Diane Chamberlain - Her Mother's Shadow

He’d practiced law for only a year before going the teaching route. The university had overlooked his lack of experience for his excellent command of his material, and he’d been grateful. He preferred teaching law to practicing it. He’d never liked twisting the truth to fit the needs of his clients, and sometimes that had been not only necessary but expected. He could never tell a lie without remembering his father’s advice. He’d been only eight or nine when he’d overheard his father tell an elderly aunt that she looked nice in a new outfit when in reality, she’d looked like a pruny old woman trying to appear far younger than her years. In private, he’d asked his father if he really believed the old woman looked nice. “Sometimes a lie can be a gift,” his father had said. They were the words Rick tried to follow in his life. He would lie only when it was a gift.

He waited two days before returning to the stained glass studio, and he was glad to find Lacey there alone. The older man with the ponytail had made him uncomfortable. He’d seemed entirely too interested in his conversation with Lacey.

She was standing on a stepladder, hanging a stained-glass panel in the window, when he walked in.

“Hi, Lacey,” he said.

She glanced down at him, and he was pleased to see her smile.

“Hi, Rick,” she said, slipping the wire attached to the panel over a hook above the window.

“Do you need some help there?”

“I do this all the time,” she said as she descended the ladder. Once on the floor, she started to fold the ladder, but he took it from her hands.

“I don’t mean to badger you,” he said, folding it for her. “But you’ve been on my mind. Every time I look through that kaleidoscope, I think about you and your red hair. I’d really like to buy you dinner. Any night. You can choose.”

She sighed with a smile, and he knew he was making it difficult for her to offer a graceful rejection.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “The truth is, I’m taking a break from dating these days.”

“Oh. Oh, I understand.” He had the feeling she was being honest, and that only increased his guilt. “I’ve done that a time or two myself. You’re getting over a bad relationship, I guess, huh?”

“Something like that.” She took the ladder from him and carried it over to the side of the studio, resting it against the wall.

“Well, how about if it’s not a date?” he asked. “We won’t dress up. I won’t even pick you up. We can meet someplace very public. And we won’t have any fun.”

That made her laugh. “All right,” she said, shaking her head. “You win.”

They made arrangements for the following night, and he left the studio far happier than when he’d arrived. In the parking lot, he got into his car and buckled his seat belt.

Yes , he thought as he turned the key in the ignition. I win.

FAYE COLLIER WALKED INTO THE HOSPITAL GYM and climbed onto her favorite elliptical trainer machine, the one positioned in the middle of the wall of windows, so she could have an uninterrupted view of the San Diego hills while she worked out. Judy and Leda, the two physical therapists in the chronic pain program and her workout buddies, took the elliptical trainers on either side of her. Faye wondered briefly how the three of them looked from the rear. She was Judy and Leda’s supervisor and had a master’s degree in nursing. She was blond, while they were both brunettes, yet she was twenty-five years older than either of them, and when it came to the backs of their thighs, she had no illusion that the physical therapists had her beat.

“What do you think of that new patient?” Judy pressed some buttons on the console and started moving her legs and arms in a long, smooth stride.

“The young guy with bone cancer?” Faye asked. “I think he needs—”

“Hi, Faye.” Jim Price was suddenly next to her, standing between her elliptical trainer and Leda’s. The sight of him put an instant smile on her face. She hoped she wasn’t blushing.

“Hi,” she said, slowing her pace on the machine. “I didn’t know you worked out during lunch.”

“I don’t,” he said. “But I just finished the paper you gave me to read and wanted to compliment you on it. Excellent.”

“I’m glad you liked it,” she said. She could feel perspiration, the result of the workout and a poorly timed hot flash, running down her throat and between her breasts. She wiped her forehead with the back of her hand.

“I made a few comments on it,” Jim said. “I’ll show you tonight, okay?”

She was blushing now. Judy and Leda had grown very quiet. They both slowed their machines to soften the noise from the flywheels, and she knew they were hanging on every word of her conversation with Jim. “That’ll be great,” she said. In the light from the window, his eyes were a delicate bronze color. She had not noticed that about him before.

Jim motioned for her to lean down so he could whisper in her ear. “You look terrific,” he said, his breath soft against her skin.

She straightened up again, smiling, and mouthed the word “thanks.”

He left her side, and Faye was grateful that Judy and Leda had the presence of mind not to say anything until he was well out of hearing distance.

“So,” Judy asked. “When’s your next date with him?”

“Tonight,” she said. Even though she had slowed her pace significantly, the monitor showed that her heart rate was the highest it had been since she’d climbed on the machine. She could not believe she was allowing a man to have that sort of effect on her.

“You are so lucky,” Leda said.

Faye knew that many of the women—and some of the men—working in the hospital had a thing for Jim Price. Even the young women wanted him. A widower for two years, Jim had left his surgery practice to take care of his wife during the last few months of her life, and nearly everyone found that sort of love and sacrifice laudable. He had money, looks that were rare for a man of fifty-five, and he was kind to patients and staff alike. Faye had known him for years, since he often referred patients to the pain program she had created, but he had not truly seemed to notice her until a few weeks ago, when her book on treating chronic pain was published. Someone must have told him that she had also lost a spouse, and his interest in her had been doubly piqued. In their first real conversation, they’d discovered another commonality: they had both grown up in North Carolina. That fact seemed to seal their fate as two people who should get to know one another better.

“Is it getting serious?” Leda asked.

“Define serious.”

“Have you slept with him?”

“Of course not. Not that it’s any of your business.”

“But this will be the third date, right?” Judy asked.

“Yes. So?”

Leda laughed. “So you’d better shave your legs.”

“Why?” She felt dense. Old and dense. She was also a little breathless and couldn’t help but notice that Leda and Judy seemed to be having no problem talking as they pedaled the machines.

“The third date is when you do it,” Leda said.

Faye laughed. “Who says?”

“That’s the rule these days, Faye.”

Faye pulled her water bottle from the holder near the machine’s console and took a drink. “Well, he probably doesn’t know the rules any better than I do,” she said. As their superior, she knew she was crossing a boundary by talking to Judy and Leda about her love life, but this was one area in which they were more knowledgeable than she was and she wanted their input. “We talked about that, actually,” she said. “About dating being new to each of us.” She hoped no one was filling Jim in on “the third-date rule.”