Just One Night Together (Flatiron Five Fitness #3) - Deborah Cooke Page 0,84
brilliant smile. “Radio City Music Hall. I was a Rockette for one Christmas season and you’re right, I loved it.”
“Get out,” Kyle said.
“Wow,” Ty said. “Isn’t that hard work?”
“Toughest months of my life,” Cassie said, shaking her head in recollection. “I’ve never been so sore, before or after. I’d dropped out of college when I got the job, but I went crawling back in January.”
“With sore feet,” Theo said.
“With sore everything,” Cassie corrected. “Turned out I only missed one semester and I made it up. The second show of the day was always brutal, but we smiled right on through.” She sobered. “It taught me that I could do a lot more than I thought I could, if I didn’t give up.”
“I know that feeling,” Damon said, when once he would have kept quiet. “They call it boot camp.”
They laughed together.
“Tomorrow at two,” Theo said, cocking a finger at Damon.
“I really appreciate you all coming,” he said, his voice tight.
“Of course,” Ty said. “You’re part of the team.”
It was true, although Damon hadn’t believed it fully until now.
He had Haley to thank for this change in his life.
Brad’s wife Katie arrived after work and so did Haley’s mom. They all worked together in the kitchen to make dinner together. It was busy, noisy, and fun, and Haley found herself laughing at her brother’s lame jokes again.
Her sister Tiffany breezed in for dinner before her midnight shift to show off her engagement ring. Plans were already afoot for the spring wedding. Matt changed the time of his weekly call to their mom from Kabul so that he could talk to Haley, too.
She was exhausted, not just from the clamor of family but all the innuendo, when she retreated to Tiffany’s old room, which acted as guest room. It might be worth staying in New York, just to have some privacy or time to hear herself think.
The room was still full of Tiffany’s things, even though Haley’s sister had her own apartment. She made a little space on the end of the dresser for her toiletry bag. There were a couple of inches of space in the closet for her suit for the next day’s interview. There had to be six bridesmaid’s dresses jammed in there along with everything else, evidence of Tiffany’s army of friends and her bad luck with bridesmaid’s dresses. Haley couldn’t decide which one was more hideous.
The closet was full, the dresser was full, and the bookcase was jammed. Even Haley’s old yearbooks had been amalgamated into her sister’s collection, along with the Agatha Christie paperbacks that Haley thought had gone to a thrift store or church sale. There was hardly space to move around, but this room had to be the least of Brad’s worries.
On impulse, Haley took the yearbook from her sophomore year of high school from the shelf. She flicked through the pages to the one she wanted to see. It might as well have had the corner turned down, because she knew exactly where it was.
Garrett’s picture. He had the kind of classic good looks that aged well. She eyed his killer smile and her heart skipped.
Would she see him the next day? He had taken over his father’s practice in town, but he might be at the hospital if any of his patients were there.
She wasn’t sure she could bear to see him again.
Haley took a deep breath and ran a fingertip across his scrawled message.
Love you forever.
Well, maybe not quite.
Divorced.
Evidently he hadn’t loved his wife forever, either.
Haley shut the yearbook and put it back on the shelf. She was moving all the plush toys from the bed, marveling that she and Tiffany could actually be related, when someone knocked on the door. She peeked around the door to find Tiffany in the hall.
She waved, her diamond sparkling. “Got a minute? I want to ask you a favor before I head to work.”
“Does it involve a bridesmaid dress with shoes dyed to match?” Haley teased. The truth was that she’d wear anything for her sister, at least for a day, but the contents of the closet were sobering.
Tiffany laughed. “Probably not. Although, you know, a lot of them are still in that closet.”
“I saw. Why don’t you get rid of them?”
“Small town. The bride might see it at the thrift store and know from the size that it was mine, and that I hadn’t kept it for parties after all. I can do without that drama.”