by Mindy Klasky
She fumbled for the door handle and flung herself out of the truck. Rye met her by the hood, settling his firm hands on her biceps. “What’s wrong?” he asked.
“I can’t do this!” Her words came out more a shout than a statement.
“You’ve just been shaken up. You know the drill—back up on the horse that threw you.”
“I’m not a rodeo rider.”
“No, but you’re a dancer. And I have to believe that you stick with adversity on the stage better than this.”
She shook her head. This wasn’t dance. This wasn’t her career. This was—literally—life or death. She couldn’t think of working anymore for the day. “Please, Rye. Will you just drive me back to Rachel’s?”
He looked at her for a long time, but she refused to meet his eyes. Instead, she hugged herself, trying to get her breathing back under control, trying to get her body to believe that it wasn’t in imminent danger.
At last, Rye shrugged and walked around the cab of the truck, sliding into the driver’s seat with a disgruntled sigh. Kat took her place meekly, refusing to look at him as he turned the key in the ignition. The truck started up easily enough, and it only took a little manhandling to get it up the side of the ditch, back onto the road.
Rye knew that he should press the matter. He should make Kat get back behind the wheel. She had to get over her fear. If she walked away from driving now, she’d probably never return.
But who was he to force her to do anything? He was just a guy she’d met ten years before, a guy who lived in Richmond, who kept coming home to a little town in the middle of nowhere, because he couldn’t remember how to say no.
Kat was the one who’d had the guts to leave for real. She was the one who’d gone all the way to New York, far enough that it had taken a real disaster to bring her back to Eden Falls. Not the piddling demands that his family made on him day after day.
He tightened his grip on the steering wheel. It had been a mistake to agree to renovate the dance studio. He was building his own life away from Eden Falls. He couldn’t let the first woman who’d caught his attention in months destroy his determination to make Harmon Contracting a success.
But he’d already done that, hadn’t he? He’d already roped himself into finishing that damned plumbing job. And repairing the ceiling leak wasn’t going to be easy, either. And he had a really bad feeling about what he’d find when he really looked at the hardwood floor.
He glanced over at Kat. What did Gran always say? “In for a penny, in for a pound.” He’d started teaching Kat how to drive, and he’d let her scare herself half to death. She was his responsibility now. It was up to him to convince her to change her mind. To find the nerve to get back in the truck—if not today, then tomorrow. Wednesday at the latest.
He barely realized that he was committing himself to spending half a week away from Richmond.
Kat hopped out as soon as Rye pulled into the driveway. She didn’t want to look at the weeds, at the lawn that was impossibly exhausted, even though it was only spring. “Thanks,” she said as she slammed her door, and she tried to ignore the hitch in her stride as her boot slipped on the gritty walkway.
Rye didn’t take the hint. He followed her to the front door, like a boy walking her home from a date.
Now, why did she think of that image? Rye wasn’t her boyfriend. And they most definitely had not been out on a date. Besides, it was broad daylight, the middle of the afternoon.
She opened the unlocked door with an easy twist of her wrist. Not daring to meet his eyes, she pasted a cheery smile on her face. “Thanks for all your help at the studio this morning. Everything’s coming along much faster than I thought it would.” She stepped back and started to close the door.
Rye caught the swinging oak with the flat of his palm. “Kat,” he said, but before he could continue, she saw him wince. He tried to hide the motion, but she was a dancer. She was an expert on all the ways that a body can mask pain.
“You are hurt!”
“It’s nothing major,” he said. “My shoulder’s just a little sore from the seat belt.”
“Come in here!” She opened the door wide, leaving him no opportunity to demur.
“I’m fine,” he said.
She marched him into the kitchen, switching on the overhead light. “Go ahead,” she said, nodding. “Take off your shirt. I need to see how bad this is.”
Rye shook his head. He was used to his mother clucking over him like a nervous hen. His sisters bossed him around. And now Kat was giving him orders like a drill sergeant. From long experience, he knew he’d be better off to comply now, while he still had some dignity intact. He undid the top two buttons of his work shirt before tugging the garment over his head.
That motion did twinge his shoulder, and he was surprised to see the darkening bruise that striped his chest. The seat belt had done its job admirably, keeping him safe from true harm, but he’d have a mark for a few days.
Kat’s lips tightened into a frown. “Ice,” she said. She turned toward the pantry with military precision, collecting a heavy-duty plastic bag. The freezer yielded enough ice cubes to satisfy her, and then she twisted a cotton dishrag around the makeshift cold pack.
“I don’t think—”
“I do.” She cut him off. “Believe me, I’ve had enough bruises that I know how to treat them.”
He didn’t want to think about that. He didn’t want to think about her body being hurt, her creamy skin mottled with evidence of her harsh profession. As if he were accepting some form of punishment, he let her place the ice pack over his chest.
“That’s cold,” he said ruefully.
“That’s the idea.” There wasn’t any venom in her retort, though. Instead, her hands were gentle as she moved the ice, as she stepped closer, maneuvering the bag until it lay right along his collarbone. The action shifted the midnight curtain of her hair, and he caught a whiff of apricots and honey. Without thinking, he tangled his fingers in the smooth strands, brushing against her nape as he pulled her close. He heard her breath catch in her throat, but she didn’t try to edge away. He found her lips and claimed them with his own, a sweet kiss, chaste as schoolkids on a playground.
“There,” he whispered against her cheek. “That’s a little warmer.”
The rasp of his afternoon scruff against her face made Kat catch her breath. Her entire body was suddenly aware of the man before her, aware of him as a man, not just a collection of parts that could be manipulated into an entire encyclopedia of ballet poses. Her lips tingled where he had kissed her, ignited as if she had eaten an unexpected jalapeno.
Without making a conscious decision, she shifted her arms, settling into the long lines of his body. She felt his ribs against hers, measured the steady beat of his heart. She matched his legs to her own, shifting her thighs so that she could feel the solid strength of him. He chuckled as he found her lips again, and this time when he kissed her, she yielded to the gentle touch of his tongue.
Velvet against velvet, then, the soft pressure of eager exploration. She heard a sound, an urgent mew, and she realized with surprise that it rose from her own throat. His fingers, tangled in her hair, spread wide and cradled her head. She leaned back against the pressure, glorying in the sensation of strength and power and solid, firm control.
He lowered his lips to the arch of her neck, finding the solid drumbeat of her pulse. One flick of his tongue, another, and her knees grew weak, as if she had danced for an entire Master Class.
Danced. That was what she did. That was what she lived for.
She couldn’t get involved with a man in Eden Falls—or Richmond, either, for that matter. She was only visiting; she was heading north as soon as she straightened things out in her parents’ home, as soon as Rachel came back to keep an eye on Jenny.
Kat steeled herself and took a step away.
“I think heat might be better than ice for my shoulder,” Rye said, a teasing smile on his lips. He laced his fingers between hers.
Those fingers!
Kat remonstrated with herself to focus on what was important. She freed her hand and took another step back. “Ice is better for bruises.” She couldn’t avoid the confusion that melted into Rye’s gaze. “I—I’m sorry,” she stammered. “I…” She wasn’t sure what to say, didn’t know how to explain. “I shouldn’t have let myself get carried away.”
Carried away. He hadn’t begun to carry her away yet.
“I’m sorry,” she said again, and this time he heard something that sounded suspiciously like tears, laced beneath her words. “I shouldn’t have done that. I’m only here for a few… I can’t… I belong in New York.”
You belong here, he wanted to say. Right beside me. And then he wanted to prove that to her, in no uncertain terms.
But he had no doubt that those words would terrify her. She’d be right back to where she’d been in the ditch—rigid with fear. Rye forced himself to take a steadying breath. To let her go.
“Go ahead,” she said after her own shaky breath. “Take the ice pack. You can give me back the towel at the studio, tomorrow.”
Rye shrugged, resigning himself to her decision. “Yes ma’am,” he said. “But aren’t you forgetting something?”
She’d forgotten a lot. She’d forgotten that she was here to help out her parents. Her sister. Her niece. She’d forgotten that she lived in New York, that she had a life—a career—far away from Virginia. “What?” she croaked.
“You have a broken computer in the back of my pickup truck.”
“Oh!” She hesitated, uncertain of what to do.
“Don’t worry,” he said, and she sensed that he was laughing at her. “I’ll take it down to the shop.”
She frowned, and her fingers moved involuntarily toward his shoulder. “But get someone else to lift it out of the truck.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said again, but the glint in his eyes said that he was anything but a respectful schoolboy. She showed him to the door before she lost her resolve.
As she heard the truck come to life in the driveway, she shook her head in disbelief. Obviously, she’d been traumatized by her disaster of a driving lesson. She’d been terrified by the thought of dying in a ditch, and the adrenaline had overflowed here in the kitchen. She’d been overtaken by the basest of all her animal instincts.
Well, there was nothing to be done but to rein in those physical responses. Goals. Strategies. Rules. She grabbed a notepad from the drawer beneath the phone and started to revise her schedule for finishing up the studio renovation, for getting all the class records in order for the new term. If she pushed herself hard, she could be out of Eden Falls in one more week.
When she’d finished her schedule, though, she leaned against the counter. Her fingers rose to her lips, starting them tingling all over again. Maybe she’d been too optimistic when she wrote up that list. Seven days wasn’t a lot, not to complete everything that needed to be done, and to keep an eye on Jenny, too. Maybe she should plan on staying in Eden Falls a little longer. Ten days. Two weeks. There was no telling what might happen in two full weeks.
She laughed at herself as she tore up her list. The renovation would take as long as it took.
And she had to admit—that wasn’t a terrible thing. No, it most definitely was not a terrible thing to spend some more time with Rye Harmon. She shook her head and thought about how Haley would tease her when Kat explained why she was staying in Eden Falls a little longer than she had planned at first.
Chapter Four
Kat ushered Susan to the kitchen table, telling her mother to sit down and relax. “You don’t need to wait on me like I’m a houseguest,” Kat insisted. “I can put the teakettle on to boil.”
Still, Susan fussed. “I just want you to rest that foot. You need it to heal, if you’re going to get back to New York. Does it still hurt a lot?”
Kat shrugged. She didn’t pay a lot of attention to pain. It was all part of her job. She took down two teacups and matching saucers, enjoying the look of the old-fashioned china that had once belonged to her grandmother. “Don’t worry about me,” she chided Susan. “You have enough on your plate.”
“Your father looks so much better. I cannot tell you how much it means, that he’s finally able to get a full night’s sleep. Jenny is a sweetheart—she’s so excited to be reading a book to her Pop-pop right now. But she is a busy child.”
Busy was one word for her. Spoiled rotten was another. Kat was tired of playing policewoman, constantly telling her niece what to do and what not to do. Just the night before, Kat had caught herself complaining to Haley, saying that Jenny had been raised by wolves. Okay, that was an exaggeration. But not much of one.
But then, just when Kat thought that she had exhausted her last dram of patience with her niece, she was forced to realize that Jenny was just a little girl—a very little girl, who was working through one of the greatest challenges of her short life. Only that morning, after finishing her bowl of corn flakes, Jenny had looked up with such transparent sorrow in her eyes that Kat’s heart had almost broken. “When is my mommy coming home?” Jenny had asked.
For once, her lower lip wasn’t trembling because she wanted sugary cereal for breakfast, or a plate full of syrupy carbs, or some other disaster for her growing body. Instead, she was trying very hard to be stoic.
Kat had pushed down her own emotions, all of her anger and frustration with Rachel. “Soon,” she’d said. “I hope she’ll be home soon.” She’d given Jenny a brisk hug and then sent her toward the toy chest, telling the child that she needed to collect all the scattered crayons at the bottom of the container, returning them to a plastic bucket neatly labeled for the purpose.
Hard work. That was what had carried Kat through the loneliness and confusion of being on her own in New York. That was the only prescription that she could offer Jenny now.
Standing in Susan’s kitchen, Kat rescued the teakettle just before it shrieked. She filled the pot and ferried it over to the table before turning to snatch up a plate of gingersnaps. Somehow, though, her booted foot slipped on the worn linoleum. She caught her balance at the last possible second, but the china plate shattered on the floor.
“Oh, no!” she cried. “I am so sorry! I don’t know how I could be so clumsy.”
Susan rose from her chair.
“No,” Kat cried. “You’re only wearing your house shoes! I don’t want you to cut your feet. Just sit down.” She limped over to the laundry room, quickly procuring a dustpan and broom. Berating herself the entire time, she brushed up the debris, consigning shattered china and dirty cookies to the trash. “Mama, I am so sorry. I can’t believe I did that. Here I am, trying to help, and I just make everything worse!”
“Nonsense,” Susan said. “It was an accident. Nothing to get so flustered about. Now, sit down, dear, and pour yourself a cup of tea.”
Kat complied, strangely soothed by her mother’s calm. Susan pushed forward the sugar bowl, but Kat merely shook her head. She hadn’t added sugar to her tea since she was younger than Jenny was now.
“Mama, I’ll go online. I can find a plate to replace that one—there are websites to help people locate old china patterns.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“But it belonged to your mother!”
“And she’d be very upset to see you so concerned about breaking it. Please, Kat. Not another word.”
Still not satisfied that she’d made appropriate amends, Kat fiddled with her teacup. She avoided her mother’s eagle eye as she turned the saucer so that the floral pattern matched the cup precisely.
“I worry about you,” Susan said, after Kat had finally taken a sip.
“That’s the last thing I want, Mama! I’m here so that you don’t have to worry. That’s the whole idea!”
“And you’re doing wonders, keeping an eye on Jenny and getting everything ready for the first summer classes at the studio.”
Kat felt guilty about that. She still hadn’t told her mother about the condition of the studio, about the utter lack of students for the spring session. Four times in the past week, she’d started to broach the matter of the bank account, of the money that Rachel had not accounted for during the winter term. Each time, though, Kat had chickened out, dreading the moment when she destroyed her mother’s fragile peace of mind. Kat’s cowardice was certain to catch up with her. There couldn’t be much more time before Susan’s life got back to normal, before she found the wherewithal to check her financial statements. Who knew? She might even stop by the columned bank building on Water Street, learn about the disaster firsthand. In public.
And that disaster would be made much worse, because Kat was involved. Kat, whom Susan expected to run things smoothly. Kat, who had never been irresponsible like Rachel. Every day that Kat remained silent was a horrible, festering lie.
She steeled herself to make the admission. After all, if she said something today, then she might still be able to help Susan to recover. Kat could stay on another week or so, help sort out the finances with the help of a sympathetic—or, at the very least, a professional—banker.
She took a deep breath, but Susan spoke before Kat could confess. “Sweetheart, it’s you that I worry about. I wish that you could learn to relax a little. To sit back and enjoy life.” Susan shook her head, running her finger along the edge of her saucer. “You’ve always been such a grown-up, even when you were a very little girl. I could leave a slice of pie on the kitchen table, right between you and Rachel, and I always knew that you would have the self-restraint to eat your vegetables first.” Susan smiled fondly, as if she could still see her twins sitting at her dining room table. “Sometimes, I wish that you still played Magic Zoo.”
