The woman who opened up was still in surgical scrubs, her dark hair loose on her shoulders, her eyes exhausted after what had undoubtedly been a very long day. As she shoved her bangs back, he caught a whiff of a chloroxylenol-based antimicrobial soap.

“Hi,” she said, stepping back. “You want to come in?”

He shrugged, but entered. The truth was, he didn’t want to be here at all.

“You eat tonight?” she asked.

Nope. “Yeah.”

“I was just sitting down to Lean Cuisine.”

As she headed through the sparse living room, he took the envelope he’d filled with five hundred dollars in cash out of his pocket. There was nowhere to put the damn thing—no table by the door, no side stand by the wilted leather couch, not even an ottoman to lay up aching feet on after a day running meds to ICU patients.

Damn it, he thought as he followed her to the linoleum-floored eating area, with its round table and four chairs.

From out of the galley kitchen, she emerged with a black plastic tray filled with something that was steaming, and a glass of pale white wine.

She sat down and arranged the stainless-steel fork and a paper towel to the left of her “plate.”

No eating, though. And she couldn’t look at him—which was nothing new.

“Here,” he said, bending forward and putting the money on the chipped tabletop.

As she stared at the envelope, she looked like she was going to cry. But that was also not a news flash—and another thing that was none of his business.

“I’m going to take off—”

“He’s getting into trouble,” she mumbled as she took her fork and stabbed at whatever creamed thing was fresh from the freezer and the microwave. “It’s bad.”

“At school?” Duke said remotely.

She nodded. “He was caught stealing a laptop from the computer lab.”

“Suspension?”

“Three days—and mandated counseling. He’s been at Mom’s until I can pick him up after work—I’m due over there right now.” She shook her head. “I don’t know how to talk to him. He doesn’t listen to me … it’s like he can’t even hear me.”

Duke put his hands in the pockets of his jeans and lounged against the wall. If she was waiting for him to tell her everything was going to be all right, she shouldn’t hold her breath. He wasn’t in that line of work.

She put the fork down. “Listen, I hate to ask you to do this…”

Duke closed his eyes and shook his head. “Then stop right there.”

“… but could you sit down with him? The older he gets … the harder this is becoming.”

“What makes you think he’ll give a shit about anything I say.”

As his old lover glanced up at him, her dark eyes were hollow as empty closets. “Because he’s afraid of you.”

“And you’re okay using scare tactics,” he muttered.

“I just don’t know what else to do.”

“I’ve got to go back to work.”

As he turned away, she said, “Duke. Please. Someone’s got to get through to him.”

Looking over his shoulder, he traced her hair, her face, the hunch of her shoulders as she sat over that cooling plastic dinner of hers.

In the silence, the years melted away, the recession making it feel like he was walking toward her, getting closer even though physically he didn’t move.

He saw Nicole in memories from so very long ago, sitting across a lecture hall at Union College. Biochem, with that professor who was bald but had had brows like salt-and-pepper tumbleweeds. Duke was in the back; she was down in front. A fire alarm went off and she twisted around like most of the other students, looking up to the rear exits as if she were planning her escape should it be the real thing instead of a drill or a malfunction.

Dark hair. Dark eyes. Small build but long legs shown off by shorts, because it was a warm one in the middle of September.

Instant attraction on his side, the kind of thing that had turned all the other women in that whole f**king school into cardboard cutouts. Later, he’d learned that she hadn’t even noticed him that day. But once she did?

Best three years of his life.

Followed by a nightmare he was still in.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” she said. Even though she knew.

He was staring at her because now she was over thirty and so was he, and they were as far away from that pair back on that fire alarm day as two strangers: She was a nurse instead of the ob-gyn she’d been planning on becoming. She was also middle-aged before her time, raising a kid on her own because the father was…

He couldn’t finish that sentence. Not even to himself. It cut too deep.

And on Duke’s side? He wasn’t a cardiac surgeon. Nope. Not even close—all he had left of the education he’d been so committed to was some useless vocabulary and a catalog of heart-related fun facts that meant he could occasionally get Jeopardy! answers right.

He was nothing but a bouncer and a road worker, his brain locked in neutral as his body took the pole position in his work.

The pair of them were proof positive that tragedy didn’t have to be traumatic in the car-accident sense. Sometimes, it was as no big deal/commonplace as a single night of unprotected sex.

As he remembered where they’d once been, the vault in his chest creaked open, and for once, it released a burp of emotion that was something other than anger or bitterness: Picturing those two eighteen-year-olds and their grand plans for life, he felt … sorry for them. So damned pathetic, all that yearning and optimism, that ignorant conception that you could go through a list of majors and classes and actually pick what the rest of your life was going to be.

Like destiny was an à la carte menu.

Assuming that youth was indeed wasted on the young—and shit, yeah, it was—aging was the payment for that period of blissful stupidity, and frankly, the exchange wasn’t worth it. Better to come out of the gate knowing that nothing was planable except death and taxes. No illusions meant you were never surprised when you got shanked.

Back in Biochem, if he’d had a more realistic vision of things … after she’d looked to the back exits, he’d have banged her for a week straight to get the burn out of his gut and then he’d have walked away free and clear. He wouldn’t have wasted all that time with her—and certainly wouldn’t have been sidetracked so badly when the wheels had come off.

Instead? No M.D. after his name, and there was never going to be. And she was one of those single, harried moms who’d last had a date back before she’d been pregnant.

“Please,” Nicole said. “I know it’s not something you want to do, but—”

“I’ll see you next month,” he said, walking away from her and the kid he “took care of.”

As he left his old apartment, he closed the door firmly.

The financial contribution he made was all he was willing to give to her—and he hand-delivered it every thirty days because he liked to make her suffer: He enjoyed standing in front of her and putting those envelopes down, and seeing the exhaustion and defeat in her once-pretty face.

It was like bloodletting, he supposed, a painful cutting that offered a release. He always hated coming, but leaving made him feel … powerful, cleansed.

And yeah, that wasn’t fair.

But neither was life.

Chapter Six

Sitting in her hard little seat at the café, Cait started clapping, and it was a case of join the crowd. Everyone in the whole place was applauding the singer up on the stage, and he was so gracious about it, nothing arrogant in his bowing. If anything, he seemed sheepish.

“What’d I say,” Teresa spoke up over the din. “What did I say.”

“You were right. He’s …” When she hesitated over the wording, her old roommate got really superior looking. “Oh, come on, I was an art major, not an English one.”

“Speechless is speechless.”

The singer waved to someone in the back, and laughed like there was an inside joke between him and whoever it was. Then he took another bend at the waist and waved to somebody else. More bowing.

How many songs had he done? Seven? All from memory—hell, she didn’t know if she could do more than “Jingle Bells” and “Happy Birthday” without sheet music. And that “Live Forever” song he’d composed? Truly incredible.

“You know, he writes his own material.” Teresa’s eyes stuck to the guy as he came down off the stage and chatted with a couple of women across the way. “And I mean, no Auto-Tune or anything like that for him. He’s the real deal.”

Cait nodded, and really wished she wasn’t gawking like everyone else, but her eyes were where they were. When he’d been performing, it had been like watching TV—no stumbles, no amateurish high notes that barely made the pitch, no trite-and-sappy Hallmark verses; he was, in fact, the real deal, and that made him unreal, in a way. So the idea that he was just walking in and out of the tables, gabbing with the regulars, laughing like a normal person? Almost more captivating than him up onstage—

Without any warning, the man looked over at her, their eyes meeting, her body jerking from embarrassment … and a shot of heat that was a shock.

Cait looked away fast, paying all kinds of attention to her mug of water. When she figured the coast had to be clear, she glanced over again.

He was still staring at her, even though there was another woman standing in front of him, making gestures big enough for a cheerleader.

“Well, well, well,” Teresa said, “looks like someone else’s noticed your new hair.”

Cait went back to her water, tracing triangles on the smooth, thick flanks of the mug. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Oh, my God, he’s coming over.”

“What?”

“He’s coming—”

“Hi,” a deep voice said.

“—over.”

Not looking, Cait told herself. Nope. There wasn’t enough of her water left to douse her when she spontaneously combusted.

“Hi,” Teresa replied in an octave higher than normal. “Great set. Songs, I mean. Fabulous.”

“Thanks, that’s really cool of you. I think I’ve seen you before?”

“Oh, you know, I’m kind of into the music scene.”

News to me, Cait thought with a grin.

Another pause.

Shoot, she was going to have to make eye contact. It was either that or Teresa was going to kick her shin under the table like it was a football. God knew the woman had done that before—

Okay, wow. He was even better-looking up close.

“I’m G.B.,” he said, putting out his hand.

“Cait. Cait Douglass.”

As she shook what he offered, he smiled as if he liked the feel of the contact—and then he held on to her palm for a split second longer than was polite.

“Is that with a C or a K?” he asked.

“It’s C-A-I-T as in Caitlyn.”

“That is a beautiful name.”

Cait grimaced. “I’ve always hated it. Too girlie— Ow.”

As she glared at Teresa, G.B. laughed. “I’m a Gordon Benjamin, so I know how that goes. G.B. is as close to my real name as I can stand to get. So, are you into music, too?”

“No.” She shot a don’t-you-dare at Teresa. “But I’m glad I was invited out tonight. You really are something.”

“Thanks, but the set felt rough on my end.”

He was cut off by the arrival of a trio of women, all of them crowding in and talking fast—saying pretty much what she and Teresa had, and wasn’t that embarrassing. As the din got louder and more fervent, Cait fully expected him to peace out and pay attention to his fans. Not how it went. Five minutes later, Gordon Benjamin, a.k.a. G.B. of the golden pipes and Fabio-without-the-cheese hair, had parked it at their table, ordered a chai latte, and was leaning back in his chair, apparently ready to stay the night.

“So what do you do for a living?” he asked Cait.

“I’m an artist. I teach at Union College and I illustrate children’s books.”

He nodded as his bowl-size mug arrived. “So you’re like me, making a living off your passion.”

“It must be hard to be in the music business. Things have changed so much, haven’t they? I mean, file sharing, piracy, all that.”

“Actually, that’s just the business side. Creatively? So much worse. The overuse of Auto-Tune, singers functioning as marketing concepts, everything so totally packaged.” He pushed his hair back, and she was momentarily distracted by how beautiful it was. “There are very few of us left who write our own material—and I’m not a twenty-year-old girl writing about famous boyfriends who treat me like crap. I want to convey truer emotions than puppy love gone bad, you know?”