthought, he held up the second apple for Anne’s inspection. She cupped her hands so he tossed it to her, and she bit right in.

“Go on,” she said, her mouth full of apple.

“Hitting the books put the bug in me to go back to school, and while I worked as an EMT in the day I went to night school at Marshfield City College.” He took another bite of apple and swig of water. “Long story short, I transferred to CSUCI the first year it opened. We called it sushi back then. Anyway, I got my teaching credential four years later. I lucked into a job at WO High a couple years ago. Had a horrendous commute to West L.A. before that.”

“That’s great, Jack.” Anne looked genuinely interested, and he figured he’d ride the crest of his opening up in hopes of getting her to talk.

“So how do you really like living in Portland?”

She smiled at his obvious swipe at her earlier tightlipped response. “I love it. It’s a gorgeous city. Very eco-friendly. Warm dry summers and rainy winters. Clean air.”

She handed him her apple core and he put it inside a plastic baggie along with his own. “What about your job?”

“It’s great. I just started a new job last month as the lead nurse for fourteen doctors in a clinic practice. It’s very different from hospital work, part administrative and part hands-on medicine, but overall a lot less stressful.” She grew pensive and he worried she’d shut down again. “Lately, I’ve been thinking of going back to school.”

“For what?”

She avoided his laser stare and fiddled with a tiny yellow flower on a tall mustard weed. “I don’t know, I’m still thinking about it.”

She hadn’t really opened up about anything, so he thought he’d take a circular route to getting to what he was most curious about. “Do you have a roommate?”

She shook her head, still engrossed with the flower. “I lease a tiny apartment in the Pearl District. It’s a great area, loads of things to do, and I can walk almost everywhere. It’s fairly close to my job, too.”

Maybe she really was happy there. From the glint in her eyes as she went on about her neighborhood, he sensed she’d found a home for good. The realization sat like a boulder in his apple-filled stomach. Hadn’t the last thing he’d said to her before she had left Whispering Oaks been something like, moving on doesn’t necessarily mean you’re moving forward. It hadn’t been the case for him, but for her maybe it had. An aching sense of loss made him blurt out the next question.

“You seeing anyone?”

Her brows lifted then drew together. She stared at her knees. “Uh, no.” The twist to her lips could only be described as a smirk. “Not this year, anyway.”

On a breath of air, he relaxed. “I hear ya,” he said with a mixed rush of relief and possibilities. “I’ve resorted to computer dating, myself.”

Her interest piqued, she slanted a sideways glance his way. “How’s that working for you?”

He shrugged. “Let’s just say, I’m not sure dating should be a science.”

That got a laugh out of her, and he decided to not try to explain how something was always missing, though on paper he and his computer dates had seemed well matched. He couldn’t figure out a lot of things these days, like the heightened desire to find a compatible partner, and the constant disappointment with his dates. “What do you say we take the dome?”

“Today?”

“It’s only ten. We can head up there and eat lunch then I promise to take you right home.”

She flashed her signature challenging look. “I’ll race you to the top!” And she was off before he could get his backpack over his shoulders.

“That’s not fair, speedy!” He resorted to taunting her with the nickname he’d given her in high school for always finishing last in the 800M race. She laughed and her feet stuttered on loose gravel. Anne grabbed a root sticking out of a rock to steady her and glared over her shoulder. It wasn’t a real glare, but one of Anne’s pretend angry looks, and it took him right back to high school and that girl he used to know. Now he was getting somewhere.

The drive home was companionably quiet. Anne couldn’t help but think Jack had something else he wanted to say. The muscle worked at the corner of his jaw, his hand gripped the steering wheel harder than necessary. Why did she have the compulsion to run her fingers through the close cropped dark blond waves on his head? Instead, she sighed and looked out the passenger window.

When he pulled into her driveway, he threw the car into Park and turned toward her. “You remember Drew?”

She nodded. Drew had been Jack’s best friend in high school. Evidently they were still close.

“He’s got his own hot air balloon company right over in Marshfield. I used to work for him on weekends and during the summers when I went to CSUCI. Why don’t you let me take you up for a ride next Saturday? You can’t say you’ve really seen Whispering Oaks until you’ve seen it from the air.”

She ignored the charming glint in those fern green eyes.

The thought of floating in the air hanging in a basket with Jack had its merits, but last night, when she couldn’t fall asleep, she’d promised not to fall back into their old pattern of being the odd man out with Brianna at the center. And a lot of today had been about Bri. Of course Brianna deserved it, and it was a good starting off place for her and Jack to try to sort things out from before, but everything still seemed so confusing. And how much guilt could she take with Brianna’s memory breathing over her shoulder reminding her how she’d betrayed her best friend by loving Jack, by stealing his attention when Brianna was getting sick and no one even knew it.

I think Jack likes someone else, she’d told Anne over the phone the week before the diagnosis.

If she was still this messed up over their situation, how must Jack feel?