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A brick of tension dropped from his body. They were home. The boy was okay. Still, he waited. Waited until the big house lay in darkness, except for an upstairs window.
Suddenly, the narrow, rectangular pane beside the mudroom door lit behind its lacy curtain.
Dane rose from the chair when he heard a latch click. Footsteps crossed the deck. Kaitlin? Or the boy, sneaking out again?
He went down the flagstone path.
She stood on the edge of the deck, wrapped in a pale shawl. Damn, she was lovely, like an elf come out to play under the stars.
“Kaitlin?” he queried softly and saw her body jerk.
“Good heavens, you’re a quiet one.”
He hadn’t meant to startle her. Keeping to the delta of the path, he asked, “How’s the boy?”
“Eight stitches. The doctor says he can go to school tomorrow, just no roughhousing on the playground.”
Dane nodded.
A handful of seconds passed. She asked, “Are you a military doctor?”
“Not anymore.”
“A doctor here, then? You seemed to know exactly what to do with Blake’s injury.”
He hesitated. “I was a trauma surgeon in Iraq. Served there since we went in. Left a year-and-a-half ago.” He’d been in the Middle East almost six years. Too damned long to work in a place where you never knew if your next breath would be your last.
She remained silent, studying him as he studied her. Finally, she said, “I was coming to see you, but your lights were off.”
“I like sitting on the porch in the dark. It’s peaceful.”
“I understand.”
He imagined she did. She would need the peace following her husband’s death.
She said, “I want to apologize for my son’s behavior. It won’t happen again.”
“He’s a typical kid. Don’t worry about it.”
“Being a kid is no excuse. He’ll apologize after school tomorrow.”
“All right.”
As she turned to go, she paused. “Would you like to join us for dinner tomorrow? As a thank-you for helping Blake tonight.”
“Help?” The way I helped Zaakir? Dane bit hard on his tongue to sever the memory. “It was my fault he got hurt,” he murmured. “If I hadn’t chased him—”
“We’re all a little to blame,” she replied reasonably. “However, if you’d rather not…”
“I’m surprised you’d trust me after tonight.”
“Why wouldn’t I?” She stepped off the deck and crossed to him. “Dane, I don’t know your past, or what’s eating you. That’s your business. But from what I’ve seen so far, from what I remember, you’re all right. So if you like roast chicken with stuffing, dinner will be at six tomorrow.”
He could smell her on the night air, caught himself lifting his chin an inch to better draw in the scent. “You’d be wise to stay away from me,” he said.
She smiled. “Perhaps. Except I don’t scare easily.”
The night trapped them, a thick swathe of darkness in which he could imagine the heat of flesh slipping along flesh. His gaze seized her, beckoned her, told her a thousand stories.
“Be careful, Kaitlin. I’m not the man you remember.” Turning on his heel, he walked back into the shroud of night.
Chapter Four
A woodpecker rat-a-tatted somewhere in the pines outside his window. He jerked awake, not because of the bird, but because the sun stood well above the trees and the clock read 9:46 a.m.
He’d slept ten hours straight. When was the last time he’d overslept? Not since college when he’d been studying half the night for a physics exam.
His tangled brain took in the tiny bedroom with its one piece of knotty pine furniture housing his underwear and socks. Kaitlin. He was in her cottage.
And, he’d fallen asleep to wake hours later with—he glanced down—the worst arousal he’d had in two decades.
Scraping both hands down his stubbled cheeks, he drew in a sigh, then flung back the downy quilt and set his feet on the rug beside the bed. He needed a shower, a freezing shower.
Naked, he headed down the short hallway to the bathroom.
The kitchen phone rang. Who’d be phoning on the landline? Had to be her.
Down the hall he went and into the kitchen. A glance at the window; no boy peered back at him. Dane picked up the receiver. “Hello?”
“Good morning,” she sang.
He cleared his rusty throat. “’Mornin’.”
Pause. “Oh, Dane. I woke you, didn’t I?” If he’d needed a shower to cool down two minutes ago, that breathless Oh, Dane doubled the requirement. “I’m so sorry,” she went on. “I’ll let you get back to bed.”
“No, no. Was up reading,” he fibbed. He glanced toward the front door and its half-moon window draped with a frilly curtain that let in the light, but obscured prying eyes. Phone to his ear, he walked over, tried to peer through to the Victorian, and imagined her in that country kitchen with its big worktable.
She said, “I didn’t mean to disturb you—”
Just thinking of her disturbed him. “Kaitlin?”
“Yes?”
“Stop apologizing.”
Another pause, longer this time. Was she remembering his asinine remark last night? I’m not the man you remember. And where the hell had his grouchy tone come from? He’d been raised to respect and honor a woman, to treat her with decency. To do anything less was as foreign to him as giving birth. He just wasn’t built that way.
“I wanted to make sure you were still coming to dinner tonight.”
So, she had been recalling his words.
He headed for his bathroom. “I’ll be there.”
“Good. Um…Is there anything you need from town? Anything for your fridge? I’m doing a grocery run in about ten minutes.”
“No thanks.” The only thing he needed she couldn’t give.
“Okay…. I’ll see you tonight.”
“I’ll be there.”
He waited for her to hang up. She didn’t.
“Aren’t you hanging up?” His voice scratched.
This time her hesitation stretched even longer. “Aren’t you?” she replied softly.
Oh, hell. What could he say? I want to hang up but can’t? I need to hang up before I grab a pair of jeans and go to your back door?
Where he’d kiss her the way he wanted to last night—
“I’m looking forward to seeing you again,” she whispered into his ear, and pictures of her in the night bloomed across his brain.
“You’re all I thought about before I went to sleep,” he confessed.
“Me too, you.” And then she released a long breath as if coming to a conclusion. “However, I’d rather be friends.”
“I’m not interested in a relationship.” Not the kind she deserved.
“That’s good to know.” Relief crept in. “Because it never would have worked. We’re too different.”
She was right, they were; but that didn’t make the truth easier. “Says who?”
“Says me. You’re too intense, too…dark.”
“Dark?”
“You’ve got things inside you.”
How could she know he had Zaakir inside him? Zaakir, who was never going to leave, who would haunt Dane until his dying breath.
Except, last night Dane had been free. For ten hours the ever-present guilt had lifted, flown. Until now, until he realized he hadn’t thought of the boy since yesterday.
He needed to get off the phone. He couldn’t hold her responsible for fixing him, and somehow he knew she’d want to do exactly that if she found out about the darkness that plagued him.
“I’ll see you tonight,” he repeated, because he had promised. Then he set the phone gently in its cradle.
He no longer needed a cold shower.
He’d been working on the Harley thirty minutes when he sensed Kaitlin’s son enter the carport from the backyard. Crouched on a square of cardboard, Dane continued to sweep the battery terminals clean with the small steel brush that was part of his toolkit. Maybe if he ignored the kid, he’d go away again.
“Whatcha doin’?”
No such luck. The boy was here to socialize and Dane wasn’t in the mood, and for damn sure not while he was checking out the bike’s battery. Already memories of another kid and a different battery surged up; he worked to control his breathing, to pinch back the images.
Blake wandered to the cardboard. His sneakers were scuffed, but what Dane could see of the boy’s blue jeans appeared clean. Go away, son. You could get hurt again.
“What’s the matter with the battery?”
“Needs a checkup.” He had yet to look the kid in the eye.
“My mom gets her car checked at the garage in town.”
“Good for her.”
His tone didn’t deter the boy; he squatted on his haunches next to Dane. “Harley-Davidson motorcycles are the best, right?”
That’s it, kid. Go for the power, the look, the sound.
Picking up his flashlight, Dane shone the beam against the clear box to check the fluid in each cell. His pulse rate accelerated. Didn’t Blake realize battery fluid was acidic, what it could do to your skin? Damn it, didn’t they teach anything in school? And where was Kaitlin? Did she know her son was in a place where he could get hurt?
“You need to back up,” he told the boy, pointing to a spot at least six feet away.
“Why?”
“Batteries can be dangerous.”
“Really? My dad once changed the battery in his pickup and he never said that.”
“Ever heard of acid?”
“Uh-huh. We did an experiment in science last fall with acid.”
“Know what it can do?”
“Sure. Can I sit on your bike when you’re done? I’ve never sat on a motorcycle before.”
As he spoke, the boy moved in the direction Dane had instructed. He breathed easier. “Don’t you have something to do?” he grumped. “Like help your mother?”
“Already did. I cleaned my room and collected the trash around the house.”
“Well, maybe there’s something else you could help her with, something she hasn’t thought of.”
“Nuh-uh. She said I could go outside ’cause it’s not raining. And anyway, I like talking to you.” The boy flushed and shot Dane a sheepish grin. “You know…about the Harley an’ stuff. When my dad was alive I was too little to know about motorcycles and anyway he didn’t have a Harley.”
Was the boy was looking for a stand-in daddy? Hell. Knees popping, Dane rose to his full height and gazed down at Kaitlin’s son for a long moment, so long the kid’s grin faded. One sneaker heel began bouncing up-down, up-down.
Ignoring the flare of sympathy in his chest, Dane said in a rough voice, “This isn’t going to work, Blake. I’m the kind of guy who likes his privacy and—”
