It's Never too Late

And she was going to be the friend to Mark Heber that she’d told him she would be. In her shock the night before, she hadn’t been able to put her heart back into the safe compartment where she’d kept it since the night her mother and brother died. She’d told him that she’d be around whenever he needed her. That, since they were two ships passing in the night, she’d be a good sounding board as he sorted through the choices he had to make.

Truth was, she hadn’t been able to turn her back on him. She cared too much.

Not that caring was going to do her a damn bit of good. Mark knew her as Adele, not as Adrianna. There was no way he’d ever forgive her once he found out about her deception.

There was no possible future for the two of them.

But she cared. So much that her involvement with Mark wasn’t about what he could give to her—it wasn’t about the future. He needed a friend now. And for whatever reason, he’d chosen her. She had something that he wanted. Or needed.

And she had to give it to him.

Which was why, when he knocked on her door just after ten that morning, telling her that Nonnie had gone down for a nap and asking if he could come in, she opened her door wider and stepped back.

“You do your homework at the kitchen table.” He nodded toward the computer and folders there, making her nervous. Her work for Will was done mostly on the computer and the evidence she was collecting was in secure folders, but she’d been collecting hard copy files, too.

“Yeah,” she said, and added, “I can hear the fountain better from there.”

Mark nodded again, obviously distracted.

“Did you get any sleep?”

He’d gone inside just a few minutes after delivering his bombshell.

“Very little.”

She hadn’t slept a lot, either.

Mark stood in the middle of her living room, his hands in the pockets of his jeans, stretching the fabric of his jeans across his groin.

She wished she knew what to do for him. “You have to work today?”

“No. I told Nonnie I’d take her for a drive. She wants to see some town called Tortilla Flat. It’s about an hour from Phoenix, straight up the mountain. One of the ladies who visited this week told her about it. Apparently the views on the way up are incredible.” There was no enthusiasm in his tone.

Or on his face, either.

“It will be good for her to get out.”

“You want to come along?”

“I have homework to do here.” She motioned toward the laptop.

“If I hadn’t told you that Ella was pregnant would you have come?”

Honesty, Adele. “Yes.”

He dropped to the edge of her sofa, legs spread, elbows on his knees and hands clasped.

“I have to ask you something.”

“Okay.” Addy sat, too. In the chair perpendicular to him. She couldn’t get too close to him. “If Nonnie’s blood pressure hadn’t dropped, if we’d gone out that night, would you have made love with me?”

“Yes.”

“You don’t take sex lightly.”

“No.”

“It’s logical to conclude, then, that I mean something to you.”