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“Stuart sounds like a good kid,” Renae said, glancing again at the grateful notes.
Evan nodded. “I haven’t actually met him, but from what Tate has told me, he is.”
She should have known better than to meet his eyes. Their gazes held, and she felt a shiver of awareness course through her. It had been too long since she’d been near an attractive man, too long since she had felt physical awareness warm her blood.
She forced her attention back to her notes. Was she really so starved for a man’s attention? How foolish.
Sure, she was young and there were times when she longed for a man’s touch. She’d told herself she would date again, once the twins were a little older and her schedule a bit less hectic. In the meantime, her life was almost perfect just as it was, she reminded herself firmly. She had no intention of doing anything to change that. Most especially with Evan Daugherty, who had already caused her more than enough heartache and confusion.
To distract herself, she stayed focused on the conversation. “Okay, so I’ll start putting together an application form to send to local schools and to make available on the website you and Tate are working on. We still need to draft a more formal statement of the qualifications we’re looking for in our applicants.”
Though Stuart attended a small, private college in Missouri, Evan and Tate had decided it would be easier to limit future awards to students in Arkansas, and Renae agreed. They would choose two recipients for next year, in addition to renewing Stuart’s award, but eventually they hoped to spread the assistance to even more young scholars. Maybe even increase the award amount to cover more than books and supplies, if they were successful with their fundraising efforts.
“We can draft the statement and make some more decisions at our next meeting. Since all the materials are here, we might as well just keep my apartment as our meeting place. Would there be any time you could meet next week?”
“Next week?” she asked with a little frown.
He nodded, studying her face. “Tate should be able to join us then. He wanted to be here today, but his wife’s car wouldn’t start and she was stranded at work. Tate had to pick up their daughter at day care, then arrange to have the battery in her car replaced.”
“They have a daughter?” Though she knew Tate was a newlywed, this was the first she had heard about a child.
“Her name is Daryn. She’s about a year old. Tate married a single mom. He met Kim when the baby was only a couple months old, right after she went back to work after her maternity leave. They had sort of a whirlwind romance and surprised everyone with a sudden marriage. It’s pretty amusing how they got together, actually. Maybe he’ll tell you about it next week.”
Again, Evan was making the supposition that she would meet with him again next week.
He must have read the hesitation in her expression because he added, “Is next week too soon? I understand if you can’t arrange a sitter for the kids again so quickly. Maybe you would rather Tate and I handle this from now on and email you?”
That was exactly what she should do. But she really didn’t want to be left out of this project now that she’d become so emotionally invested in seeing it succeed.
She shook her head. “No, if we’re going to get everything in place to start accepting applications for next fall, we should probably meet again soon. Next Wednesday will work for me.”
She assumed each meeting with Evan would get easier, especially since he had cooperated with her in keeping the tone between them strictly business. And in the meantime, she would decide whether it was time to let Lucy know about these meetings. She couldn’t say she was looking forward to that, but she was reluctant to deceive her mother-in-law, even through omission.
Evan insisted that she leave the dinner cleanup to him. She gathered her notes and stuffed them into her bag in preparation to leave.
He glanced at his watch as he walked with her into the living room. “I’m sure you’re eager to get home to the kids. Do you have a regular sitter for them?”
“Lucy takes care of them when I’m not home. They always have activities at church on Wednesday evenings, which gives me one free night a week on my own. That’s why I’m available to meet with you and Tate next Wednesday.”
“Lucy.” Evan cleared his throat uncomfortably after repeating the name. “You mean Lucy Sanchez?”
She nodded, understanding why his tone had suddenly changed. It hadn’t occurred to her until just then that Evan probably wasn’t aware of her living arrangements. “Jason’s mother.”
“She still lives close by, I take it.”
“Actually, she lives with us. After Jason died, she took early retirement from her job with the Revenue Department and moved in with me during the last couple months of my pregnancy. She stayed to help with the twins when we brought them home from the hospital. When we saw how well it was working out, she sold her little house and we’ve shared a home since. It’s been an almost-ideal arrangement for all of us.”
She could tell he was startled to hear that she and Lucy shared a home. He wouldn’t be the first person to find it odd that a thirty-year-old widow chose to live with her mother-in-law for seven years after her husband’s death, with no plans to change the situation. Renae rarely bothered to explain and never made excuses. It was a choice that suited her family, and she had no qualms about saying so.
Evan pushed his hands into his pockets, his expression shuttered, his brown eyes darker than usual. “Does she still spit on the ground every time she hears my name?”
She didn’t really know how to answer that only partially facetious question. She settled for, “Not quite that bad.”
A muscle flickered in his set jaw. “Okay, but does she still blame me for Jason’s death?”
Renae sighed wearily and pushed a strand of blond hair behind her ear. “She still grieves for her son. She gets caught up in ‘if only.’ If only he hadn’t gone riding that day, if only he hadn’t bought a bike in the first place … that sort of thing.”
“All of which lead back to blaming me.”
She was unable to argue. It seemed best to take her leave then, instead. “Thank you for the pizza, and for letting me be a part of establishing the scholarship.”
He nodded and walked her to the door. They reached for the knob at the same time, his hand landing on top of hers. Rather than moving it immediately, he went still, his fingers warm around hers. His face was somber when he looked down at her. “Renae?”
Her heart was racing much faster than it should have been, especially considering they were barely making contact. Yet that touch of skin on skin, the warmth that radiated from him, the nearness and strength of him—all sent her thoughts winging back to a stolen kiss on a dark, summer night. A kiss that had left her bewildered, conflicted and crying into her pillow for several nights afterward. A kiss that still brought up feelings of guilt and confusion on the very rare occasion when she allowed herself to remember it.
“What?” she whispered, unable to pull away just yet.
“Do you still blame me?”
She didn’t know if he referred to the kiss or to Jason’s accident, but her reply applied to both. “I try not to let myself dwell on the past.”
That muscle twitched again in his jaw. “That’s not really an answer.”
She drew her hand from under his, moving away so that no contact remained between them. “Jason made his own decisions.”
Just as she had made hers.
She shifted restlessly toward the door, making it clear she wanted Evan to open it. Without further delay, he did so. “I’ll see you next week,” he said as she walked out.
She merely nodded and kept walking. Perhaps she should find an excuse to handle the rest of their scholarship business through the safely impersonal distance of email after all.
“You’re quieter than usual today, Evan. Is something wrong?”
Resting his chopsticks against his plate, Evan shook his head and reached for his teacup.
“Just hungry,” he explained in response to Lynette Price’s concerned question from across the restaurant table. “I overslept this morning, so I had to gulp down an apple for breakfast on the way to a client meeting.”
Lynette nodded as if that fully explained his introspection. “I hate when that happens. I forgot to set my alarm last Friday and I was fifteen minutes late to work. Threw me off schedule for the rest of the day.”
A week after Evan’s meeting with Renae, he and four friends had gathered for their every-Wednesday lunch at a Little Rock restaurant. His business partner, Tate Price, sat on the opposite side of the table flanked by his bride, Kim Banks Price, and Tate’s sister, Lynette Price. To Evan’s right sat Emma Grainger, who worked with Kim and Lynette.
Lynette, a physical therapist, and her coworker friends had started the Wednesday lunch outings almost a year ago. Lynette had invited her brother and Evan to join them a few weeks later. That was when Tate had met Kim. Now Tate and Kim were newly married.
Though Tate and Kim’s wedding had been a spur-of-the-moment event, none of the others had been particularly surprised when they paired off. Sparks had flown between them from the start, though it seemed that the couple had been the last to acknowledge the attraction between them.
“I’m sorry I caused Tate to miss your scholarship meeting last week,” Kim said to Evan.
“It wasn’t your fault your car wouldn’t start,” he assured her.
Evan remembered how hesitant he’d been to tell Renae that Tate had to cancel. He had sensed that she had been more comfortable at the thought of meeting with both of them rather than with Evan alone. He’d done his best to set her at ease, and he thought he’d succeeded for the most part—with the exception of their rather emotional parting.
He still didn’t know for certain if Renae held resentment toward him for Jason’s death. After all, it had taken several years for him to stop blaming himself. Being outright accused at the funeral by Jason’s grieving mother had certainly not helped him with that slow healing.
“How was your meeting with Mrs. Sanchez?” Emma asked curiously. Like the others, she’d heard about the scholarship launch, and had been told that the widow of the man in whose honor it was established wanted to be involved.
It still rather startled Evan to think of Renae as Mrs. Sanchez, a name he associated with Jason’s mother. Renae had been so young when she and Jason married, and not much older when she’d been widowed. She was still young, for that matter, and yet she lived quietly with her children and her mother-in-law. Was she still in mourning for Jason?
“It went well,” he said, keeping his thoughts to himself. “We made some decisions, outlined some of the things we need to do next.”
“Is there anything I can do to help?” Kim offered. “I’m still so grateful to you both for making my brother your first recipient.”
“He wouldn’t have gotten it if he hadn’t been deserving,” Evan reminded her, not for the first time. “I’ll let you know if there’s anything you can do.”
“I’d like to help, too,” Lynette offered. “Maybe we can come up with an idea for a fundraiser.”
Evan nodded. “That would be good.”
“We’ll all help,” Emma said. “It’s definitely a worthy cause. But I’d like to hear more about Jason Sanchez. You guys haven’t told us much about him, other than that he was a high school teacher who died in a motorcycle accident. What was he like?”
Evan and Tate exchanged glances, and Evan was sure memories were flashing through Tate’s mind, just as they were his own.
“Jason was great,” Evan said finally. “Smart, funny, outgoing. Every kid’s favorite teacher in school, you know? He made a real effort to keep his classes interesting, to bring history to life for his students. He’d only been teaching a couple years when he died, so I guess you could say he hadn’t had time to burn out yet.”
“He wanted to teach college history,” Tate contributed. “He liked academia, enjoyed the challenges and even the politics of it all.”
Evan nodded. A good-looking guy, Jason had savored being the center of attention, knew he was admired by his female students, fancied himself in the role of popular professor. His dad had died when Jason was a young teen, leaving him an only child to be pampered and indulged by his adoring mother.
Several years his junior, a lonely young woman with a deep-seated longing for family and stability, Renae Ingle had fallen under Jason’s spell while she was an occupational therapy student and Jason was studying for his master’s degree. Evan had been doing an internship in urban gardening in Chicago that year. By the time he returned home, Renae and Jason were a couple.
Which made it all the more wrong when Evan had fallen for Renae himself.
“You knew him from childhood?” Emma persisted.
“I did,” Evan confirmed with a nod. “Jason and I became friends in junior high and remained close after that. I met Tate in college, where we were both studying landscape design. I introduced him to Jason and the three of us spent a lot of time together after that.”
“Jason was a good friend,” Tate agreed. “We had some fun times, didn’t we, Ev?”
Evan nodded.
“I saw Jason a couple of times when he stopped by the house on his motorcycle to meet up with Tate and Evan,” Lynette volunteered. “He was really good-looking, had a smile that made my teen knees melt. I had such a crush on him, and I think he knew it.”
“Did you ever meet his wife?” Emma asked.
Lynette shook her head. “No. The guys weren’t hanging out as much when Jason started dating her.”
Tate shrugged. “We got busy. I was working for a landscape design company in Dallas, Evan was away doing an internship, Jason was getting his master’s degree. Then Evan went into the army, Jason and Renae got married, and Jason started teaching and studying for his doctorate. After that, we were lucky to all be in the same town for an afternoon to shoot some hoops or ride our …”
Tate’s words faded. Obviously he had suddenly remembered that final motorcycle ride Jason and Evan had taken. “Anyway,” he continued quickly, “Evan spent more time with Jason and Renae when they were dating, before he went off to the army, so he knows her better than I do.”
Evan still clearly remembered Jason introducing him to Renae. Shaking his hand, she had gazed up at him with a smile in those vivid blue eyes and Evan had felt his heart take a hard flop in his chest. Clichéd, maybe, but true. During the next few months, he’d spent some time with Jason and Renae, even double-dating on a few occasions, though his own dates hadn’t led anywhere. Maybe because he’d had a hard time taking his attention from Renae whenever she was in the vicinity though he’d done his best to ignore his attraction to her.
There had been times when he thought he’d sensed an answering awareness in her when their eyes had met, but he’d tried to convince himself he was only projecting. It had been easier for his peace of mind to believe he had no chance with his buddy’s girlfriend, and he thought Renae had made an equally determined effort to ignore the sparks between them. Until the night they had found themselves alone in a pretty little garden at a friend’s house, standing beside a moonlit fountain.
“Jason has asked me to marry him,” barely twenty-one-year-old Renae had confided tentatively, her face young and vulnerable in the pale light as she had gazed up at Evan.
He’d felt his stomach twist, even as his fingers tightened around the beer can in his hand. He’d downed a few too many at that gathering to celebrate Jason’s master’s degree in education. Yet he found Renae’s eyes more intoxicating than the beverage as he asked in a gravelly voice, “What did you tell him?”
Glancing downward, she had hesitated, moistening her lips and nervously tucking a strand of long, bleached hair behind her ear. “I told him I’d think about it.”
Evan used his free hand to lift her chin so that he could look hard at her expression, as if he could read her thoughts in her glittering eyes. “Do you want to marry Jason?”
“I’ve been alone a long time,” she had whispered. “Jason and Lucy love me and want me to be a part of their family.”
Lucy had been all in favor of Jason marrying Renae. There had been times when Evan had wondered even back then if Lucy had pushed the match even harder than Jason had. Though Jason had seemed oblivious, maybe Lucy had sensed Evan’s attraction to Renae. Maybe that was part of the reason Lucy had been so cool toward him before Jason’s death, and downright hostile afterward.
“That’s not what I asked you,” he had growled. He’d told himself he was asking for Jason’s sake, not his own. “Do you want to marry him?”
“I—” She had paused with a hard swallow before saying, “I think I do.”
Evan had felt his heart drop. His first reaction had been pain—his second, an illogical anger.
“Well, let me be the first to kiss the bride,” he’d said on a beer-fueled impulse. And he had pressed his lips to Renae’s, intending nothing more than a brief, forbidden, curiosity-satisfying kiss.
It had instantly flared into so much more.
“I’m sure Mrs. Sanchez is pleased that you guys want to memorialize her husband with this scholarship.”
Emma’s comment brought Evan abruptly back to the present. Realizing he had been staring at the noodles on his plate for several frozen moments, he stabbed his chopsticks into the pile, avoiding Emma’s entirely too-perceptive dark eyes. “Yes, she seems to be. Tate and I will tell her this evening that the three of you want to be involved with fundraising. I’m sure she’ll be touched.”
To his relief, Tate changed the subject then with a funny story about something little Daryn had done the night before. Though Evan participated in the conversation, he still found himself drifting back to that night so long ago, to a kiss that had flared into a hungry, passionate embrace that had almost burned out of control before Renae had broken it off with a shocked gasp.
Staring up at him with tear-filled eyes, she had asked in a choked voice, “What was that?”
“Something I’ve been wanting to do for weeks,” he had admitted grimly. “But if you’re going to marry Jason, it will never happen again.”
“He loves me,” she had whispered, wringing her hands and looking at Evan with raw vulnerability. “Can you give me any reason I shouldn’t marry him?”
Evan had felt the words trembling on his lips. But then he’d stared down at the crushed aluminum can in his hand and asked himself what in the hell he was doing. Jason was his friend. And Evan had plans that did not yet include marriage or children.
Renae was young, confused, maybe suffering cold feet at the thought of major commitment, but he knew she cared deeply for Jason. He would do nothing more to come between them.
“I’m sure you’ll both be very happy,” he had said as he’d turned to walk away without looking back. A month later, he’d been in boot camp, and Renae had been wearing a diamond on her left hand.
For a long time afterward, he had wondered what Renae would have said if he’d told her that Jason wasn’t the only one who loved her.
That was something he would never know, he reminded himself as he finished his lunch with his friends. Too much had happened since, too many reasons for him to keep his distance—not the least of which included her mother-in-law who blamed him still for Jason’s death.
Chapter Three
