Keeping Her Close

by Carol Ross

  Harper decided not to ask about the specifics involved, thinking she’d have time to sort these associations at the family dinner. Even though she’d already begun questioning her impulsive response to Nora’s invitation. Kyle clearly didn’t want her there, and she’d only accepted with the hope that it would get to him. Not well done of her. Why couldn’t she just kill this curiosity of hers where he was concerned?

  “Nice to meet you both.”

  “You, too!” Laney grinned, and Harper could see that she was much younger than she’d originally assumed. “Nora said she invited you to dinner this weekend.”

  “She did. I hope that’s okay? I understand you’re doing the cooking.”

  “It’s more than okay. It’s awesome! And I am. I love to cook! I’m making Uncle Kyle’s favorite.”

  “Well, great. I’m already looking forward to it. Should I bring anything?”

  Laney’s answer was another happy grin, “Just Uncle Kyle. I miss having him around.”

  “If Laney wasn’t cooking an entire salmon, we might say yes,” Mia joked. “Since you guys are friends, you probably already know how much my brother eats?”

  Harper smiled at Mia’s subtle attempt to discern the status of her and Kyle’s relationship. The question hinted at protectiveness on her part. And Laney was calling him “uncle” when, from what Harper understood, he hadn’t earned the title through genetics. As far as Harper was concerned, that made it even more affectionate and special. Nora, Mia, Laney—these engaging, friendly women did not seem like the estranged family members Harper had been picturing. Speaking of, a still beaming Nora was strolling to the front of the room. With a promise to see her at dinner, Mia and Laney departed for their mats in the back row. Harper turned to look at Kyle who was shooting the breeze with a middle-aged woman behind them. He faced the front to focus on Nora as she began to teach the class.

  Where Harper was in for another huge surprise. So much for her relaxing yoga session where she was going to let go of all her negative feelings. Instead, they blossomed and festered like a diseased lotus flower.

  Reverse warrior, triangle, downward-facing dog, lord of the dance, it didn’t matter, Kyle Frasier could do them all. Every pose. Much better than Harper could, which wasn’t saying all that much. But he was also better than every other person in the class as far as she could see, even his mom/instructor. Harper labored through the poses, sweating and straining and trying not to grunt like a tennis player. All of this made more difficult by attempting not to watch Kyle breeze through the class like some sort of yoga prodigy.

  It was official: she’d been conned. And not only in the yoga way. She’d asked him if he was close to his family and he’d said, Not really. He’d told her he didn’t want to talk about them, and he’d said it in a way that led her to believe the relationship was strained. She’d actually felt bad for him!

  All of this prevented her from feeling sorry for him when, at the end of class, Nora asked him to demonstrate a “challenging series of poses.” She could tell he was embarrassed by the attention. This was something she did know about him; his humility had appealed to her from the day they’d met. She could see he was ready to decline. The hint of disappointment on Nora’s face had Harper wanting to volunteer to perform the poses herself, and she had no idea what they entailed. Nora was like the coolest, sweetest person Harper had ever met and she silently willed him not to disappoint his mom. It was difficult to believe the woman had birthed this closed-off, hard-edged, military disciplinarian. That wasn’t exactly fair; she knew he was a nice guy. To other people.

  Kyle, being the good son that he was, obviously could read Nora, too, and acquiesced to her request. Smoothly, he dropped into plank position as if he were going to perform a push-up. Then he lowered to his elbows and shifted his weight forward, lifting his legs and tucking one knee onto the opposite elbow.

  “Soaring pigeon,” Nora proudly narrated through the poses, giving the traditional name and the familiar English translation. Kyle stretched both legs back until they were parallel with the ground. He extended one arm, so his entire body was balanced horizontally on the other. Harper watched and tried not to gape at his muscles bulging out all over the place. The pose looked impossible, like something an acrobat might perform.

  Lowering the outstretched arm, he placed his palm on the floor near the other and extended his body up into a handstand. Bending his knees and arching his back he touched the back of his head with his toes.

  “Wounded peacock, handstand scorpion,” Nora finished in succession. “Just beautiful, Kyle!”

  “Thanks, Mom,” an upside-down Kyle said, making everyone laugh.

  “Can you do the grand finale?”

  “Sure.” He walked across the floor on his hands to the very front of the classroom and stopped. Springing to his feet, he executed a back handspring. He was pure brilliance and a stunning example of manly beauty. And Harper was incredibly angered by all of it.

  The entire class broke out in applause. Dry-mouthed, probably from the gaping, Harper fumbled with her water bottle.

  “Kyle was a gymnast when he was young,” Nora explained. “He’s the one who got me interested in yoga when he was only a teenager.”

  Fuming, Harper took a long drink and tried to analyze her feelings. She was upset on two fronts. The first because she’d realized a disturbing truth throughout the course of class. Kyle had deliberately kept this information from her. About his yoga abilities, not to mention the acrobatics, about his mom, his family and everything else. Despite her efforts, she’d learned precious little about him, and that’s the way he wanted it.

  The second part was more complicated and had to do with why this bothered her. She wanted to know this stuff about him. She wanted to know him. It hurt that he didn’t want to share anything about himself, that he didn’t want her to get to know him. Which all had to do with why it also bothered her that a shapely woman with a perky ponytail sidled up next to him and introduced herself.

  “Hi, I’m Mandy. So, you’re Nora’s son, huh?”

  “Guilty.”

  “What else are you guilty of, Kyle?” Mandy asked. “JK!” she said after a beat and then giggled wildly. Reaching out, she play-slapped his biceps. “I adore your mom. You are so lucky...”

  Harper bent over so that she could roll her eyes and her mat at the same time. She took her time, blatantly eavesdropping, while Mandy gushed over his one-handed-whatever-pose (of course, Mandy knew its proper name!) and not so subtly quizzed him about his relationship status. Harper wanted to interrupt, but she needed to face the fact that no matter how different—how nice—he was toward others, he was not that way to her. She was just a job to him. She needed to accept this and treat him like he was an employee. Except she didn’t care if someone was an employee, she treated everyone the same, or at least she tried to. She liked to think she did. Kyle, on the other hand, did not.

  Mat tucked under her arm, water bottle in the other, and no further reason to loiter around while Kyle gave Mandy tips on how to gain the proper core strength to master the wounded peacock, Harper took off toward the cubby where she’d stored her stuff before she wounded him with a kick to the kneecap.

  * * *

  CLASS HAD NOT gone well. Harper seemed even more upset with Kyle than she’d been earlier in the day. Asking what was wrong felt like crossing a line, a line that Kyle both desperately wanted to cross and didn’t want to go near at the same time. But that’s what he had to do now. And it wasn’t the crossing so much as why he was going to do it. He’d been easing over the line already, at least in his mind. But now that he had to make friends with her, he’d give anything if he could do it for reasons that were entirely his own. Wrestling his conscience into submission, he told himself that this was the best and the most expedient way to discover what she knew about Owen.

  “Harper, is something wrong?”
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br />   Continuing to stare out the window, she droned, “I’m fine.”

  “You didn’t injure yourself in class, did you?”

  “No.”

  They drove in silence as Kyle tried to decide how to proceed. Deciding directness was the best approach, he asked, “Harper, did I do something to upset you?”

  Tension resonated in the space between them. “Not on purpose,” she finally murmured.

  “What is it, then?”

  “It’s nothing.”

  “It’s obviously something,” he countered.

  “You’ll think I’m weird.”

  “I doubt that.” I think you’re smart and beautiful and interesting without being conceited or pretentious. And now I finally get to ask all the questions I’ve been wanting to ask you. And regardless of why I’m asking, I still want the answers.

  “You know what, fine, why shouldn’t I tell you?” She shifted in her seat so that she was looking right at him. “It bothered me seeing you in there.”

  “Which part?”

  “Doing yoga. You’re incredible.”

  “Well, I can teach you some stuff if you want. I work at it several mornings a week. The better shape you’re in, the easier it is to elude a would-be assailant.”

  “Can you give the safety stuff a rest for five seconds?” she returned sharply. “This is personal.”

  “Sure,” he replied calmly.

  “What bothers me is that I didn’t know that you even did yoga. We had this whole conversation about it, and you never said anything. You didn’t even mention that your mom taught at the studio, or that she was a yoga instructor at all. Or that she lives in Pacific Cove. When I told you I was going to yoga class, you looked like you were going to be ill.”

  “Yeah, that’s because I didn’t want you to—” He cut off the end of the sentence when he realized how it might sound.

  “You didn’t want me to what?”

  He tried a more diplomatic explanation. “I didn’t want to start mixing up my professional life with my personal life.”

  “You didn’t want me to meet your family, you mean?”

  “Yes.” But not for the reasons you’re thinking.

  Harper let out a strangled sound that went right to his heart. “Why? If you weren’t nice to everybody except me, I wouldn’t care. I’d just think you were a jerk and go on about my life. But Helen and Mandy know more about you than I do! I know I talk a lot and tend to be sarcastic during our safety sessions, but surely you can recognize that for the fear and uncertainty that it is. Am I that horrible to be around?”

  “Helen?” Kyle turned on his blinker so he could pull over at the next lookout. He couldn’t talk to her about this and drive safely anymore. He couldn’t handle that he’d upset her like this. He wasn’t sure how he was going to explain away his behavior, but he had to try.

  “Yes, Helen! Indy’s dog-mom. The stranger you helped on the street and then happily conversed with for a good ten minutes. Unprompted, you chatted about dogs and told her that your sister is a vet. I heard you tell the woman behind us at yoga that you like egg rolls, and I eagerly filed it away.

  “My point here is that everything I know about you I’ve learned from your conversations with someone else. When I asked about your sister, you said, and I quote, ‘Yes.’ And then gave me a speech about crime scene B. I asked if you were close to your family and you said, and I quote, ‘Not really.’ If that’s true, then what was that back there?” She thrust a finger toward the back window. “My son this, my brother that, I’m making Uncle Kyle’s favorite dinner—those were not the sentiments of a family that is not close. I realize that our relationship is different, you being my security consultant, and technically this is none of my business, but I don’t understand why you’re so...cold to me. What did I do to make you not like me?”

  Slowing the vehicle, Kyle turned off and steered into a parking spot on a lookout above the ocean. The moon was a nearly full, pale yellow ball on the horizon, its fuzzy reflection shimmering on the surface of the water below. He turned to face her, and thought, Here goes.

  “I do like you,” he said.

  Harper gaped at him and then barked out a doubtful laugh.

  “The fact is that I like you very much.” Capturing her surprised gaze with his, he tried to convey his sincerity. Her breath caught as she stared into his eyes and he could see she wanted to believe him. His focus shifted to her mouth. Her lips looked incredibly soft. And the way they were parted was like an invitation. One he badly wanted to accept. Kyle was a hundred percent positive he’d never wanted to kiss a woman as much as he did in that moment. What he wanted to do was to show her exactly how much he liked her.

  “I like you, too,” she said softly. “That’s why this bothers me so much.”

  Struggling for control, he swallowed his desire. Inhaling slowly, he exhaled a breath, and said, “Harper, I’m sorry. You’re right. About everything you just said. I’ve been trying to keep some distance on purpose.”

  “Why?”

  Why indeed. “I’ve, uh... Owen—” Harper winced, and he stopped talking. Perfect, he thought. Owen was his excuse. Because at the core of this, he was. Kyle was just going to twist the details a little.

  “See?” he said. “That’s the problem. Just the sound of Owen’s name makes you flinch. I thought I could do this, work for you, get to know you, help you, I thought it was what Owen would want. I still believe that last part, which is why I’m still here. But almost immediately, I could see that it was going to be a lot more difficult than I anticipated. I don’t know how to be...friends with you without Owen being right here in the middle between us. He’s so much a part of me—and you, too—from what I can see, that it seemed easier for me just to avoid anything personal to keep from talking about him. To keep from reminding you about him, and maybe myself, too.” That was true; he reassured himself. It just wasn’t all of the truth.

  Harper’s blue-gray eyes flashed with something that looked like anger but then went soft. Sad. Kyle felt like a heel for putting even a hint of this on her. The attraction was the issue, his issue, and he needed to find a better way to deal with it because things were about to get real between them. And the last thing he wanted to do was hurt her.

  * * *

  HARPER STARED AT Kyle and felt her heart go warm and crowd her chest. She knew it! He really was a good guy. More to the point, it wasn’t her. The regret and sincerity in his expression drew her sympathy and made her want to lighten his mood. “Well, I’m glad it’s not because you think I’m annoying and difficult.”

  “No, Harper, I promise that’s not it.”

  A smile tugged at her mouth.

  “Although,” he drawled, tipping his head to one side, “you are a little difficult.”

  “What?”

  “This job would be so much easier if you were like an attorney or a florist or a telemarketer.” Now she could see the humor dancing in his eyes.

  “A telemarketer?” she repeated flatly, trying not to laugh.

  He shrugged one helpless shoulder. “In case you didn’t know this about yourself, you are an exceptionally good talker. But my point is, any job where you stayed in one place for more than five minutes would be a dream for me.”

  Harper barely managed to smother her laugh. “I edit photos for hours straight sometimes.”

  “True, but I’m on the edge of my seat the whole time,” he said. “Because any second, I know you’re going to come running out of your office like it’s on fire and tell me we have to go because the sun is going to set. Like it’s a surprise. News flash, Harper, the sun sets every single day.”

  She tried to form a response, but then gave in to it and laughed instead. Funny Kyle was her new favorite person.

  They exchanged grins and something else that made Harper’s pulse leap before Kyle went serio
us again. “I’m genuinely sorry. And what I said is true, I do like you. I’d like for you to give me another chance.”

  Harper nodded. “You’re forgiven. Second chance granted. What you said makes sense. But you don’t have to not talk about Owen because you think it might upset me. I mean, I don’t want to talk about what happened between him and me for reasons I’ve already worked through. But I don’t care if you mention him, especially if not mentioning him makes you clam up and go all stone-faced military man on me. Sharing your memories might make it better. It worked for me.” Even though they aren’t happy memories like yours, she added silently.

  “Stone-faced military man?” he repeated with a playful scowl. “That’s a bit extreme, I think.”

  “Hey, I have photographic evidence, remember? Do you need to see it again?”

  With an exaggerated cringe, he said, “Ouch. That’s right. No thanks. That photo isn’t going to end up on some internet meme, is it?”

  Pulling one shoulder up, Harper fashioned a “we’ll see” expression, and said, “Just be honest with me, and you’ll have nothing to worry about.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  EVEN THOUGH HE and Harper had formed a truce of sorts, the impending dinner with his family was unnerving for Kyle. Kyle and his dad had been so close; he’d felt lost after his death. Nora and Mia shared a similar closeness and Kyle didn’t know where he fit into that, or if he even deserved to. He’d been his father’s son. By design, he realized now.

  Since Mia wasn’t his father’s biological child, his dad hadn’t wanted a relationship with her, and so Kyle had inadvertently followed his lead. It made him cringe when he thought about how uninterested he’d been in his sister’s life. It was true that they’d had different hobbies and pastimes—Mia had been a loner focused on school while Kyle had enjoyed outdoor activities and excelled at sports. But the truth was that Kyle had never been interested in finding common ground. He couldn’t recall ever attending one of her science fairs or academic competitions. He never asked what she was up to or invited her to play sports with him. At the very least, he wished he would have just taken the time to hang out with her once in a while. The way Levi and Laney did.