“I noticed.”
“I’m sorry. Did I keep you awake?”
“No, but clearly something kept you awake. What was it?”
She shrugged. She hadn’t written up the letter to the town yet about the outcome of the claim for the Buxton Mill. She wanted to write it and then tell Ian McKinnon personally. He’d worked hard on plans to develop the property for the town that he deserved to hear it from her first.
“You're awfully quiet,” Keith finally broke the silence, bringing his empty coffee cup to the sink. “Something is bothering you.”
Regis glanced over at Keith’s handsome face. When had she become this attached to seeing it, having it bring her comfort.
“I have a lot of work to do before I leave.”
His expression fell. “You’re leaving?”
“End of the week. I got the call from my supervisor yesterday.”
He opened his mouth to say something, but then stopped.
“I knew last night,” she said, answering the question he didn’t put into words. “I just didn’t know…how to tell you. I didn’t want to talk about it.” She abruptly got up from the table and dumped the rest of her coffee in the sink, and turned on the faucet to rinse the sink and her cup.
“Stop,” Keith said.
She didn’t look at him. “I don’t want to leave these dishes in the sink.”
“Stop,” he said again, turning off the water and pulling her around to face him.
“We knew this day was going to come eventually,” she said, looking up at him. The light in his blue eyes had faded with his disappointment.
“Did we?
A cynical laugh escaped her lips. “How could you not know that I’d be leaving?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t really think much about it. I just thought about how I was feeling. How I thought we were both feeling.”
She fought tears as he pulled her into his arms. “Right now I’m feeling rotten. To make matters worse, my boss is insisting on my taking a vacation.”
With raised eyebrows, Keith said, “Well, there’s an excuse for you to stay longer.”
She pulled out of his arms and went back to the sink. “I can’t even think that far. There is still so much for me to do this week.”
“Okay, here’s a radical idea.”
She stopped washing a coffee cup and glanced at him.
“Stay.”
“What?”
“Finish out your week and then just stay. You said you have vacation. So take a vacation right here. You don’t have to run off to another town, do you?”
“Well, no.”
“Where do you go when you leave a town you’ve been working in?”
“I have a simple apartment in Chicago. By simple, I mean utilitarian. It looks a lot like my motel room except it has a small kitchen. I’m not there very often. I’m sure once I get home Mike will find another town for me to go to. He usually keeps me busy.”
Keith leaned against the counter as she finished rinsing the last dish and put it in the strainer to dry. She turned off the water and dried her hands before looking at Keith again.
When she did, she saw emotion in his eyes that she’d never seen. Not even when they’d made love. A thump of emotion formed in her throat that she couldn’t swallow down.
“Stay,” he said in a soft voice that was almost pleading. Her bottom lip began to quiver and she clamped it down with her teeth to keep it steady.
“This isn’t something we should talk about this morning.”
He looked at her for a lingering moment as if studying the lines on her face.
“Okay, we’ll talk about it tonight then.”
She nodded and reached up to kiss him. He tasted of coffee and smelled like the cinnamon bagels they’d had for breakfast. His tongue brushed against her lips and she gasped. The hand at the small of her back flexed, pressing her closer to him as he tilted his head, deepening the kiss until she was lost in him again.
Everything that had been circling in her head since last night vanished. All she thought about was the way it felt when this incredible man kissed her. He’d turned her world inside out. And yet all that disappeared when she was in Keith’s arms. There was absolutely no confusion about the way his mouth felt against hers, the way his lips moved, how his tongue teased at the seam of her mouth. She had no doubts about whether or not she wanted him to keep kissing her, about how right it felt to have him holding her.
When they finally broke apart, their breath was coming in pants and she could feel Keith's heart beating as furiously as her own. He kept his arms around her and looked down at her.
“I’ll see you tonight,” he said with a smile.
And for the first time in the past two weeks, Regis dreaded it.
# # #
Chapter Eight
“This is the second time I’ve caught you daydreaming,” Nancy said, standing in the doorway to Hawk’s office.
“I’m not daydreaming,” he said.
“Yeah? Well whatever it is, if you don’t snap out of it, I’ll be forced to do something drastic.”
“Like what?”
“Call your mother.” She chuckled at the look he gave her, and then tapped her fingers on the doorjamb. “Seriously, you’ve got a patient in examining room one who is waiting for you.”
“I’ll be right there.”
Ever since Regis left his house yesterday morning, he knew she was pulling away from him. She told him she was going to be finished with her work in Rudolph by the end of the week. But Hawk didn’t think she’d avoid him before she had to leave. But then, just as he was expecting her to come to his house last night after work, she’d called and said she had too much paperwork, and thought it was better for her to stay at the motel.
He’d spent many nights alone in that big log cabin since he’d come back to Rudolph after med school. But last night was the first night in over two weeks that he’d spent the night without Regis snuggled up, warm, and naked next to him. And he didn’t like it one bit.
He got up from behind his desk and walked the few strides to the examining room, pulling the folder from the wall file and checking the contents. Concerned, he knocked on the door and went inside.
Ian McKinnon sat in a chair by the window instead of the examining table. And he didn’t look happy, which was great concern to Hawk.
“I didn’t expect to see you here today.”
“I didn’t plan on coming.” He turned his hand. That’s when Hawk saw the white rag stained with red. “I slammed the glass on the counter and cut myself.”
“On purpose?”
“The slamming of the glass was on purpose. The glass breaking was just Murphy’s Law.”
Hawk washed his hands and dried them quickly before putting on latex gloves. Ian sat in the same chair by the window. Hawk sat in his seat and rolled it closer to his cousin to examine the wound.
“You may need a stitch or two,” he said.
“Terrific,” Ian said.
“What set this off?”
“The phone call I got last night from your girlfriend.”
Hawk stopped examining the wound and looked at Ian. Dark circles were evident under his eyes.
“Regis called you? What for?”
“The claim for the mill wasn’t fully approved. What they’re giving us is a joke. We can forget getting the mill rehabbed for the center. There isn’t enough money to fix what needs to be repaired. The engineer said the flood water caused structural damage to the foundation of the building and needs to be completely repaired or the building will have to be torn down. Except, the insurance company is only giving us cleanup cost for the building.”
“What about FEMA aid?”
“What? In two years? The repairs need to be made within a certain period of time. Without enough money to repair the foundation the floods destroyed, the town will order the building to be completely torn down. That means no more Wounded Veterans Center. ”
Now it all made sense to
him. “I’ll talk to her.”
“She can’t do anything. At least, that’s what she said. It came from higher up. Oh, and she’s really sorry.”
Hawk squashed down his anger as best he could. Why hadn’t Regis come and told him about the claim for the mill herself? Why was he getting it secondhand?
“Let’s put that aside for now and get you stitched up.”
“What’s the hurry? It’s not like I have anything pressing to do with my day now that the project at the mill is all but dead.”
Ian might be ready to give up. But Hawk was a long way from giving up the fight.
* * *
The community center was busier than it had been in days now that a full FEMA staff had set up camp there. People were coming in and out of the room from morning until late afternoon. Regis was glad she’d gotten most of the paperwork for her claims finished. Now she was just fielding questions and dealing with disgruntled customers who weren’t happy.
She was tired, physically from lack of sleep, and emotionally from dealing with a heart so heavy, it physically hurt. She’d hated sleeping alone last night. Regis hated even more that each time she rolled over, she’d searched for Keith’s warm body. Not finding him there left her cold.
She forced herself to be in the present and not the past. She had too much work to do to spend time pining over a man who’d be part of her past very soon.
The main area of the community room was full of people. Some were filling out paperwork, others were lined up in front of a table. Off to one side, a group of older kids watched their younger siblings playing while harried parents waited for their turn in line with the FEMA reps. Luckily, no one was lining up in front of her table needing help. It gave her some time to go through paperwork that needed to be finalized and filed by the end of the week before she left.
She heard a familiar voice greet someone in the crowd and lifted her gaze from the computer screen long enough to see Keith charging her way. The look on his face made her stomach drop.
“Can I talk to you a minute in private?” He didn't bother with preliminaries as he stepped behind the table.
Regis looked up, startled. She braced herself for what she knew was coming.
“Can it wait until later? I really want to finish this paperwork before the end of the day. Maybe we could have dinner out somewhere tonight.” she said.
“This is important,” Hawk insisted. “There is an empty room down the hall. We can talk there.”
“All right.” She quickly asked the agent at the next table to watch her computer while she stepped away, a courtesy they each did for each other during the day when it got busy and promised to be quick.
She followed Keith to an empty room down the hall and waited for him to shut the door behind her. She didn’t wait for him to get to what was on his mind.
“I didn’t tell you because I thought Ian should know first.”
“That was very thoughtful of you. But that doesn’t change the fact that the Buxton Mill claim has been denied.”
“It wasn’t denied. It just wasn’t approved for the full amount.”
“It may as well have been denied for all the good that tiny settlement will do for the cause.”
“Keith,” Regis shifted, uncomfortable with his question. “You know that I'm not really supposed to discuss my cases.”
“Ian isn’t a case,” he spat out the word. “You should have seen him, Regis. He’s given up. That center was a lifeline for him and now…”
She closed her eyes and tried to steady her nerves. This had been her fear.
“I did everything I could do, Keith. These things aren’t always as cut and dry as you think. Every claim has certain criteria that needs to be met if it's going to be approved. I skated on thin ice with my report but I got called on it by my manager. The pictures clearly show flood damage inside the building. That water level was enough to show that it was flood water, not the rain, wind or ice that damaged the property. I can only pay out for how the policy reads. Believe me, I wish the damage had been done by wind and ice. It would have been easier to approve more for the claim.”
“The engineer said the foundation needs to completely be replaced or the building needs to be demolished. If you read the report.”
“I had the engineer report. Ian gave it to me. But unfortunately, the engineer also said that the foundation showed signs of wear before the storms. The building was aging. The insurance company won’t pay out for an aging property that was already in disrepair.”
“So that’s it?”
“There’s nothing else I can do.”
Keith paced in front of her, clearly upset by what his cousin was going through. Then he stopped and looked at her directly.
“Is that why you didn’t stay with me last night?”
She drew in a slow breath. “I needed to call Ian and prepare the letter to the town. I wanted to make sure it was thorough.”
“That’s an excuse. You could have done that at my place.”
“You know I wouldn’t have worked if I had stayed at your house last night.” She smiled up at him and was taken aback when he didn’t respond in kind.
“If we can’t get the money to repair Buxton Mill, it’ll have to be demolished. The town won’t let it stand in that condition while we raise money.”
She’d never felt so helpless in her life or wanted to do something more than what she could do for anyone. “I know. And I’m sorry.”
“Are you?”
His accusation was like a slap to the face. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“You blow into town, take a quick look at a policy or a property and decide the fate of people’s lives. And then you get the hell out of town again and leave the people left behind to pick up the pieces.”
Anger surged in her. “Yes, that’s what I do. That’s all I do. But in doing that I’m trying to help people just like you do, Keith. It may not be the same, but I can help some people. There are times when I can’t. Sometimes my hands are tied.”
He paced in front of her again. “Ethan served eight years in the Navy, Regis. Ian did two tours in Iraq, lost his leg and nearly lost his life. This center was important to the soldiers in this community coming home from service overseas. It was supposed to be a place where they could come together and deal with whatever they experienced while serving this country. They need this center.”
“Do you think I don’t know that? Believe me, I have been around active military and veterans my entire life. But it doesn’t change what I can and can’t do for the center.”
Keith ran his hand over his head in frustration. “Jeez, Logan and Poppy were talking about getting married there. Now that’s not going to happen either.”
She took in the heavy slump of Keith’s shoulders and felt it herself. She was losing this battle. And maybe it was never a battle that could be won. This is what she’d always dreaded, falling for someone and then having to disappoint them .
Keith pierced her with a pleading look. “They’ll never get the building inspector to approve repairs without the money. And without the money the mill will have to be demolished and that’ll be the end of the community center for the veterans. They need help.”
“I know.” She glanced at the door and thought about all the people waiting in line. Every one of them was feeling as desperate as Keith felt.
“I can’t help everyone. But I can help some of the people in there,” she said, pointing out the door. “I need to get back to doing that.”
Keith nodded. “You’re right. Okay.”
“I’ll understand if you don’t want me to come over tonight.”
“No, I do.”
With a wary smile, she said. “I’ll see you then.”
* * *
Hawk watched Regis walk down the hallway until she disappeared in the room that was mulling with activity. Every emotion inside him was raw and conflicted, making it hard for him to even think. Deep down he knew this wasn’t
Regis’s fault. She didn’t make the rules and there were a whole lot of rules that were stacked against them.
But part of his frustration went deeper than the center. She hadn’t told him what was going on. Instead, she’d avoided him last night. She was leaving. She’d said as much the other day at breakfast. And that was the harder pill for him to swallow than losing out on insurance claim money for the mill. It was losing Regis that was eating him up inside.
If he was going to fight, then the fight started there.
# # #
Chapter Nine
Regis sat in her car in front of Keith's house for a minute, hoping that tonight would turn out better than this afternoon had. She’d reminded herself a thousand times over the course of the afternoon why she didn’t get involved. It was for this. There was always going to be someone leaving. And leaving was just as hard when you cared about someone as being left behind.
But she wouldn’t deny herself the chance to spend as much time as she could with Keith before she left Rudolph. She hoped he felt the same.
She checked her hair and make-up again in her rearview mirror and tried to push away the memory of her confrontation with Keith earlier. She'd known he would be upset about the Buxton Mill claim. But she had no idea how deep his feelings for it went. She only hoped they could get past that tonight.
The moment she entered the house, it was clear that her hopes had been in vain. A meal was set out on the table, and the lights were low, but the normal easiness of their nights together was gone. Instead, Keith sat at one end of the table and ate his dinner while she silently ate hers.
Regis looked down at her plate, trying to figure out what she could say that would fix this. She picked at her food, pushing it around on her plate with her fork, unable to eat any of it. Her stomach was in knots, waiting for Keith to say something, anything that would indicate what he was thinking. But she already knew. She’d been through many nights like this right before her father would ship out on a tour.
“Maybe this wasn't such a good idea,” she finally said.
Keith looked at her then, questions clouding his handsome face. “What? You coming here or us?”
Badland Bride (Book 2 - Dakota Hearts) Page 7
