days a week. He frowned at the neatly typed list, wondering why Lorraine, who had never lacked for anything in her life, was teaching six classes a week for, probably, not much more than minimum wage. Thoughtfully he folded the schedule and put it in his kit bag. Then he said to the young woman who was handing out towels, “I have a pass for the weight room. Next week could I try out a couple of aerobics classes to see if I’d like to add that to my membership?”
“No problem,” she said. “Just pick up a guest pass on your way in.”
Monday he’d take early lunch at the garage, come to Lori’s class and then corner her afterward. After all, the two of them had quite a bit to talk about. He wanted to confront her with her actions of ten years ago. He also wanted to know what was going on in her life right now. She owed him a few answers, did Lori Cartwright. And maybe when he’d gotten them, he’d get over this adolescent obsession with her.
He’d better. What other options did he have?
As Cade turned away, fumbling for his car keys in his pocket, he noticed for the first time the two little girls who were sitting in padded green chairs by the doorway to the gym. Both were blond, one with straight hair and one with curly. Lori’s daughters, he thought with a lurch of his gut. They were squabbling, the elder girl giving officious directions, the younger whining in a manner calculated to aggravate.
Cade took a deep breath and walked over to them. “Hello,” he said pleasantly. “My name’s Cade. Your mother and I were friends years ago, before she was married. What are your names?”
The younger one crowed, “We’re not supposed to talk to strangers. Come on, Rachel, give it to me.” She made a grab for her sister’s hand.
Rachel pulled back. “Stop it, Liddy, you’re being a brat and I’m going to tell Mum how bad you were.”
“I’ll tell her you wouldn’t give me my gum. ’Cause you’re so mean and horrible.” Liddy’s face crumpled with maximum histrionic effect. “I’m only little, you shouldn’t be so awful to me.”
With matching melodrama Rachel cast her eyes heav-enward—kingfisher-blue eyes, Cade noticed with a catch at his heart—and said, “You’re the one’s who’s horrible. Take your silly gum, see if I care.”
Liddy snatched at the package and jammed a huge wad of bright pink gum into her mouth. “I bet I can make a bigger bubble than you,” she announced triumphantly.
“Oh yeah?” said Rachel, and blew a marvelously stretched bubble that, miraculously, didn’t end up smeared all over her face.
Cade said, casually he hoped, “Is your dad coming to get you?”
The gum was forgotten. Rachel and Liddy both directed stares of uniform hostility at him and said nothing. Cade had never thought of himself as easily frightened, but there was something about their instant alliance and the cold blue of their gaze that disconcerted him. He said, determined not to be outstared, “I guess I shouldn’t have asked that, I’m sorry. I hope I’ll see you both again.” Then he pushed open the swing door and stepped outside into the sunshine.
They won that round, he thought ruefully. Hands down. And why should he be surprised that Lori’s daughters had strong personalities? Lori had never been what you’d call backward.
But Lori wasn’t going to win the next round. The one that was slated for Monday at noon.
At five to twelve on Monday, Cade wandered into the aerobics room at the gym. Two or three others were already there, chatting desultorily at the front of the room. Lori was kneeling in the back corner, putting her tapes into the machine. Soundlessly he walked up behind her. “Good morning,” he said. “Or is it good afternoon?”
Her whole body jerked, then went still. With a deliberation he had to admire, she finished adjusting the controls on the tape deck before she looked around. Her eyes skidded up his long, well-muscled legs, his shorts and loose singlet. Quickly she pushed herself to her feet “Good morning, Cade,” she said. “The weight room’s two doors down. Or had you forgotten?”
“Unfortunately, I forget very little.” He held out his guest pass. “Thought I’d try aerobics today. One should always be open to new experiences, don’t you agree?”
“You’re coming to my class?” she said tightly.
“That’s the plan.”
She looked as though any number of sizzling retorts were on the tip of her tongue. He watched her swallow them as four more people came through the door. “Fine,” she snapped. “Just don’t overdo it your first day, I’d hate to see you hurt yourself.”
“Come off it, Lori,” he said softly. “You’d like to see me carried out on a stretcher.”
“No, I wouldn’t, it would ruin my reputation as a teacher,” she said with a sweet and patently insincere smile. “Enjoy, as they say.”
He watched her walk away. Today her top was green, her shorts navy. Both were shiny and both clung to all the right places. She didn’t look like the mother of two children. Cade positioned himself in the back row and prepared to pay attention.
A considerable number of people had gathered in the room by now. At the last minute a middle-aged woman rushed in the door and headed for the back row. Inwardly Cade flinched; it was the woman from the studio, the one where he’d seen the photo of Lori and her two daughters. The woman caught sight of him, gave him a pungent glance liberally dosed with suspicion, and pointedly moved forward a row. This, at any other time, might have amused Cade.
The class began. Very soon Cade concluded that Lori was very good at her job, no matter what her reasons were for having it. She referred to people by name, she kept up a running stream of encouragement and banter, and she insisted on good technique. The sequence of moves was extremely vigorous, disabusing him of any notions that aerobics was for sissies. The others in the class were accustomed to these moves; Cade was not. More than once he found his arms and legs at odds not only with each other but also with the smoothly orchestrated steps everyone else was taking. Including the big blond student called Tory, stationed once more in the very front row. He, Cade, had been smart to stay in the back, he thought irritably.
He found himself sidestepping to the left and doing bicep curls while the rest were stepping to the right and had switched to a rapid overhead move Lori was calling the arrowhead. Wishing he had half his father’s coordination—for Dan MacInnis had been an inventive dancer—Cade struggled on. It wasn’t the moment for Lori to look down at him, give him another sweet smile and say in a carrying voice, “Get your legs doing the moves first. The arms can follow. And you can always march on the spot if this is too strenuous.”
If sweat hadn’t been dripping into his eyes—he hadn’t worn his sweatband figuring he wouldn’t need it for a mere aerobics class—and if he hadn’t been determined to accomplish what students who were roughly half his age were doing with ease, Cade might have thought of a witty retort.
Just as he was getting the hang of what she was up to, Lori switched to something called the grapevine. “Keep your hips angled forward, not sideways...like this,” she called out. Cade looked at her hips, at their supple movements and delectable roundness, and stumbled out of step again.
He thoroughly disliked feeling like an uncoordinated klutz, he who rather prided himself on his body’s fitness. He scowled at Lori as his arms alternated triceps and lateral raises, thinking meanly, I
