The Heart of the Matter Read Online Free PDF

always do that.
    Jason made a production of getting to his feet, then realized his bag was still on the floor and he would have to bend for it.
    “I imagine I’ll be paralyzed by Wednesday,” he said, bending for the bag and accepting immediately that it had been a terrible mistake. Strained muscles protested.
    He straightened with difficulty.
    “I told you to take it slowly,” she admonished, taking his arm and leading him toward the door as though he were ninety. But he was in too much pain to take offense. “Come on. I’ll walk you out to your car.”
    “I did take it slowly,” he insisted, hobbling along with her, “but even slowly took every reserve of endurance I had. Where did you train, anyway? With the Olympic men’s triathlon team?”
    “Honestly.” She scoffed lightly, taking more of his weight as they went down the few front steps. “A group of men play basketball once a week at the Y and think they’re commando material. Real fitness takes so much more than that. But you’ll feel it as you continue.” She stopped in the middle of the walk and looked up and down the street, which was empty except for a black Ford Explorer, and a station wagon that bore the church’s name on a magnetic sign on the side.
    “Where is your car?” she asked.
    “At home,” he said, aware that he was leaning on her. “I walked here to warm up.”
    “Where do you live?”
    “On Oak Hill overlooking the bay.”
    She frowned. “That’s a mile and a half away. Youwore yourself out before you got here. How did you expect to get home after seventy-five minutes of exercise?”
    He smiled blandly. “Hearse?”
    She punched his shoulder.
    He screamed.
    She apologized and rubbed the spot. “Relax, Mr. Warfield. I’ll take you home.”
    “You can call me Jason,” he said, hanging on to her as she led him toward the Explorer. “If I don’t have to come back on Wednesday.”
    It was dusk when Laura pulled into the driveway behind a blue Mercedes wagon. She hurried around her vehicle to help her passenger out.
    “Never mind, I can’t do it,” he said when she pulled the door open. “I’ll have to bend my head and move my legs, and I think everything has fused into a solid bar of rust. Just close me in and call a priest.”
    “How you do exaggerate,” she said with a smile, crouching to look in at him. “And anyway, rust isn’t solid. It flakes, so I’m sure if you move just a little, you’ll find you can move a little more.”
    “No, I don’t think so.” He lay back against the headrest and closed his eyes. “Get my boys so I can tell them where the insurance policy and all that stuff is. And I want to be cremated.”
    Laura couldn’t hold back the laughter. “Well, if you don’t get out of the car, I’ll have to perform the cremation myself and it’ll be a little crude. Come on. Give me your right leg.”
    “Take it,” he said. “I’m sure it’ll come right off. It disconnected from the rest of my body somewhere during those leg lifts.”
    She was really starting to like him. “Come on. I’ll help you.”
    She took the fleece-covered calf of his left leg carefully in her hands and lifted until his foot was out of the car.
    “Ow, ow, ow, ow!” he cried.
    “Sorry,” she said, then moved the other leg in the same way. But this time she was aware of sturdy muscle. The rest of him might not be well-honed, but basketball had tightened his legs nicely.
    She looked up into his dark brown eyes and discovered that he was reading her thoughts. The humor was still there, along with genuine physical discomfort, but over that, bright and clear, was…interest.
    It collided with the interest she felt and made her want to withdraw. Nothing ever came of interest-for her, anyway. Interest always led one along a promising path then fizzled or died abruptly, leaving her with the conviction that there was something wrong with her.
    She stood and straightened, needing to put some physical distance between