we come up with some sort of solution. We’d be happy to talk about what’s bothering you if you want to discuss it. If not, just tell us to butt out and we’ll change the subject.”
He had always found it easy to be with Nic. Comfortable. He liked the way she treated him. Like a regular guy. Not an eligible bachelor-doctor. Or worse—a tragically romantic figure. Women usually classified him as one or the other, sometimes an uncomfortable combination. Nic simply saw him as her neighbor and friend.
Maybe she would understand the dilemma that had been weighing on him for the past couple of weeks….
“What happened?” she asked encouragingly. “Is it one of your patients?”
“No, nothing like that. It’s—this is going to sound pretty silly,” he said with an irritated shake of his head.
“Try us.”
He looked into the two inquiring faces turned toward him and sighed.
“My high school class back in Alabama is having an informal fifteen-year reunion in a couple of weeks. They’re attending the homecoming football game, which is against a big rival, and then having several activities and a dance the next day, followed by a farewell breakfast on Sunday morning. I’m just dreading it, that’s all.”
Aislinn’s expression didn’t change in response to Joel’s revelation. Nic looked surprised, but he couldn’t blame her for that. He doubted that she had expected a mere high school reunion to be his dilemma. But then, she didn’t know the whole story.
“A fifteen-year reunion?” she repeated.
He nodded. “Our class secretary was Heidi Pearl. Heidi Rosenbaum now. If it were up to her, we’d get together every year. Thank goodness the class confines her to having reunions only once every five years.”
“Did you go to the last one?”
“Yeah.” He figured his tone gave her an indication of how awful that had been.
Nic shrugged. “Last I heard, there’s no law that says you have to attend high school reunions. I’m not sure I’ll go to my ten-year reunion next summer. I’ve got better things to do than to sit around with a bunch of people I barely know now, talking about embarrassing adolescent memories. Aislinn’s the only friend I held on to from high school, and she and I see each other often enough.”
“Yeah, but I’m kind of expected to go. I was the class president.”
“Of course you were,” Nic murmured.
He gave her a mild look, then added, “Besides, Heidi works for my dad. There aren’t any excuses that would hold up to her daily inquisitions.”
“She sounds kind of scary.”
“Trust me. She’s terrifying.”
Nic chuckled, then shook her head. “Still. You should just tell them you aren’t interested this time.”
“I wish I could.”
“Why can’t you?”
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“Try me,” she said again.
“I think she will understand,” Aislinn said, making him wonder if she had somehow already guessed his quandary. Good intuition, he reminded himself. Nothing more.
The funny thing was, he thought maybe Nic would understand. One of the few women in the small-town Arkansas police department where she worked, she was well accustomed to trying to meet everyone else’s expectations.
“Judging from past experience,” he said, trying to choose his words carefully, “if I go, I’ll be greeted with cloying sympathy and treated like some kind of tragic hero. If I don’t go, everyone will be even more convinced that I’m an emotional basket case.”
“You? A basket case?” Nic’s eyes were wide with surprise beneath her fringe of blond-streaked bangs. “You’re, like, the sanest, most normal guy I know.”
“Yes, well, I wasn’t in such good shape the last time my class got together, five years ago. My wife, Heather, had died only a few months earlier, and I—Well, I guess I wasn’t ready for a reunion of all my old high school friends.”
“Heather was in your class?” Aislinn asked, her slightly husky voice warm with compassion.
He nodded. “We were typical high school sweethearts. We went to the prom together, were voted ‘cutest couple,’ that sort of thing. We attended different universities, but we stayed together despite the odds against long-distance relationships. Then I went to medical school and she to graduate school—again, different schools, different states. We got engaged during Christmas break of our third years but waited until we felt financially ready before we got married.”
He took a sip of his soda before adding tonelessly, “Six months later, she was killed in a car accident. Broadsided by a semi with bad brakes.”
Chapter Two
Nic had known, of course, that Joel was a young widower. He had mentioned once that his wife died in a car accident, but she hadn’t asked for any details, nor had he volunteered any.
He hadn’t been in any relationships during the months she had known him, and she had wondered if he was still grieving for the wife he’d lost. Now that she knew how long Joel and Heather had been together, she understood exactly how hard that loss must have been for him.
“I’m sorry,” she said, not knowing what else to say.
It seemed to be enough. He nodded. “Anyway, I made the mistake of attending the reunion before I’d completely worked through my grieving, and it was a…rough experience. Too many painful reminders, too much emotion and sympathy from my classmates. I was a mess by the time it was over and I didn’t do a very good job of hiding it.”
“That’s understandable,” she assured him. “It would have been a difficult ordeal for anyone.”
He searched her face as if trying to tell whether she really did understand. Apparently satisfied with whatever he saw there, he nodded again. “The thing is, that was five years ago. I’ve come a long way since then. I’ve made peace with my past. I’ve made a good life for myself here and I consider myself a generally happy guy.”
“That’s the impression I’ve always had of you.” Actually, she considered him the most laid-back and easygoing man she knew. She’d often envied him his ability to take things in stride, handling the pressures of his job with apparent ease.
“It’s not an act,” he assured her. “That’s really the way I feel, for the most part.”
“That’s good then, right? So your old friends should be pleased to see you doing so well.”
Joel squirmed a little in his chair. “I’m just not so sure they’ll see it that way. I’m afraid they’ll still view me as the man I was rather than the one I’ve become.”
“A legitimate concern,” Aislinn agreed.
