“I was never seeing a cardiologist,” she replied tartly. “That was just an unfounded rumor.”
His red eyebrows rose in surprise. “Is that right?”
“Yes.”
“Mike’s an idiot.”
Surprisingly, her lips twitched with a near smile. After a moment she asked, “How is he?”
“I don’t see him much,” Bob replied with a shrug. “He’s real busy being a full-time student and all. He’s got a part-time job working for the university. Doing some odd jobs around campus for extra cash.”
“He’s going to school full-time?”
Bob nodded. “He sort of made the decision at the last minute, almost too late to enroll for the semester. I think it was sometime during Christmas. He’d been moping around for days, and then he just jumped into this plan. He’s been going like a windup bunny ever since, hardly ever giving himself a chance to breathe, as far as I can tell.”
Her fingers tightened almost painfully around the handle of her shopping cart. “Do you know if he’s declared a major?”
Bob grinned. “You might not believe it. It’s education. He says he wants to be a teacher. When I think back about what he was like in school, and remember what a trial he was to all his own teachers, I can’t help but laugh.”
But Catherine wasn’t laughing. In fact, she was having a hard time not bursting into tears. “I think it’s great,” she said, forcing out the words.
Bob’s grin faded as he searched her face. “Hey, you want me to give him a message from you next time I talk to him?”
There were so many messages she would have liked to send. I’m proud of you. I miss you. I’m still in love with you. But all she said was, “Just give him my best.”
“Catherine—”
“Gosh, I’d better get going. I have frozen things melting in my cart as we stand here.” It was a patently flimsy excuse, since the temperature was hardly warm enough to melt anything for some time yet. But she couldn’t stand there any longer, trying to keep her raw feelings hidden. “Goodbye, Bob. It was great to see you.”
He didn’t try to detain her. But she knew he watched her closely as she hurried away.
Hands in the pockets of his jeans, Mike looked up at the window above his head, smiling a little when he saw a black-and-white head peering back down at him from the windowsill inside. Funny how much he had missed that sight in the past months.
The last time he’d stood here it had been cold, and a Christmas wreath had hung from a big red bow on the balcony above him. Bundled into a coat against the bleak December day, he had stood in this very spot for a long time, gazing up at Norman as they had silently said their goodbyes before Mike walked away for the last time. Of course he had known Norman hadn’t really been aware that it was goodbye, but Mike had liked carrying that fantasy away with him when he’d climbed into his loaded truck and driven away from the apartments that had been his home for such a short time.
Now Norman sat in the very same place, as though he hadn’t moved in the meantime, even though May flowers bloomed around the complex and Mike wore a short-sleeved shirt with his jeans and sneakers. It had been gray and cloudy that day; now the sky was a brilliant blue dotted with only a few fluffy white cotton-candy puffs. So many things were different—not the least of which was Mike, himself.
He knew Catherine was home, because her car was in its usual space. What he didn’t know was how she would react at finding him at her door. Half tempted to turn around and climb back into his truck, he wondered where he was going to find the nerve to climb those stairs and find out.
Catherine moved to answer her door, still distracted by an article she had been reading, when someone rang the bell. It was with only idle curiosity that she checked the peephole to see who stood on the other side.
The scientific journal fell unnoticed to her feet when she saw who it was. She pressed a hand to her chest, where her heart was suddenly pounding, and stared at the doorknob, trying to remember how to use it.
Norman butted against her leg, meowing with what sounded like impatience for her to open the door. Spurred into action, she reached out and opened the door. “Mike?”
He looked exactly as he had the first time she had seen him, though he wasn’t wearing the ID badge this time. His dark-blond hair was still a little shaggy and wind tossed, and his eyes were as vividly blue as ever. He still looked like someone who should be cavorting on a beach somewhere, or posing for ads for casual men’s wear.
He was still the most attractive man Catherine could ever imagine meeting.
“Bob was only partially right,” he said, for all the world as if only moments had passed since they had last spoken. “It wasn’t our relationship I was trying to sabotage. It was everything it represented.”
She had no clue what she was supposed to say in response to that. Except… “Um, would you like to come in?”
He stepped inside and closed the door behind him, but he shook his head when she automatically waved him to a seat. “No, I need to say this,” he said, looking as though he had rehearsed a speech and wanted to get it all out before he forgot any of it. “Even if this is the last time we see each other, you deserve to know what I finally figured out about myself since we split.”
“And what is that?” she asked, studying him curiously, her racing pulse beginning to slow, but not by much.
“I wasn’t afraid of competing with your friends,” he admitted. “I was afraid of becoming one of them. Grown up. Responsible. Tied down. I liked not being committed to anything, not even to the classes I was taking just to appease other people. I didn’t have to care about my grades because I wasn’t really trying to earn a degree, anyway. I didn’t have to worry too much about my responsibilities to my job, because it was one I could walk away from at any time. And I figured I didn’t have to work too hard at our relationship because it wasn’t going to last, anyway. And there was a p