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“What truth?”
He drew in his breath sharply, seemed to consider.
“Tell me,” she said, even though she had the childish desire to put her hands over her ears to block what he was going to say next.
“He was flirting with a girl. Instead of doing his job.”
She knew David rarely swore, but he inserted an expletive between his and job that could have made a soldier blush.
“He was over there by the concession not even looking at the water.”
“He was already going out with me!” she said, her voice a squeak of outrage and desperation. “That’s a lie.”
“Is it?” he asked quietly. “I was coming on shift. I wasn’t even on duty. I looked out at the water and I knew something was wrong. I could feel it. There was an eeriness in the air. And then I saw that little girl. She had blond hair and she was facedown and her hair floating around her head in the water. I yelled at him as I went by and we both went out.”
“You’re lying,” she whispered again.
He looked at her sadly. “It was too late. By the time we got to her.”
“Why would you tell me something so hurtful?” she demanded, but her voice sounded weak in her own ears. “Why would you lie to me like that?”
His eyes were steady on her own.
“Have I ever lied to you, Kayla?” he asked quietly.
“Yes!” she said. “Yes, you have.”
And then she turned and practically ran from him before he could see the tears streaming down her face.
CHAPTER FOUR
DAVID’S HAND LANDED on her shoulder, and he spun her around.
“When?” he demanded. “When did I ever lie to you?”
“We kissed that one night on the beach,” Kayla said, carefully stripping her voice of any emotion.
His hand fell away from her shoulder, and he stuffed it in the pocket of his shorts and looked away from her.
“And then,” she said, her voice a hiss, “you would barely look at me after that. That, David Blaze, is the worst kind of lie of all!”
He drew in his breath, sharply, and looked like he had something to say. Instead, his expression closed.
That same cool, shutting-her-out expression that she remembered all too well from after their ill-fated kiss!
“I don’t want to talk about it,” he said. “I don’t want to talk about any of this.”
His tone was dismissive, his eyes that had been so expressive just a moment ago, were guarded. His features were closed and cold, his mouth a firm line that warned her away from the place he did not want to go. Which was their shared history.
And that was not a problem. Because Kayla didn’t want to go there, either.
“You brought it up,” she reminded him tightly.
He scraped a hand though his hair and sighed, a sound heavy with weariness. “I did. I shouldn’t have. I’m sorry.”
* * *
“Thank you for your help,” Kayla said with stiff formality. “I can take it from here. I’ve taken enough of your time. You should go.”
David was aware Kayla was taking her cues from him. Slamming the door shut on their shared past.
David was aware he had managed to hurt her feelings, and make her very angry and he was genuinely sorry for both.
Her husband was dead. What momentary and completely uncharacteristic lack of control had made him tell her, after all these years, about what had happened that day?
He supposed it was because she had taken Kevin’s word and way, absolved him of responsibility by blaming those poor parents, as innocent in the whole thing as their child had been.
The drowning had been ruled an accident. But the tension between him and Kevin had never been repaired.
It was only the fact that he had just saved Kayla’s life that was making her struggle for even a modicum of courtesy. In other circumstances, David was aware that he probably would have found that struggle, so transparent in her face and eyes, somewhat amusing.
You should go. That was a good idea if David had ever heard one.
He still could not believe the anger he felt when she said that about it being the parents’ responsibility, his anger at how completely she had bought into Kevin absolving himself.
Still, it was all a long time ago. Her voice saying that, soft with compassion, was something worth escaping from.
It was a long time ago.
Sometimes months could go by without him thinking of it.
But that was not while looking at the beach, with Kayla at his side. He didn’t like it that she had seen, instantly, that it still bothered him.
And he liked it even less that her hand had rested on his wrist, her touch gentle and offering understanding.
Kayla. Some things never changed. She was always looking for something or someone to save, Kevin being a case in point.
Kevin had died in a car accident on a slippery night, going too fast, as always. Had he not cared that he had responsibilities? The accident had happened very late at night. Why hadn’t he been home with his beautiful, young wife?
David shook it off. It was none of his business, but he wished she had not brought up that kiss. He remembered every single thing about it: the sand of the day clinging to them both, the bonfire, the sky star-studded and inky, the night air warm and sultry, the velvety softness of her cheek nestled into his hand as she gazed at him with those huge, liquid-green eyes. His lips had been pulled to her lips like steel to a magnet. And when he had tasted them, they had tasted sweetly of the nectar that gave life.
Until that precise moment, that electrifying meeting of lips, they had just been friends in a circle of friends. But they had been at that age when awareness is sharpening...where the potential for everything to change is always shimmering in the air.
It was true. What he had done after was the worst kind of lie.
Because the next day, Kevin, who had not been at the bonfire the night before, had told David he had fallen for Kayla. That he’d known forever that she was the girl for him, that he had asked her to the prom and she had said yes.
Obviously, Kevin had asked her to the prom before David had kissed her.
He’d felt the dilemma of it; his best friend was staking a claim, had a prior claim. Since his own father had died, David had practically lived at the house next door. He and Kevin were more than friends. They were brothers. Plus, what had Kayla been doing kissing David when she’d agreed to go with Kevin to the prom?
David had done the only possible thing. He’d backed off. In truth, he had probably thought he might have another chance to explore the electricity that had leaped so spontaneously between him and Kayla.
He had thought the thing between her and Kevin would play itself out. Kevin never stuck with anything for long.
But then the little girl had drowned. On Kevin’s watch. And the days of that summer had become a swiftly churning kaleidoscope that they all had been sucked into. A kaleidoscope of loss and of pain and guilt and remorse and sadness. And of anger.
And somehow, when the kaleidoscope had stopped spinning and had spit them all out, Kayla and Kevin were engaged.
It occurred to David that he had been angry at Kevin long before that child had drowned.
“You need to go.”
Kayla said it again, more firmly.
David wanted to get away from her, and from the anger in her eyes, and the recrimination, and the pain that shaded the green to something deeper than green.
She dismissed him, turning her back on him, marching through the doors of the clinic.
The easiest thing would have been to let her go.
But when had David ever done what was easy?
He had promised to see to her dog and her things, and the fact that his word was solid gold was part of what had allowed him to go so far in the world. Blaze Enterprises had been built on a concept of integrity that was rare in the business world.
He followed her through the doors of the clinic.
The ancient nurse, Mary McIntyre, insisted that Kayla take one of the beds in the empty clinic, and so, even though Kayla had dismissed him, he followed them as Mary fussed around her, asking questions, taking her pulse and her blood pressure and listening to her heart.
“We’ll just keep an eye on you, dear. There’s a doctor three minutes away if we need him.”
“Okay,” Kayla said, settled on the cot, her arms folded across her chest. She glared at David. “Why are you still here?”
“Just making sure.”
She raised a comically puffy eyebrow at him. “You don’t need my pity. I don’t need your help. I’m chaperoned. I can’t possibly get into any more trouble. The neighborhood kids are out looking for my dog and are retrieving my purse, so you can go.”
It was like coming through a smoky building fraught with danger, and finally catching sight of the red exit sign.
“Do you want me to pick you up in a couple of hours?”
David contemplated the words that had just come out of his mouth, astounded. He wasn’t even planning on being here in a couple of hours. A quick check on his mother, a consult with her care aides and gone.
The urgency to get back to his world felt intense.
Especially now that he’d had this run-in with Kayla.
But in a moment of madness he had promised to look after her dog, and bike and purse. He had tangled their lives together for a little while longer. But escape was just postponed, not canceled.
And apparently, she was just as eager not to tangle their lives as he was.
“I’ve got the neighborhood kids on the case of my dog. I mean it would be nice if you checked, but no, don’t feel obligated. And no, definitely don’t come back. I’ll just walk home. It’s not far.”
She had been riding her bike on Sugar Maple. Did she live close to there?
“Where are you staying?”
She gave him a puzzled look. “I thought your mom would have told you.”
“Told me what?” he said cautiously.
His mother, these days, told him lots of things. That someone was sneaking into the house stealing her eyeglasses. And wine decanters. That she’d had the nicest conversation with his father, who had been dead for seventeen years.
That was part of the reason he was here.
One of the live-in care aides had called him late last night and said, in the careful undertone of one who might be listened to, You should come. It may not be safe for her to be at home anymore.
He had known it was coming, and yet been shocked by it all the same. Wasn’t he back in his hometown hoping it was an overreaction? That if he just hired more staff he would not have to take his mother from the only home she had known for the past forty years?
It seemed to David, of all the losses that this town had handed him, this was the biggest one of all.
He was losing his mother. But he was not confiding that in Kayla, with her all-too-ready sympathy!
“You thought my mother would tell me where you lived?”
“David, I’m her next-door neighbor.”
His mouth fell open and he forced it shut. That was a rather large oversight on his mother’s part.
“The house was too much for Kevin’s folks,” Kayla said.
He’d known that. The house had been empty the last few times he had visited; he had noticed the Jaffreys were no longer there the next time he’d returned to Blossom Valley after Kevin’s funeral. It probably wasn’t the house that was too much, but the memories it contained.
David had his fair share of those, too. He’d felt a sense of loss, to go with his growing string of losses that he felt when he came home, at seeing the house empty. He had practically grown up in that house next door to his, he and Kevin passing in and out of each other’s kitchens since they were toddlers.
Both of them had been only children, and maybe that was why they had become brothers to each other as much as friends.
There was no part of David’s childhood that did not have Kevin in it. He was part of the fabric of every Christmas and birthday. They had learned to ride two-wheelers and strapped on their first skates together. They had shared the first day of school. They had chosen David’s puppy together, and the dog that had been on their heels all the days of their youth had really belonged to both of them.
They had built the tree fort in Kevin’s backyard, and swam across the bay together every single summer.
When David’s dad had died, Mr. Jaffrey had acted like a father to both of them.
No, maybe not a father. More like a friend. Had that been part of the problem with Kevin? A problem David had successfully ignored for years?
No rules. No firm hand. No guidelines. An only child, totally indulged, who had, despite his fun-loving charm, become increasingly self-centered.
The Jaffreys’ empty house had looked more forlorn with each visit: paint needing freshening up, shingles curling, porch sagging, yard overgrown.
