She looked up as Kane walked out of Dietz’s room. Kane’s usual jeans and T-shirt outfit had been replaced by a black suit with a bright green tie. A series of press conferences and interviews forced Kane to wear his big boy clothes.
The business attire highlighted his handsome face, but she preferred him in casual clothes. The more serious the clothing, the more serious Kane became. It was the laughing, joking and, yeah, annoying Kane who captured her heart.
He slumped down on the bench next to her and balanced his head against the lime green wall behind him. Exhaustion weighed down his limbs, making his shoulders slump. Stress showed on every inch of his face from the frown lines on his forehead to the flat line of his lips.
“How’s Dietz?” she asked.
Kane kept his eyes closed but reached out for her hand. The warmth from his palm seeped into her skin. “Better. He’s stabilized. The first shot collapsed his lung. The second didn’t hit the chest cavity as feared. More like under his arm.”
Touching Kane filled her with a desperate longing. She hadn’t left him yet and already missed him. Every hour put her one step closer to losing him. The flight back to Seattle was going to kill her.
“Is he awake?” She could hear the tears in her voice. She almost didn’t recognize the sound since before yesterday it had been years since she cried.
“Yeah. He’s talking.”
A typical cryptic Kane comment. “Anything interesting?”
Kane squeezed her hand as he opened his eyes. “That I should get back to work because the death toll on Kauai was on the rise.”
That relief she yearned for finally hit home. Not because of Sterling Howard getting what he deserved. Because of Kane.
“Dietz cleared you?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m so happy for you. You must be relieved.” He needed a celebration. She just wished she could be part of it. Part of his life.
“It will be good to get back to work.”
Disappointment rushed right in behind the relief. He still couldn’t let go and enjoy. This news should have sent his world spinning upright again. But, after everything that had happened in the canyon, that rein he had held on his control had tightened, not loosened.
She had to leave. It was either that or blubber all over him, and that was just not going to happen. With one last touch of her palm against his cheek, she leaned over and kissed him. Soft and warm, unleashing her loss and need. When they broke apart, she rubbed her nose against his.
“I need to go,” she said in a soft voice against his lips.
She lifted her head, expecting him to crack a joke and offer her a ride. He didn’t do either. He sat there staring at her with an unreadable expression. He could be happy or sad; she’d never be able to tell.
That was the problem. His emotions stayed locked inside. She’d lived like that for years. She couldn’t do it anymore. A few months ago, the physical part would have been enough. Not now. She’d lived half of a life for too long.
“Thank you for everything.” When he didn’t say anything in response, she stood up and started down the hallway.
She’d gone five or six steps, forcing her feet to lift and move, then repeat again, when the tears began pushing against the back of her eyes. The lesson of her life was that love hurt. Always.
“You’re actually going to leave.” His husky voice, so low and unemotional, hit her like a fist to the stomach.
She turned back around to face him. He should see what emotion looked like. “There’s nothing else for me here.”
Almost as if in slow motion, he stood. His face, tense before, drew tighter now. Something that looked like pain moved behind his eyes.
“Nothing?”
“My life is in Seattle.”
Five feet of emptiness and baggage stood between them. People walked around them. The loudspeaker continued to squawk. They ignored it all, looking only at each other.
“What’s there? Your business? You can take that anywhere. Your mother? Move her here.” His arms hung loose by his sides.
Here? “Kane, we’ve been through so much in such a short time. It’s not real. It’s…” It was very real for her. That wasn’t the issue.
“What?”
“Not going to work.” She stared at the ceiling, trying to force the tears back down her throat long enough to talk. What she needed right now was some of that patented Annie attitude. Only, she couldn’t conjure it up. “We’re different. I need something else.”
“What?”
“Emotion. Passion. Love.”
“And I can’t give you that.”
His ready agreement touched off a new feeling inside her. Anger. “No, you can’t. You don’t feel anything. You don’t allow yourself to care and get hurt, and all those other wonderful and horrible human things.”
“Annie—”
“No,” she held up a hand to keep him from moving any closer. If he touched her, she’d lose her composure. Weakness could not be his last memory of her.
“Annie, please listen to me.”
“Let me finish. See, I grew up with that hole. The one where my physical needs were met but nothing else. I can’t do that again.” When she said the words, she finally understood them to be true. “I deserve more, like a man who can tell me he loves me and accept that life includes pain without hiding from that.”
“You don’t think I can do all that?” He stood right in front of her now.
She worried her heart would stop. Right there. On the spot. On the side of the hospital hallway. “You lost your mother, sister and wife. Those deaths are a shield you use to keep everyone, except Derek, and maybe Josh, outside.”
He stared at her with those intense dark eyes. The usual spark had burned out leaving only flatness.
She couldn’t look anymore. With a nod, she turned away and tried to force her legs to move again.
“You’re wrong,” he whispered to her back.
She stopped.
“Do you know what happens on the first day after you bury the woman you love? You die. Shrivel and die. You wonder if anyone would notice if you crawled into that hole in the ground and joined her.”
His tears fell now. When she turned around, she saw something else in those eyes. Desperation. Despair. Maybe a flicker of hope.
“Kane, you don’t have to—”
“But you realize, even though most of you is dead, that you can’t jump in that hole because it will upset other people. They’re grieving over one loss and can’t take another. So, you exist for them. Not for you. You aren’t alive anymore, so for them.”
He stopped and rubbed his forehead. She figured he was done talking until the words started again, this time surer and louder. “You get up and breathe and eat because the other people you care about beg you. You do it even though you curse every sunrise. You wonder how kids can dare laugh in the park or anyone can go to the beach, how life can go on as normal, when all you feel is darkness. But you go through the motions for them.”
Every word made her heart ache for him. Emotion moved through his voice and showed on his face. Kane felt it all. Lived through it all, and it stayed with him.
Closing the distance between them, he stepped forward and crowded her to the side of the hallway right against the wall. “Then one day you get up because there’s nothing else to do. You realize you won’t be lucky enough to die. You’re stuck living. You start functioning on autopilot.”
She reached out and ran her fingers down his arm. He didn’t move to touch her. His body stayed stiff as his shoulders drooped.
“The people who care about you start to think you’re coming around. Really, you’re just learning how to exist without thinking. Without a heartbeat.” When his voice cracked, Kane swallowed and started again. “Then the coldness settles in. With the color gone, everything looks and feels the same. Bland. Days pass, one into the other. Then it happens. You don’t think of your wife every fucking minute of every fucking day. That sho
uld be a good thing, but it’s not. You know why?”
Tears clogged Annie’s throat. She could only shake her head.
“Because it means you’re losing her. You’ve lost her body. Her touch. The pillow no longer carries her scent. The bathroom only smells like you. The memories fade. The sound of her voice no longer rings in your head. You, the person who vowed to love her forever, forget parts of her and who she was.”
Annie choked on a sob but didn’t let go of Kane’s hand.
“One day you realize all you have is photos. A few memories. The things you wished you’d done or said stay with you. Yeah, that stuff, the guilt, doesn’t fade. You date because it’s expected, but the part of you that died is still dead, and every new relationship is an opportunity to lose that last little piece of you that lives on.”
She had been so wrong. He felt with an intensity that ran deep and consumed his life. The pain for him was permanent, crowding out room for anything or anyone else.
He continued. “And that’s how you live—”
She brushed her hand over his lips, “Kane, please. Don’t.”
He kissed her palm. “Until one day a redhead from Seattle drops on your beach, all mouthy and tough, and those feelings come back. The ones you vowed never to have again. The ones you thought you never could feel again.”
Hope. The emotion that radiated from him was hope. She wanted to believe something else lingered there in that beginning of his smile.
“Kane, what are you saying?”
The smile spread across his beautiful mouth. “That I love you. That I started feeling and living again when you washed up in front of my house.”
“I can’t—”
“You can’t leave me,” he pleaded as his grip tightened on her hand. “You don’t need Seattle. You need me and Derek and Kauai, and heaven help him, Josh.”
Love. The look on his face and in the glow on his cheeks. Love. He felt it, too.
Everything she wanted sat right there, at her fingertips. All she had to do was grab it. For her. Not for her mother or for anyone else. For her.
“I need—”
“Me.”
“Yeah, you. I love you.” She said the words. She’d never said them before. Never met anyone worthy of them until now. “Forever, put-me-in-the-ground-with-you type of love.”
He grabbed her around the waist and lifted her high in the air. Spinning her around in a circle and shouting a cheer. She could hear the murmur of approval from the nurses. Laughter mixed with tears as she wrapped her arms around his neck and held on. She pledged her love as she kissed his face and neck.
The twirl stopped, but her head kept spinning. When she finally landed, her heart lodged in her throat at the look of pure pleasure on Kane’s face. Gone were the lines and frowns.
“Well?” she asked. If he came this far, he could go the final step.
“What?” He actually had the nerve to look serious with that question.
“You have something to say to me.”
“See, now, I’m thinking your bossiness is going to be a problem.”
“Kane.” The man was two seconds away from a kick to the shins.
“Really, I’m the police chief, and you’re going to have to show me a little respect.”
“I’m going to show you my shoe in your butt if you don’t tell me what I want to hear.”
“That I love you? Yeah, I do. I love you.” That sexy grin of his came back in full force. “I am a bit worried that I’ll strangle you before the wedding, but I’ll work on that.”
“Wedding!” The idea stole her breath.
He was handing her everything. Love. Loyalty and a real home.
“This is a family-oriented island. The chief of police can’t be living with some haole girl.” He pulled her tight against him.
The love he felt was right there. Easy to see.
She tried to look stern. “I’m looking up that term soon to see what it really means, so don’t get used to it.”
“Have I explained that as the wife of a town official, you get a job?” He kissed her then with a love and longing that made her head spin.
“Did you propose?”
“Good point.” He nodded with mock seriousness. “Better ask and get you to say yes before I describe the job duties.”
Excitement and happiness screamed inside her, begging to get out. She’d say yes to anything he asked. “Tell me the duties first.”
He leaned in as if he were telling her a secret. “The chickens.”
“Chickens?”
“Your job is to round up the chickens.”
She threw her head back and laughed. “For you, I’d even hunt down those stupid beasts.”
His laughter joined hers. “Wow. You are in love.”
She was. The forever kind.
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“Does watching the rain help?�
� she asked.
Help what, was the question. “It looks like we’re stuck for awhile.”
“At least we’re not outside.”
Yeah, because being alone in a cave with her was a better solution.
Cal glanced over his shoulder. Cassie sat hunched in the far corner, her upper body curled over her bent knees. In the fading light, he could see she was trembling. The sexy shorts and thin T-shirt that distracted him during their hike and kept her cool despite the sun’s heat proved even less practical now.
He beat back the images floating through his mind. Mental photographs of skimpy wet clothing clinging to her trim frame, followed by visions of the same clothing strewn all over the cave floor. Cassie naked and backlit by the fierce storm.
Jesus, he was in trouble.
“Do you think—”
“You need to get out of those clothes.” He had no idea when the words formed in his head or how they escaped his mouth.
They must have surprised her too since her head shot up and a sharp gaze pinned him where he stood. “I’m fine.”
That made one of them. “This is serious, Cassie.”
“No, it’s not.”
“We could be here for a long time.”
“So?”
He knew many ways to talk a woman out of her clothes to get her into bed. Doing so for practical reasons clearly was not his strength. “You’ll get sick.”
“Figures you’d think about that now. After I’m drenched.”
He tried the less controlling route. “How about you slip out of those before you get cold?”
A seductive smile crept across her lips. “Are you trying to sweet talk me out of my clothes, flyboy?”
He had no idea what he was trying to do, except engage in a bit of self-torture. “I’m only trying to help.”
“How?”
How? “Huh?”
She leaned back, opening up her body to his view and balancing her upper body on her hands. “How would you help?”
Your Mouth Drives Me Crazy Page 23
