Still the One (22 page)

A lump of sympathy formed in Annette’s throat. “I can’t answer that for you, honey.”

“Well, when I turn eighteen, I’m going to get some insurance money, and I’ll be able to support us.”

“Money is important. But so is family. You’re lucky to have Katie and… and…” Why was it so hard to say the man’s name? A part
of her, a dark, jealous part, hated that he existed. “… and Zack.”

Gracie lifted her head. “They’re not really family, and I’m not going to pretend they are.”

“Shutting them out of your baby’s life would be a mistake, Gracie. In fact, that might be one of the biggest mistakes of your
life. You don’t want to deprive your child of people who would love it.”

“I’ll love it enough to make up for it.”

“You’ll love it with everything you’ve got, I’m sure of that. But the love that surrounds a child in a family… well, that’s
something special. That makes a child feel connected. That makes a child feel like it belongs.”

Gracie headed for the door. “I’ve got to go.”

“All right, sweetie. Enjoy the book.”

Annette leaned back against the pillow and stared at the blank screen of the turned-off TV mounted on the wall. She and Gracie
had a lot in common. It was hard to put aside loyalties that you’d held for years. It was hard to look at things in a new
way, hard to open your heart to the possibility that there was another side to the story. It could be really, really hard
to admit that maybe you’d been wrong—or at least, not entirely right.

You teach what you need to learn
. The old saying ran through Annette’s mind like a burglar, unwelcome, startling, and intrusive. Not wanting to think about
it anymore, Annette blew out a hard sigh and reached for the TV remote.

Zack pushed open the door of the tiny hair salon at the assisted-living center to see Katie standing behind the lone stylist
chair, rolling a pink curler into the white hair of a little dumpling of an elderly lady, laughing at something the woman
had said. Katie wore flat sandals, a sleeveless blue-and-white-striped shirt, and a short white denim skirt, and her hair
was pulled up in a messy updo. His heart chugged hard at the sight of her.

He’d been out of town for the last three days—he’d had a presentation in New York that had been in the works for months—but
Katie had been on his mind the whole time.

She was turning into an obsession. At first he’d told himself that it was because he hadn’t been with a woman in a while—too
long of a while, now that he thought of it. He’d told himself that while he was in New York, he should call one of the models
he used to date and blow off some steam, but he hadn’t been able to work up the interest.

He didn’t just want to be with a woman; he wanted to be with one particular woman: Katie.

Which made no sense. Katie was a full-commitment kind of woman, and he was a live-for-the-moment kind of guy.

Still, she was driving him crazy. The memory of that kiss replayed in his mind over and over, popping to the forefront of
his thoughts at the most inconvenient times. He couldn’t recall ever being so haunted and intrigued and bewitched by a woman.

Oh, wait—he could. He’d been seventeen years old and crazy about a brown-eyed girl in the most colorful town in Louisiana.

Katie spotted him in the mirror. Her honey-colored eyes widened, and two pink spots formed on her cheeks. “Zack—hello!”

Good. It was only fair that his presence affected her, because God only knew hers affected him.

Her behavior didn’t indicate she was glad to see him, though. Her gaze went right back to her client, and she continued putting
rollers into the older woman’s hair. “When did you get back in town?”

“Just now. I went by the salon and Bev said you were here.”

Avoiding his gaze, she looked down at her client. “Dorothy, this is Zack Ferguson.”

“Oh, you must be the warmie everyone is talking about!” the white-haired woman exclaimed.

“I think you mean hottie,” Katie said softly to the lady.

“Yes, yes, yes. Hottie. And aren’t you just! Why, you’re a flat-out sheet-scorcher.” The woman beamed at him. “I understand
you made a fortune playing poke.”

“Poke-er,” Katie prompted. “You know—the card game.”

“Yes, indeed.”

Katie grinned. “Zack, this is Dorothy.”

Zack dipped his head in a nod. “Nice to meet you.”

“Likewise,” Dorothy said. “So you’re Gracie’s father?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, she’s a darling girl! So sweet. We all just love her.”

Zack’s eyebrows rose. “Darling” and “sweet” were not descriptions he would have ascribed to the sullen teenager. Perhaps Dorothy
had confused Gracie with another girl working at the retirement home.

“She’s teaching us how to use Tubeface,” Dorothy added.

Zack grinned at the malapropism. “No one does Tubeface better than Gracie.”

“She showed us the funniest videos. And she’s teaching us to swim the wet.”

“I think you mean surf the Web,” Katie prompted.

“Yes, that’s it. And she turned shuffleboard into a drinking game.”

Katie’s brows pulled together.

“Oh, don’t worry.” Dorothy flapped her hand dismissively. “It was harmless fun, and she’s not drinking herself. She’s too
young—and besides, she’s got that baby to think about. The only person who had a problem was Iris Huckabee, and that was only
because she was drinking prune juice.”

Zack laughed.

“The stuff Gracie’s teaching us about the computer is amazing. Why, I had no idea Oprah has a wetsite!”

Katie looked at Zack as she picked up a roller. “Gracie told me you’ve been calling and texting her.”

Zack nodded. They’d communicated every day. It was actually easier to get information out of Gracie over her phone than it
was in person. “I just saw her in the rec room, and she was calling bingo.”

“Oh, she’s great at that,” Dorothy said. “And she’s good at getting the folks on the rehab wing involved in activities, too.”

That was surprising. Wonderful, but surprising all the same.

“She and my mother-in-law are bonding,” Katie said, affixing the last roller at the bottom of the neat row down the center
of the woman’s head. “They like some of the same books.” Katie pumped the metal bar on the chair, lowering it, and looked
at Dorothy. “Ready to get under the dryer?”

“You bet.” The woman took Katie’s hand, rose from the chair, and bustled to the lone hair dryer. “I won’t be able to hear
a thing once I get under that contraption, so I might as well say good-bye now.” She waggled her fingers at Zack. “Nice meeting
you!”

Katie adjusted the helmet over the old lady’s head, turned the blower on high, and handed her an Oprah magazine.

“So your trip went well?” she asked, moving toward the back of the small salon.

“Yes.” The client had signed a huge contract, which would keep Zack’s staff busy for the next few months. Usually he would
have stayed longer to kick things off, but he’d left his vice president in charge. He’d been eager to get back to Chartreuse.
“How are things between you and Gracie?”

“We’re getting along better, as long as we stay away from sensitive topics.”

He grinned. “Does that leave you anything to talk about?”

“Sure. Books and movies and music. Baby clothes and birthing classes.” Katie opened a door in the back of the salon, stepped
in, and came out with a broom. “And school. We visited the high school counselor and got Gracie enrolled. She’ll attend most
of the first semester and try to bring her grade point average up, then take her midterms online. After she has the baby,
she can decide whether she wants to go back to school for her last semester, finish online, or test for the GED. She’ll have
some options.”

“Options are good.” Why didn’t he seem to have any where Katie was concerned? Only one option came to mind—the same option
that had led him to throw caution to the wind that night on the sailboat and to kiss her in the kitchen. He watched Katie
set the dustpan at the styling station, beside a picture of Paul—Christ, she even had his picture here!—and start sweeping
the perfectly clean floor. “What else is going on?”

“I made Gracie an appointment with a therapist yesterday, but she wouldn’t go.”

“Can’t say that I’m surprised.”

“I went instead.” She swept up a few locks of white hair. “We talked about a lot of things.”

“Such as?”

“The identity of the father.” She stopped sweeping and looked at him. “The therapist said we shouldn’t push Gracie. When she
trusts us more, hopefully she’ll tell us about him.”

“I’m more concerned about Gracie telling the boy.”

“We’ve been over this.” Katie blew out a little sigh of exasperation and leaned on the broom. “Please don’t start in on that
again.”

He didn’t want to argue with her. He didn’t know what the deal was with Gracie and the baby’s father—it confounded him that
despite all his snooping, he couldn’t find out who he was—but there was nothing to be gained by alienating Gracie. And hell—for
all he knew, it might be for the best if the guy just stayed out of the picture. Gracie wouldn’t need child support; in addition
to her inheritance from her parents’ estate, Zack had more than enough money to care for her and her child.

“Okay,” he said.

Katie eyed him suspiciously. “Okay, what?”

“Okay, I won’t push Gracie about the baby’s father.”

“Oh.” The capitulation seemed to leave her off balance. Her eyes softened. “Oh, good.”

He stepped closer. “I’m glad you told me about your father. Now I understand why you feel the way you do about it.” He didn’t
agree—he still thought Gracie should at least give the guy a chance to step up to the plate—but he understood, and he was
willing to step back and let things unfold at Gracie’s pace. “I’m glad you confided in me.”

“Yeah.” Her lips curved up in an embarrassed half smile. “Me, too.”

“Why didn’t you tell me that summer?”

She lifted her shoulders. “I was ashamed.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I guess I felt like there must have been something about me that was basically unlovable, and that’s why my
father always left.”

His chest squeezed around his heart. He’d felt the same way about his parents—that it was his fault they fought, his fault
they ignored him. He’d grown up thinking he was fundamentally flawed, and he’d spent his entire life trying to prove otherwise.
Not to his parents—at some point, he’d quit caring what they thought—but to himself. He’d thought that success and money would
do the trick.

He’d been wrong.

But he and Katie were different. They might have the same wound, but they’d recovered in different ways. He held himself away
from others; she reached toward them.

“You know better now, right?”

She lifted her shoulders.

“Kate, you’re the most lovable person I’ve ever known.”

She looked at him, her brown eyes surprised, and time fell away. Suddenly they weren’t just two people talking; they were
two people connected to each other, deeply and intimately.

It had always been that way with Katie. From the very beginning, there had been some intangible bond, something that drew
him to her. It was as if her heart were transparent and he could see right into it and it was a safe place. She made him feel
things he’d never felt with anyone else—understood and accepted and whole.

She looked like she was going to say something more, but instead she picked up the dustpan, bent and swept up whatever nearly
invisible stuff she’d corralled with the broom, then dumped it into the trash can by her station. She briskly carried the
dustpan and broom to the back room. She was running away from him, damn it. Without thinking, Zack followed her.

It was a tiny room, really little more than a walk-in closet with cabinets and a small counter, lit by a dim overhead bulb.
Zack stood in the doorway, holding the door open as Katie busily hung the broom and dustpan on the wall at the back. She turned
to the shelves on the right and reached for a fresh stack of towels, standing on her tiptoes.

“I’ll get those for you,” Zack said, stepping forward and reaching over her head. The door closed behind him. Katie stepped
back, bumping into him. His hands went out to steady her, and landed on her waist.

A hot shock ricocheted through him; his groin was against her bottom, his nose in her hair. She smelled like herbal shampoo
and Katie—a scent that reminded him of summer and desire and a nameless longing—a scent that made him so hard, so fast that
he could have been seventeen again.

Neither one of them moved for long seconds. And then his fingers tightened around her waist as if they had a will of their
own. His mouth moved against her hair.

She inhaled sharply, then gave a little moan. He dipped his head and kissed her neck, right where her pulse beat, right on
the little brown birthmark. He felt her pulse flutter under his lips.

“Turn around, Kate,” he whispered. “Turn around and kiss me.”

He kept his hands on her waist, feeling her silky shirt slide under his fingers as she turned. Her eyes were dark, almost
all pupil in the dim light.

“God, I’ve missed you,” he told her. He felt like he’d missed her before he’d ever met her, like he’d missed her for a couple
of lifetimes, like she was a missing part of his very soul.

He heard her quick intake of breath. He pulled her flush against him, then lowered his head and kissed her.

The kiss was slow and tender, but the effect on Katie was like a bolt of lightning—instantaneous, jolting, electric. It was
as if someone had put a defibrillator on her heart, shocking it back to life, and all of a sudden her blood was pumping furiously
through her veins and feelings, long lost, were flooding her body.

Something had happened in the other room. Zack had given her that look—the one that was tender and open and frank, the one
that said, “I get you, I know you, and I think you’re amazing,” a look that said, “Your secret is safe with me,” and “I’m
on your side, no matter what.” It was the look that had told her, “I’ll defend you and watch out for you and make sure you
get home safe”—the look that had made her fall for Zack all those years ago. God help her, he’d tripped the switch all over
again.