Tara Quinn - White Picket Fences

“Remind me why we care about the things we care about.”

“This sounds serious.”

“Have you ever regretted what you gave up to be who you are?” Randi asked before she realized how stupid the question sounded. Barbara was at the top of her career, making more money than Randi had seen in years. Kind of hard to regret.

“Yeah.”

Randi dropped the pencil, leaning back in her chair with one foot propped on the desk in front of her. “Yeah?”

“There are downsides to everything.”

Of course there were. For every mountain climbed, a valley lay on the other side. Randi knew that, counseled her young athletes with such truths at every banquet she attended, every speech she gave. Without the bad, how could one measure the good? With no losers, there could be no winners.

But…

“So what do you regret most?”

“Same thing you do, I imagine,” Barbara said, her no-nonsense voice tinged with the warmth she reserved only for those she considered real friends. “The circuit, the training, the life of a professional athlete, particularly a female professional athlete, exacts its price. You have to have complete focus, keep your mind and heart on one goal—to be the best. And suddenly you aren’t a kid anymore with your whole life stretching before you.”

Her fingers straightening the lace on her tennis shoe, Randi froze.

“You wake up one morning and find yourself all alone in a world of couples,” Barbara continued.

Or you lie awake one night, alone in a bed big enough for two, on a street lined with houses filled with families. In a town of moms and dads and people pulling together.

“And you discover,” Randi said slowly, “that not only are you alone, you don’t have the slightest idea how to change that.”

“Wonder why nobody told us when we were growing up that while we were building one kind of skill, we were missing out on another. All the emotional stuff—the dates, the fumbling first kisses, the hurt feelings. Those were experiences we needed and didn’t get.”

“They didn’t tell us any of that stuff because winning is everything,” Randi told her friend, the knowledge as natural to her as the air she breathed. Competition was a fact of life, and the point of competing was to win.

“We just didn’t know, until it was too late, that when we chose to win physically, we were losing something else just as vital,” Barbara murmured.

“But it’s not necessarily fatal,” Randi said now, barely hiding the question in her statement.

Barbara had managed, somehow, to win on all counts. She and Randi never spoke of the relationship Barbara had embarked on almost a year before. Randi had never even met the woman, but she knew the relationship was stronger than ever.

She’d seen the change in her friend. The easy light in her eyes, the peace that had replaced the nervous tension in Barbara’s every movement.

“It’s damn hard,” Barbara said slowly, “to coax out that emotionally retarded child inside of you. To risk feeling like a fool as you learn things about yourself, about life, that most people learn when they’re teenagers.”

Randi wasn’t sure she wanted to hear this. And yet, wasn’t it exactly why she’d called her friend? Because she knew Barbara had grown up the same way she had—with one hundred percent dedication to her goals.

And they were women in a man’s world, to boot. Fighting not only to develop their talents to almost impossible levels, they’d also had to compete with men—for sponsorships, for trainers, for facility time. Even for comps. All the factors essential to a young athlete’s success came so much more readily to men than to women.

She and Barbara and others like them had had to be strong on every front. Which left no room whatsoever for the softer things in life. Like giving one’s heart.

Yet Barbara had finally found a way. She’d come to terms with her sexuality. She’d risked everything for the chance to not be alone.

“And what if you’re more comfortable with the status quo?” Randi asked.

“Of course you’re more comfortable,” Barbara said. “Who wouldn’t be? It’s what you’re familiar with, what you know.”

“And you think that’s wrong?”

“Not necessarily. Not if comfortable is enough for you.”

“And if it isn’t?” Randi wasn’t sure one way or the other; she just wanted to be aware of all the possibilities.

“Then you have a long—uncomfortable—road ahead of you.”

THE FOLLOWING MONDAY, almost two weeks after her not-quite-successful date with Zack Foster, the Montford Pet Therapy Club held its first meeting. Several creative excuses for missing the get-together entertained Randi on and off throughout that day.

Maybe her Jeep was in the shop and if she didn’t pick it up by four o’clock, she couldn’t have it until the next day and then she’d have no way to get to work in the morning. Or to escape her home that evening in case of some dire emergency.

She worked on that one for quite a while, coming up with different angles, but eventually dismissed it. Her Jeep was brand-new, for one thing; she had no intention of depriving herself of its use, for another—even if that meant she had to see Zack Foster again.

She’d have claimed a sick dog or cat or fish she had to rush home to, except the reason that wouldn’t work was obvious. If she was going to make a fool of herself with an asinine excuse, it had to at least be one that would fly.

The sick-grandmother thing was overused. Emergency baby-sitting might be good if there weren’t about a thousand substitutes for her services in this town full of college students.

She had cramps.

That might be true, but absolutely none of Zack Foster’s business.

She was allergic to animals? But then why hadn’t she mentioned that from the outset? And wasn’t that something her brother would’ve known before assigning her this ridiculous advisorship to begin with?

Still trying to come up with something at the last second, Randi locked her office early and headed toward the room in the student center that was to be the location of the dreaded meeting.

Why in hell couldn’t there have been a tennis match that afternoon? Or a track meet? Or anything else that could even remotely pass as something that required her professional attention? Where were all the millions of things that took up every spare second of Randi’s time on any other day?

Ten students were waiting in the room when Randi arrived. Ten students oohing and ahhing and making friends with the two canines drooling on the gray-tiled floor. Ten students, two drooling canines—and Zack Foster.

He looked as good as Randi remembered. Damn him. And damn her for noticing that, instead of inventing a plausible excuse.

“You’re late,” the man said when he noticed her hovering at the back of the room.

Only ten minutes. That wasn’t bad.

“I know.”

His eyes locked on her briefly and he looked as though he had more to say.

Randi just stood there.

“Meet Sammie and Bear,” he finally said, indicating the furry masses holding court at his feet.

Glancing at them and then away, Randi turned to the students, instead.

“Okay, gang, let’s all have a seat and figure out who we’ve got and what we’re doing.”

One of the first things she’d learned in life was to pretend she was always in control—even when she’d never felt less in control. Especially then.

SHE HADN’T GOTTEN any worse-looking in the two weeks since he’d seen her, Zack thought as he leashed Sammie and Bear and stood waiting while Randi got the meeting under way. If anything, she looked even more desirable than he’d remembered. With her cropped blond hair, that narrow waist and those firm legs that went on forever outside those indecently tight shorts she’d worn two out of the three times he’d seen her—didn’t the university pay her enough to afford longer pants?—she’d cause any red-blooded guy to take a second look.