by Cara Colter
It had been two years since she had seen him. At her husband, Kevin’s, funeral. And that day she had not really noticed what he looked like, only felt his arms fold around her, felt his warmth and his strength, and thought, for the first time, and only time: everything will be all right.
But that reaction had been followed swiftly by anger. Where had he been all those years when Kevin could have used a friend?
And she could have, too.
Why had David withheld what Kevin so desperately needed? David’s chilly remoteness after a terrible accident, days after they had all graduated from high school, had surely contributed to a downward spiral in Kevin that nothing could stop.
Not even her love.
The trajectory of all their lives had changed forever, and David Blaze had proven to her he was no kind of friend at all.
David had let them down. He’d become aloof and cool—a furious judgment in his eyes—when Kevin had most needed understanding. Forgiveness. Sympathy.
Not, Kayla reminded herself bitterly, that any of those things had saved my husband, either, because everyone else—me, his parents—had given those things in abundance.
And had everything been all right since the funeral? Because of Kevin’s insurance she was financially secure, but was everything else all right?
Not really. Kayla had a sense of not knowing who she really was anymore. Wasn’t that part of why she had come back here, to Blossom Valley? To find her lost self? To remember Kevin as the fun-loving guy she had grown up with? And not...
She was weakened by the sting. And by David’s sudden presence. She was not going to think disloyal thoughts about her husband! And especially not with David Blaze in the vicinity!
“Where’s your kit?” David asked with an authoritative snap in his voice that pulled her out of the painful reverie of their shared history.
“I don’t need your help.”
“Yes, you do.”
She wanted to argue that, but the sense of languid clarity left her and was replaced rapidly by panic. Was her throat closing? Was her breathing becoming rapid? Was she swelling? And turning red? And where was her new dog, Bastigal?
She dragged her eyes from the reassuring strength in David’s—that was an illusion, after all—and scanned the nearby shrubs.
“I don’t need your help,” she bit out again, stubbornly, pushing down her desire to panic and deliberately looking away from the irritation in his lifted eyebrow.
“Bastigal,” she called, “come here! My dog. He fell out of the basket. I have to find my dog.”
She felt a finger on her chin, strong, insistent, trying to make her look at him. When she resisted, masculine hands bracketed her cheeks, forcing her unwilling gaze to his.
“Kayla.” His voice was strong and sure, and very stern as he enunciated every word slowly. “I need to know where your bee-sting kit is. I need to know now.”
CHAPTER TWO
DAVID BLAZE WAS OBVIOUSLY a man who had become way too accustomed to being listened to.
And Kayla was disgusted with herself for how easily she capitulated to his powerful presence, but the truth was she felt suddenly dizzy, her blood pressure spiraling downward in reaction to the sting. At least she hoped it was the sting!
She divested herself from the vise grip of David’s hands on her cheeks, not wanting him to think it was the touch of his strong hands that had made her so light-headed.
He was not there for Kevin, she reminded herself, trying to shore up her strength...and her animosity.
She lowered herself to the curb. “Purse. In the bike basket.” It felt like a cowardly surrender.
She watched David, and reluctant admiration pierced her desire for animosity. Even though he was far removed from his lifesaving days, David still moved with the calm and efficiency of a trained first responder.
His take-charge attitude might have been annoying under different circumstances, but right now it inspired unenthusiastic confidence. Feeling like every kind of a traitor, Kayla allowed David’s confidence to wash her with calm as she attempted to slow her ragged breathing.
How was it he could feel so familiar to her—the dark glossiness of his hair, the perfect line of his jaw, the suede of his eyes—and feel like a complete stranger at the same time?
David strode over to where she had thrown down her bike, picked through the strewn sunflowers and green-leaf lettuce until he found the purse where it had fallen on the ground. He crouched, unceremoniously dumping all the contents of her bag out on the road. If he heard her protested “Hey!” he ignored it.
In seconds he had the “pen,” an emergency dose of epinephrine. He lowered himself beside her on the curb.
“Are you doing this, or am I?” he asked.
He took one look at her face and had his answer. His fingers tickled along the length of her leg as he eased her skirt up, exposing her thigh. She closed her eyes against the shiver of pure awareness that was not caused by reaction to the sting or the feel of the warm summer sunshine on her skin.
She wanted to protest he could have put the pre-loaded needle, concealed within the pen, through the fabric of the skirt, but she didn’t say a word.
She excused her lack of protest by telling herself that her throat was no doubt swelling shut. It felt as if her eyes were!
She felt the heat of his hand, warmer than the sun, as he laid it midway up the outside of her naked thigh and pressed her skin taut between his thumb and pointer finger.
“I think I’m going to faint,” she whispered, any pretense of courage that she had managed now completely abandoning her.
“You’re not going to faint.”
It wasn’t an observation so much as an order.
She attempted to glower at his arrogance. She knew if she was going to faint! He didn’t! But instead of resentment, Kayla was aware, again, of feeling a traitorous clarity she attributed to near death: his shoulder touching hers, the light in the glossy chocolate of his hair as he bent over her, his scent masculine, sharply clean and tantalizing.
Still, some primal fear made her put her hand over the site on her leg where he had pulled the skin taut with his bracketed fingers as the perfect place to inject the epinephrine.
He took her hand and put it firmly out of his way. When she went to put it right back, he held it at bay, his strength making her own seem puny and impotent.
“I’m not ready!” she protested.
“Look at me,” he commanded.
She did. She looked into the strength and calm of those deep brown eyes and all of it felt like an intoxicating chemical cocktail so strong it made a life-threatening beesting feel like nothing.
The years dropped away. He was woven into the fabric of her life, the way he cocked his head when he listened, the intensity of his gaze, the ease of his laughter, the solidness of his friendship, the utter reliability of him.
She could feel her breathing slow.
But then with her hand still in the grip of his, her eyes drifted to the full, sensuous curve of his lower lip and she could feel her heart and breath quicken again.
Once, a long time ago, she had tasted those lips, giving in, finally, to that want he had always made her feel. Though by then they had both been seventeen, she had been like a child drinking wine and it had been just as heady an experience.
She remembered his taste had felt exotic and compelling; she remembered how he had explored the hollows of her mouth as if he, too, had thought of nothing else for the two years they had known each other.
What a price for that kiss, though! After that exchange, he had gone cool toward her. Frosty. It had changed everything in the worst of ways. They had never been able to get back to the easy camaraderie that predated that meeting of lips.
David had started dating Emily Car
son, she, Kevin.
And yet, even knowing the price of it, sitting here on the curb, Kayla had the crazy thought: if she was going to die and had just one wish, would it be to taste David’s lips again? She found herself, even though it filled her with self-loathing, leaning toward him as if pulled on an invisible thread.
David leaned toward her.
His eyes held hers as he came closer. She could feel her own eyes shutting, and not just because they were swelling, either. Her lips were parting.
He jammed the pen, hard, against the outer edge of her upper thigh.
The needle popped out of its protective casing and injected the epinephrine under her skin.
“Ouch!” The physical pain snapped her back to reality, and her eyes flew open as Kayla yanked herself back from him, mortified, trying to read in his face if he had seen her moment of weakness, her intention.
It didn’t look like he had. David’s face was cool, remote.
The indifference of his expression reminded her of the emotional pain she had felt that night after they had shared that kiss. She had thought, on fire with excitement and need, that it was the beginning of something.
Instead, she had become invisible to him.
Just as Kevin had become invisible to him. That was what Kayla needed to remember about David Blaze: he seemed like one thing—a man you could count on with your life, in fact—and yet when there was any kind of emotional need involved, he could not be relied on at all.
The moment of feeling intoxicated by David was gone like a soap bubble that had floated upward, iridescent and ethereal, and then pop—over.
“That hurt,” she said. It was the memories of all the ways he had disappointed her as much as the injection, not that he needed to know.
“Sorry,” he said with utter insincerity. He hadn’t cared about her pain or Kevin’s back then, and he didn’t care now. He got up, moved to his car with efficiency of motion. It seemed as if he were unhurried and yet he was back at her side almost before she could blink.
He settled back on the curb, and Kayla ordered herself not to take any more comfort from the strength in the shoulder that touched hers. She saw David had retrieved a small first-aid kit from the glove box of his car, and he unzipped it and rummaged through, coming up with a pair of tweezers.
“I’m just going to see if I can find the stinger.”
“You are not!” she said, yanking her skirt down over her naked thigh and pressing the fabric tight to her legs.
“Don’t be ridiculous. The stinger could still be pumping poison into you.”
She hesitated and he, sensing her hesitation, pressed. “I already saw the sting site. And your panties. They’re pink.”
To match the blush she could feel moving up her cheeks. Kayla sputtered ineffectually as he easily overpowered her attempts to hold her skirt down.
“There it is. Quit jumping around like that.”
“Give me those tweezers!” She made a grab for them.
“Stay calm, Kayla,” he ordered, amused. “It’s like being bitten by a snake. The more excited you get, the worse it is.”
“I don’t want you messing around under my skirt and talking about excitement,” she said grimly.
But for the first time, his stern mask fell. He gave a small snort of laughter, and that damned grin made him more astoundingly attractive than ever! “Just be grateful you didn’t get stung somewhere else.”
“Grateful,” she muttered. “I’ll be sure and add it to my list.”
“Got it!” he said with satisfaction, inspecting the tweezers and then holding them up for her to see. Sure enough, a hair of a stinger was trapped in them.
The amusement that had briefly made him so attractive had completely evaporated.
“Get in the car.”
That’s what she had to remember. The very qualities that made David a superb rescuer—detachment, a certain hard-nosed ability to do what needed to be done—also made him impossible to get close to.
What had she been thinking, leaning toward him, thinking of his kiss?
She was in shock, that was all. Riding her bike with her dog and sunflowers on a perfect summer day when out of nowhere, a bee. And him.
She, of all people, should know that. When you least expected it, life wreaked havoc. It was a mistake to surrender control, and the circumstances were no longer life-threatening, so she simply wasn’t giving in.
“My dog,” she reminded him. “And my bike. My purse. My stuff is all over the road. The phone is new. I need to—”
“You need to get in the car,” David said, enunciating every word with a certain grim patience.
“No,” she said, enunciating every word as carefully as he did, “I need to find my dog. And get my bike off the street. And retrieve my phone. It is a very expensive phone.”
He frowned, a man who moved in a world where his power was absolute. He was unaccustomed to anyone saying no to him, and she felt a certain childish satisfaction at the surprised, annoyed look on his face.
Slowly, as if he was speaking to a child, and not a very bright one at that, David said, “I’m taking you to the emergency clinic. I’m doing it now.”
“Thank you. You’ve given me the shot. I undoubtedly owe you my life, but—”
“I’ll take care of the dog and the bike and the purse and the phone after I’ve made sure you are all right.”
“I am all right!”
That was, in fact, a lie. Kayla felt quite woozy.
And she got the impression he was not the least bit fooled as he looked at her carefully.
“Get in the car,” he said again.
He was quite maddening in his authoritative approach to her. Her gaze went to her personal belongings scattered all over the road. “The EpiPen bought me time,” she said, tilting her chin stubbornly at him.
His sigh seemed long-suffering, though their encounter had lasted only minutes. “Kayla, you need to listen to me. I’ll take care of your stuff after I’ve taken care of you.”
She scanned his face, the stern, no-nonsense cast of his features, and felt a somewhat aggravating sense of relief swell in her. Why would it feel quite good to surrender control to him? To let someone else be in charge? To let someone else take care of her?
David was just that guy, and he always had been. The one who did everything right. The one who knew what to do. The one who could be counted on to look after things. The one you would choose to have with you in an emergency: when the hurricane arrived, or the boat capsized or the house caught fire.
Except he hadn’t done the right thing by Kevin, the time it had really counted.
“My dog is on the loose somewhere. He could be picked up by a stranger or run over by a car. My bike could be stolen. The new phone could be crushed by a passing vehicle!”
Irrationally, she trusted David, in some areas, at least. If he said he’d take care of it, he simply would. His strength of purpose had always been nothing less than amazing.
And intolerant of those less strong.
Like Kevin, who had never taken care of anything.
The thought, breathtaking in its disloyalty, came out of nowhere, blasted her and made her feel guilty. And, oddly, angry at David all over again.
Okay, so Kevin had not been overly responsible. He’d had many great qualities!
Hadn’t he? The whisper of disloyalty, again, made her feel angry with David as if his presence was nursing these forbidden thoughts to the forefront.
“I need to find my dog,” she said, folding her arms over her chest. She was not going to have these thoughts, or surrender control to David Blaze—who was overly responsible—without so much as a whimper.
Had she learned nothing from life? No, she had learned to rely on herself!
“
I’m okay now,” she said, and it felt like an act of supreme bravery, in light of his darkening features. “David, I appreciate you playing knight in shining armor to my damsel in distress.”
The look on his face darkened so she rushed on, shooting a look at his car, “I appreciate your riding in on your shining gray steed, but really, I’ll take it from here. I don’t need any more help from you.”
CHAPTER THREE
DAVID CONTEMPLATED KAYLA, and it was hard not to shirk from the impatience that yanked at the muscle in his jaw and darkened his eyes to a shade of brown so dark it bordered on being black.
He looked totally formidable, and not a single remnant of the carefree boy of Kayla’s adolescence appeared to remain in him.
When had he become this? A man so totally certain of his own power, a man not to be messed with?
“I’m not playing a game here,” he said quietly. “I am not playing knight to your princess. Not even close. Life is not a fairy tale.”
“I’m the last person who needs to be reminded of that,” she said, and he flinched, ever so faintly, but still she had to hide a shiver at his intensity, and her face felt suddenly hot.
She was not blushing at the thought of sharing a fairy tale with him! It occurred to Kayla that, despite the shot, her face might be swelling. In fact, with each passing second she probably was looking more like poor Quasimodo, with his misshapen face, than a princess.
“You are highly allergic to beestings,” he said, his patience worn thin, like a scientist trying to explain a highly complicated formula to a fool. “Anaphylaxis is a life-threatening emergency.”
She touched her forehead. She could feel the puffiness in it.
“We have stopped the emergency for now,” he went on. “A secondary reaction is not uncommon. You need to be under medical observation.”
“But my dog,” she said, weakly. She knew he had already won, even before he snapped “Enough,” with a quiet authority that made her stomach dip.
“Kayla, either get to the car under your own power, or I’ll throw you over my shoulder and put you there with mine.”
