The Date Next Door

“I’ll be staying at a motel, won’t I?”

“Are you kidding? Mom’s got the guest room all ready for you. She’s been fussing over it for days.”

“Oh, I didn’t want her to go to that much trouble.” Nic frowned at the back of Joel’s head, knowing he had deliberately withheld that bit of information from her. “I told you I would be perfectly comfortable in a motel or at the resort where the rest of your out-of-town classmates are staying.”

“Stay by yourself at a motel? Mother would have a fit. She’s pretty old-fashioned that way. And we’ll be spending enough time at the resort as it is. You wouldn’t want to be stuck there with my old friends while I’m visiting with my family. This way we can leave together when things get boring—as I’m sure they will.”

Nic twined her fingers more tightly in her lap, regretting—not for the first time—that she had ever let herself get talked into coming along.

Chapter Three

Nic was not a particularly tall woman. Five feet six inches in her sensible work shoes, she was usually several inches shorter than the men she confronted daily on the job. She stayed slim and muscular through a combination of regular exercise and overactive metabolism. Yet still she felt as though she towered over Joel’s mother, Elaine Brannon.

Elaine reminded her vividly of the delicate porcelain figurines her grandmother had collected, and which Nic had been sternly forbidden to touch. Elaine might have stood five feet two on her tallest days and was hardly large enough to cast a shadow. Though neither of her sons topped six feet, she was dwarfed between them, her impeccably made-up face glowing with pride as she gazed up at them.

As Ethan’s had earlier, Elaine’s smile changed when she turned to greet Nic. If a smile could be gracious and suspicious at the same time, this one was.

Nic was almost amused. Apparently this family worried that Joel would be the target of unscrupulous gold diggers or doctor groupies, even though she knew he had told them that she and Joel were just friends. Even if they incorrectly suspected there was more to their relationship, did they honestly think she looked like either of those types? She wore just enough makeup to satisfy her mother. There was no expensive “product” in her casual, easy-to-maintain hairstyle. She couldn’t show cleavage if she tried, since she didn’t particularly have any.

Joel saw her as a pal, not a potential romantic partner—and that was exactly the way she wanted things to remain. Much less messy all around.

The woman’s tiny hand was icy-cold in Nic’s. “Welcome to our home, Nicole,” Elaine said with practiced Southern charm. “My husband hasn’t returned from work yet, but he’s looking forward to meeting you.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Brannon. It really wasn’t necessary for you to put me up, you know. I could have stayed in a motel.”

Elaine shook her ash-blond head. “What kind of hosts would we be if we sent you off to a motel? I’ve prepared the guest room for you and I hope you’ll be comfortable in it.”

“I’m sure I will be,” Nic lied politely, though the privacy of an anonymous motel room sounded very nice at the moment.

“Come on, Nic, I’ll show you to your room so you can freshen up,” Joel offered, motioning toward the stairway that curved upward behind them.

She followed him gratefully, aware that both his mother and brother were watching as she and Joel climbed the stairs.

The average-size four-bedroom house was fashioned in a vaguely Colonial style with gleaming wood floors, wainscoted walls and reproduction light fixtures. It was warm and welcoming, not too formal for Nic’s tastes and yet attractively decorated. Framed family photographs adorned almost every inch of the walls of the upstairs hallway.

She stopped at a large family portrait, recognizing a much younger Elaine immediately. Elaine had aged very well, looking barely different now. A man stood beside her, and it was obvious where Ethan and Joel had gotten their similar features. “Is this your father?”

“Yes. That’s Dad—Lou Brannon. He should be home soon. I think you’ll like him.”

“I’m sure I will.” But her attention had turned to the children in the photo.

Ethan and Joel were easy enough to spot; neither of them had changed significantly since toddlerhood, apparently. Yet it was the other child whose image held her riveted, another boy, this one little more than a baby, perhaps a couple of years younger than Joel. “This little boy…”

“My younger brother. Kyle.”

Sadness filled her as she realized the significance of his never mentioning Kyle to her before. Studying the happy, innocent face in the photo, she bit her lower lip.

“He died in a flash flood twenty-eight years ago. He was almost two.”

Though Joel had spoken without emotion, Nic knew him well enough to understand that his rather flat, even tone was an attempt to hide exactly how strongly he did feel about the loss of his younger brother. “I’m sorry.”

“I barely remember him,” Joel replied with a slight shrug. “I was just four myself. He was with his nanny when her car was swept into a flooded river. The car was eventually found, but neither the nanny’s nor my brother’s bodies were inside. They were never recovered.”

Nic thought of the woman she had met downstairs, and her gaze turned back to Elaine’s face in the portrait. She looked so young, so proud of her attractive family. Nic couldn’t imagine what she had gone through when she’d lost her youngest child.

“I’m very sorry,” she said again.

He nodded and motioned down the hallway. “The guest room is at the end of the hall—next door to the room where I’ll be sleeping.”

She couldn’t resist pausing to look at several more of the family photographs, amused by the images of Joel as a gap-toothed, towheaded little boy, self-conscious in front of the camera. Oddly enough, Ethan looked almost as somber and responsible as a child as he did now. Had he been born an old soul? The mental question made her smile, as it sounded more like something Aislinn would ponder than herself.

Her amusement faded when she studied the photographs of a more mature Joel. Eagle Scout, high school graduate, college graduate, medical school graduate—all of his accomplishments had been recorded and displayed in this family hall of fame. It was during high school that he began to be accompanied in many of the photos by a strikingly lovely redhead. Tall, curvy, intelligent-looking, the woman seemed to be as at home within those frames as Joel and his brother and parents.

“This is Heather,” she murmured.

“Yes.” He glanced at a wedding photo of himself and his late bride. “This was taken six months before she died.”

It was a good thing, Nic mused, that she didn’t have any romantic designs on Joel. It would be hard to compete with the memory of this supermodel-beautiful woman.

The Brannons had certainly known their share of tragedy, yet the general impression she received from this neatly crowded photo gallery was of a close, generally happy clan. Her own family had also suffered loss, she thought with a fleeting memory of her father’s last cancer-racked days. And they, too, had been able to put the pain behind them and move on with their lives, though of course it had been difficult for her mother.

That life could be hard and often unfair was something Nic had learned a long time ago. She had decided to concentrate as much as possible on the positives, a philosophy she knew she shared with Joel. So why did his old friends seem determined to focus on his tragedies rather than his accomplishments? Or was that situation mostly in his own imagination?

She supposed she would be finding out soon enough. They would be meeting his old classmates in less than three hours. Swallowing hard, she looked away from the photograph of beautiful Heather Brannon and followed Joel into the guest room.

“Joel told us you’re a police officer, Nicole. That must be a challenging career for a petite young woman like yourself.”

It was one of the first comments orthodontist Lou Brannon made after being introduced to Nic. She recognized his tone. He was one of those people who was equally fascinated and dismayed by her career choice. His only knowledge of the job probably came from television and crime novels, and he couldn’t imagine why anyone, especially a woman, would want to spend every day pursuing criminals and other lowlife.

“I enjoy it,” she said, as she always did to such comments. “And it pays my bills.”

They were standing in the den, chatting for a few minutes with Lou and Elaine before Joel and Nic had to leave for the pregame gathering of his classmates.

“It’s such a dangerous and unsavory job,” Elaine fretted. “I can’t imagine why any young woman would want to do it.”

An awkward moment of silence followed that comment. Nic finally responded with a simple, “I like it.”

“And she does it very well,” Joel said in an attempt to smooth over the slight tension his mother’s remarks had left between them. “She’s received several commendations just in the relatively short time she’s been on the force.”

Being no more comfortable with Joel’s compliments than his mother’s criticisms, Nic abruptly changed the subject. “What time are we supposed to leave for the reception?”

He checked his watch. “Pretty soon. We’re meeting at Chucky’s Bar and Grill at six for drinks before the seven-thirty kickoff. Chucky’s is less than a mile from the football field, so everyone’s going to caravan over after drinks.”

“How many were in your class?”

“Just under a hundred. Not exactly a big school, so we all pretty much knew each other.”

Elaine smiled mistily—something which must have taken quite a bit of practice, Nic decided with a dose of cynicism. “Joel and Heather were so popular and outgoing that their classmates all knew them and loved them. Especially Heather. I don’t believe she ever said an unkind word about anyone in her entire life.”