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He thought of what he had come to know about her over the past year, and even more in the past two weeks: that she was funny and shy and smart and sassy. And eminently decent. He realized exactly why he had avoided girls like her.
“My Mom is going to be in total shock,” she told him, finally, stopping in front of him. Her brow was just a little dewy from exertion, her breath was coming in faint pants.
A shameful waste of passion.
“She has tried everything to get tickets to this event,” Katie rushed on. “She even offered her first-born child. Which would be me. Oh, I could just kiss you!”
He closed his eyes and puckered up, but nothing happened. When he opened them again, she had whirled away, was in the back room on the phone. He felt an astonishing yearning to know what her lips would have tasted like, even though he now knew her to be far more dangerous than he had ever guessed.
Well, to his detriment, he had never shown nearly enough caution around anything dangerous.
“Mom,” she said, breathlessly into the phone, “You’ll never guess what just happened. I have tickets to Tac Revol!”
He stood there for a moment, letting her excited voice wash over him, thinking maybe he was too late. She already was a crazy cat lady, that was the only type of person who could get so excited about those tickets!
He was aware, suddenly, almost sadly, that he had gotten exactly what he wanted. He had transformed her. This was the moment he had waited for and worked toward. His stated mission was over, except for the going-out-with-him part.
He had seen her. Passionate. Laughter filled. Playful. This moment had come out of nowhere, a gift almost as good as getting to see her swim with dolphins. But what was even more astonishing than having seen her was the glimpse of himself. This was the kind of girl a man could fall in love with, before he even knew what had happened.
A woman who loved her mother. He was not sure any of his other recent girlfriends had ever mentioned a mother to him!
Love. He didn’t like it that that word had entered his mind in connection with Katie. Thankfully, she was the kind of girl a man like him was not really worthy of since he was not certain he could sustain this new and honorable self for long enough. He might even have bad genetics.
His father had managed a pretext of honor for thirty-five years! His father had taken a vow to love and honor and cherish, through better or worse, and he had broken that vow. He had institutionalized his wife. If that wasn’t bad enough, he was reluctant to go and see her. Dylan was willing to bet it had been more than two months since his father had visited his mother. He suspected a new lady friend. And then his sister wondered what was wrong with him when he could not bring himself to return his father’s calls? The events of his mother’s illness had sent Dylan into a state of shock. He could not believe the fabric of a life that had seemed so strong, so real, could be so easily torn. He had become a man who did not believe in anything anymore.
And yet, looking at Katie talking to her own mother, he thought, A man could believe in that.
He realized the enormity of his error. He’d told himself he had been trying to give her back something she had lost. Now he saw he had tried to give her back what he missed about himself.
Hope. Belief. Trust.
He was not the man for this task. Foolish to have taken it on.
Katie glanced at him. Suddenly her whole demeanor changed. “Mom, I’ll call you back.”
“Dylan?”
“Huh?”
“Are you okay?” She came out of the back room, came and stood looking up at him.
He pasted his breeziest smile on his face, tried to see the plain Jane in her. But he saw something else. A girl who needed a man who could be one hundred per cent real. Katie needed someone brave enough to trust her with who he was once he laid down the shield.
He folded his arms over his chest. He wasn’t ever having a relationship with her. He’d done the decent thing. He’d given her back her spirit, however briefly. Both of them knew now that it had only been hidden, not lost.
And what of his own spirit?
He was aware of his lack, that he had overdeveloped many sides of his personality: strength, daring, persistence. Others he had managed to totally ignore: sentiment, softness, vulnerability. If he let this thing with Katie go any further, he was going to get to the place where he really hurt, and dammit, he didn’t want to go there! He was not the least bit interested in discovering his own humanity, what lay beyond the fearless facade.
He was about fun and danger, and lovely combinations of both. He was not about self-discovery. In fact he could honestly say he hated stuff like that. Nothing could bring on that nice-to-have-known-you bouquet faster than a girlfriend wanting to have a deep and meaningful conversation.
“Dylan, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” he said.
She looked doubtful. “Did you want to see Tac Revol?”
“Excuse me?” he said, lifting an eyebrow at her. “Like, I’d be caught dead at something like that!”
For a moment she looked unconvinced, and then her face relaxed.
“Oh. Of course you wouldn’t! You probably don’t even know Tac Revol spells Cat Lover, backward. You’ve just been so persistent. I thought, oh, never mind what I thought.” Her smile came back. “So, you don’t care if I take my mom?”
“I’m glad you’re taking your mom.” He ordered himself to stop talking. McKinnon, get out. Get out with your life. Full retreat. “I wish I could make my mom so happy. Just one more time.”
“Is she gone, Dylan?” she asked softly.
Such a complicated question. “Yes,” he said gruffly. She was gone. The mother of his youth, brilliant, witty, warm, loving, capable, sensitive, she was gone. And she was never coming back.
“Oh, I’m so sorry.”
Everything brave and fearless in him was collapsing in the face of the light in her eyes, the wariness washed from them, replaced with something so warm, a place a man could lay down his shield and rest his head.
Katie Pritchard was beautiful in a different way than he had ever experienced beautiful before.
Hers was a kind of beauty that changed the things it touched, made them need to be worthy of her. She was deep and real and genuine, and she’d already been stuck with one guy who wasn’t anywhere near worthy of those things, who could not live up to her standard.
And that knowledge of her and what would be required of any man who linked his life with hers, even temporarily, made him feel oddly fragile, as if he had inadvertently touched something sacred. He was aware of feeling the route he was on had taken a dangerous twist and become very, very scary. Scary? But that was impossible. The Daredevil Dylan McKinnon was fearless. A little snip like her was not going to bring him to his knees.
Or maybe she was.
Because she reached up and touched his cheek with her hand, soothingly, as if she understood all the secrets he was not telling her.
And then she kissed him.
Her lips were unspeakably tender, they invited him to tell her everything, they called to the place in him that he had been so fierce about guarding, that he had revealed to no one.
It was a place of burdens and loneliness, and the burdens felt suddenly lighter, and the loneliness felt like it was fog that sun was penetrating.
“If you want to go for coffee sometime,” she said, hesitantly.
He reeled back from her. “I have to go out of town for a while,” he said, and saw her flinch from the obviousness of the lie.
But he felt as if it was better—far better—to hurt her now than later. The fabric of life, and especially of love, was fragile after all. He could not trust himself not to damage what he saw blossoming in the tenderness of her eyes.
Love. He could not trust himself with love.
CHAPTER FIVE
KATE took up her post beside her window, glanced at the clock. Nearly one o’clock and no Dylan. Just as there had been no Dylan for the past three days. No dropping by her shop, no teasing, no exotic invitations. Ever since she had accepted the tickets from him—and made the mistake of telling him she was available for coffee—it was as if he had dropped off the face of the earth.
The chase was over. For a guy like him it was all about the chase. She knew that from sending his flowers.
He had told her he had to go away, but she could see his red sports car parked right up the street. He certainly didn’t have to let her know his schedule!
Still, this feeling inside her should serve as a warning. She missed him coming by. Each day she chose an uglier outfit in anticipation of it. Today she had on a pair of daisy-printed culottes and had her hair tied with a matching bandanna. It was a lot of trouble to have gone to if he wasn’t going to come by and appreciate it.
For all that she had thought she was winning this game of cat and mouse they had been playing, she now realized she hadn’t been at all.
She’d been kidding herself, falling more in love with him every day. The tickets to the Tac Revol reading had finished her really, swamped her with tenderness for the man she wanted—no, needed—so desperately to hate. And when he had choked up, at the mention of his own mother, it was like the armor around her heart had been pierced irreparably.
And then he’d stopped coming, proving her instincts had been correct. Saying yes to him, inviting him for coffee, was the beginning of the end. Except her end seemed to have come without the stuff that was supposed to come in the middle. Ridiculous to feel regret.
Probably Dylan had seen something in her face that day she took the tickets that had frightened him off. Girl who cares too much, feels too deeply, capable of sappy behavior over small gestures.
Good, she tried to convince herself. Good that he had lost interest in his game. She had no hope of coming out the winner in any kind of match with him.
It was five minutes past one. He wasn’t coming. He wasn’t running today, or if he was he was avoiding her shop.
She felt her heart drop, hated it that she felt her throat close and her eyes prick as if she was going to cry! She would not cry. Her assistant, Mrs. Abercrombie, was working today. People came in all the time!
Stop it! She ordered herself. She’d known all along this was the danger of dancing with a man like that. That is what they had been doing, the last weeks, dancing, circling around each other, jousting.
A dangerous dance, because how could you spend any kind of time with a guy like that and not want more?
Not more of the good looks and charm, not more of the fun-loving playboy persona.
No, more of the other things, the more subtle qualities, the ones he tried to hide. Depth. Gentleness. Compassion. Intelligence.
More of the look in his eyes and on his face when he had said his mother was gone. She had seen who he really was then: a warrior who somehow felt he had failed, who was looking at his arsenal of weapons helplessly, not understanding how they had not worked to hold back the flow of life, to keep pain at bay from those he loved. In that moment, when he had mentioned his mother, she had seen how furiously and fiercely he loved, and she knew just why he was intent on pursuing the superficial.
And she knew just why she wanted to be the one he finally chose to lay down his weapons for, to come home to.
Her heart wanted it so badly. Her head said, pragmatically, never going to happen. Katie pulled her shoulders back and shoved out her chin, tucked her hair neatly behind her ears.
She was a divorced woman, not a schoolgirl. She already knew about the daggers hidden in the cloak of love. She had known all along she should not let her defenses down, and she had thought she was succeeding. Now she saw her defenses had started to come down the first day she had given in to the impulse to watch him run.
She had been realistic from the start, she had known he was not a man any intelligent woman should be pinning her hopes on. She had known all along she was a momentary distraction. She had known all along that some girl would come along who was his type—dumb, beautiful and built, a girl who allowed him to keep his fearless facade in place—and that would be the end of his interest in her.
The day was gorgeous, and she needed to focus on that—on the robin singing in the tree outside her window, in the solace of her flowers. She decided to put some buckets of flowers outside the door.
But when Katie looked at her finished display, she knew she wasn’t as done thinking about him as she wanted to be. To people walking by it would only look pretty. Not a single soul but her would know what it meant. Unconsciously she had chosen larkspur, primroses, yellow lilies. She had lined her outer windowsill with little garden-ready containers of marigolds.
Dylan’s worst character traits were all represented: fickleness, inconsistency, false expectations. The marigolds might have been unfair. She shouldn’t really call him cruel—he had given her the Tac Revol tickets—but it did feel cruel that he had lost interest as quickly as he had gained it. That she had come to look forward to him coming by, anticipate it, live for it, and he had stopped.
At the last moment she added a bucket of gladiolas to her display. The flower of the gladiators, of warriors, representing strength. True strength, not just physical strength, but strength of spirit. She eyed her choice wondering if it represented her or Dylan.
Without warning, his office door flew open, and Dylan stepped out into the bright sunshine.
For a moment Katie hoped he had seen her, fantasized that he would come over and tell her what urgent matter had kept him away for the past few days.
But he didn’t appear to see her at all. Slighted, she went to duck back inside her own door, but something in his demeanor stopped her. He was looking vaguely frantic, his eyes scanning the parked cars, when she could clearly see where he had parked his own car.
Dylan, frantic? She frowned. Something wrong with that picture. He never looked anything but polished—some might go as far as to say perfect—even in his jogging clothes, but he wasn’t in his jogging clothes, and he looked faintly disheveled. His shirt was white and crisp, but his tie was undone, his sleeves rolled up. He had left his desk in a hurry.
None of her business, she told herself, but instead of stepping in to the relative safety of her shop, and away from any kind of engagement with him, some kind of automatic pilot took over. She stepped out, touched his arm.
He started, and that’s when she realized, despite the rather gaudy outfit she was wearing for his benefit, he hadn’t even seen her.
He couldn’t have dismissed her that completely from his life in three short days!
“Dylan, what’s wrong?”
He looked at her, and she knew she was seeing something she might never see again. Dylan was afraid.
He fumbled with his keys. “The hospital just called. Tara was brought in by ambulance.”
Tara. One of his standbys. How had she managed to forget this about him when she was inviting him for coffee?
“They can’t locate Sam.”
“Sam?”
“My sister, Tara’s, husband. They wouldn’t say very much on the phone. Or maybe I didn’t hear much beyond scheduled for surgery.”
“Tara is your sister?” she asked, flabbergasted. And then she saw the look on his face. He had his keys out, and Kate noticed his hand was shaking ever so slightly. She plucked the keys from him.
“I’ll drive you. I’ll just let Mrs. Abercrombie know I’m leaving.”
She expected argument, at least a token protest, but there was none.
“Thanks, Katie,” he said, and then he looked at her. Really looked at her, and she knew she could put out all the buckets of larkspur in the world, it wasn’t going to change how she felt. The whole world could believe he was a daredevil, beyond fear, if they wanted to. In his eyes in that moment, she saw how deeply he cared for those rare people who were close to him, just as the other day she had seen how he cared about his mother. She saw that he, without hesitation, would lay down his life to protect those he cared about.
She saw, clearly, why he was so quick to get rid of women from his life.
Because he was the kind of man who, when he gave his heart, it took every single thing that he had. Caring so much was the place that weakened him, that made him afraid. No one could understand that fear of being destroyed by love as well as a woman who had lost a baby.
Katie understood she had a job to do. She unlocked the doors of his car, and they got in. She had never been in a car where she felt so low to the ground. She looked at the gear shift, tried not to let her trepidation show.
“I think the quickest way to the hospital—”
She nearly stalled the car getting it out of the parking spot. Gamely she gave it gas, and was astonished by how the amount of power sucked her back into the seat. She slammed on the brakes, adjusted the amount of gas she gave it, tried again. A car behind her honked.
“Have you ever driven a car like this?” he asked uneasily.
“A car’s a car,” she said grimly, trying to force it into second. The gears ground, and he winced.
“That shows what you know. Katie, pull over. I’ll drive.” As annoying as it was that her Good Samaritan act had been accepted for less than thirty seconds, at least his preoccupation with her driving was keeping him from being overtaken by worry about his sister.
