The Big 5-Oh! (6 page)

And then she saw him.

With the same mysterious magnet he’d carried with him at their first meeting, some strange centrifugal force drew her straight to Jared the moment their gazes crossed. His eyebrows arched and his chin rose as they headed for one another, and his beautiful toothpaste commercial smile broadened with every step he took.

“Olivia, isn’t it?”

“Jared.”

“What in the world are you doing here?”

“There you are,” Rand said as he stepped up beside her and placed an arm loosely around her shoulder. “This is my father, Dr. Jared Hunt. Dad, this is Olivia Wallace. She's staying at Josie's place for a few weeks.”

“What are the chances?” Jared said without dragging his eyes from her.

“I was asking myself that very thing,” she replied.

“I’m sorry. Do you two know each other?” Rand asked.

“We were on the same flight from Cincinnati,” Jared explained. “I looked for you down at baggage claim.”

“I made a stop in the ladies’ room on the way,” she said, trying to remain casual. “By the time I got to the glass doors, I seemed to be the only one left from our flight.”

Jared reached out and took her hand for just a split second. “It's really good to see you again, Liv.”

“You too.”

“Well, would you like to meet some people?” Rand asked her. “You don’t mind, do you, Dad?”

“Not as long as you bring her back around afterward.”

Liv smiled at Jared and then allowed Rand to guide her away, despite the overwhelming desire to stay planted right next to him like one of those deep-rooted sycamore trees back home.

There were neighbors and friends, all of them with names Liv knew she wouldn’t remember. And then there was someone named Georgia, impossible to forget.

“Olivia, meet Georgia,” Rand said, and the woman with the platinum hair and movie star eyelashes presented her hand as if she expected Liv to kiss her ring.

“Sweet Georgia Brown,” she said in a drawl so Southern that Liv could almost smell the mint julep on the woman's breath. “Like the song.”

“Liv Wallace,” she replied, shaking Georgia's hand awkwardly. “No songs named after me. I did meet a woman named Liv on a train once though.”

Laughter erupted out of Rand, but it didn’t last long. Sweet Georgia wasn’t laughing, and Liv noticed that she didn’t look all that sweet at the moment either.

“Is this one of your girlfriends, Randall?” she asked, sizing Liv up in a way that made her wish the fabric of her dress was a little bulkier.

What a question
, she thought.
Girlfriend indeed. I’m old enough to be his—

“Not yet,” Rand answered. “But the evening's young, Georgia.”

Locking Liv's hand into the crook of his arm, he led her away to the next group congregated along their circular pool-side path. She could feel the sharp forks of Georgia's scrutiny poking her in the back as they walked away.

“Bill and Martha, this is Olivia Wallace. She's visiting from Ohio and staying over at Josie's.”

Several more introductions followed before Rand finally led Liv to a cushioned rattan chair at a small round table.

“Have a seat,” he said, holding the back of the chair for her. “I’ll get you a plate and something cold to drink. You’ve got to taste my dad's salsa.”

Liv sighed as Rand made his way across the natural stone pavers toward the buffet set up on a long folding table draped with a colorful sarape blanket.

“I just can’t get over you showing up here tonight.”

Liv tensed as Jared touched her bare shoulders with two warm hands, and then she managed a grin as he rounded her chair and sat down in the one beside her.

“It's crazy, isn’t it?” she asked him.

“Here I was thinking I’d never see you again. And I have my son to thank.”

She folded her hands in her lap in an attempt to keep them from shaking.
This isn’t high school, Liv. Get hold of yourself
.

“So tell me, how long are you planning to stay?”

“A couple of weeks,” she replied. Was it her imagination that he looked disappointed?

“I hope you’ll let me show you around.”

“I’d like that.”

“If I can pry you away from my son, that is.”

They both turned toward the buffet table where Rand stood with two full plates in hand, struggling to pull himself away from Georgia and back toward Liv.

“It would appear he's quite taken with you,” Jared told her.

Liv chuckled and then shook her head.

Just my luck.

After years of believing the laws of attraction had all been overturned, she had finally met someone who made her heart race again. But it was his son who was rushing her way like a bull charging through a china shop door.

“I got you a little sampling of everything,” Rand said, setting the plates down on the table. “What would you like to drink?”

“Diet soda?”

“I’ll be right back,” he declared. Then, after just a couple of steps, he turned back toward his father and pointed at the second plate. “That isn’t for you.”

With a twinkle in his eye, Jared plucked an unidentifiable appetizer that looked like a miniature turnover from the assortment of snacks before him and popped it into his mouth.

“You’re impossible,” Rand groaned.

“What kind of pie is that?” she asked Jared once Rand was out of earshot.

“You’ve never had an empanada?”

Liv shook her head. Not only had she never tasted one, she’d never even heard of one.

“Try it.”

She lifted a pie from the plate in front of her, examined it carefully, and then took a bite.

It had taken such a long time after cancer treatment to get her appetite back that bold tastes were now always a wonderful surprise.

“What's inside?”

“Chorizo.”

“Now in English?” she suggested on a chuckle.

“Chorizo,” he repeated. “A type of pork sausage, spiced with paprika and garlic and red pepper. It's a traditional Spanish or Latino meat that they fry into this pastry dough to make an empanada.”

Liv's mouth was burning, and Rand arrived with beverages just in the knick of time. She grabbed the cup out of his hand and gulped down the soda.

“I was expecting an apple pie filling or something,” she told them, and both Jared and Rand laughed. “But this is really, really good!”

“Sometimes you’ll see them filled with fruit or pumpkin,” Jared explained. “But these are traditional
tapas
. Appetizers.”

“Wait till you try the salsa,” Rand added.

It seemed like several days had passed, but Liv realized it was just that morning when she’d driven in from the Fort Myers airport. She recalled spotting an odd, long-necked bird along the side of the road and thinking what a strange and different place she was in. Now, as her lips burned and her eyes watered from the compelling new cuisine, and her pulse raced from the crackling nearness of Jared Hunt, she wondered if Delta had actually flown her out of Ohio, over the Grand Canyon, and into some parallel universe where birthday curses were unknown and the locals ate delicacies like salsa and little spicy pies.

Hey, what if I wake up younger in Florida Land? With smaller feet and no wrinkles. Oh, and what if there's chocolate with zero calories on this planet!

Why not? In a world where it seemed like everything was new and different, and where anything was suddenly possible, it couldn’t hurt to waste a wish or two.

And if Sanibel Island, Florida, was light-years away from Cincinnati, Ohio, the most obvious alien in this new world was heading straight for her.

“So, Olivia Wallace,” Georgia Brown sang in her thick Southern drawl as she plopped down in the chair next to her and crossed her legs into a twisted pretzel, “I just heard you’re a temporary visitor to our sleepy little town. Tell me, how long are you staying? And just what are your intentions with our young Randall while you’re here?”

There was a special meter not widely known in the region, and Jared had long been the keeper of it. He liked to call it the
Georgia Brown Richter Scale
, and it measured the levels of embarrassment caused in others by his nurse. The meter gave Jared a little electrical shock every time Georgia's seismic activity was on the rise. And this was a doozy.

“Liv, why don’t I walk you home?”

She didn’t even respond. Olivia just popped up out of her chair and took his lead.

“Very nice meeting all of you,” she tossed back at them, already in full retreat mode. “Rand, thank you so much for inviting me. It was really lovely.”

Once they’d stepped outside the patio door and the screen had tapped shut behind them, Jared and Liv turned toward one another. Her green eyes sparkled, and a full-on grin spread across her face. “Thank you,” she said in a whisper. “She's a pill.”

“She is.”

“What is she, someone's crazy aunt or something?”

Jared felt a rush of heat as he replied. “Sort of. She's my nurse.”

“Are you ill?”

“No, no,” he laughed, and then he realized she was only joking. “I’m a doctor, remember? She works for me.”

“Ohhh,” Liv sniggered.

“Although I’m not feeling all that great right now.”

“Shall I call a nurse?”

“No. Please.”

Jared instinctively reached toward her face and smoothed back a wayward curl that had fallen across her cheek. As she looked up at him and smiled, it took everything honorable in him not to lean in for a kiss. He reminded himself that he was not a teenager, he was a gentleman, and this was a true lady. They’d only just met for the first time that morning on an airplane that felt to him as if it had crossed some great divide.

“Would you like to go for a walk?” he asked and was relieved when she nodded.

Jared's hand hovered on the small of Liv's back as he guided her toward the concrete sidewalk leading to the corner illuminated in dim yellow light from the street lamp.

“So how long have you lived here?” she asked, tucking her hands deep into the pockets of her dress as they strolled along.

“About fifteen years. Rand was just a kid when we left Chicago and bought this house, and his mother was still alive.”

“I’ve been in Cincinnati for my whole life,” she told him. “Born and bred.” She tilted her head slightly and grinned at the taut canvas sky. “There's about a foot of snow on the ground there right now, and I’m walking under a full moon, wearing a sleeveless dress.”

“I know.”

“You do?”

“I left a foot of snow behind in Cincinnati when you did this morning.”

“Oh, that's right,” she commented, and then she stopped walking and turned toward him. “Isn’t that strange? It feels like such a long time ago.”

“I was thinking that myself tonight.”

Jared offered her his arm, bent at the elbow, and she took it. They meandered down the street, arm in arm, and Jared found himself wondering if the sweet scent tickling his nose emanated from the neighbor's garden or Liv's smooth, fair skin.

“What are your plans while you’re here?” he asked her when they reached the corner and turned to the left.

“I’m not sure,” she replied. “Read a couple of books. Get some sun. Sleep until ten o’clock every morning! I’m on a mission to escape.”

“From?”

She paused for a long moment before answering. “Me, I guess.”

“You’ll have to explain that to me.”

“Well, I told you this morning that I’ve just been through the war.”

“Ah, cancer. Yes. And I recall mention of a birthday curse as well.”

“Right. It's a pretty big one headed my way next week.”

He took a minute to try and guess which one was looming. Forty? Forty-five?

“My birthdays have traditionally been ripe with disasters,” she continued. “Seriously, it's like some sort of annual dark cloud that comes back around every year about this time.”

Jared looked up at the full silver moon and then grinned. “Good news. Not a cloud in sight.”

Liv pinched his arm playfully and then patted it several times. “Well, keep a close watch, Dr. Hunt,” she told him. “There's probably a typhoon on the way.”

“That's the spirit,” he replied, squeezing her hand. “Positive thinking is so important.”

Prudence didn’t like surprises.