Just Around the Corner

“And what reason would that be?”

“So she can stick her finger down her throat to throw up after she eats.”

Standing beside her, he rinsed his own plate and handed it to her to put in the dishwasher. He didn’t say anything.

“If she is anorexic or bulimic, she needs help, Matt.”

“I teach lighting design.”

“But you said she came to you for guidance.”

“I teach lighting design.”

“I realize that!” Phyllis said, wishing he’d let her past the barriers he’d erected. “So you don’t know about eating disorders, but you know about people. And she trusts you.”

“There’s nothing I can do.”

“You can at least try to get her to talk to someone, to see a counselor.”

“I’ll suggest it on Monday,” he said, and then, “I’m going to finish that vacuuming and leave you to your bath and your book. I’ll be back tomorrow afternoon to take you grocery-shopping. Thanks for dinner.”

Before she could say, “You’re welcome,” he was gone.

Probably just as well. He could clean for her. Take out her trash. Stand at her kitchen counter and eat.

He couldn’t be welcome in her life.

CHAPTER NINE

MATT FELT A LITTLE AWKWARD. Okay, he felt damn stupid. It wasn’t that he wasn’t used to grocery-shopping, pushing a cart up and down the aisles, filling it with stuff. He did all that. Regularly. But he’d never pushed a cart being filled with stuff for someone else. He was finding out more than he needed to know about Phyllis Langford.

Her tastes in food. What brand of

toilet paper she used. What kind of toothpaste.

“You know, those would be cheaper at Wal-Mart,” he told her when she added paper towels and tissues to the cart. She’d chosen the same brands he used.

A Wal-Mart had opened on the outskirts of town two years before.

“I know.” She nodded, and continued loading the cart. “I just figured it was worth the few cents I’d have saved not to drag you to another place.”

“I have to go, anyway.”

She glanced back at him, the first time she’d met his eyes fully since he’d picked her up half an hour earlier. “Maybe next week, then.” Her focus returned to the list she’d been concentrating on.

She looked great. The tight beige hip-huggers she was wearing with a black chenille turtleneck sweater were practical and sexy as hell at the same time. Hard to believe, looking at her, that she was pregnant.

Feminine and baby items were in the next row. Phyllis eyed the baby items, pausing as though she’d like to linger, ran a hand through her windblown hair, but pressed on. She stopped in front of the feminine supplies.

Matt studied the baby items. There were a lot of different pacifiers. One claimed that it was orthodontically tested. Matt was glad to see that.

Phyllis slid a small bag of feminine napkins onto the underside of the basket, next to the toilet paper.

“You bleeding again?” he asked.

She shot him a startled look, glanced around. He’d made her uncomfortable.

Damn. “Sorry.”