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Annie frowned. If someone had hurt her friend…
“I’ve been thinking about you all morning,” Becky said, her attempt at a smile weak at best. “Tell me how it went.”
As far as Annie was concerned, her trials and tribulations were a low priority at the moment.
“What’s wrong, Bec?” Her friend’s auburn curls had pulled loose from the ponytail she always wore when she worked.
Naturally curly hair was only one of the many things Annie and Becky Howard had in common.
“I just sent a student to a hospital in San Antonio for tests.”
Annie’s skin grew cold. “Is it serious?”
“I think he has an ulcer. He’s been vomiting blood.”
Staring at Becky’s bent head, Annie tried to read her friend’s mind. Certainly a sixteen-or seventeen-year-old with an ulcer had a serious problem. It would be indicative of some pretty severe emotional struggles, if nothing else. But it was still treatable.
She’d watched Becky work a car accident one time on the side of the road; they’d passed just after the crash occurred, and had stopped to see if they could help. One young man had died, but Becky had saved the life of another.
And she’d never shed a tear.
“So what’s really wrong?”
Becky looked up, and her eyes filled with fresh tears.
“I just saw Luke coming out of the grocery store. I wanted yogurt for lunch.”
Damn. “They don’t have yogurt in the cafeteria?”
“Not strawberry banana.”
“Did he say something?” Annie asked gently. Becky was the most loving person she’d ever known. Luke’s leaving town to join the army sixteen years before, walking out on Becky and their love affair so abruptly, without a backward glance, had nearly destroyed her friend. And just as abruptly, a month ago, he’d returned to town.
“No…” Becky’s voice trailed off. “I didn’t give him a chance.”
“Do you think he saw you?”
“He looked straight at me.” Becky’s lips trembled. “I can’t believe this, Annie,” she said with a deep shudder. “I got over Luke Chisum years ago. I want nothing to do with him. And still, seeing him out of the blue like that, I turn to mush.”
Annie wanted to believe that a girl could get over her first love. Even if he had been the knight-in-shining-armor kind.
“It’s just that, seeing him up close…”
Remembering her first sight of Blake, two years before, when he’d stepped off that plane, Annie felt her own throat tighten. “Aw, hon.” She hated seeing her friend hurt. “I’m sorry.”
Becky sniffled and blew her nose.
“It gets easier,” Annie murmured, though she wasn’t as certain of that this morning as she might have been the day before.
Becky nodded. “It has to, doesn’t it?”
Annie sure as hell hoped so.
“He’s got this tiny scar by his left eye….”
“From the helicopter crash?”
“I don’t know, but probably. It’s still a little pink, so it has to be fresh.” She paused, glanced out the windshield and then looked back at Annie, her eyes filled with tenderness —and pain. “I just can’t stop thinking about him over there in Iraq, about all the things we hear about that place. About the crash. What if he’d been taken hostage?”
Grabbing her friend’s hand, Annie gave it a squeeze. “Don’t let those demons get you, Bec,” she said. “You’ll drive yourself crazy.”
And Annie, more than most, knew the truth of this. “Cole says he’s fine,” she continued. “Still the same old joking-around Luke.”
“All that joking covers a lot.”
Annie didn’t doubt it. Luke Chisum had been home only a month and already he was taking his father to therapy, doing everything he could to make his mother’s life easier, doing his share at the family ranch—in spite of an older brother who treated him with open hostility every chance he got.
“Still, other than some color blindness due to damage to the optic nerve, he seems to have completely recovered.”
Becky tried to smile. And failed. “Do you know how long he was at Walter Reed?”
The amount of time he’d spent in the veterans’ hospital would give a medical professional like Becky a fairly good idea of the extent of Luke’s injuries.
“I don’t.” Annie hesitated, thought and then continued, “I know that he got a medical discharge, though. With his vision the way it is, he wouldn’t meet army regulations.”
“I wondered,” Becky said, and looked at Annie again. “He’s back for good, isn’t he?”
“Cole thinks so.”
“Think he’ll let me just go on not speaking to him for the rest of our lives?” Becky’s attempt at a smile was a bit more successful that time.
Annie tilted her head, trying to assess her friend. “You want him to?”
“Depends on the day.”
Annie understood that completely.
“SO TELL ME ABOUT LAST night.” Becky was calm once more, her capable, reliable self as she turned the tables on Annie.
Glancing at her watch, Annie asked, “Don’t you have to get back?”
“I’m working at the clinic this afternoon. I have another hour before I have to be there.”
“Did you get that yogurt you were after?”
Becky grimaced and shook her head. “I was on my way in when I saw Luke. So I turned around and came back here.”
Annie had figured as much. “Why don’t we load the bike up and go to my place? I’ll make us some tuna salad and we can talk.”
SHE ADDED PICKLES and onion to the tuna, put a plate of thin wheat crackers on the table, and they nibbled as Annie relayed, almost word for word, the scene between her and Blake the night before.
“Do you think I’m crazy?” she asked her friend as her story came to its end.
“Not at all.” Becky didn’t hesitate. “The world has changed so much in the past five years,” she said. “Not only has it become common for women to assume challenging roles in the workplace, we’re learning that we have all kinds of personal strengths we didn’t realize we had. Society, as a whole, is also more focused on getting the most out of life. Going after what we want. And you’re a product of that.”
“I live in a tiny town in Texas, in the middle of nowhere,” Annie reminded her.
“With the Internet, no place is in the middle of nowhere anymore.”
Annie knew she’d needed to talk to Becky. Her friend had always had a way of making sense of the world, most particularly when Annie couldn’t seem to do so herself.
“I wrote in my column this morning about being honest,” she said, thinking aloud. “And the one thought I kept coming back to was how badly I want this baby. I mean, I get a little scared sometimes, when I think of raising a child all alone, but mostly I just feel peaceful about the idea. I’m so sure this is the right step for me.”
“Not that it matters,” Becky said, laying a hand on top of Annie’s, “but I think so, too.”
“You do?”
“Yeah.”
“You’ve never said so.”
“I didn’t want to encourage you, in case you weren’t sure.”
“So what makes you say so now?”
“It meant so much to you that you were willing to risk the pain of seeing Blake again—even knowing that he’d say no.”
Annie was tempted to say nothing. But this was Becky.
“He didn’t actually say no yet.” It meant nothing. “I think he has to at least give the appearance of considering the idea, because of his friendship with Cole.”
Damn Cole for putting her—and Blake—in this position. As much as she adored her younger brother, there were times when his stubborn refusal to accept that she and Blake were over grated on her nerves.
Becky was staring at her. “Blake didn’t say no?”
“Not yet. But he will.”
“What did he say?” The interest in Becky’s eyes scared Annie. As if there was something there…
“That he’d think about it. Like I said, he has to, because he’s still Cole’s friend.” She wanted to make that point abundantly clear.
“Did he say when he’d let you know?”
“No. He’ll probably just give Cole a call. I’m half expecting to hear from my interfering brother any minute now.”
“What if he doesn’t say no?”
Annie’s heart nearly stopped, and then her breathing followed suit. Both started again raggedly. “He’s going to say no.” That’s all there was to it. “I’ve got my first interview with a prospective donor next week in Houston.”
“Who with?” Becky’s surprise seemed to distract her—which was a good thing as far as Annie was concerned. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I just set it up this morning,” she replied. “He’s a communications professor, a friend of someone I worked with at the station in San Antonio when I was married to Blake. He’s widowed, fifty-seven, has two grown kids and a woman friend who is in complete support of the ‘project,’ as he called it.”
“He called your baby a project?”
Annie hadn’t been thrilled with that, either.
“HEY, DO YOU KNOW WHY Katie Hollister would be looking for Shane?” Annie asked as she and Becky tidied up after the lunch they’d barely touched.
“They hardly know each other,” Becky said, shaking her head. “She’s a senior, and Shane just started high school.”
“That’s what I thought.” The Hollisters lived across the street from the three-bedroom ranch home Annie and Roger had bought when they got married.
Annie repeated the conversation she’d had with her young neighbor at school earlier that day.
“She’s seen Shane over here often enough with me,” Becky said. The women frequently had Sunday dinner together.
Becky, who was the daughter of River Bluff’s sheriff, had been raised by her father’s exceedingly strict mother, and she was sometimes as eager as Annie to escape family get-togethers.
“Guess that’s why she’d assume you’d know,” Becky was saying now, but she was frowning, and she seemed to be thinking about far more than that.
“Could also be that we live in the same town we grew up in and everyone knows we’re best friends,” Annie teased, wiping crumbs off the counter. “So what’s up? Why would a popular girl like Katie be looking for a guy three years younger than she is?”
“I have no idea, but I intend to find out.”
“If it’s a romantic thing, I doubt your son is going to open up to his mother about it,” Annie observed.
“Of course it isn’t romantic.” Becky’s voice became more adamant with every word. “He’s barely fifteen years old,” she added, as if that explained it all. “Girls like Katie Hollister go for football captains and college guys, not younger boys.”
Unless the boy in question had great muscles and a gorgeous face like Shane Howard’s? Annie sure hoped not. The last thing Becky needed right now was problems with her son. And the last thing Shane needed was to be led off track by hormones and a slightly wild older woman. He was a good kid, with decent grades and a plan for his future.
ANNIE FOLLOWED BECKY back out to the car to retrieve her bike.
“You call me the second you hear from Blake,” her friend demanded, closing the back of the Tahoe.
“I’m not going to hear from him.”
Becky’s expression was firm as she stood there, shoulders back. “You might, Annie. You need to be prepared for that.”
No, she didn’t. But she’d be fine, either way.
“Have you thought about what you’ll do if he says yes?”
“He’s not going to say yes.”
Becky’s keys dangled from her fingers as she put her hands on her hips. “I hope you’re right.”
Annie knew what Becky was trying to do here. She wanted Annie’s eyes wide open so she wouldn’t be blindsided—and get hurt. “Remember last New Year’s Eve?” she asked.
