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There as a strange light in her green eyes now, suggesting hunger, delight, desire.
It was one thing for a male deprived of intimacy for a full year to feel lustful in these circumstances, but Grace…Surely she wouldn’t use her imagination on him this way, would she?
Dammit, this was little Gracie, the lanky tagalong. And he was unsure of her thoughts!
It was a struggle to trigger lucid conversation, but he managed. “So how was the big party?”
She shrugged, sinking into a chair at the table. “Probably as you remember. Routine.”
Kyle did remember, having helped with the catering on occasion. Never before had he ever been concerned over whether or not she had a date, though. The relief that she’d proven to be alone out on the street tonight had been overwhelming. For no good reason, he was very glad indeed.
She was staring up at him in curious amusement. “All in all, Kyle, you’ll find you haven’t missed much around here.”
Kyle sank into a chair beside her. Setting his elbow on the table he propped up his chin and stared her down. “For starters, I missed watching you grow up.”
She shot him a pained look. “I wasn’t exactly a baby when you left.”
“Guess not,” he slowly relented. “But I was graduating college and you were still too young to vote. There must be some events worth a report.”
She deadpanned him. “I am voting now.”
He laughed richly. “Still quick with the wit. But seriously, fill me in.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Anything that will help me get my balance round here, help me belong again.”
SHE SIGHED CONTENTEDLY. “Well, Michael and I have shared this duplex since my senior year at St. Catherine’s. I have a degree in theater arts, but my first love is fashion design. Did a lot of work for the plays there, discovered I was more comfortable offstage creating the costumes.”
“Far away from the North accounting empire.”
“Oh, yes. That’s exclusively Michael’s forte.”
“Wondered which way he would fall. When we were roommates, he seemed more interested in juggling girls’ phone numbers than any other kind of numbers.”
“He works way too hard now. You’ll be good for him, Kyle. Maybe you can rediscover his playful side.”
“What do you do for fun these days? Still pal around with Heather Crain?”
“Definitely. Though she’s Heather Basset now. Married a very nice guy from our old crowd, a real estate agent.”
“That scrawny blonde with the blue eye shadow and inline skates is married?” He wiped some imaginary sweat from his brow. “Look out!”
She huffed in frustration. “You always end up impossible, Kyle.”
“Okay, I’ll back off. Just one last thing. All the instances that I’ve thought of you over the years, believed you were perfectly happy, breaking boys’ hearts, was I on the right track?”
He’d thought of her over the years? The news made her melt into the hard wooden chair. “You were close. But I’m still sorting things out.”
“Guess a fair amount of confusion goes with the territory.” He sobered, raking a hand through his jet hair. “I too am still sorting.”
Her face crinkled tenderly. “I’m so sorry about Libby.”
“Yeah.”
“It must be hard, raising Button on your own.”
“Amelia will be helpful.”
“How old is she now?”
“Late sixties, I think.”
“Wow.”
He shook a finger at her. “Gotta warn you, she wouldn’t care for your doubtful look. Button’s given her a new lease on life. She is a challenge Amelia intends to conquer.”
Grace conjured up a picture of the tall, broad-shouldered woman with deep lines around her eyes, her hair in a long salt and pepper ponytail. “She did seem like the invincible kind,” she heartily assured.
“Perfectly said.”
“Would I be prying too much if I asked you how you ever connected with Amelia again? It must have been terribly hard.”
“The initial call with the news of Libby’s death, the existence of a secret great-granddaughter was very difficult.” He paused, wincing. “Amelia was stunned, then harsh over our defection—as was her right. But amazingly she showed up in Chicago for the funeral. After that, her visits became a regular thing. Eventually I must’ve passed some kind of benchmark, for she made me a proposition—move in with her, reopen the bistro and try to make a go of it.” He marveled over the memory. “She put it in such a way as to make it sound like a favor to her, a second chance at family. I’m not the smartest man around, but I did see a hell of a deal there for all three of us.”
She patted his hand. “A terrible twist of fate for you, losing Libby.”
“Maybe I could’ve averted the disaster. Looking back, there are things I’d have done differently. But hey, no one can turn back the clock.”
He clapped his hands together then, as if to break the mood. “Hey, this is way offtrack. Part of my reason for coming is to firm up our deal, decide my weekly hours. You dashed out so fast today, we never settled things.”
“Well, demands of the job.” She bit her lip self-consciously. Bailing out in a panic was kind of embarrassing now.
“I would prefer to come Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, from nine to whatever,” he said, unaware of her discomfort. “Probably work sometime after the noon hour, depending on the meal prep. I promise not to be too big a pest,” he added jokingly.
“Hah! You’ve already rearranged my kitchen.”
He was disgustingly gleeful. “For your own good, trust me.”
She smacked the table hard. “You think I’m going to fall for that old line all over again? You and Michael always had me running in circles, washing your car, running your errands—to learn!”
“This time you will benefit, princess, I swear.”
She smiled lamely as he waved a white paper napkin in truce. “Somehow, I doubt it.”
“For the record,” he went on huskily, “if you don’t know it yet, Grace, I am so thrilled to have this job. I need to make the money somehow, and a sweet distraction like you is an unusual bonus.”
“Glad to help,” she said haltingly. “Anything I can…” Her mouth went dry as cotton.
His blue eyes brightened. “Anything?”
Her heart tripped alarmingly. “What have you in mind?”
“I wasn’t going to impose this soon, but if you know something about wallpaper…”
“What about wallpaper, Kyle?”
“The bistro needs some and I am a dunce when it comes to decorating.”
“Oh.” She was sinking in quicksand, pure and simple. “Well, I guess I could help with that.”
“Busy tomorrow?”
“I can spare some time,” she stumbled.
“Super. You’re the best.” He shifted in his chair. “Suppose I should be going. Unless you’d like to share this cake first.”
“I’d love to,” she retorted, “if I could find my knife set.”
“It might have been a knife set once, Gracie. Now, it’s a pile of ragged steel blades with dried wooden handles.” He eyed her knowingly. “You aren’t supposed to put them in the dishwasher.”
“Oh, never mind.” With a crooked grin she dragged a manicured finger into the thick fudgy frosting.
He was aghast. “Hey, you didn’t learn that at home.”
“Did it at summer camp. Have you ever tried it?”
He opened his mouth to protest, only to find her finger full of frosting smack dab on his lower lip. With artist’s flair she began to frost his mouth. “There now. No cleanup.”
Kyle snagged her wrist, aghast. “You did that to the boys at camp?”
“Never you mind.” With a squeal she tried to wrench from his firm grasp. Shaking with laughter they stood up and began to tangle for control. In their struggle Kyle pulled her against his chest. Then the laughter died off.
This was her chance. To steal the kiss that had eluded her over and over, as recent as today when Michael stormed in here. Tired of fretting over her every move, she stood on tiptoe to lock lips.
Clasping a hand to her head, meshing the frosting between their lips, Kyle savored the taste of Grace. Her lips were so warm and soft. He was tempted to plunge his tongue into her mouth, until he remembered who she was, where their relationship belonged.
“God, Grace.” With a heaving breath, he let her go. He searched her face in a shell-shocked way. “That was…”
Her mouth curved naughtily. “Much better than camp.”
“I was going to label it an accident.”
As much pride as she had, she couldn’t let that go unchallenged. “I’d rather you consider it a nice experiment.”
He sighed indulgently. “Fair enough. It’s something I wanted to try too, since the moment I saw you.”
“Now you sound apologetic!”
He lifted his brows, perplexed. “You’re taking a great little kiss and beating it to death.”
“Oh, you—you—kitchen cop!”
He broke into spontaneous laughter. “Is that supposed to be an insult?”
“Yes. Now find my knives and cut that cake!”
Tension broken, they began moving about the kitchen like a couple, dodging one another with a twist, a turn and a laugh. Kyle produced a knife and two forks while Grace opened the refrigerator. “I don’t believe it. You brought me a carton of milk!”
He’d brought it earlier with all the other groceries. How scary that she hadn’t even noticed. As Michael intimated, her meal schedule must be a disaster. “Can’t have chocolate cake without milk,” was all he dared to say.
Twirling round she grabbed two plates and mismatched glasses from the cupboard. The tall one was plastic, bearing the likeness of Michael Jordan, the stout glass bore a picture of Wilma Flintstone. She filled them with milk and brought them to the table.
“Take your pick.”
Kyle sank the knife into the cake with practiced strokes and eased layered slices on two plates. “My heart is with Wilma, but I am thirsty. Guess I’ll go for Jordan.”
They settled in cozily at the small round table.
His mouth curved warmly. He reached out and touched some of the smaller auburn curls at her temple. “Never expected to celebrate the tail end of your birthday this way.”
“Mmm…” The feel of Kyle’s roughened fingertips on her face was exquisite. She leaned into his hand as her new kitten might.
But this couldn’t be the beginning of something. Kyle was here because Michael had hired him to nurture her. He was widowed a year, full of secrets and troubles, with a small girl to raise.
She shouldn’t dare to hope for anything.
But neither should he be running the pad of his thumb down her jawline with that dreamy expression. “So, I’ll
call you first thing tomorrow.”
“Really?” she sighed.
“Sure. About the wallpaper.”
“Oh. Right. Whatever you want. Whatever you say.”
“That doesn’t sound like the Gracie I know.”
She sighed in resignation. As if he knew her at all.
IT WAS NEARLY ONE O’CLOCK in the morning when Kyle rolled down Amelia Anderson’s sedate Golden Valley street of modest homes and aged trees. Reaching her Cape Cod home, he expertly pulled into her narrow driveway. He’d swung into this drive so many times during college, when Libby was alive and living here with her grandparents, that dodging the plank fencing against the neighbor’s property and parallel hedge siding Amelia’s yard had become a practiced art.
Kyle parked and shut off the engine, his thoughts turning to his late wife, who had felt trapped here as child under Amelia’s suffocating tutelage. How gladly he’d played the hero, coming to rescue her by night, arranging their elopement, whisking her off to a new independent life in Chicago.
Since then, he’d come to feel more like a thief than a hero. How naive he’d been—they’d both been—to consider only their feelings in the equation. There were many factors over the years that caused him to reflect, all the lonely holidays, the lack of any new long-term relationships. Many of the friends they’d made eventually moved on or had extended families of their own to focus on. Unlike his own dysfunctional parents who’d basically ignored him, Libby’s grandparents—if a bit possessive—had at least wanted her in the bosom of their family.
He emerged from the Jeep, happy enough with the state of the union. Dashing across the shadowed lawn he noted that light streamed through the bay window from the living room. Perhaps Amelia had fallen asleep in her chair again, television droning, a knitting project for Button askew in her lap.
