3, 2, 1...Married!

by Sharon Sala

  He made her laugh again. “Not much to say. We fell in love, he fell out.” Shrugging, she said, “Wouldn’t even make a decent T-shirt slogan.”

  So she had a gift for understatement. “But he hurt you and you’re leery.”

  K.C. looked off, avoiding his eyes. They were far too kind. And far too sexy. No swimming lessons in the world would have kept her from drowning in them eventually. “Something like that.”

  Maybe it would help her if he shared a little of his own story with her. “You’re not alone, you know. About being hurt, or leery. Or being the last one to fall out of love with someone.”

  Something in his tone pulled at her. K.C. looked at Bailey.

  “I married Bobby’s mother not because she was carrying Bobby but because I was in love with her and I thought that if I did all the right things, I could make her happy.” A smile that was more philosophical than humorous curved his mouth. “But you can’t make someone happy. They have to be happy to begin with. And our life together didn’t make Gloria happy. One day, she decided to just call it quits.” Though he was talking about it, he tried to keep the memory at arm’s length. Fifteen months later, it still hurt. “I came home early to find her leaving a note with the sitter.” Just like that, after all their time together, she left both of them with only a note in her wake. Without realizing it, Bailey set his mouth hard. “I made her read it to me, just so I could get it into my head that it was over.”

  Forcing the tentacles of the memory back before it ensnared him, Bailey looked at K.C. “But just because Gloria and I didn’t work out doesn’t mean that someday, there won’t be someone who does.” He paused, flushing slightly. “Sorry, didn’t mean to sound as if I were preaching.”

  “You weren’t. I appreciate your sharing that with me.”

  But she still wanted to run, he thought. Taking her hands into his, he looked into her eyes. Holding himself fast. “I’d really like to take you home, K.C., but—” He glanced over his shoulder toward the rear of the house and Bobby’s bedroom.

  “I understand.”

  More than anything, he wanted to ask her to stay, but he knew it was too soon. All he could do was look to the future. “And I’d really like to see you again.”

  She tried to sound blasé again. “I’ll be in the park.”

  He held her hands a moment longer. “You know what I mean.”

  Her heart began to hammer. Oh no, she wasn’t going to go there again. Once was more than enough. Visions of Eric popped into her head.

  Drawing her hands away, she began to move back. “And you know where I live—”

  Yes, he thought, he certainly did. “Oh, K.C., wait,” he called to her before she could run off.

  She turned.

  Bailey handed her the beige-and-blue stuffed animal she had held earlier. She stared at him, bemused and puzzled.

  “Think of it as a souvenir—or a bribe.” And something to make her think fondly of him. “You can give it to Gracie if you like.”

  She smiled at the toy, then up at him. “Gracie has one. This one’s mine.”

  She held it against her much the way Bobby did, he noticed.

  Suddenly, she brushed her lips against his. “Thank you,” she said before she left abruptly.

  Best trade he ever made, Bailey thought to himself as he traced the imprint of her lips against his, watching her walk to her car through his window.

  Chapter 7

  Nathan Calloway’s voice broke Bailey’s reverie. “Is there anything particularly strange going on across the street that I can’t see?”

  It took a second for the question to sink in. Bailey was aware that the other men all turned to look at him with open interest. Discussion of that afternoon’s football game had abruptly ceased. “What do you mean?”

  Nathan waved his hand at the Mediterranean-style town houses facing the park. “Whenever you’re not watching Bobby, you’re looking over your shoulder at those town houses. I’ve been talking to the back of your head half the time I’ve been sitting here.”

  Bailey thought of covering, but that would make the situation out to be more than it was. “Sorry, just wondering if K.C. was coming out today.”

  Taylor stopped tossing the football to his five-year-old. “A new playmate for Bobby?”

  Jeff Hamlin laughed. He’d noticed that something was up himself. Bailey had been far too preoccupied today. “More like one for Bobby’s father, from the kinds of the looks he’s been shooting that way.”

  Bailey wasn’t in the mood for ribbing. At least, not the kind these men could give. A shoulder rose and fell in studied nonchalance as he brushed off the observation. “Just someone I met.”

  The admission brought hoots of appreciation. Billy Stevens clapped his large hands together. “Hey, let’s hear it for the Toyman.” He raised and lowered his eyebrows in an age-old lecherous gesture. “Does this ‘someone’ have a sister?”

  Bailey laughed. “You don’t even know what she looks like.”

  Joining in, Nathan waved his hand at the protest. “Doesn’t matter.” His eyes wandered over toward his twins, three-year-old boys guaranteed to wreak havoc on any army. “Right about now I’d settle for any sort of female companionship. A woman who doesn’t run for cover as soon as she knows that twins run in the family.”

  “Emphasis on run,” Billy interjected with a booming laugh.

  Bailey knew that Billy was only half kidding. A single man with a child might be initially appealing, but the reality of the responsibilities had a way of throwing cold water on any budding relationship after a short while. Sitting back, he wondered how much to admit to the men. How much there was to admit to the men. He hadn’t had an opportunity to explore his feelings any further because the object of his interest had been conspicuously absent since Saturday.

  “Her sister’s married,” Bailey muttered.

  Billy sighed soulfully. “Everybody’s sister’s married.” But then his grin took over, widening encouragingly. “So, are you two going out or what?”

  “Right now, ‘or what’ pretty much describes it.” Bailey was beginning to wonder if he’d misread the signs. Saturday evening, it had seemed as if there had been a great deal of promise. But he hadn’t seen her since. She hadn’t even come to the park with Gracie the way she’d inferred she would. Was there a message in that? Was he to think that she was intentionally avoiding him?

  Because there was a silent demand for details, Bailey gave them a quick summary of Saturday’s events after they’d left. “She helped me out with Bobby,” he concluded, “and I had her over for dinner that night to say thank you.”

  The men all looked at him expectantly, clearly not content to leave the matter hanging.

  “And?” Nathan finally coaxed.

  Bailey blew out a breath. “And now I haven’t seen her since.”

  “Did you try calling?” Jeff suggested as he tied his son’s laces for the third time that afternoon.

  Bailey had thought about it and had even picked up the telephone once or twice. But Gloria’s rejection had left scars in its wake and he wasn’t entirely sold on the idea of leaving himself wide-open to enduring the same experience again so soon.

  “I don’t want to be pushy.” His excuse, he knew, didn’t exactly go over well with the others. But it wasn’t the others he was thinking of. “I thought if she came out with her niece, maybe we could pick up where we left off. Start a conversation.”

  Nathan shook his head. “If that’s where you left it off, maybe you went about Saturday night all wrong. Women like romance.”

  “Nothing wrong with that,” Billy commented.

  Nathan turned toward him. “I never said there was. I could use a little myself right now.”

  “Awww,” Billy teased.

  Taylor looked at Bailey, as if a bell suddenly went off in his head. “Hey, she wouldn’t be the one that we saw last Saturday, would she?”

  “The one with legs up to here?” Jeff slid into the seat
beside Bailey, holding his hand up to his chin. When Bailey acknowledged the description with a nod, Jeff hooted his delight and jabbed him with an elbow. “You old dog, you.” And then he realized Bailey’s dilemma. “That kind isn’t just going to throw herself at you, Bailey, good-looking though you might be.”

  Nathan drew his head back, pretending to scrutinize Bailey closely. His eyes shifted toward Jeff. “You think he’s good-looking?”

  Jeff spread out his hands. “Yeah. In a clean-cut sort of way.”

  Billy ran his hand though his blond hair, tossing it back in an exaggerated motion the way a model might. “How about me?”

  Jeff snorted. “You, you’re lucky your dog doesn’t bury you in the backyard along with his ugly bones.”

  “Guys,” Nathan summoned their attention back to the initial conversation. “We’re working on his problem, not yours.”

  Bailey frowned at Nathan. How had this gotten so out of hand? “I don’t have a problem.”

  It was obvious the others didn’t see it that way. Nathan looked at him. “You want to see her again, don’t you?”

  He did, but this wasn’t anything he was about to undertake through committee advisement. This was his to handle. No way was this supposed to be a team effort. Bailey looked off, watching Bobby playing. “Sorry I mentioned it.”

  But it was too late for that. Nathan was all set to give Bailey his full backing.

  “No, this is good, this is good,” he assured Bailey enthusiastically. Jeff and Taylor nodded their heads in agreement. “We’ve all been out since our divorces—however infrequently—” he added, thinking of his own experiences. “You, however, have hung back, bringing the group’s average seriously down.” He clamped an arm around Bailey’s shoulders. “Time you started pulling your load.”

  Bailey had a different slant on it. “Time I stopped sharing things with you,” he corrected.

  But there was a germ of truth in what they’d said, he thought. If he wanted to see K.C. again, he was going to have to do something and not wait for fate to step in a second time. Fate had other paths to take and other people to move along. He’d gotten his one free get-out-of-jail card. Now it was time he did something about it—before it was too late.

  If it wasn’t already.

  Bailey stood, his mind made up. “I’ll see you guys later.”

  Nathan saw the look in Bailey’s eyes and read it correctly. “That’s my boy.”

  Bailey ignored him. Moving at a good pace, he cut through the grass and took Bobby down from the shiny gray whale he’d just crawled onto.

  Instead of protesting, Bobby turned bright-green eyes up at him and asked, “Where?”

  Bailey took a firm hold of the small hand and retraced his steps back to the bench, and to the sidewalk just beyond. “We’re going to go see your favorite person—after me, I hope.”

  He figured it was his tone rather than his words that evoked the wide smile from Bobby, but who knew? Maybe Bobby understood more than he gave him credit for.

  Bailey turned a deaf ear to the calls his departure generated from the other single fathers. He was only thankful that although some of K.C.’s windows faced the street, the entrance to her town house faced east, away from the park. At least he wouldn’t be under close scrutiny as he stood on her doorstep, ringing her bell.

  Crossing the street, he fervently hoped he wasn’t about to make a colossal fool of himself.

  K.C. set the thermometer aside. “Almost normal, kiddo,” she told Gracie. The little girl popped up like toast from the bed. The few seconds it had taken to sit still while K.C. took her temperature had seemed endless to Gracie. “That means you still can’t break the sound barrier.

  “Too late,” she murmured to herself as Gracie scrambled off the bed and ran to the other room. It never ceased to amaze her how children could be so sick one minute and then so full of energy the next, their temperatures fluctuating like waves in a choppy sea.

  For her part, K.C. was relieved. Gracie had been cooped up in the house too long and had a raging case of cabin fever, fairly bouncing off the walls after almost a week. But at least tending to her and Rachel had left little time for her to think about Bailey. And wonder what he was doing.

  If he even noticed she wasn’t there.

  Of course he hadn’t. He was a man. All men had attention spans the size of dying gnats.

  The doorbell rang just as she left Gracie’s room.

  “Get that, will you?” Rachel called.

  As if Rachel would, K.C. thought, a smile twisting her lips as she glanced toward her sister in the family room. They had had the same upbringing, but Rachel had always behaved as if she had been born a princess, waiting for her coronation ceremony to begin.

  “Yes, milady,” K.C. called over her shoulder, unlocking the front door. “May I help y—?”

  Her voice died away as she looked at Bailey and Bobby standing on her doorstep.

  To say that she was surprised to see him was to give new meaning to the word understatement.

  What was he doing here?

  It took her a moment to collect herself. “Is something wrong?” Habit had her quickly looking Bobby over. She half expected Bailey to tell her that the boy had fallen again.

  “No, we just want to know if you and Gracie would like to come out and play.”

  Come out and play. Like a child. It nudged at old, fond memories, long lost. “Well, I—”

  It seemed that he didn’t want to give her the opportunity to brush him off. “We haven’t seen you since Saturday night and I was wondering if maybe Bobby and I frightened you away from using the park.”

  She could see how he might get that idea. “No, Gracie had a cold. She’s just getting over it.”

  “Oh, I’m glad—I mean, not that she had a cold, but that it wasn’t anything we—that I—” He stopped. “Can I start over?”

  Leaning her head against the doorjamb, she smiled at Bailey. He was really very sweet. “No need.”

  “Oh, but there is,” he assured her. “A very big need.”

  Suddenly a sultry voice called out from inside, “Who is it, K.C.?”

  K.C. closed her eyes involuntarily. Here it comes, she thought. “Just a man Gracie and I met in the park, Rachel.”

  The next moment, her sister was hobbling into the foyer on her crutches, eager to see if this was the man. The look in her eyes was very appreciative as she took measure of him at close quarters.

  Balancing herself as best she could, Rachel regally extended her hand to Bailey. His handshake was firm and warm.

  “Hello, I’m Rachel Collins.” She flashed a quick smile in Bobby’s direction, but it was the senior edition of the Quaid model that held her attention. “Would you and your son like to come in?”

  He appeared reluctant. “No, we just stopped by because we hadn’t seen K.C. and Gracie for a few days and wondered—”

  Her hand still in his, Rachel was already coaxing him into the house. “No need to explain. Please, I feel like a shut-in. A little conversation would do me a world of good. I’ve already heard everything K.C. has to say. K.C.—” she turned toward her sister “—show Mr. Quaid to the family room.”

  Gracie, never hanging back in the shadows for long, came running out to see who the newest visitors were. When she saw Bobby, she gleefully ran forward and took possession of his arm, ushering him into her domain with the air of a young Queen Elizabeth, showing off her newly acquired kingdom.

  “I show toys!” she announced.

  Gracie, her father was given to saying, had more toys than any three children put together. But she had met her match today, K.C. thought.

  “Out of luck there, Gracie. This is one young man you’re not going to impress with your cache of things.” She looked at Rachel who seemed content to devour Bailey with her eyes. “Bailey makes toys.”

  “I know, you mentioned that.” Only after she had all but crawled down her sister’s throat and pulled the words out, Rachel added sile
ntly. But even then, it was evident to Rachel that Bailey Quaid had made one hell of an impression on her sister. Not that, after one look, she had to wonder why.

  There was a match here, she just had to find how to make them see that. Rachel’s mind went into overdrive as she drew her guest into the family room.

  Chapter 8

  “I am really sorry you had to go through that.” K.C. searched for the right words to frame her mortified apology as she walked Bailey and Bobby to the door. Nothing seemed really equal to the job.

  For the past two hours, while K.C. alternately cringed and flung back terse quips, Rachel had subjected Bailey to a barrage of questions while smiling fetchingly. She interspersed her modern-day version of the Spanish Inquisition with tales meant to showcase K.C.’s virtues. As far as K.C. was concerned, her sister had all but put her on the auction block, hung a sign around her neck and started the bidding with her eyes on a very limited market.

  Bailey had to admit that it was an unusual afternoon, but he had walked into it on his own. And he found the flush of embarrassment on K.C.’s cheeks incredibly appealing.

  Slipping a jacket on Bobby, he made light of her apology. “Your sister means well.”

  Not in her book, K.C. thought, struggling with a temper that usually lay dormant. Rachel had dragged out stories from their past that even she had forgotten about. She’d begun to feel as if she’d fallen headlong into a very bad English drawing room comedy entitled Marrying off Katherine.

  “My sister is lucky I didn’t toss her through the window and break her other leg.”

  He tried to envision that. After listening to Rachel, he’d come away with the feeling that K.C. could tackle absolutely anything she set her mind to.

  He began to wish that it were him.

  “I love a physical woman,” he said, laughing. And then the laughter died away as he shrugged into his own windbreaker. “I was serious the other night.” His eyes held hers. “About wanting to see you again.”