The Driven Snowe Read online

  No way was she telling her mother. Not until she knew for sure.

  A nurse came in, and Angela’s heart jumped into her throat. “Yes?”

  “Oh.” The woman seemed surprised. “Sorry. Didn’t realize you were still in here. I’m sure the doctor will be back in a minute.” With that, she hastily left, shutting the door behind her.

  Angela sunk disconsolately back in her chair. It was the waiting that was doing this to her. She’d been waiting since Friday to find out something definite.

  Friday had started in a cold, antiseptic smelling room like this, too.

  She remembered her ob-gyn appointment vividly, like one of those nightmares that haunt you the whole next day. She had been in a paper robe and no underwear, lying back, trying to think of what she needed to buy at the supermarket instead of focusing on what was happening as the doctor performed the pelvic exam. After the initial unpleasantness, the doctor stood up. “You’re doing self breast exams, right?”

  Angela thought for a second. “Well, off and on.”

  The doctor frowned. “You need to do them every month,” she said, moving up toward Angela’s chest. “You know how, right?”

  “I’m pretty sure I do.”

  “Not good enough.” The doctor lifted the paper gown. “You need to…”

  The doctor then proceeded to demonstrate on Angela’s breast. Angela felt herself withdraw, back to her grocery list. Red peppers, shallots, I think that there’s salmon on sale…

  “You need to work inward, gradually, in concentric circles.”

  “Okay.” Maybe I’ll get some more rice, I think I’m low…

  “And then you…” The doctor paused. Angela remembered that pause, remembered not paying attention to it. “Angela, how long has this lump been here?”

  Some brown sugar for cookies… “What?”

  “I said, how long has this lump been here? This one, in your right breast.”

  Angela felt her body go clammy and cold with shock. “I don’t know,” she said distantly, as if it weren’t really her voice saying it. “I honestly don’t know.”

  She had taken the rest of the day off, a rarity for her. The soonest mammogram she could get was Monday, first thing. She had taken the appointment. And then she had waited.

  It had given her time to think.

  I haven’t been to Italy. Haven’t been to Europe, period. She flipped through the travel magazines she had strewn around her house. She had always meant to. She had been so busy working after she’d graduated, and then, when she’d finally snapped from all the pressure, she had moved from New York City back to the calm small-town atmosphere of Manzanita. She was just regrouping, she’d told herself. She’d get to all those adventures she’d been putting off. Now, she wasn’t sure what she was going to hear on Monday. Didn’t know how bad it was. How long did she have, really?

  I haven’t made a stained glass window. Never learned flamenco dancing. Haven’t been to a club in years. Never learned Mandarin cooking, never painted a self-portrait, haven’t seen Hawaii…

  Good God. What had she been doing with her life?

  I haven’t even had sex!

  For some reason, that struck her the hardest. She’d never had any interest in having a lasting relationship with a man—she’d seen what it had done to her mother. But she had still thought of experiencing the act of physical love at some point, by whatever fantasy she had conjured up. She figured the situation would arrange itself at some point…when the stars aligned, or when some gorgeous Greek-god-type got a serendipitous flat tire outside her house. However it happened, it would happen without her worrying about it.

  Now what was she going to do? Go to the grave, a lonely, closed-off virgin who had never left North America?

  She’d paced around her house. She didn’t have time to go to Europe. She wasn’t going to make a stained glass window in a weekend, she wasn’t going to learn flamenco dancing overnight. But she was going to do something to redeem herself, and she was going to do it that weekend. With grim determination, she’d thrown on her sexiest dress, her most ridiculous heels, and had gone to the Cable Car, a place her co-workers had dubbed “the only pickup joint in Manzanita.” And she had tracked down Josh Montgomery, a man she knew only by what little she’d remembered from high school, what she’d heard, or the brief glimpses of him she’d caught in town.

  The Josh Incident, as she was now calling it in her head, seemed like a dream, something too amazing to be true. Sitting alone in this cold, dim doctor’s office, she knew she was right. Comparatively, the Incident wasn’t real at all.

  “Miss Snowe?”

  Her head swung toward the door. “Yes?”

  “I’m Dr. Jones.” He was tall, lanky, with pale blond hair and dull blue eyes. He looked like he didn’t smile a lot, and he wasn’t smiling today. “Just had your mammogram done, right?”

  “Yes,” she said, clutching her arms around herself. “Am I…that is, is it…”

  He glanced down at his folder. “Hmm. Nope. It’s not cancer.”

  “It’s not cancer,” she repeated. She let out a breath she didn’t realize she was holding.

  “No. It’s just calcified tissue. Ultrasound gave us a pretty good idea, but the mammogram—it’s pretty conclusive. You should still do self exams regularly, especially with your family history.” He frowned as he said that. “But otherwise, you’re good to go.”

  She sat there, numb with relief. “Thank God.”

  “You can get dressed.” He had already mentally moved on to the next patient, and left without another word, closing the door behind him.

  It’s not cancer. I’m not dying.

  She got up and put on her clothes, her shaking hands making it hard to button her shirt. Finally fully dressed, she put her glasses on, grabbed her purse and walked out. It was March, but the day was clear and the sun shone magnificently, while the cool air made everything smell clean and fresh and new.

  I’m not dying. She started her car, and carefully pulled out of the driveway. She would go in to work, of course. The car automatically took the streets that headed to the Manzanita Public Library. She noticed how beautiful the trees were along the street, the way the new houses and stores changed everything so dramatically. She noticed small boutiques, shops she’d never even realized existed, showing pretty wares in their glistening windows. The Dress Barn had been replaced by The Gap. Joe’s Burgers, which had sat on the same lot for as long as she could remember, was now flanked by a Blockbuster Video and a trendy-looking hair salon.

  She hadn’t noticed, she thought, as she nudged her glasses higher up on her face. Why hadn’t she paid attention before?

  I’m not dying.

  She had plenty of time.

  Then again, she thought, as she paused at a stoplight, she’d been under that same impression before all this started. She had a second chance here. Damn if she was going to waste it.

  I’ll sign up for classes. She noticed that she was stepping on the accelerator, and moving much faster than the speed limit for the residential roads she was now traveling on. Pretty houses were rushing past her window. She slowed the car down, but her mind continued to speed ahead. I’m going to take a trip somewhere. I’ll see if I can go out with the girls on Friday night, to that club they always go to. Maybe even go with them to coffee more often, make regular lunch dates. She pulled into the parking lot, seeing the same large brick building she’d been driving to for the past two years. She smiled with determination. I’m not going to make the same mistakes.

  She’d been given a reprieve, and more important, she’d been given a chance.

  She had Josh to thank in large part for this, she thought as she shut off her car, all but floating down the paved walkway toward the double glass doors. She had been honest when she told him that she was more afraid of sex than anything else—getting that close to anyone, after all of these years, seemed so much more impossible than learning another language or taking a worldwide crui
se. If he had been horrible to her, she might have given in to her apprehension and crawled back into her cocoon of daydreams and excuses.

  After her unprecedented but successful move in propositioning him, she could probably bungee jump naked down the Grand Canyon with relative ease. From here on, she was going to do everything she’d always dreamed of. He was a starting point. She had a long way to go from here.

  Too bad she’d probably never bump into him again to tell him, she considered with a grin. He’d probably never realize how he had, by helping her with her situation, changed her life forever. She wondered if he’d even think of her again.

  Well, even if you don’t…thank you, Josh Montgomery, for being my sure thing.

  With a little grin, she stepped into the library.

  HE OUGHT TO BE in a meeting going over last quarter’s sales figures and tearing apart the capital equipment budget, Josh thought, not going on a research mission to hunt down a one-night stand. That is, an attempted one-night stand. He smiled. He’d change that status soon enough.

  He walked through the glass doors of the Manzanita library. In the five years since he’d been back, he didn’t think he’d been in the library, ever. He’d barely gone to his old library as a high-school student. He guessed most libraries were the same. There were cheerful posters and childish drawings, each signed in a youngster’s scrawled hand. There was the familiar paste-and-dust smell of books, and his shoes made a conspicuous shuffling on the floor. It had the sort of silence you could feel.

  He was in luck. The old man behind the reference desk pointed him to a dark alcove, in the back of the library. He guessed it was a sort of local history archive. There were bound magazines, and black-and-white photos on the walls of the relevant events of the town—the local Almond Festival, or that fire that swept through town hall back when he was in grade school. He went past all the early yearbooks, straight to his year: 1985. The cover was a deep navy blue, scuffed from handling. He flipped it open.

  Had he ever been this young? He grimaced as he saw his own face in several candid photos. And who let him dress like that?

  He thumbed to the black-and-white photos of the freshmen. The self-consciously grinning faces all resembled mug shots. After a few pages, the faces blurred together. He glanced down at the names instead…Amy, Abigail, Alexandra, Angela, Adriana, Andrea…

  Wait a second. He flipped back a page.

  Angela Snowe.

  He frowned, then kept flipping. He got all the way to the sophomores, then went through the section a second time.

  That can’t be her.

  He scrutinized it. The girl in the photo had a dreamy expression—or at least, she looked rather dazed behind her glasses. Her hair was frizzy, standing up in a tangled nimbus around her head. He thought he could see the slight glint of braces in the small photo.

  It took a few minutes, but the more he stared, the more he could reconcile the images. While her face was rounded with a little baby fat, he could see hints of the high cheekbones and strong, determined chin. He could understand how he might not remember her from high school, surrounded as he was with cheerleaders and other hangers-on. Hell, he’d been an 18-year-old football star. Back then, any girl with a D-cup was downright riveting. A freshman with glasses and frizzy hair would not have caught his eye.

  He was a lot more discriminating now.

  He turned, ready to ask the librarian where the phone book was, when he stopped dead in his tracks.

  Angela?

  It was her. She looked different than she had that night at the Cable Car, but he recognized her just the same. She was wearing a straight skirt that was worn discreetly below the knee, and a crisp white shirt. She was wearing her glasses this time, and her hair was in the same severe ponytail it had been…at least, before she’d removed the holder that trapped it, and let that glorious mahogany mass tumble across his pillows. Even her low pumps made her legs look delicious, and he knew exactly what that body was like beneath the demure outer wrapping.

  He smirked in self-deprecation as his own body went hard. Well, damn. You really can find whatever you’re looking for at the library.

  So he’d found her. What was he going to do now?

  Well, wait for the, er, swelling to subside, he rationalized. He put the yearbook down and wandered back into the darker corners of the stacks, waiting.

  He didn’t even have to hunt for her. His quarry came to him. Bearing a pad of yellow legal paper and a slightly bemused expression, she didn’t even notice him there as she studied the numbers off the spine of some ancient-looking book.

  He cleared his throat. “Miss, perhaps you could help me find something.” His voice was barely above a whisper, and he deliberately made it low and almost scratchy.

  She didn’t even look up from her notepad, still scribbling down a number. “Just one second, sir, and I’ll be more than happy to help you find what you need.” He grinned. I certainly hope so. He walked up behind her, his breath tickling the nape of her neck. “I’m looking for a book that might tell me how to track down a missing person. I met someone on Friday night, and she vanished on Saturday. I don’t even know her last name. Do you think you could help me out?”

  Before Josh had finished saying “missing,” she’d spun around, her eyes wide behind her glasses. He smiled.

  “It’s you,” she said, looking dumbfounded.

  “In the flesh,” he said, smiling and taking a step forward, getting closer to her. He noticed that she clutched the notepad to her chest like a shield. “Did you miss me?”

  “I…that is…” She cleared her throat. Her eyes looked a little wild. “Why are you here?”

  He laughed. “I’m here because I wanted to see you again. I would have told you that on Saturday, but, well…” He gestured, helplessly.

  “You wanted to see me again,” she said, as if repeating a foreign phrase.

  “Exactly.”

  “Why?”

  He blinked. “Well, ah…” He thought about it, then shrugged. “Why wouldn’t I?”

  He had her there, it seemed. She chewed thoughtfully at her lower lip. “You’re not a relationship person,” she said finally, with a slight smile, like someone finally remembering the answer on Jeopardy.

  Not the “sure thing” reputation again. He grimaced. How long was he going to be paying for that one? “Maybe not,” he admitted, “but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to see you again.”

  “Hmm. Well.” She backed up against the bookshelves behind her, hitting them with a low thump. “I thought we’d agreed that it was a one-time occurrence.”

  “I wasn’t expecting it to be as incredible as it was when I agreed,” he replied.

  Suddenly, her eyes looked dreamy. “I didn’t, either,” she admitted.

  He saw his advantage, and immediately took it. He leaned close to her ear. “Just think what it could be like next time.”

  She put her hand flat on his chest, and gently pushed him a step back. “You’re making it hard to think,” she accused him breathlessly. “I understand what you’re saying. I just don’t think it’d be a good idea.”

  “Sounds like a great idea to me,” he said. “You said you wanted more experiences. Why not with me?”

  “I want lots of different kinds of experiences. I don’t need to necessarily focus on, er, that kind.” She blushed, something he found continually charming. When was the last time he’d seen a woman blush like that? “But I appreciate it,” she added, polite to a fault.

  “Angela,” he said, ready to pull out the big guns. “I’ve gone through a lot of trouble to find you. I’ve been thinking about you constantly. I’d really like to see you again, and all modesty aside, I think you really enjoyed seeing me, too.” He smiled, the most deliberately charming smile he could muster. It wasn’t hard—just being close to her made him feel like smiling. “Can you give me one reason why—after you got up all the courage to ask me to help you, after the spectacular night that we had—can you
give me one reason why you think we shouldn’t see each other again?”

  “Well,” she said, then blurted out, “I’m not dying anymore, that’s why.”

  “You’re not what?” He blinked. He couldn’t have heard that right.

  She cleared her throat. “It’s a long story.”

  He had heard her correctly. “I’ve got time,” he ground out.

  She looked at him, her eyes clear and direct. “I thought I might have cancer when I came to you. That’s why I picked you.”

  He grimaced, completely disconcerted. “Funny. I thought you picked me because I was a sure thing.”

  “Well, there was that, too,” she said, then frowned at him. “And I’ve already apologized for that. But the bottom line is, I’d always meant to have sex at some point. The scare brought the fact that I didn’t have as much time as I’d thought sharply into focus. So I looked for you. I’m not sorry I did.” Now she smiled. “In fact, I can’t thank you enough.”

  “Thank me?”

  “Well, yes. I want to experience life now, in the present, and enjoy everything I’ve only talked about. You helped make that possible,” she said, her brown-eyed gaze soft and gentle. “I’ve signed up for all these classes today, I’m looking into traveling. For pity’s sake, I’m even going to Club X on Friday night with the girls.” She smiled again, her tone both embarrassed and delighted. A man could grow to crave that smile. “If you knew what I was like before, you’d understand what a big step all this is. And I really feel like I have you to thank for it.”

  He was speechless. He’d had a lot of women appreciate their time together, but he’d never had it viewed as a life-altering experience before.

  “Thanks, again.” She kissed him on the cheek, like a blessing. “Who knows? Maybe I’ll see you around.”

  “Wait a second,” he said. “I still don’t see why we can’t see each other again.”