Kate's Vow (Vows)

by Sherryl Woods

  Unfortunately, given his behavior not ten minutes earlier, effectively telling her to mind her own business, he doubted she was going to be too anxious to accommodate this sudden need he had to hold her in his arms again.

  When Kate emerged from the pool house, he fully expected her to mumble a polite goodbye and take off. Instead, she strolled over as if nothing, nothing, had gone on between them. She poured herself a glass of orange juice and sat down opposite him as if she’d just dropped in to chat about the weather. Puzzled, he waited for the verbal knife to be unsheathed and aimed at his belly. He watched her uneasily.

  “Expecting Davey soon?” she asked.

  “Any minute now.”

  “Good.”

  “You going to stick around?”

  “If you don’t mind.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t mind.” What he minded was this sudden, cool inanity, but he couldn’t think of a blasted way to end it. Actually, he could think of one way. He could finish the conversation she had tried to start inside. Given that alternative, he opted for silence and watched as Kate slipped farther and farther away, lost in her own thoughts.

  He glanced up and saw Mrs. Larsen bustling toward them. If she had any clue about what he and Kate had been up to, it didn’t show in her stoic expression.

  “I thought I’d clean up these dishes if you’re finished,” she said. “Need to get things done around here if Davey’s going to have those boys over tonight.”

  He glanced at Kate. “I don’t need anything else. How about you?”

  “Nope,” she said, giving Mrs. Larsen a smile. “Thank you, though. It was a lovely breakfast.”

  The housekeeper nodded. “You staying for lunch?”

  “I would like to see Davey,” Kate said, glancing at David.

  Which caught him between a rock and a hard place. He wanted her out of here so he could get his equilibrium back, maybe even figure out what the hell she was up to now. At the same time he wanted her to stay, so these thrilling new off-balance sensations would last. “By all means, stay,” he said. “Davey would be furious if I let you get away before he sees you.”

  If Mrs. Larsen sensed the undercurrents, she ignored them. “I’ll be fixing something around one o’clock, if that’s okay.”

  “Something simple,” David said. “I know you’re baking all those cookies for tonight.”

  “Yes, sir,” she said and lumbered off with the tray of breakfast dishes.

  “So, what’s happening tonight?” Kate inquired.

  “Davey’s having a sleepover. Eight of his friends are coming. I’ve given Mrs. Larsen the night off. Otherwise, I’m afraid she’d quit.”

  Kate’s expression turned wistful. “I think it sounds like fun.”

  David regarded her skeptically. “Fun?”

  “Sure. Ghost stories. Games. Lots of cookies.”

  “Don’t forget the pizza.”

  “Pizza and cookies,” she said, nodding approvingly. “Every kid’s dream menu.”

  “You know,” he said slyly, “if you play your cards right, you could wind up as a chaperon.”

  Instead of backing down instantly as he’d anticipated, she hesitated. Then, slowly, she beamed, as if the whole idea genuinely appealed to her. “You wouldn’t mind?”

  “Mind?” he said, refusing to examine the consequences of having this woman in his home overnight…in a guest room. “I’d welcome the prospect of adult conversation.”

  “Not from me. I intend to tell ghost stories, too.” She looked uncertain. “Do you think Davey will object?”

  “To your being here or to your sitting in on the ghost stories?”

  “Either one.”

  “I think he’ll be ecstatic to have you around. As for the ghost stories, it depends on whether you know any really scary ones.”

  “I think that between now and tonight, I ought to be able to dream up one that’ll have them all hiding under the beds. What about you?”

  “Forget the ghost stories. I was thinking of spending the entire evening under the bed with earplugs.”

  “No. No. No,” she said, her eyes unexpectedly alight with laughter. “You have to get into the spirit of this.”

  “Just how many sleepovers have you hosted in your time?”

  “Only one, for my youngest niece. It was for her thirteenth birthday. It wasn’t any fun,” she said with obvious disgust. “All they wanted to do was practice using makeup and styling each other’s hair.”

  Startled by her genuine indignation, David suddenly found himself laughing with her, letting the tension finally ease away. “Oh, Kate, you really are something.”

  “I trust you’ll remember that the next time I irritate you,” she said.

  “Do you intend to irritate me often?”

  For an instant, she looked nonplussed, a little sad. “No.” She stood up suddenly. “If I’m going to spend the night, I’d better go home and change and pick up a few odds and ends.”

  “I thought you were staying for lunch.”

  “I’ll try to get back, but if I don’t make it, tell Davey I’ll be here tonight.”

  Suddenly David didn’t want to be left alone with his thoughts. “Why don’t I drive you? I can pick up the soft drinks for tonight.”

  She hesitated, then nodded finally. “Sure.”

  On the way through the house, he stopped to tell Mrs. Larsen they were going out. “Anything else you think we need for tonight?” he asked her.

  “Extra toothbrushes,” the housekeeper suggested. “Kids never remember their toothbrushes.”

  The instant they were outside, Kate met his gaze. “Don’t you dare buy extra toothbrushes. Half the fun of staying out overnight is not having to do all those things your parents are always insisting you do. Nobody’s teeth will rot between tonight and when they go home tomorrow.”

  He grinned back at her. “Does that mean if you and I stay out overnight one of these days, you’ll want to break all kinds of rules?”

  “Oh, I think we’ve already broken about as many rules as we’re going to,” she said quietly.

  Something in her voice stunned David into silence. She sounded as if she’d looked into the future and no longer saw them together. The very thought of losing her sent a chill through him.

  * * *

  The din from the family room echoed through the entire house. Kate slapped a throw pillow to either ear and went in search of David.

  “Whose idea was this?” she demanded loudly when she found him.

  “What?” he shouted back.

  His voice barely topped the sound of some musical group that relied heavily on bass. Kate could feel the whole house vibrating. She stepped close and plucked the earplug from his ear.

  “I asked whose idea this was.”

  “Yours, I think,” he said. “You wanted my son and me to get closer. I think you wanted to be nearby to observe the bonding.”

  “If this is bonding, it’s not all it’s cracked up to be,” she grumbled. “They don’t even know we’re here.”

  “I’m sorry about the ghost stories,” he said sympathetically. “I know you were really counting on telling them.”

  Kate grimaced. When she had suggested telling ghost stories, nine boys had stared at her uncomprehendingly. Davey had informed her privately in an undertone that that was baby stuff. “I guess I caught them two or three years too late.”

  “You could tell me one,” David suggested. “Or I could tell you about the next Stephen King picture. It’s a guaranteed spine tingler.”

  Kate shrugged. “It wouldn’t be the same. Is there any pizza left?”

  “Are you kidding? That went ten minutes after the delivery man dropped it off. Too bad they don’t give you a discount if you can eat it faster than they can deliver it.” He held out a hand. “Come with me, though. Mrs. Larsen left a secret stash of roast beef sandwiches for us.”

  Kate sighed. “Wonderful.”

  He poured them both mineral water an
d put the plate of sandwiches on the kitchen table. Kate watched the fleeting look of dismay that crossed his face and wondered if he was thinking again that this was something he should have been sharing with Alicia. When he sat down across from her, though, his gaze was free of whatever had been troubling him.

  She, however, couldn’t shake that bleak mood so easily. It reminded her once more that the memory of tonight was all she would have left soon. She had to force David and Davey to face their grief and when she did, David wouldn’t thank her for it. Maybe someday, but certainly not now. And yet she had no choice. David would be living only half a life as long as a part of himself remained buried with Alicia.

  So she would have this one night of feeling as if they were a family and in the morning she would do what had to be done and then she would move on and try to put her own life in order. Alone, as usual. She had to blink hard against the sting of tears.

  She looked at David and forced a smile. “Davey’s having the time of his life,” Kate said, determined to put on a brave front so that he would never know how much it hurt her to know that even when they were most intimate Alicia had come between them, would always be there between David and any woman, unless she found a way to free him. “Is this the first time he’s ever had a sleepover?”

  “Yeah. I must say I wasn’t sure what to expect,” he confessed. “When I was a kid, I occasionally had a friend over, but never a whole gang like this.”

  “But I imagine living in a college dorm is a similar experience,” Kate said.

  “Maybe. I didn’t live in a dormitory. I lived at home.”

  “Me, too,” Kate said wistfully. “I wanted to go to a really good law school and that meant going to one within commuting distance. I couldn’t have afforded to go away to one of the Ivy League schools.”

  “Did you feel you missed out on a lot by living off campus?” David asked.

  She nodded. “The social things, yes. I don’t suppose it really mattered, though. I met Ryan my sophomore year, and that was that.”

  “Do you suppose you fell into a pattern with him because you didn’t have an opportunity to meet a lot of other students socially?”

  Kate considered the question thoughtfully. “You may be right. We met in the library. Just a couple of studious loners, I guess.”

  “And here you are with me, another loner.”

  “A loner, maybe,” she said. “But not a misfit. I think that was Ryan’s problem. He prided himself on being a social outcast. Trying to live a normal life with someone like that creates a real strain. I think I was beginning to resent that even before he walked out.”

  “Maybe he anticipated that you were getting ready to cut him loose and wanted to beat you to it. The palimony business was his way of making you notice he was going.”

  “A last bid for attention?” she said, surprised by his perceptiveness. “Could have been, I suppose.” She met David’s gaze. “It doesn’t seem to matter anymore.”

  It was ironic, she supposed, that this had been his gift to her. After all this time she had finally left the past behind. She was no longer afraid to love again.

  And now she had to let go of the man who’d made that happen.

  * * *

  Kate awoke in the guest room the next morning with sunlight streaming through a window and a ten-year-old asleep beside her. As soon as she rolled over, Davey’s eyes blinked wide and a grin spread across his face.

  “Hi, Kate.”

  “Hey, sleepyhead, what’re you doing in here?”

  “I came in to check on you after everybody left this morning. You were still asleep. I guess I was pretty sleepy, too, so I lay down.” He regarded her uncertainly. “Was that okay?”

  “Absolutely,” she said, thinking of how wonderful it felt to have this child trust her so completely, to have him take her into his heart the way he had. This was yet another of those moments she would hold close through the years. A child’s love was so simple and straightforward. It was only between grown-ups that the emotion got complicated.

  Suddenly the rest of Davey’s explanation struck her. “You said everyone’s gone?”

  “Yeah, a while ago.”

  “What time is it?” she asked, reaching for her watch.

  “Probably eleven o’clock,” Davey guessed.

  “Closer to noon,” Kate said with a groan. She hadn’t slept this late in years. “Is your dad up?”

  “I don’t think so. He looked pretty beat when he finally went to bed.”

  “Indeed he did,” Kate agreed, thinking of his half-asleep kiss at the guest room door sometime after four this morning. He’d missed her lips. The kiss had landed in the vicinity of her nose. “Well, since Mrs. Larsen isn’t here, suppose you and I go clean up and fix breakfast.”

  “The guys helped to clean up,” Davey said, bounding out of bed. He frowned. “I think we probably need to vacuum, though. Mrs. Larsen will have a heart attack if she finds popcorn stuck under all the cushions.”

  “To say nothing of pepperoni and cookie crumbs.”

  He grinned. “Yeah, that, too.”

  Actually, the boys had at least put the furniture back into upright positions and replaced most of the cushions. They’d even lugged the trash into the kitchen. Three garbage bags full.

  “Not so bad,” Kate observed, bending down to retrieve the green pepper she’d almost squished into the carpet. “Where’s the vacuum?”

  “I’ll get it,” Davey said, dashing off and returning with it a few minutes later.

  “Okay, I’ll run this, if you’ll get a rag and dust. You go first so that all the crumbs are on the floor when I start.”

  While Davey got the cleanup started, she made a pot of coffee and fought against the feelings of belonging that kept sneaking up on her. It was almost impossible to resist the magical allure of believing that this was her house, that Davey was her child and that the man still asleep upstairs was hers, as well.

  But that couldn’t be, she reminded herself. Not until the past was well and truly buried. And after she said what she had to say this morning to make that happen, David might never forgive her.

  She refused to let anticipation of the confrontation to come ruin these last precious moments, though. She was humming as she ran the vacuum from room to room with Davey darting ahead of her, turning it into a game, making her laugh.

  Suddenly she looked up and spotted David standing in an archway, his jeans riding low on his hips, his chambray shirt hanging loose. His cheeks were stubbled with the beginnings of a beard. His hair was mussed. It was a sexy, masculine look that had her whole body crying to march back into his room and tumble into bed with him.

  “Good Lord, what’s all this racket?” he murmured in a husky, sleepy voice that teased her senses.

  “It’s the morning after,” she told him.

  “After what?” he grumbled. “Did somebody set off a bomb in here? You’ve been making that infernal racket for hours now.”

  “Just trying to live up to Mrs. Larsen’s high standards,” she said, pushing the vacuum into one last corner. She beamed at him as she switched it off. “All done now.”

  “Thank God.”

  “You don’t do well in the morning, do you?”

  “I do wonderfully well when morning comes after a night of sleep. This morning came after sleep deprivation that could have been used to elicit military secrets from the enemy.”

  “Well, pull yourself together, buddy. I am about to make some of my world-famous pancakes.”

  “World famous, huh?”

  “They would be, if this weren’t a secret recipe. Now move it.”

  He mumbled something about twisted personalities as he stumbled back toward the master suite. Davey peeked around a doorway. He grinned. “He’s always cranky before he has his coffee.”

  “Then by all means take him some coffee,” she suggested. “I just made a fresh pot.”

  While Davey did that, Kate fixed breakfast. She found silverware
and napkins and, when Davey returned, sent them outside with him. “Fork on the left, knife and spoon on the right,” she reminded him as he dashed off.

  David reappeared just as she was about to pour the pancake batter onto the sizzling hot griddle. He smelled of soap and some sort of minty mouthwash. No after-shave. Just the pure masculine scent of a man who’d freshly showered. She decided that all those manufacturers of sexy shaving lotions were wasting their time. There was nothing more alluring than this.

  He propped himself against the counter and observed her in a way that was thoroughly disconcerting. “Don’t mind me,” he said when she stood there with a spoon in one hand, poised over the bowl of batter.

  That was like asking the tides to ignore the moon, she thought grumpily, but she ladled the batter onto the griddle and listened to the satisfying sizzle. “If you’re going to stick around in here, grab that plate,” she said, flipping the golden pancakes over and fighting an unexpected urge to cry. How was she going to walk away from this? The temptation to try to hold on tight, to compromise and accept just a small part of David’s heart, was almost too great.

  When David had the plate in hand, she scooped up the first batch of pancakes. He took them and started for the door.

  “Hey, where do you think you’re going?”

  “I’ve got mine. I’m going to eat.”

  “Oh, no, you don’t. Come back here. That plate’s for all of them.”

  “But these’ll get cold.”

  “Not if I keep adding warm ones on top. Now stand still. Here’s another batch.”

  She flipped at least a dozen onto the plate before she shooed him out of the kitchen. “Share those with your son.”

  He leaned down and dropped a kiss on the end of her nose. “You look cute all dusted with flour.”

  Kate groaned and rubbed at the offending flour as he walked out the door. She turned one last batch of pancakes onto another plate and followed.

  All during breakfast, she couldn’t keep her glance from straying first to David, then to the pool, and then to the master bedroom just beyond. He seemed to be studiously avoiding exactly the same kind of survey. Occasionally their gazes caught and Kate felt an embarrassed flush creep over her.