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Get
out. Get out now!"

The last couple of words were nearly a
scream. Lori ignored them and patted the bed. "Eight steps,"
she said cheerfully. "Seven if you don't shuffle."

"I
don't shuffle," Gloria told her icily.

"Looks like
shuffling to me."

"I loathe you with every fiber of
my being," the old woman said.

"I'm sure you do. Now
walk."

Gloria slowly, painfully, made her way across the
study. When she reached the bed, Lori steadied her as she lowered
herself onto the mattress and slowly lay down.

"Great
job," she said, careful to keep her voice neutral. She wasn't
gloating and didn't want Gloria to think she was. At least their
workout together was a distraction. Lori wanted to stay busy enough
to forget the photos she'd seen earlier. Speaking of busy…

She
opened the tote bag she'd brought with her and set several catalogs
on the table.

"You have a lot of choices," she said,
fanning out the pages. "DVDs, books on tape, your basic
shopping, although all my catalogs are discount, which I'm guessing
you don't do."

Gloria looked from the shiny pages to her
and frowned. "What are you talking about?"

"Something
to fill your day. Currently you're staring at these four walls, being
cranky and, frankly, getting on my nerves. You need to do something
else. Get interested in a soap, read, listen to a book, watch a
movie. I would normally add 'visit with family' but you seem to be
avoiding them."

Gloria stared at the window. "I have
no idea what you're talking about."

"Interesting.
Kristie told me that one of your grandsons stopped by early yesterday
evening. Walker. That he'd called first and you'd told him not to
come, but he'd shown up anyway."

The information had
stunned Lori. After all, in her mind, Gloria had been the abandoned
elder of the family. But first the old woman had refused to see Cal
and now she'd told Walker to go away. As much as Lori hated to admit
it, Reid might have had a point when he'd said his grandmother was a
little difficult.

Gloria narrowed her eyes. "This is none
of your business. You mention my family again and you're
fired."

Lori pretended to yawn. "I'm sorry. What?
Did you say something?"

"Don't think I can't,"
Gloria told her. "One call to the agency that employs you and
you're gone."

Lori shook her head. "You don't want
me gone. I'm tough on you and you respect that. I care about you and
you need that. You can't be mean enough or crabby enough to scare me
away, and that's new for you. So here's the question. Why are you
trying so hard to live your life alone?"

Gloria pointed
at the door. "Get out. Get out now."

Lori was about
to argue when she felt a queasiness in her stomach. She nodded and
left, heading directly for the kitchen. By the time she hit the back
hallway, she was shaking and feeling close to fainting.

A
quick glance at her watch told her she'd gone too long without food.
She knew better, but between the reporter's ambush and her morning
workout with Gloria, she hadn't noticed the time.

She walked
into the kitchen only to find the one person she most didn't want to
see. Reid.

He looked up from the thick stack of papers he was
reading and smiled at her. "I heard shouting. Should I be
worried?"

She was already pretty weak, what with her
blood sugar crashing, so the last thing she needed was a visceral
reaction to a useless, possibly horrible, man.

But there it
was— a sudden fluttering of her heart, a trembling of her
thighs that had nothing to do with needing to eat and everything to
do with needing a man.

But why did it have to be this
one?

"We're good," she said and walked to the
refrigerator, where she'd stashed a bottle of juice. But before she
got there, he was on his feet, next to her.

"Lori? What's
wrong? You look like crap."

"Gee, thanks."

"I'm
serious." He touched her cheek. "You're sweating. And
shaking."

The light brush of his fingers was nothing.
Less than nothing. Yet she found herself leaning into the contact and
imagining him touching her