“At least what?”
He shrugged, wished she’d get in, let him shut the door and turn on some heat.
“I don’t know.”
Leslie’s frown wasn’t encouraging, but she got in the car. He’d have to be very careful not to make mistakes like that again.
LESLIE HOPED she made it home without throwing up. The wine and sandwich weren’t the problem as much as the conversation. She already had enough to contemplate, an entire new way of life being thrust upon her, without Kip pushing issues that were best left alone.
Vacillating between deep breathing to calm the panic, searching for different perceptions to allay the fear, and reminding herself that she always had a choice and that she was worthy of joy, she’d managed to tie her stomach in knots.
Heat blew out of the vents pointing straight at her. The hot air didn’t help. Kip didn’t seem to notice the intrusive blast in his face as he turned on to 71, which would take them most of the way back to her mother’s house.
“At least what?” For a guy who’d said he wanted to talk, he was being annoyingly silent.
He glanced at her, his face nothing but shadows in the darkened car. At eleven o’clock, there were very few oncoming headlights to illuminate them.
“I…” He sighed, let one hand fall from the steering wheel to his lap. “It’s just that we’re making so many life-altering decisions in such a short time. Who knows what the future’s going to bring as far as our relationship’s concerned?”
“I have a different view of relationships than you do. I’m not interested in casual sex.”
“I’ve known you most of your life, Les. I already know that.”
Ironically, although he’d given her the acknowledgement she’d been seeking, his words stung. “You don’t know what I’ve been up to during the past ten years. I could’ve changed.”
He glanced at her again, and while she couldn’t see the expression in his eyes, she could feel its penetration. “Have you?”
Yes was on the tip of her tongue. Stupid, considering she’d started this whole thing by saying she wasn’t that kind of woman. “No.”
“Feel better now?”
Not in the least. If anything, she felt worse. Rolling down her window, she sucked in the cold night air.
He was right. It would be cruel to separate Jonathan and Kayla. They were children. Their security and well-being had to come first. If she was certain about nothing else, she knew that. It was a life lesson she’d learned the hard way.
“Why don’t you tell me what you envision,” she said, pretending for all she was worth that she was in a board room, putting together a billion-dollar deal.
“With the living arrangement, you mean?”
Did he have to spell it out quite so baldly?
Leslie nodded. And then, realizing he couldn’t possibly have seen that, said, “Yes.”
“I haven’t had time to envision much of anything,” he told her. “Is your place large enough for all of us?”
She opened her mouth to answer that, but he continued without giving her a chance.
“Do we need to find another place? Put it in both our names?”
This time, Leslie realized that the question was rhetorical.
“That would probably be best.” His words just kept right on coming. “We might need to stay at your place for the time being, or maybe you and the kids can stay there and I’ll bunk in a hotel if your house isn’t big enough, but eventually we’ll need a place we both own.”
He sounded so certain about that, she just had to ask. “Why?”
“If anything happens to me, everything I have will be Jonathan’s. I want to be able to leave him as much security as possible. Same goes for Kayla. I imagine that you’d leave whatever you have to her if something were to happen to you.”
If Leslie hadn’t already been half in love with the man, she might’ve fallen for him then.
“Not that I’m agreeing to this, mind you, not at all, but aren’t you worried about how it’ll look, for the kids’ sake? Us living together without being married?”
“Their own parents weren’t married.”
“But they weren’t living together, either.”
“Let’s cross that bridge when we come to it, okay?”
She couldn’t. “I’m not going to marry you, Kip.”
“I’m not asking you to marry me, Leslie.”
And then something else occurred to her. “What if you want to marry someone else someday?” Or, miracle of miracles, she did.
“What if one of us gets hit by a car?” His response was immediate. “Who knows what the future will bring, Les? We’ll deal with it when we have to.”
“But…”
“The kids will come first,” he said, his voice resonating with complete conviction. “If Jonathan’s off at college and Kayla’s a perfectly well-adjusted high school student and cool with whatever we decide, and one or the other of us wants to get married, then I guess we could consider it.”
His words could not make sense. They could not comfort her or give her hope. There were dangers he didn’t know about, dangers that might escalate for her, jeopardizing her hard-won peace, he would be so close, a daily reminder of things she tried to forget.
“What if you fall hopelessly in love?” she asked him. “Are you going to put your life on hold until Jonathan leaves home?”
“Isn’t that kind of what we’re both agreeing to by taking them in?”
Well, for her, of course, but… “When it comes to women, you don’t always think with your…um…brain.”
“I’ll let that go, Les, because I know you’re overwhelmed, but just a note for the future—I don’t like to be insulted.” His tone was light, easy. It looked like he was grinning.
And Leslie felt the message in her heart. The brash, loud, wild, lost boy might have grown up, but he still craved respect. She wasn’t the only one with childhood wounds.
“Point taken.” Her response was as lighthearted as his.
“If I take Jonathan, I’m in for the long haul,” he said now, his expression completely serious again. “You have my word on that.”
She nodded, even though he couldn’t see. Watched as the red lights of the car in front of them grew dimmer. The guy had to be doing ninety. At least.
“Back to your little fantasy,” she said when the silence began getting on her nerves. “How do you propose we make this work? We split all living expenses, including groceries, divvy up the chores and each support our own kid?”
Not that she’d given it any thought. She was simply hypothesizing.
“The kids’ support comes out of a joint fund we both have to sign off on,” he reminded her. “Technically we could take some of the living expense money from there, as well.”
“I’d rather not,” she told him. “I can certainly afford to provide food and shelter, and I’d rather Kayla had the money later, for college, or to open a business.”
“I’ve already decided the same for Jonathan.”
Funny how, even in a couple of hours’ time, in the midst of drastic change, some decisions just seemed right.
KIP TURNED OFF THE EXPRESSWAY, wishing he had another half hour in the car with Leslie instead of the five minutes it would take to get to her mother’s house. He let up on the gas.
“To answer your question, yes, I supposed we’d share living expenses and chores,” he said. “I had some vague idea of two suites on opposite ends of the house, with the kids’ rooms in between.”
He couldn’t tell if her silence denoted agreement or disapproval.
“How healthy is it going to be for the kids to see us dating other people?”
“You’re really hung up on the dating thing, Les. You said you didn’t have a boyfriend. Were you lying about that?”
“No!” She sat up straight, rigid. “I just don’t want Jonathan to get the wrong idea with a parade of women in and out of your life.”
“He won’t see t
hem.” He couldn’t even think about his sex life at a time like this. Had no idea how things would go. But he knew that whatever it was, his new son was not going to be privy to anything that didn’t smack of family wholesomeness—even if it was untraditional family wholesomeness.
“And if you told me you were going to be home, I’d expect you to be there, even if some lovely lady showed up—”
“Leslie!” He stopped the car in front of her mother’s house, shifted it roughly into park. “What is it with you and my sex life all of a sudden? I thought you wanted me to take Jonathan. Now you think I’m not good enough?”
She stared directly ahead, her chin jutting out. “I do want you to take him! And I know you’re good enough. It’s just that I also know about you and your women,” she said. “If we were sharing a house, there’d be a lot of potential problems with—”
“You can’t possibly know,” Kip told her. “You haven’t seen me in ten years, remember?”
“You love women, Kip. That doesn’t change.”
“I do love women,” he said without a hint of guilt or apology, “and I appreciate everything about them. But I also know when and how to exercise that appreciation.”
She didn’t reply. Probably didn’t believe him. Kip sighed. He made a rapid decision that might’ve been different if he hadn’t had those beers, or lost his best friend less than a week before, or been contemplating becoming a father the very next day.
“What did Cal tell you about my father?” he asked her. He’d left the car running for heat. She hadn’t reached for the door handle, which meant he still had her attention. She was choosing to continue this conversation.
“I know he wasn’t around very often. That he gave you anything you wanted in the way of money or possessions and not much else,” she said slowly. “I know he missed every single football game you ever played and that he was in Paris the night of your high school graduation.”
All true. All water under the bridge.
“He wasn’t always gone,” Kip told her. “As a matter of fact, he wasn’t away nearly as much as I said he was…”
She’d turned in her seat. He could feel her gaze on him. Kip stared out the front of the windshield, studying the shadows cast by the moon. The bare branches of the huge oak tree in Clara’s yard swayed eerily.
“My father enjoyed sex.” He searched for words that could convey what he was trying to say without sounding vile. “But he didn’t respect women.”
There, did that do it? He glanced over at her. Her face was still turned in his direction, but she said nothing, as though waiting for more.
“He was into everything kinky he could find,” Kip said. “Pornography, ménage à trois, toys, parties. Women were there for his use. He paid them handsomely and treated them as though they were little more than the bottles that held his whiskey.”
“I’m sorry.” Her words were a whisper in the darkness.
“For my thirteenth birthday, he bought me a couple of whores. Not just one, which was twisted enough, but two.”
CHAPTER SIX
LESLIE’S EYES WERE GLISTENING in the darkness. At least she hadn’t left the car as he’d half expected her to do. In some respects, Leslie was still so innocent.
“It’s amazing you turned out as healthy as you did,” she said.
“Your brother and your mother, mostly your brother, were the ones who taught me to see things another way.” Kip admitted something he’d never before put in to words. “Cal cherished you and your mom. When he spoke of either of you, it was always with deference, as though you were more precious than gold. No matter how mad he’d get when your mother put her foot down, he’d never speak ill of her. And you…”
Something across the street seemed to have caught her attention.
“You were a kid sister, underfoot, but I never once heard him complain about you or make fun of you.”
Her posture didn’t change, didn’t soften. She didn’t move at all.
“And he had that same attitude toward his dates,” Kip went on, wishing he knew how to help her deal with Cal’s death without causing her further pain. “He’d never talk about having sex with his dates—even when the guys teased him about not getting any. He wouldn’t even listen if I started in about some hot time I’d had. He’d tell me I was disgusting, that sex was meant to be a private, intimate communication between two people who loved each other. Period. Part of me hated what my father was, but I was young, horny, I knew no other way.”
Her hand fell to the armrest above the door handle, but she didn’t open the door. Did she want to hear this?
Why did he so badly want to tell her?
Maybe because he’d just lost his best friend and she was that friend’s kid sister.
“And then one summer night, between our freshman and sophomore years at college, I talked Cal into driving out to Alum Creek.”
It had been a favorite hangout, fishing hole, dope-smoking getaway when he’d been much younger.
“After a couple of beers, Cal told me about this girl he’d been sleeping with. Sounded like it’d been going on for a while. He said that when he was with her, everything inside of him settled and went wild at the same time. He felt safe, alive—and, corny though it sounds, as if he’d found his true home.”
Leslie’s funny little cough stopped him. He was embarrassing her.
“Apparently this had been going on all through high school, but when he came back for the summer, she wasn’t interested,” Kip said and then finally got to his reason for mentioning this at all. “What I remember most about that night is the tone of Cal’s voice. He spoke of this girl, being with her, as though he’d found some perfect happiness. It wasn’t like any sex I’d ever experienced. And I wanted it.”
He felt her stiffen beside him and paused, waiting for her to speak, to tell him this was none of her business, to get out of the car.
“And you know why he had it?”
Her head turned sharply and she stared at him before shaking her head, once.
“Because he respected women. They were people to him, not just there for his pleasure. From that moment on, I’ve seen women in an entirely different light. I enjoy them. Not only their bodies, but their thoughts, their emotions, their vastly different perspectives.”
She bit her lower lip and Kip hoped that he’d just scored at least a small point with her. He meant what he was saying, and he wanted her to believe him.
“I made a vow that night that I would never, ever sleep with a woman just to have sex, I would never kiss and tell, and I would always observe any boundaries set by the women I was involved with. I’ve never once veered from those rules. Nor will I.”
Leslie nodded, blinking as though to get rid of tears. “I won’t speak of this again,” she said, her voice thick.
Obviously his mention of Cal’s lesson had been tough on her. Kip didn’t know whether it was best not to mention her brother at all, or to go on remembering. He wasn’t up on grief therapy. Before now, he’d never lost anyone he cared about enough to grieve over.
He’d just lost his best friend and was having difficulty with that. Leslie’s bereavement was much more intense. She’d not only lost her sibling, but her mentor, her protector, as well.
Which was another reason he had to take little Jonathan. He couldn’t leave Leslie to handle this all alone.
“I LIVE IN A FIVE-BEDROOM 3600-square-foot home in a gated community up in the mountains east of Phoenix.” With the crazy housing market in Phoenix, houses appreciating as much as $100,000 a year, the place had been too good an investment to pass up.
“Does that fact that you’re telling me this mean you’re considering my proposal?”
It was late, almost midnight. She was aware that they should go in. Clara would’ve heard the car pull up. Still, if he was going to take Jonathan, he should know where Kayla would be.
And she had to think about Kayla. Nothing else. She couldn’t actually consider his suggestion tha
t they live together, could she? For her, such an arrangement could only be emotional suicide.
“It has a dual master floor plan, which is found more than not in new Phoenix houses these days.” She continued as though she hadn’t heard him. If she ignored the question, it might go away.
“With bedrooms in between?”
She nodded.
“What else?”
“I have a lap pool and Jacuzzi in the back, but it’s fenced separately from the rest of the yard. I’ll put a lock on that gate until Kayla’s a little older.”
“You live there alone?”
“I had a cat. She died a few months ago.” His earlier words were there, distracting her with their threat of things too difficult to manage.
“Les?” Her heart lurched when he laid a hand on her shoulder and used his fingers to turn her head toward him. “Are you inviting Jonathan and me to share this paragon of a home with you?”
“The community has a PGA-approved golf course and state-of-the-art 40,000-square-foot community center.” She knew she must sound like a real estate agent, but couldn’t seem to stop as she went on listing details. “They do all kinds of programs and have Easter egg hunts and other activities for children throughout the year.”
“Les…”
“There are several parks in the neighborhood, as well. A big dog park and a little dog park—for big dogs and little dogs, not a big park and a little park…”
She could see herself staring at him, wanted to stop. Be aloof. Confident. She licked her lips. Couldn’t swallow because her throat was too dry.
“Can you refinance to put my name on the deed?”
Using the shake of her head as an opportunity to look away from him, Leslie stared out the window at the darkened neighborhood of her growing-up years. The houses were older, some with different owners, but still nice. The memories were mixed, some good, some bad. She shook her head again. “I can’t.”
“Why not?”
The Promise of Christmas Page 6
