“Hey, Darla.” After all this time, she still felt the burn of Nick’s gaze as it flicked quietly over her in assessment. And the rumbly cadence of his voice vibrating through her, reminding her of a casual, careless cowboy who’d just slugged a shot of tequila.
“What is it?” she asked. He was staring at her.
He pointed to her head, rotating his finger in a circle in the air. “Your hair. It’s…”
Her hand flew upward. “A mess. I took the red-eye, but we had a rain delay in Denver. Long night.”
He reached over like he was going to gently finger a curl. Then he seemed to realize that wasn’t appropriate and dropped his hand. “It’s…long.”
It had finally reached her shoulders, a real feat with curly hair that just kept…curling up. At last, it was the length it had been BC, Before Chemo. Before she’d found a little, seemingly insignificant lump in her neck that had changed her life forever.
On the outside, she now looked just as she had before all of that. But she doubted she’d ever feel like her old happy, carefree self again. The battle for her life had banished that woman forever. But she’d always attacked all her problems with a vengeance. She prided herself on that. To the world, Darla Manning appeared to have her shit together. She’d made certain.
She shrugged. “It’s been three years.” And if she made it through her upcoming barrage of blood and other screening tests without a sign of the cancer returning, the prize was relative relief from worry…until next year. The fear and overwhelming sense of dread that was now at its height would temporarily abate. She’d have a ticket to ride the bus of life through another year to continue her plans and dreams.
“Three years,” he mused. “It’s a milestone.”
“One I’d like to forget,” she quipped. Then immediately bit her lip. Nick tended to make things come out of her mouth—honest things—that she later regretted.
“No,” he said, his gaze bearing down on her with a solemn, intense expression. “It should be marked. Celebrated.”
She waved her hand in a dismissive gesture. “I’m not sentimental like you.”
“Yes, you are,” he said. “You just don’t show it.”
“You don’t get to analyze me anymore,” she said quietly.
“You’re right,” he said, his tone dry. “Because we don’t have a relationship, do we?”
“What does that mean?” She threw her hands up in the air. “Of course, we have a relationship. We’re exes.”
He gave a lazy shrug, but the intensity was back in his gaze. “We were best friends for years.”
She snorted. “A lot’s happened since then.”
“Just to clarify,” he said, “I’m not looking to be best friends. Just friends would be nice.”
She held up her hands in surrender. “I have nothing against being friends.” If only she could squish Nick Cammareri firmly in the friend box and shut the lid. Trouble was, he kept spilling out.
Oddly, he grinned. “Good.” He petted Boss, who was now sitting patiently at his feet. “So why did you come back a day early?”
Shouldn’t she be asking him why on earth he was here? While she tried to figure out a calmer way to ask that, she said, “I’m on a deadline, and I have a million things to do.” She thought about telling him that she was headed right back to the West Coast as soon as she could, but she didn’t quite know how to bring that up. Or, more truthfully, she was avoiding the subject.
She noted the subtle disapproving lift of his brow. “Writing and teaching. Still working yourself to the bone, I see.”
She waved her hand in a whatever gesture. “The price of success.” Add your marriage into that calculation too, a little voice inside of her whispered. That had been a victim of her success too.
“Yeah, well, as far as your health is concerned, maybe that’s too high.”
“My health was fine until I walked in and you made my blood pressure skyrocket,” she snapped.
“I’ve always been good at that,” he said with a pointed expression that told her he wasn’t talking about anger. Why did he look at her like that, with a gaze that reminded her of things he was capable of doing that she had no business remembering?
That caught her off guard and made her blush—again. Before she could think of a clever retort, he said, “All I’m saying is that your friends are worried about you, but they don’t want to say anything. Maybe I’m just concerned too.”
“Thanks for that. But I think we’d better just stick to the facts. Like, what are you doing here?” Darla switched to her no-nonsense voice. The one that made her twin five-year-old nieces stop fooling around and listen up immediately.
“Oh. That’s…a long story. Can I get you a drink?”
He was asking her if she wanted a drink? In her own home?
The familiar irritation welled up, fortunately tamping the sex appeal down. “No drink, Nick. Just answer the question.” Her house was just twenty years old, not one hundred–plus like nearly all the homes in their charming beach town. She’d caved and given him a key to redo her kitchen backsplash, at his insistence. And okay, he’d also offered to sand and refinish the wood flooring while she was away. But those projects had been done months ago.
Also, she knew him well enough to know that he was stalling.
He sighed heavily. “My roommate just found out he’s leaving for air force training on Monday. His fiancée had to switch her shifts at the hospital to get the weekend off and—”
Why did a thirty-seven-year-old man have a roommate? She bit back the question. Their old friends had all settled down with jobs, relationships, and houses. His lack of doing so was even more evidence of his continued lack of maturity. Too bad she still found herself trying to avoid looking into his soulful eyes that, come to think if it, sort of matched the dog’s.
As if Boss read her mind, he rolled over on his back and gave her that you-know-you-love-me-already look.
“And you came here?” She practiced calming breathing, like her therapist said.
The goal was to get him to leave, not engage him. Yet, after five minutes, here she was, irritated as all get-out.
He gave a lazy shrug. “Far be it from me to stand in the way of young love.”
She rolled her eyes.
“The truth is, they’re really noisy. The bed squeaks, the headboard knocks against the wall, and…”
She held up a hand. “Okay, spare me the details.” He was messing with her, being Nick. She could tell by the mischievous twinkle in his eyes as he embellished the facts. Or at least, she hoped he was embellishing. Unfortunately, her brain had taken that info and twisted it into things she didn’t want to recollect. She shook off the old memories, peeled his gray T-shirt off the back of her couch, and handed it to him, trying not to notice that it was soft and warm and smelled like his soap. The same familiar scent from so long ago, her nose remembered perfectly.
He didn’t take it.
Please take it, she wanted to say, and cover up those pecs already!
“Maybe you can go to your dad’s.” There. She had no problem being assertive with anyone else in her life.