Viewership was up. Date Two had lured in more viewers than even Conrad had hoped for so early on. He was practically frothing at the mouth waiting for what Date Three’s numbers would garner.
I, on the other hand, was dreading it. Partly because of the number of viewers. . . and partly because of Brooks. At the end of our second date, Brooks offered to drive me home, but I’d decided to take a taxi instead. I needed to keep my time with him as minimal as possible because, as hard as it was to admit this to myself, I felt something stirring inside. The same stirrings I’d felt that night we spent together. I was certain it was nothing more than a carnal craving, but any urge where Mr. Reality was concerned had to be concealed until it was extinguished.
“If we head back now, you’ll make it in time for rummy club,” I said as I maneuvered Mrs. Norton’s wheelchair on the path.
“Are you going to join us this time, honey?” Mrs. Norton tightened the knot on the scarf wound around her hair. The breeze had a bite to it today.
“I’m still recovering from my last loss playing with you card sharks, so probably not.”
“When you live at an old folks’ home and all you have is time on your hands, you become proficient at cards, puzzles, and gossip.” She smiled back at me. “Quite the glamorous life.”
“You staying warm enough?” I asked as a rush of wind cut across the park. She was bundled up in a big coat and a blanket cinched around her lap, but I remembered how my grandma could never seem to stay warm those last years of her life. I’d find her in a sweater and slippers on a July afternoon, nursing a cup of Earl Gray.
“The cold is worth the fresh air.” Mrs. Norton inhaled, taking in the sights. “You’re a darling for spending your Sundays with us, when there’s only about a million other things a person your age could and should be doing.”
I had to grit my jaw as we approached a hill. Even though it was slight and the path was paved, my endurance was on par with a couch potato’s. “There’s nowhere else I’d rather spend my Sundays than here.”
“Even with your grandma having passed?”
“Especially now.” We slowed to a snail’s pace as my heart hammered from the exertion. I hated this damn hill. “You all remind me of her. Part of her still feels alive here.”
“Your grandma would not shut up about you. She was so proud of you.” Mrs. Norton glanced back at me, concern exaggerating her wrinkles. She was probably worried I was about to pass out and send us both rolling down the hill. “But she had every right to be proud of you. You turned into one of those people who’re going to change the world, instead of the other type intent on destroying it.” One of her hands dropped to her wheelchair wheel, trying to give me a little help up the hill. “Like that insufferable Mr. Reality. What a heinous human being, and now with you being forced to date him . . .” Mrs. Norton pffted, shaking her head. “If he ever crosses my path, I’m going to give him a piece of my mind. The piece I’ve held back for ninety-five years.”
Pausing to catch my breath, I made sure to set the brakes on the wheelchair. Mrs. Norton hadn’t survived a great depression, one world war, and giving birth to six children to see her last moments on this earth bouncing backward down a nature trail.
“If your grandma were around to hear about all of this . . . she’d have something to say about it. Something that would burn a sailor’s ears.”
Blowing my hair out of my face, I shoved my sweater sleeves up past my elbows. “If Grandma were still around, she’d remind me not to let anyone or anything get in the way of what I want. And I want that job as the head of the Life and Style department. If dating a heinous human being is attached to that, I can manage.”
“Heinous human being, eh?” A new voice surprised me from behind. “I thought I detected my ears ringing a half mile back.”
I placed the voice an instant before my head whipped around. My eyes bulged when I saw who was standing beside me, wearing nothing but a pair of shorts and running shoes.
“What . . . ?” I started, sounding as confused as I felt. “What are you . . . ?” Words got stuck in my throat again.
“What am I doing here?” Brooks filled in, giving me a half smile when he caught me checking out his chest. “Stalking you. Obviously.”
My eyebrows pulled together. “Why—”
“Hannah, that was a joke.” He motioned at himself, yanking free the shirt dangling from his shorts to wipe his sweaty face. “I’m out for a run.” He noted my expression. “You know, a run. Physical exertion. Heartrate elevated. That kind of thing?”
Mrs. Norton’s head was whipping from him to me, almost gaping between us the way she did when one of her favorite soaps was on.
“I thought you found an apartment close to the office.”
“I did.” He shrugged as he moved on to wiping off his neck.
“That’s got to be at least ten miles from here,” I said.
Checking his watch, he tipped his hand. “More like eleven and a half. Sunday’s are my long run days.”
I must have been making a face, because it made him laugh. “A long run is a mile,” I said.
“A mile’s a warm-up.”
Then I remembered some of the dirt Quinn and I had dug up on him last weekend. “You’re one of those exercise fanatics, aren’t you?”
“I’m one of those fanatics who like to stay healthy.”
“You could run two miles and be healthy,” I said.
“I like a challenge.”
That was when Mrs. Norton reminded me of her presence with a clearing of her throat.
“Oh, sorry. Susan Norton, meet Brooks North.” I motioned between them, not missing the way Mrs. Norton was looking at Brooks like he was an ice cream cone melting under the summer sun. “Brooks, meet Mrs. Norton.”
“A pleasure.” Brooks slipped on that rogue-ish smile as he held out his hand.
“Indeed.” Mrs. Norton was blushing like a schoolgirl. Dear god, did this man’s effect on women have no bounds, age included? “Why didn’t you tell me your boyfriend was so easy on the eyes, Hannah?”
I shot her a look. Wasn’t she the woman who’d just been bad-mouthing the “heinous human” I was forced to endure?
“Yeah, why didn’t you tell her I was so good-looking?” Brooks crossed his arms, which made it all the more difficult to keep from staring at his chest.
“Because there’s little, if not nothing, to tell.” Undoing the wheelchair’s brakes, I braced myself before attempting to heave Mrs. Norton the rest of the way up the hill.
“I already told you I can tell when you’re lying.”
“No, you’ve deluded yourself into believing I’m lying whenever I say something that doesn’t correspond with your worldview that you are flawless.”
Brooks fell in beside me, looking like he was ready to jump in if I gave myself a heart attack. “I’ve got a flaw or two,” he said, pulling his shirt over his head. Mrs. Norton expressed what she thought about that in a long sigh. “But those have nothing to do with my looks. Or my forearms, isn’t that right?”
My face heated when I realized he’d heard my humiliating answer from the other night. “Your degree of arrogance is repugnant.”
“It’s not arrogance if it’s the truth, honey.” Mrs. Norton waved her finger at me, shooting another smile in Brooks’s direction.
Can you say traitor?
“Would you please let me help you?” Brooks actually butted in, grabbing one of the wheelchair handles I was holding. “It looks like that vein in your forehead’s about to burst.”
“If it bursts, it’s because you are annoying me with your presence, not because of the physical exertion.” I swatted his hand away and kept pushing at a tick above a snail’s pace.
“Why don’t you let him help? You sound like you’re going to have an asthma attack back there.” Mrs. Norton twisted around in her chair, her eyes filled with concern. “Tell me you have your inhaler.”
“Wait. You’ve got asthma?” Brooks paused before rushing back up beside me. “Then I’m not asking anymore. I’m telling.” His shoulder bumped into mine as he tried maneuvering me out of the way. “Step aside.”
The surge of anger I felt over being told what to do gave me a fresh burst of energy. “No. You don’t get to ‘tell’ me anything.” I pushed against him, my hold on the handles edging into death grip territory. “And I walk this hill all the time.”
“Pushing a wheelchair?”
“Yes,” I grunted as the top of the hill came into view.
“Last time she did it, she gave herself an attack,” Mrs. Norton added.
“It wasn’t an attack.” I fired another glare at Brooks when he looked like he was about to step in again. “It was an episode.”
“One that took you ten minutes of lying on the ground to get over.” Mrs. Norton waved at a patch of grass as if that was the very place I’d collapsed last month during my “episode.”
When we finally crested the top of the hill, I exhaled with relief, feeling as though I’d just won Olympic Gold.
“You don’t look so good.” Brooks studied me as I kept walking down the level pathway.
“Coming from you? I’ll take that as a compliment.” I kept my gaze forward and tried to ignore the way my limbs felt like putty and my chest was tightening in a familiar way.
“No, really. You’re white as a sheet.” When Brooks’s face lowered to mine, there was actual concern on his face. Not the manufactured kind.
“I’m fine.” I wheezed, eyeing the bench up ahead and wondering if I could make it.
“Of course you’re fine. If by that you mean you are not at all fine.” Brooks didn’t play around this time when he moved in behind Mrs. Norton’s wheelchair, wrangling me aside in one lithe movement. “Can you make it to that bench?”
“Of course I can,” I answered, though I wasn’t half as certain as I sounded.
“You have your inhaler, right?” Mrs. Norton eyed my purse slung across my body.
I nodded because I’d sound like a dying frog if I opened my mouth to answer.
“Hannah, for Christ’s sakes. I’m going to throw you over my shoulder and run to the first emergency room I can find if you don’t sit down and catch your breath.” Brooks stopped pushing Mrs. Norton, eyeing the patch of grass next to us.
“The camera isn’t rolling. You don’t have to pretend you care.” I managed to make it to the bench and pawed through my purse once I collapsed into it.
“I’m not pretending.” He fixed the brakes on the wheelchair and crouched beside me still struggling to unearth my inhaler. He stuck one hand in and pulled it right out. When I grabbed it from him and took my first puff, he let out a long exhale. “If you die, I get the job, and then I’ll always be known as the guy who got the job by default. When I get it, I want to be because I earned that title.”
As I leaned forward and continued to focus on my breathing, I bumped my knee against his. “If. Not when.”
“You poor thing.” Mrs. Norton rubbed my back. “Let’s get you inside once you feel ready to move.”
“I’m fine,” I said, shoving off the bench, embarrassed Brooks had witnessed what he had. I didn’t want him to know I possessed any sort of weakness.
“Give yourself a minute,” Brooks said, rising with me.
“I don’t need a minute. I’m fine.” No sooner had the words snapped out of my mouth than my legs crumbled beneath me.
Brooks’s arms flew around me before I made it far. “Why do you make it your mission to do the opposite of what I ask?” He adjusted his hold around me right before heaving me into his arms entirely.
I gasped with surprise. I wasn’t used to being thrown into a man’s arms against my will—especially a man moving with the kind of ease that suggested I was packed with feathers. “Put. Me. Down.”
Brooks ignored my death stare, glancing at Mrs. Norton. “Will you be okay here for a few minutes on your own while I take her inside?” He tipped his head at Glendale Assisted Living facility.
“No, she will not be okay. And neither will you if you don’t set me down before you finish taking that breath.” I wiggled against him, but all that did was cause his arms to tighten.
Mrs. Norton waved us off. “I’ll be just fine. I’d love a few more minutes of fresh air anyway. Take your time, handsome.” The way she winked at him made me wonder if there was some kind of hidden message behind it. “Just inside the doors, there’s a sitting area, or you’re welcome to my room if you’d like some privacy.”
“We don’t want privacy,” I said as Mrs. Norton dug around in her purse for her keys.
“I’ll be right back,” Brooks told her before turning up the walkway that led to Glendale’s entrance.
“Put me down,” I repeated, trying on my most no-nonsense look.
“No.”
My nostrils flared. “Please put me down.”
His pace picked up. “No.”
My hand whacked his chest. “You’re a cretin.”
“And you’re no princess either.”
An annoyed grumble spilled from me as we whooshed through the sliding glass doors. Under other circumstances, being carried by a strapping young man wouldn’t have been so infuriating. In fact, this was Ms. Romance gold if I could have traded out the man, but instead, I found myself mired in Ms. Romance sludge.
Thankfully, the sitting area was empty and, other than a few residents staggered around the hallway waiting for afternoon coffee service, no one was present to witness the spectacle.
“Would you put me down already?” My voice echoed in the empty room as I slugged him one more time in the chest.
“Fine,” he snapped, dropping me.
Onto the couch. Whether or not he knew it was there, I couldn’t say.
Not saying anything else, he marched out of the building, presumably to retrieve Mrs. Norton. That gave me a few minutes to collect myself and decide how I would greet him when he reappeared: with gratitude or contempt.
“Miss me?” His voice echoed through the room a few minutes later.
“Like a leech pried off of my ass,” I muttered.
“A blood-sucking hermaphrodite.” He rested one hand over his chest. “Again, one of the nicer things I’ve been called.”
“Where’s Mrs. Norton?” I asked, tucking my inhaler in my purse.
“Making her move on the single males club circled around the coffee station.” He hitched his thumb over his shoulder where the lobby was. “What are you doing hanging around with people four times your age anyways?”
The high from my attack was draining away, leaving me tired and woozy. “My grandma lived here for about five years before she died last year. I can’t seem to kick the habit of hanging around a happening place like this.”
Brooks slowed his pace as he approached me. “You two were close?”
“She raised me from the time I was eight, so yeah, we were close.” My throat moved as I wondered why I was telling him this.
Brooks settled onto the edge of the chair beside me. “You didn’t live with your parents?”
“I did.” My tongue worked into my cheek. “Until they passed.” When I chanced a look at Brooks, I found nothing distinguishable on his face. No pity. No judgment. Just . . . recognition. “After that, I moved in with Grandma until I left for college.”
Brooks was quiet for a moment, but it was a relief to have someone not feel the need to fill the silence when they found out about my parents.
“How did they die?” he asked.
“In an airplane crash,” I said, surprised he’d been so direct. People never asked me how they died; they found out through a friend. His honesty was as refreshing as it was unexpected. “Dad had his private pilot’s license, and one of their favorite things to do was spend an afternoon flying. They flew hundreds of times, without so much as an emergency landing, until that day . . .” Images of my parents flooded my mind. “They died doing what they loved, together.”
Brooks shifted, the scent of sweat and man hitting me. “That’s why you believe what you do, isn’t it? Because of them?”
“I suppose so.” I stared at my clasped hands. “Because they were a real life example. They proved that love and commitment and romance are real. I believe what I do—I write what I do—because of them.”
Had that inhaler come laced with truth serum or something? I didn’t usually open up like that, and certainly not to a brigand like Brooks.
“I believe what I do because of my parents as well. At least part of it.” The chair whined as he moved, his voice sounding a key deeper. “My parents married straight out of high school, and I came along a few years later. Dad was working construction while Mom stayed home, until he got the grand idea that he was going to go to college and make something of himself. Mom supported the idea . . . by working two jobs and still keeping up with the household chores while he ‘chased his dream.’” From the corner of my eyes, I could see him staring out the window, his expression vacant. “Once he graduated, Mom exchanged two jobs for three so he could start his own architectural company. It was years before he was able to turn a profit, and a few more before it was a considerable one. A few months after finally ‘arriving,’ he served her with divorce papers as a thank you for years of hard work and commitment.” Brooks cracked his neck, his posture stiff. “Even after the divorce, she never gave up hope that he’d come back to her. That they were ‘soul mates.’ She never stopped believing that, even when he married a woman half her age who looked like she’d been sprung from a life-size Barbie box.”
I found myself scooting down the couch toward him, unsure why. My body seemed to be making the decision for me.
“Mom was diagnosed with cancer a couple years after the divorce. She died still loving the man who likely hadn’t spared a single thought for her since walking out.” Brooks shook his head, still staring out the window. “That’s the tragedy. That’s why I refuse to lie to my readers about what is and isn’t real. A harsh truth is more merciful than a pretty lie.”
My teeth worked at my lip, not sure if I should say something or stay quiet. “You don’t believe your mom actually loved your dad?” I asked softly, scooting to the very end of the couch.
Brooks didn’t seem to notice I’d closed the gap between us. “Mom loved the idea of him. The version of him she’d built up in her head. She didn’t love the real him, because there was nothing there to love.”
When I found my hand moving toward his, I pulled it back. “Just because it didn’t work out for your parents doesn’t mean it isn’t real.”
“Real?” Brooks snorted. “Love is about as real as my stepmom’s lips.”
I covered my mouth to hide my smile. “I guess that’s what we’re going to prove, one way or another.”
“More than half of marriages that vow ‘til death do us part wind up in divorce. You’ve got your work cut out for you.”
“Yet when polled, three-quarters of the population believe in true love.” I shrugged. “You’re the one who’s got work to do.”