Maybe when he picked the boy up at school, they’d drive around and take a few more photographs in the area.
The thought brought a smile to Kirk’s lips as he pocketed his key. He was anxious to get into his studio and start working.
As he walked to the back of the house, Kirk passed his father’s den. The door was still closed. Still locked. As were his feelings about what had taken place behind that door. He hadn’t opened it since he’d arrived in Bedford. The time wasn’t right. Maybe it never would be.
Kirk averted his eyes and continued walking.
* * *
It was getting to be a habit, Rachel thought, padding up the stairs to her room, not finding Ethan in the house on Saturday morning.
But it wasn’t like the first time. Panic didn’t set in anymore. Rachel knew exactly where to find her son when she wanted him. With Kirk. It was a wonderful, reassuring feeling, knowing that Ethan was in good hands. Knowing that Ethan was happy and getting along with someone who was very important to her.
This had all the makings, she mused dreamily as she slipped on her shorts, of a regular, bona fide fairy-tale ending.
If they could just work their way through the briars and the brambles to reach the castle. Something in Kirk’s past, immediate or distant, had formed those briars, and until she knew, until he trusted her enough to tell her everything, she was just going to have to hack about blindly with her sword.
He had opened up a little to her in the coffee shop that morning, but not completely. She would have bet anything that what he’d said wasn’t all that was weighing so heavily on his mind. There had to be something else that he wasn’t telling her.
But he would. By and by, he would. She was relentless when she was after something, and this time she was after restoring Kirk’s peace of mind.
She owed it to him for returning Ethan to her.
And because she loved him.
Dressed, Rachel pulled her hair through a plastic ponytail fastener and arranged it high atop her head. It nodded there, listing first to one side, then another, like a topknot.
A cursory survey in the mirror told her that she looked more like a eighteen-year-old girl than a twenty-seven-year-old woman, with a teaching position at a prestigious college and an eight-year-old son.
Eighteen.
She’d been eighteen the year that Kirk left Bedford.
Rachel pulled the fastener out of her hair and let it cascade to her shoulders again. Hastily she ran her fingers through it. She didn’t want to be reminded of that time. Didn’t want to think about the fact that he might be leaving again.
Rachel wanted Kirk to remain in Bedford more than she had wanted anything in a long time. She knew that if he just opened up, if he just talked things through with her the way he had in the old days, she could help alleviate the pain for him. Then he’d stay. She just knew it.
With a sigh, she padded down the carpeted stairs in her bare feet. Forgoing shoes, she went straight out the front door. She’d just check on Ethan and then get breakfast going.
Outside the first thing she saw was Cameron’s maroon four-by-four pulling up in her driveway. Grinning, she postponed her trip to Kirk’s and waited until Cameron cut off the engine.
“You’re just in time,” she called out to him as she approached his vehicle.
“In time for what?” He looked at his sister cautiously as he pulled up the hand brake.
“To cook breakfast. I believe you’re behind by about a dozen times.” Since he dropped by so often, they’d made a habit of taking turns cooking. Ability and willingness, however, usually placed the ball—and the pan—in Rachel’s court.
Cameron got out. Rachel noticed that he was wearing his oldest clothes. The ones he favored when he went camping. Had he just stopped on his way to the campgrounds?
“No time for breakfast,” he told her, confirming her suspicions. He looked around the driveway and the immediate area. “Where’s Ethan?”
“Where he always is lately.” She nodded toward the house next door. “With Kirk.” When Cameron began to head in that direction, she quickly matched her stride to her brother’s. “I was just going over there to see if he was wearing out his welcome.” She passed one hand over the other in an imitation of something taking off. “It seems that every weekend at dawn’s first light he’s over there like a streak.”
Her words made him stop on Kirk’s doorstep. “Then maybe he won’t want to.”
She frowned, trying to make sense out of Cameron’s verbal shorthand. “Won’t want to what?”
Things had been progressing so well with Ethan the last few weeks, Cameron was eager to get back on his old footing with his nephew. “I came over to borrow him.”
Rachel rocked on the balls of her feet, still sorting through the words. “You want to borrow my son? Like a cup of sugar?”
He grinned, realizing he had gotten ahead of himself. “Like a camper. I want to take him on a camping trip. Some of the guys at the precinct are getting together this morning. They’re taking their sons and going up to the San Gabriel Mountains for the long holiday weekend.” He nodded at the closed door. “I thought that maybe Ethan might like to go. It’s been a while since we last went camping together.”
Before divorce proceedings and their repercussions had gotten under way, Cameron and Ethan had gone camping all the time. Cameron had known that Don, wallowing in self-pity, made little time for his son. Camping had been Cameron’s way of attempting to rebuild Ethan’s self-esteem. Ethan had always looked forward to the trips. It hadn’t been until everything began falling apart that Ethan began turning down Cameron’s invitations.
Rachel grinned. “Now would be a good time to start going again.”
She knocked on Kirk’s front door. When there was no answer, she automatically tried the doorknob. The door wasn’t locked.
Cameron raised a brow as he followed Rachel inside. “I didn’t think it was necessary, but maybe I should give Kirk my standard Bedford Police Department lecture about locking his doors.”
“Don’t. You’d only manage to put me to sleep.” Kirk grinned as he walked into the living room from the kitchen. The sounds of voices had drawn him. Ethan shadowed his every step. “What brings you sneaking around? Slow day for crime?”
“You know we have no crime in Bedford. It’s not allowed. Like in Camelot.” Cameron looked at his nephew. “I thought maybe Ethan would like to go camping.”
Ethan grinned. “When?”
Cameron was immensely encouraged by the look that sprang into Ethan’s eyes. “Now. As soon as you can get your stuff together.”
The eagerness on Ethan’s face was momentarily tempered as he looked at Kirk. He was obviously torn. Kirk decided to set the boy at ease.
“Sounds like a good opportunity to take some unique photographs, if you ask me.”
Hope sprang up, usurping indecision. Ethan looked from Cameron to Kirk. “Are you coming, too?”
It had been years since he’d gone camping. He was tempted, but he knew that if he came along, it would be an intrusion on the bond that Cameron was trying to reconstruct with Ethan.
“No.” He smiled. “But I can let you take my camera with you.”
Ethan’s eyes grew wide as he realized what Kirk was telling him. “The one I used to take the picture of the cow?” Kirk nodded. “Wow.” Reverence and awe shimmered in the single word. “I promise I’ll take extraspecial good care of it.”
Kirk rested a supportive hand on the boy’s shoulder. “I knew you would, or I wouldn’t have offered it.”
Cameron clapped his wide hands together, signaling an end to the discussion. “Okay, it’s settled. Let’s get your stuff together, Ethan.”
Rachel cleared her throat loudly. Three sets of eyes turned in her direction. “I hate to interrupt all this male bonding, but aren’t you all forgetting something?”
Kirk and Cameron exchanged looks. Cameron shrugged his shoulders for Ethan’s benefit, showing his bewilderment.
She ran her hand over his hair. “Like asking for permission, maybe?”
Ethan blew out a breath. “Oh, yeah, right.” He raised his brows hopefully. “Can I, Mom?”
She laughed and shook her head. “How can I turn down such a heartfelt plea?” She looked at Cameron as a little zip of anxiety raised its head. “You promise you’ll watch him?”
“Like a hawk.” He winked at Ethan, then looked at his sister. “Don’t I always?”
“It’s been a while,” she reminded him. She turned toward Ethan. “C’mon, let’s get your gear together.”
She slipped her arm around his shoulders. He was growing up, she thought. Faster than she was prepared to accept. But at the same time, along with the bittersweet pang, she felt a wave of pride. She glanced over her shoulder at Cameron.
“We’ll meet you out front in fifteen minutes,” she promised.
Ethan hurried ahead of her, impatience and eagerness making him do double time. He was down the driveway before she had made it to the front door.
“Nice to see him back to normal again,” Cameron commented as he and Kirk slowly walked out behind Rachel. He watched his sister hurry after Ethan. “Rachel gives you all the credit, you know. She says it’s like a miracle.” Cameron smiled at his best friend. “I guess it is.”
Kirk absently caressed the camera he’d picked up from the coffee table and intended to entrust to Ethan. “The word miracle is being greatly devaluated. He just needed to unload on a stranger.”
“Stranger?” Cameron laughed at the idea. Kirk was such an integrated part of his life, Cameron couldn’t imagine him in that role. “He’s practically adopted you.”
Kirk shrugged as he leaned against Cameron’s car, waiting for Ethan to reappear. “Things’ll settle down after I leave.”
Cameron slanted a look at Kirk. He wasn’t bandying words about. He was serious. Cameron frowned. “You’re leaving?”
In his mind, he’d packed up a dozen times, for everyone’s good. His bags still stood by his bed, empty. But it was just a matter of time. “Eventually.”
Cameron felt a sadness seeping through him. He always enjoyed Kirk’s company. But it wasn’t his own reaction he was concerned about. “Does Rachel know?”
There was nothing accusing in Cameron’s tone. Why, then, Kirk thought, did guilt seem to well up in his chest? “My going was never in doubt.”
Cameron regarded him thoughtfully. “Oh, I don’t now. Rachel probably thought the same thing I did. That maybe this time you’d settle down here, or at least make it your home base.”
Maybe, just maybe, that had been in the back of his mind, as well. Kirk drew in a breath and said nothing.
“Would it be so bad,” Cameron asked quietly, “having a home to come back to?”
Kirk looked over his shoulder at the house he’d been raised in. The house he’d escaped from, only to return, searching for peace.
“This was never my home, Cameron.”
Cameron laid a hand on his friend’s arm, drawing his attention back. “Home isn’t always a place. Sometimes it’s a feeling. Or people.”
He laughed dryly. “You’re beginning to sound like Rachel.”
Cameron raised a brow at his friend’s use of Rachel’s name. “Why not? I taught her everything she knows.” He looked away for a moment, weighting his words. “Kirk, maybe it’s none of my business...”
Maybe it was time he started facing things that had lurked in shadows for too long. “Ask.”
“Are you sleeping with my sister?”
It wasn’t what he’d expected Cameron to ask. Kirk looked at him, surprise and a hint of unease mingling within him. “What makes you think that?”
“Body language. And I saw the way you two looked at each other.”
He would have answered any question that Cameron asked him—except that one. It wasn’t his answer to give. He wasn’t the only one involved. “Maybe that’s something you should ask her.”
Cameron paused for a moment. “I don’t have to. You just gave me my answer.”
Kirk felt awkwardness rise up between them in a way it never had before, not even when they had first met. So where did that put them? On opposite sides?
He looked at Cameron, wondering why he wasn’t saying anything. “So now what? Are you going to tell me to stay out of her life? Because if you are, I’ve already made up my mind about that.”
Cameron wondered how two people could be as close as he and Kirk, and still miss a call like that. “To stay in it, I hope.”
Kirk looked at Cameron incredulously. “You’re not angry about this?”
“Only if you hurt her,” Cameron answered honestly. If he could have handpicked someone to love his sister, it would have been Kirk. “Hey, this isn’t some grade B movie where I suddenly turn on you and beat you to a pulp behind the barn.”
Kirk felt his mouth curving in a relieved smile. He would have hated losing Cameron as a friend. “As if you could—”
“You’d be surprised what they taught me at the police academy.” Cameron grew serious. “I always thought the two of you would have wound up together if you hadn’t left Bedford.” He voiced out loud what he had thought a hundred times in the last few years. “Maybe if you hadn’t left, Rachel would never have fallen for Don.”
The same thing had occurred to Kirk since he’d made love with her. “Great, more guilt. Just what I need.”
“Nothing to feel guilty about. Things happen. Mistakes get made. The main thing is not to let them take over your life.”
Cameron couldn’t begin to understand what he was wrestling with, Kirk thought. Neither could Rachel. He didn’t want to ruin her life by staying. “I’m a loner, Cameron.”
“You only think you are. Everyone needs someone.”
Kirk looked at him skeptically. “Great advice from a bachelor.”
“Hey, just because I’m not married, that doesn’t mean I’m alone.”
Kirk thought of their high school days. “Still maintaining an active social life?”
“Active enough, but I’m not talking about that. I have a terrific sister, a nephew who’s finally coming around, and a great best friend.” His eyes held Kirk’s. “That’s not being alone in my book.”
Kirk knew what Cameron was saying, and resisted being won over. He was doing this for Rachel’s sake. “Look, I taught myself a long time ago not to need anyone. People disappoint you.”
“Rachel wouldn’t.”
Kirk looked at him, but said nothing.
“Your parents disappointed you.” Rachel hadn’t shared Kirk’s confidence with him, but it didn’t take a great stretch of the imagination to guess that much. “Are you going to let that color the rest of your life?” For the first time in his recollection, Cameron felt himself losing his temper with his friend. “Because if you do, then you’ve given them a hell of a victory over your spirit. And disappointed a fantastic woman in the process.”
Rachel approached them just in time to hear the last sentence. “Who’s a fantastic woman?”
“You are,” Cameron told her easily, brushing a kiss to her temple. His manner gave no indication of the intensity of the conversation he and Kirk had just had.
Rachel grinned. “It only took him twenty-seven years to realize that,” she confided to Kirk. Behind her, Ethan deposited his sleeping bag and a cloth traveling case stuffed with items he’d need for the trip. Rachel turned around to give her son one last round of instructions. “All right, you promise not to wander off or do anything silly?”
Ethan rolled his eyes, embarrassed. “Mom, I’m eight years old.”
“My point exactly. Hey.” Rachel cupped his chin affectionately in her hand. “Moms worry. It’s part of our job description.” She dropped her hand and regarded him thoughtfully. “Tell you what, you make sure to keep an eye on your uncle. Don’t let him wander off, either. Deal?�
��
Ethan slanted a look toward his uncle and grinned. “Deal.”
Kirk draped the camera’s strap around Ethan’s neck and pressed three rolls of film into his hands. “Bring me back some great photos. Something unique.”
King Arthur sending off Sir Galahad to fetch the Holy Grail couldn’t have had a more dedicated minion. “You bet!”
Rachel suppressed a smile and secretly blessed both Kirk and Cameron for her happiness.
Chapter 15
Issuing another barrage of instructions, Rachel deposited her son beside her brother in the four-by-four. Locking the passenger door, she stood back beside Kirk.
“God, just look at him.” She gestured at Ethan, feeling so happy that tears were beginning to form. “He’s grinning from ear to ear.”
Kirk slipped his arm around her, noticing how naturally it came. “Why shouldn’t he be? He doesn’t have to comb his hair or brush his teeth or take a shower for two whole days. Little boys like being dirty.”
Waving, Rachel smiled, catching Kirk in a contradiction. “You didn’t, as I recall.”
Kirk maintained a mild expression. “That’s because I was always afraid of tearing my clothes.” He waved back at Ethan as the boy twisted around in his seat, slicing the air madly with his hand.
“Sounds exceedingly conscientious.” Rachel moved into the street to watch the four-by-four disappear around the corner.
“Not really. I just didn’t like getting hit.”
Rachel turned and looked at Kirk. She was tempted to step through the door Kirk had inadvertently opened, but she thought better of it. She wanted to spend the day with him. If she pursued the matter he’d let slip, she might find herself alone. She’d ask him about it later.
Rachel hooked her thumbs in her belt loops and gave Kirk a look of studied innocence. It was still quiet. The neighborhood hadn’t fully awakened yet. Only the birds were out, screeching angrily at one another. Somewhere in the distance, Rachel heard the sharp cry of a cat. Probably out looking for breakfast, she thought.
Kirk turned away from the street, and Rachel followed him to his driveway. “I guess this leaves me with a free weekend.”
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