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She began to shake as she fought tears and she hated that through all of this, she’d desperately wanted him to beg. She knew it couldn’t have made any difference, but she’d wanted it all the same. She’d wanted to know that last night had meant as much to him as it had to her.
Obviously, it hadn’t.
Julie dressed in her tightest pair of jeans because being unable to breathe helped to keep her mind off the horrors of her morning. She’d scrubbed the shower, washed her sheets, remade the bed and had given herself a stern talking-to. None of that had worked in the least, so she’d left to go see her sisters, stopping on the way to buy the biggest latte known to man. If not breathing didn’t help, maybe she could drown herself from the inside out.
It was a little after eleven when she pulled up in front of the small house where she’d grown up. The tiny lawn looked lush and green and there were flowering plants everywhere, mostly thanks to Willow’s green thumb.
She glanced at the two cars already parked in front of the house and took in the empty space in the driveway, then got out and walked into the house.
“Hey, it’s me,” she said as she stepped into the bright living room.
Willow sat curled up in the chair in the corner, while Marina had taken a corner of the sofa. They both smiled at her.
“Hi,” Willow said as she stood and hugged her sister. “Are you really going to drink all that coffee? Too much of that will kill you.”
“That’s the plan,” Julie said, doing her best to smile as she spoke so Willow would think she was kidding.
Marina moved in for her hug. “Hi. How are things?”
“Okay. Mom at the clinic?”
“Uh-huh.” Marina sat back on the sofa and patted the cushion next to her. “It’s low-cost vaccination day.”
“Right.” Julie plopped down.
One Saturday morning a month, Dr. Greenberg, Naomi’s boss, opened his offices to the neighborhood and gave low-cost vaccinations to whomever wanted them. It had been their mother’s idea—part of her ongoing quest to save the world. Julie had always thought she should spend a little more time trying to save herself.
“So how are you two?” she asked.
Willow and Marina exchanged a glance. Julie immediately tensed. “What?”
Willow sighed. “We were talking about Dad.”
Great. Because the day hadn’t started off badly enough, Julie thought grimly.
“It’s been a few months,” Marina said. “He should be coming back any time now.”
“How exciting,” Julie muttered and sipped more coffee.
“Jules, no.” Willow flipped her long blond hair off her shoulder and leaned forward. “That’s not fair. You never give him a break.”
“I’m sorry I don’t have enough appreciation for a man who abandons his family over and over again and the mother who lets him.”
Marina’s mouth twisted. “That’s not fair. She loves him.”
Julie felt too raw to deal with the familiar argument. “Don’t say he’s her destiny, I beg you. He blows back into her life and ours, he’s charming and adoring and then he goes away. He moves on to the next thrill and we’re left picking up the pieces.”
Julie’s childhood had been punctuated by her father’s visits and her mother’s subsequent week of tears and feeble attempts to hide her pain. While her sisters were happy to remember the excitement of their father’s visit, Julie always recalled the aftermath. Jack Nelson was like a big electrical storm. A lot of light and noise and an impressive show, but when it was over, someone had to handle the cleanup. That someone had usually been her.
She took another sip of her coffee. Apparently it wasn’t enough to drown her, which meant she would now be completely awake to deal with the humiliation of last night and this morning.
“All men are bastards,” she muttered.
Willow’s blue eyes widened. “Julie, no. Not all guys are like Garrett.”
Right. Her ex-fiancé. Julie groaned. She’d thought he’d been the absolute low point of her romantic life, but when compared with Todd/Ryan, he was almost a nice guy.
“Speaking of slime on two legs,” she said, “I had my date with Todd last night.”
“What?” Marina threw a pillow at Julie. “Are you kidding? Why didn’t you say anything until now?”
“I’ve been here five minutes.”
Willow rolled her eyes. “Oh, please. That’s a walkin announcement and you know it.” She slid to the edge of the chair and grinned. “Okay, tell us everything. Start at the beginning and speak slowly. Don’t leave out anything. Was he fabulous? Was he charming? Could you tell he was rich?”
Under any other circumstances, Julie would have laughed. Willow’s idea of a guy with money was one who would only make her pay for her own meal instead of his as well. She tended to attract the down-and-out type, those between jobs or paychecks or even stints in jail.
“He was …”
On the way over, Julie had tried to come up with a way to make the situation into something she could laugh about instead of a pathetic statement on her luck with men. But she couldn’t remember a single thing she’d planned on saying and she surprised both herself and most likely her sisters by starting to cry.
“Jules?”
They were both beside her in a heartbeat. Marina hugged her from the side and Willow knelt in front of her. Someone took her coffee from her hand, and then she was held so hard, her chest hurt. Or maybe her chest just hurt on its own.
The embrace was familiar and comforting. They’d always been there for each other, only she wasn’t usually the one at the center of the healing.
Julie wiped away her tears and swallowed. “He wasn’t a one-armed humpback,” she said, her voice shaking a little. “He was nice. Charming and sexy and we danced and he made me laugh.”
She’d already decided not to mention that she’d slept with him. No doubt she would confess all later, but right now she couldn’t face admitting she’d been that much of a fool.
She’d been so careful, too. Ever since Garrett, she’d avoided men and sex and entanglements. Based on who Ryan had turned out to be, she should have stuck with being single.
“How did it go wrong?” Willow asked. “Was he secretly a woman?”
That made Julie laugh. She touched her sister’s face. “No, but that would have been interesting. He lied … about everything.”
She told them about him pretending to be Todd, in order to teach her a lesson.
“He assumed I was in it for the money, so his plan was to show me a good time, get me to fall for him and then tell me the truth.”
“What?” Marina stood up and put her hands on his hips. “That’s horrible. You didn’t do it for the money. You did it for Grandma Ruth. You lost. Did you tell him you lost because you always play scissors?”
“I mentioned that.”
Marina settled back beside her. “This is going to turn you off guys forever, isn’t it?”
Julie nodded. “I suspect I’ll have a lengthy recovery.”
“Want me to hurt him for you?” Willow asked.
Julie laughed again. Willow was all of five foot three inches. She was feisty on the inside but on the outside she had a whole lot more in common with a waif than a bodybuilder.
“That’s okay,” Julie told her. “I appreciate the offer, but he’s big and burly.”
“But I have speed and the element of surprise on my side.”
“I love you guys,” Julie said.
“We love you, too,” Marina told her. “I’m just so mad. Maybe Willow and I could take him together.”
“I don’t think so.”
Willow leaned against Julie’s shoulder. “I hate Todd, too. He’s a part of this. How could Grandma Ruth want any of us to marry someone who’s so jerky?”
“Maybe she doesn’t know,” Marina murmured.
“Maybe it’s the reason she offered the money,” Julie said. “It doesn’t matter. It’s over. I’m never going to see Ryan again.”
Or think of him. Except she had a feeling that forgetting him was going to be more difficult than she wanted it to be. If only she could go back in time and never show up for that stupid date.
Willow squeezed her arm. “You want us to not tell Mom? You know how she worries.”
“That would be great,” Julie said. “I’ll probably have to mention it eventually, but if I could wait a while, it would be easier.”
“Sure,” Marina said. “Whatever you want.”
Julie managed a smile. “So you two feel so sorry for me I could get you to do anything, huh?”
Her sisters nodded.
If she’d been feeling better, she might have teased them or come up with a crazy task. Instead she let them comfort her and told herself that in time, she would put all this behind her and forget she’d ever known Ryan Bennett.
Julie stared out of the window of her office and did her best to get excited about the view. Sure, she could mostly see the building next door, but to the right she could see clear to Long Beach.
She’d been promoted the previous week and had moved into larger quarters. She now had a shared assistant and a nice raise. She also had big plans to celebrate this weekend with a shopping spree. Willow and Marina had already promised to come with her.
This was all good. She was smart, successful, moving upward in her chosen career. So why couldn’t she stop thinking about Ryan?
It had been three weeks since that disastrous night and morning when he’d swept into her life and made her think this time things would be different. Three weeks of remembering, of dreaming about him, of wanting him.
That’s what she resented most—that her own body betrayed her. She could stay sane during the day but when she finally fell asleep, he invaded her dreams as she relived what it had been like to be with him. She woke up several times a night, aroused, hungry for his touch. These were not the signs of a woman forgetting a man.
“I want him gone,” she whispered into the silence.
But how to make that happen? Until she’d found out he was a lying bastard, he’d been the best night of her life.
He was also persistent. He’d phoned three times and sent a basket filled with chocolate, wine and season one of Gilligan’s Island on DVD.
She placed her hand on the cool glass. Things had to get better, right? She couldn’t remember him forever. It was a matter of discipline and maybe a little less coffee. She could always call Willow—the queen of all things organic—and ask if there was some kind of sleep aid to get her through this rough patch.
Julie turned to return to her desk, only she didn’t exactly make it. As she took a step, the room seemed to shift and sway.
Her first thought was an earthquake, but there wasn’t any noise. Her second thought was that she’d never felt so dizzy in her life. Her vision narrowed and she realized she was very possibly going to faint.
Somehow she made it to her chair where she collapsed. After a couple of deep breaths, her head cleared, but now her stomach felt all queasy.
She did a quick review of what she’d eaten that day and wondered if she had food poisoning. When that seemed unlikely, she considered a quick-onset flu. It was early in the season, but it could happen.
Wasn’t there a prescription she could take? Something that would cut down how long she would be sick. Eyeing the stack of work awaiting her attention, she picked up the phone and dialed a familiar number.
“Hi, Mom, it’s me. I’m good. Kind of. Is there a flu going around?”
“How do you feel?” her mother asked two hours later as Julie sat in one of Dr. Greenberg’s examining rooms. One of the advantages of her mother being the man’s office manager was Julie and her sisters never had to wait to get an appointment.
She’d been weighed, had her blood pressure taken, peed in a cup. Talk about thorough. “I feel weird,” Julie admitted. “Queasy, but otherwise fine. I keep waiting to throw up, but I don’t.”
“Poor girl,” Naomi said soothingly as she held her hand against her daughter’s forehead.
“I’m twenty-six, Mom. Not really girl material.”
Her mother smiled. “You’ll always be my little girl.”
Julie laughed. Right now the fussing was kind of nice.
“Let me get you something carbonated,” her mother said as she headed for the door. “It might settle your stomach.”
Julie watched her go. All three sisters had inherited their mother’s blond hair and blue eyes. They were variations on a theme, ranging from Willow’s pale blond to Julie’s medium, to Marina’s dark gold hair. Julie and Marina had inherited their father’s height, while Willow was petite.
In her high-school science class, Julie had been fascinated by how two people could have produced three daughters who were so similar in some ways and different in others.
“Here you go.” Her mother returned with an iced drink in a cartoon-character paper cup. “Dr. Greenberg will be right in.”
Just then the older man stepped into the room. “Julie, you never come see me anymore. What’s up with that? Now that you’re a fancy lawyer, you don’t have any time for a mere doctor?”
“I do move in very special circles,” she said with a grin.
Her mother waved and ducked out of the room. Dr. Greenberg took Julie’s hand and leaned forward to kiss her on her cheek.
“So you’re not feeling too good?” he asked.
“I don’t know. It’s weird. I can’t tell if it’s food poisoning or the flu. I thought maybe you could tell me and then give me a prescription.”
He scowled at her, an expression she remembered from when she’d been little and had been scratching her rampant case of poison ivy.
“Not everything can be solved with a pill, young lady.”
She fingered the long sleeve of her silk blouse. “Does this make me look too young? First Mom and now you. Do I look sixteen?”
