He grinned at her and she saw a glimmer of the mischievous side of him that she recognized from long ago.
And liked. A lot. Still.
“In the two months since I’ve been home I’ve had one date,” he answered her genuinely, then. “One blind date that my grandmother forced me to go on with the daughter of someone she knows at the country club. The date ended at the veterans’ hospital.”
“That’s kind of a weird place to go for a good-night kiss,” Kyla said.
But this time his smile was more solemn. “Lily had just left the army—the only date I’ve ever had with a woman in the service—so my grandmother thought we’d have that in common. But when I went to pick Lily up at her parents’ house, she was wearing cammies.”
“Camisoles?”
“Camouflage,” he corrected. “For a nice dinner out. Her mother was trying to get her to change, but there was no getting through to her and the longer things went on about her clothes, the more I started to see that she was in trouble. She was having problems even remembering that she’d been discharged, that she was back in the States, back in civilian life. She was pretty clearly in crisis. We didn’t end up going out. Instead I talked her into checking herself into the hospital to get some help and when she agreed, that’s where I took her.”
That was serious, just not the kind of serious Kyla had been expecting.
“As much as I didn’t want to go on the date, it was good that GiGi set it up before Lily went too much further off the deep end. That can be a problem bigger than just adjusting.”
“But that’s honestly all you’re going through— adjusting? Because you might not be wearing camouflage, but you do always wear something that has some kind of mention of the military on it.” She nodded at the insignia on the pocket of his shirt.
He glanced down at it and breathed a small chuckle. “Huh...I didn’t even realize that,” he said. “But that’s really only a sign that I haven’t done a lot of clothes shopping since I’ve been back. I have those couple of suits I showed you this morning for whenever I do something with business—or to go to things like today—and a few clothes to wear to Sunday dinner at GiGi’s because she doesn’t allow jeans at those, but otherwise...”
He shrugged just one of those broad shoulders and it occurred to Kyla that wounded or not, they were both still something to see.
“Otherwise I just have stuff I’ve had for years and years, mostly what I bought in college or on base. There isn’t any other deeper meaning to it.”
“Are you sorry you’re out?” she probed anyway, unsure if he was being completely truthful.
“There’s a part of me that is,” he seemed to confide. “You’re pretty much the only blip in a lifetime of aiming for the military. Everything else I did from the time I was a little kid was to get me there. It’s been my life, and now it’s over and done with.”
Kyla tried not to stall on the thought that she’d been a blip in his goals somehow because it really was him she wanted to hear about tonight.
“But your life isn’t over or done with,” she felt compelled to say.
“No, it isn’t,” he agreed without any hesitation or sign that he thought that, and she was glad to hear it because it helped dispel some alarm that he might be having more dire issues than she’d assumed. “Just one chapter is.”
“Seems like more than one chapter—maybe the first volume in the books of your life.”
He smiled at her. “There are going to be volumes?”
She shrugged again, allowing for the possibility. “Why did you leave the Marines—since it doesn’t really sound like you wanted to?” she asked.
“Things were happening here that I thought it was important for me to help with. I was on the short list for a promotion—”
“To?”
“Major. But there aren’t that many of those spots to go around. I didn’t think I should accept it and then leave.”
What things were happening here?
That was what Kyla wanted to ask, but he’d said it so ambiguously that she had the sense he didn’t want to expound on it. She decided not to pry. Instead she asked, “If things weren’t happening here would you have stayed in longer?”
“Probably. It’s in my blood.”
“So being out is going against your nature?”
“I hope not. I hope it just feels that way for now and that I’ll get used to the slower pace. To the lack of discipline. To the hours—maybe someday I’ll actually be able to sleep past zero-five-thirty. And think of it as five thirty a.m. I hope I can stop craving being busier, having more work to do. That I won’t miss the adrenaline rush of the physical situations. That I’ll feel more in touch with everything out here—my family, whatever job I end up doing for Camden Incorporated, everything.”
“But that is how you feel now?” she said.
“Like a fish out of water—that’s how I feel,” he summed up. “But it’s been better the last few days. Maybe I’m mellowing...” he added, looking steadily at her as if she had something to do with that.
But Kyla could only stare back at him in disbelief. “This is you mellow? The schedules and the perfection and the nothing ever out of place for more than a minute? And remember I saw your closet this morning when you asked me to help you pick out a suit—your shoes are all lined up, toes in, heels out, the same amount of space between each pair, the same as the space between every hanger. You move without making a sound, you hear things I don’t think even dogs can hear, you always seem on the alert. Sometimes I’m not even sure you blink and I wonder if they took you, replaced your parts with robot parts and have now just sent you out among us...”
“Wow. I didn’t know it was that bad,” he said with another laugh.
“It’s not bad.” She refuted the idea quickly. She hadn’t meant to offend or criticize him. “But it isn’t mellow, either.”
“I guess I just feel more mellow. But I can guarantee one thing—none of my parts have been replaced.”
Ah, he still had it in him to put a little innuendo in that—maybe there was hope for him yet.
“I know what you’re saying, though,” he said then. “I’m still more marine than civilian. I don’t know if that will ever change.”
And to prove it, since they’d both been finished eating for perhaps five minutes, he stood to clear the table.
Kyla did, too, though she would have preferred to just sit awhile longer.
“Do you want it to change?” she asked as they took everything to the sink.
“Do I want to become a civilian slacker and turn into everything that’s driving me crazy?”
“Well, no. But—”
“I don’t know what I want right now,” he confided. “Fish out of water, remember? There are days when I just want to jump back into the bowl. So right now I’m doing what I’ve told you to do—I’m taking it one step at a time, not making any big decisions, and just trying to make things work. I love my family—even if I am having some trouble fitting in again—and I’d like to get back to being close to them. And I do feel as though I have an obligation to take a role in the business, not to just profit from it. I was raised by H.J. to know that that was expected of me even if I did serve in the military first. I’m just trying to work it all out—let go of the old path and get on a new one, I guess.”
“Have you thought about merging paths rather than leaving one completely behind to get on the other?”
He frowned at her as he handed her a rinsed dish to put in the dishwasher. “I don’t think Camden Incorporated wants to go to war.”
“No, but what about doing things for veterans through Camden’s? You could instigate a discount for military personnel and their families. You could initiate programs. For instance, you could offer veterans who want to start businesses what you’re offering me—help learning how to handle finances and administration. Camden’s could sponsor programs to retrain veterans and help get them back into the work force. Or outreach pr
ograms to employ veterans yourself. It seems like there are a lot of things that an organization like yours—with the kind of resources you have—could offer. And who would know better than you what former soldiers and military families need? Like with that Lily person—you saw what she needed and got her help. Maybe helping military and ex-military people in other ways through Camden’s could be your role in the family business. Seems like that would still be serving your country and connecting you with the military but also get you back into your life here.”
Kyla wondered if she’d gone on for too long and lost him because he didn’t say a thing as he handed her the last of the dishes and cleaned the counter and sink. Then he went silently to the freezer and took out the ice cream that was intended for their dessert.
“I just want a little of that,” she said when he left the carton on the counter and reached for the bowls.
Still without a word, he didn’t take down any bowls at all and instead opened a drawer for two spoons.
Once they’d both taken ample spoonfuls of a velvety chocolate gelato, he seemed to come back to the moment, looking at her again. “You sell yourself short, you know it, Gibson?”
“How so?” she asked.
“There’s more behind that pretty face than the cleanup song and how to finger paint. Everything you just said...those are damn good ideas. That’s the first thing anybody has suggested to me that sounds like something I’d actually like to do.”
Oh. That made her feel good...
“I’m glad,” she said, as if she wasn’t thrilled to know she’d come up with an idea he liked. “Just don’t tell me I’ll have to become a marine before you’ll help me now,” she joked to cover her own feelings.
“Yeah, you’d make a lousy marine,” he joked in return. “Look at you, barefoot and about to double dip into that ice cream...”
She was barefoot and had been about to double dip, but she stopped short and rolled her eyes at him before she took a second clean spoon out of the drawer and used that for an additional bite.
“And you still do that,” he said thoughtfully, watching her the whole time.
“What?”
“Hold the spoon up and lick the ice cream off like it’s in a cone.”
She hadn’t thought about that, but she guessed that was something she did because there she was doing it.
“You did that all summer in Northbridge,” he said, his voice gone quiet, reflective and an octave deeper. “Every time we got that ice cream we liked from the creamery there—remember?—we’d get a dish and share it. You’d do it every time.”
“Is that bad? Another reason I’d make a lousy marine?”
His grin was rakish and secret and raised only one side of that lush mouth of his. “It’s not bad, but it would definitely put a strain on the fraternization policies.”
He finished his own first spoonful of gelato and took a second clean spoon to have another bite, too, saying as he did, “I’ve been thinking about Northbridge—what would you say to a trip there on Monday? We could take the plane and fly up, spend the night so it wouldn’t be too much for you or for Immy and you’d have a night’s rest, then Tuesday we could drive your car back here so you’d have it when it comes time to need it.”
“The plane? As in, you have your own?”
“The family does. We all have access to it.”
To Kyla her car meant her freedom, and a trip to Northbridge was also a solution to several other things she’d been thinking about, so she was in favor of that idea and told him so.
“Actually then I could get my driver’s license replaced and I can get more of my belongings—I talked to the principal of my school and put in to have the whole semester off to deal with things here, but Darla needs help making the rent, so she’s thinking that the sub in my classroom can be her substitute roommate, too. But I have to clear space for her—”
“We can stay longer than overnight if you want.”
“I don’t have that much stuff and I’m sure Darla will help me box it, so one day and maybe the next morning to get the driver’s license and talk to my bank about sending me replacement ATM and credit cards should be enough. The problem is where to stay while we’re there. Our apartment is tiny and I’d hate to have Immy keeping Darla up at night when Darla has to go in to work the next day.”
“I thought we’d all stay at the ranch. There’s plenty of room—it was built for the lot of us to be there at once and it’s big enough that not even Immy’s crying will bother Seth or his wife—or you, so you can still sleep through the middle-of-the-night feeding.”
“You’re sure?”
“Positive,” he said. “Seth has been trying to get me up there since I’ve been home anyway. This will kiss...I mean, this will kill two birds with one stone.”
Kiss? That was an odd slip of the tongue. But he was still watching her eat ice cream. Was that what he was thinking about while he did it?
It certainly put it in her mind all of a sudden.
But Kyla retreated from the thought, reminding herself that they were wrong for each other and deciding that if that was what was on his mind, she should call an end to tonight.
So in a tone that relayed that she was ending the evening, she said, “Okay then—Monday to Northbridge, and tomorrow is your family’s Sunday dinner?”
He nodded, apparently willing to skirt over the gaffe, too. “Drinks are at five, dinner is at six, but GiGi wants us to come earlier in the afternoon—she says she wants time with you and Immy since I banned her from coming over here. I think I’m being cast as the big, bad ogre.”
“Well, you are kind of big and bad...” Kyla teased him, for some reason finding it impossible to block the mental image of how she’d found him when she’d come downstairs earlier. The appeal of seeing him in that softer pose, feeling once more all she’d felt—pangs and urges and drives...
He closed the space between them.
“Yeah, you have no idea how big and bad I can be,” he countered her taunt, doing some mock intimidation before he reached for her empty spoon.
But it wasn’t intimidation she felt when he came close. When she looked up into his handsome face and found those blue eyes looking down at her from so nearby, full of something she couldn’t quite interpret. Or at least something she was afraid to interpret because it seemed primitive and sensual and much like pure, raw desire...
Then suddenly his mouth was on hers in a kiss that was anything but big or bad or intimidating. A spontaneous kiss that was sweet and gentle and as light as their first kiss when they were kids.
And over just as quickly, before she was even able to respond or compare whether or not he’d improved since then.
But at least it wasn’t on the top of my head, she thought before she told herself that there shouldn’t be any kissing of any kind, anywhere, going on.
“That’s probably not a good idea,” she heard that saner, more reasonable, rational part of her say while another part of her was reeling.
“We can’t turn back the clock,” he added, sounding sane and reasonable and rational himself, even as she looked up into those smoldering blue eyes.
“We can’t,” she agreed.
Or was she telling him that they couldn’t kiss? Because they couldn’t!
Except that he did it again anyway—taking her just as much by surprise.
Only this time it wasn’t over in an instant. And she did kiss him back. And had time to compare...
And, oh, yeah, he’d learned a thing or two because it was an incredible kiss, one that pressed her head farther back, that swayed a little and drew her in...
Until he stopped it, stood up soldier straight again and put both of their ice cream spoons in the sink beside Kyla as if nothing of consequence had happened.
And while she ordered herself to tell him not to ever kiss her again, to make him promise that he wouldn’t, she didn’t take that order any better than she’d taken any he’d given her. The best she could
muster was to stand away from the countertop and say, “Behave yourself, marine!” in a way that didn’t sound at all serious.
But when his response was a very businesslike, “Affirmative,” she couldn’t help feeling a little let down.
And confused.
Yes, she knew very well that kissing didn’t have any part in this agreement between them. But she also knew that Beau was likely to have taken what she’d said to heart, carved it in stone and he wouldn’t ever kiss her again.
And even though that was the way it should be, she couldn’t feel anything good about that possibility.
But she concealed her feelings with a fortifying breath and said, “The memorial service, and rugby, and the heat, and hours of crying baby—that seems like a full enough day. I think I’ll say good-night.”
Beau nodded. “’Night,” he said, as if she’d already been dismissed. Kyla turned tail and left him in the kitchen.
But when she reached the foot of the stairs she hesitated to go up, glancing back at him.
He wasn’t standing stick straight anymore. Instead, he had both hands flat to the counter she’d been leaning against, arms out, elbows locked, bracing his weight as he stared down at the marble.
Locked inside of himself. Lost in thought.
But about what? Kyla wondered.
About putting his life on a new course and starting to resolve some of the issues he had?
Or about her?
About those kisses—the one last night and the two just now?
Probably not the kisses, she decided. Even if those kisses were so much on her mind that she knew she was going to have trouble falling asleep tonight, too.
Thinking about them.
Especially about that last one.
And the way it had felt to have his mouth on hers again...
New.
And not so new.
Chapter Six
Push-ups. Pull-ups. Crunches. Weights.
Beau wasn’t counting the sets or the reps he was doing before dawn on Sunday morning. He was just in his basement gym, pushing himself through the most grueling workout his body would withstand.
Her Baby and Her Beau Page 11
