A Splendid Obsession

by Cathleen Galitz

  Something worth sticking around for.

  “Kay? Kay Anne Aldarmann?” Jason asked, looking as if he were unable to believe his eyes.

  His ability to speak appeared as impaired as his vision.

  “I didn’t…realize you’d be here…. You look…terrific….”

  Kayanne bit down on her tongue to keep from commenting on his appearance.

  And you look so very small and old and frightened that it’s hard not to feel sorry for you.

  Jason cleared his throat. “I understand that you’ve done…quite well for yourself…. I’m happy for you, Kay. Really…I am.”

  She had to fight the urge to look away from the man who had caused her such heartache. Having come this far, however, she saw no reason to dance around the issue any longer.

  “I don’t know exactly how well I’m doing,” she replied. “I’m back living at home, working at a menial job and trying to get my head screwed on straight after all these years.”

  Her old high-school counselor swallowed hard. Looking around to see how many pairs of eyes were watching him, he moved closer, presumably so it would be harder to eavesdrop. When Dave took a menacing step in his direction, he retreated accordingly.

  “I’m sorry,” Jason said.

  His voice cracked. His eyes watered. And Kayanne realized with a start that he truly meant it. His unexpected remorse was balm to old wounds that had never properly healed. She wondered if he had been carrying around his own fair share of guilt for the past decade. In all the times she’d run through this particular scenario in her head, she had never once imagined feeling pity for the man who had abused his position and taken advantage of a confused teenage girl.

  Tonight, however, time, distance and sobriety altered her perspective. Instead of humiliating him by slapping him across the face or curling up in a fetal ball and letting him hurt her for another decade, Kayanne felt an amazing change come over her. It was as if she were watching herself from a distance and wondering why she had ever given such a scared little pip-squeak so much power. How much of her life had she wasted holding the past against the future? Weary of carrying around the heavy burden of resentment, she asked herself what good could possibly come of nursing her bitterness any longer.

  “I forgive you,” she said, feeling surprised to hear those words come out of her mouth.

  Suddenly a strange, tingling sensation shot from her fingertips throughout her whole body as a brilliant light enveloped her. She felt warm all over—weightless and free. Jason continued talking as if completely unaware of the light surrounding them. Looking to Dave for support, Kayanne found him equally unaffected by what she’d once heard called a white-light experience. Dave was glowering at Jason as if considering the pleasure of tearing him limb from limb as the other man tried ineffectually to explain himself in a rush of words.

  Kayanne wondered if she was going crazy.

  “That was such an unhappy time for both of us,” Jason was saying. “You were dealing with Pete’s tragic decision and you came to my office shortly afterwards blaming yourself. You were so beautiful, my wife and I were having marital trouble, and I was young and stupid. I was also worried that you might try something like Pete did.”

  So you slept with me, a high-school senior who wasn’t nearly as sexually experienced as she would have everyone believe?

  Kayanne cut him off. The power of forgiveness was too extraordinary to risk under the weight of misspoken words.

  “There’s no reason to go into it all over again. People make mistakes,” she said simply.

  Standing here all these years later, she was able finally to grasp the truth. The man she had trusted above all others hadn’t intentionally hurt her. In her hour of need, she’d turned to an egotistical, inexperienced counselor for help and mistaken what he’d had to offer for love. Embroiled in his own problems and caught up in trying to comfort her, Jason had discovered an attraction over which he’d had little control. That didn’t mean he hadn’t exercised poor judgment and that his decisions hadn’t hurt her deeply when the community had rallied behind him to cast her as the Jezebel who’d killed their favorite son and had made a married man forsake his vows. It just meant that Kayanne was ready to let go of that painful part of her past and move on. At long last.

  “I wish my wife had been able to see things that way. She filed for divorce shortly after you left,” Jason said, blinking back tears.

  “I’m sorry.”

  Kayanne really was. More for his wife than for him. It couldn’t have been easy for her living under a cloud of doubt and rumor. And it must have also been hard competing with all the needy young girls who put her husband on a pedestal far above the geeky adolescent boys their own age.

  Jason wet his lips. “I don’t suppose there’s any chance that you and I could possibly get together for some—”

  This time it was Dave who cut him off.

  “No,” he said, leaning in so far that the other man had to take a step backward or risk falling over. “She most certainly can’t. Not ever. Not with you.”

  As much as Kayanne resented having anybody speak for her in such a manner, she couldn’t help but be touched by such a gallant, protective move. The fact that Dave had been privy to one of the most revealing and unflattering conversations of her life should by all rights have sent him scurrying for the door. That he was still there by her side ready to do battle for the sake of her tattered reputation was incredibly moving.

  If she wasn’t careful, she might just fall in love with such a hopelessly romantic fool. And that could only spell Disaster with a capital D for them both.

  Dave raised his closed fist from where he had it cocked at his side to emphasize his point. Kayanne put a hand gently on his arm to restrain him.

  “That’s not such a good idea.”

  Although neither man was sure if she was addressing him or the other, Kayanne defused the situation with a soft look.

  “Would you mind dancing with me now?” she asked Dave.

  Without so much as another word, he took her in his arms and swung her onto the dance floor, casting a final dark look over his shoulder at the infamous Mr. DeWinter.

  That sorry son of a bitch!

  Dave didn’t claim to understand all of what had just happened. Only enough to be enraged at the idea of a grown man abusing the trust of his position with a minor. Why Kayanne had taken the brunt of this town’s ill will as a teenager while DeWinter was still a school counselor was beyond Dave. At the very least, the creep should have been fired. Running him out of town on a rail would have been more to Dave’s liking. The man’s audacity sickened him. You would think the little pervert would have been worried about Kayanne’s father killing him.

  Then he remembered. Kayanne had had no father or burly brothers to protect her. The thought of her fending for herself at such a young age caused him to pull her even tighter against his chest. He was glad that the slow song the DJ played lent itself to intimacy. Kayanne felt so good in his arms that it seemed as if she had been special ordered to fit against the hard planes of his body. Strong both physically and emotionally, she didn’t fit the stereotypical anorexic, self-absorbed waif so often associated with supermodels. Yet it was her unexpected vulnerability that caused Dave to wrap himself around her in an effort to protect her from those who seemed to take delight in her troubles.

  He couldn’t believe she’d actually been able to forgive that little slimeball. It wasn’t something Spice would do—and yet another indication that he had sorely misjudged her real-life inspiration. Beneath Kayanne’s initial brashness was a woman of greater depth and character than he’d ever imagined.

  And beneath the fabric of her slinky dress was a body he couldn’t get out of his mind no matter how hard he tried. During waking or sleeping hours.

  Dave’s desire to make the lecherous Mr. DeWinter swallow his teeth like a handful of Chiclets gave way to the overwhelming desire for something more carnal. Beneath a twirling mirrored b
all, he fell headlong into Kayanne’s warm gaze. As green as the first blades of a springtime meadow, her eyes had the power to melt all his defenses.

  “I can’t believe how good you are to me,” she whispered into his ear.

  Smelling like heaven, Kayanne leaned in even closer to make sure Dave heard that ridiculous assertion. With the evidence of his arousal pressed hot against her, he dared not allow her to pull away for fear that everyone else in the room would be aware of his lack of self-control as well. Holding her against him, he swore softly in response to her assessment of his character. The way Kayanne was looking at him as though he were some kind of knight in shining armor made him feel a sham.

  How could he possibly tell her that his armor was tarnished by the fact that he’d agreed to escort her tonight for the sake of getting into her head? And that he was similarly motivated to get into her pants? When she laid her head trustingly against his shoulder, Dave resolved to keep her safe from all men—himself included.

  “I think you’re amazing,” he told her.

  “Thank you,” she said, tilting her head up to look straight into his eyes and hold his soul up to examination. “For being there for me.”

  Something hard stuck sideways in Dave’s throat. He couldn’t imagine that Kayanne could have ever brought herself to confide any of the details of her involvement with Mr. DeWinter in her morally upright mother. Nor could he imagine her being able to keep her mother from hearing embellished versions from interested friends and neighbors. In a community that prided itself on everyone knowing everything about everybody, it would have been impossible to keep such a secret.

  Dave wondered if Kayanne had run off to the big city to avoid facing her mother’s disappointment. Or just to make life easier for Jason DeWinter.

  The unshed tears glistening in her eyes made Dave want to rise above his own selfish desires and become what she foolishly believed him to be. A white-hatted hero. What did it matter that they were as ill-suited as Don Quixote and his beloved Dulcinea?

  Never had Dave had such intense feelings for a woman. Stroking her hair, he reveled in its texture and felt Kayanne soften in his arms. He wondered how long he could continue holding her up with his own boneless limbs.

  Her breath was as sweet against his skin as the fragrance she wore. Dave had been dreaming of Kayanne’s kisses ever since Rose had so rudely interrupted their first one.

  Brushing his lips gently across hers, he heard a murmur of protest die in her throat. His fingers tangled in her hair.

  He touched her lower lip with the tip of his tongue, inviting her full participation. Warm and soft and inviting, her mouth opened expectantly. He felt her tremble in his arms. And heard a moan that echoed his own.

  The music, the people, the surrounding scenery all faded into nothingness. Blinded to everything but the feel and taste and perfection of this woman, he sealed them together in a fusion of heat and longing.

  To embrace fire without self-immolating was something new to a man who, if he were honest with himself, was more than a little intimidated by Kayanne’s wild side—and notorious past. Like many of his colleagues, he sometimes found it difficult to live beyond the pages of his books. And this desire was nothing like he’d ever written before.

  He kissed her long and deep and hard. She kissed him back, holding onto his shoulders, digging in with her nails in a way that brought more pleasure than pain.

  “What do you say we get out of here,” Kayanne suggested in a whisper that was full of promise.

  As chance would have it, at that exact moment, a drunk collided with them, bringing the rest of the world back into sharp focus. In spite of the fact that he’d spilled his drink all over Kayanne’s designer dress, the bleary-eyed man stepped back and assumed the posture of someone expecting an apology.

  “Hey,” he slurred, concentrating on Kayanne’s name badge as if it were fading in and out of focus.

  He took a hiccup step in her direction and squinted at her. When recognition finally dawned on him, he blew enough alcohol in her face to make her draw back in disgust.

  “Hey, buddy,” he said, poking a finger in Dave’s chest. “You’d better be careful. The black widow kills her prey after she mates.”

  Gentle by nature, Dave didn’t know what exactly came over him as he stood looking down on the man’s prone body less than a minute later. His hand hurt where it had scraped against the man’s belt buckle. He couldn’t quite believe that he’d actually hit that jackass, but the evidence lay irrefutably whimpering on the floor in front of him. Usually drunks didn’t have this kind of an effect on him. Tired of all the innuendos, snide remarks and flat-out maliciousness directed at Kayanne over the evening, Dave had struck back the only way he knew how.

  The hurt expression on her face had unleashed a beast in him. As much as Dave hated to admit it, he felt little remorse about driving his fist into the bum’s soft belly and leaving him crumpled in a heap. When the screams around them died down, he donned his best Cary Grant imitation of a good-natured man pushed past his limit. Regarding the assembled crowd staring at him in appalled curiosity, he put forth a question to all of them.

  “Does anyone else have anything nasty to say about my date?”

  Nine

  Seeing how it was a rhetorical question, Kayanne didn’t wait around for an answer to Dave’s inquiry. They remained only long enough to see the drunk on the floor get dragged away by some of his friends and to listen to Mrs. Rawlins’s short speech before making a quiet getaway.

  Once outside and safely tucked into Dave’s car, Kayanne wasn’t sure how she was supposed to feel. Angry that he felt the need to protect her when she was perfectly capable of doing that for herself—as she had been doing for the past ten years? Embarrassed to have been made a spectacle of in front of her old mentor and classmates? Or grateful that a knight in shining armor had stepped forward to defend her questionable honor?

  Mostly Kayanne was confused. Forgiving the man whom she’d been blaming her troubles on for the past decade left a hole in her life she needed to fill with something other than contempt. With the exception of a few notable jerks and one mouthy lush, most of her old classmates had actually been quite warm and complimentary. And the man whom she’d initially seen as the most unlikely romantic interest in her future—her date for the evening—was melting the polar ice field of her heart faster than a Popsicle in a microwave.

  Life was proving far more unpredictable than Kayanne could have ever imagined. Her world was spinning out of control. It felt rather like being drunk. Alcohol chipped away at inhibitions, letting her take chances that she would never make when sober then providing her with a handy excuse for her behavior the next day. Tonight Kayanne was on the verge of taking the biggest risk in her life with her eyes wide open and her senses unimpaired.

  Could there be anything more frightening than falling in love stone-cold sober?

  Her standard approach to dating was to use men before they could use her first. It was a strategy borne out of a painful string of doomed relationships intended to satisfy the libido without engaging the heart. Experience whispered in her ear to take things slowly. She refused to listen.

  Dave and she were both grown-ups who understood the score. They were consenting adults who, for whatever reason, needed to carry this relationship to the next level. What difference did it make that such a step might be their final one? After becoming intimate, Kayanne couldn’t imagine resuming their friendship as it had once been and waving cordially to one another on the street as if nothing had passed between them.

  Dave pulled up in front of his house. He leaned forward and put one hand on the side of her headrest. With the other, he tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. The gentleness of that small gesture sucked the breath out of her lungs.

  “Would you like to come inside?” he asked her.

  Finding her throat too tight to allow words out, Kayanne simply answered with a nod. No shy virgin, she felt out of sorts with her
self for being so nervous. She had been with men before. Innumerable men had sought her out as an elixir for eternal youth. Or a status symbol that put them in an exclusive club of men who had slept with a supermodel. Kayanne herself had considered sex as a weapon ever since Pete Nargas had taught her the foolishness of love in its purest form.

  What she was feeling for Dave was different from anything she’d ever felt before. Neither innocent nor manipulative, it was lust refined with genuine affection. And it was every bit as risky as that first sip of whiskey. Kayanne’s sobriety was based on control, and since what she was feeling at the moment was far out of her control, she had to ask herself if it was possible to date casually and stay sober.

  There was certainly nothing casual about the way her heart beat so wildly against her chest. Nor the roar in her ears caused by the blood thrumming through her veins. Later, she wouldn’t be able to recall Dave opening the car door for her. Or the front door to his house. Or the door to his bedroom for that matter. He didn’t carry her like some naive bride up the walk and over the threshold, but Kayanne couldn’t remember her feet ever touching the ground either.

  The rest of the evening, however, was indelibly etched into her memory.

  Dave didn’t wait to reach the bedroom before making his intentions crystal clear. He didn’t bother asking her if she wanted a cup of coffee or needed to recap the events of the evening. Instead, he simply put his hands around her waist and pulled her to him. It was an act that could have easily been designed to show her just how much bigger and stronger he was than her. Instead it made Kayanne feel incredibly safe. There was no way this man would hurt her. Not physically.