Love Inspired December 2014 - Box Set 2 of 2: Her Holiday FamilySugar Plum SeasonHer Cowboy HeroSmall-Town Fireman

by Ruth Logan Herne

  “That’d fit the Karla Kennedy master plan, wouldn’t it?” He stood up off the wall and took a few steps away from her. “That wasn’t fair. That was out of line.” He turned back to stare at her. “Sore spot for me, you know?”

  What wasn’t fair was how emotionally raw, how honest and charming he looked washed in moonlight with that wounded grin on his face. He didn’t belong on a high-rise balcony in Chicago and never would. He belonged right here. Was it so awful to admit that now just a small part of her did, too? “I’m glad I came.”

  “You did the right thing. You helped your family out in a tight spot.”

  “I’m glad I came for other reasons, too. I’m not sorry we met.”

  “You’re just sorry we met here.” He said it with a tone of regretful acceptance.

  It was true. “Yes.” The moment was tumbling toward something that wasn’t smart for either of them. A closeness that would only make everything more difficult instead of easier. Half out of distraction, half out of curiosity, and because she knew she’d probably never get another chance to find out, Karla stood up and asked, “Hey, Captain McDonald, can you really tango, or was that just a fish tale?”

  He laughed. “I most certainly can. In fact, I am the best Scottish tango dancer you will ever know.”

  Karla laid her sweater on the stone wall. “Prove it.”

  * * *

  Karla looked at him with such a daring playfulness in her eyes. Dylan knew right then and there that he didn’t want to play the victim anymore. Why not take that beautiful woman in his arms and slay all the bad memories Yvonne had dumped on him? How many times had Jesse told him to “snap out of it”? Right here, right now, was the first safe chance to do that. Things were destined not to work out between him and Karla—she wanted everything he’d left behind, and the timing couldn’t be further off. This was one night, one chance to take back a piece of himself that Yvonne seemed to have stolen.

  Dylan took off his uniform jacket and laid it on the stone wall. “You’d better mean that.”

  She put her hands on her hips, a feisty ball of challenge. “I most certainly do.”

  He looked around. “We don’t have any music.”

  She wasn’t going to let him get away that easily. “I have a smartphone.”

  He crossed his arms over his chest. “Oh, got a tango tune all cued up, do you?”

  She held up her fingers in the universal “5 seconds” gesture, then rifled through her handbag for her phone and began tapping furiously. As she worked, her tongue stuck out just the tiniest bit, and his pulse kicked up a notch at the endearingly unconscious quirk. It seemed as if every time he was with her some little detail would add itself to the pile of things he liked about her. A smarter man would have stopped that pile from getting any more chances to grow, but it had been so long since he’d met any woman that made him even consider taking chances with his heart. Even stupid, doomed chances.

  “Ha!” she proclaimed, setting the phone on the wall and punching a final button. “Technology for the win.” The first strains of “La Cumparsita,” that one song everyone thought of for tangos but only tango fans could name, wafted out into the night.

  “Predictable, but it works.” Dylan undid his cuff buttons and rolled up his sleeves.

  She pulled back. “Too obvious?” Then, she got an idea. Honestly, the sight of that woman getting an idea was like a shot of espresso. Holding up a finger again, she darted back to the phone, tapped some more and began a low, playful laugh as the Proclaimers’ “I’m Gonna Be” started up.

  “A Scottish band, Mr. Scottish tango man.”

  A pop song? That pop song? “How on earth did you come up with that?”

  She grinned. “I just typed ‘Scottish tango songs’ into the search engine.”

  “There are no Scottish tango songs.”

  She pointed to her phone. “Are you going to stand here and argue with the internet or are you going to deliver?”

  The steady beat of the song filled the night air. He knew the song, knew the band, but hadn’t ever thought of it in terms of a tango. Only as he stood there and counted out the rhythm, it worked. It actually fit in a weird, crazy way. Somehow, with that one offbeat suggestion, Karla Kennedy yanked all the hurt right out from underneath him. She was there, in a circle of lamplight, ready to hand an enormous chunk of his heart back to him with her outstretched hand.

  He took her hand, feeling something zing through him as he did. “Do you even know how?”

  She cocked her head to one side. “Can’t be that hard.”

  “Oh, it’s harder than it looks.”

  Her chin tipped up in defiance. He put his hand to her waist and counted out the beat, made easy by the pop song’s powerful drumbeat. “Slow, slow, quick-quick slow.”

  Karla tripped twice, but he caught her, saving her from falling. By the end of the first verse she was following his lead, laughing when she goofed instead of getting frustrated the way Yvonne always would. For the first time in ages, the comparison didn’t pinch; it freed him.

  By the chorus, she was having fun. The combination of the rowdy Scottish pub song with a summer night tango somehow made it all new again. Karla had given him lots of gifts over these few weeks, but even if this was the last one, he’d walk away a happy man.

  When the bridge came, a rousing burst of “da-da-da” nonsense syllables, Karla pulled away from him and began joyfully dancing around the makeshift dance floor, a ridiculous jig of waving arms that sent him doubled over laughing.

  Laughing. How long had it been since he’d laughed like that? It swept the stale air from his lungs. When the verse returned, he pulled her back into the tango, indulgently staring into her eyes and holding her the tiniest bit closer. It would be okay, just for tonight. This felt like such a restoration. “Get ready,” he said, sure his grin filled every part of his face.

  “For what?”

  “For this.” With that he dipped her, enjoying the way her arms tightened around him as he pulled her off balance. It wasn’t anything close to elegant, but it was spectacular in its own crazy way. He relished the way her hair swept around her face when he pulled her back up and spun her into a turn. When she missed a step and ended up with one foot tangled around his leg, he felt her laugh ripple over him until he laughed himself.

  When the chorus came back around, he didn’t let her leave him, but promptly picked her right up off the ground to spin her around until she threw her head back and shouted the lyrics right along with him.

  He hadn’t planned to kiss her. He shouldn’t have, given the circumstances. But when he dipped her again and she stared up at him with those incredible ink-blue eyes, he couldn’t have helped himself for all the world. She had all this joy and determination and energy and he just needed to taste it, to breathe it in and wake back up to a world where love didn’t leave so many scars. To kiss a woman in a tango dip was the most romantic thing in the whole world, and tonight he wanted to give that to her.

  Her hand slipped around his neck, and he could feel the instant when she chose to kiss him back, feel the sensible side of her fall away and indulge in the moment they were sharing. It was so much more than attraction, it was romance—that pure, heart-to-heart thing he was pretty sure he’d killed off. He took a deep breath as he kissed her, the scent of her and the summer night and his own heart beating again pouring over him in lush, sparkling waves.

  He didn’t even notice that the music had stopped; his own happiness was roaring in his ears. He was holding almost all her weight, tipped over as she was, but he felt none of it. He wasn’t even sure he felt the ground under his own feet. As a matter of fact, when she made this little sound—this tiny, blissful mewling sound—it shot through him so fast he thought he might drop her. Only he didn’t. He hung on tight, and she clung to him. The sensation was dazzlin
g. Heart-stopping. Unforgettable. Really, really dangerous.

  He pulled her back upright, restoring their vertical balance but feeling completely off-kilter in every other way. When she took the smallest step back, breathing as hard as he was, he felt the space between them too keenly. As if it were a mistake to be far from her.

  And she was leaving. He’d known all along she was leaving, they’d talked about it on the High Tide, they’d even planned for it, but it suddenly felt all wrong. He could sit down right now and list a dozen reasons why he’d never want to pull her from her dream of Rooster’s in Chicago, and still gladly defy all of them for another moment like the one he’d just had. Not exactly an honorable sentiment, was it?

  Karla hugged herself, cheeks bright pink, eyes wide, lips that memorable shade of burgundy he could never quite get out of his head. A lock of her hair—dark and glossy in the lamplight—fell across her cheek, and he swallowed the urge to tuck it behind her ear. “Um...wow.” Her voice held the startled spark he currently felt igniting in his chest.

  “Yeah.” Should I apologize? He couldn’t genuinely do it—he couldn’t bring himself to regret kissing her. It’d been such a gift to kiss her and feel that way again.

  “So...what do we do about that?” She sat down on the wall, and he wondered if she felt as dizzy as he did.

  He sat down next to her. Not touching her, but still close. “I’m not sure I know.” He looked at her, glad she held his gaze. “Do we have to do anything about it?”

  “I need to leave. You need to stay here. That kind of calls for something to be done, doesn’t it?”

  Suddenly it was important to say, “I’m not sorry I kissed you. Not at all. It was—” having started, he now found he had no idea how to finish “—amazing. And I have to tell you, I wasn’t sure I could do amazing ever again.”

  She knit her fingers together. “It’s all wrong, you know? All the details, the circumstance, the timing. It’s all off. Mixed-up.”

  He shrugged. “I thought it all lined up perfectly with Yvonne, and look what happened. I don’t think you can go by how easy it feels.”

  She stared at the river. “This part feels easy. I mean not the tango—you’re right, that’s much harder than it looks—but this part. Only there are other pieces that don’t fit together.” She turned to look at him. “Pieces I’m not ready to give up.”

  “And you shouldn’t.” Much as he wanted to hit the pause button on this summer, to freeze these moments right where they were, he didn’t want her to stop being the tenacious woman determined to open her own place. “You’re great at Karl’s, but you’re supposed to be more than just your grandfather’s replacement. I’d never want to keep you here.” He sighed. “And I’d never want to go back. Not to Chicago.”

  “It’s not like we can meet in Rockford,” she mused, citing the city roughly halfway between Chicago and Gordon Falls.

  He knew, even as she said it, that there wasn’t a compromise to be had here. Feeling the possibility slip sadly between his fingers, he leaned over and kissed her gently again. “So that’s what you’ll be.”

  “What?” she said, blinking up at him, breaking off a piece of his heart that had just come back to life.

  He tucked that wayward strand of hair back behind her ear. “The one that got away.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  “McDonald, you’re an idiot.” Jesse glared at Dylan over the top of the fire truck as they were washing it Monday afternoon.

  “I knew you’d say that.” Already sorry he had given in to his friend’s relentless demands to know what happened after he and Karla were seen leaving the wedding reception together, Dylan braced for a lecture.

  “She’s perfect for you.” Jesse began working a rag around a fixture as if it fed the words. “She’s smart, she’s pretty, she catches monster fish on your boat, she makes coffee that keeps your customers happy, and you’re hooked on her. Even I can see it. For crying out loud, half the town can see it.”

  Dylan tossed a rag into the sudsy bucket at his feet. While Jesse was known to exaggerate facts as easily as he breathed, this was precisely why he hesitated leaving the reception with Karla. Tongues in Gordon Falls wagged at even the slightest encouragement. If the wedding festivities hadn’t been grating on his nerves so much, he would have never left with Karla, never opened her to that kind of small-town speculation. Still, he couldn’t bring himself to regret the moments he’d shared with her two nights ago out on the riverbank. The “Scottish tango song” had been running through his mind nonstop for the past forty-eight hours. “Half the town? Or just Violet and her buddies?”

  “Oh, yeah, the kidnapping. I suppose the pump was primed long before Hot Wheels tied the knot, huh?” Jesse was referring to Max Jones’s nickname, a favorite of Violet’s and Karl’s and a few other Gordon Falls residents. Jesse leaned on one elbow on top of the truck. “It’s not such a big deal, Dylan. I mean, it’s not like you were kids kissing out back behind the school dance or anything.”

  Dylan froze, even though he told his limbs not to give anything away. He’d deliberately left the kiss out, hoping the spontaneous dance would be enough to satisfy Sykes’s relentless curiosity.

  Too late. Jesse practically climbed up the truck to point a finger at him. “You did! You kissed her, didn’t you? It’s all over your face, buddy.” He laughed, annoyingly pleased. “Oh, man, she’s even better for you than I thought.” He planted his chin in one hand, ready for a long story. “And?”

  Dylan was not of the “kiss and tell” variety. He didn’t want to say anything at all—the wonder of that kiss was still working its way through his system. He didn’t know himself yet what it all meant, and he certainly wasn’t in the mood to work it out with the likes of Jesse Sykes, soon to be a newlywed. Jesse had proposed to Charlotte the day after Max and Heather’s wedding.

  That gave him a perfect diversion: “So when’s the wedding?”

  “Oh, no you don’t. I already told you all about that.” It was true. As they’d started cleaning the truck, Jesse had launched into a detailed, play-by-play account of the proposal and Charlotte’s “yes.” Of course, that only made things worse for Dylan. “This conversation is about you,” his pal countered, “not about me.”

  “Sykes, even the conversations that aren’t about you are about you.”

  Jesse hopped down off the truck and came around to Dylan’s side. His face grew serious—well, as serious as his friend got, which wasn’t very. “It blew you away, didn’t it? You’re totally hooked on her, and it’s driving you crazy, isn’t it?”

  Maybe it would be better to admit it to someone. Dylan was just hoping for someone less drastic than Jesse. “Sort of.”

  “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

  Dylan threw up his hands. “Isn’t it? She has this whole life planned back in Chicago, this amazing job that starts in a matter of days, and I have everything all set up here. I’m in no mood to do a relationship on a 150-mile commute.”

  “She’s running Karl’s like a natural. Her grandfather needs to retire, someday if not now. This is a no-brainer as far as I can see.”

  Dylan rose up to his full height. “She’s already got a job. A prime job that will take her exactly where she wants to go. I will not ask a woman to settle for me. I’m nobody’s backup plan, got it?”

  Jesse had struck a raw nerve, and he had the good sense to know it and back off. “Hey.” His tone changed. “No one wants that for you. Or Karla. You’re a catch, always have been. If she doesn’t opt for you, then it’s her loss, buddy.”

  Dylan didn’t offer a reply, more like a grunt of acknowledgment. Jesse was just being Jesse; the guy had fallen for Charlotte hook, line and sinker, and wanted to see the whole world matched up as happily. The trouble was all with Dylan, and he knew it. It wasn’t on Jesse that this morning it felt as
if the fireman was the last in a long line of Gordon Falls residents conspiring to send Dylan into another heartbreak.

  They worked for a while in tense silence, cleaning and rinsing in the warm afternoon sunshine. Then, as if he’d been trying to hold it in and just couldn’t any longer, Jesse came back around to Dylan’s side of the truck. “What I can’t get,” he said, tossing a wet rag to the floor at Dylan’s feet, “is why you’re not even trying. Karla’s worth the effort. Yvonne’s never been my favorite person, but if you let what she did keep you from fighting for a chance with Karla, well, then she just went to the top of my most hated list.” He grabbed Dylan’s shoulder. “Come on—you’re better than that.”

  “Look, we talked about it, okay? We both agree it won’t work.”

  Jesse leaned against the truck. “Oh, I can just imagine how you ‘talked about it.’ You probably even apologized for kissing her, didn’t you?”

  Dylan refused to answer that.

  “You know what your problem is?”

  It didn’t matter what answer Dylan gave to a question like that, so he remained silent.

  Jesse kept right on, determined to finish his lecture. “Your problem is that you think you’re being noble.”

  That wasn’t what Dylan was expecting. “Noble?”

  “You’ve got it in your head that you’re putting Karla’s goals ahead of yours. The whole noble heroic sacrifice bit. Not getting in the way of her chosen future.”

  Dylan went back to scrubbing a set of dials. “Thanks for making me sound like a doormat of chivalry. I knew I could count on you.”

  “It’s convenient, as far as emotional excuses go. Feels safer to take yourself out of the game and all.”

  This was starting to get annoying. “Got me all figured out, do you?” Normally he let Jesse get away with a lot, but the guy was toeing up to a line Dylan didn’t want him to cross. He was in no mood for one of his “I have matters of the heart all figured out” speeches. He turned his back to Jesse in the futile hope that Sykes would get the hint.