not keepers?”
Ricky scowled at the analysis of his love life. He had a hunch it was more accurate than he wanted to believe. “We’ve got more houses to check out,” he said, stalking away without answering Tom’s question. His friend’s hoot of knowing laughter followed him.
What if he did protect himself from winding up married by dating women he would never, ever spend the rest of his life with? What was wrong with that? It wasn’t as if he led any of them on. As Tom said, Ricky rarely went out with the same woman more than once or twice, and he always put his cards on the table, explaining that in his line of work he was on the go way too much to get seriously involved.
Maybe it was a pattern he’d developed to avoid commitment, but so what? It was his life. He liked living alone. He liked not being accountable to anyone. After spending his first eighteen years accountable to an overly protective mother, an iron-willed father and four sisters who thought his love life was their concern, he liked having his freedom. His nieces and nephews satisfied his desire for kids, at least for the moment. He got to play doting uncle, soccer coach and pal without any of the responsibility that went with being a dad.
There wasn’t a woman on earth who could make him want to change the life he had.
Satisfied that Tom was totally and absolutely wrong, he dismissed his taunt about Allie Matthews. He’d probably never even see her again, never make good on that promise to take her dancing. She wouldn’t even expect him to.
He was still telling himself that the next day, but he couldn’t seem to shake the image of Allie’s cerulean gaze as it had clung to his. If what he’d seen in her eyes had been expectations, he might have run the other way, but that hadn’t been it. There had been gratitude, but underlying that there had been a vague hint of loneliness.
He tried to imagine being rescued from the debris of his home, having only an elderly neighbor for support, rather than the huge, extended family he had. He couldn’t. He knew without a doubt that his hospital room would be crowded with people who cared whether he lived or died, people who would help him to rebuild his home and his life. Who would be there for Allie?
He spent an hour telling himself that surely a woman described as an angel would have dozens of friends who would be there for her, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that Allie might not.
“Damn,” he muttered, slamming his coffee cup into the sink and grabbing his car keys.
On the drive he told himself that if he got to the hospital and found that Allie had all the support she needed, he would just turn right around and leave. That would be that. End of story. End of being haunted by those big blue eyes.
Unfortunately, something in his gut told him he was about to go down for the count.
Chapter Three
Allie hated the hospital. The antiseptic smell alone was enough to carry her straight back to another time and place when her life had been forever changed. This time she was an adult and her injuries weren’t either life-threatening or permanent, but the doctors still had no intention of releasing her until she could tell them she had both a place to go and someone to care for her.
Unfortunately, there was no one. She knew only a few of her neighbors, and their lives and homes were in as much a shambles as her own. Her parents had offered to fly down immediately and stay with her, but the expense of paying for hotel accommodations for all three of them struck Allie as foolish. In addition she knew that they would hover just as they had years ago. She didn’t need that. She needed to get back into a familiar routine as soon as she was physically able to. She had promised to let them know if she couldn’t come up with another solution. There had to be one. It just hadn’t occurred to her yet.
“What about that lovely young woman at the clinic?” Jane asked helpfully. She had been to visit the night before and was here again, taking a bus from her sister’s, where she had been staying since the storm.
“Gina has a brand-new baby and a two-bedroom apartment. I couldn’t possibly impose on her and her husband,” Allie said, though her boss had indeed come by and issued the invitation.
“I would insist that you come to Ruth’s with me, but she’s not in the best health herself and, to be perfectly honest, she’s a pain in the neck,” Jane said.
Allie bit back a laugh. Jane’s opinion of her sister was something she had heard with great regularity since she’d moved in next door to the elderly woman. They barely spoke, because Jane thought Ruth spent way too much time concentrating on her own problems and not nearly enough thinking of others.
“Old before her time,” Jane often declared. “She was a cranky old woman by the time she hit fifty. Dressed like one, too. I tried to talk her into a snazzy pair of red sneakers the other day. You would have thought I was trying to get her to wear a dress with a slit up to her you-know-what.”
Now she sighed. “The minute I get that insurance check, I’ll move to an apartment, so I won’t have to listen to her complaining all the livelong day.”
“She did open her home to you,” Allie reminded her. “She was right there as soon as she heard about what had happened.”
“Yes, she was,” Jane admitted. “Of course, she said it was her duty. She wouldn’t have come, I promise you, if she hadn’t worried what her pastor would think of her if she left her only sister on the street.”
Jane waved off the topic. “Enough of that. We need to decide what’s to be done about you. If I thought we could find an apartment in time, you could move in with me until you rebuild, but there’s no way I can get settled someplace that fast.”
“It’s very sweet of you to want to do that, but this isn’t your problem,” Allie told her. “I’ll figure something out.”
Jane looked as if she wanted to argue, but eventually she stood. “Okay, then,” she said with obvious reluctance, “but I’ll be back tomorrow. Same time. You have my sister’s phone number. If anything comes up and you need me, you call, you hear me? Any time, day or night.”
Her elderly neighbor bent down and brushed a kiss across Allie’s cheek. “I think of you as the granddaughter I never had, you know. I hope wherever we end up, we don’t lose touch.”
“Not a chance,” Allie promised, squeezing her hand.
She watched as Jane left, admiring her still-brisk step in her favorite pink shoes. She wore them today with an orange skirt and flowered shirt. A bright-orange baseball cap sat atop her white hair. It was an outfit that could stop traffic, which Jane counted on, since she hated wasting time on a corner waiting for a light to change. It was a habit that scared Allie to death.
All in all, her neighbor was a wonder, interested in everything and everyone. Allie saw her pause in the hallway and watched her face as she carried on an animated conversation with a nurse she’d befriended on her first visit. Jane had all of the doctors and nurses wrapped around her finger. Allie didn’t doubt that Jane was the reason they’d been taking such extraspecial care of her, bringing her treats from the cafeteria and lingering to chat to make up for the fact that she’d had so few visitors.
Once Jane was gone, Allie struggled to her feet, determined to take a walk around the room at least to begin to get her strength back. She closed the door on her way past so no one would witness her awkward, unsteady gait.
She
