The Last Bridge Home. Linda Goodnight
Читать онлайн книгу.
face and hands. She had to know. Yes, she was nosy, but Zak was her best friend. He needed her.
And she’d go crazy if she didn’t know the truth.
Please let the conversation be a misunderstanding on my part. Zak could not be married.
“You look better.” Her mother stood in the laundry room, folding towels into a green plastic basket. The smell of lavender fabric softener, moist and hot from the dryer filled the narrow space.
“I’m going over to Zak’s. Don’t get too hot back here. I can fold these later.”
Mom, who worried less about her blood pressure than her daughter did, said, “I saw that woman leave. I wonder who she was. All those children.”
“You had three children.” Jilly snagged a clean washcloth.
“Mmm. Didn’t seem that many back then.” Mom kneed the drier shut with a metallic bang. “You don’t think she’s Zak’s girlfriend, do you?”
Jilly’s stomach lurched. She fisted the washcloth into a wad. “I wouldn’t know.”
“Did you watch that movie on cable last night? The one I told you about?”
“Yes, Mom.” She’d watched the DVD a long time ago. The movie, about a girl who was always a bridesmaid and never a bride, could have been the story of Jillian’s life. Except for the part about finding the guy of her dreams. Or rather him finding her. Jilly had found hers five years ago when Zak bought the house across the street. Beyond sharing pipe wrenches and hamburgers, he hadn’t bothered to notice.
“That could happen to you if you’d stop jumping every time he calls.” Mom handed her a stack of clean, fragrant towels. “Zak likes you. That woman is the first one I’ve ever seen over there other than his mother and you.”
“Mom, let it go.” Jilly hid her reddening face behind the stack of terry cloth. “Guys don’t find me attractive in that way. Zak likes me for a friend.”
“Maybe he’d like you for more if you played hard to get. Men are intrigued by a woman they can’t have.”
Jilly chanted her mantra, the one she’d used since she was sixteen. “When the time is right, the Lord will send someone.”
Someone who didn’t mind her freckles or red hair, someone who saw the real Jillian Fairmont. Not some jerk like Clay Trent who’d called her “Spotty” in front of the entire junior class. “Men don’t find me attractive.”
“You’re too hung up about your looks, Jillian. You’re a beautiful woman.”
Even though her mother repeated the words often, Jilly didn’t believe a word. Years of playground torment had told her the truth. Boys weren’t attracted to her. They wanted to be her friend, her pal, but not her date to the prom.
“Bye, Mom.”
“Take some of those muffins. The way to a man’s heart…”
Jilly made a rude noise but dumped the towels in the linen cabinet and grabbed the muffins as she threaded her way around a pair of squirmy dogs.
With Mugsy and Satchmo at heel, she jogged across the street, her mother’s words ringing in her head. She wanted to believe Zak found her attractive, but he’d never treated her as anything but a pal.
She hammered on his front door. “Hey, open up. I brought Mom’s muffins and two of your buddies.”
The dogs alone usually brought Zak roaring to the door to engage in a mock battle with the terriers.
“Come on in. I could use a friend.”
Uh-oh.
Jilly gave the door a push and stepped in. Sprawled on the couch, a dejected-looking Zak took a gut full of rat terrier as both dogs leaped aboard. He shoved them off. The dogs plopped on their bottoms, heads tipped to the side in a comical questioning expression. Clearly, their friend did not want to play, an unusual turn of events.
“You don’t look too happy.” Jilly shoved his sneakered feet aside and scootched in at the end of the couch. She set the muffins on a lamp table out of the dogs’ reach. “Who was that? What happened?”
Zak dropped his feet to the floor and sat up. “I need to talk to you about something. Promise you’ll hear me out before you tell me how stupid I am.”
She’d never seen him look this worried. The hope that she’d misunderstood dwindled away. “So, is it true? You’re married?”
Shoulders bumping hers, Zak swiveled his long, lanky body in her direction. Green eyes stood out against a summer tan, bewildered. “You heard what she said?”
“If you mean Crystal, yes, most of it. At least, I think I did.” Sickness rose in Jilly’s throat. She fought it down, although every hope she’d ever had, every dream that Zak would wake up and see her as a woman instead of a pal died a quiet death. “Why didn’t you tell me before? Why didn’t I know?”
“Because I didn’t know.” He rubbed the back of his neck, kneading tight muscles. She’d done that for him before, after a hard ball game when his muscles ached and his arm stiffened up.
Before she knew he had a wife.
“Please,” Jilly scoffed, even though nothing amused her. “Give me some credit here. She didn’t give you one of those drugs that make you forget, did she? You married her. A man doesn’t forget something that momentous.”
“I knew I had married her. I just didn’t know we are married.” He slammed his fist onto his thigh. “This can’t be happening.”
“You’re not making sense.”
“Tell me about it. Nothing makes sense right now except I have a problem I don’t know how to solve.” He gripped the neck of his T-shirt and pulled, exposing the tanned skin below his throat. Jilly wanted to make him feel better, but how did a woman comfort another woman’s husband?
Mugsy, the empathetic one, lifted both paws lightly to Zak’s knee and cocked his head. Zak absently rubbed the pointed ears. Satchmo, not to be left out, leaped easily into Jilly’s lap, dog tags jingling.
“From the top,” Jilly said. “Explain this before I call your mother and tell her you’re having a nervous breakdown.”
“Whatever you do, don’t call my parents.”
“They don’t know?” This was worse than she’d thought.
“Not everything. I was in college, away from home, on baseball scholarship. Crystal was one of those girls who hung around college guys even though she wasn’t in school. Kind of a groupie type. She’d come to the ball games and jump up and down, all excited. After a good game, she’d rush up, gushing about how I was sure to get a call from the scouts.”
“She stroked your ego.”
“I guess. What did I know? I was barely eighteen and green as a frog.” He made a huffing noise.
“So what happened?”
“You know that old song about the candle in the wind? That was Crystal, blowing through life at the mercy of anyone and everything. She had problems and I felt sorry for her.” He shrugged, chagrined. “She was cute, too. Put the two together and I didn’t stand a chance when she asked me to marry her for the sake of her baby.”
“Her baby?” Even though the hated red blush crept up her neck, Jilly had to know. “Or yours, too?”
Zak’s eyes darkened to the color of rich moss, eyes that usually made her heart flutter. She couldn’t let that happen anymore. Even though it did.
“You have to believe me, Jilly. Those kids aren’t mine. None of them. Crystal and I were married about fifteen minutes. Shoot, most of the time I was at ball practice. I barely saw her.”