Not Another Bad Date

“She’s not here.”

“No, but I’m not sure it’s ever a good idea to pick up something that was broken to pieces.”

He tilted his head to one side and looked across at her. “Yesterday, when I was watching my football players run drills, I remembered giving you that fairy book in your dorm room fourteen years ago. One second I was yelling at the tight end, and in the next, I remembered the look on your face when I gave you the book. I remembered how much you loved it.”

“I did.”

“Then I remembered the night I told you Devon was pregnant.”

She remembered that, too.

“I remember the look in your eyes.”

Adele glanced down at the toes of her velvet flats. “This is what I mean by not picking up broken pieces.”

Silence stretched between them for several long moments before he said, “I went to your dorm room a few days later, but you were gone. No one knew where you’d run off to.”

She looked up. “You asked?”

“Yes.”

She shook her head. “Maybe we shouldn’t talk about this.”

“I think we should.” He tossed the instructions on top of the crib pieces. “I always regretted how much I hurt you.”

“That was a long time ago. I’m over it.”

“Are you?”

“Yes.” It was true. But that didn’t mean she was stupid enough to make the same mistake twice in one lifetime. She was older and wiser. She didn’t want to develop feelings for Zach. For one thing, he lived here in Texas. Her life was over a thousand miles away, waiting for her return.

“I hope so because I had to do what I felt was right. At the risk of getting told to go fuck myself and the door slammed in my face again, you have to know that if given the exact situation, I’d have to do it all the same. I had to step up and take responsibility for something I’d done. It wasn’t easy, but I didn’t have a choice.”

“I know you didn’t. I always knew you had to do the right thing. It was one of the things I loved about you, but that didn’t mean it hurt any less.” She looked into his brown eyes, and said, “Or that I’ll ever let you hurt me like that again.”

“I’m not going to hurt you.” He reached for her hand and pulled her against his chest. “I like you, and I think you like me. We’re adults. Let’s just have fun together while you’re here.”

His fingers brushed her back and sent hot tingles up her spine. Through his clothes and hers, his chest warmed her breasts, and she didn’t want to give up the tingles. Not yet. She wouldn’t be here long enough to develop deep feelings for him. Not this time.

“Okay, but just don’t ask me out on a date,” she said, fearing that if they ever actually dated, the curse would make sure things went straight to hell.

“What? Of course I’ll ask you out.”

She shook her head. “No, don’t. It will ruin everything.” She wrapped her arms around his neck and raised her mouth for his kiss. She liked him. After a three-year dry spell, he made her feel wanted. Like a desired woman, but that wasn’t love. It wasn’t the heart-pinching, stomach-aching love she’d had for him so many years ago. It wasn’t even the easy kind of love she’d felt as an adult for some of the other men in her life.

This time it was simply heart-pounding, stomach-tightening lust. She was old enough not to mistake the two. To know the difference and not confuse it with deeper emotions. Not even when he made love to her on the floor and gave her an orgasm that left her weak and gasping. Not even when he came over the next two days for repeat performances.

Over the Thanksgiving holiday, he and Tiffany left town to visit his family in Austin, but he turned up on Adele’s porch bright and early the following Monday morning. They ran five miles together, and he told her about his mother’s cornbread stuffing and ambrosia.

“You like ambrosia?” Adele managed to ask as they ran. Usually Adele didn’t like to talk while she huffed and puffed along, but Zach didn’t seem to have the same problem. In fact, a few times he turned and jogged backward.

Show-off.

“You don’t?”

Adele shook her head. “Too much going on all in the same bowl.”

“Are you sure you’re from Texas?”

Sometimes she wondered that herself.

Over the next two weeks, they jogged together most weekday mornings. When they returned, they soaped each other up in the shower or in Sherilyn’s spa tub and worked out in a whole different way. Zach always made sure he brought his own condom, and she always made sure she had granola bars or croissants for afterward. Together, they even managed to put up the baby’s crib and swing.

He always parked his Escalade by the curb and didn’t seem concerned that anyone would see them together out on their run, but she knew Tiffany wasn’t aware that her father was spending a lot of time with Adele. Adele did not kid herself into thinking Tiffany would be okay with it.

“Daddy wants to take down the portrait of my momma,” Tiffany mentioned as Adele took her home one day after school. “He says it’s time, but that makes me mad. When your momma died, did your daddy make you take all the pictures out of the house?”

Somehow, Adele figured “all the pictures” was an exaggeration. “Not all of them. Just the ones that made him sad.” She looked into the rearview mirror into Tiffany’s green eyes. “Maybe you could find something to hang up there that would make you both happy.”

A frown appeared between Tiffany’s brows, and Adele returned her gaze to the road. “Do you think the picture of Momma makes my daddy sad?”

No. “Talk to him about it.”

“Right,” Tiffany scoffed. “All he wants to talk about is the game Friday night.”

That particular game was the state championship, and it was being played across town at the Warren P. Bradshaw Stadium. The whole town had been celebrating for a week. The local newspaper had written about the impending game and about Zach, and the story had been picked up in papers across the state. The Dallas Morning News and Austin American Statesman had interviewed him. A former NFL star turned high-school football coach in a small Texas town made great ink.

She asked him if all the pressure got to him and made him nervous. He’d shrugged. “Everyone gets nervous right before a game. L. C. Johnson used to puke before every game. A lot of guys do.”

“Did you?”

“Nah.”

“Who’s L. C. Johnson?”

He’d chuckled and kissed the curve of her neck. “Only the biggest dual threat in the NFL. The last year I played for Denver, he put up some crazy stats. He rushed for over sixteen hundred yards and caught damn near everything I threw to him.”

She’d moved her hair to give him better access. “Do you miss it?”

“Playing ball?” He’d run his finger across her bare shoulder and pushed her bra strap down her arm. “Sometimes, but not as much as I used to. I miss throwing the perfect pass. I miss winning the battle, but I don’t miss trying to get out of bed the morning after a game. Or playing through the pain and nausea right after getting hit by a guy determined to kill me.”

She’d pulled back and looked into his face. “That’s horrible.”

“It’s part of the game. Besides, I had a live-in masseuse.”

She laughed. “I can’t see Devon playing masseuse.”

“Honey, Devon didn’t live in Denver with me.”

“Ever?”

He shook his head. “For most of our marriage she lived here. Across town in the big house she built. I’d come and see her and Tiffany as much as I could.”

Adele couldn’t imagine being married to Zach and living so far away from him. “That doesn’t sound like much of