by Gina Wilkins
That sort of thing always worked for Shane, she thought with a slight pout.
Amazingly enough, she didn’t think even Shane could get through to Kyle at this point. It was a shame, too. Molly suspected that Kyle was a lonely, unhappy man who was just too stubborn to admit he needed anyone else.
She glanced at her watch. It was just before 6:00 p.m. and still raining heavily. Deepening shadows blurred the corners of the room now as dark gray clouds obscured the skies outside. Kyle reached out to turn on a lamp on a table between the two recliners. “Are you hungry?”
She was, actually. She had stopped for a light lunch and a stretch break at just before noon, and she hadn’t had anything since. “I’m a little hungry.”
He put his hands on the arms of his chair and pushed himself to his feet. “I’ll see what I’ve got.”
Maybe this was his way of apologizing for snapping at her—not that an apology was necessary, since she was the one who’d tried to push him into talking about something that he’d already said made him uncomfortable. “There’s no need to go to any trouble on my behalf.”
He shrugged and kept walking. “I’m hungry. I’m going to eat, anyway—you might as well have something, too.”
It was hardly a gracious invitation, but considering she had arrived unannounced and uninvited on his doorstep, she considered herself fortunate that he was being even somewhat tolerant of her presence. She followed him into the kitchen. “Is there anything I can do to help?”
He opened the refrigerator door. “I can handle it.”
“I’m restless, Kyle. I’d like something useful to do to take my mind off the weather.”
He sighed gustily and tossed something onto the counter with a thump. “You can clean the lettuce and chop tomatoes and cucumbers for a salad. I’ve got a package of pasta and a jar of pesto sauce we can have with it.”
“That sounds good.”
With one of his characteristic shrugs, he said, “I eat a lot of prepackaged stuff. I’m not much of a cook.”
“Neither am I.” She stuck the lettuce under running water to wash it. “I’m sure you remember how Mom is about her kitchen. She loves to cook, and doesn’t like anyone underfoot when she’s busy. Since I was always happier outside with Dad and Shane anyway, I never did much cooking. A few years ago, Mom decided belatedly that I should learn how. Maybe she waited too late, but it was not a raving success. After eating a few of my meals, Dad and Shane begged me to go back out to the barns.”
She was babbling—but then Shane had always accused her of seeing silence as a vacuum begging to be filled.
Kyle didn’t chuckle in response to her story, nor did he pause in his dinner preparations. For a moment she wondered if he had been listening to her at all, but then he spoke. “Do you still live with your parents?”
Something about the way he asked annoyed her. She had told him she was almost twenty-four. Did he think she had accomplished nothing for herself since he’d left? Oh, right—he still thought of her as “little Molly.”
“I live on the ranch at the moment. I moved back full-time after I obtained my master’s degree in education last spring at Rice University in Houston. I’ve been tutoring the foster boys we’re housing now to bring them up to grade level while I wait for a full-time teaching position to open up in the local schools. I’ve been told a position should become available in January, and if it does, I’ll look for an apartment then.”
Again, she had given him way more information than he’d asked for. Maybe she was just the tiniest bit defensive about being unemployed and still living at home at almost twenty-four. She could easily have found a teaching job in the Dallas metroplex, probably, but the small school district closer to the ranch tended to have less turnover.
Her father had talked her into coming back to the ranch, rather than moving more than an hour away to live in Dallas. He had told her he needed her assistance now that he’d begun to take in more foster boys, turning the small ranching operation into a full-time group home for at-risk teenage boys. The truth was, Jared would be perfectly happy to have her live at home indefinitely.
“Shane still lives on the ranch, too,” she added when Kyle didn’t comment. “He added on to his house when he and Kelly had their two girls. Now he handles most of the livestock and general maintenance chores so Dad can concentrate on the day-to-day business aspects of running a group home.”
“How many boys are in residence there now?”
She was pleased that he had asked a question. Surely that meant she’d piqued his interest, right? “There are four now, but we’re approved to accept up to six. It isn’t officially a therapeutic foster home, since we don’t take boys with serious emotional or behavioral problems, just the ones who don’t seem to fit in anywhere else. I know when you were there we could only take one or two at a time, but we’ve made some changes. One of the barns has been converted into a dormitory, complete with a dining room and a study area with computers for homework. That’s where I spend most of my time with the boys.”
“Still no girls?”
“No. They’ve decided to focus solely on boys, since having girls there would open up a whole new set of challenges.”
He grunted, and she assumed that was an assent.
“So Shane has kids of his own now, huh?” he asked after working a few more minutes in silence.
“Two girls. Annie and Lucy. They’ve taken my place as the little girls all the boys become big brothers to.”
Fifteen years older than Molly, Shane had been a grown man when Kyle lived on the ranch. Shane had already built his house on the property and had been busy with his own life and friends—among them, Kelly Morrison, whom he had married not long after Kyle left.
“The girls have Shane—and Daddy—wrapped around their little fingers,” she added with a chuckle.
“That doesn’t surprise me. So did you.”
“I know.” She smiled unrepentantly. “I was shamelessly spoiled—and now Shane’s girls are being treated the same way. It’s a good thing Kelly is more like my mom when it comes to being the disciplinarian, or Annie and Lucy would be little brats.”
Kyle poured the strained, hot pasta into a bowl. “I saw your dad lay down the law to you a few times.”
“Let’s just say I knew exactly how much I could get away with before he drew the line. He got a bit more strict with me as I got older.”
“I’ll bet.”
Had that been a note of amusement in his voice? Encouraged, she carried the salad to the round oak table that sat at one end of the narrow kitchen. “It’s funny, but when it comes to the foster boys, Dad’s the disciplinarian and Mom’s the one who spoils them.”
“I remember that, too.”
“He knows so well what it was like to be an angry teenager, separated from his family and shuffled from one foster home to another. He knows what it takes to get through that anger and give the boys hope for their futures. His record of success has been amazing.”
Kyle had the table set now with plain, mismatched dishes and sturdy flatware. Without asking, he filled two glass tumblers with ice and water, setting them on the table along with the bowl of pasta and a plate of bread.
The rain was still falling heavily outside, and for some reason the sound of it hitting the windows made their simple dinner seem more intimate. Falling back on her usual habit, Molly started talking again to ward off any awkward silence.
“I’ve never been to this part of the country before. It’s really beautiful. How did you happen to end up here?”
Concentrating on his dinner, he shrugged. “I visited the area with a buddy and I liked it. When I had to choose a place to live after I got out of the Marines, I decided to come here.”
“I like your house.”
“It’s small,” he said. “Needs some repairs. A little isolated for some people’s tastes. But it was affordable and it suited me.”
“I think it’s great,” she assured him, entirely si
ncere. “The view alone is priceless. As for the location, it’s not so very far from Gatlinburg.”
He glanced at the window and the storm that raged outside. “Sometimes it seems farther than at other times.”
Like now, for example, his tone implied. With the storms making the roads so hazardous, the closest town might as well be hours away.
After they’d cleared away the dishes, Kyle looked at the window again. “It looks to me as though you have two choices. I can try to drive you back down the mountain, or you can spend the night here and leave in the morning.”
She crossed her arms and frowned at him. “You neglected to mention the third choice. I can drive myself down the mountain.”
“Not an option.”
“Why not? If it’s safe for you to drive…”
“I didn’t say it was safe. It would be a reckless and foolhardy drive with me at the wheel—and I know this mountain like the back of my hand. You’d never make it down. The best solution is for you to stay here tonight—but if that’s unacceptable to you, I’ll drive you.”
“Why would it be unacceptable to me?”
He looked decidedly uncomfortable. “I wouldn’t blame you if you have reservations about spending the night in a house with someone you barely know….”
She couldn’t help laughing, though she doubted he would share her amusement. “Give me a break. I’m not worried about being here with you.”
His sigh seemed to hold sheer exasperation. “Do you have no sense of self-preservation? You set off on a crazy, solo drive halfway across the country without telling anyone, then have no qualms at all about spending the night with a total stranger in an isolated house on a mountainside?”
“Kyle, you are not a total stranger. You were a member of my family for more than a year.”
“I was never a member of your family. I just lived there for a while when I had nowhere else to go.”
With that, he turned on one heel and stalked into the other room. Molly took a moment to admire how fluidly he moved, despite the limp—kind of a sexy, rolling gait that made her pulse rate increase before she shook her head and started after him. “So are you telling me I should be worried about staying here with you?”
“No, of course not,” he snapped impatiently, throwing himself into a chair. “You’re perfectly safe with me.”
“So, what’s your point?” She planted her hands on her hips to study him.
“The point is—hell, I can’t remember.” Slouching in the chair, he glared at his feet.
“Okay, then.” She dropped her arms. “Since I have no intention of risking either of our lives on the road, I might as well crash here until the storm’s over. I’ll take the couch.”
“Damn straight.”
She giggled, even though she knew he wasn’t joking. Funny how he could annoy her at one moment and amuse her at the next. Rather like Shane—except that she didn’t in any way think of Kyle as a brother.
“I have a computer in my bedroom,” he said, still looking grumpy. “You can send your brother an e-mail, if you want to.”
“That’s not necessary. He isn’t expecting to hear from me today.”
He shrugged. “Whatever you think best.”
Exactly what she liked to hear—that someone thought she knew what was best for her. “I’ll call him tomorrow morning, as soon as I have a cell phone signal.”
“Fine.” He glanced at a clock on the wall—the only thing he’d bothered to hang on the white-painted Sheet-rock. “I don’t know if you’re interested in football, but there’s a college game starting, and I was planning to watch.”
“Go ahead and watch your game. You don’t have to entertain me.”
“I didn’t intend to,” he replied, reaching for the remote to the big-screen TV in one corner of the room— the only luxury he had apparently treated himself to. A few minutes later, he was engrossed in the game, leav ing Molly to wonder if he was even aware that he still had company.
She wondered if his rudeness was his odd way of reassuring her that she really was safe from any unwanted advances from him. If so, she could have told him it wasn’t necessary. Maybe her libido had kicked into overdrive when she had watched him cross the room, but he seemed totally oblivious to her, other than as an inconvenience.
She stood and wandered toward the windows, debating whether she wanted to risk going out to her car for her bag. A painfully loud clap of thunder and a gust of wind-driven rain answered that question.
One corner of Kyle’s living room held a small bookcase, overflowing with paperbacks stacked two deep on the shelves. Since he was making so little effort to play the gracious host, she figured that relieved her of some of the rules of etiquette, as well.
Without asking, she knelt to scan through the titles. Thrillers, mysteries, science fiction, a little fantasy. No real surprises there, except for the sheer number of books. Living alone here as he did, so isolated in his mountain cabin, he probably turned to his books for company.
She plucked a promising-looking novel from the selection. “D’you mind if I read this while you watch your game?”
Without glancing at her, he gave a grunt that she assumed was an assent.
She curled up on one end of the couch and opened the book. She managed to read a page and a half during the next half hour. The writing was fine, the premise interesting—but when it came to holding her attention, the story could not compete with the reality of the man in the recliner a few feet away from her. He sat without moving, his full attention seemingly focused on the game playing on the screen, proving again that she wasn’t nearly as distracting to him as he was to her.
He fascinated her.
Granted, her memories of him were hazy. She had been so young when he left, and there had been several boys in her family since. He had been quiet even then, standing apart from group activities. So many of the boys had arrived rebellious and angry at the circumstances that had landed them in foster care, but Kyle had kept his emotions carefully locked away. From what Molly had been told, he’d been obedient and cooperative, though so obsessively guarded that it had taken Cassie and Jared several months to coax a genuine smile from him.
Molly remembered his smiles. Perhaps because they had been so rare, and because she had been so accustomed to winning over everyone she met, she had been thrilled the few times Kyle had actually smiled in her direction.
Whatever their challenges, Molly had considered each of the foster boys brothers. Even though she had known from the start that their stays would only be temporary, she had still grieved each time one of them moved on. Her parents had protected her from physical dangers during her childhood, but they hadn’t been able to prevent the heartaches that accompanied each departure. Instead, they had shared them—and then all of them had opened their home and hearts again to the next boy who needed them.
During the past year or so, she had realized that her childhood had set a pattern for the way she interacted with the men she’d met as an adult. She had never had a serious relationship. It seemed that anyone who initially expressed a special interest in her had ended up seeing her more as a kid sister or close pal.
Her girlfriends had accused her of manipulating the situations to ensure just that outcome. They had suggested that she was commitment-phobic, or had her standards set too high. Her response had been that she was too young to get tied down to one guy.
While that had been the truth, she suspected there had been more to her reluctance to give her heart completely to anyone. But for some reason, she had always shied away from examining her skittishness more closely.
Oddly enough, it had been easier for her to see those potential suitors as brother figures than it was to think of Kyle that way now, even though he’d once been a part of her family. She had thought of the others as nice boys. Kyle was a man battered by experience, a soldier hardened by battle. He was only a little more than five years her senior, but she was painfully aware of the vast differences bet
ween his life and her own decidedly sheltered existence.
Did he still see a little girl when he looked at her? Unfortunately, he wouldn’t be the only one who did.
Though he didn’t look at her, Kyle was all too aware of Molly’s eyes on him during the evening. He focused fiercely on the game, though he was unable to enjoy it as much as usual.
Why did she keep staring at him? He wasn’t doing anything entertaining. He certainly wasn’t that interesting to look at. Was she studying his scars, wondering how he’d gotten them? Was she comparing the man she saw now to the boy she remembered?
He could have told her she might as well stop looking for similarities. As far as he was concerned, that boy had died in a fiery blast in the Middle East.
When he could stand her scrutiny no longer, he gave a silent, mental curse and shoved himself to his feet. “I’m getting something to drink. You want any—”
Before he could complete the question, he stumbled, almost taking a nosedive straight down to the floor. His bum leg had locked up while he’d been sitting so self-consciously motionless, and now it refused to cooperate, punishing his too-sudden movement with a jawclenching wave of pain. He knew the spasm would subside if he stood perfectly still for a few minutes, then swallowed a couple of pain pills. He’d certainly had enough experience.
Soft hands clutched his arm. “Are you all right?”
He shook her off. “I’m fine. Just a cramp. What do you want to drink?”
“Why don’t you sit down and I’ll get us something?”
She could almost feel the embarrassment, frustration and anger seething in the look he gave her.
She took a hasty step backward, raising both hands in a gesture of surrender. “Okay. Fine. You go. I’ll have whatever you’re having.”
It took every ounce of strength he had to force his feet to move and his legs to support him as he headed for the kitchen. Pain slammed through him with every step, but he kept his head high and his shoulders squared.
Life and war had left him with very little, but he still had his pride. It refused to allow him to show any further weakness in front of Molly Walker.
