Girl Trouble

Her eyes widened and her cheeks flooded with color. Roughly Cade pushed her away, infuriated by his body’s betrayal, even more angry that she should be aware of it. He said harshly, “Lifting weights. What about you?”

“I—I have an aerobics class. But what are you doing in the city? I thought you were in Australia. Or Chile, or somewhere.”

“Australia was seven years ago, Chile eight” Realizing he was still clasping her by the shoulders, bare except for the straps of her top, he let his hands fall and bent to pick up the towel he’d dropped when she’d bumped into him. “I live here now,” he said.

“Live here? Since when?”

“A couple of months ago. You don’t look very pleased.”

That was putting it mildly. She looked appalled, distraught, even—his eyes narrowed—frightened. Now why should the reappearance of a man she’d spurned many years ago—had treated like dirt—make a woman as self-possessed as Lorraine Cartwright afraid?

She pushed a strand of hair back from her face; her fingers were trembling very slightly. Making an obvious effort to gather her wits, she said, “It’s nothing to me where you live, of course. It just startled me, that’s all, seeing you after all these years.”

“Ten,” Cade said. “Remember? The last time we talked was at the gas station in August.”

Two days after the beating. He watched her pale, then flush an unbecoming shade of red. “I suppose so. Look, I’ve got to—”

“So have you become a student in your old age, Lorraine?” he asked with an unpleasant smile.

Her chin tilted. “Lori,” she said. “I go by Lori now.”

It wasn’t the answer he’d expected. “Lori...why the change of name?”

Her chin went a little higher. “Why not?”

In other words, mind your own business, Cade MacInnis. Oddly, he thought the abbreviated name suited her. Lorraine went with the disdainful air of that much younger woman, the one with smooth hair and polished fingernails. The one way she hadn’t looked so far today was disdainful. “You didn’t answer my question,” he said.

He could see her searching her memory. “Oh...oh, no, I’m not a student.”

A blond guy over six feet tall and built like a football player punched her lightly on the arm with a familiarity that raised Cade’s hackles. “Hey, Lori—you ready to go?”

“I’ll be right there, Tory. Cade, I have to go, I’ve got a class. It’s been...nice to see you again.”

“Nice? Tell the truth, Lori, you’d rather I was in Patagonia. How’s Ray?”

She flashed him a look he could only describe as hunted, mumbled, “’Bye,” and, joined by a crowd of students, headed for the large room where aerobics classes were held.

Cade stayed where he was, his eyes glued to the blond ponytail of the woman he had once loved with all the desperation of youth, and then had hated equally fiercely and with youth’s complete lack of compromise. Nice to see you... Who are you kidding, Lorraine Cartwright? Patagonia’s too close for your liking. Central Antarctica would suit you better.

She was no more indifferent to him than he to her. That much he’d learned from a conversation as baffling as it had been brief. That, and the fact that for some reason his sudden appearance had frightened her.

He strolled over to the ceiling-high windows that bordered one side of the aerobics room. The music had already started, poundingly loud, with an accelerated rock beat that was one of the reasons he’d never ventured near an aerobics class. Then his fist tightened on his towel. Lori was perched on a raised dais at the front of the room, doing toe taps and arm raises as the beginning of a warm-up. She wasn’t a member of the class. She was teaching it.

Lorraine Cartwright teaching an aerobics class to a bunch of students? What the hell was going on? The Lorraine he knew might have been riding her thoroughbred horse, or shopping in Montreal, or going to plays and concerts in New York. But she wouldn’t have been teaching aerobics.

The class was mixed, male and female, with a preponderance of students in bright garb, but also with some older people in the back rows, even a gray head or two. The student called Tory was in the front row, enthusi-astically jabbing his fists over his head. Cade stepped closer, watching Lori as she started marching on the spot. Her breasts bounced as she moved. The smooth play of muscles in her arms and legs bewitched him. Oh great, he thought caustically. A cold shower, that’s what you need, and saw her glance in his direction. Her step faltered, losing the beat.

Too bad I’m not in Patagonia, isn’t it, Lori? Too bad I’m right here in Halifax. Because you and I have some unfinished business, and I’m going to make damn sure we deal with it.

Almost as if she could read his thoughts, she hurriedly looked away, picking up the rhythm again. Cade had had enough of watching her. He shouldered his towel and headed for the showers.

When he emerged, wearing jeans and a summer shirt, his hair in wet curls on his scalp, the class was still in progress. Everyone was jogging on the spot, doing arm raises at a fast clip; Lori looked as cool and energetic as she had twenty minutes ago. She did not look his way.

Cade strolled to the front desk and picked up an aerobics schedule. She was listed as L. Cartwright. She taught six 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 bet you can’t bench press 250 pounds, lady.

Pretty childish. About Liddy’s level. Even if it does make you feel better.

She was jogging now, jogging as lightly as if she had springs in her heels, carrying the class along on her own energy and cajoling them in a way they plainly loved. This was not the woman he remembered. She wouldn’t have lowered herself to such a mundane task, let alone enjoyed it.

Some of the stretches in the last ten minutes used muscles Cade hadn’t even known existed; by the time the class ended, his hair was clinging wetly to his scalp and he was in dire need of a shower.

As Lori ran to the back of the room to get her tapes, he walked over to her. There were patches of sweat on her green top both down her spine and under her breasts; he thought they were one of the most erotic things he’d ever seen. He said truthfully, “I sure know I’ve been exercising. You run a good class—thanks.”

“It’s my job,” she said dismissively.

“Got time for a coffee? Or a sandwich in the cafeteria?”

“No. Thanks.”

It was time to make his move, the one he’d rehearsed on the way over. “Lori,” Cade said, taking her by the elbow as she would have walked past him, “it must be as obvious to you as it is to me that you and I need to have a talk.”

Her lashes flickered. She said in a rush, “I have only one thing to say, Cade...although it is important. I’m truly sorry that all those years ago I was partially responsible for getting you fired. Truly sorry. Now let go of me, please.”

“Partially?” he flashed. “That’s not the way I see it.”

“Partially. That’s what I said.”

“Let’s not get hung up on semantics—you got me fired.”

“It was more complicated than that.”

“It was very simple. You told Daddy and Daddy fired me.”

“How very convenient for you that rich rhymes with bitch!” Refusing to drop her gaze, Lori yanked at her arm. “Let go! Because that’s it. There’s nothing else we could possibly need to discuss.”

He said in a level voice, “Why did you look so frightened the first time you saw me?”

“Cade,” Lori said, “the past is the past. Dead, gone and buried. I’ve never believed in reincarnation and I’m not going to start now. I don’t want you talking to me. I don’t want you talking to my children. Have you got that straight?”

“I probably shouldn’t have said anything to Rachel and Liddy...I apologize for that.”

“I don’t see how you knew who they were.”

“Come off it—they look enough like you to be clones. Plus I saw a photo of the three of you in the window of a studio downtown. The woman who owns it was in the class this morning.”

“You mean Sally put that photo on display? I’ll have her hide for that!”

Cade didn’t want to talk about Sally. “Just answer me one question. Why are you working at a low-paying job that must get monotonous as all get-out, as well as being hard on the body, when you’ve got a rich husband and a very rich father?”

With a touch of her old haughtiness she ignored his question. “Take a hint, will you?” she retorted. “I have nothing to say to you. Not one word. If you persist in harassing me like this, I’ll lay a complaint and have you barred from the class.”

“For all your faults, you were never a coward,” he drawled, and decided the time had come to fight dirty. “Do you remember the night you threw yourself at me, Lorraine? Or have you conveniently buried that memory along with another one—the way you spoke to me at the gas pumps in August? Remember? I had a black eye, three fractured ribs and two broken fingers.”

For a moment her teeth clamped themselves to her lower lip. Her infinitely kissable lip, thought Cade, and wondered if he’d thrown away any chance of her ever speaking to him again. He hadn’t liked her using the word harass. Hadn’t liked it one bit.

“There’s no point in this!” she cried “I hate rummaging through the past, hauling stuff up that’s better left buried. We went our separate ways all those years ago—and that’s the way it still is.”

Abruptly he dropped her elbow and held out his hands; he was never fully able to remove the traces of grease ingrained in the creases of his skin from his work at the garage, and his knuckles were marred by scars and scratches. “I’m still not good enough for you, am I?” he grated. “I’m just a mechanic. A grease monkey. So far below you that you won’t even have a coffee with me in the university cafeteria.”

“That’s not—” Her eyes widened and her fingers, light as falling leaves, rested on his wrist. “Cade, what happened there?”

A jagged white scar ran from the back of his left hand to the inside of his wrist. He stared down at her fingers, feeling their warmth burn his flesh, and said flatly, “Accident on an oil rig in the North Sea. A couple of years ago. What do you care, Lori?”

She dropped her hand to her side and took a deep breath. Then she said quietly, “We’ve both got scars, haven’t we? Some outside and some in. That’s what living does to you. Please listen to me-I don’t want to hurt you and I certainly don’t look down on you. But you and I have nothing more to say to each other. You must accept that and leave me alone.”

“And where are your scars?”

“Cade...please.”

He’d always loved the shade of her irises, a color that hovered somewhere between blue and green, reminding him of the shimmering reflections along a lakeshore on a summer’s day. Right now those irises were full of appeal. He said nastily, “Very touching. You’ve learned a trick or two since I last knew you.”

She whispered, “You hate me, don’t you?”

“Now you’re beginning to get it. Can you give me any reason why I shouldn’t?”

Her face hardened. “I can’t give you anything,” she said, each word as brittle as a shard of ice.

“Ray always struck me as the kind of guy who’d be insanely jealous. Is it him you’re afraid of? That somehow he’ll find out you and I have met up again?”

An indecipherable expression crossed her features. “I’m a married woman,” she said, “that’s one—”

“Why aren’t you wearing your rings?”

“Here?” she said ironically. “The famous Cartwright diamonds? I don’t think so.”

Any stray thoughts Cade might have entertained that perhaps she and Ray had divorced in the last ten years—didn’t one out of three marriages end in divorce? —were squashed. Not that it made much difference. The turmoil of emotion lodged somewhere between his stomach and his heart had very little to do with Ray and everything to do with Lori. What he wanted to do was take her in his arms and kiss her senseless. Ray or no Ray. Married or not. Which was scarcely the way to behave with a woman who’d just accused him, more or less accurately, of hating her.

Nor did he have the slightest idea what to say next. Because nothing had gone the way he’d rehearsed it.

She solved his dilemma for him. “I have to get home,” she said coldly. “Goodbye, Cade.”

His voice seemed to be trapped in his throat. He watched her leave, the graceful swing of her hips in her snug-fitting shorts, the proud carriage of her head. Not until the door swung shut behind her did Cade, finally, work out exactly what it was he was feeling. It wasn’t hatred. It wasn’t anger. Nothing so simple. It was pain. Outright, all-encompassing pain. Lori Cartwright wanted no more to do with him now than had Lorraine Campbell all those years ago.

Pain? Because a woman he despised was rejecting him? He was losing his mind.

More to the point, what was he going to do about it?

Cade was no nearer an answer to this question by the time he got back to the garage, had shrugged into his overalls and addressed himself to the intricate workings of a custom-built Mercedes. Sam had been checking the idling speed on a Volkswagen Passat that one of the apprentices was working on; he wandered over to Cade and said offhandedly, “Good lunch?”

Cade chose a different wrench and made an indeterminate sound that could have meant anything.

“What did you have?”

“What?”

“To eat,” Sam said patiently.

“Nothing. I forgot. To eat, I mean. I went to the gym.”

“You okay, boy?”

No, thought Cade. I’m not okay. I’ve got a lump in the pit of my stomach as big as the battery in this car and all I can think about is a woman with kingfisher-blue eyes and a body to die for. A body I lust after. Me, who’s managed to keep my sexuality very much under control for years. “I’m fine,” he said. “You want to go over those accounts after we close?”

“You don’t have to lie to me,” Sam said mildly. “Just tell me to butt out.”

Finally Cade looked up. “Sam, I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s woman troubles, okay?”

“Didn’t take you long...what is it, less than three months since you moved here? Not that I’m surprised. You always did attract the women.”

All except for one. “I don’t want to talk about it,” Cade said through gritted teeth.

“Nothing new about that—you never were much of a one for talk.” Sam grinned at him. “We’ll go for a bite to eat once we close and we’ll do the accounts after that. No point starving yourself for the sake of true love. The manual for the Mercedes is in the office if you need it.” Smiling benignly, Sam sauntered off.

True love. Huh, thought Cade. What he felt for Lori was nothing to do with love. Lust, definitely. Frustration beyond anything he’d ever experienced. A rage that frightened him with its force. But not love. No, sir.

Thoroughly exasperated with himself for parading his emotions so blatantly that Sam had picked up there was something wrong. Cade went to get the manual. He’d figured out one thing today. His neat little theory that once he’d seen Lorraine he’d be able to get on with his life had been shot down in flames at high noon. Instead of exorcising her—had he actually used that word to himself? How naive could you get?—he’d only gotten in deeper.

But he’d never in his life been involved with a married. woman and he wasn’t going to start now. Not that Lorraine wanted anything to do with him. So his high-minded principles weren’t worth a heck of a lot.

Some days. Cade decided morosely, scanning the crowded shelf of manuals, you just plain shouldn’t get out of bed.

CHAPTER THREE

THAT evening Cade phoned his mother. Nina MacInnis was a schoolteacher who’d managed for years to instill a love of learning into adolescents more interested in the opposite sex than in modern literature. Although her husband Dan, Cade’s father, had been an accomplished dancer and a man of great charm, he’d also been an alcoholic who several times a year would drink himself into insensibility. This Nina had suffered in silence, a silence that would ring with things unsaid and had made the young Cade long for shouting matches and thrown plates; they’d have been easier to deal with.

Two years ago she’d arranged for early retirement and had taken up with the school principal, a widower who never touched alcohol, who had an endearing sense of humor and who loved to travel. Cade, on his first visit a couple of months ago, had been delighted by the change in his mother and had liked the principal enormously. So the first thing he said when Nina picked up the phone was, “I thought you and Wilbur might have left for Outer Mongolia.”

“He’s in the living room watching the hockey game and having a cup of tea,” said Nina primly. “But we’re thinking of flying to Hawaii before Christmas.”