Changing Lanes (The Lone Stars Book 3) (4 page)

It had taken almost fourteen years for him to find her again, and he wasn’t about to screw it up.

His dad had screwed it up, and it had cost him six months that he could have spent with his mom. In light of the fact that his father had died when Devon was ten, he could have used that extra six months.

With his EJ—Laney, Devon didn’t want to waste a minute. He knotted his tie. He was ready for his future, and Laney hopefully would play a huge part in it.

More than anything, he wanted her to remember him. It had stung this afternoon when she’d looked at him with only polite curiosity. He’d thought of her everyday and today, she hadn’t known him.

She’d become a doctor. The only thing she hadn’t wanted to do with her life. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that. It’s not that he didn’t like her being a doctor, it’s more that he wanted to make sure that she’d been the one who picked it for herself. He could remember her overbearing father with great clarity. The man had grabbed Laney’s arm and practically thrown her in the car. That day, her frightened Caribbean blue eyes had burned themselves into his memory. He’d run after the sleek gray Jaguar as it bounced down the dirt road that lead out of the camp until it had pulled out onto the highway and the receding taillights had faded into the expansive sunset.

Tears had streamed down her cheeks as she’d turned around in the backseat and watched him run after her.

His stomach muscles clinched. That had been the single worst day of his life. Over the years, he’d run through that day a thousand times in his mind trying to find a way that he could have changed things. But he’d been young and powerless and afraid he’d make things worse for her.

He shook his head. The past didn’t matter; the future was where he should be looking.

Tonight he was taking her to an interpretative dance dinner theater thing that Seth Charming had arranged for him. Since Seth was the only person he knew from a rich, snooty family, he was the one to ask about cultural events. The rookie had hooked him up with some front row tickets, and Devon had agreed not to embarrass him for an entire week. It was going to be tough, but Laney was more than worth it.

“Do I get to meet her?” His mother walked into the master bedroom.

“Who?” He hadn’t told her about Laney. Once he did, she’d hound him relentlessly to meet her, and then she’d spend hours telling Laney how he’d pined over her for months after he’d gotten back from camp. Or worse, what if his mother hated Laney for hurting her son. It had happened before. Call him crazy, but right now, he wanted Laney to think only nice thoughts about him. His mother, Sweet Louise, was a wonderful person, but she tended to go overboard with whatever she did. Whether it was gardening or loving her son, she went to extremes. That was fine with him, but Laney would get caught in the crossfire. He loved his mother, but she liked to walk in, take charge, and mess things up.

“The girl you just emptied your entire closet on the floor for. I’ve never seen you this nervous over a date. She must be something special.” His mom picked up some trousers from the floor, walked to his closet, stopped, and turned around. “What am I doing? Your momma doesn’t work here, pick up after yourself.”

She dropped the trousers and walked to the door. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

She walked out into the hall.

Knowing his mother, there wasn’t anything she wouldn’t do.

Tonight was the first night of his life.

Three hours later, he wanted to cry. If he’d had less testosterone and no self–esteem, he might succumb to tears, but as he was a guy, that wasn’t going to happen. Hands down, this was the worst date of his life. Not only was the night a total disaster, but she still hadn’t recognized him.

“I’m pretty sure I got all of the Parmesan cheese out of your hair.” He fisted and unfisted his hands. Tomorrow, Seth was a dead man. He gave Devon the tickets to the worst interpretative dance show in the history of the world. Naked people dancing around and throwing food at the audience wasn’t art, it was weirdness.

Laney unlatched the gold clip holding her hair back and shook it out. It was graceful and sexy at the same time. He wanted to run his fingers through her hair, but instead stuffed his hands into his pockets. She was wearing a lacy blue clingy dress that showed off her toned body. And she’d done something to her eyes to make them appear larger and bluer. It had taken ten full minutes for words to come out of his mouth when he’d seen her walking toward him. And unfortunately, that had been the best part of the evening. It would be a miracle if she agreed to see him again after tonight.

He was trying so hard to impress her, but all he’d managed to do was coat her in parmesan cheese.

“It’s okay. I don’t think it would have been so bad if we weren’t sitting on the front row.” She opened her little gold purse–thing and tucked the clip inside.

“I can’t apologize enough for this evening. The show was billed as provocative interpretative dance dinner theater. I was sure they meant provocative as in thought provoking and not as in naked.” There was no way to salvage this evening. If only he could start again. He’d take her to the symphony or opera or to some foreign film festival where the subtitles had subtitles.

“And disturbing.” She pulled another sliver of Parmesan cheese out of her hair. “I don’t get why the guy rode a wheel of parmesan cheese out on stage, took off his clothes, danced with the cheese, and then shredded it all over the audience … and then there was the weird rant about the IRS.”

“Don’t forget the water balloons.” Devon had buttoned his jacket to hide the huge wet blotch left by the balloon that had tagged him on the upper thigh. It looked like he’d peed his pants. Again, he just wanted to hit rewind and redo this entire evening. He’d tripped over the best foot he’d tried to put forward.

“Speaking of that, are you okay? A direct hit to the scrotum can be painful, but I don’t think there was enough force behind it to cause any testicular damage.” She tucked her purse under her arm. “I don’t have my medical bag with me, but I can take a look if you’re in pain.”

If there was ever a time to die of embarrassment, this was it. He waited for a heart attack, or a lightning bolt, or for his head to explode, but nothing happened.

Laney didn’t sound the least bit embarrassed. Then again, she was a doctor. The human body was nothing more than a machine that needed fixing.

They walked to his car—tonight he’d brought the Cadillac Escalade because she was a classy lady and needed to ride in a classy car for their uber classy date.

He opened the door for her and fought the urge to apologize again for the evening; he’d already said all there was to say. He offered his hand to help her in and her purse fell, bounced off the running board, and landed upside down in a puddle of mud. Could the night get any worse?

He knelt down and picked it up. Mud oozed through his fingers and the latch popped open. Six foiled condom packets, two pens, a credit card, and twenty bucks fell out. Out of nowhere a huge gust of wind blew the condoms across the parking lot. He grabbed the twenty dollars and the credit card before they flew away.

Did he go after the condoms or pretend that he hadn’t seen them?

He glanced up at Laney whose cheeks were flushed as she watched them blow across the parking lot. One landed on the windshield of a gray Toyota Highlander and got stuck under the windshield wiper.

Given the last ten minutes, it was hard to pinpoint when the evening had actually hit rock bottom. Every situation had peaks and valley only this one had no peaks and a whole lot of flood–plain valley.

Devon closed her door and walked to the driver’s side. It was safer pretending that he hadn’t seen them. Six condoms. He smiled to himself. She had confidence in him that was for sure.

When he opened his door, he heard laughter. The sound soothed the part of his soul that was sure he’d never see her again. Laney was doubled over, tears running down her face, and laughing her ass off.

So the girl with the bizarre sense of humor was still in there. Good to know. Years ago, making her laugh had been his number one priority—the sound was still music to his ears.

He wanted to touch her… nothing too personal, but he needed a physical connection between them. Was running his fingers through her hair too much? He saw more cheese but picking it out reminded him of monkeys picking lice off of each other. What about stroking her back? He raised his hand, but couldn’t quite figure out where to start. He settled for lightly patting her on the upper back. She didn’t seem to mind. The lace of her blue dress—the same color as her eyes—was soft instead of itchy as he’d thought it would be. Finally, he settled a hand between her shoulder blades. His big hand covered a good portion of her back.

It took a five full minutes, but she finally sat up, wiped her eyes, and looked at him. Without a doubt, she was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen—the laughter shining in her eyes and the moonlight in her hair. His mind took a snapshot so that fifty years from now he would remember this moment in great detail.

“Hands down, this is the worst date I have ever been on.” Her smile made it funny instead of pathetic. “How about you?”

“This is definitely the worst date I’ve ever been on. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had some bad ones, but this is a new level.” His bad mood was lifting. Just being near her made him happy. Would it always be like this?

“How do you think we could make it worse?” She smiled broadly, and he noticed a slight overbite. He didn’t remember the overbite.

“You could turn out to be a vegetarian.” He offered. She hadn’t been all those years ago, but if she were now, it wouldn’t be a deal breaker. He would know by now, but since they hadn’t had dinner, he still didn’t know what she liked to eat.

“Sorry to disappoint. I like meat. Cows taste good.” She turned so that her back was against the door. “I could bring up how my biological clock is ticking and that I’m looking to get married soon and have lots of babies.”

Strangely, he was okay with that, but that wasn’t quite the response she was looking for.

“And I could bring up my liberal views on plural marriage. How would you like to get in on the ground floor by being wife number one?” He absolutely wanted only one wife, but she was right, it was fun talking about all the things he shouldn’t say on a date. Since trying to impress her was out the door, the least he could do was make her laugh. “Did I mention that my parents met at a family reunion and that my eighteen brothers and sisters all live with me?”

“I have thirty–two cats, and they all sleep with me.” She patted his arm. “In my free time, I knit their fur balls into scarfs for the homeless. According to the American College of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology, as many as one quarter of the population is allergic to cats, so at any given time twenty–five percent of the homeless in Austin are dodging a bullet every time their neck gets cold.”

“The makers of Benadryl must love you.” He said.

She had the most mischievous gleam in her eye that he almost forgot that he needed to keep her on the pedestal that he’d put her on. While the witty banter was fun, intelligent conversation was what she was used to. They should be discussing art or literature or global economics. He searched his brain, but he didn’t know anything about art or literature or global economics.

“Besides tonight, my worst date was in college. This guy took me to Arby’s and ordered for me. Don’t get me wrong, I’m okay with a man ordering for me, I’m just used to him asking me what I want first. It turned out that he had a coupon for a free Beef and Cheddar. I appreciate that he was thrifty, but I wasn’t in the mood for a beef and cheddar. He got so mad when I offered to pay. Then he took me to people watch at the mall. But the worst part was when he called me the next day to tell me that he’d had a dream that I was his soul mate and he asked me to marry him. Weird huh?”

Devon scratched the back of his neck and forced his facial muscles into a smile that matched hers. “Yes, pretty weird.”

He’d been reluctant to bring up camp in the hopes that she’d remember him. Clearly that plan wasn’t working.

“Until now, that was my gold standard for a bad date.” Her voice was light, carefree.

“So tell me about yourself.” The fact that he was hungry, she was covered in Parmesan cheese, and he didn’t have a clue what he should do next, didn’t stop him from diving right on in. “Did you go to any summer camps?”

He wasn’t above begging.

“Sure. I think everyone has been to summer camp at one time or another.” She sat back and thought about it. “I’ve been to water skiing camp, anatomy camp—not as fun as it sounds, drama camp when my mother was convinced I needed some culture, and robot camp where we actually didn’t get to build any robots.” She turned to him. “How about you?”

Drama camp rated above him?

“Just over–night camp.” That he’d been forced to attend by court order on account of some less than stellar behavior that he wasn’t about to bring up. It seemed that he was going to have to pry the info from her. “A place called Camp Huawni.”

“Oh my God.” She put her hand over her heart. “In Timpson, Texas? I went there. I met a boy there, DJ. He was so cute … taught me how to kiss … and a few other things.” She fanned herself. “He carved DJ+EJ=4EVER into a tree trunk in the woods. We had a torrid high school love affair.”