The Date Next Door

“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.

Nic shrugged. “So don’t go. Send your best wishes to all your old friends, tell them you’re doing great but you’re too busy with work to join them this time.”

“That would probably be best, of course…”

“But it isn’t what you want to do,” Aislinn translated from his expression. “Why not?”

Looking rather sheepish, he replied, “I think it’s a pride thing.”

If there was anything Nic could understand, it was a “pride thing.” She had been accused on plenty of occasions of having entirely too much pride for her own good.

Comprehension clicked in her brain. “You don’t want your old friends to think you can’t handle another reunion. You’re afraid if you don’t go, they’ll think it’s because you’re still too wounded and vulnerable. That’s what you meant by basket case.”

Wincing a little at her choice of adjectives, he nodded. “I guess that’s it. The only way to convince them that I’m really okay seems to be to show up and prove it. But…well, it still won’t be easy.”

Aislinn seemed to have a sudden brainstorm. “What you should do,” she said earnestly, “is take someone with you. You know, like a date or something. That way everyone can see that you’re okay, and the attention won’t all be focused on you.”

“Take someone with me?” The suggestion seemed to startle him. “I hadn’t even thought of that.”

“What better way to demonstrate that you’ve moved on?” Nic asked, seeing the logic of Aislinn’s idea. She hoped she wasn’t coming across as insensitive to Joel’s loss—but he was the one who had said he’d put the past behind him. And tact had never been her strong point, unfortunately.

Joel didn’t seem to take offense at her wording. Instead he appeared intrigued by her reasoning. “I wouldn’t want to make any pretense about a relationship that doesn’t exist. No fake romances or anything like that.”

Nic exchanged a wince with Aislinn before replying, “Oh, agreed. Ick. Just introduce your companion as a friend and leave it at that. The others can make what they want out of it.”

Still looking thoughtful, Joel toyed with a pizza crust on his plate. “It’s a good idea, but I wouldn’t know who to ask. Unless…is there any way I could talk you into going with me, Nic?”

Nic could almost feel her jaw drop. “You would want me to go with you?”

“Well, you would be the logical choice,” he replied. “We’re friends. We have a good time together. If I asked someone else, I’d have to get into sticky explanations, whereas you already know the whole story. I heard you tell Aislinn earlier that you could use a few days away from work. I know attending someone else’s reunion is hardly an ideal vacation, but I’d make sure you have a good time. And I’d owe you big-time.”

He had spoken so quickly that she’d had a hard time following him. But it all came down to the realization that he was asking her to accompany him to his high school reunion. The fact that she had concurred with Aislinn’s recommended plan didn’t make Joel’s invitation any less startling. “I, uh—”

Embarrassed now, he lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “Never mind. Bad idea. I can’t blame you for not wanting to have anything to do with this.”

“Well, it was our idea,” she conceded, motioning toward Aislinn, who was watching them in silence.

“Yeah, but you weren’t volunteering to be the attention deflector. I understand.”

“Isn’t there anyone else you can take?”

“Not really. Like I said, I don’t want to go through a bunch of explanations again, nor do I want to give anyone the wrong idea by asking her to my reunion. It wouldn’t be fair for me to risk using anyone just for the sake of my own pride.”

There was that word again. Pride. The one argument she understood best.

Maybe she couldn’t really understand Joel’s dilemma in its entirety, especially since she had never viewed him as a “tragic figure” herself, but she could understand his need to prove himself to other people. She’d been doing that herself for most of her life.

“Okay,” she blurted. “I’ll go.”

Aislinn murmured her approval of Nic’s impulsive acceptance.

Joel blinked. “Um—you’ll go?”

She nodded before she could talk herself out of the rash offer. Joel was a friend, she reminded herself, and she didn’t have many real friends. Friends came through for each other. “I’ll go if you really think it will help you out. But I warn you, I’m lousy at parties and social events. You might very well regret asking me when I embarrass you in front of all your old schoolmates.”

His smile made a funny little shiver run down her spine. “Not possible.”

It wasn’t the first time she had noticed how attractive he was. Not even the first time she’d found herself reacting rather dramatically to that attractiveness. Only natural, of course, with her being a normal single woman and Joel being so darned sexy. But she neither expected—or even wanted—anything to develop between them.

She liked having him as her friend. And from painful experience, she had learned that nothing ruined a great friendship faster than trying to turn it into more.

The mental warnings she had been trying to ignore since she’d accepted his offer began to clang more loudly, harder to discount now. As much as she disliked social events, as much as she dreaded attending a reunion of strangers who would be studying her with curiosity, she was beginning to worry that the greatest peril inherent in this scheme wasn’t making a fool of herself or embarrassing Joel.

It made an interesting—and frustrating—dilemma. By doing Joel a big favor in the name of friendship, was she taking the risk of damaging that relationship that had become so special to her during the past few months?

Declining the ice cream Nic offered for dessert, Joel left not long after the discussion about his reunion. Aislinn lingered to help Nic clean up the remains of their dinner.

“It was nice of you to agree to help him,” she said when she and Nic were alone.

Nic looked at her friend suspiciously. “Why do I get the feeling that you somehow manipulated me into agreeing?”

“I had nothing to do with it. He needed your help, and you came through—as you always do for people you care about.”

Nic closed the dishwasher door with a little slam. “Because I’m a sucker, right?”

“No. Because you have a good heart,” Aislinn said loyally. “And because there’s very little you wouldn’t do for your friends.”

“Yeah, well, I might have gone a little too far this time. I don’t suppose you knew what he was going to ask me to do?”

“No. I just had a feeling there was something you could do to ease his mind—and I knew you would do it.”

“But…a high school reunion, Aislinn. With a bunch of strangers even Joel doesn’t seem too enthusiastic about. Can you imagine how awful that’s going to be?”

“It would have been worse for him to go alone. We can both understand why he wouldn’t want to be treated as an object of pity. And you and Joel are such good friends that he knows you’ll probably have a good time despite the awkwardness of the situation.”

“I’m sure that’s why he thought I’d be the one to take with him. Because we get along well without having to worry about any complicated undercurrents between us,” Nic said lightly, wanting to make sure Aislinn wasn’t getting any wrong ideas. “And, of course, he’s hesitant to take another date because he doesn’t want to lead anyone on—apparently that’s a problem for a single doctor.”

“Especially one who looks like Joel,” Aislinn murmured.

A mental image of crowds of hopeful women chasing after Joel made Nic scowl. “I guess that’s why he was comfortable asking me. He can be confident that I see him as a pal, nothing more.”

“Hmm.”

Nic frowned more deeply. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It didn’t mean anything,” her friend replied innocently. “I was just responding to you.”

Though she was still suspicious of Aislinn’s tone—they had been friends for too long to deceive each other easily—Nic decided to just let it go for now. For some reason, she felt as though they were edging a little too close to potentially dangerous territory.

“Maybe you’ll have a good time,” Aislinn said after the silence had stretched a bit too long.

“And maybe I’ll win the lottery and become the country’s newest multimillionaire—which would be even more miraculous since this state doesn’t have a lottery,” Nic shot back. “But I’m going, okay? And Joel is so going to owe me after this. Big-time.”

“I’m sure he’ll be happy to pay up,” Aislinn said, now looking just a bit too bland.

Once again Nic decided to let the comment pass without response.

“You’re sure you don’t mind doing this?” On the Friday morning of Joel’s reunion, he stood with one hand on the open trunk of his car, studying Nic’s face. He had just placed her bag inside with his own, but he was giving her one last chance to change her mind about accompanying him to his hometown.

She settled the issue by reaching up to place her hand next to his, pushing down to close the trunk with a decisive snap. “It’s too late to change our plans now. I’ve already arranged to take off work today. I’m not expected back until Monday morning.”

“Still, you could do something with your time off that would be more fun than bailing me out of a jam.”

“Dude, we’ve had this conversation a dozen times in the past two weeks. Now get in the car before you talk me into changing my mind.”

Chuckling ruefully at her tone, Joel opened the passenger door for her, then walked around to slide behind the wheel. “I really do appreciate this, Nic.”

“Look,” she said, snapping her seat belt. “let’s just agree that you’ve already thanked me enough, okay? There’s no need to keep doing so all weekend.”

“Okay. But I am grateful,” he added in a mutter.

She sighed heavily, making him chuckle again.

They left his car in the parking deck at the Little Rock Regional Airport and went through the lengthy process of checking in and going through security. Joel had insisted on buying Nic’s ticket, though she had offered to pay her own way.

This trip was on him, he had informed her. It wasn’t as if it would have been her first choice of a long-weekend destination.

It wasn’t a long flight from Little Rock to Birmingham, Alabama, and the time passed quickly. Too quickly, as far as Nic was concerned. As determined as she was to do everything she could to help Joel out this weekend, she was in no real hurry to get started.

A man with clear hazel eyes exactly like Joel’s met them at the airport in Birmingham. As he and Joel greeted each other with warm smiles and hearty slaps on the shoulder, Nic studied Ethan Brannon curiously. Not so much the Matt Damon resemblance here, she decided. Ethan’s face was more sharply planed than Joel’s, a bit harder, even when he smiled.

He was smiling when he turned to her, taking the hand she offered when Joel introduced her casually as his friend and neighbor. But this smile was different from the one he’d shared with his younger brother, she saw immediately. This was the polite, rather cool smile he might offer a stranger he didn’t quite know whether to trust.

Still, his tone was friendly enough when he said, “Nicole, it’s a pleasure to meet you. Joel’s told me about you. You’re the police officer, aren’t you?”

“Yes, I am. And please call me Nic. Everyone does.”

He nodded and turned back to Joel. “Let’s get your bags.”

“We’ve got them.” Both Joel and Nic had packed light for the weekend, stuffing everything they needed into wheeled carry-on bags. Joel had teased her about bringing so much less than he’d expect from a woman, but she’d gotten the impression he wasn’t particularly surprised. “Let’s go.”

Nic sat in the backseat of Ethan’s SUV, giving the brothers a chance to catch up during the hour-long drive to their parents’ house in small-town Danston, Alabama. She watched the interaction between them during the trip, making several private observations.

Ethan was very much the older brother, she decided. A little bossy. A bit too concerned about Joel’s well-being, as if it were his responsibility to make sure younger brother was okay.

Nic knew that dynamic all too well, having an older brother of her own. Paul had displayed a tendency to go overboard with advice about her life, too, until she had rebelled at twenty and informed him in no uncertain terms that she didn’t need his guidance, even if it meant she had to make a few mistakes along the way.

She wondered if Joel had ever had that talk with Ethan. After all, Joel was thirty-three, long past the stage when Nic had asserted her independence.

Maybe the difference was that Ethan was a bit more subtle about it than Paul had been. He wasn’t openly snooping or issuing advice, just asking questions and wondering aloud why Joel had made certain decisions—such as moving to Arkansas when he could have had a thriving practice in Birmingham or Atlanta.

“If you’d wanted a small-town practice, you could have stayed in Danston,” he added, letting his voice rise just enough to turn the statement into an implied question.

“I needed to get away from Danston,” Joel replied with a shrug, and though his tone was unemotional, his simple words expressed a great deal.

Ethan must have picked up on that implied message. He let the subject drop. “So, Nic,” he said, “what bribe did my brother use to talk you into coming to his reunion with him?”

She laughed. “No bribe. Just lots of manipulation. And he does owe me a favor after this.”

“No kidding. I still live here in town and I don’t go to my reunions.”

“The difference is that no one expects you to,” Joel muttered.

“No. The difference is that I don’t particularly care what anyone else expects of me,” Ethan returned smoothly.

Joel let that pass.

“We’re almost to my parents’ house, Nic,” Ethan said, looking at her in the rearview mirror. “I’m sure you’ll be glad to stretch and freshen up.”

“I’ll be staying at a motel, won’t I?”

“Are you kidding? Mom’s got the guest room all ready for you. She’s been fussing over it for days.”

“Oh, I didn’t want her to go to that much trouble.” Nic frowned at the back of Joel’s head, knowing he had deliberately withheld that bit of information from her. “I told you I would be perfectly comfortable in a motel or at the resort where the rest of your out-of-town classmates are staying.”

“Stay by yourself at a motel? Mother would have a fit. She’s pretty old-fashioned that way. And we’ll be spending enough time at the resort as it is. You wouldn’t want to be stuck there with my old friends while I’m visiting with my family. This way we can leave together when things get boring—as I’m sure they will.”

Nic twined her fingers more tightly in her lap, regretting—not for the first time—that she had ever let herself get talked into coming along.

Chapter Three

Nic was not a particularly tall woman. Five feet six inches in her sensible work shoes, she was usually several inches shorter than the men she confronted daily on the job. She stayed slim and muscular through a combination of regular exercise and overactive metabolism. Yet still she felt as though she towered over Joel’s mother, Elaine Brannon.

Elaine reminded her vividly of the delicate porcelain figurines her grandmother had collected, and which Nic had been sternly forbidden to touch. Elaine might have stood five feet two on her tallest days and was hardly large enough to cast a shadow. Though neither of her sons topped six feet, she was dwarfed between them, her impeccably made-up face glowing with pride as she gazed up at them.

As Ethan’s had earlier, Elaine’s smile changed when she turned to greet Nic. If a smile could be gracious and suspicious at the same time, this one was.

Nic was almost amused. Apparently this family worried that Joel would be the target of unscrupulous gold diggers or doctor groupies, even though she knew he had told them that she and Joel were just friends. Even if they incorrectly suspected there was more to their relationship, did they honestly think she looked like either of those types? She wore just enough makeup to satisfy her mother. There was no expensive “product” in her casual, easy-to-maintain hairstyle. She couldn’t show cleavage if she tried, since she didn’t particularly have any.

Joel saw her as a pal, not a potential romantic partner—and that was exactly the way she wanted things to remain. Much less messy all around.

The woman’s tiny hand was icy-cold in Nic’s. “Welcome to our home, Nicole,” Elaine said with practiced Southern charm. “My husband hasn’t returned from work yet, but he’s looking forward to meeting you.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Brannon. It really wasn’t necessary for you to put me up, you know. I could have stayed in a motel.”

Elaine shook her ash-blond head. “What kind of hosts would we be if we sent you off to a motel? I’ve prepared the guest room for you and I hope you’ll be comfortable in it.”

“I’m sure I will be,” Nic lied politely, though the privacy of an anonymous motel room sounded very nice at the moment.

“Come on, Nic, I’ll show you to your room so you can freshen up,” Joel offered, motioning toward the stairway that curved upward behind them.

She followed him gratefully, aware that both his mother and brother were watching as she and Joel climbed the stairs.

The average-size four-bedroom house was fashioned in a vaguely Colonial style with gleaming wood floors, wainscoted walls and reproduction light fixtures. It was warm and welcoming, not too formal for Nic’s tastes and yet attractively decorated. Framed family photographs adorned almost every inch of the walls of the upstairs hallway.

She stopped at a large family portrait, recognizing a much younger Elaine immediately. Elaine had aged very well, looking barely different now. A man stood beside her, and it was obvious where Ethan and Joel had gotten their similar features. “Is this your father?”

“Yes. That’s Dad—Lou Brannon. He should be home soon. I think you’ll like him.”

“I’m sure I will.” But her attention had turned to the children in the photo.

Ethan and Joel were easy enough to spot; neither of them had changed significantly since toddlerhood, apparently. Yet it was the other child whose image held her riveted, another boy, this one little more than a baby, perhaps a couple of years younger than Joel. “This little boy…”

“My younger brother. Kyle.”

Sadness filled her as she realized the significance of his never mentioning Kyle to her before. Studying the happy, innocent face in the photo, she bit her lower lip.

“He died in a flash flood twenty-eight years ago. He was almost two.”

Though Joel had spoken without emotion, Nic knew him well enough to understand that his rather flat, even tone was an attempt to hide exactly how strongly he did feel about the loss of his younger brother. “I’m sorry.”

“I barely remember him,” Joel replied with a slight shrug. “I was just four myself. He was with his nanny when her car was swept into a flooded river. The car was eventually found, but neither the nanny’s nor my brother’s bodies were inside. They were never recovered.”

Nic thought of the woman she had met downstairs, and her gaze turned back to Elaine’s face in the portrait. She looked so young, so proud of her attractive family. Nic couldn’t imagine what she had gone through when she’d lost her youngest child.

“I’m very sorry,” she said again.

He nodded and motioned down the hallway. “The guest room is at the end of the hall—next door to the room where I’ll be sleeping.”

She couldn’t resist pausing to look at several more of the family photographs, amused by the images of Joel as a gap-toothed, towheaded little boy, self-conscious in front of the camera. Oddly enough, Ethan looked almost as somber and responsible as a child as he did now. Had he been born an old soul? The mental question made her smile, as it sounded more like something Aislinn would ponder than herself.

Her amusement faded when she studied the photographs of a more mature Joel. Eagle Scout, high school graduate, college graduate, medical school graduate—all of his accomplishments had been recorded and displayed in this family hall of fame. It was during high school that he began to be accompanied in many of the photos by a strikingly lovely redhead. Tall, curvy, intelligent-looking, the woman seemed to be as at home within those frames as Joel and his brother and parents.

“This is Heather,” she murmured.

“Yes.” He glanced at a wedding photo of himself and his late bride. “This was taken six months before she died.”

It was a good thing, Nic mused, that she didn’t have any romantic designs on Joel. It would be hard to compete with the memory of this supermodel-beautiful woman.

The Brannons had certainly known their share of tragedy, yet the general impression she received from this neatly crowded photo gallery was of a close, generally happy clan. Her own family had also suffered loss, she thought with a fleeting memory of her father’s last cancer-racked days. And they, too, had been able to put the pain behind them and move on with their lives, though of course it had been difficult for her mother.