The Lonely Hearts Club Read Free Page A

Sprite from the waitress who stopped beside the table, and felt some of the bleak pall that had surrounded her lift a little on the wave of her friends’ unstaunchable support. “Julia isn’t involved with one of her graduate students, at least not that she mentioned. And even if she was, that’s not our problem.”
    Candace snorted and took a healthy gulp of her martini. “I hate that bitch.”
    “Thank you,” Liz said.
    “So,” Bren said into the sudden silence. “What do we do now?”
    We. Liz liked the way that sounded. She could count on these two. When she was lonely or scared, they would be there, and that was a big reason why single motherhood didn’t loom quite so dauntingly. Her friends would help her, even though they couldn’t heal the betrayal of discovering that her lover of almost six years hadn’t been in love with her for a long time. Julia had informed her of that at the same time as she had announced that she was currently involved in a passionate affair with a woman more than a decade younger than either of them. Almost worse than Julia’s infidelity was Liz’s loss of faith in her own judgment, because she hadn’t suspected Julia was on the verge of leaving. Oh, on some level, subconsciously, she had sensed something was wrong. They didn’t make love as much as they used to, especially not in the last year. Julia seemed to have more committee meetings and evening academic obligations than ever before, so they saw less and less of one another. In retrospect, it hadn’t been the best time to start a family, but at thirty-five, Liz was running out of time. They’d always planned on having children, and in the midst of actually preparing for the reality of it, she hadn’t noticed that Julia wasn’t really involved. Obviously, she hadn’t noticed a lot of things.
    “Stupid,” Liz muttered.
    “No you’re not,” Bren said, as if she’d read Liz’s mind. “Trusting. Not stupid.”
    Liz fixed Bren with a stare. “Actually, I think they’re one and the same.”

    *

    Reilly’s head snapped back and she bit down hard on the rubber mouth guard clamped between her teeth. She kept her gloved hands raised in front of her chest and tucked her elbows tight to her sides, dropping back with one leg in anticipation of the roundhouse kick she knew was coming. Blocking the kick with one arm, she snapped a back fist and caught nothing but air.
    “Halt,” Master Drew Clark called, and Reilly immediately shifted into her ready stance, fists extended in front of her, legs spread shoulder width apart.
    “Come with me,” her tall, blond instructor ordered.
    Reilly followed her friend and teacher to the far corner of the room, away from the other students. “Sorry.”
    “For what?” Drew asked, indicating Reilly’s gloves with a tilt of her head. “You can take those off. You’re done for tonight.”
    “Yes ma’am.” Reilly jerked loose the Velcro on the wrist of her right glove with her teeth, clamped the glove under her left arm, and pulled her hand free. Then she rapidly removed her left glove and placed them both on the bench against the wall.
    “I thought we agreed you wouldn’t train if you’d worked all night,” Drew said.
    “Yes ma’am, we did,” Reilly said, confused. As usual, she could read nothing in Drew’s face beyond the usual intense focus she displayed in the dojang . A few inches taller, Drew was a good twenty pounds lighter but all muscle, and the fiercest fighting machine Reilly had ever seen. If she didn’t know the ex-Marine sergeant outside the confines of this twenty-by-forty-foot room where Drew taught women to defend themselves and to trust in themselves, Reilly might have thought Drew had no more feelings than a machine. But Reilly knew otherwise. “I didn’t work last night. Well, I did, but it was quiet and I slept five hours. That’s plenty for me.”
    “Then what happened today?”
    “Nothing.”
    Drew didn’t object, but Reilly felt her