The bathroom at his cabin really was too small. A man couldn’t step out of the shower without being confronted by his own naked image in the mirror. Zach stood there, nude, and had to admit he looked pretty damned bad. No wonder Brooke had grounded him. He was black and blue down his entire left side. It looked worse today than it had in the three days since the wind had decided to remind them all who was boss.
He started to towel off in his usual brisk way, but his ribs objected within seconds. And his thigh. His upper arm. He ended up dabbing himself dry as gingerly as a pinup girl with a powder puff. Then he pitched his towel with all the force of his throwing arm into the laundry basket with perfect accuracy.
Of course, when the basket was only two feet away, it wasn’t much of a win.
The bathroom renovation idea that he’d started mulling over was rapidly becoming a real project in his mind. He’d rather wait until he and Brooke were married, so they could plan it together, turning his bachelor space into a home for man and wife.
That could be a while, though. She needed time to get used to the idea that his career included all kinds of safeguards, and he was considerably heartier than a child. Confidence would come with time, reinforced with every shift where he returned home healthy.
He had the time off now. Even without being married, he could get the project going and ask Brooke’s opinion on everything. They could spend their days off looking at faucets and tile and all that other stuff. Maybe it would even help her see that he wasn’t as much of an adrenaline junkie as she seemed to think he was. He’d enjoy the challenge of laying tile as much as he would bungee-jumping.
Then, when they married—because he was going to ask her someday, and she was going to say yes—the new bathroom would be a wedding gift.
Besides, she’d grounded him for four more days, and he was bored as hell.
He dressed one-handed, gritting his teeth as he pulled on jeans over his bruised hip. A T-shirt was easier to manage than a button-down. Then he struggled into the sling he had to admit was helpful in preventing him from mindlessly grabbing things with his injured arm. It was a lot easier to dress with Brooke’s help, but she was already at the hospital this morning and wouldn’t get home from work until eight at night, if she made it out of there on time.
Even with a bum arm, he’d be able to get a lot done by then. He’d have no interruptions for the planning phase. With pencil, notepad, and measuring tape in hand, he started to sketch the existing floor plan, but ten minutes into it, someone knocked on his front door.
So much for no interruptions.
With his arm in a sling, he had to set his notepad down and stick the pencil in his teeth in order to open the door with his one good hand.
The woman on his porch was a knockout, petite and platinum blonde, an angel dressed in a white halter dress.
“Don’t you remember me?” Charisse Johnson clasped her perfect hands together under her perfect breasts. As she gazed up at him as if he were some kind of demigod, a tear dropped from her lashes and rolled down her cheek. “Oh, Zach!”
The pencil clattered to the floor.
* * *
“And so I just had to come and see you. My yoga instructor said the most beautiful thing during savasana. Love cannot be destroyed.”
Zach leaned against his kitchen counter, watching Charisse as she helped herself to his home, refilling the water glass she’d asked for, part of the long time no see, what did you do to your arm, aren’t you going to ask me in routine. It was bizarrely fascinating, like watching a creature from another world, a unicorn in his kitchen.
“He explained it like this. Love is like water. It can be deep and stay in one place, all for one person, or it can flow, trickling out to touch lots and lots of people.” Charisse made little rippling motions with her delicate fingers, the ones that had caressed him before sliding a gold band on another man’s hand. “But no matter what shape it takes, it cannot be destroyed.”
“I take it you’re more into the trickling.”
She nodded earnestly. “I try to fill my world with love, and leave love everywhere I’ve been.”
There was no way she’d missed his sarcasm. During their whirlwind romance, he’d always thought she was intelligent, just not academically inclined. This delightfully dim-witted chatter was just an act. He had no patience for it.
“It’s time to get to the point, Charisse.”
“The point? It’s all about love. That’s the only thing that matters.” She walked toward him, right up to him, getting in his personal space. She traced the strap of his sling with one finger. “Look at you, getting hurt in the line of duty, all to save someone you didn’t even know. That’s a form of love, too. Agape. Oh, Zach, you have so much love in you. Surely there’s still some for me?”
“No.” He stopped her finger and pushed her hand away.
She tossed her platinum hair back and bit her lower lip with her perfect, white teeth. “Not even a little bit?”
“No.” It was true. So bone-deep true. He’d once loved her, or the idea of her, absolutely. She’d thrown that love away so hard, it had been obliterated. If he put it in the terms of her stupid water analogy, that love had exploded into a spray of water droplets so tiny, they’d evaporated into the atmosphere.
He’d known this for a long time. It wasn’t a revelation that he had no lingering feelings left for Charisse. If this visit was teaching him anything, it was that maybe he could forgive his younger self for being so taken by her. She was every bit as pretty and vivacious as he remembered. He could cut himself a break for having been so blinded back then, instead of hating himself for having been a sucker.
Blonde bombshell or not, if he’d met her for the first time today, the man he was now wouldn’t waste more than a smile on Charisse Johnson. She was all surface, no depth.
He looked for more in women since his brush with Charisse, and he’d found it all in Brooke. Pretty had been upgraded to sensational. A woman who was vivacious when ordering drinks at a bar had been replaced by a woman whose vitality energized an emergency department. Giddiness couldn’t compete with substance, not that Brooke was always serious. He could recall her applauding in the middle of a bunch of whooping firefighters at the races. That had been truly charming. Even when it came to cheerleading, Charisse wasn’t as cute as Brooke.
But she was trying. “No? I don’t believe you. Mary Beth saw you on my wedding day. You remember Mary Beth? She was on the island that week, too. All my bridesmaids were. It was the bachelorette party.”
“I figured that out.”
“They were true friends that week. I almost married you, but they sat me down and gave me a reality check that morning. But the morning of my wedding, my real wedding, Mary Beth said she’d never seen a man look the way you looked. She said you were standing under an old southern oak tree, and you didn’t take your eyes off me. Oh, I wish I’d seen you.”
They’d now entered the sickening portion of the visit. He found that although the love was long gone, the bitterness remained strong.
“I’m not reliving this with you, Charisse. It no longer matters.” He brushed past her to head for the front door, which she would be leaving through shortly.
“Zach, I’m divorced.”
I’m not surprised.
“The divorce was final two weeks ago.”
He opened the door with more calm and cool than he was really feeling. “I’m sorry, Charisse. I’m not interested in picking up where we left off.”
Finally, she dropped her act. Her eyes narrowed and her mouth tightened, but only for a second. She tossed her hair and became charming once more.
“I wasn’t asking if you were interested. I’ve found a man who loves me. He really loves me. I know he’s the right one. In fact, we’re leaving for our destination wedding today. Tony is taking me all the way to Fiji to say our vows on a tropical beach. I’ve always wanted to be barefoot in the sand while a man pledged himself to me—oh, sorry. No offense.”
“None taken.”
“But I need a little favor. Destination weddings are so glamorous. They are not a place for children—and Zach, I’m a mother now.” She pressed her fingertips to her chest and smiled like a virtuous, platinum Madonna.
That one was a stretch. Charisse with maternal instincts? Whatever. Some other man’s problem.
“I need your help. I need someone to care for my child while I’m gone.”
It was such an outrageous request, Zach had no reply. This was why she had come? If she still lived in Alabama, she’d come a long way.
“Who could I turn to? I thought of you right away.”
“No.”
“For one thing, you’re a fireman, and they always show photos of firemen caring for children on Facebook.”
“This is insane, Charisse. The answer is no, I will not babysit your kid while you go get married in Fiji.”
“For another thing,” she said, and despite her smile, he could see that she was irritated with him for interrupting her pretty speech, “you loved me, and for a man to do what Mary Beth said you’d done, to track me down and come after me... Well, a love like that can’t be destroyed completely.”
“You can take that up with your yoga instructor.”
What a frigging nightmare this was. Thank God, thank God, thank God Charisse had stood him up four years ago.
He wanted Brooke. Just the thought of Brooke was like a balm to his soul right now. He was going to get Charisse out of his house, get into his truck, and drive to the hospital. He’d bring Brooke anything in the world she wanted to eat for lunch, and he’d feed her every bite while telling her how priceless she was.
“And I’ve got the child to prove that our love still exists, something special between you and me, forever. Our child.” She closed the distance between them and shut the front door with a flourish, the exclamation point on the end of her speech.
Memories started crowding in. Zach didn’t focus on memories of having sex with Charisse, but memories of using birth control with her. Condoms—yes, they’d used condoms. She’d been on the pill, too.
At least his younger self hadn’t been dumb enough to take her word for the pills. He’d moved into her hotel room on the third day of that vacation, and he’d seen the round prescription compact by the sink, next to her toothbrush. But they’d used condoms as well before that, because pills didn’t protect against...but then, she was an angel, and they were going to elope, and it was silly to worry about catching a disease from his almost-wife. His faithful, innocent one-and-only.
His younger self had been an idiot. He was lucky he hadn’t caught any diseases after they’d ditched the condoms. But when it came to pregnancy, she’d still been on the pill. He was covered there.
“The baby was born exactly nine months after the wedding. My husband and I hadn’t been planning on children so soon, but it was fun. Lots of baby showers.
“Then, about a year after she was born, well, our marriage hit a little rough patch. We smoothed things over, but Gary started saying she didn’t look like him. Everyone, and I do mean everyone, told him that children’s looks change a lot at that age, but he was as obstinate as a mule. By the time she was three he demanded a paternity test, can you believe it?”
How many yoga instructors had he caught you with in those three years?
Zach said nothing. He was in a state of suspended animation, watching a scene in someone else’s life, waiting to see what would happen next. It was kind of a blessedly numb state to be in.
“He took her to the lab himself and got the paternity test. As they say on TV, he wasn’t the baby-daddy, after all.” She heaved a great sigh.
“So then he made a big fuss about it, and I just had to get away for a little while. While I was gone, he took her over to my parents’ house and freaked them out by saying he wasn’t going to care for another man’s child. You can just imagine the scene when I got back from the cruise. Long story short, the divorce became final two weeks ago, right on the baby’s fourth birthday, and I couldn’t be happier. Tony treats me so much better than Gary ever did. Fiji will be a dream come true.
“But my parents are being so old-fashioned, saying they’ve done their part and the parent should raise the child, not the grandparents. Not even just for one more month. So I thought to myself, I’m not the only parent, am I? Tony helped me track you down. Oh, Zach. It is good to see you.”
Zach sat down heavily on his couch and shoved his hand through his hair. Fifteen minutes ago, all he’d wanted in life was to design a new bathroom to surprise Brooke. Now he was dealing with more drama than he’d dealt with in the past four years. Four years and nine months, to be precise.
This is drama, Brooke. Over the weekend, she’d apologized for putting him through drama, when it had only been life. Charisse created drama. She’d been born with every advantage a person could have to succeed in life, but she tossed the good things in her life away, time after time, thoughtlessly.
And maybe there was something to Charisse’s water theory, because a very tiny part of him pitied her.
He still wasn’t babysitting her child while she ran off to Fiji. “I’m not buying it, Charisse. Just because your ex-husband wasn’t the father, that doesn’t mean I am, either.”
“Who else would it be? What kind of woman do you think I am?”
“The kind who sleeps with one man days before she marries another.” He let that comment sink in. Whether he pitied her or not, he was fed up with her cockeyed view of the world. “It’s entirely possible there is another baby-daddy candidate out there besides me and your ex.”
“Oh, that’s a terrible thing to say.”
“There has to be, in fact. You either got pregnant on your honeymoon or within a week or two afterward, but it wasn’t before. You were on the pill when you were with me. It’s very effective, so I doubt I’m the father. You had your fling with me the week before the wedding. What’s to stop you from having a fling the week after?”
“It’s you, Zach.”
“I saw you take a pill in the hotel room.”
“One.” She stared down at him, looking triumphant as she gave him the details with gusto. “I had a lot going on that month. Between the wedding nerves and the beach vacation and the alcohol, I skipped a bunch of pills that month, actually. The OB-GYN said that’s how I got pregnant. You’re it, Zach.”
It was possible. The room seemed to lose its air. For one stunning moment, he had trouble drawing in a breath, and it had nothing to do with his bruised ribs.
Charisse was also an accomplished liar. Zach needed proof. “The first thing we’re going to do is a paternity—”
He cut himself off at the sound of a small thump from the porch, followed by the wail of a child. It was the instantly recognizable true wail, the cry that indicated real pain.
The kind that made paramedics jump into action.