Love Unbound

by Cassandra Dee

  My cheeks flush hot, an involuntary reaction to what was clearly a compliment about my body. If Kyle notices, he doesn’t comment. He peers in his beer bottle. “You want another one, or are you good?”

  “Sure, I’ll take another.”

  “Still drinking Diet Coke?”

  I think about what Kyle just said to me. About my blessings. “Make it a regular Coke.”

  Kyle smiles. “Just for the taste of it.”

  I giggle at the familiar tagline, and look on as Kyle flags down our waitress. He’s clearly not really flirting, but there’s something about the way he gently touches her elbow, the ripples of laughter he pulls from her without visible effort. Maybe it’s because he’s dedicated his life to easing people’s pain, but it’s like he can’t turn it off. He makes people feel special, and it seems to work.

  Plus, I have to confess. I like the way Kyle looks at me, the way he sizes up my body and seems genuinely excited by what he sees. When he looks me over, it’s not with contempt or in a critical, appraising way. He seems to want to absorb my every cell. Some girls might feel uncomfortable if a guy looked at them like that, but not me.

  I watch Kyle take up a nacho, flick a stray piece of cheese-cloaked chicken onto his tongue before he digs in.

  Kyle likes his meat. And I, for one, am just fine with that.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The first few weeks of dating are heavenly. We do all sorts of stuff that makes me feel comfortable, like mini golfing. He takes me to a karaoke bar, cheering me on as I laugh my way through an off-tune but sincere rendition of “Holding Out for a Hero.” We spend an afternoon strolling around Los Feliz, eating gelato and browsing in my favorite independent bookstore, where Kyle buys the latest Amy Tan book for me and a hardback LBJ biography for my dad. “You know,” he says, “in case he makes it through all of Rockford.”

  More than anything, we just talk, and it becomes evident that this man has a soft spot in his heart.

  “That’s why it was so nice to talk to your dad,” he tells me one day, over breakfast at a diner. “It’s been years since I spoke to a person who wanted absolutely nothing from me.” He grins, taking a sip of coffee. “It was different with Ralph. He doesn’t care about himself. He just wants you to be happy, really.”

  I swallow, unsure what to say. On the one hand, my heart’s fluttering. This man knows more about me and my dad than anybody else in the world. But is that a good thing? I don’t know.

  Plus, Kyle gets me to open up, in ways I haven’t since the year I spent seeing a therapist after my mom left. I tell him about how I’d started out pursuing an English degree that naturally went on the back burner when Dad got sick. About the journal I kept until about a year ago, when the burdens of working and caregiving for a sick parent got to be just too much to juggle, not to mention too painful to think and write about. About old boyfriends from high school, and of course, about Chase.

  “So you basically hadn’t dated at all for two years until I came along?” Kyle asks, surprised. “Pretty girl like you wasn’t going out every night?”

  I shake my head ruefully. For some reason, this man thinks I’m beautiful even with the extra junk in the trunk. But I don’t correct him because it’s kind of nice.

  “I didn’t go out for nineteen months,” is my slow reply. “It just didn’t seem worth it.”

  Kyle whistles. “Man. So we gotta pack nineteen months’ worth of lost time into three? That’s a hell of a lot of bowling to do.”

  And I laugh at his joke. Because actually, bowling’s grown on me. It’s kind of fun with the weird colored shoes, and the satisfying sound of the ball whacking pins flat. But even more, it’s fun because I’m with Kyle. Something about this man is drawing me close, making my heart pump whenever I’m in his vicinity.

  Throughout that whole first month and a half, though, there are two things that surprise me. First of all, Kyle barely lays a hand on me. I still get plenty of appreciative looks, especially when I wear anything Lili would describe as bootylicious. And he occasionally slips in a little innuendo, but there’s nothing crazy. He’s a gentleman. Maybe Kyle will touch my knee or give my hand a squeeze when he drops me off at the end of our dates, but that’s as far as it goes. This man hasn’t even tried to kiss me yet.

  Maybe it’s my fault he hasn’t. Maybe all that talk about how I wasn’t just there for his pleasure has made him gun-shy, afraid he’s going to scare me off if he makes even the slightest hint of a pass.

  Of course, there’s always the possibility that I’m reading this wrong, that he isn’t attracted to me. Given how hard he works out, and the fact that we live in a city just crawling with women with firm, magazine-cover-ready model bodies, the idea that he’d be drawn to someone curvy and round is probably just wishful thinking on my part.

  Still, I know what I want.

  I see it in my mind’s eye almost every night after Kyle and I spend the day together. Because Chase has been replaced in my solo bedtime sessions. Now it’s Kyle I imagine as I work myself to orgasm. I picture his curvy lips suckling my clit, his hot mouth enveloping its tingling hardness. The muscles of his abdomen flexing and releasing as I straddle him, hips pumping hard, my moist opening engulfing his massive girth. His full-throated, gut-deep groans as his thick, ropy load runs out between my lips and all over my thighs.

  But even with the walloping force of the orgasms these fantasies give me, I barely bask in the afterglow. All I ever find myself thinking, as the wetness on my bedsheets cools beneath my bare backside, is: Why I can’t just take charge in real life, the way I always do when I picture us devouring each other like this? What’s holding me back?

  Maybe it’s the other strange thing about our first weeks together. This whole relationship, if that’s even the right word for it, started when Kyle struck up a connection with my dad, when he saw something in a dying man’s concern for his daughter, and realized he had a chance to do something amazing for a person in need…or maybe two people. But even though he’s told me several times how much he enjoyed talking to my dad when they set this whole situation in motion, and despite the tremendous similarities I see between the two of them, for these first six weeks and change, Kyle never actually meets Ralph. It’s not that he’s not interested in Dad’s progress. He asks me about him every time we get together. He shares my optimistic spirits on those days when Dad spends more time talking than coughing. He holds my hand when I recall bracing my body against Dad’s so he could vomit or spit up blood. He even sent over a few items from the CMI catalogues, a body-temperature-sensitive electric hot water bottle and a timed pain-med-dispensing arm bracelet, kind of like a diabetic’s insulin pump. But even with all this consideration, not to mention the several hundred thousand dollars he dropped on the Cedars treatment before we even met, two months go by before Kyle asks to meet my father, or come by the house.

  Ironically, it’s not until the night Dad and Kyle finally meet that I find out why it’s taken so long. It’s also the first time, on our two-month anniversary, that Kyle’s ever told me to “wear something special” for our date. I go with a navy blue dress with subtle black polka dots, low-cut enough to offer just the right touch of tasteful enticement (with some help from my favorite black Wonderbra, of course). Pair that with tiny heart-shaped silver studs in my ears, a birthday gift from Dad the year before the cancer hit, and just the right shade of glossy pink lipstick, and I look about as desirable as I can without a three-year exercise-and-diet routine to back me up.

  When I open the door, Kyle is in a gray suit, his shoulders so wide that they almost take up the entire doorframe. Those blue eyes seize mine immediately, and I blush, already beginning to stammer.

  “Hi,” is my low murmur. “It’s good to see you.”

  But before I can grab my purse, Kyle places a hand on mine.

  “Let’s go say hi to Ralph,” he says.

  I’m taken aback. Kyle’s never met my dad before, even if Ralph brokered this whole three mo
nth arrangement. So for a moment, I can’t move, staring at the gorgeous man. But then I step away, allowing the alpha to pass.

  “Sure,” is my murmur. “He’s upstairs.”

  I lead Kyle upstairs without another word, the only sound the creaking of the floorboards and Kyle’s breathing, which seems unusually shallow. What is he so nervous about? Given his typical bravado, I would have figured him for the type who gets his girlfriends’ parents eating out of his hand.

  You’re not his girlfriend, I think to myself, even though he doesn’t seem to be dating anyone else…

  “Hey, Dad. It’s us,” I say in a soft murmur.

  “Hey, kids. Come on in.”

  Dad has put on the “good” pajamas, silky forest green ones I got him for Christmas, instead of the T-shirt he usually wears all day. He had me shave him and comb his hair before I got in the shower, and he’s wearing his biggest, widest aw-shucks smile. Even so, I can’t help but notice how sunken his eyes look, how much baggier those PJs are now, even though I only bought them back in December. These days, it’s no longer good weeks and bad weeks. It’s good days and bad days. And what Kyle’s witnessing here is a brave face on a bad day.

  “So this is the fella I bought for you?” Dad jokes, his voice reedy. His words are clearly fighting their way through the pain.

  I chuckle, just a little self-conscious. “Dad, this is Kyle. Kyle, this is my father, Ralph.”

  “Sir, it has been too long coming. A real pleasure, believe me.” Dad holds out his hand. Kyle strides over to the bedside, and somehow, he’s popped on his sunglasses.

  What? Why would anyone wear sunglasses indoors? What is this all about, anyways? Kyle asked to meet Dad. Why’s he acting like he’s being forced to do this at gunpoint?

  “So,” Dad says, slumping back on his pillow as soon as Kyle releases his hand, “suppose the first thing is I gotta say thank you. I don’t know a lot of people who would do what you’re doing for a stranger.”

  “I don’t doubt it. Unless you know a lot of other billionaires.”

  I’m struck by the coldness of Kyle’s reply, but Dad gives him an honest laugh. “Yeah, I guess I don’t, really. But I also need to thank you for the time you’ve been showing Sarah. Every day after you two get together, she tells me all the places you’re taking her. She’s been so busy, with her job and the stuff she does to keep me going. It’s just nice to have somebody getting her out of the house and having some fun.”

  “Somebody has to,” Kyle says, his voice barely above freezing. His words hit me like a punch in the stomach. He turns to me, not seeming to notice the stunned hurt furrowing my brow. “I’ll meet you in the car, okay?”

  I can hardly gasp out a “yeah” before Kyle turns back to Dad, his manner as rigid and formal as a prom tuxedo. “We won’t keep you from your evening any longer. Have a great evening.”

  “Yeah, it’s good meeting you, Kyle. You ought to come by for dinner some night. Sarah’s not a chef at the restaurant, but she damn sure knows her way around our kitchen.”

  “Okay. Thanks.” Kyle glides past me on the way out the door, sliding the sunglasses back on, the better to block out my pained expression.

  I wait until I hear his footfalls on the stairs before I close the door and turn to Dad. “Geez, Dad, I’m so sorry,” is my pained whisper. “I have no idea what got into him. He’s been asking me all week about finally meeting you. Now he does, and this is how he comes off? I don’t get it.”

  “I do.” Dad fluffs up his pillow with a weakly curled fist. “It’s just like I was the first time I met your Grandpa Al when your mom and I were dating. Guys get nervous meeting the parents of someone they’re going out with. Especially if they really like you.”

  My body relaxes a bit. “You really think that’s all it is?”

  “Sure I do. It’s not like the guy has any reason to dislike me. Unless he saw the bumper sticker on my truck and he’s not a Niners fan.”

  That gets a full-blown smile from me, but it’s quickly supplanted by the butterflies in my stomach. “And you…you really think he likes me?”

  “Sarahbelle,” Dad says patiently, “you never meet the parents if you don’t like her. And what’s not to like? I mean, look at you. You’re the most beautiful girl in the world.”

  I catch my reflection in the mirror and see the grateful tears building in my eyes, the lovely dress that hugs my shape in just the right ways, and the glow of happiness and growing love lighting my cheeks. For the first time ever, I feel like the girl my dad’s describing, like the girl Kyle seems to see when he looks at me. Tonight, I do feel like a fairy tale princess. And my evening is just getting started. If I only knew what’s coming for me.

  I grin, checking my handbag. “So you sure you’re gonna be okay tonight?”

  “Yeah. Get the meds in me, I’ll be fine. Probably turn in about an hour or so. You have a good time tonight. Don’t let that dress go to waste.”

  When I make it to the car, the fairy-tale begins to fade as I find Kyle stiff as a board behind the steering wheel, the sunglasses still clamped on his face.

  “So my dad liked you,” I say hesitantly, once we’re driving smoothly down the road. “I mean, what little of you he got to meet. I thought you said our reservation wasn’t until 9. Why are we rushing out to -”

  That’s when I notice the tears slipping out from under the polarized lenses, streaking Kyle’s cheeks. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen the man even close to crying. It’s so shocking that it makes me gasp.

  “Hey, what’s the matter?” is my soft question.

  Kyle clears his throat hard, trying to get the quaver out of his voice before he speaks. It doesn’t work. “Why didn’t you tell me it was so bad?”

  “What?”

  He thrusts an angry finger at my house. “How sick he looks. How sick he obviously is. I, I didn’t expect that.”

  “Well, I told you he was having a rough week. And you know what his situation is. I mean, you’re paying for us to try to make it better, right?”

  “Yeah, I know, I just…” Kyle rips the shades away, knuckles the moisture from his eyes and face. “Seeing him like that. It reminds me of my dad.”

  It suddenly occurs to me how selfish I’ve been. In all the time we’ve spent together, all the chats about childhood and high school and dating history, somehow, and I can barely believe it myself, I’ve never asked Kyle about his parents.

  “Was, was it cancer for him, too?”

  Kyle nods. “Pancreatic. And I cannot tell you the millions I spent trying to kill it.” He takes a ragged breath. “Sarah, I’m a problem-solver. And a damn good one. But cancer is just evil,” he growls. For the first time that night, he meets my gaze. And in those eyes are things I’ve never seen before from him. They’re full of hurt, and fear for me, and regret for his past.

  “My dad’s health,” Kyle says, “is the one thing I’ve ever wanted that I couldn’t get.”

  As soon as he says it, I can’t pretend anymore. Sure, when I first agreed to spend these three months with Kyle, I thought of it as nothing but an extended thank-you, my way of showing my gratitude for a man who was doing something so generous and selfless for my father. But seeing him like this, knowing the pain he carries around every day, and how he doesn’t let it stop him from feeling deeply, and caring immensely, and loving the world and his life…I know that his real worth has almost nothing to do with money. And I know that this isn’t just about medical bills anymore.

  So, for the first time ever in my not-particularly-distinguished dating career, I initiate the first kiss.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The kiss breaks the ice on the evening, and the mood continues to lighten as we drive downtown. I finally let out my first real laugh all day when the car pulls up to the valet station, and I realize where he’s taking me for our first truly romantic night out.

  “Señorita Sarah?” Osvaldo the valet exclaims as I step out of the luxury car.

  �
�Hey, Ozzie. Not used to seeing me on this side of the valet station, are you?”

  “Keep your eyes off her, brother,” Kyle says as he rounds the car’s front grill. “She’s with me.” He flips the valet his keys and a wink. Osvaldo gives us a warm chuckle. I take Kyle’s offered arm, and together, we enter Perch.

  When we walk into the restaurant, I finally discover why, on a Friday night, Osvaldo seems to be the only valet on duty. Kyle has reserved the entire place for the evening, just for the two of us. The lights are low, and there’s a candlelit table right near the bandstand, where a sharp guitar-led contemporary quartet simmers just below a boil, the perfect tempo for conversation and intimacy. As I look over the place that I’ve seen forty hours a week for two years now, but never like this, it suddenly occurs to me that I work at what just might be the most romantic restaurant in all of Los Angeles. That is, of course, if you’re lucky enough to have it decked out especially for you by this striking gentleman at my side.

  Lili’s waiting to seat us, and she’s dressed as G-rated as I’ve ever seen her: hair in a sensible bun, lace blouse up to her clavicle, and a billowy black skirt. As she guides us to our table, she drops her voice to a whisper, leaning back to me.

  “He’s gorgeous,” she whispers. “And you look beautiful. Go for it girl!”

  I blush. Did Kyle hear? But thankfully, he’s still behind me at the door, handling something or other.

  We don’t need menus because Kyle’s already selected a special feast for two, personally prepared by our executive chef, Gerardo. Surf-and-turf skewers to start, steak frites for Kyle, and salmon gnocchi for me, paired with a full-bodied cabernet I can only describe as a brilliant choice. For dessert, Kyle goes with the chocolate pot de crème, and a lovely sweet wine as accompaniment.

  As we enjoy sweet, creamy spoonfuls of heaven together, Kyle grins.

  “So, is this a little more what you expected?”

  I daub chocolate from my lip with a napkin. “You know, I’ve worked here for almost two years, and this is the first time I’ve ever actually tried the food. Never even had one of these desserts. But if I had done it before, this is definitely the one I would have picked. Guess you remembered I love chocolate.”