by Robyn Neeley
“After all that? No way.” She sought for the door handle.
Sitting with him in the cozy darkness of his car with the odor of his favorite woodsy cologne teasing her senses and the warmth of his body all too close was not the way she’d have chosen to conduct a rational discussion.
Even his profile, silhouetted by headlights when a car passed by on the highway made her feel suffocated. Her heart began a strange, new rhythm, and she felt almost drunk.
Which she probably was, she reflected with inward humor. Kalin had always gone directly to her head.
“Let go of that handle. I’m taking you to dinner, remember?”
“Hope never dies. You might have changed your mind.”
“Sorry.” He sounded anything but. “This is going to take a lot longer than I thought. Is Galveston okay with you?”
“Galveston?”
“For dinner. You used to love going to Galveston.”
“I don’t care.” That was a laugh and a half.
“You’ll care fast enough if I take you someplace where the service or the food isn’t up to par.” He urged her to buckle her seat belt. “Sit back and rest, Casey. You still look like the last time you slept was about a year ago.”
Casey found herself happy to relax a little. She watched the dark horizon on the drive toward the beach, practiced her deep-breathing exercise, and told herself she could handle it.
Kalin kept her entertained with a flow of talk about the sale of his book, which warmed her heart and made her smile.
“When the call came, I was in the shower, so I stalked to the phone stark naked and stood there dripping water all over the carpet. I’d figured it was some idiot wanting me to come get him out of jail for drunk driving.”
Casey caught her breath and quivered at the disturbing thought of Kalin’s naked body.
“It took me a moment to realize it was an editor. After I’d hung up, I stayed, drip-drying, jumping up and down, and calling all my relatives to tell them I’d sold a book. By the time I was through, I didn’t need a towel.”
Casey hoped he didn’t know what he was doing to her.
He launched into a description of the revisions he’d been asked to make, several of which were things Casey had suggested years before, and asked if she was interested in accepting a position as manuscript critique artist.
They had arrived at the Bolivar ferry, and Kalin drove onto the boat at the direction of the deck hands.
“I’d never read a Western until I met you,” she said. “Now I love them and keep up with all the latest.”
“Good.” Kalin parked his car and switched off the motor. “You have a better understanding of Westerns than most English professors I’ve met. Want to get out?”
Casey followed him to the rail and let the cool, damp wind flow over her face. As the ferry plowed through the bay toward Galveston Island, the wind grew cooler.
“Are you warm enough?” Kalin asked.
“This is balmy weather compared to what I’m used to.”
He wrapped both arms around her and pulled her against him. “In that case, you can keep me warm, because I’m freezing.”
He radiated warmth and comfort, and his arms made no demands, so she stood in the haven of his arms until the ferry docked. Oddly enough, she felt more comfortable in his presence. She didn’t even jump when his arms went around her.
He helped her climb back into his SUV as they neared the landing. “I thought I’d give you a chance to get after Gaido’s the way you got after Cap’n Bob’s.”
Casey smiled. “We recent graduates of cooking school are full of idealism.”
She absorbed the Galveston night lights as they drove along Seawall Boulevard to Gaido’s Restaurant. This near Christmas, the seawall seemed relatively deserted, but the resort atmosphere remained and Casey soaked it up. She had missed the Texas Gulf Coast more than she thought.
When they arrived at the restaurant, Casey fled to the restroom. She pulled the rubber band out of her hair and fluffed it as well as she could with her fingers, but it was no use. The face looking back at her from the mirror seemed young and guileless, totally unlike the sophisticated image she had hoped to project around Kalin McBryde at all times.
So much for sophistication. She rejoined Kalin and followed the headwaiter to a table looking out over the darkened Gulf.
“What are you having?” Kalin watched her study the menu.
“Blackened redfish, what else? I’m going to see if they try to pull a fast one on me like Cap’n Bob’s did.”
“What’s wrong with fried shrimp?”
“Is that what you’re having?”
“I think so. Why are you looking at me like that?”
Casey considered. Kalin liked fried foods as well as he claimed his father had. If the laws of genetics ran as unfairly as ever, Kalin had inherited his father’s propensity for maintaining his lean, muscular physique on a diet composed almost entirely of fried foods.
“Well?”
She lowered her gaze and studied the menu, amazed at how easily she could look Kalin in the face now. “Nothing.”
“You can have some of my shrimp. How about a salad?”
Casey agreed, and sure enough he ordered a salad and asked for extra dressing, then ordered a dish of fried scallops on the side. She was hard put to regard the food with her usual zest, instead of reckoning the number of fat grams in each bite of food Kalin put in his mouth.
She watched with fascinated horror the things Kalin added to his baked potato when he suddenly burst out laughing.
“I’ve been waiting for you to say something. It’s easy enough to see you’re dying to ask me if I’ve had my cholesterol checked lately.”
“Not me.” She returned to her own plate.
“Casey.”
She looked up to find his brilliant gaze on her face.
“You can lecture me as much as you like about my diet. I’ll even listen. If you care to take over planning my meals … ” His voice trailed off suggestively.
Casey forked up a bite of redfish and pretended she hadn’t heard. She admired the glittering display of Waterford crystal displayed in lighted cases all around the restaurant.
He grinned at her. “Of course, I have a terrible tendency to eat whatever I can grab from fast food places. What I really need is a live-in cook.”
“You can’t afford one until you sell more books. You’d better watch yourself, Kalin McBryde. You deliberately ordered all that stuff.”
He suddenly looked like a mischievous boy. “I couldn’t resist. The minute I mentioned fried shrimp, you started calculating my chances of living to finish the meal. Don’t worry about me. Uncle Jack has already been on my case. Besides, I don’t smoke and my father did, which Uncle Jack says is probably saving me.” He added two more slices of butter to his potato. “If you don’t get busy on that fish, I won’t let you take a few of these shrimp off my hands.”
Casey had lost most of her appetite, but she worked diligently at her fish and tasted the shrimp Kalin transferred to her plate.
He studied her face. “My father smoked and drank way too much, if you want to know.”
Casey glanced uncertainly at him and said nothing.
“In the year before he died, he did a lot of crazy things.”
“As a result of his diet?” Casey concentrated on her food.
“As a result of less oxygen to his brain,” Kalin said in dry tones. “Maybe you’re wondering why I went to law school after I’d sworn I’d never go. Well, after he died, I discovered he had made some interesting financial investments. One of them was to pay my tuition in advance at the law school he wanted me to attend, with the stipulation that if I didn’t attend, the money would revert to the school’s alumni fund.”
Kalin’s smile was wry. “At the time, it looked as though I needed a well-paying profession. Most of Dad’s other investments were no good, to say the least. And unlike most young lawyers just starting out, I had his law library and a lot of contacts.”
Casey nodded her agreement and pretended intense interest in removing a bone from her fish.
His blue gaze pinned her. “That was part of what was wrong with me five years ago, you know.”
She looked up, startled.
“I was discovering that my father had lost most of his money in various schemes, both legal and illegal,” Kalin went on. “The legal ones were women and race horses.”
Casey looked at him in disbelief. “Your father?”
“Yes. My father. It was one hell of a shock, I can tell you, and I was getting very little sympathy from you.”
Casey returned her attention to her fish.
“I’m not blaming you,” Kalin said. “I couldn’t tell you about it back then because I was still too shocked myself. I just want you to understand why I was such a basket case.”
Casey nodded once more, totally at a loss. She remembered Kalin grumbling when she needed to bake refreshments for one of her grandmother’s meetings rather than sit holding his hand in the front porch swing for several hours. At the time, she hadn’t known why he’d wanted to spend so much time with her doing nothing but holding her, but since she enjoyed being held by Kalin, she hadn’t complained.
Unfortunately, her job and the promises she had made to bake special deserts for her grandparents’ social activities demanded some of her time and attention, and Kalin had been in no mood to understand her obligations.
“Now that I’ve told you my troubles with my father,” Kalin said, smiling at her, “it’s high time you told me about yours.”
Chapter 5
Casey froze before his determined gaze. She looked down and mumbled, “There’s nothing to tell. I never knew him.”
“I have a feeling there’s plenty you can tell.” He reached across the table for her hand. “Another reason I was so angry was that you’d never told me about your father and mother yourself. It hurt that you had such a lack of trust in me.”
Casey tried to twist her hand from his grasp. “If you want to know the truth, I didn’t tell you because I was ashamed. It isn’t everyone whose father goes to court to deny his paternity and gets upheld. So if you want to get technical, I don’t even know who my father was.”
“Come off it, Casey. Anyone can look at you and tell Derrick Davenport was your father. Those eyes alone — ”
“That’s not what the judge thought,” Casey returned.
Kalin smiled at her, and his blue eyes seemed to glitter. “Darling, you know as well as I do judges and courts make mistakes. Sometimes they know the truth, but for other reasons, they decide against the claim. That’s what happened in your father’s case.”
She flushed but maintained composure. “All Granny told me is that my mother was a star-struck teenager who capped off her constant rebellion by running off to California as soon as she was eighteen. She wanted to be an actress.”
Casey knew her voice held a considerable amount of sarcastic bitterness, but Kalin’s face betrayed only sympathetic interest.
“Rebellion?” he asked. “Did she refuse to do her chores?”
“And how,” Casey said. “Granny didn’t know what to do with her. No matter what punishments Granny came up with, my mother still did exactly as she pleased.”
Kalin smiled. “Whereas you gave in and did your chores?”
“Yes.” Casey tried again to pull her hand back.
He refused to let her go. “Your grandmother used to say you would end up like your mother if you didn’t behave?”
Casey’s hand jerked in his. The flush that stained her cheeks probably answered him. She returned swiftly to her story.
“How my mother met Derrick Davenport, no one knows. She did manage to get a few bit parts in some movies, so more than likely she met him at a party connected with one of them.”
“He was known for his capacity for partying, wasn’t he?” Kalin asked when Casey showed signs of winding down.
She shrugged and kept her eyes on her plate. “Somehow he managed to keep their affair quiet, because that was one of the reasons my mother’s story wasn’t believed when she got pregnant. He was able to say she tricked him by sneaking into his home one night.”
“It does seem hard to believe that he managed to keep it quiet,” Kalin said. “Derrick Davenport wasn’t known for his restrained lifestyle.”
“I’ve often wondered if he thought she was lying about her age. All the pictures I’ve seen of her look terribly young.”
Kalin smiled. “That’s probably it. If you had slept really well last night, you’d look about sixteen.”
Casey cast him a glance akin to loathing. “Anyway, she got pregnant. Instead of coming back home in disgrace, she chose to try to get Derrick Davenport to marry her by begging him to come back to her in all the tabloids. When that didn’t work, she took him to court. He cast doubt on her claims by pointing out that he’d never been seen in public with her. Also, she had been seen with several other men. What it amounted to was that his lawyers managed to make it look as though my mother had deliberately seduced my father for the money. The judge denied her claim, and Davenport started dating Megan Murphy and married her soon afterward.”
“What about the DNA tests?” Kalin kept her hand in his. “They said you were undeniably Davenport’s daughter.”
“It didn’t make a bit of difference. Granny claims he bribed the judge.” She shrugged. “I think the judge also denied her claim because she had publicized it so vigorously. It looked as though all she wanted was the publicity and the money. In other words, everything was all her own fault.”
“Out for what she could get,” Kalin murmured, in parody of the words he’d said to Casey five years ago.
“Yes.” Casey’s voice shook.
He tightened his grip and leaned toward her. “Casey.”
Their waiter arrived with suggestions for dessert.
Casey sighed with relief as Kalin let go of her hand. He’d get back to the subject in a moment, she knew, but she’d have herself under better control by then.
Picking up her fork, she attacked her fish in hopes he’d find it hard to maintain intensity while she ate.
For once, she’d mistaken her man.
“What happened when the judge denied the claim?” Kalin fixed her with his steady gaze.
Casey pretended great concern with the remains of her fish. “The story fizzled out, despite my mother’s efforts to keep the tabloids excited. I was born in a Los Angeles charity hospital, and she died two days later. By that time Granny had arrived.”
“Your grandmother wasn’t there when you were born?”
“No. She arrived the next day. My mother hadn’t wanted her to come.” Casey stopped, then added, “The daily papers didn’t even report my mother’s death.”
“The tabloids must have reported it,” Kalin said, his tone hinting that he already knew they had.
With a sense of mild shock, Casey realized Kalin had researched the story. Why was she so surprised, when she of all people knew of his talent for research?
“They did,” Casey said. “‘Davenport Love-Child Orphaned’ or ‘Turned Over to Charity,’ depending on how they looked at it. Nothing they said made my father so much as call the hospital to see what became of me.”
“Does that bother you?” Kalin asked.
“I suppose it does,” Casey admitted.
“How did you feel about it when you were growing up?”
> Casey flashed him a look of resentment. Law school had taught him the art of staying on top of a subject with questions.
“I didn’t know who my father was until I was twelve and snooped into Granny’s private box of letters and newspaper clippings. She had always evaded my questions about my father.”
“And?”
“It didn’t mean much to me at the time. Of course, I read everything I could about Derrick Davenport, including stories about the paternity suit filed by an unknown actress who later died. Granny tanned my bottom and warned me against talking about it, so I never told anyone except Bonnie. Also, Granny had told the reporters I died a few days after my birth. That’s why we were never plagued with periodic interviews. Granny is a very believable woman.”
Kalin smiled and nodded. “Why didn’t you tell me? Don’t you think I’d have believed you?” His eyes were steady on hers, as if he was determined to have an answer.
Casey flushed. “By then I wasn’t telling anybody. I had grown up enough to realize what my mother had done. Besides, what would you have thought? That I had some ulterior motive for telling you? No, I suppose not. You thought that when I didn’t tell you.” Her fingers clenched on her fork. Now Kalin would know why she felt so ashamed for having begged him to come back to her.
“Casey,” Kalin said softly. “You know better than that.”
“Do I?” She put the fork down with a clatter.
Kalin’s face was set in determined lines. “What did your mother do?”
She glanced up. “What do you mean?”
“It’s obvious you’ve passed judgment on her. What have you convicted her of?”
“I don’t know what you mean.” She clasped her cold hands together in her lap.
But she did know, and the realization was enough to banish what was left of her appetite.
The waiter arrived bearing chocolate cake topped with pecans, and Casey gazed on it with a lackluster eye.
After a swift survey of her tense face, Kalin said gently, “Eat your cake. I’ll shut up until you’re done.”
These words banished what was left of her appetite. She forked the cake into pieces and pretended to inspect its texture.
