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“Did you see Zach outside?” Alexis queried, giving Delia’s shoulders another tight squeeze. “He’s hanging the Christmas lights for Jo.”
Her heart dropped into the pit of her stomach and thrashed around in burning waves.
“I…yes. I saw him,” she said, hoping that would be enough of an answer to stave off further inquiries.
She wasn’t surprised her friends were asking her about Zach. He’d been her boyfriend all through high school. They didn’t know the whole story, of course, because she hadn’t told them. Other than her parents, she hadn’t told anyone.
But she was going to have to tell them, and soon—keeping the most important part of her life a secret was wearing on her. And, at the moment, it was making her feel a little queasy.
“I’m dying of thirst,” she said in an effort to change the subject, and thinking maybe a little carbonation would settle her stomach. “Can we get a table and catch up on what’s been going on with you? Emailing was nice, but it’s so much better to be face-to-face, don’t you think?”
Her girlfriends might not have taken the hint, but Jo, who was still hovering nearby, certainly did. The older woman began unobtrusively herding the ladies toward a large table next to the far wall.
“Four sodas coming up,” Jo said without waiting for the women to order. “Three diets and one regular.”
Delia chuckled. It was exactly the same drink order the girls had made dozens of times in their youth. She was amazed that Jo remembered.
Samantha flashed a mock scowl. “Your figure is as nice as ever,” she groused. “I was always jealous that you got to eat and drink anything you wanted without putting on a pound, whereas I couldn’t—can’t—even look at a regular soda without gaining weight.”
“You look fine,” Delia countered as Jo returned to the table and passed the drinks around. “You all do.”
“So when is the clinic going to open?” Mary asked. “Old Doc Severns hasn’t been working for a month. If anyone sprains an ankle around here, they have to drive for an hour to get it looked at.”
Delia combed her fingers through the length of her hair, offhandedly massaging her scalp. The vision in her left eye was beginning to blur, a sure sign that she was feeling the start of one of her knock-down, drag-out migraines. She couldn’t imagine why one would hit her now. She was so happy to be with her old friends. It would be a shame if a headache ruined it for her.
Please, God, not today, she thought, trying to breathe deeply.
Not that she was actually praying to God. She’d left her faith when she’d left her youth. It was just a way of thinking and nothing more. It wasn’t as if God, if He was there, had time for her headaches. She’d rather rely on science.
She rummaged around in her purse for her migraine medication and popped a pill in her mouth, following it with a long pull on her soda. The medicine wouldn’t stave off the headache completely, but at least it might whittle her migraine down to only one night of suffering. Otherwise she’d be in bed for a week.
“Still having your headaches, huh?” Samantha asked.
“Sometimes,” Delia confirmed with a groan. “Unfortunately.”
“Stress?” Mary guessed. “I remember the day of senior finals. You looked like you were going to outright faint most of the day.”
“I felt like I was going to collapse,” she assured them. “I can’t even believe I passed any of those exams.”
“And yet you made it through med school,” Alexis commented, tilting her head so that her long blond hair brushed over her shoulder. “How is that?”
Delia sat speechless for a moment, stunned by the revelation. Now that she thought about it, how was that, that she’d managed long, sleepless nights during her residency, not to mention her years as a single mom with no support?
Because, she realized, her migraines hadn’t been as bad in Maryland, stress or no stress. It was coming back to Serendipity that was the real strain on her nerves, and no wonder. Until all of her secrets were out in the open, she was carrying a tremendous burden inside her heart.
“That Zach,” Jo said as she swished forward and stopped at their table. “What a good, kind Christian man he’s turned out to be. I don’t know what I’d do without him, offering to put up the Christmas lights for me again this year—and then stopping ’round today to fix them up when the wind blew half of them off the eaves. Now that’s Christian charity for you. Otherwise Chance would have had to do it, and he’s already overworked just cooking for me.”
Theoretically, Jo was speaking to everyone at the table, but Delia was well aware that the woman’s comments were aimed directly at her.
Everyone looked toward her, yet no one spoke a word.
“That’s nice of him,” she stated, not knowing what else to say.
“It sure is,” Jo agreed with a chuckle. “It seems to me that man does more around the community and the church than anyone else in this town. No matter what or when the need arises, he’s always the first to volunteer.”
It hadn’t escaped Delia’s notice that it was the second time in as many minutes that Jo had mentioned Zach’s faith.
Bad boy Zach Bowden a man of God?
It was hard to fathom. How ironic would it be if Zach found his faith when Delia had lost hers?
Whether she liked it or not, Zach was going to be a big part of her life. She couldn’t ignore that fact forever. And she had visited Cup o’ Jo to find out more about him.
She supposed it was simply that she was feeling a little overwhelmed. She’d learned far more about Zach in this short time than she’d anticipated.
“All right, all right, enough about Zach already. Gone. Poof. Zip it. No more Zach. I don’t want to see him, talk to him or think about him.” She chuckled, but it sounded fake even to her own ears.
Suddenly, a chill ran up her spine.
No—that wasn’t quite accurate. It wasn’t a chill, exactly—more of a burning premonition.
She groaned and pressed her forehead with the palms of her hands.
“He’s standing right behind me, isn’t he?”
If she hadn’t already known it instinctively, she would have been warned by the way her friends’ eyes suddenly widened and the way the chatter around the table instantly ceased. Even Jo was quiet.
There was nothing to do but to face him. Her stomach roiled as she turned in her chair and glanced his direction. As she suspected, Zach was standing directly behind her and was staring right at her.
And they had an audience. Nearly everyone in the café was watching them.
In Serendipity, they were as infamous a couple as Bonnie and Clyde. She wanted to roll her eyes. Hadn’t anything else scandalous happened in the ten years she’d been gone? It seemed to her that everyone’s memories were far too keen where she and Zach were concerned.
Thankfully, it wasn’t long before the hum of activity in the café resumed. Jo excused herself to go back to waiting tables, and Delia’s three girlfriends spoke in hushed tones to one another. Delia couldn’t hear what they were saying, but she could imagine.
If she could have, she would’ve ignored Zach’s presence, just as he had done to her when she’d first entered the café; but she found it difficult to break her gaze away from him. He was stunningly handsome in his trademark white shirt, black leather jacket and blue jeans. He held a black cowboy hat in one hand and was curling the rim with his