Not Another Bad Date

to be just fine. When I left, she was eating breakfast, and the baby was kicking.” Not that she’d felt any kicking herself.

“Really?”

“Really. She’s going to need lots of rest, but I’ll be around to help out.” They moved into the dark living room, and Adele gave her niece’s shoulder a squeeze before she dropped her arm to her side. “Try not to worry.”

“I always wanted a little brother,” Tiffany said as she flipped a switch. Delicate wrought-iron chandeliers lit up a large room with the furnishings pushed back against the walls. The large rugs had been rolled up leaving the middle bare. “But my momma and daddy only had me,” she added.

“I always thought it would be nice to have an older brother.” Adele moved farther into the room and glanced about for Kendra’s shoes. At the far end, a fireplace made of gold-and-brown marble dominated one wall. Columns and leaves were carved into the smooth stone, and like the rest of the house, it bordered on over the top. “A little brother would have been really ni—” She stopped in midsentence, her mouth fell open and the air whooshed from her lungs. Above the mantel, caressed by the warm glow of special lighting, Devon Hamilton stared down at her from a life-sized portrait. Her green eyes cold and her lips pressed into that I’m-better-than-you smile Adele recognized.

Tiffany moved beside her and looked up. “That’s my momma.”

Adele moved her mouth to speak, but no words came out. Shock hit her stomach, while hot little pinpricks spread up her chest to her face. She took one step back, then another.

“She died a few years ago.”

Adele stopped. Shock number two. Devon is dead? “I’m sorry,” she whispered past the clog in her throat.

“Wasn’t she beautiful? Like an angel.”

“Mmm-hmm,” she managed.

“It’s just me and Daddy now.”

Daddy. Tiffany and Kendra went to school together, which meant Tiffany was also thirteen. Which also meant…holy crap. In her shock over Devon, she’d forgotten all about Daddy. “Kendra, we’ve got to go. Now!”

Both girls looked at her, and Kendra said, “I need my shoes.”

“Get them another time.” Adele headed toward the door.

“Maybe I left them downstairs.”

“I’ll wait in the car,” Adele said over her shoulder as she moved through the entry and out the door. “This can’t be happening,” she whispered to herself. Her fingers felt cold, and she shook her hands. She twisted an ankle on the uneven cobblestones in the walkway, but she didn’t let a little thing like pain shooting up her shin slow her down. “Oh my God. I can’t believe this.” She hooked a right beneath the portico and moved toward Sherilyn’s Celica. At one time or another, every woman alive fantasized about running into an ex and making him sorry he’d dumped her. Adele had had those fantasies. She’d had them a time or two about Zach Zemaitis, but she’d always pictured herself sizzling hot, not looking like crap with coffee down her sweater.

She pulled a set of keys from the pocket of her jeans. God, just get me out of here. She looked up, and the keys fell from her numb fingers at the sight of shock number three jogging up the driveway toward her. The sunlight caught in Zach Zemaitis’s hair like a halo and a pair of Oakley Thump Pros rested on the bridge of his nose. Her heart pounded in her ears as the soles of his running shoes pounded the uneven cobblestones with ease.

Within the shadow of the portico, Adele stood frozen, afraid to breathe as he jogged up the drive. He gazed straight ahead, and with any luck, he’d run right on by without seeing her. But lately, Adele’s luck had been fairly shitty, and just before he disappeared from sight, his head turned, and he looked right at her. His footsteps slowed and stopped. He retraced a few steps backward, and a crease furrowed his brow. For several long seconds, he simply stared at her, pinning Adele with a gaze she could feel rather than see. He was breathing a bit heavy as he pulled air into his lungs, and he slowly raised a hand to his temple and turned off the MP3 built into the slim frame of his glasses. He pulled the little speakers from his ears, then pushed the black sunglasses to the top of his head. Across the distance he looked at her through the dark brown eyes that used to make her heart squeeze and her stomach ache. His brows lowered over his steady gaze, and he walked from the sunlight into the shadow. With each step of his jogging shoes, her heart pounded a little faster in her chest, and she put a hand on the trunk of the car to keep from keeling over…or passing out…or jumping in the car and locking the doors.

After all these years, he still moved the same. Relaxed as if he was saving his energy for something important. Like throwing a long bomb, sprinting past a determined lineman, or exerting himself in bed. Sweat dampened the armpits of a blue X-TERRA T-shirt that fit loose about his wide chest. A pair of gray cotton jogging shorts rested low on his hips and fell midway to his powerful thighs. He was bigger than she remembered. His jaw was stronger, his cheekbones more defined. Age had not robbed him of one ounce of his good looks. If anything, he was even more gorgeous than she remembered. And as she forced herself to stand there and face Zach instead of jumping in the car and peeling out on his nice cobblestone driveway, she held on to a desperate hope that perhaps he didn’t recognize her.

“Adele?” So much for her desperate hope.

“Hello,” she managed. “How are you, Zach?”

“Surprised.” His voice was different. Deeper. More masculine than she remembered, but his accent was pure Texas. “It’s been a long time.”

Fourteen years.

His gaze moved across her face to her unruly hair. “You look the same.”

He didn’t. He looked better. More like a man. “I’m here to pick up my niece, Kendra.”

“Oh.” His gaze returned to hers and after several long heartbeats, he said, “I’ll get her.” He turned toward the door and took a few steps.

“She knows I’m here.”

He turned back toward her and the early-morning sun filtered though the vines above his head and cut slashes of light across his eyes and the full crease of his mouth.

“I had to take her mother to the hospital,” Adele explained. “She’s still there.”

A single bead of sweat ran down his right temple. He raised his arm and wiped the side of his face with the short sleeve of his T-shirt. “You took her last night?”

“Yes.”

He dropped his arm to his side and lowered his gaze to the coffee stain on her sweater. “Nothing serious, I hope.”

“Not really,” she lied, and clenched her hands to keep from covering the stain. “I heard about Devon.”

He looked up. “Yes. She was killed in a car accident three years ago.”

“I’m sorry for your loss.” Shock number four. She’d actually said that without choking.

“Thank you.” He took a few steps toward her, and she had to remind herself to breathe. “The Junior League isn’t quite the same without her.” He bent forward and picked up the keys at her feet. “Or so they tell me.” He rose to stand, so close that the scent of his warm skin touched her nose. There had been a time when she would have breathed deep and sucked the scent of him deep into her lungs, but those days were long over. “I didn’t realize you live in Cedar Creek,” he said.

“I don’t. I’m just here until my sister has her baby.”

“When’s the baby due?”

When? He was so close that she took a step back and bumped into the trunk of her sister’s car. “Around Valentine’s day,” she answered.

“Four months.” He reached forward and grasped her wrists. He slid his warm palm to the back of her hand and turned it up. “That’s a long visit,” he said, and dropped her keys into her hand.

“Yes.” Her gaze lowered to their hands and the words “Carpe Diem” tattooed in bold script on the inside of his forearm from elbow to wrist. Unless he’d had it removed, he had a pair of interlocking tattooed Z’s circling his left biceps, too.