Kate wheeled on her father.
He held up his hands. “Now you know I don’t interfere much—”
“The hell you don’t,” Kate said.
“Just an opinion or an observation ever’ now an’ again,” her father conceded. “An’ I do have a stake in how them grandchildren of mine are gonna be raised.”
Kate folded her arms and seethed.
“That man there,” her dad said in a quiet, authoritative voice, “is a hell of a man. I don’t know what went on between the two of you while you was out there with Jolly and that bunch, an’ I ain’t gonna ask. But I’d be a damn fool to let you be a damn fool right now. No sir, that ain’t gonna happen today.”
A lump formed in the back of Kate’s throat. “You don’t know that I can trust him any more than I do,” she accused.
“No, no I don’t, Kate. An’ that’s the plain truth of it. But I’ll tell you one thing: that man cares about you or he wouldn’t have done the things he done. An’ I’m not talkin’ about the custody deal he worked out for you or that money he got for you. I’m talkin’ about the way he saved your kids that night.” He was quiet for a moment. “He’s been a hero FBI agent in all the papers. Solved the Martini kidnappin’. All that. Why should he care about what goes on here—unless—he really cares?”
At that moment, the school bus pulled down the dirt road and let Steven and Hannah off. After a few weeks of no school while everything got back to normal, Kate had enrolled both of them into public school. The environment was different than both of them were used to, but they were handling the changes pretty well.
She expected them to come to her but they saw Shane and knew him in spite of the haircut and shave. Crying out, they ran to him. Both of them had been worried when he’d disappeared from the hospital. A couple of times, she’d let them talk to Shane because it had allowed her to get off the phone and not appear rude. Then she’d noticed how much they’d enjoyed talking to Shane, and how willing Shane had been to talk to them. Kate hadn’t wanted Steven and Hannah to get hurt, so she’d quietly nipped that in the bud as well.
They ran across the yard, screaming out his name. “Shane! Shane!”
Turning, a big smile curving his lips, Shane caught them both around the waists and pulled them into his arms. They started asking questions at the same time.
Kate saw Jolie Meacham fluff up her blond hair, grab a can of tea from the ice chest and saunter over to where Shane sat holding Steven and Hannah.
“Of course,” her dad said, scratching his chin, “you could just sit back an’ let Jolie Meacham have him. She’ll put another notch on her bedpost because she’s still workin’ her catch-an’-release program.”
Shane took the tea and thanked Jolie. Jolie smiled at him, that hundred-watt flash of ivory that generally made men take leave of their senses, and added a hand-on-the-waist hipshot in her tight jeans that made someone up in the roof trusses bang his thumb with his hammer and curse like blue blazes.
Kate had never really felt jealous over Bryce when he’d turned his attentions to other women. She’d spent her time being more hurt and confused than anything else. What she felt now was totally alien to her, but she didn’t like it.
She took her hat off and set her hair free. Then she handed her cap to her dad. “Hold my hat,” she said. And before she knew it, she was striding across the yard to where Jolie stood smiling and talking to Shane.
Without a word, scared to death inside, Kate stepped in front of Shane and crossed her arms over her breasts. Jolie shut up and took a step away, confused over what was going on.
Steven and Hannah and Shane all sat quietly, waiting for her to speak.
Kate was uncomfortably aware that every eye there was fixed on her. “I’m not much for beating around the bush,” she said, “and I’m not about to start now. I’ve been hurt and used, and I’m not going to let that happen again. Not to me and not to my kids. So before you show up around here and start getting invited into people’s houses, I want to know what you’re really doing here.”
Shane shooed Steven and Hannah out of his lap. They hung on to his hands as if they were afraid for him.
Shane’s eyes were soft as he looked down at her. “I’m sorry we met the way we did, Kate. I can’t change that now. But I’m glad we met, even though it’s turned my world upside down and inside out.” He shook his head. “I don’t know what my intentions are. I came down here to find out. All I know is that I can’t quit thinking about you. And Steven and Hannah. I don’t know what that means because I’ve never felt like this in my life. Truth to tell, I haven’t wanted to be around anybody or share myself with anybody in—well, a long time.” He pulled his hands free of Steven and Hannah. “I came down here to be with you. To find out how you felt. Because sitting up there in that apartment in Georgetown, I wasn’t going to find out.” He breathed out, like he couldn’t quite catch his breath. “I came down here to find out, and that’s all I know to tell you.”
She saw the fear in him then. It made her feel sorry for him. Almost. It also drove her crazy and made her want him in spite of her own fears. Both of them were taking a chance, and that meant something to her.
Without a word, she stepped in close to him, took his face in her hands, and kissed him deeply, bruising his lips and tasting his mouth. And then she was in his arms and he was holding her more tightly than she’d ever before been held.
Finally, unable to kiss him any longer without wanting to rip his clothes from him, Kate stepped back and looked him in the eyes. “Break my heart, mister, and I’ll put you in the hospital.”
He laughed at her then. “I can live with that,” he said.
Then Kate took over showing him the house, telling him her dreams of what it would be like when she finished. He walked with her, holding Steven and Hannah’s hands, and it felt like the most natural thing in the world.
She was out of the dark storm that had followed her around for the last few years. She was walking in the sun now, no longer feeling the heat, only the promise of the brightness.
ISBN: 978-1-4268-5453-8
STORM FORCE
Copyright © 2006 by Meredith Fletcher
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Storm Force Page 25
