by Loree Lough
He knew the answer to his next question even before he asked it. “Installed windows. Yourself?”
Her expression said, Well, sure. Doesn’t everybody?
If he hadn’t made that promise to himself to keep a safe distance from her, Adam would have given her a hug—maybe more than just a hug—while trying to convince her that not everybody installs their own windows. Especially not pretty, petite girls.
“Once I’d put down a new floor and painted the walls, I had myself a right nice little place to do business.” She gave a nod. “Now getting the business, that was the hard part. At least, at first.”
She sat forward to take another sip of tea, a length of cinnamon hair falling over one shoulder when she did. She flipped it back, exposing the delicate creamy-white skin of her inner wrist, and dangly silver earrings.
He had a new word to describe her now: Stunning.
Adam shook his head. Snap out of it, man. He couldn’t deny how much he liked Kasey. Couldn’t deny how much he disliked what he was beginning to feel for her, either.
Which is what? he wondered.
He was attracted to her, to be sure. And what man wouldn’t be captivated by a gorgeous, green-eyed redhead with a knockout figure and the voice of an angel?
But there was more to it than that. So much more.
Somehow, being with Kasey these few hours had forced him to admit he didn’t like his solitary lifestyle. She hadn’t done it with smoke and mirrors. Hadn’t done it with feminine wiles. Rather, she’d made him see how much he yearned for love and companionship, simply by being, well, by being Kasey.
During the past fifteen years, he’d probably looked at her picture a thousand times. Each time he’d seen that sweet, innocent face looking back at him, Adam had prayed she’d stay that way, forever. He’d likely said a thousand prayers for her, too; he may never know if all the heavenly requests made on her behalf had been met, but he could see, looking at her now, that that prayer, thankfully, had been answered.
Better get a grip, Thorne, he reminded himself. He’d had no way of knowing it at the time, but when he made the choice to go along with Buddy’s prank all those years ago, he chose his destiny. His cowardice had been one of the reasons she’d lost her dad, and his throwing a little money at her family once a month hadn’t changed that.
He chalked up what he’d begun to feel for Kasey to guilt. Had to be some kind of cockeyed contrition, right, because what else could it be? They’d only known each other for a few hours.
Several times over the years, he’d considered digging deeper, finding out more about Kasey and her mom. But nothing he might have learned could replace Al Delaney, so why try? Protectiveness had spawned that idea—was it also responsible for what he’d been feeling since he opened the door, saw her standing there, drenched and dripping and shaking like the last autumn leaf? Had he confused protectiveness for something deeper?
“How’s your tea?” she asked, interrupting his thoughts.
Mechanically, he picked up the cup, took a sip. By now, it was cooler than he liked it. Fact was, he preferred coffee to tea, but he didn’t say so. “It’s good.”
“Sweet enough?”
On the rare occasions when he did drink tea, he used no sugar at all. But he’d have eaten the stuff raw, right off the spoon, if she’d asked him to. “It’s perfect. Thanks.”
Then, more to get his mind off his roller-coaster emotions than for any other reason, he asked, “So how’d you get your first job?”
“Well…” She tucked stockinged feet under her. “A friend was getting married, and she had no money for a bouquet—for floral arrangements of any kind, for that matter. My dad always said I had a green thumb, that I was pretty good at arranging flowers from Mom’s garden….”
Her smile went from friendly to whimsical, telling Adam that one memory had conjured another. I miss him still, said the mellow look in her eyes.
She sat up straighter, cleared her throat. “Anyway, Claire ended up getting ten wedding gifts from me—” One finger at a time popped from her closed fists as she counted: “The bride’s bouquet, one for her maid of honor, the groom and best man’s boutonnieres, mother of the bride and groom corsages, and vases for the front of the church.”
Adam nodded. “Let me guess…and all the nice ladies who attended the wedding saw your pretty flowers, and when their daughters got married…”
Kasey clapped her hands together. “Exactly! Word of mouth was all it took. Before I knew it, I had more orders than I could handle.”
“Good news travels fast.”
“Then I got smart.”
He blinked. “Smart, how?”
“My dad used to say ‘why work hard when you can work smart?’ I didn’t figure out what he meant until I’d been in business a year or so.” Staring straight ahead, she lowered her voice, as if what she was about to say was a state secret: “He died when I was just twelve, and he had a lot of ‘sayings,’ so there was a lot to figure out.” Facing him again, she continued in her normal tone of voice. “Anyway, I finally realized I could make more money, a lot more money, if my arrangements were b-i-g.”
Scratching his head, Adam said, “I’m following you…I think.”
“Well, at first, all my clients were individuals. They wanted flowers for weddings, to decorate their homes and vacation properties. Small arrangements, you know? I was barely covering my overhead costs.”
Eyes wide, she clasped her hands under her chin and whispered, “And then I saw a huge urn of flowers at one of those offbeat art galleries downtown. It hit me like that!” She snapped her fingers. “What I needed was a whole new kind of customer. Businesspeople instead of…regular people.”
“So that’s where the shopping malls and department stores came in,” Adam said.
“And financial institutions, and legal firms…any company that wants to set a certain atmosphere for their customers and clients.”
Adam added smart and savvy to his quickly growing list of reasons to like Kasey Delaney. “You’ve accomplished quite a lot in your twenty-six, er, almost twenty-seven years.” Imagine what she could have become…if she’d had a father to nurture and guide her, he tacked on.
“It hasn’t been all that much, really.”
Even in the dim lamplight, he could see that she was blushing. He didn’t understand why she’d feel self-conscious about all she’d accomplished, and said so.
Her voice was soft and sad when she repeated, “It just…hasn’t been much.”
Adam wanted to know more, so much more, about this lovely, talented young woman. Wanted to know what put the sadness in her voice, dimmed the light in her eyes. He’d always made his monetary deliveries in the dead of night, so had no way of knowing if she’d taken a husband, if she had children. Might she be available…?
He’d stayed on the fringes of her life, quite by choice. Every month, like clockwork, he dropped a cash-filled envelope into the mailbox of the house where she’d grown up. He hadn’t felt right about poking his nose into other areas of the Delaneys’ lives. But now, hearing that a home of her own and a successful business didn’t seem like much of an achievement to Kasey, he couldn’t help but wonder what her dreams and goals had been.
His goal hadn’t changed in fifteen years: Fill in for Al Delaney in the only way he knew how…with money.
“I’m going to warm up my tea,” she said. “Care for a refill?”
He shook his head. “You said you lost your dad when you were twelve?”
She nodded over her shoulder, and he winced inwardly as a wary expression darkened her pretty features. What did she know? he wondered. Had the look been prompted by something she suspected…about him?
He thought of that old saying— Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you—and wondered again if her visit here had been happenstance…
…or part of a plan.
And speaking of plans…
“Your father must have planne
d well for you and your mom.”
Brow furrowed, she gave him a sidelong glance. “Planned well?”
“Well, you seem to have done pretty well for yourself. House that’s free and clear of bank attachments, a successful business… Did you go to college, Kasey?”
“Sure did. Graduated the University of Maryland with a BS in business administration.”
“Well, it’s not as expensive as Harvard, but the tuition sure ain’t free.”
Her frown deepened. “True.” Kasey perched on the arm of the sofa, wrapped both hands around her mug. “My tuition wasn’t paid with funds from my dad’s estate, if that’s what you’re implying. He was a good, hardworking man, but he wasn’t rich. Not by a long shot.”
She focused on some unknown spot behind him. “We had bills, lots of them. In fact, we found bills we didn’t even know we had until after he died.”
Clearing her throat, she stood, walked around to the front of the couch and sat down. “Which is why, first chance I got, I wrote a check to that mortgage company.”
“Sorry,” Adam said. “Didn’t mean to pry.”
She met his eyes and sent him a smile so warm, so sweet, it made his heart ache. Oh, to have a woman like this…so kind and nurturing, so resourceful and dedicated…for his very own!
“You’re not prying, exactly,” she said offhandedly.
“So you made it through college on scholarships, then?”
That made her laugh. “No. I did okay in the grades department, but not okay enough to earn scholarships.”
That surprised him, a fact that must have shown on his face.
“Oh, I think if I’d had the luxury of time to study, time to turn in detailed reports, if I’d had a dad at my elbow, making sure I’d dotted all the I’s and crossed all the T’s, I probably could have done better in school.”
Shame and remorse thudded in Adam’s chest.
“I had to work two, sometimes three, part-time jobs to help out. Mom did what she could, but she’s never been particularly healthy….”
There had never been any indication that Mrs. Delaney was anything but hale and hearty. “What’s wrong with her?”
Kasey shrugged. “Little of this, little of that. My grandmother always blamed it on self-pity. Me? I call it loneliness.”
Mortified, Adam scrubbed both hands over his face. If the woman was lonely, there could be but one reason.
“Lonely for what, I never quite figured out,” she tacked on.
He raked his fingers through his hair, waiting, hoping she’d explain.
“My folks didn’t have the most loving, romantic relationship in the world.” A harsh, nervous laugh punctuated the statement. “And if you had known them, you’d realize what an understatement that is!
“They rarely spoke, and when they did, it was only to insult one another. So it took me by surprise how hard my mom was hit by my father’s death.”
Kasey hugged her legs to her chest, rested her chin on her knees. “I’ll never forget the look on my mother’s face when the grim-faced cop arrived on our front porch to deliver the news,” she whispered.
She met Adam’s eyes. “She looked so lost and alone—like a little girl. It frightened me so much.” She sighed. “Turned out she loved him in her own way, despite all their problems.”
Adam didn’t know what to say, and so he said nothing.
“I was a mess, crying and blubbering like a two-year-old. Mom was too distraught to provide much comfort. Things only got worse the next day, when the cop came back to tell us about the evidence the department had found all around the railroad tracks.”
“Evidence?” His heart thundered. What did she know…and could she connect him to that night? He recalled the article in The Baltimore Sun and the other papers. “Evidence of what?”
“Cigarette butts, footprints and pieces of a pumpkin, of all things, in the cemetery near the tracks.”
Holding his breath, Adam waited for her to hit him, square between the eyes, with the accusation.
“The police found what was left of a scarecrow-type dummy, just down the tracks from the graveyard. They figured it was just a silly Halloween prank—kids probably, who were curious to see how far the train would carry their ingenious little creation. At the time, the cops decided the shock of thinking it had been a real person in front of his engine scared my dad so badly, he had a heart attack.”
What did she mean “at the time”? Adam stiffened, waiting for further explanation.
But she shook her shoulders, instead, as if casting off the dour turn the conversation had taken. “Enough about me,” she said in a deliberately brighter voice. “Tell me how you got interested in medicine. Were you a fan of Marcus Welby, M.D. reruns?”
He’d seen the television show a time or two and had enjoyed it, but he hadn’t made a career choice because of it. He hadn’t gone the route of most students interested in medicine, who, after interning in pediatrics or obstetrics or geriatrics, changed their specialty until they found one that “fit.” Adam had known almost from the morning after that life-changing night which field he’d choose.
But how could he explain that to Kasey?
Just then, the oven timer began chiming.
“Oh, my,” Kasey said, dashing into the kitchen to turn it off. “I must have pushed the wrong button when I was looking for the overhead light.”
Saved by the bell, Adam thought. With any luck, when Kasey came back to her perch on the couch, she wouldn’t pick up where she’d left off.
“I wish there was some way to call home. They’ll be so worried.”
“They?”
Nodding, she snuggled back into her corner of the sofa. “My mom and Aleesha. Who knows what they’re thinking, what with this storm and all. And it’s the night before Halloween.”
The night before Halloween. Fifteen years ago tonight, Adam, Luke, Wade and Travis were huddled in Buddy’s basement, making plans for “the great prank,” each agreeing to bring one element vital to its success….
“Well, you know how it is in Maryland,” he said. “Chances are fair to middlin’ it isn’t even raining in Ellicott City.”
His words seemed to reassure her, for she sent him a small smile.
“True. Still, I’ve never been gone this long without telling them where I was. They’re probably thinking something terrible happened to me.”
“And maybe because they know you so well, they’re thinking you’re a feet-on-the-ground kind of gal who’s riding out the storm in a safe place.”
“You’re very sweet to say that.”
The warmth of her gaze lit a fire in his soul, and as much as he wanted to warm himself by it, it was a blaze Adam knew he had to tamp, immediately.
“So who’s this Aleesha person you mentioned?”
“She’s seventeen now, but I met her three years ago, when I volunteered for the Big Sister program in Baltimore. Her parents died in a house fire at just about the same time my dad was killed. She’d been bounced from foster family to foster family ever since. Poor little thing doesn’t even remember her folks, she was so small when she lost them.”
Kasey hadn’t said her father died, he noticed; she’d said he’d been killed. All the more reason not to stoke what he was beginning to feel for her, because sooner or later, she’d find out he was one of the killers.
“Aleesha and I hit it off, right from the get-go,” Kasey continued. “She’s the most wonderful, loving girl. She has some problems but we’re working around them.”
“Problems? What kind of problems?”
“Learning disabilities, for starters. Plus, she’s very myopic, and wears braces on her legs. I adopted her just over a year ago.”
“Legally?”
She gave one nod. “Legally.”
So the girl who’d grown up without a dad had learned enough about loving, about giving, to share her life—her self—with a needy child. “You’re something else, Kasey Delaney. Something else.”
She blushed, waved his compliment away. “Seemed the least I could do. I mean, God has been pretty good to me.”
God? Adam failed to see what God had to do with who and what Kasey had become. Seemed to him she was self-made, that she’d fought adversities of all kinds, and won—and Adam said so.
“No.” She said it emphatically, in a no-nonsense voice. “I am what I am, if you’ll pardon the Popeye quote, because God saw fit to give me my own little miracle.”
What kind of nonsense was she spouting? She’d seemed perfectly rational and reasonable, until that “miracle” business came out of her mouth. It was ridiculous enough to be laughable. “A miracle, huh?” he asked, hoping the sarcasm he felt didn’t show in his voice.
“Yup. In the form of a generous, anonymous benefactor.”
Adam’s heart beat harder. A generous, anonymous benefactor. So she did know about him! But how? He’d been so careful about his deliveries.
“For fifteen years now, once a month, someone has been leaving money in our mailbox.” She held up her hands. “I know, I know, it sounds like something out of a Dickens novel, but it’s true! He started small, just a few dollars at first, and worked his way up. Last envelope contained over a thousand dollars. Cash.”
Adam swallowed, hard.
“I have a pretty good idea who he is, too.”
He held his breath, grateful for the semidarkness that hid his blush. “But how…how do you know it’s a ‘he’?”
She grinned and tapped a fingertip to her temple. “Two and two, Dr. Thorne, usually equals four.”
“I—I’m afraid I don’t follow.”
“Well, we have this neighbor, see, and after Dad died, he began looking in on us. A lot. Never had two words to say to us before that night—unless you count boyhood pranks—and then suddenly, the day after Dad was killed, he came over to ask if Mom and I needed anything. Day after that, we found an envelope with ten dollars in it stuffed into the mailbox.
“A month or so later, he cut our grass—using his lawn mower and gas!—and we got fifteen bucks in the next envelope. Another time, he trimmed the hedges, and, yep, a couple days later, there was a twenty-dollar bill in the mailbox.”
