The Heart of the Matter by Muriel Jensen Page A

accounted for her behavior, and in the light of day she saw things more clearly and was more hopeful than frightened by what might develop between them.
    She stared at the finished cake for fifteen minutes as she considered the possibility that he would tell her to take her cake and give it to someone who was willing to deal with the kind of paranoia from which she suffered.
    She covered the cake with plastic wrap, placed it in a flat box on the passenger seat of her car and decided that rejection was probably preferable to the regret she would feel if she didn’t try.
    She drove across the small town to the highway that paralleled the ocean, then took the turn that led up the hill to the exclusive community where Jason lived.
    She was half a block away from his house and rehearsing what she would say when she saw the blondes. They stepped out of a little green MG that had just pulled into the driveway when Jason walked out his front door, arms open.
    One of the blondes was a little taller than the other andwore her hair straight and loose. It flew out behind her like a banner as she ran into his arms, tanned legs in small white shorts flashing.
    The other blonde, rounder, more voluptuous, with her hair piled in a loose knot atop her head but with the same great legs in khaki shorts also hurried into his embrace. He picked them both up off the walk, and all three laughed and hugged as though they had delicious things planned for the balance of the afternoon.
    Laura felt a stabbing pain to her midsection. Fury simmered in bitter disappointment inside her as she watched Jason and the blondes disappear into the house.
    By the time she backed into the nearest driveway and headed back down the hill, self-recrimination was added to the fury and disappointment and she had a serious stew under way.
    She was not at all surprised when Jason missed that night’s class. Well, she told herself as she worked her students hard, what else did she expect? She’d left him with the impression that she was afraid of a relationship with him, and he, being a man and true to the species as she knew it, didn’t bother grieving over her or expending energy trying to cajole her into giving it a try. He simply moved on—and in rare form, apparently.
    She’d known how it would all turn out in the beginning; she’d just let herself be deluded by his exceptional charm, by his beautiful children, and by a lifetime of wishing desperately that there was something other than what she had.
    She came to terms with it in her head. She simply couldn’t accept it in her heart. And that was the trouble, she knew. A few thin weeks in his company and she was already thinking emotionally rather than logically. Jasonhad poisoned her with his brown eyes and his gentle touch.
    By Wednesday evening, her stew of self-recrimination, anger and disappointment had fermented and was bubbling away inside her. All attempts to reason herself out of what she felt had failed. So she was living with it, but not well.
    When she started the warm-up routine and saw Jason come loping through the doors at the last minute to take his place beside Philly with a smiling greeting, her pot of fermenting stew began to boil over.
    It propelled her with more force than complex carbohydrates. She picked the hardest routines, ran them longer and ignored the concerned glances from her students. Jason and Philly leaned against each other in laughing exhaustion during the brief break before she went to the floor work.
    That spurred her on to even more merciless measures, completely oblivious to the strain and pain herself as she again chose the upper body side lifts everyone hated, added more push-ups to an already grueling routine and more reps to the leg lifts that had everyone groaning before they’d even started.
    By cool-down, two students had left, two were lying on their backs on their mats, panting, and the others were only halfhearted in their efforts to follow her.
    Two of the