It's Never too Late - By Tara Taylor Quinn Page 0,33
her good days. She just didn’t have the capacity to hold it long enough to get herself there and situated sometimes.
Thinking of the struggle Nonnie had just managing life’s most basic functions, Mark felt his frustration drain away. He waited to make sure that she made it back to her chair okay, and let himself out to run downtown for more motor oil.
CHAPTER TWELVE
“I SWEAR I’M NOT stalking you,” Mark said in lieu of a greeting as Addy stepped out the door Thursday afternoon.
Sitting on the low wall in front of her unit, she watched as he slid a plastic box under her car, used pliers to loosen something up and guided the center of the box to catch the flow of used and dirty oil.
“I know you’re not,” she said, enjoying the break from the personnel files she’d been perusing all afternoon. Pleasingly boring files belonging to well-qualified people.
“I want to warn you, she’s probably cooking up some plan to get you and me together.”
“As long as we know it’s not going to happen, there’s no harm in her meddling. We both understand and accept it for what it is.”
His grin warmed her more than the bright sun shining down on them. She should go in.
But she didn’t feel right leaving him all alone to tend to her vehicle.
“I hate to think what she says about me when I’m not around to defend myself,” Mark said, leaning back against his truck, which was parked in the driveway next to her car.
“I can tell you one thing she never mentions,” she said. “Your grandmother never mentions any of your friends.”
“She didn’t think they were good enough for me.”
“You don’t agree?”
“No. I grew up with them. Some of them are like family to me.”
“Any one more family than the others?”
She handed Mark the glass of tea from the tray she’d carried out and he sipped. “I was closer to some than others.”
“Did you have a woman you were closer to than others?”
It wasn’t her business. Absolutely not her business.
But if she knew, she could stop obsessing about it. Could stop wondering if there were late-night phone calls. If some afternoon she might come home to find a strange woman on their shared doorstep.
If she knew his heart was taken, she could stop imagining him naked.
He crossed his ankles, studied his flip-flops. “I did.”
“As in past tense?”
Squinting in the sunshine, he looked at her. “I asked her to marry me. She turned me down.”
Was the woman daft? “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. I’m not sure that I was ready to marry her. I just didn’t want to leave her high and dry.”
“Not much of a reason to marry.”
“I was deciding whether or not to come out here,” he said. “We’d been seeing each other a couple of years. I’d reached a turning point. I wanted her to know that I hadn’t just been using her until something better in life came along.”
“Like a scholarship offer.”
“Like anything.”
“Do you love her?”
“I care about her, yeah.”
She needed him to love the woman—so much that there’d be no chance for anything to develop between them.
So much that she could go to dinner with him as they’d planned and know that this was the only meal they’d ever share.
“Obviously you care or you wouldn’t have spent two years with her. But do you love her?”
She was watching him. Waiting for an answer to a question she had no right to ask.
“I don’t really have anything to compare it to,” he finally said. “But if I had to swear on the good book, I’d probably say no. I’m not pining away for her and it seems like I should be if I were in love with her. If there is such a thing.”
“You don’t believe in love?”
“Not in society’s prettied-up version of it. Television, romance novels, even the classics would have you believe that there’s some magical feeling that’s going to descend upon you and sweep you away to a place where the feeling will never fade and it will sustain you through all things and at all times.”
“Yeah.”
“It’s a fairy tale. And before you ask, I don’t believe Cinderella is a true story or that there’s a Santa Claus, either.”
“What do you believe in?”
“Loyalty. When you commit to someone, you follow through on that commitment.”
“Like you do with Nonnie.”
“Like my grandmother has always done for me.” His tone was sharper than usual.
Uncrossing his ankles, Mark straightened, handed her the glass of tea and buried his head beneath her hood.