A chance of a lifetime, p.21
A Chance of a Lifetime, page 21
She would snatch his hair from his scalp if he did.
The embrace slowly, naturally, fell away. She set the two mugs of coffee in front of him, next to sugar and creamer, then began fixing hers to taste. He silently followed suit.
“Are you hungry?” she asked. They’d eaten like bears preparing for hibernation, but that meant nothing. Their parents had called them the bottomless pit and the hollow leg because of the enormous amounts of food they could put away. Besides, Calvin had been on the peaked side when he returned. He had a few pounds to go to get back to fighting weight.
“I could eat,” he allowed.
She grabbed a cookie jar in the shape of a teapot, a couple of napkins, and her coffee and led the way into the living room. After emptying her load on the coffee table, she sat at one end of the couch, turning to face him at the other. Giving him a chance to ignore what had happened wasn’t an option, so she carefully sipped her coffee, then remarked, “Nice kiss.”
His hand trembled just a bit as he lifted his own coffee. The shadows were back in his eyes, but they faded before taking up permanent residence. “You’ve gotten some practice since you were fifteen and trying to kiss around your braces.”
“So have you. I believe after the first time you kissed Mary Watashe, she said never again, not even if you paid her.”
He snorted. “Kissing her was like kissing an evil life-force-sucking monster.”
“I’ve heard that. She moved away after high school.” Bennie casually added, “Last I heard, she was a lip model for some cosmetics company.”
That made his eyes pop, as she’d known it would. “A lip model? You mean, people pay to take pictures of her mouth?”
“Scary thought, isn’t it?” She gestured. “How’s your coffee?”
“Good. But it’s more like the good-you-should-take-the-time-to-savor-it than the it’s-morning-I-need-caffeine sort.” He took a cookie from the jar, the scents of raisins and oatmeal wafting between them, took a bite, then tilted his head to one side and studied her.
Serious talk ahead? she wondered. Or memories he didn’t want to discuss?
She’d been right the first time.
“How did you and J’Myel end up together? When we left home, you were still our best bud, the younger sister neither of us had, and then one day, I heard you and him hooked up.”
Was she imagining that extra emphasis on heard, to remind her that she’d never told him they were dating, or was that her own guilt? She’d wanted to tell him, but by then it was impossible to discuss one with the other, and she’d felt sad and conflicted and disloyal. As her boyfriend, J’Myel had claimed, her first priority was him, but she’d been friends with Calvin every bit as long and maybe a little bit better.
She tucked her feet on the seat, wishing she’d built a fire to chase away the chill inside her. But the room would have overheated too quickly, and external temperature had nothing to do with the shame she’d felt so long for the way she’d let Calvin down.
“He’d come home on leave,” she began slowly. “He’d just finished a tour in Helmand Province, and he’d been happy to get away from the war and the Army and to have no worries beyond having fun, chilling out, drinking a lot of cold beer, and kissing some pretty women.”
“And the first one he kissed was you, and after that there weren’t any others.”
She shrugged with a tight smile. “I never did learn to share graciously.” After another sip of coffee, she wrapped her fingers around the cup. “He was the same J’Myel he’d always been, just grown-up. All those years I thought I was immune to his charm, but his first night here, he looked at me with those brown eyes and that ear-to-ear grin of his, and I…”
She’d done what girls had always done with J’Myel: fallen hard and fast. It was never permanent; he always moved on before the girls could start bringing up marriage and babies, and she’d known that. She hadn’t been totally sure it was permanent for her, either. She wasn’t about to let him break her heart, not until he showed some serious commitment. That was why it had taken them three years to get married.
“We spent as much of his leave together as we could. He was stationed at Fort Irwin, and we flew back and forth for long weekends. It was all kind of surreal. I never, ever dreamed I’d grow up and fall in love with the mouthy kid I’d pushed around all those years, but it happened. We got married, had a sweet honeymoon, then went back to living apart. He was deploying again soon after, so we never actually lived together.” She stared into her coffee, remembering the last time she’d spent with him. He’d talked about the future, coming home again, getting out of the Army, finally living as a couple and doing all the things couples did, like sleep in the same bed every night.
Neither of them had had a clue that it was the last time they’d spend together.
What would the future have held for them? she wondered wistfully. Would he have been happy living the rest of his days in Tallgrass, or had he wanted to move away, like Calvin said? If he’d chosen to leave for good, would she have gone with him? Would she have left Mama here to pass her final years alone?
Would she and J’Myel have loved each other forever?
No one was guaranteed forever. With the divorce rate somewhere around fifty percent, though, she liked to think they would have been one of the lucky couples whose marriage succeeded.
Shifting her cup to one hand, she rested her other arm on the back of the couch and twirled one of her curls around her index finger. “Any more questions?”
“Just one.” He hesitated before meeting her gaze. “Did you ever dream you might grow up and…get involved with me?”
She’d said fall in love with, not get involved. His change of words made her smile faintly. She stretched out her hand to touch his, also resting on the back of the sofa, and gave it a gentle squeeze. “Life is a wonderful surprise, isn’t it?”
* * *
“I need a magic wand.”
It was Saturday evening, Lucy’s bake orders for the following day had doubled from the week before, and she and Joe were now facing a mountain of dishes to wash. Even though she’d cleaned as they went along—mostly—the time constraints and lack of help besides Joe’s had combined to overwhelm her. Add aching feet, legs, back, and one shoulder, and she was pooped.
“I have a magic wand.” The response came from Joe, teasing and lascivious and naughty, and it made her stop for a moment and just look at him. Not a lot had changed since their big kisses last Monday night. He still got her up at dawn to walk; he still showed up at her house soon after she got home from work; he still lifted, carried, and pitched in without complaints; and he still ate most of his meals with her. But now he touched her, and not the old arm punches or chokeholds they’d been used to. Sometimes he curled his arm around her when they were sitting close enough, and there were times when he held her hand just because. And he was as generous with his kisses as he was with everything else.
Happy mercy, everything had changed, and it made her feel fifteen years younger and like she was falling in love for the first time. You sound giddy, her mom had said when they had their weekly chat a few days ago, and Lucy’s response in the privacy of her bedroom was to pump her fist and silently shriek, I am! Who could be blessed with the miracle of a second love and not get giddy about it?
He walked around the huge worktable and pressed a kiss to her forehead. Nearly a week, and it still shivered through her. “Is any of the debris in the dining room maybe hiding a chair?”
“Nope. Just garbage the construction workers didn’t haul off.”
Joe held up one finger, signaling her to wait, then disappeared through the store room and outside. It took him a few minutes to return, a lawn chair under one arm. He unfolded it in a corner out of the way, gave her a bottle of water from the fridge, a protein bar from his hip pocket, and gestured as if it were a throne.
“Why do you carry a lawn chair in your trunk?”
“I’m a coach. I never know when I’ll need to sit down.”
“You’re a coach. You don’t get to sit down.” She pressed her hands to the small of her back. “Joe, I can’t sit here and be lazy while you do all the cleanup.” Even as she was protesting, he lowered her into the chair, pulled out a box to support her feet, and tore open the protein wrapper for her.
“I’m just tired,” she went on. “Coming down here every night, working all afternoon and evening today, still walking twice a day, and going to work…” She took a bite of the protein bar, and her eyebrows rose. “Hey, that’s pretty good. I bet I could learn to make this.”
Shaking his head and grinning, he turned to the sinks. He’d already started the dishwashers, but there was plenty to wash by hand. Then the table had to be cleaned—she couldn’t even reach the middle of it to scrub—and then they had dozens of sweets in the cake refrigerator waiting to be snuggled into their wrappers or boxes. A couple more hours, she could go home, beg off the evening walk, take some Motrin, and dislodge Norton and Sebastian from the couch so she could lie there and recuperate. Possibly until work called Monday morning. Preferably with Joe at her side.
She polished off the protein bar, drank half the water in one swallow, and breathed heavily. She was recovering her second wind. Sliding to the edge of the seat, she braced her hands on the arms and started to push up. A stab of pain through her right shoulder made her gasp and sink back down.
“What’s wrong?” Joe asked.
Gingerly she rubbed her shoulder. “I think I overdid it trying to prove that I could whip cream without a mixer. Just give me a minute, though, and I’ll help you.”
He gave her a long look before dipping his hands back into the soapy water. “Do you know how much my mom would pay to see me washing dishes all on my own, without anyone twisting my arm? This is a rare sight here, Luce. You might even want to take a picture for posterity.”
Trust him to make her laugh even when she felt like crap. Pulling out her cell, she snapped a couple of shots, and then, since watching him do anything was pretty much a pleasure, she tried to resettle in the chair, though the ache in her back just wouldn’t let her get comfortable. Lord, was she so feeble that she couldn’t handle long hours in the shop? Her feet hurt, her neck was stiff, her shoulder throbbed, her back hurt. She had gotten so disgustingly out of shape over the last seven years. Instead of canceling tonight’s walk, maybe she should ask Joe to double it, and she should probably give in to his regular requests that she work out at the gym with him. Rock-hard muscles looked fine on him, she’d told him, but she liked being soft. She didn’t want to look ripped.
“So soft that you can’t even bake eight dozen cookies and a few trays of muffins and rolls without wearing out,” she muttered beneath her breath.
Voices at the back door startled her into looking that way, and when Patricia, Marti, and Carly walked into the kitchen, Lucy’s brows arched high. “What are you guys doing—” Dismay turned her toward Joe. “You asked them to come clean up after me?”
Patricia tucked her purse out of the way, then hugged Lucy. “We’ve all offered repeatedly. Joe just took us up on it. You feeling okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. Just tired.”
Watching them, Lucy did a mental scan of her symptoms. Shoulder—better. Back—still aching. Feet—thoroughly protesting the remaining extra pounds on her body. Neck—stiff, but she’d endured worse. Chest—not hurting exactly, just kind of fluttering in disapproval at the rest of her. Oh, and a bit of a burn right in the middle of her breastbone, like the beginning of a case of heartburn. Everything else checked out fi—
Chest? When did her chest get involved in this? She grabbed at the likeliest explanation: heartburn, too much hot salsa at lunch, topped off with tastings of too much ultra-rich frosting. That was all it was. All it could possibly be.
“What are we doing here?” Marti asked as she circled to the sink with Carly on her heels.
Lucy heard Joe running through the list of chores but only distantly. Her skin had grown clammy, and her heart was thundering, as if it were trying to escape her body. She didn’t blame it. She’d want out, too, if all her other systems were going haywire.
Nona’s voice—the grandmother who’d always looked out for her favorite granddaughter—spoke sternly in her head. You’re having a heart attack, child. Go to the hospital.
A heart attack? That wasn’t possible. Heart attacks were for elderly people, frail people, people who’d already lived full lives and had health issues. She was only thirty-four. Other than her blood sugar and cholesterol being a little high, and her weight being more than a little high, she was in good health. Despite her own minor problems, she had no family history of heart disease. She was active. She was young. She had years to go before she could conceivably have a heart attack.
But deep inside she knew it was true. She’d had acid indigestion before that could have eaten through cast iron, and it had felt nothing like this. She’d suffered panic attacks before, too, in the months following Mike’s death, and they’d been nothing like this. She’d had her heart broken before, shattered into tiny pieces that had never fit back together right. Not. Like. This.
But what if she was just overreacting? After all, she was listening to her dead Nona’s voice. And there was no rule that said every case of indigestion, every panic attack, had to feel exactly the same way. Maybe she was just trying to do too much. Maybe subconsciously she was more worried about this business venture than she realized. And what if she said, Guys, I’m having a heart attack, and they called 911, and the paramedics took her to the ER, and everyone got worried and scared, and it turned out not to be a heart attack at all? How foolish would she feel then?
Nona snorted. How foolish will you feel dead?
Good point. Pressing her hand to her chest, Lucy leaned forward again but didn’t try to stand. “Joe.” He was laughing at something Carly said and didn’t hear her. “Joe.”
When he turned to face her, all handsome and charming and so damn happy, something else in her subconscious rushed from the back of her mind to the front: She loved him. Was in love with him. He wasn’t her best bud anymore, wasn’t the pest of a little brother. She loved him.
Oh, God, she’d prayed to fall in love again, to marry and have babies and someone to grow old with, but sometime around her thirtieth birthday, she’d began to wonder if it would ever happen. Even if it had, she’d thought it could never be the same as before. Mike had been so important: her first boyfriend, her first love, her first husband. He was the man she’d been destined to spend the rest of her life with. Even another true love wouldn’t be able to measure up to him.
But she’d been blessed with a second chance. She loved Joe, in different ways maybe but every bit as much as she’d loved Mike. If her chest wasn’t hurting, her heart would be dancing with joy.
Blast it, it wasn’t fair. She needed time to do something about that.
The amusement slid from his face, and he got really serious really fast. Drying his hands, he came to her, crouching in front of her. He picked up her wrist, held it a moment—counting her pulse, she realized—then grimly asked, “What is it, Luce?”
She glanced at her friends, gathered behind him, and a tear or two seeped into her eyes. “I love you guys, you know?” She wouldn’t die or even come close to it, damn it, without saying that. Her voice caught as the pain intensified, making breaths harder to come by. “You don’t know how much I hate saying this, but…my chest hurts.”
Fingers gripping Joe’s like a lifeline, gaze locking on to his stricken face, she whispered, “I think I’m having a heart attack.”
* * *
Joe hadn’t known Marti could whip her phone out of her skin tight jeans so quickly, or that Carly needed only a second longer. Marti dialed 911, and for the first time ever that he’d known her, her voice was wobbly and shaking as she asked for paramedics. Carly had moved away to the end of the table and was talking in a low, urgent voice to Therese, and Patricia stood behind Lucy, hands on her shoulders.
His own chest ached, all the way down into his gut. He’d heard of sympathetic labor pains. Was there such a thing as a sympathetic heart attack, because his chest was so constricted he could hardly breathe. Muscles in his thighs tight, he lowered to his knees on the thick mat and cupped Lucy’s hands in both of his. He couldn’t keep a smile steady, or his hands, but he tried. “Aw, my heart gets kind of fluttery around you, too,” he teased gently. “This isn’t just a ploy to get more pictures of me doing kitchen work to send to my mom, is it?”
An unsteady smile curved her lips. “I am definitely sending the ones I got to all the Cadore women just as soon as I get a chance.” Her voice was airy, her breathing shallow, her grip cutting off circulation to his fingers.
“You do that, you might as well post them on Facebook and every other social media platform out there. I don’t know if it’s genetic, but Cadore women can’t keep anything to themselves.”
The wail of a siren came sooner than he expected. He found relief in its approach, but it also acted like a spark to the fire of anxiety inside him. As long as it was just them and their friends in the room, it could be no big deal, a little scare, a case of better-safe-than-sorry. Once the paramedics arrived, it would be real. Real pain. Real risk. Real danger.
He’d never been a fan of institutionalized religion, but his parents had taught them all the power of prayer. Even as he grinned at Lucy and said, “You’d better not flirt with the paramedics,” inside a scared little voice was jabbering, Please don’t let this be serious. Please don’t let her die. Please, God…
The siren grew ear-splittingly loud, then abruptly stopped. Joe glanced around, and Patricia opened her eyes from prayers of her own. “Carly and Marti went outside to meet them.”
