Marriage On His Mind

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Murder came to mind. Jack nodded in the affirmative, but his gaze stayed on Coach, who seemed to be taking a long time drifting down from her own clouds. “Who are you?” he asked her as the attendant pushed a wheelchair around to the passenger side of the car.

Her hands shaking, she fitted her sunglasses back in place and lifted her cap to turn it around and resettle it. “I’ll park your car and leave your keys with the ER receptionist.”

He couldn’t say goodbye, so he brushed a hand down her cheek and turned from her to shift himself into the wheelchair. He never looked back.

Mickey watched him disappear through the electric doors, then leaned her forehead against the steering wheel for a minute to get her bearings.

His kiss should be labeled by the government as hazardous to one’s health, for surely her temperature had elevated to a life-threatening degree. She leaned back and blew out a breath, her arms stiff, her hands locked on the steering wheel. He would be a significant roadblock in her need for independence. Too significant. She shoved the car into first gear.

After finding a parking place nearby, she sat on a bench under a tree for more than half an hour, giving him a chance to be taken into a room, then she climbed the ramp and entered the hospital. She glanced furtively around her but the waiting room yawned empty. She swept off her hat as she approached the reception window. “Excuse me,” she said to the woman working at a computer behind the counter.

“Yes? May I help you?”

“I, ah, I wanted to know about a patient who was just brought in with an ankle injury.”

“Are you a relative?”

“No. Just a...friend. Is he all right?”

“Let me check. Have a seat, okay?”

Mickey sank onto a bench. Dropping her cap on the table beside her, she picked up a magazine and flipped through it, seeing only a blur of words and pictures. Stark images of her last visit to a hospital emergency room flashed before her eyes. I’m sorry. There’s nothing we can do. Sorry... Nothing... Sorry...

Nothing.

The door from the ER parking lot whooshed open, startling her. She brushed a weary hand down her face and stood as Scott Lansing approached.

“How’s he doing?” he asked, his eyes asking questions he must have sensed she wouldn’t answer.

“I don’t know. He’s inside. Did you win?”

“Amazingly, we did. I’ll go check on him.”

“Wait.” Mickey caught his arm. From her pocket she dug out a set of keys. “Give these to him, please. I’ll be on my way.”

He hefted the keys lightly. “Hang tight. I’ll see how he is.”

After a few minutes, he returned. “We haven’t been introduced.” He extended his hand in greeting. “I’m Scott Lansing.”

“Yes, I know. How is he?”

“Ornery.”

“Please.” She realized how pathetic she sounded when the man dropped his attempt at humor and started speaking in soothing doctor tones.

“He’s going to be just fine. No break, just a bad sprain. You can go see him, if you want. He’s having his crutches fitted, then he can leave.”

She had to get out of here, away from the reminders, away from the past. “I...can’t stay. Tell him...tell him I’m glad he’s all right. And I’m sorry I caused him to be hurt.”

“Why don’t you tell him yourself?”

She could hear Jack’s voice as he called thanks to someone, then the sound of the electric doors swinging open. She took three steps back, turned and ran.

Jack concentrated on negotiating the metal crutches through the door, and looked up only in time to catch a glimpse of Coach’s tempting backside. He glanced at Scott.

“Stubborn as you, Jack, old buddy. Do you want to go to Chung Li’s or home?”

Jack moved toward the glass exit door, but she was already out of sight. “Pizza, I guess.”

“Sit down for a second while I pick up your prescription. Elevate that foot.”

Jack maneuvered himself to a cushioned bench. Beside him on the low table laden with well-used magazines sat an L.A. Seagulls baseball cap. He picked it up and turned it in his hands. Coach’s? It had to be. He checked it for a name tag; finding none, he lifted it to his face and breathed in the sweet, subtle fragrance of shampoo that lingered in the fabric. His body reacted with lightning speed to the scent, to the remembered taste of her mouth and her uncontrolled response. If they’d just had a little more time alone in the car, maybe he could have convinced her to trust him, or at least to meet with him again.

He spun the cap that his reluctant Cinderella had left behind. Folding it, he jammed it into his waistband, knowing he had to find her. Ignoring his long-trusted intuition, which told him he was inviting trouble by searching her out, he decided she was a woman in need of a happy ending. And he’d make a helluva Prince Charming.

Four

Mickey stood in the courtyard absorbing the beauty of the community college campus, an award-winning school praised for its overall design and lush landscaping. Climbing ivy and leafy trees cleverly screened concrete and stucco buildings; flowering shrubs edged brick pathways weaving through the campus grounds. No city sounds intruded. The college was a community unto itself.

The frantic, disorganized first week of the semester was over; her second week of teaching had begun. Last Monday, she’d been able to look forward to the batting lesson with Jack at the end of her first day of teaching. Now all that faced her was her new Monday, Wednesday and Friday routine: four classes of algebra, followed by an hour for lunch, then two hours tutoring in the math lab. She would have papers to grade in the evening, lessons to plan and individual counseling where needed—nothing overly demanding, nothing that would too quickly awaken long-dead emotions, just a gradual return to life.

She had forgotten how much she enjoyed teaching, had forgotten the pleasure of communicating with curious students, how satisfying it was to see awareness dawn on the face of someone who grasped a concept that a moment earlier had been a puzzle.

“Hey, Ms. Morrison,” someone called, coming up behind her as she stared at the koi swimming in the fish pond, the showcase of the school’s courtyard.

She lifted her head and turned, then recognized the young man she’d just tutored in the lab. “Hey, Greg,” she responded, smiling at the infectious grin on his face. “Good work today.”

“It clicked, you know?”

“Drop by again on Wednesday, if you can. I think you can catch up in a hurry.” Her gaze shifted to a man making his way on crutches past them. He looked up from focusing on the path before him and stared at her, surprised.

“I’ll be there,” Greg said, walking backward. “Thanks a lot.”

Mickey blinked, breaking the intensity of the gaze with the man who had haunted her dreams for days. Haltingly, she said goodbye to Greg and watched as he jogged across the courtyard. He had been out of sight for seconds before she reluctantly faced forward again. “Jack,” she whispered.

Jack positioned a crutch on each side of her, trapping her between him and the koi pond. His head an inch from hers, he breathed in the now-familiar scent of her shampoo. His gaze took in her blond pixie hair and startled brandy-colored eyes. Even without touching her, he could feel the tautness of her body, clothed this time in a blue-and-white striped tailored blouse and matching blue slacks. “You work here,” he stated, noting the briefcase she carried.

He saw her glance in silent question at his own soft-sided satchel tied to the handle of his right crutch. “I volunteer legal aid, and I occasionally speak to classes on topics that I have some expertise in,” he told her. “How about you?”

“I teach algebra,” she replied, clearly uncomfortable at having to answer.

He pulled back in surprise and studied her face, her identity becoming blindingly clear. “Your name wouldn’t happen to be Mickey Morrison, would it?”

Her eyes widened in obvious shock. “How do you know that?”

His tenant! All these weeks, and she’d been living a hundred yards from him. Damn it all, what luck! He grinned. “I thought you knew my name.”

“I know your first name.”

“I’m Jack Stone.”

“Is that supposed to mean something to me?”

“It should.”

“Why?”

“The name Jack Stone doesn’t ring any bells?” he pressed.

“Tell me why it should.”

Ignoring her demand, he slid a hand into his satchel and withdrew her L.A. Seagulls baseball cap. She started to take it from him, but he yanked it out of reach. “Not so fast. You stayed at the hospital for almost an hour. Obviously, you were worried about me. Why didn’t you at least stay long enough to talk to me?”

“I told you. There can’t be anything between us. Don’t keep forcing the issue.”

He used his most soothing voice, one he’d cultivated to pull information from reluctant clients and witnesses. “I know you’re in some kind of trouble. Whatever it is, let me help you.”

Mickey dipped her head. Lord, spare me from chauvinistic men, she thought, suddenly finding her sense of humor now that the shock of his knowing who she was had settled in. “Look, you can’t tell anyone, okay?” she said, her voice hushed and deep.

He leaned closer. “Of course.”

She glanced around surreptitiously. “I escaped a white slavery ring.”

“What?!”

“There were twenty of us, being guarded by a eunuch. He fell in love with me.” She sighed dramatically. “He helped me—”

Jack laughed, then plopped her cap backward on her head. “I get the message, loud and clear, Coach.”

“Do you?”

“Whatever’s bothering you isn’t criminal, right?”

“What made you think otherwise?” she asked, genuinely curious.

“Call it jumping to conclusions after years in a business where being suspicious is part of the job description.”

“Yet you were willing to help me, even if I’d done something—”

“I didn’t think you’d done anything. I just thought you were in some kind of trouble.” He backed up, providing her an escape route. “I can see you want to get on your way.”

Mickey frowned. He was giving up far too easily. She pulled the baseball cap off her head and ran her fingers through her hair. She was mesmerized by the intensity of the beautiful dark blue eyes directed on her, holding her hostage even after granting her freedom. “Thanks for returning this.”

“I’ve carried that with me everywhere I’ve gone these past four days. I went to the grocery store and opened shampoo bottles until found which one matched the scent in your cap, just because I needed to know. Even getting caught was worth the embarrassment.”

“You...you got caught? Sniffing shampoos in the store?” She tried very hard not to laugh.

He grinned. “Yeah, by a smug teenaged boy who stood there with his arms folded across his chest until I loaded every bottle I’d opened into a shopping cart and then followed me to make sure I bought them. But I needed to know everything I could about you. This cap was all I had. It’s hard now to give it up.”

She swallowed. No one had ever laid siege to her before. She wasn’t the kind of woman men saw as a sex object. She was just Mickey, the woman whom people asked directions of, whom weekend daddies trusted to take their daughters safely into public rest rooms. She looked harmless. She was harmless. She was not the femme fatale that Jack seemed to be projecting her to be.

Jack could see he’d flustered her, although he was mature enough not to gloat. He knew who she was. He knew how to find her. He could let her go—for now. “So long, Coach,” he said, maneuvering his crutches past her.

“Wait a minute, Jack Stone,” she called. “Tell me why I should know you.”

“You just think about it,” he called back, grinning. “I’ll be seeing you.”

Mickey wrenched open the jar of fish bait and sniffed. Ugh! What an atrocious odor. Fish Love It! Guaranteed To Attract Even The Most Elusive, the store display had promised, while the jar label warned it was not for human consumption. As if anyone in their right mind would want to taste it!

She held the jar at arm’s length, her nose wrinkling and eyes squinting. Dipping her thumb and two fingers into the jar, she extracted a smidgen of bait. The texture of clay, it rolled easily into a ball she could press onto the hook. She stared at her hand when the task was done, then dipped it in the water before resolutely wiping it on the ground, hoping the dirt would mask any lingering scent.

Inexpertly, she cast the lure into the pool. Not happy with the location, she reeled it back in and tried again, twice, until she was satisfied with where it fell. She settled down on the bank, leaned against a boulder and finally relaxed enough to let her mind wander.

Jack Stone. Why should his name be familiar to her? What did he know that she didn’t? He hadn’t been off her mind all afternoon, not as she had driven home from work, or changed into denim cutoffs, T-shirt and slip-on sneakers, or gathered up her brand-new fishing gear before hiking down to the stream behind her house.

He knew her name now, and where she worked. She waited for the trepidation to come with the knowledge that he could find her easily. She felt only a glow spreading through her body. It wasn’t thoughts of Jack, she rationalized, but the five o’clock summer sun spilling through the leafy shelter of trees that was warming her. She closed her eyes and let the heat seep into her, relaxing, healing and even a little arousing. Her body began to tingle, much like a leg that has fallen asleep coming back to life with pinpricks of pleasure-pain.

As she heard the jangle of dog tags and the patter of paws, she opened her eyes slowly, reluctant to stop her body’s awakening.

“Woof!” The golden retriever barked in greeting as he nuzzled her neck with his wet nose and gave her a slow doggie kiss up her cheek.

“Woof to you, too, Flee,” Mickey said, smiling and fending off his affectionate caresses. She’d made friends with the beautiful dog over the past couple of weeks, discovering his name on one of his tags, his address identifying him as her landlord’s pet.

She really should go over and introduce herself, she thought for probably the twentieth time. But the woman at the property management company that had handled her lease said he was gone frequently, which was why he’d contracted the company to take care of the details. If Mickey had any problems, she was to direct them to the company, not to her landlord. She figured he wanted as much privacy as she did.

She liked his dog, though, who offered undemanding companionship.

“Flee, you mangy mutt!” a man’s voice called, accompanied by the sound of leaves being crushed underfoot in a slow, awkward cadence. “If you knock me down one more time, I swear I’ll—”

Mickey dropped her fishing pole and scrambled to her feet as the man about to issue a dire threat came into view. “Jack!” she gasped, watching as he caught sight of her and grinned. He negotiated his crutches over and around rocks, twigs and bumpy terrain to come up beside her.