It's Never too Late

The woman affected him like no one else.

“Did you ever get in trouble as a kid?” They’d spent the evening talking about his antics. He wanted to know about hers. To know her better.

He wanted her to feel as vulnerable as he was feeling....

“Not that I can recall.”

“You have to have done something wrong. No one’s perfect.”

“I didn’t say I didn’t do things wrong!” She chuckled. “I said I didn’t get in trouble for them. All Gran had to do was call me by my full name and I’d practically break out in tears. I hated disappointing her.”

“Because you were afraid she would leave you?”

He would’ve sworn she stiffened next to him. “It’s a natural reaction,” he said, softening his tone. “I figure you got the same spiel I did as a kid from your counselor.”

“You had counseling?”

“Just at school. After Mom died. Another hazard of living in a small town. Everyone knew her. And they thought, after she’d died, that I’d have a problem dealing with the mixed emotions of hating what she did, but grieving because she was my mother.”

From what she’d said, she’d loved her father. Before she’d hated him. Their situations were different, but some of the childhood processes would have been the same.

Watching the road in the pitch darkness as they sped through the desert, Mark said, “I didn’t like cou

nseling and I certainly didn’t think I needed it. I can’t say I participated, but apparently the things the guy had to say found a way in. It didn’t take me long to figure out that they thought my acting up after Mom died was due to some subconscious need I had to test Nonnie—to push her until she finally shipped me off. The guy—I can’t remember his name—suggested that I had a fear of being abandoned. Because from my first days, I had been.

“I assured him that I had not been left. Nonnie had been with me from the moment I was born and she wasn’t going anywhere.”

“Was that true? You really weren’t afraid of being left?”

“Looking back on it, I’m not sure. I know I didn’t think I was. Mostly I remember being pissed that the guy suggested such a thing. He wasn’t from Bierly and I figured he just didn’t know Nonnie.”

And she’d very expertly turned the conversation right back to him.

He needed to know about her.

* * *

ADDY WASN’T EAGER to get back to Shelter Valley and the work that awaited her.

She’d written a controversial article about border guards that made her stomach churn and dropped it off at the school newspaper office that afternoon. If they printed it, they’d put the university in a tough political position. If they didn’t, they’d be taking away her freedom of speech.

All institutions faced the challenge at one time or another. She had to know how Montford handled it.

She also wanted to know more about Mark Heber and she already knew too much. She was spending too much time with him—and wanted more. It was like he’d deposited a part of himself inside her and that part was breeding. Rapidly.

“There’s a casino with a quiet bar not far from Shelter Valley,” Mark was saying as they neared their exit. “It’s out by the cactus jelly plant, right off the freeway. Some guys from work told me about it.”

“I don’t gamble.”

His chuckle had her turning to look at him. She’d been trying to avoid the temptation to soak up any more of him. At least for the night. “I don’t gamble, either,” he said. “In fact, I’ve never been inside a casino. Never saw the point. If I have extra money to spend, which I never have, I’d invest it in something a little more stable than a game of chance. I was going to suggest that we stop in for a drink. Unless you’d rather get straight back.”

If he wanted to spend more time with her as badly as she did with him, she had to get straight back. But what if he just needed a little more time out in the world before he went back to the home he shared with his grandmother?

“A glass of wine sounds good,” she said, afraid of just how good it sounded.

She only wished it was the wine compelling her to agree. But she had half a bottle chilling in the refrigerator at home.

Adele Kennedy’s home.