скачать книгу бесплатно
While the spousal search had paid off for some, it seemed to Annie that most of her single women friends were still frantically seeking Mr. Right. There were even a few so desperate to do the nuptial deed that they were ready to settle for Mr. Not Too Obviously Wrong...or worse.
“Don’t you want to get married, Annie?” an unattached acquaintance had recently demanded of her. The context of the question had been a discussion—a one-sided litany of complaints, really—about the lack of eligible men in Atlanta and the abundance of competition for them.
“Not particularly,” she’d answered frankly. “Although I’m certainly not ruling it out. If I meet someone wonderful and we fall madly in love with each other, I’ll probably want to get married. But I’m not really looking. I like the life I have. The life I’ve made for me. Being on my own is—”
The sound of her name summoned Annie back to the present. She looked across the table at Matt, wondering how long she’d been caught up in her thoughts.
“Have a nice trip?” he inquired wryly.
“Sorry,” she apologized, reaching for the glass of unsweetened ice tea she’d ordered when they’d sat down. She sipped at it, trying to recall what they’d been discussing before she’d gotten so enmeshed in her marital musings. “I, uh, what...?”
“We were talking about your keeping Eden’s bridal bouquet.”
“Oh.” Annie set down the glass and shifted in her seat. “Right.”
“It’s not like you to be so sentimental,” Matt asserted, then paused for a few moments. When he resumed speaking, his tone was tender. “Now if it had been Lisa who’d caught Eden’s bouquet...”
Annie’s breath wedged at the top of her throat as the half-whispered words gave way to an emotionally charged silence. She watched, hands clenched, heart hammering, as Matt retreated into himself—into a world of memories she knew she’d never share.
Lisa, she thought. It’s always going to be Lisa.
“Lisa” was Lisa Anne Davis.
Lisa...
The new girl in school with whom Matthew Douglas Powell had fallen head over heels in love on a September morning nearly a decade and a half ago.
Lisa...
The young woman Matthew Douglas Powell had married in a joyous June ceremony some nine years later.
Lisa...
The adored wife Matthew Douglas Powell had laid to rest on a bleak February afternoon a few months shy of his fifth wedding anniversary.
Annie had been with Matt at the beginning and the end...and afterward. Monitoring his well-being had been one of her chief concerns since Lisa’s tragic passing, fifteen months ago. She’d done everything she could to help him piece his shattered existence back together.
She’d held him while he’d wept for his lost love.
She’d soothed him while he’d raged against the unfairness of life.
She’d spent hours—aching, seemingly endless hours—listening while he’d recalled the soaring happiness that had been his.
The first year after Lisa’s death had been hard on Matt. So hard that there’d been a few desperate days when Annie had genuinely been afraid that he might surrender to his grief and do something irreparable.
Thankfully, those desperate days—and the heartsick fears they’d engendered—had passed. Anger had eased. Sorrow had yielded to resignation, if not acceptance. In recent weeks Annie had begun to believe that Matt had finally come to terms with what had happened and had started to heal.
Or had he? she wondered uneasily, studying the lankily built man sitting across the table from her. If the look on Matt’s face was any indication—
“It’s chow time, y’all.”
The ebullient announcement jolted Annie out of her anxiety-tinged reverie. Its source was a ponytailed young waiter named Rudi. The possessor of an eager-beaver grin, a bodybuilder’s physique, and an apparently inexhaustible store of enthusiasm for his job, he’d served Annie and Matt during many of their previous visits to the Rio Bravo restaurant.
“For the lady, the usual fajitas con pollo.” Rudi said, plunking a sizzling platter of chicken chunks, onion strips and sliced green peppers in front of Annie. “Hold the guacamole, double the side order of pico de gallo. Watch the plate, it’s really hot.”
“Thanks,” she managed, still a bit off-balance.
“You’re welcome,” came the cheerful response. “And for the gentleman—what else but tacos al carbon. Heavy on the onions, forget the sour cream.”
“It looks great, Rudi,” Matt said, surveying the feast being placed before him. The introspective expression that had troubled Annie was gone. He looked as though the weightiest matter on his mind was how to fill his mouth as quickly as possible.
“We aim to please,” the waiter answered. “Although it’s not very difficult with you two.” He tilted his head to one side. “Look, I realize it’s none of my business—but do y’all ever eat anything besides chicken fajitas and beef tacos?”
“Oh, sure,” Matt said easily, flashing a quirky, crook-cornered smile. “Whenever we go out for Chinese, I get shrimp fried rice and she gets Moo Goo Gai Pan.”
“Sometimes we split an order of stir-fried green beans with garlic,” Annie noted.
“In other words, y’all know what you like and you stick to it.”
“At least as far as food goes,” Matt qualified.
Rudi considered this for a few seconds, then glanced back and forth between Matt and Annie. “Anything else?” he asked helpfully. “Another beer, maybe? Or a refill on the ice tea?”
“I’m fine for now,” Matt said, picking up his fork.
“Me, too,” Annie concurred.
“Okay. I’ll check back with y’all later. Enjoy your meal.”
“We always do,” Matt replied.
Rudi grinned in response, then pivoted on one heel and bustled away, his ponytail bobbing against his bulked-up neck.
Matt dug into his entrée almost immediately. Ignoring the tantalizing aroma of her own main course, Annie studied him as he ate. While his show of appetite was reassuring, her mind kept flashing back to the expression she’d seen on his face when he’d uttered Lisa’s name.
He’d seemed much more at peace with himself lately, she reminded herself. And today, when he’d helped her unpack at her new home, she’d felt as though the “old” Matt had been restored to her. The old Matt, who’d never been touched by true love or untimely death—who’d laughed easily, shared unstintingly, and embraced each new day as having the potential to be better than the one before it.
Finding Eden’s bridal bouquet hadn’t appeared to have had an adverse effect on his mood. In fact, if she’d been asked to compare their reactions to the discovery, Annie would have said that she’d been more unsettled by the discovery than he.
She’d chalked her response up to a certain degree of...well, embarrassment wasn’t precisely the word, but it was in the neighborhood. Allocating the silver Wedding Belle locket she’d received from Eden a place of honor in her jewelry box was one thing. Treating a dried-out bunch of ribbon-tied rosebuds as though it were some sort of treasured artifact was entirely another.
Matt had been right when he’d said it wasn’t “like” her to be sentimental. Except for an abiding romantic fantasy that involved waltzing with Fred Astaire, mushy-minded emotionalism had never been her style.
It wasn’t a matter of being insensitive. At least, Annie didn’t think it was. She had feelings. Intense, deeply held feelings. And she cared—passionately—about her family and friends. Nonetheless, if there was a gene for going gooey over raindrops on roses or whiskers on kittens, it obviously had been left out of her DNA.
Lisa Davis, on the other hand, had sighed about the beauty of sunrises, sunsets and starry nights. She’d sobbed during weddings, baby showers and certain television commercials. She’d also been a total sucker for holidays, happy endings and the music of Barry Manilow.
It had taken Annie a long time to accept that Lisa’s lace-trimmed, hearts-and-flowers attitude was genuine. It had taken her even longer to understand that this attitude was one of the things Matt—her reasonable, rational best buddy Matt—loved most about the woman he’d made his wife.
Annie bit her lower lip and continued to scrutinize Matt. Maybe she’d been wrong, she worried. Maybe his teasing her about Eden’s bouquet had been a smokescreen for his true feelings. Maybe he was suffering inside, haunted by memories of his own wedding. Maybe the fragile, faded flowers had made him think of the baskets of blossoms that had filled Lisa’s hospital room during the awful days near the end of her—
“I’m okay,” Matt interrupted quietly.
Annie stiffened. “What?”
“I’m okay,” he repeated in the same even tone, setting down his fork on the edge of his plate. “You can stop looking at me like you’re afraid I’m going to freak out.”
Aghast, she tried to reject his words. “I—I w-wasn’t—”
“Annie.”
That’s all he said. Just “Annie.” But those two precisely uttered syllables—plus the directness of his gaze—were more than enough to silence her stammered denial.
Annie sustained Matt’s steady, blue-gray stare for the space of a few heartbeats. Then she looked away. “I’m sorry,” she muttered, not entirely certain for what she was apologizing.
“Don’t be.”
Easy for him to advise, impossible for her to comply.
Annie made an awkward gesture, torn between the need to explain herself and the conviction that doing so would only make things worse. The former finally won out.
“Look, Matt,” she began. “I don’t want you to think that—I mean, I wasn’t really...well, yes. I guess I was. But I’m not...not—” She gestured again, frustrated by her inability to express herself. She struggled for several seconds, then blurted in a rush, “It’s just that I get concerned about you, you know?”
“Of course I know.”
The reply was quick and unequivocal. Yet for all its undeniable swiftness and seeming simplicity, something about it triggered an odd jolt of emotion deep within Annie. It also drew her gaze back to Matt’s face.
“I...I don’t...understand...” she faltered.
Matt leaned forward. “Your ‘getting concerned’ got me through hell, Annie,” he told her. “If you hadn’t been there for me after Lisa died, I might not be here now.”
Annie’s throat tightened. This was the first time she’d heard Matt indicate that he realized how dangerously close to the emotional edge he’d come in the wake of his wife’s passing. It was also the first time she’d heard him acknowledge her role in bringing him back from the brink.
“We’re friends, Matt,” she said, hoping her inflection communicated how much the word meant to her. “Friends help friends when friends need it.”
“Yes,” Matt agreed, nodding. A comma-shaped lock of sandy blond hair fell forward onto his forehead. He forked it back into place with an unthinking sweep of his right hand. “But it’s important to realize that the kind of help friends need can change.”
Annie hesitated, sensing that they were entering into uncharted emotional territory. Uncharted for her, at least. There was an expression in her best buddy’s eyes—a tempered, disconcertingly tough expression—that suggested he’d been exploring this ground for some time.
“What are you trying to tell me?” she finally asked.
“I’m trying to tell you that I’m all right,” he answered. “Not one hundred percent, but I’m working on it. Yes, I have moments when I miss Lisa so much it hurts. And I think about her. I think about her a lot. But I don’t obsess the way we both know I did right after she died.”
“So?” Annie could barely get the word out.
Matt remained silent for several seconds, the look in his eyes softening. “So,” he finally replied, “it’s time for you to stop ‘getting concerned’ about my mental stability whenever I mention my dead wife’s name.”
As gentle as the implied reproach was, it still hurt. Annie’s first instinct was to dispute it. She opened her mouth to do just that, but closed it without uttering a sound.
What are you going to say? she challenged. That you’re a better judge of Matt’s state of mind than he is? Are you going to suggest he’s some sort of basket case? Just a little while ago you were thinking how much better he seems!
A terrible thought suddenly occurred to her.
What if she didn’t really want Matt to recover from his grief? What if, in some dark corner of her soul, she was relishing his dependence on her? What if—
No, she denied. No! It couldn’t be. It absolutely, positively, could not be. She knew herself better than that. And she knew her feelings for Matt better than that, too.
Annie took a deep breath and looked the man sitting across from her squarely in the eye. “You’re saying I overreacted when you started to talk about what Lisa would have done if she’d been the one to catch Eden’s bouquet.”
“I’m saying you’ve saved me from myself more times than I can count since Lisa died,” he corrected without missing a beat. “But the kind of help you gave me during the past fifteen months—the kind that involved your being part nursemaid, part psychotherapist and all-round guardian angel—isn’t the kind I need now.”
Annie let several seconds slip by, watching Matt’s face intently. “What kind do you need?” she finally asked.
Matt smiled. Grinned, almost. The expression was shatteringly familiar to Annie. It was a passport back to a carefree past she’d thought was beyond reclaiming.
“I need you to be my best buddy again,” he responded with disarming candor. “And to help me get a social life.”
* * *
It took Annie most of the rest of the meal to determine precisely what Matt meant by this.
“You want me for fix you up with someone?” she asked, rolling up her final fajita.
Matt paused in the act of forking up the last few grains of tomato-tinged rice that had come with his entée. He seemed genuinely startled by her question. Then, astonishingly, he began to laugh. There was a definite edge to the sound.
“Fix me up?” he echoed after a few seconds. “God, no! The last thing I need is anybody else trying to ‘fix me up.’”
“Anybody...else?”
“I’m up to my ears in people who want to introduce me to ‘nice’ girls.”
“Who?” The question popped out, unbidden and unconsidered.
“I don’t know.”
“How can you not know who wants—”
“No, Annie,” Matt cut in, shaking his head. “It’s the prospective dates who’re the strangers to me.”
“Oh.” She paused, mulling this over. “But the people who want to introduce you—”
“Them I know.”
Annie reached for her glass of now lukewarm ice tea and took a sip. “Do, uh, I, uh, know any of them?”
“Oh, definitely.” The response was wryly ironic. “The list includes my mother, Lisa’s mother, Lisa’s older sister, my brother’s wife—”
“Eden?” Annie replaced her glass with a thunk. She’d spoke with Eden about Matt over lunch just two days ago. Her friend had been sympathetic and full of advice. Yet not once had she mentioned that she was attempting to play matchmaker for her brother-in-law. She hadn’t even hinted at it.
