Second Time's the Charm

“I didn’t think you’d take my call.” He reached her, standing a bit too close for her comfort.

He’d been right. If he’d called, she wouldn’t have answered. The late-October evening breeze wafted from him to her, carrying the slightly musky scent that used to fill her nostrils every night and greet her at the breakfast table every morning.

She’d liked it.

“Why are you here?” she asked again, irritated that she was rumpled, still wearing her scrubs. After a ten-hour day between the day care and the clinic, her makeup would be worn away. And her hair was falling out of its ponytail.

Kirk liked it loose and curling down her back.

“I wanted to see you, to make certain you were okay.”

She wanted him to look at her and eat his heart out.

“I’ve been here five years,” she said. She was too tired to deal with him, to listen between the lines for the truth he didn’t speak. One thing she knew, Kirk took care of Kirk. If he was in Shelter Valley, it was because he needed something from her.

“I just heard about the break-ins you’ve been having here,” he said. “The one last night made the news in Phoenix.”

Truth be known, she was a tad unnerved by the latest break-in herself. Everyone in town was. An older woman who lived alone had been in bed asleep and never heard the intruder who’d removed her sliding glass door, helped himself to the money and credit cards in her purse and left. She’d woken early that morning to a chilled house and gone out to her kitchen to find the sliding glass door off the track and her purse contents dumped on her kitchen table.

Nothing else had been disturbed.

“According to the news, the thief’s getting more daring,” Kirk told her. “Until now the thefts have taken place when people weren’t home.”

He was right, which still didn’t explain his presence there.

“I’m not giving you any money, Kirk.” It was the only reason she could think of for him to have made the almost-hour-long drive from his home in Scottsdale, the high-end suburb north of Phoenix where she’d last heard he was living.

“I broke up with Leah.”

She knew. But didn’t want to feed his ego and let him know that she and Papa and Gayle ever mentioned him. “I’m sorry to hear that,” she said, proud of her even voice, her expressionless face.

Because inside, she was seething. How dare he show up in her new hometown? So what if he’d attended college there. They’d met and fallen in love in Shelter Valley. He shouldn’t have the balls to show his face there. Not anymore.

“I couldn’t marry her.”

“Oh? Why not?” The question slipped out because she was too tired to stop it. But she wished she had. She didn’t give a rat’s ass about Kirk Henderson. Didn’t want to know anything about him. And didn’t want him to think she did. “Is she already married?”

The dig was beneath her. But the small part of her that lived in a lower place liked the justice that would have been served if that were the case—since his own wedding vows hadn’t stopped him from pursuing the other woman.

“No. She’s never been married.”

But she had a five-year-old son. Kirk’s son. She wondered what kind of custody agreement they had come to. Biting the inside of her lip, Lillie hitched the big bag she carried with her “doctor’s kit”—items designed to divert children of varying ages from whatever immediate trauma they might be facing—farther up on her shoulder and hugged her arms around her waist.

“She’s been expecting me to marry her since our divorce was final.”

“Because you told her you would.” The point was pertinent. Kirk lied.

“I meant to. I thought I wanted to.” She’d never heard that insecure tone in his voice. Kirk was the man. Always had been. She’d been fool enough to be attracted to his confidence when she’d been too young to recognize the difference between ego and a healthy self-image.

A car drove slowly past the parking lot. Becca Parsons, the mayor, probably on her way home from the city offices just down the street from the clinic. She waved. Lillie waved back.

Shelter Valley sign language for “Yes, I’m fine.”

“The truth is, Lil, I kept putting the wedding off because I just didn’t feel ready. At first I thought it was too soon.” He shrugged, looked down at his casual designer leather shoes that probably cost him a couple hundred bucks. At least. “You know, I felt I had to be divorced long enough to let the end of our marriage sink in....”

He stopped as she flinched, as though realizing that he’d misspoken.

“It took me a while to figure out the truth,” he said, scuffing the toe of his shoe as he kicked a small rock a couple of inches in front of him.