A Splendid Obsession

by Cathleen Galitz

  “Until we meet again then,” Rose said, holding out an arthritic hand to Dave.

  Kayanne noticed how gently he took it in his own, being careful not to squeeze too hard. She almost choked when he lifted it to his lips and placed a kiss upon its leathery surface. She was tempted to ask him to kiss another part of her anatomy as they took their leave but didn’t want to risk upsetting her genteel client with such a vulgar suggestion.

  “Would you like any help in getting Rose home?” Dave asked.

  “I can handle things from here by myself,” Kayanne told him curtly.

  The thought of anyone thinking otherwise was intolerable.

  “But thank you for offering,” she added as an afterthought. “And for everything else.”

  Such as being so sweet to Rose and so understanding of her own plight. For making her feel pretty instead of dirty for a change. And mostly for just playing along and making a difficult situation more tolerable.

  “I mean it about stopping back by again sometime,” Dave said. “Don’t worry about interrupting my writing. The truth is that I’d be eternally grateful for the diversion.”

  Having been considered a diversion more than once in the past, Kayanne just smiled and put him off as politely as possible. “We’ll see.”

  The likelihood of their paths ever crossing again was slight. Still, she appreciated the invitation more than he would ever know. She couldn’t remember a time when a man had made her feel so welcome without expecting something in return.

  “Let me see you two ladies to the gate,” Dave said, coming around from behind his chair to help Rose up and make sure she didn’t fall down the steps.

  Delighted with the simple courtesy, she took his arm and gushed all the way to the sidewalk. It was easy to see why Rose was so enamored. In fact, they barely stepped off out of hearing distance before the older woman proved there is no age at which one is safely exempt from the green-eyed monster.

  “Why don’t you just mind your own business?” she hissed, yanking her elbow out of Kayanne’s helping hand.

  While she wasn’t exactly expecting overwhelming gratitude for her efforts in locating Mrs. Johansson and returning her safely to her room, Kayanne didn’t think she’d be attacked for it either. So much for harboring any fantasies about Rose becoming the kindly grandmother she’d never had.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “If you must know, I’m in love with Professor Evans,” she said coyly. “So consider yourself warned, girlie—keep your hands off of him!”

  Kayanne tried not to laugh. Rose’s crush was sweet, in a pathetic sort of way, and she saw no reason to point out the obvious difference in their ages. Any more than she needed anyone to call attention to the difference between Dave Evans’s and her own background, education and standing in the community.

  “Don’t worry,” she assured her aged companion. “He’s not my type.”

  Rose looked surprised.

  “Why the hell not?” she demanded, shattering any remaining stereotypes Kayanne might have had about doddering old ladies. “He’s good-looking, smart and damned polite considering how rude you were back there.”

  Kayanne hoped swearing with impunity was a right one earned with age. At least that would be one thing to look forward to in the future. Why she felt the need to explain herself to a geriatric fugitive was beyond her, but she saw no need to gloss over the truth either.

  “I generally go for the rebel type. Fixer-uppers, my mother likes to call them. Personally, I just feel that there’s less chance of hurt feelings when the time comes to go our separate ways if both of us are irreparably flawed.”

  Rose shook her gray head in dismay. “What about your feelings, sweet pea? And don’t try and tell me you don’t have any.”

  “My feelings are off-limits.”

  Rose stopped shuffling her feet.

  “Not if you want to get back to the Manor anytime soon they’re not.”

  Kayanne forced herself to take a deep, calming breath. She could scarcely explain to herself let alone to Rose that Dave Evans appeared to be a real gentleman and, as such, was the exact opposite of the kind of man she used to date—before realizing that her sobriety hinged on remaining single.

  “Let’s just say he scares me.”

  It wasn’t an easy admission for a woman who worked so very hard to appear fearless at all times.

  “Or maybe it’s just the stifling stability he represents that scares me,” she clarified, sorting her feelings out loud.

  A stickler for honesty, Kayanne hoped she wasn’t lying to herself. For while that statement had rung true in the past, lately dreams of domesticity crept into her thoughts at the oddest times. She assumed it had more to do with her self-imposed celibacy and a desire to carve out a more normal life for herself than the ticking of her biological clock.

  “No need to be afraid of a good man,” Rose informed her with an unladylike snort. “Unless, of course, he’s mine.”

  Kayanne bit her lip to keep from grinning. As a recovering alcoholic and a has-been model with a reputation as long as Sheridan’s Main Street, she stood as much of a chance of hooking up with the handsome would-be Pulitzer prize winner as Rose herself did. Now that the crisis of the moment was behind her, Kayanne took a minute to consider Rose’s perspective as they began their slow journey across the street. She had to admit that Dave wasn’t hard to look at. And the fact that his charm extended across generations and beyond the bounds of barroom pickup lines said something about his character as well.

  He was exactly the sort of man her mother was attempting to pray into the life of an unruly daughter whose homecoming was as much an act of penance for past sins as it was a matter of necessity. Kayanne shuddered at the thought of being attracted to a man her mother actually approved of: stable, sober and undeniably nice. One could almost attach the smell of sugar cookies and wholesome goodness to him.

  She imagined Professor Evans’s classes would soon be overflowing with eager women far more interested in their instructor than anything he might assign them to read in the textbook. With his good looks and easygoing personality, she doubted he’d be lonely long.

  Kayanne directed Rose to the back door of the retirement center, hoping to slip her in without attracting undue attention. She didn’t have the heart to set the old lady straight regarding matters of propriety. What was the harm in harboring a little romantic fantasy at her age? Just because Kayanne had decided to shelve her romantic dreams didn’t mean everybody else had to.

  It was too bad Dave Evans was the sort of man who could make a woman regret her decision to take herself off the market.

  Permanently.

  Two

  Dave Evans stopped typing only when it grew too dark to see the keyboard. As the sun dipped behind the Big Horn Mountains and bid him good evening, he stretched out his lean frame, put both hands behind his head and let out a satisfied sigh. He didn’t know what to make of the redheaded Amazon who had strode into his yard earlier in the day, but he was grateful to her nonetheless. After weeks of wrestling with writer’s block, he’d finally produced something other than tortured prose destined to fill the garbage can.

  He didn’t dare call this intruder by her real name. Even if their paths never crossed again, Kayanne was far too unusual a name to slip unobtrusively between the covers of a book. The woman who’d trespassed onto his property and into his novel had the same unnerving effect upon his usually aloof hero as she had upon him. Just the memory of those catlike eyes, lithe body and sassy attitude ignited a fire deep in his belly. Although no stranger to physical attraction, Dave couldn’t remember ever being broadsided by such overt sensuality as hers before.

  Since Kayanne’s handshake alone transmitted enough voltage to electrocute a mortal man and she was already threatening to burn up the pages of his previously stalled novel, he could only imagine what she could do in real life between the sheets of his bed….

  He reprimanded himself for
allowing his thoughts to travel down that shameless avenue. Was this woman so intriguing simply because she was a complete enigma or just because he was feeling alone as a newcomer to the community?

  From her unusual name to the defiance that had defined her grasp, Kayanne was unlike anyone else he’d ever encountered. He was fascinated by the challenge flashing in a pair of eyes the color of jade.

  Jaded eyes.

  Dave suspected those eyes had seen a good deal more of the world than any of the characters he’d invented with their complicated, contrived pasts. Hell, there was more vibrancy in a simple toss of Kayanne’s unruly mane than in any of the words he’d so painstakingly fashioned for the cool, blond heroine of his imagination who, as of yet, had failed to dominate either his hero or his novel. His writing was seamless enough in structure to earn him a master’s degree, but lately it felt as separated from the nitty-gritty of reality as the ivory towers of academia that defined both his literary style and his life.

  That wasn’t to say that he hadn’t experienced any success as a writer. Reviews of his first novel, Bitter Fruits, had heralded him as the next William Faulkner. Unfortunately, he’d never been particularly fond of Faulkner. Nor had the fact that the book had won some literary awards translated into a huge advance for his next novel. Commercial success and literary success were not always one and the same. That reality lay as heavy on his chest as the impending deadline that was kicking his butt. Lately he hadn’t been able to produce much of anything except writer’s angst, and that didn’t translate well to the page.

  Dave worried that his parents were right about it being time to give up on his dream of being a full-time writer and academic. John and Eula Evans couldn’t understand why their only son would choose to spend his life knocking his brains out over a keyboard in the wilds of Wyoming when he could just as easily take over the family business from the comfort of their Birmingham estate.

  Frankly he couldn’t understand it himself.

  All he knew was that there was a monster inside him that had to be fed a certain number of words every day or it would eat him instead. He was hoping that the obscurity of this remote mountain town would allow him to prove himself on his own terms—and to break through the writer’s block that had him so stymied. Simply introducing Kayanne as a minor character took his story in a fresh, new direction and breathed life into words that, up until now, had felt as dry as dust blowing across the vast Wyoming prairie. Dave dubbed his new character Spice, hoping no one would draw the connection between fact and fiction.

  At the moment, he was more concerned about not letting this headstrong character take over his whole book. In the span of a couple of pages she was already making moves to push his delicate heroine all the way back to her Tara-like roots. After all the time he’d taken to develop Jasmine as a woman of substance, he wasn’t about to let her go so easily into the night—even if the outspoken Spice was of the opinion that she was little more than a simpering fool. Spice might not be the nicest character he’d worked with, but the woman knew her own mind.

  And took great delight in playing with his.

  Later that night when Dave crawled between the sheets of his bed, he was startled by the fact that it was not his blue-eyed blond creation that played havoc behind his closed eyelids, but rather a long-legged, green-eyed beastess who left him hard and needy in his dreams.

  The following morning, he took a break from his chapter to stock up on gingersnaps at the corner grocery store. Since he’d bought them expressly for Rose and her keeper, he was disappointed when they failed to show up later that day.

  Or the day after that.

  Or after that.

  And when his writing once again turned as stale as the cookies hardening into doorstops atop his kitchen counter, he was tempted to check into the retirement center next door to see if anything untoward had happened to the charming Mrs. Johansson—and her companion who had been acting as his unwitting writing muse.

  Instead, he decided to do what Hemingway so often had done when feeling short on inspiration: he went back to the corner store and bought some whiskey to go with his fresh batch of gingersnaps.

  Kayanne could feel the beginning of a migraine coming on. A mild twitching behind her right eye was working itself into a full-blown throb as she filled out yet another required piece of bureaucratic paperwork and counted the minutes until her shift would be over. Because they were so shorthanded at the center, she hadn’t had a day off since her first day of working there. Between taking care of her ailing mother at home, adjusting to a new and decidedly unglamorous job, and fighting her craving for alcohol, she was feeling as brittle as a wishbone.

  And just as likely to snap in two.

  The last few days had been among the most trying of her life. Petulant photographers, vying divas and grueling hours under the most arduous of conditions were nothing compared to being treated like a recalcitrant teenager by her mother again.

  Like a leper by old acquaintances.

  And a sexual threat by a card-carrying member of AARP.

  In between her mother’s wheedling that she should find a good man with whom to settle down, her boss’s lecherous perusal and overt disdain for their clients, and Rose’s determination to get her fired, Kayanne found herself longing to wash away the indignities of life the old-fashioned way: with a bottle of tequila and shaker of salt.

  It took an act of sheer willpower and commitment to the original twelve-step program to steer her past the nearest liquor store and into an AA meeting instead. Once a day she sought solace in the success stories of those who had been through it themselves—fellow drunks who neither stooped to condone excuses nor looked down upon her in judgment. Her sponsor, Bethany Moore, assured Kayanne that her present job at the Evening Star Retirement Manor was all part of a universal plan to assist in her recovery. Bethany believed that simple labor devoted to the good of others was exactly what an ex-model celebrity needed to learn proper humility. For her own part, Kayanne chalked it all up as karmic payback for her previous bad behavior.

  Still, the day she’d received her six-month sobriety token, Kayanne had found the applause in that dingy, smoke-filled room warmer and far more genuine than the echoes of any star-studded event of her past.

  Outside the four walls that bound her fellow AA members in blissful anonymity, life continued to present more challenges. Since her first successful break out, Rose Johansson was outdoing herself daily to repeat the feat. Tuesday she’d coerced a friend into calling the front desk with an elaborate story about scam artists targeting old-folks homes in hopes of distracting Kayanne long enough to slip out the front door unnoticed. Wednesday Rose had tried creeping unobtrusively behind a pile of laundry that had been leaving the building. When confronted, she had feigned confusion as convincingly as any legitimate Alzheimer’s patient. But the next day when Kayanne had caught Rose climbing onto a chair placed strategically beneath her bedroom window, she’d dropped the innocent act and had proceeded to call her “warden” every name in the book.

  It wasn’t the kind of book Kayanne expected an old lady to check out of the library, either….

  Claiming that an unruly five-year-old had nothing on Mrs. Johansson, J.R. had threatened to handcuff her to the bed if she kept up her shenanigans. Kayanne wasn’t sure if her supervisor was joking or not. He didn’t so much as bother to hide his contempt for the residents from anyone but visitors and potential clients. J.R. treated the elderly men and women who had raised families, owned businesses and fought in wars as though they were uncooperative children incapable of making even the simplest decision by themselves. His lack of people skills was partially responsible for the high turnover of staff at the Manor. The rest could be blamed on the atmosphere of impending death that permeated the place.

  Despite her own reputation as a cold-hearted bitch, Kayanne couldn’t bring herself to feel such detachment for the clients with whom she worked. Personally, she found them a good deal more interesting t
han J.R., who was apt to point out what a good catch he was whenever the opportunity presented itself. He was a man laboring under the delusion that his supervisory position more than made up for his lack of height and personality.

  The way he looked at Kayanne made her skin crawl, but she did her best to shrug it off with a world-weariness that had yet to stoop her shoulders. If that little maggot thought he was going to use his influence to worm anything more than a cordial greeting from her, he would have to stand in line behind a long queue of men mistaken in their belief that they could use sex as a weapon against her.

  Kayanne found herself absently wondering if Dave Evans was of the same ilk. Even though they’d only exchanged a few words in an awkward situation, he’d nonetheless made an impression on her. He’d been so sweet to Rose before Kayanne had put in an appearance that it was hard to think he’d have any ulterior motives along those lines. Of course, just because he was kind to old ladies didn’t mean he was any different from J.R. in the way he treated younger ones. But as Rose was apt to point out, Dave certainly was easier on the eyes. And there was something about the man’s quick smile that worked away at a girl’s heart—even one as well protected as Kayanne’s.

  “Code ninety-nine.”

  A male voice over the intercom crackled with irritation. Code ninety-nine was the administration’s secret way of informing workers that a resident was missing. While it didn’t inspire the level of panic that such an announcement would have on Kayanne’s first day at work, it was nonetheless the perfect culmination of a lousy week. She rubbed her temples. One didn’t have to contact a psychic to figure out who was AWOL again.

  Or where she was headed.

  Dave couldn’t have been more delighted when Rose dropped by looking as if she were dressed for a high tea than if the Queen of England had just announced her presence on his front stoop. Instead of the loose-fitting housedress that she’d worn the last time they’d met, today she was sporting a beige polyester pantsuit with a bright bow tied jauntily at her throat. Freshly set and colored, her hair was the same tint as the cotton candy he’d loved as a boy whenever the carnival had come to town.