“If anyone were listening to us, they’d assume you were talking to a child. Don’t you know once a person reaches adulthood, age becomes a relative thing? You’re feeling old inside because you’ve been nursing patients nonstop since college.”
This line of conversation was starting to make her uncomfortable.
“You didn’t even take time off from your work after you got married,” he persisted. “When your husband became ill, you nursed him with everything you had in you, then lost yourself in the care of other patients. It’s time for a change, Michelle.”
“You mean I should find another way to earn my living after you no longer require my services?” she teased to hide her increasing turmoil.
“I’m talking a complete break from any kind of work.” He sounded so serious, she was astounded.
“I’d go mad from boredom.”
“Good, if that’s what it would take to shake you out of your octogenarian mind set.”
She pressed on the accelerator. “Anything else you want to get off your chest before we reach the Coast Highway?”
“I’ve only scratched the surface, but the rest can keep for later. We’ve got weeks ahead of us.”
The reminder that they’d be alone together for the next month sent tremors through her body. Michelle couldn’t explain her own overpowering awareness of him unless it was the fact that he’d been in the background of her life since Graham had met Sherilyn.
Once he’d decided to marry her, he sold the family home he and Michelle had grown up in. Being a protective brother, he found another house with a separate apartment for Michelle so they could still remain close.
Having lost their parents in a tour bus crash while on vacation in Mexico, both of them had known the agony of loss and felt compassion for Zak whose early childhood had been traumatic for him, especially when he’d only had three years with his adoptive parents before they’d also been killed in a car accident.
Though Michelle had been a sophomore in high school at the time of Graham’s marriage, she’d found time to spend with Zak and be his friend. To Sherilyn and Graham’s delight, even when she’d started nursing school and had a day off, she’d drive him to the beach at Oceanside or Carlsbad where they’d surf.
He was a natural and picked it up in no time.
Sometimes she’d take other boys in the neighborhood his age with them, but he inevitably sought her company. It was no hardship. They got along as if they’d been friends in another life.
When she thought about it, they must have explored every beach city between Laguna and Del Mar. He’d always loved the ocean at Carlsbad the most.
It hadn’t surprised her to learn he’d decided to settle there upon his graduation from college. However it took Graham and Sherilyn some getting used to because they were crazy about him and would have preferred he live in the same city.
Sherilyn Sadler had been a first-grade teacher in Riverside when she’d married Graham Robbins. After her parents’ death, she’d sold their modest home and moved to an apartment with Zak who was six at the time. For the next three years she tried to be mother and father to her little brother.
The money didn’t last long and she finally got a teaching job. Then she happened to meet Graham Robbins at a party of a mutual friend. They fell deeply in love and married. With the loss of both sets of parents, the two of them determined to give Zak and Michelle the best home they could.
But it was another difficult transition period for Zak who’d lost his ability to trust.
All this came out when as a teenager, Zak confided his innermost thoughts to Michelle on their many outings.
He was bewildered by confused memories of being shifted to different foster parents, and couldn’t understand how his birthparents could have abandoned their own flesh and blood.
Neither could Michelle. All she could do was listen.
In the listening, a bond was formed.
It went deep.
Maybe deeper than she’d realized to have survived the last decade when she’d rarely seen him or talked to him. Zak had been busy establishing his career, and she’d immersed herself in nursing both before and after losing her pediatrician husband, Rob.
Whatever the explanation for the impact Zak had made on her yesterday morning, he was no longer that angry, hurt, yet remarkable teen trying to understand his life.
Over time, with the help of Sherilyn and Graham’s love, he’d managed to heal to a great degree and was already making an impressive mark in the world.
Zak would never know how much Michelle respected him. She knew several guys in their late twenties who’d never outgrown high school and still didn’t have a thought for the future.
Right now she’d give anything for Zak’s birthparents to see what kind of man he’d become in spite of his upbringing. But that kind of thinking didn’t get you anywhere.
As Rob had said many times, and he’d seen it all in his ten years of practice before he became ill, “Thank God for the resilience of a child’s spirit.”
Zak had been endowed with that resilience.
“We’re near the ocean now,” the subject of her thoughts broke the silence. He’d come awake from his catnap.
“The beach has always been my favorite place, too. If I lived here, I’d feel like I was on a permanent vacation. That balmy air. There’s nothing like it.”
She could taste it, smell it. The fog hadn’t burned off yet. Maybe it wouldn’t, but it didn’t matter.
Unbelievably, she hadn’t seen the Pacific in almost four years. Not since she and Rob, who had just begun to show signs of his illness, had come with the family for a barbecue Zak had arranged. He’d been renting an apartment then, building a business from scratch.
Her world had changed so drastically since that time…
“Tell me where to go.” She’d stopped at a light.
“Drive south for two blocks, then turn right and follow the road down to the end. You’ll see a private alley on the left. My garage is number 2.”
In a few minutes she’d found the alley in question. In reality it was a cul-de-sac.
Sherilyn had shown her photos of the condos Zak’s company had been hired to renovate several years ago before they were listed on the market. Twenty stacked beachfront apartments had been converted into ten privately owned luxury condos, finished in a white cubicle style reminiscent of the Mediterranean.
Zak’s earnings on the project served as a down payment on one of the two ground floor condos, making his dream of living on the ocean come true. Already she could tell the pictures hadn’t done justice to the reality.
She came to a stop in front of his garage.
“If you’ll reach behind me and open my suitcase, you’ll see the remote on top of my robe with my wallet,” Zak murmured.
Like a fool, instead of getting out and walking around to the back door, she undid her seatbelt and turned to feel for his case with her right hand. Not quite able to undo the lock, she stretched a little more and finally accomplished her objective.
Once her hand closed over the remote, she brought it forward. But in the process her body brushed against his shoulder. The contact sent liquid fire through every particle of her being.
In that instant their eyes met.
Between black lashes, his resembled hot green coals.
Without permission her heart began to hammer. Her palms started to ache.
Before