by Cara Colter
“Maybe you were ultracool. I wasn’t.”
“I probably wasn’t, either,” he said, that wryness still in his voice. “But I sure thought I was. Maybe all guys that age think they are.”
Certainly Kevin had thought he was, too, Kayla remembered. But he never really had been. Funny, yes. Charming, absolutely. Good-looking, but not spectacularly so. Athletic, but never a star. Energetic and mischievous and fun-loving.
Kevin had always been faintly and subtly competitive with his better-looking and stronger best friend.
When David signed up for lifeguard training, so did Kevin, but he didn’t just want to be equal to David, he wanted to be better. So if David swam across the lake, Kevin swam there and back. When David bought his first car—that rusting little foreign import—Kevin, make that Kevin’s father, bought a brand-new one.
The faint edge to Kevin’s relationship with David seemed like something everyone but David had been aware of.
Hadn’t Kayla spent much of her marriage trying to convince Kevin he was good enough? Trying to convince him that she was not in the least bowled over by David’s many successes that were making all the newspapers? Trying to forgive Kevin’s jealousy and bitterness toward his friend, excuse it as caused by David’s indifference to the man who had once been his friend?
But Kayla remembered David really had been ultracool. Even back then he’d had something—a presence, an intensity, a way of taking charge—that had set him apart.
And made him irresistible to almost every girl in town. And on one magic night, I’d been the girl. That he had shared his remarkable charisma with.
I tasted his lips, and then he hardly looked at me again.
“I adored them back,” she said, wanting to remember the affection of those moments and not the sense of loss his sudden indifference had caused in her.
“They were pesky little rascals,” David said. “You never told them to go away and leave you—us—alone. I can remember you passing out hot dogs—that I had provided—to them at a campfire.”
Maybe that was why he had stopped speaking to me.
“Did I?”
“Yeah. And marshmallows. Our soda pop. Nothing was safe.”
“I love kids,” she said softly. “I probably couldn’t bear to think of them hungry.”
“Our little do-gooder.” He paused and looked at her. “You did love kids, though. That’s why I thought you’d lose no time having a pile of them of your own. Especially since you seemed in such a hurry to get married.”
Kayla bit her lip. For the first time since they had lain down beneath the stars, she was certain she heard judgment there.
Marry in haste, repent at leisure.
“So why didn’t you have kids?” he persisted.
Kayla begged herself not to even think it. But the soft night air, and this unexpected moment, lying in the coolness of the grass beside David, made the thought explode inside of her.
She had wanted a child, desperately. Now she could see it was a blessing she had not had one.
“The time was just never right,” she said, her tone cool, not inviting any more questions.
“Aw, Kayla,” he said, and as unforthcoming as she thought her statement had been, she felt as if David heard every unhappy moment of her marriage in it.
She felt an abrupt, defensive need to take the focus off herself. “So why aren’t you married, David? Why don’t you have a wife and kids and a big, happy family?”
“At first it was because I never met anyone I wanted to do those things with,” he said quietly.
“Come on. You’ve become news with some of the women you dated! Kelly O’Ranahan? Beautiful, successful, talented.”
“Insecure, superficial, wouldn’t know Orion if he shot her with an arrow.”
The moment suddenly seemed shot through with more than an arrow. Heat sizzled between them as his gaze locked on hers.
“What do you mean, ‘at first’?” she whispered.
He didn’t answer—he just reached out and slid a hand through her hair, and looked at her with such longing it stole her breath from her lungs.
The air felt ripe with possibilities. Kayla again felt seen, somehow, in a way no one had seen her for years.
Somehow, feeling that way made her feel more intensely guilty than her disloyal thoughts about her husband.
And then, thankfully, the uncomfortable intensity of the moment was shattered when the darkness exploded around them, and they were both frozen in an orb of white light.
“End to a perfect day,” she said, happy for the distraction from the intensity. “Beesting, hospital emergency room, lost dog—” disloyal thoughts about my deceased husband “—now alien kidnapping.”
He didn’t smile at her attempt to use humor to deflect the intensity between them.
“Don’t forget the stargazing part,” he said softly.
She looked at him. Not many people would look better under the harsh glare of the light that illuminated them, but he did. It brought the strength of his features into sharp relief.
It occurred to her that the stargazing was the part she was least likely to forget.
David broke the gaze first, sat up and shielded his eyes against the bright light that held them.
“Police! Get up off that grass.”
CHAPTER NINE
THEIR PREDICAMENT STRUCK KAYLA as hilarious, but she suspected her sudden desire to laugh was like biting back laughter at a funeral. Her nerves were strung tight over the moments they had just shared. Her emotions felt electric, overwhelming and way too close to the surface.
Could David possibly think she was more attractive than Kelly O’Ranahan, the famous actress?
Of course not! She was reading way too much into his hand finding her hair and touching it. He probably felt nothing but sorry for her.
“Put your hands in the air where I can see them.”
Poor David. She cast a look at his face. If David had been ultracool back then, he was even more so now. A proven track record of ultracoolness.
It occurred to her she was about to get one of Canada’s most respected businessmen arrested. It was no laughing matter, really, but she couldn’t help herself.
She laughed.
David shot her a look that warned her he wasn’t finding it in any way as amusing as she was. His expression was grim as he reached for her hand and found it. Then he got his feet underneath him and jumped up lithely, yanking her up beside him.
She noticed he stepped out just a little in front of her, shielding her torn nightie-clad body from the harshness of the police searchlight with his own.
It reminded her of something a long time ago—a thunderstorm, and seeking shelter under the awning of the ice cream store. She remembered him pulling off his shirt and putting it over her own, which had become transparent with wetness.
Was it in some way weak—a further betrayal of her marriage—to enjoy his protective instincts so much? He let go of her hand only after he had put her behind him, and then shaded his eyes, trying to see past the light.
“Sir, I need you to put your hands up in the air. You, too, ma’am.”
The light they were caught in was absolutely blinding. Kayla squinted past the broadness of David’s shoulder and into the brightness. She could make out the dark outline of Blossom Valley’s only patrol car.
She did as asked, but the laughter had started deep inside her and she had to choke it back. She slid a look at David. His expression was grim as he put his hands up, rested them with laced fingers on the top of his head.
The spotlight went off, and a policeman came across the lawn toward them. He looked grumpy as he stopped a few feet away and regarded them with deep suspicion. He took a notepad from his pocket, licked his pencil, waiting.
When neither of them volunteered anything, he said, “We’ve had a report of a prowler in this area.”
Kayla bit her lip to try and stop the giggle, but she made the mistake of casting a glance at David’s face. Naturally, he was appalled by their predicament, his face cast in stone. A snort of laughter escaped her.
“Have you folks been drinking?”
“No,” David bit out, giving her a withering glance when another snort of laughter escaped her.
“I’m sorry,” she managed to sputter.
“Is this your house?”
“No,” David snapped.
“Have you got any ID?”
“Does it look like we have any ID?” David said, exasperated and losing patience fast. She cast him a glance, and saw instantly that he was not intimidated, that he was a man who was very accustomed to being in authority, not knuckling under to it.
“Well, what are you doing half-dressed in front of a house that isn’t yours? How do you know each other?”
David sucked in a harsh breath at the insinuation that they might have been doing something improper. He took a step forward, but Kayla stepped out of his protection and inserted herself, hands still on top of her head, between him and the policeman. She sensed David’s irritation with her.
“We’re neighbors. We’re looking for my dog,” Kayla said hastily, before David really did manage to get himself arrested. “We thought we saw him and gave chase. I’m afraid we did trespass through several backyards. It turned out to be that bunny over there.”
“What bunny?”
Kayla turned and lowered one arm to point, but the bunny, naturally, had disappeared. “There really was one. We haven’t been drinking.” She could feel a blush moving up her cheeks as she realized a nightie that was perfectly respectable in her house was not so much on the darkened streets of Blossom Valley.
“Or doing anything else,” she said, lowering her other arm and folding both of them over the sheerness of her nightie.
The policeman regarded them both, then his suspicion died and he sighed.
“You can put your hands down. My little girl has been looking for that dog since the posters went up. She went to sleep dreaming about the reward. She wants a new bicycle.” He squinted at David. “Do I know you?”
David lowered his arms and lifted an eyebrow in a way that said I doubt it. How could he manage to have such presence, even in such an awkward situation?
“Are you that investor guy?” the cop asked. Deference, similar to that Kayla had heard in the care aide’s voice, crept into the policeman’s tone. “The one I saw the article about in Lakeside Life?”
“That would be me.”
“You don’t look much like a prowler, actually.”
“Do most prowlers not go out and about in their pajamas?” David asked a bit drily.
“Well, not Slugs and Snails pajamas,” the officer said, recognizing the name brand of a Canadian clothing icon that produced very sought after—and very, very expensive—men’s casual clothing.
Kayla squinted at David’s pajama bottoms. They did, indeed, have the very subtle label of the men’s designer firm, and she had to admire the officer’s professional powers of observation.
She also had to bite back another giggle as she realized her own attire, her summer-weight, white nightie, might be worthy of a painting, but it was way too revealing. She maneuvered back into the shadow cast by David.
David shot her a warning look over his shoulder when she had to bite back another giggle.
“What do you think of AIM?” the policeman asked, putting the dark writing pad he’d held in his hand back into his shirt pocket. He snapped a flashlight onto his belt.
“Personally, I think it’s a dog,” David said.
“Unfortunately, not the dog we are looking for,” Kayla inserted helpfully.
David gave her a look over his shoulder, and then continued as if she hadn’t spoken, “If you have it, now’s the time to dump it. If you don’t have it, don’t buy it. Try—” he smiled a bit “—Slugs and Snails. It trades as SAS-B.TO.”
“Really?”
David lifted a shoulder. “If you’re into taking advice from a half-naked man in his pajamas in the middle of the night.”
The policeman finally relaxed completely. Now it was all buddy to buddy. He laughed. “Well, the pajamas are Slugs and Snails. How far are you from home?”
“Sugar Maple,” David said.
“I can give you a lift back over there.”
“No!” David’s answer was instant. “Thanks anyway.”
“Speak for yourself,” Kayla said firmly. “It’s a perfect finish for this day—a ride in the backseat of a police car. Plus, it’s on my bucket list.”
David glared at her. “Why would that be on your bucket list?”
“Because it’s what everyone least expects of me.”
“You got that right,” David growled.
But a deeper part of the truth was that Kayla knew David wouldn’t get in the police car because he would be aware, as she was, that everyone had phones and cameras these days. He was the CEO of a company that relied on his reputation being squeaky clean. He was publically recognizable because of his success and his involvement with well-known and high-profile people. Kelly O’Ranahan was only one of a long list.
David Blaze was a public figure. Kayla didn’t really blame him for not getting in, but she was aware as she smiled at him, as the policeman opened the door for her and she slid into the backseat, that she needed for this encounter with David to be over.
She felt she had, somehow, revealed too much of herself on the basis of a starry night and an old friendship.
Now she felt the vulnerability of her confessions, felt faintly ashamed of herself and as if she had betrayed Kevin.
But worse than any of that? The yearning she had felt when David had reached out and touched her hair.
Kayla felt she had to escape him.
Being determined that he would not see any of that, she gave David a cheeky wave as she drove away in the police car.
And then she let the relief well up in her, a feeling as if she was escaping something dangerous and unpredictable and uncontrollable.
She liked being in control. Especially after Kevin.
“Hey, good luck with your dog,” the cop said, a few minutes later. He very sweetly got out and opened the car door for her before he drove away.
Despite the fact her day had unfolded as a series of mishaps, and her dog was missing, and she had discovered, within herself, an unspoken bitterness toward Kevin, Kayla was uncomfortably aware of something as she climbed the dilapidated stairs to her house.
She felt alive. She felt intensely and vibrantly alive, possibly for the first time since she had left Blossom Valley.
She could not even remember the last time she had laughed so hard as when the police light had been turned on her and David.
Her life, she realized, had been way too serious for way too long. When had she lost her ability to be spontaneous?
But she already knew. Her marriage had become an ongoing effort to control everything— fun had become a distant memory.
Yearning grabbed her again. To feel alive. To laugh.
Despite the hour, Kayla didn’t feel like sleeping. She didn’t feel ready, somehow, to leave the night—with its odd combination of magic and self-discovery and discomfort—behind. She went into the kitchen, turned on the light, opened the fridge.
Somehow, drinking lemonade on her front porch and watching the sun come up sounded wonderful in a way it would not have even a day ago.
And who knew? Maybe she would even see Bastigal wandering home from his own adventure.
But it was the thought that maybe she was really wai
ting to see David again that made her rethink it. She closed the fridge door—and the door on all her secret longings. She turned off the lights and ordered herself to bed.
But not before having one last peek out the window. She told herself she was having one last look for Bastigal, and yet her stomach did a funny downward swoop when she watched David come down the street.
Kayla sank back in the shadows of her house as she watched David take the front steps of the house next door. He pulled up the screen and tried the handle.
Kayla realized the care aide had decided to do her job now. The front door was locked up tight.
Telling herself it was none of her business, she went to a side window and watched him go to the back door of his house. It was the same. Locked.
He tried a window. Locked. Kayla noticed all the windows were closed, which was a real shame on such a beautiful night—but she realized all sorts of precautions would be in place to try and ensure his mother’s well-being.
As she continued to watch, David went back to the door and knocked lightly. Kayla could tell he did not want to wake his mother if she was sleeping. Presumably the care aide was not, but she did not come to the door, either. Watching television, maybe?
He stepped back off the steps, and Kayla could tell he was contemplating his options.
She could offer him her couch, of course. He had rescued her today—no, given the lateness of the hour, that was yesterday already—after she’d been stung.
She’d only be returning the favor.
But she remembered his deeply sarcastic tone when he had said earlier today: Kayla to the rescue.
And then, a certain wryness in his tone, he had remembered her working at that camp, those children trailing her through town.
Really, more of the same.
Kayla to the rescue. It made her aware that she needed to resist whatever was going on in her.
She was going to go to bed, and she was going to mind her own business and not feel the least bit guilty about it, either.
