By then, I’d understood that Jude was sick, addicted and in pain. And I knew he’d done a terrible thing. But I never expected him to turn his back on me. I’d cried a brand new river of tears over those returned letters. I was just so angry that he’d reject me on top of all his other crimes. How dare he.
Hell, I was still angry. Sitting there at my tidy desk in the hospital’s Office of Social Work, my hands were tightened into fists. I wasn’t at all prepared for his reappearance. Tonight when I went to the grocery store after work, I knew I’d look for him in every aisle. I’d look over my shoulder at the gas pump and standing in line at the bakery. In our town of nine thousand, it was inevitable that I would eventually run into him.
I was never going to be ready.
Something landed on my desk with a thunk. It was a covered coffee cup from the hospital cafe. “Thank you so much,” I said immediately, looking up into Denny’s serious brown eyes.
“My pleasure. You just looked like you needed a little lift this morning.”
You have no idea. “Thanks,” I repeated, pulling the cup toward me. Even without lifting the lid, I knew I’d find a skim milk latte inside with a sprinkle of cinnamon. Denny knew me. Denny studied me. And once a month or so, he asked me out. I always worded my refusals gently but firmly. I hoped he’d stop asking. He was so nice, though. Turning him down made me feel like a diva.
“You know it’s time for the staff meeting, right?” He tipped his head toward the conference room.
When I looked, there were people gathering around the table already. Shit! I leaped out of my chair and grabbed the latte.
I was two steps away before I realized that Denny hadn’t followed me. Looking over my shoulder, I saw him smile. “It’s your turn to report the case load, isn’t it?”
With yet another muttered thanks to Denny, I snatched the folder off my desk and headed for the meeting.
Pull it together, Haines, I ordered myself. Denny shouldn’t be saving my ass. He and I were in competition for the same job. We were both graduating at the end of the semester, and the hospital had only one full-time position available. He would probably get it, since his degree was a master’s and mine was a bachelor’s. Come January, I’d probably be begging them to extend my internship while I scrambled to find a real job.
Given mornings like this one, it would be hard to begrudge Denny the victory.
The two of us were the last to sit down. Our department was small and fairly informal, but since I was gunning for a permanent job here, appearing ditzy was a bad idea. There were five full-time social workers, with Denny and I as part-time help while we both finished degrees. Mr. Norse, our boss, a friendly, rumpled man in his sixties, opened the meeting with a discussion of next year’s budget forecast.
Naturally, my mind wandered right back to Jude. Those budget forecasts didn’t stand a chance against my troubled ex, with his piercing gray eyes and tight jeans.
We became a couple during my junior year of high school. But even before we’d ever had a conversation, I’d been aware of Jude. He was the boy who’d always slunk into class late if he felt like it. The teachers didn’t even give him a hard time, because there would be no point. He gave off an aura of “I don’t care what you think.”
I’d found him ridiculously attractive. It wasn’t just his too-long eyelashes, either. I’d had it bad for his attitude. I was a cautious good girl, always too fearful of authority to say the things inside my head.
Watching him became my hobby. But the idea that Jude Nickel would ever look my way had been pretty ridiculous.
One afternoon at school I was in a tizzy trying to set up for a school band concert. The copy machine had jammed while I printed the programs, and folding them had taken longer than I’d thought it would.
So I was well behind schedule when I reached the gym. Someone had already set up a couple hundred folding chairs in rows, and I’d been asked to drop a program onto each one of them. There I was, slapping programs onto the chairs, when the fire door opened and a cool breeze flew through the room, sending those programs airborne before they went skating to the floor.
Frantic, I’d grabbed them up again, setting everything back the way it should be. And then it happened a second time! My blood pressure rose as I chased another set of programs off the floor. Stomping over to the emergency exit, I kicked the doorstop, and the door began to swing closed.
A tattooed arm shot out at the last second and held it open. “Do you mind?” asked a gravel-toned voice. “I’m having a quick smoke here.” A zing of nervous energy shot through my gut as Jude Nickel peered through the door at me.
“Seriously?” I snipped. “That’s against about ten rules.”
He raised a single eyebrow, as if questioning my sanity. That casual, wordless statement made me feel hot everywhere. Jude always had. Whenever he glanced at me, I never knew where to put my eyes. And now he was actually studying me for the first time.