by Cathie Linz
Valentine’s Day! Kayla had almost forgotten. Jack was going to be picking her up at the house in less than two hours from now. The only thing she’d done to prepare for tonight was to ask Diane to baby-sit Ashley.
Since George was stranded out of town on a business trip, Diane had been more than willing to help out, adding her own words of wisdom when she came over to the house. “So the man finally asked you out.”
He’d asked her even more than that, he’d asked her to marry him, but Kayla didn’t tell her friend that part. She was afraid Diane would think she was hallucinating.
Besides, Kayla felt she’d already dumped enough on Diane, confiding in her about Bruce taking Ashley away and what her attorney had said today. She didn’t want to take advantage of her friend any more than she had already.
“Yes, he asked me out,” Kayla replied before nearly wailing, “and I don’t have any idea what to wear.”
“How about that burgundy silk dress with the swishy full skirt?”
“I can’t find it.”
Diane moved Ashley aside and looked into the tiny closet herself. “It’s right here.”
“I looked through that entire closet... Never mind. Thanks. You’re a savior.”
“If you don’t calm down you’re going to poke that mascara brush in your eye,” Diane warned her.
“I should have put on the dress first, before putting on my makeup. Shoot, I’m doing everything backward,” she muttered, while carefully pulling on the dress. She avoided getting any makeup on the dress, but now her curled hair was all messed up.
Ten minutes later she was looking more pulled together and felt more in control. Then the phone rang. It was Jack.
“Listen, something’s come up...” he said.
Her heart dropped like a stone. He was canceling.
“Kayla, are you there?”
“Yes. You’re canceling. That’s okay.”
“No, it wouldn’t be okay and no I’m not canceling. No way. I’m just running late, and I’m wondering if you’d be able to meet me at the restaurant instead of my picking you up.”
“Oh. Sure. I wasn’t thinking, I mean about your picking me up. I know you’re not driving yet, I should have offered to pick you up. Or to meet you there. I wasn’t thinking.”
“I love it when you babble,” he murmured with a sexy laugh. “Here, write down the address of the restaurant.”
She did, and he made her repeat it twice.
“I’ll see you there,” he said.
But when she walked in to the Glass Box, she didn’t see him.
“Happy Valentine’s Day. May I help you?” the hostess, who was completely dressed in red, asked her.
“I’m here to meet someone, but I don’t see him.”
“His name?”
“Jack Elliott.”
“He’s here. Follow me please,” the hostess requested.
Kayla did, through a maze of tables and rooms until they came to an area in the back, separated from the rest of the restaurant. Normally it might be used for banquets, but tonight it was decorated with dozens of red and white balloons and a huge bouquet of red carnations. “There must be some mistake,” Kayla began.
“There’s no mistake,” Jack said from the table set for two in the far corner. He was wearing a suit and tie. The cut of his clothes emphasized the athletic fitness of the strong body beneath them: the broad shoulders, lean waist, narrow hips. She’d never seen him looking so handsome. He quite simply took her breath away.
“You look great,” he murmured, a glint of hunger smoldering in his eyes.
“So do you. Your cast,” she belatedly noticed. “Your cast is off!”
“Yeah. I wanted to surprise you.”
“Well, you did that, all right.” Seeing him on his own two feet for the first time was a heady thing. The man oozed sex appeal. To prevent herself from melting in the doorway, she tried to be practical. It wasn’t easy. “Did the doctor give his okay?”
“What do you think I did, held a gun to his head and made him remove the cast?”
“When you want something, you have a tendency to go after it, no holds barred.”
“You’ve got that right,” he noted with a wolfish grin. “I’ve been wearing a damn cast for weeks. It was time to get rid of it. The doctor agreed. Remember, I told you I was a fast healer. But don’t take my work for it. Come on over here and check me out for yourself.”
His here-I-am-come-get-me look was too tempting to resist. She walked to his side, hoping he didn’t notice that her knees were shaking as if she were the one who’d been in a leg cast all this time.
To her surprise he didn’t make any more provocative comments, but instead took her hand in his and raised it to his lips. As if on cue, the room was suddenly filled with the sound of a violin.
Kayla didn’t know what to say, not that she would have been heard over the sweet, but loud, sound of the musical instrument. They were serenaded throughout their meal, which was comprised of filet mignon so tender it melted in her mouth, tiny boiled potatoes and the sweetest peas she’d ever eaten.
During dinner she tried to make small talk. “Your uncle referred several clients to us yesterday,” she told Jack.
“That’s good. He must have been impressed by how well you handled me.”
Jack’s grin was so wicked, Kayla became tongue-tied and couldn’t say another word.
The violin covered the silence.
Dessert was decadent chocolate mousse. She was tempted to lick the glass bowl, but restrained herself.
The music finally stopped.
“Thanks for your help, Igor,” Jack said. “I think I can manage things from here.”
“I am sure you can,” Igor agreed. To Kayla, he said, “I would do anything for this man. He saved my precious Strad.”
“His violin,” Jack elaborated for her benefit.
“A Stradivarius.” Igor stroked the instrument as if she were the love of his life. “The fire almost got her, but now she is safe in my arms.”
After Igor’s departure, Jack said, “There’s a little champagne left yet.” Taking her glass, he filled it halfway and handed it back. “A toast,” he suggested. “To keeping you safe in my arms, just like Igor’s Strad. You might want to check your glass before you drink that, though,” he suggested.
Frowning, Kayla lowered her glass to look in it. Something glittered at the bottom of it. Dipping her finger in the bubbly alcohol, she snagged a ring. A simple yet elegant sapphire solitaire ring.
She stared at Jack in bemused astonishment. “Why?” she whispered. “Why would you do all this—” she waved her hand around the elaborately decorated room “—for me?”
“Because I want you more than I’ve ever wanted any other woman in my life. Because I felt like it. Because you’re worth it. Or you could say it was all of the above,” he ended in a teasing voice.
“I’m serious.”
“So am I. Marry me.”
“This is crazy.” But she tried on the ring, anyway. It fit. She took it off again.
“So? Haven’t you ever done anything crazy in your life?”
“I married Bruce.”
“That wasn’t crazy, that was stupid,” he retorted. “There’s a difference.”
“I’ve got a child to consider.”
“I know. And I know I don’t have much experience with kids. But I’m willing to learn. Ashley isn’t afraid of me anymore.”
“No. She’s taken you under her wing.”
“Yeah, I kind of noticed that. She’s a real special kid.”
“Yes, I know.”
“So what do you say?”
“I’m still not sure why you’re doing this.”
“Because I want to. What do you want?”
She wanted him. Her gaze showed it.
“I’ve been in one bad marriage,” she whispered.
“You loved Bruce?”
She nodded.
“That was the problem,” Jack maintained. “Th
ere’s a reason they say love is blind. We don’t have that problem.”
She blinked at him. “We don’t?”
“I may not be able to offer you love, but I can give you two things that are even better. Sex and financial security.”
Kayla didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “You sound like some kind of kinky financial advisor.”
“As long as I don’t look like a kinky financial advisor, we’re okay.”
“Are we?” she asked. “Are we really going to be okay?”
“You bet we are. How could we not with what we’ve got going for us?”
“Which is?”
“Spontaneous combustion. Do you deny it?”
She shook her head.
“Then marry me. My folks already love Ashley. They’d be in seventh heaven at having her for a granddaughter. We’ve already covered the sex part, but not the security. My parents invested in some blue-chip stocks when I was born, stocks that have just been sitting there since the car accident, making money. I’m not wealthy, but ‘comfortably well off’ is the term my accountant uses.”
“So I marry you to help me retain custody of Ashley? And what do you get out of it?” Kayla asked him.
“You. And your promise that you won’t interfere with my work fighting fires. Sometimes women want to change a guy.”
“You could have any woman you want. I fielded the dozens of phone calls, remember?”
“I don’t want any other woman. I want you.”
“For now. How do you know that would last? It wasn’t that long ago you told me you weren’t looking for forever.”
“I wasn’t looking for forever, it kind of came and knocked me over the head,” Jack ruefully acknowledged. “But it’s not like I’m talking about love here, because I’m not. The good thing is that you’re practical, you don’t expect me to make any sappy declarations of undying devotion.”
Not expect, no, although a little rebel part of her did wonder what it would be like to hear such words from him.
“I don’t do well with love,” he told her bluntly. “And from what you’ve told me about your marriage, it doesn’t sound like love did you any favors, either.”
He was right. Love hadn’t done her any favors.
“So what do you say?”
She paused for a moment, running through the pros and cons, but in the end following her instincts. “Yes. I say yes.”
Seven
You’re doing what?” Diane shrieked when Kayla got home that night.
“Shhh. Not so loud or you’ll wake Ashley,” Kayla cautioned.
“You go out once with the guy and now you’re going to marry him? What did you have to drink?” she asked suspiciously.
“Champagne.”
“He must have put something in it,” Diane muttered.
“He did,” Kayla agreed. “This.” She held out her hand for Diane to see the sapphire ring on the ring finger of her left hand.
“Well, he’s got good taste, I’ll give him that. But Kayla, you haven’t known him that long. And you’re so vulnerable right now, what with Bruce being the swine that he is. Don’t you think Jack might be taking advantage of the situation?”
“It’s not like that.”
“Then what is it like?” Diane demanded.
Kayla paused, remembering Jack’s admonition not to let on that this was anything other than a whirlwind courtship. The fewer people they told the truth—that there was no love involved—the less chance there would be that something might get back to Bruce to make him suspicious.
Which was all very well and good, but Jack didn’t know Diane. Kayla had never, in all the nearly twenty years they’d known each other, been very good at keeping anything from her best friend. Diane ferreted out secrets the way an anteater ferreted out ant hills.
“Okay, what’s really going on here?” Diane said. “And remember, this is your best friend you’re talking to. The one who taught you how to put on mascara, the one who lent you my brand-new prom dress when I got the measles and couldn’t go, the one who went with you to divorce court when you got the final decree.”
“And I want you as my matron of honor, if you wouldn’t mind.”
“Jack wants a formal wedding as opposed to running down to city hall on his lunch hour the way Bruce did?”
“I’m sorry you weren’t there with us,” Kayla said regretfully.
“I think Bruce deliberately waited until I was out of town, knowing I’d try to talk you out of it if I knew what the swine was up to ahead of time.”
“I was blindly in love and stupid then,” Kayla admitted as she headed for her bedroom and the trinket box she kept there.
“And you’re not blindly in love and stupid now?” Diane asked, trailing after her.
“No.”
“Then why are you marrying Jack if you’re not in love with him?”
Finding what she was looking for, Kayla held up a silver Claddagh ring. “First you have to swear, on our special friendship ring, that you won’t tell anyone.”
“Jeez, I haven’t done this since we were twelve,” Diane noted, taking the ring and looking at it fondly. “How do you keep your ring so clean? Mine’s a mess.”
“Come on. Swear.”
“All right, all right. Best friends always are loyal and true, I will never tell on you,” she vowed. “Now what the heck is going on?”
“Jack and I are getting married for practical reasons.”
“Which are?”
“Bruce has vowed to use the fact that I’m a single, working mother against me.”
“And?”
“That means I need a husband. If I married Jack, I wouldn’t be a single mom anymore.”
“But you’d still be working, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes. But maybe not quite as many hours, we’re hiring that new person now that business is booming, and that should help take some of the pressure off.”
“Business is booming thanks to Jack’s uncle, but I still don’t see how marrying him is going to change Bruce’s mind about anything. You don’t think Bruce will be impressed by a Chicago firefighter, do you? If the guy isn’t in the thirty-percent tax bracket, Bruce doesn’t even acknowledge his presence.”
“I’m not doing this for Bruce, I’m doing it for Ashley.”
“I thought she was afraid of Jack.”
“Only in the beginning. Now she’s taken him under her wing and she fusses over him like a little mom. He’s real good with her, he just hasn’t had much practice in the past. I think Corky was right, that Jack felt uncomfortable around kids because they reminded him of a time when he was vulnerable, when he was a kid and his parents were killed in a car accident. Since then his philosophy has sort of been that life isn’t to be trusted.”
“Do you love him?”
“As Jack rightly pointed out to me a short while ago, love hasn’t exactly done me any favors.”
“Do you feel anything for him?”
“Of course I do. Attraction, chemistry, fondness, irritation, amazement.”
“You don’t think all those things could be love?”
“I refuse to let them be love. And so does Jack.”
Diane sighed before giving in. “Then it sounds as if the two of you were meant to be together,” she noted with a rueful smile. “So when do I get to meet him? If I like him, then I’ll agree to be your matron of honor.”
The meeting took place a few days later at the engagement party Jack’s folks threw for them.
Jack knew he liked Kayla’s friend Diane when, within the first few minutes of meeting him, she took him aside and quietly said, “If you hurt Kayla, I’ll break both your legs.” Her tone of voice was both kidding and dead serious. “I’ve checked around and people say you’re a good guy. But you’re good-looking and the word is you’re popular with women, so I wanted to make sure we understood each other.”
“Cheat on Kayla and die, right?” Jack said.
“That’s pretty much it,
” she cheerfully agreed.
“Then I’ll live a very long life.” Jack smiled. “Listen, your loyalty is great. I suspect Boomer is over there telling Kayla the same thing you’re telling me, aside from the fooling around part and in different words maybe, but basically the same thing. We both have buttinskys for best friends.”
“Maybe so, but I just wanted you to know that Kayla has been my best friend since we were both five, and there are times, not many but a few, when she needs some looking after.”
“So what are you two talking about over here?” Kayla asked as she joined them.
“You,” Diane replied.
“That’s what I was afraid of.”
“Relax. I’ll be your matron of honor,” Diane said before drifting over to the buffet table and her husband, George.
“She liked you,” Kayla told Jack.
“You don’t have to sound so surprised about it,” he retorted. “A lot of people like me.”
“Many of them female. I’m surprised Misty and the rest of the gang haven’t come after me with an ax for taking you off the market.”
“Off the market? What am I? Raw meat?”
She gave him a saucy head-to-toe once-over before declaring, “Prime meat.”
“Sure,” Jack grumbled. “It’s easy for you to flirt when we’re surrounded by a roomful of people, including my folks.”
“Speaking of which, you were right, Corky didn’t think our engagement was strange. She told me that Sean proposed to her within three days of meeting her.”
“They are the exception to the rule.”
“Which rule?”
“That love doesn’t work.”
The comment should have reassured Kayla. She wasn’t looking for love. She was looking for someone to help her keep her daughter. She was getting the better end of the deal here.
Nibbling her lower lip, she whispered her fears aloud. “Are you sure I’m not taking advantage of you?”
“Not yet,” Jack murmured, “but I’m hopeful that maybe later...” He sent her a smoky look.
But later was postponed by Ashley, who came down with a doozy of a case of tummy flu.
By the time Kayla was able to take a break, three days had gone by. The house looked like a disaster area, but Ashley was feeling better. Leave it to Bruce to stop by unannounced. Kayła refused to let him in and instead kept him standing on the tiny front porch. “You’re supposed to call before stopping by,” Kayla reminded him.
