The 39-Year-Old Virgin

Did she know him? Was he someone she’d gone to school with? The lighting was far from good, designed more for seduction and to hide imperfections than to highlight anything. Claire squinted, studying the rugged, chiseled face, the somber yet ever so slightly amused expression beginning to emerge. Her eyes shifted to his sandy-blond hair and light blue eyes.

He didn’t look familiar, but that didn’t take away from the fact that he somehow seemed familiar. She wasn’t about to ask “Do I know you?” because even she knew that would sound like a line and it might very well open an undesirable door.

And then the familiar stranger stopped being a stranger with his very next words.

“What’s the matter, Claire?” he asked. “Don’t you remember me?”

She stood there, trapped in a memory that refused to gel even if it did produce flashes in her head. “You know my name.”

“I know a lot of things about you,” he told her, his amusement growing. “I know you used to like to watch detective shows, but that you wouldn’t if you had any homework to do. You did it first, then watched. I know you used to sing to yourself when you were studying when you thought no one was around to hear you.”

Her mouth dropped open as she stared at the tall man before her. She should know him, she realized, and yet, no name rose to her lips. “Who are you?”

Caleb had no idea why he didn’t answer her question directly, why he didn’t just tell her his name instead of choosing to prolong the mystery for her just a little longer. He nodded at the table, indicating that she take a seat, then, switching it around, he straddled a chair himself. He watched her sink down into the nearest one as if she intended to shoot up to her feet at any second.

“Who do you think I am?” he asked her.

Claire stared at him intently, her green eyes sweeping over him. When he’d stood behind her and she’d turned around, she’d noted that he was almost a foot taller than she was. The man had shoulders like a football guard and it wasn’t thanks to any padding in his jacket. She could tell by the way he moved.

“Possibly what I’d imagined my guardian angel looked like,” she answered, her mouth curving slightly, “but then if you were my guardian angel, that Neanderthal wouldn’t have been able to see you.”

For a glimmer of a moment, he was back in the past. The past where anything was possible and the blinding hurt hadn’t found him yet. Caleb decided to give her another clue.

“I became a cop because of all those detective shows you used to watch. You didn’t know it, but I used to sneak out of my room and watch them with you. I’d sit on the top step, just outside my bedroom door, and watch the show—when I wasn’t watching you,” he added. Then, for the first time in a very long time, he allowed himself a genuine smile. “I had one hell of a crush on you, Claire.”

He said her name as if they were old friends. So why couldn’t she remember him?

Who was he?

“I still don’t—” And then her eyes widened as she processed what he’d just told her. The connection came to her riding a lightning bolt. “Caleb? Caleb McClain?” she cried, not completely convinced that she was right.

But it was the only answer that made any sense, given what he’d just told her. He was the only little boy she used to babysit. Except that he wasn’t little anymore. And definitely not a boy.

My God, she felt old.

Caleb nodded. “It’s Detective McClain now.”

Even though she’d guessed right, Claire could hardly believe it. Except for the color of his eyes—electric blue—and his hair—a dark sandy-blond—he bore no resemblance to the small, wiry, semishy little boy she used to babysit on a regular basis.

“How long has it been?” she heard herself asking, raising her voice as the music grew louder again.

Caleb brought his chair in closer. “Twenty-two years. Ever since you went off to that convent in New York.”

She’d broken his heart that summer. Up until that time, he’d been nursing his crush, thinking it love, and making plans for the two of them and their future together once he gained a few inches on her. The fact that he was five years younger had never fazed him in the slightest. As an only child, he’d always felt older than he was.

Caleb frowned slightly as he regarded her. She was dressed conservatively enough, certainly not like most of the women here. In a two-piece cream-colored suit with the hint of a rose blouse peeking out, she looked more like she was on her way to a board meeting than a place where singles converged and mingled.

It didn’t make sense, her being here like this. “Do they encourage nuns to frequent places like this?” he asked. “Are you on some mission, looking for converts?”

She was seriously thinking of having cards printed up with a disclaimer written across them. It would certainly save time. “I’m not part of the Dominican Sisters anymore.”

“What happened? I heard my parents talking about your decision to join an order. My mother said you had the calling.” He didn’t add that he felt his heart was going to break that entire summer. Those were merely the thoughts of a highly impressionable twelve-year-old.

Real heartbreak, he now knew, was so much harder to survive.

Claire shrugged, falling back on the excuse she’d given her mother because it was the only simple way she could summarize what had happened. “My ‘calling’ just stopped calling.”

Outside the job, he never prodded. Everyone had a right to their privacy. Still, because this was Claire, the “woman” from his childhood, something kept him in the chair, talking. “So, are you just passing through?”

“No, I’m staying. For now.” Why she felt it was necessary to qualify her words, she wasn’t sure. Maybe because she felt so uncertain about what to do with this new life. “My mother’s ill—” a nice safe word for what was wrong, she thought “—and right now, she needs someone to be there for her.” Although, she added silently, her mother was still almost every bit as feisty as she used to be and determined to keep her independence. If she hadn’t gotten a copy of the lab report, she would never have guessed that there was anything wrong with her mother except a bout of fatigue.

He caught himself vaguely wondering what this mysterious malady was, but he left it alone. Wasn’t any of his business. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

She nodded in response to the sentiment he’d expressed. “Thank you. In the meantime, I’ve just gotten a job at an elementary school.” A job. It still felt rather odd to say that. She’d been a Dominican Sister for so long, being anything else was going to take a great deal of adjustment. But they were going to need the money, now that her mother had retired. And there might come a time when her mother would need around-the-clock care, so she needed to amass a nest egg now. “I start next week.”

He could see her as a teacher, he thought. “Which school?”

“Lakewood Elementary.” Caleb laughed shortly under his breath. It wasn’t a response she would have anticipated. “What?”

“Nothing.” But the expression on her face prodded him to elaborate. “It’s just that it’s a small world.” There were a total of six elementary schools in Bedford. It seemed ironic that she should get a job at this one. “That’s the school my son goes to.”

A son. The boy she’d babysat had a son. Sometimes she forgot that other people went on to have lives while she’d been sequestered in tiny villages where running water was considered a luxury.

Claire smiled. “You have a son.”

Her whole face still lit up when she smiled, Caleb noted. That was what had first captured his preadolescent heart, her smile. It surprised him to discover that there were some things that hadn’t changed.

“Yeah,” he finally acknowledged. “I’ve got a son.”

Obviously, he wasn’t one of those fathers who liked to brag, she thought. “What’s his name?”

“Danny.”

Definitely not in the bragging league. “Do you have a picture of him?” she coaxed.

He did, but the one he carried in his wallet was a two-year-old-photograph of both Danny and Jane. Right now, he didn’t feel up to seeing it. So he lied.

“No, not on me.” He really had to get going. And yet, somehow, he continued to remain straddling the chair, his arms crossed over the back, just looking at her. He’d never expected to see her again. “If you don’t mind my asking,” he began in his gruff detective’s voice, then tempered it as he continued, “what are you doing in a place like this?”

“I was asking myself the same question. Some of my friends talked me into coming here with them. I think this is their way of ‘breaking me in.’”

“And where are they now?”

“One, my cousin Nancy, had to leave,” she explained. “The other three—” she waved a vague hand toward the throng “—are out there somewhere on the floor.”

Presumably not alone, Caleb surmised. He rose from the chair and pushed it back toward the table. “Well, I’ve got to get going.” But his feet still weren’t moving. And he knew why. He felt as if he was deserting her, leaving her to be preyed on by the next over-sexed male. Which was why, he supposed, the next minute he heard himself asking, “You want a ride home?”

Claire popped up to her feet as if she’d been launched by a catapult, crying “Yes” with such enthusiasm and relief he found it difficult not to laugh.