“Do you miss it here? Ever?”

His silence was long. “No, Kayla. I don’t have time to miss it.”

“If you did have time, would you?”

Again the silence was long. And then, almost reluctantly, he said, “Yeah, I guess I would. Blossom Valley was the place of perfect summer, wasn’t it?”

The longing was poignant between them.

“I can’t remember the last time I looked at the stars like this,” she murmured. But she thought it was probably in those carefree days, those days before everything had changed.

“Me, either.”

It was one of those absolutely spontaneous perfect moments. With the pure scent of the dew on the grass and the night air and those flowers drooping under their own weight that had made the night so deliciously fragrant.

“Is that Orion above us?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said, “the Hunter.”

“I remember how you impressed me once by naming all the stars in that constellation.”

She laughed softly. “Zeta, Epsilon, Delta. That’s his belt.”

“Go on.”

So she did, naming the stars of the constellation one by one, and then they lay in silence, contemplating the night sky above them.

He didn’t answer. He just reached out and slid a hand through her hair, and looked at her with such longing it stole the breath from her lungs.

The air felt ripe with possibilities. Kayla, again, felt seen, somehow, in a way no one had seen her for years.

The Millionaire’s

Homecoming

Cara Colter

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CARA COLTER lives in British Columbia with her partner, Rob, and eleven horses. She has three grown children and a grandson. She is a recent recipient of an RT Book Reviews Career Achievement Award in the Love and Laughter category. Cara loves to hear from readers, and you can contact her or learn more about her on her Facebook page.

This story is for my sister, Anna, for my brother-in-law, Dale, and especially for Courtenay. You are my greatest teachers.

Contents

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

EPILOGUE

EXTRACT

CHAPTER ONE

BLOSSOM VALLEY. IN A fast-paced world, David Blaze thought, a trifle sardonically, his hometown was a place unchanging.

Built on the edges of a large bay that meandered inland from Lake Ontario, it had always been a resort town, a summer escape from the oppressive July humidity and heat for the well-heeled, mostly from Canada’s largest city, Toronto.

The drive, two hours—with the top down on David’s mint 1957 two-seater pearl-gray ragtop convertible—followed a route that traveled pleasantly through rolling, lush hills dotted with contented cattle, faded red barns, weathered fruit stands and sleepy service stations that still sold ice-cold soda pop in thick, glass bottles.

Upon arrival, Blossom Valley’s main street welcomed. The buildings were Victorian, the oldest one, now an antiques store, had a tasteful bronze plaque that said it had been built in 1832.

Each business front sparkled, lovingly restored and preserved, the paned windows polished, the hanging planters and window boxes spilling rainbow hues of petunias in cheerful abundance.

Unfortunately, the main street had been constructed—no doubt by one of David’s ancestors—to accommodate horses and buggies and the occasional Model T. It was too narrow at the best of times; now it was clogged with summer traffic.

David, though he had been here only on visits since leaving after high school, found himself uncharmed by the quaintness of the main street, pretty as it was. He still had a local’s impatience with the congestion.

Plus, once there had been two carefree boys who raced their bicycles in and out of the summer traffic, laughing at the tourists honking their horns at them....

David shook it off. This was the problem with being stuck in traffic in his hometown. In Toronto, being stuck in traffic was nothing. He had a car and driver at his disposal twenty-four hours a day, and it was a time to catch up on phone calls and sort through emails.

He was accustomed to running Blaze Enterprises, his Toronto-based investment firm, and he had only one speed—flat out. His position did not lend itself, thank God, to ruminating about a past that could not be changed, that was rife with losses.

Then, up ahead of him, as if mocking his attempts to leave the memories of those kids on bicycles behind, he saw a girl on a bike, threading her way through traffic with a local’s panache.

The bicycle was an outlandish shade of purple, and the old-fashioned kind, with a downward sloping center bar, high handlebars and a basket. Pedaling away from him, the girl was in a calf-length, white, cotton skirt. The midday sun shone through the thinness of the summer fabric outlining the coltish length of her legs.

She was wearing a tank top, and it was as if she’d chosen it to match the bike. The girl’s narrow, bare shoulders had already turned golden from the sun.

She had on a huge straw hat, the crown encircled with a thick, white ribbon that trailed down her back.

He caught a glimpse of a small, beige, wire-haired dog, or maybe a puppy, peeping around her with a faintly worried expression. The dog was sharing the bicycle basket with some green, leafy lettuce and a bouquet of sunflowers.

For a moment, David’s impatience waned, and he felt the innocence of the picture—all the things that had been so good about growing up here. The girl herself seemed familiar, something about the slope of her shoulders and the way she held her head.

He could feel himself holding his breath. Then the girl shoulder checked, and he caught a glimpse of her face.

Kayla?

Someone honked at a jaywalker, and David began to breathe again and yanked his attention back to the traffic.

It wasn’t Kayla. It was just that his hometown stirred a certain unavoidable melancholy in him. The loss of innocence. The loss of his best friend.

Kayla. The loss of his first love.

Grimly, David snapped on his sound system and inched forward. The street, if he followed it a full six blocks, would end at Blossom Valley’s claim to fame, its lakefront, Gala Beach, named not because galas were held there, but after a popular brand of apples that grew in the local orchards.

Gala Beach was a half kilometer stretch of perfect white sand in a protected cove of relatively calm, shallow water. The upper portions, shaded by fifty-year-old cottonwoods, held playground equipment and picnic tables, concessions and rental booths.

It had been a decade since David had been a lifeguard on that beach, and yet his stomach still looped crazily downward when he caught a glimpse of the sun-speckled waters of the bay sparkling at the end of Main Street.

David Blaze hated coming home.

He turned left onto Sugar Maple Lane, and the difference between it and Main Street was jarring. He was transported from the swirling noise and color and energy of Main Street to the deep, shaded silence of Sugar Maple: wide boulevards housed the huge, century-old trees that had given the street its name.

Set well off the road in large, perfectly manicured yards were turn-of-the-century, stately homes—Victorians. Solid columns supported roofs over deeply shadowed verandas. On one he caught a glimpse of white wicker furniture padded with overstuffed, color-splashed cushions that made him think of sugary ice tea in the heat of the afternoon.

And there was the girl on her bike again, up ahead of him, pedaling leisurely, fitting in perfectly with a street that invited life to slow down, to be savored—

He frowned. There was something familiar about her. And then, as he watched, the serenity of the scene suddenly dissolved.

The girl gave a small shriek and leaped from the bike. It crashed down, spilling sunflowers out onto the road. The puppy, all five pounds of it, tumbled out of the basket and darted away, tiny tail between tiny legs.

The girl was doing a mad jig, slapping at herself. It momentarily amused, but then David realized there was an edge of desperation in the wild dance. Her hat flew off, and her hair, loosely held with a band, cascaded out from under it, shiny, as straight as the ribbon around the brim of her hat, the soft light filtering through the trees turning its light brown tones to spun gold.

David felt his stomach loop crazily for the second time in a couple of minutes.

Please, no.

He had slowed his car to a crawl; now he slammed on the brake and shoved the gear stick into Neutral in the middle of the street. He jumped out, not even bothering to shut the door. He raced to the girl, who was slapping at her thighs through the summer-weight cotton of the skirt.

His shadow fell over her and she went very still, straightened and looked up at him.

It wasn’t a girl. While he had denied it could be her, his deepest instincts had recognized her.

Despite the snub of the nose and the faint freckles that dusted it, making her look gamine and eternally young, it was not a girl, but a young woman.

A woman with eyes the color of jade that reminded him of a secret grove not far from here, a place the tourists didn’t know about, where a waterfall cascaded into a still pond that reflected the green hues of the surrounding ferns that dipped into its waters.

Of course, it wasn’t just any woman.

It was Kayla McIntosh.

No, he reminded himself, Kayla Jaffrey, the first woman he had ever loved. And lost. Of course, she had been more a girl than a woman back then.

He felt the same stir of awareness that he had always felt when he saw her. He tried to convince himself it was just primal: man reacting to attractive woman.

But he knew it was more. It was summer sunshine bringing out freckles on her nose, and her racing him on her bike. Look, David, no hands. It was the way the reflection from a bonfire turned her hair to flame, and the smell of woodsmoke, and stars that she could name making brilliant pinpricks of light in the inky black blanket of the sky.

David Blaze hated coming home.

* * *

“David?”

For a moment, the panic of being stung was erased from Kayla’s mind and replaced with a different kind of panic, her stomach doing that same roller-coaster race downward that it had done the very first time she had ever seen him.

Except for the sensation in her stomach, it felt as if the world had gone completely still around her as she gazed at David Blaze.

She tried to tell herself it was the shock of the sting—knowing that she was highly allergic and could be dead soon—that made the moment seem tantalizingly suspended in time. Her awareness of him was sharp and clear, like a million pinpricks along her arms.

Kayla didn’t feel as if she were twenty-seven, a woman who knew life, who had buried her husband and her dreams. No, she felt as if she were fifteen years old all over again, the new girl in town, and the possibility for magic shimmered in the air around her that first time she looked at David.

No, she told herself, firmly. She had left that kind of nonsense well behind her. That pinprick feeling was the beginning of the allergic reaction to the sting!

Still, despite the firm order to herself, Kayla felt as if she drank him in with a kind of dazed wonder. It seemed that everyone she ran into from the old days had changed in some way, and generally for the worse. She’d seen Mike Humes in the hardware store—her new haunt now that she had been thrust into the world of home ownership—and the former Blossom Valley High senior year class president had looked so comically like a monk with a tonsure that she had had to bite her lip to keep from laughing.

Cedric Parson ran Second Time Around—an antiques store that she also haunted, ever on the lookout to furnish her too-large house—and the ex-high school football star looked as if he had an inflated tire tube inserted under his too-tight shirt.

Cedric was divorced now, and had asked her out. But even though she had been a widow two years, she was so aware she was not ready, and that she might never be. There was something in her that was different.

Even the fact that she judged her two high school pals in such a harsh and unforgiving light told Kayla something about herself. Not ready, but also harder than she used to be, more cynical.

Or maybe “unforgiving” said it all.

But trust David Blaze to have gotten better instead of worse. Of course, she knew what he did—the whole town took pride and pleasure in following the success of a favored son.

Even though she’d been back in Blossom Valley less than two weeks, one of the first things Kayla had seen was his picture on the cover of Lakeside Life. The magazine was everywhere: in proud stacks at the supermarket, piled by the cash registers of restaurants, in leaning towers of glossy paper at the rental kiosks.

The magazine had recently done a huge spread about his company, and the cover photo had been of David standing in front of the multimillion-dollar Yorkton condo he had developed, in a suit—even her inexperienced eye new it was custom—that added to his look of supreme confidence, power and success.

Though she had contemplated the inevitability of running into him, given where she lived, the photo hadn’t really prepared her for the reality of David Blaze in his prime.

How was it that someone who made investments, presumably from behind a desk, still had the unmistakably broad build of a swimmer: wide shoulders, deep chest, narrow waist, sleekly muscled limbs?

David was dressed casually in a solid navy-colored sport shirt and knife-creased khaki shorts, and despite the fact a thousand men in Blossom Valley were dressed almost identically today, David oozed the command and self-assurance—the understated elegance—of wealth and arrival.

His coloring was healthy and outdoorsy. That combined with that mouthwatering physique made Kayla think his appearance seemed more in keeping with the lifeguard he had once been than with the incredibly successful entrepreneur he now was.

His hair, short enough to appear perfectly groomed despite the fact he had just leaped from a convertible with the top down, was the color of dark chocolate, melted. His eyes were one shade lighter than his hair, a deep, soft brown that reminded her of suede.

It had been two years since she had seen him. At her husband, Kevin’s, funeral. And that day she had not really noticed what he looked like, only felt his arms fold around her, felt his warmth and his strength, and thought, for the first time, and only time: everything will be all right.

But that reaction had been followed swiftly by anger. Where had he been all those years when Kevin could have used a friend?

And she could have, too.

Why had David withheld what Kevin so desperately needed? David’s chilly remoteness after a terrible accident, days after they had all graduated from high school, had surely contributed to a downward spiral in Kevin that nothing could stop.

Not even her love.

The trajectory of all their lives had changed forever, and David Blaze had proven to her he was no kind of friend at all.

David had let them down. He’d become aloof and cool—a furious judgment in his eyes—when Kevin had most needed understanding. Forgiveness. Sympathy.

Not, Kayla reminded herself bitterly, that any of those things had saved my husband, either, because everyone else—me, his parents—had given those things in abundance.

And had everything been all right since the funeral? Because of Kevin’s insurance she was financially secure, but was everything else all right?

Not really. Kayla had a sense of not knowing who she really was anymore. Wasn’t that part of why she had come back here, to Blossom Valley? To find her lost self? To remember Kevin as the fun-loving guy she had grown up with? And not...

She was weakened by the sting. And by David’s sudden presence. She was not going to think disloyal thoughts about her husband! And especially not with David Blaze in the vicinity!

“Where’s your kit?” David asked with an authoritative snap in his voice that pulled her out of the painful reverie of their shared history.

“I don’t need your help.”

“Yes, you do.”

She wanted to argue that, but the sense of languid clarity left her and was replaced rapidly by panic. Was her throat closing? Was her breathing becoming rapid? Was she swelling? And turning red? And where was her new dog, Bastigal?

She dragged her eyes from the reassuring strength in David’s—that was an illusion, after all—and scanned the nearby shrubs.

“I don’t need your help,” she bit out again, stubbornly, pushing down her desire to panic and deliberately looking away from the irritation in his lifted eyebrow.

“Bastigal,” she called, “come here! My dog. He fell out of the basket. I have to find my dog.”

She felt a finger on her chin, strong, insistent, trying to make her look at him. When she resisted, masculine hands bracketed her cheeks, forcing her unwilling gaze to his.

“Kayla.” His voice was strong and sure, and very stern as he enunciated every word slowly. “I need to know where your bee-sting kit is. I need to know now.”

CHAPTER TWO

DAVID BLAZE WAS OBVIOUSLY a man who had become way too accustomed to being listened to.

And Kayla was disgusted with herself for how easily she capitulated to his powerful presence, but the truth was she felt suddenly dizzy, her blood pressure spiraling downward in reaction to the sting. At least she hoped it was the sting!

She divested herself from the vise grip of David’s hands on her cheeks, not wanting him to think it was the touch of his strong hands that had made her so light-headed.

He was not there for Kevin, she reminded herself, trying to shore up her strength...and her animosity.

She lowered herself to the curb. “Purse. In the bike basket.” It felt like a cowardly surrender.

She watched David, and reluctant admiration pierced her desire for animosity. Even though he was far removed from his lifesaving days, David still moved with the calm and efficiency of a trained first responder.

His take-charge attitude might have been annoying under different circumstances, but right now it inspired unenthusiastic confidence. Feeling like every kind of a traitor, Kayla allowed David’s confidence to wash her with calm as she attempted to slow her ragged breathing.

How was it he could feel so familiar to her—the dark glossiness of his hair, the perfect line of his jaw, the suede of his eyes—and feel like a complete stranger at the same time?

David strode over to where she had thrown down her bike, picked through the strewn sunflowers and green-leaf lettuce until he found the purse where it had fallen on the ground. He crouched, unceremoniously dumping all the contents of her bag out on the road. If he heard her protested “Hey!” he ignored it.

In seconds he had the “pen,” an emergency dose of epinephrine. He lowered himself beside her on the curb.

“Are you doing this, or am I?” he asked.

He took one look at her face and had his answer. His fingers tickled along the length of her leg as he eased her skirt up, exposing her thigh. She closed her eyes against the shiver of pure awareness that was not caused by reaction to the sting or the feel of the warm summer sunshine on her skin.

She wanted to protest he could have put the pre-loaded needle, concealed within the pen, through the fabric of the skirt, but she didn’t say a word.

She excused her lack of protest by telling herself that her throat was no doubt swelling shut. It felt as if her eyes were!

She felt the heat of his hand, warmer than the sun, as he laid it midway up the outside of her naked thigh and pressed her skin taut between his thumb and pointer finger.

“I think I’m going to faint,” she whispered, any pretense of courage that she had managed now completely abandoning her.

“You’re not going to faint.”

It wasn’t an observation so much as an order.

She attempted to glower at his arrogance. She knew if she was going to faint! He didn’t! But instead of resentment, Kayla was aware, again, of feeling a traitorous clarity she attributed to near death: his shoulder touching hers, the light in the glossy chocolate of his hair as he bent over her, his scent masculine, sharply clean and tantalizing.

Still, some primal fear made her put her hand over the site on her leg where he had pulled the skin taut with his bracketed fingers as the perfect place to inject the epinephrine.

He took her hand and put it firmly out of his way. When she went to put it right back, he held it at bay, his strength making her own seem puny and impotent.

“I’m not ready!” she protested.

“Look at me,” he commanded.

She did. She looked into the strength and calm of those deep brown eyes and all of it felt like an intoxicating chemical cocktail so strong it made a life-threatening beesting feel like nothing.

The years dropped away. He was woven into the fabric of her life, the way he cocked his head when he listened, the intensity of his gaze, the ease of his laughter, the solidness of his friendship, the utter reliability of him.

She could feel her breathing slow.

But then with her hand still in the grip of his, her eyes drifted to the full, sensuous curve of his lower lip and she could feel her heart and breath quicken again.

Once, a long time ago, she had tasted those lips, giving in, finally, to that want he had always made her feel. Though by then they had both been seventeen, she had been like a child drinking wine and it had been just as heady an experience.

She remembered his taste had felt exotic and compelling; she remembered how he had explored the hollows of her mouth as if he, too, had thought of nothing else for the two years they had known each other.

What a price for that kiss, though! After that exchange, he had gone cool toward her. Frosty. It had changed everything in the worst of ways. They had never been able to get back to the easy camaraderie that predated that meeting of lips.

David had started dating Emily Carson, she, Kevin.

And yet, even knowing the price of it, sitting here on the curb, Kayla had the crazy thought: if she was going to die and had just one wish, would it be to taste David’s lips again? She found herself, even though it filled her with self-loathing, leaning toward him as if pulled on an invisible thread.

David leaned toward her.

His eyes held hers as he came closer. She could feel her own eyes shutting, and not just because they were swelling, either. Her lips were parting.

He jammed the pen, hard, against the outer edge of her upper thigh.

The needle popped out of its protective casing and injected the epinephrine under her skin.

“Ouch!” The physical pain snapped her back to reality, and her eyes flew open as Kayla yanked herself back from him, mortified, trying to read in his face if he had seen her moment of weakness, her intention.

It didn’t look like he had. David’s face was cool, remote.

The indifference of his expression reminded her of the emotional pain she had felt that night after they had shared that kiss. She had thought, on fire with excitement and need, that it was the beginning of something.

Instead, she had become invisible to him.

Just as Kevin had become invisible to him. That was what Kayla needed to remember about David Blaze: he seemed like one thing—a man you could count on with your life, in fact—and yet when there was any kind of emotional need involved, he could not be relied on at all.

The moment of feeling intoxicated by David was gone like a soap bubble that had floated upward, iridescent and ethereal, and then pop—over.

“That hurt,” she said. It was the memories of all the ways he had disappointed her as much as the injection, not that he needed to know.

“Sorry,” he said with utter insincerity. He hadn’t cared about her pain or Kevin’s back then, and he didn’t care now. He got up, moved to his car with efficiency of motion. It seemed as if he were unhurried and yet he was back at her side almost before she could blink.

He settled back on the curb, and Kayla ordered herself not to take any more comfort from the strength in the shoulder that touched hers. She saw David had retrieved a small first-aid kit from the glove box of his car, and he unzipped it and rummaged through, coming up with a pair of tweezers.

“I’m just going to see if I can find the stinger.”

“You are not!” she said, yanking her skirt down over her naked thigh and pressing the fabric tight to her legs.

“Don’t be ridiculous. The stinger could still be pumping poison into you.”

She hesitated and he, sensing her hesitation, pressed. “I already saw the sting site. And your panties. They’re pink.”

To match the blush she could feel moving up her cheeks. Kayla sputtered ineffectually as he easily overpowered her attempts to hold her skirt down.

“There it is. Quit jumping around like that.”

“Give me those tweezers!” She made a grab for them.

“Stay calm, Kayla,” he ordered, amused. “It’s like being bitten by a snake. The more excited you get, the worse it is.”

“I don’t want you messing around under my skirt and talking about excitement,” she said grimly.

But for the first time, his stern mask fell. He gave a small snort of laughter, and that damned grin made him more astoundingly attractive than ever! “Just be grateful you didn’t get stung somewhere else.”

“Grateful,” she muttered. “I’ll be sure and add it to my list.”

“Got it!” he said with satisfaction, inspecting the tweezers and then holding them up for her to see. Sure enough, a hair of a stinger was trapped in them.

The amusement that had briefly made him so attractive had completely evaporated.

“Get in the car.”

That’s what she had to remember. The very qualities that made David a superb rescuer—detachment, a certain hard-nosed ability to do what needed to be done—also made him impossible to get close to.

What had she been thinking, leaning toward him, thinking of his kiss?

She was in shock, that was all. Riding her bike with her dog and sunflowers on a perfect summer day when out of nowhere, a bee. And him.

She, of all people, should know that. When you least expected it, life wreaked havoc. It was a mistake to surrender control, and the circumstances were no longer life-threatening, so she simply wasn’t giving in.

“My dog,” she reminded him. “And my bike. My purse. My stuff is all over the road. The phone is new. I need to—”

“You need to get in the car,” David said, enunciating every word with a certain grim patience.

“No,” she said, enunciating every word as carefully as he did, “I need to find my dog. And get my bike off the street. And retrieve my phone. It is a very expensive phone.”

He frowned, a man who moved in a world where his power was absolute. He was unaccustomed to anyone saying no to him, and she felt a certain childish satisfaction at the surprised, annoyed look on his face.

Slowly, as if he was speaking to a child, and not a very bright one at that, David said, “I’m taking you to the emergency clinic. I’m doing it now.”

“Thank you. You’ve given me the shot. I undoubtedly owe you my life, but—”

“I’ll take care of the dog and the bike and the purse and the phone after I’ve made sure you are all right.”

“I am all right!”

That was, in fact, a lie. Kayla felt quite woozy.

And she got the impression he was not the least bit fooled as he looked at her carefully.

“Get in the car,” he said again.

He was quite maddening in his authoritative approach to her. Her gaze went to her personal belongings scattered all over the road. “The EpiPen bought me time,” she said, tilting her chin stubbornly at him.

His sigh seemed long-suffering, though their encounter had lasted only minutes. “Kayla, you need to listen to me. I’ll take care of your stuff after I’ve taken care of you.”

She scanned his face, the stern, no-nonsense cast of his features, and felt a somewhat aggravating sense of relief swell in her. Why would it feel quite good to surrender control to him? To let someone else be in charge? To let someone else take care of her?

David was just that guy, and he always had been. The one who did everything right. The one who knew what to do. The one who could be counted on to look after things. The one you would choose to have with you in an emergency: when the hurricane arrived, or the boat capsized or the house caught fire.

Except he hadn’t done the right thing by Kevin, the time it had really counted.

“My dog is on the loose somewhere. He could be picked up by a stranger or run over by a car. My bike could be stolen. The new phone could be crushed by a passing vehicle!”

Irrationally, she trusted David, in some areas, at least. If he said he’d take care of it, he simply would. His strength of purpose had always been nothing less than amazing.

And intolerant of those less strong.

Like Kevin, who had never taken care of anything.

The thought, breathtaking in its disloyalty, came out of nowhere, blasted her and made her feel guilty. And, oddly, angry at David all over again.

Okay, so Kevin had not been overly responsible. He’d had many great qualities!

Hadn’t he? The whisper of disloyalty, again, made her feel angry with David as if his presence was nursing these forbidden thoughts to the forefront.

“I need to find my dog,” she said, folding her arms over her chest. She was not going to have these thoughts, or surrender control to David Blaze—who was overly responsible—without so much as a whimper.

Had she learned nothing from life? No, she had learned to rely on herself!

“I’m okay now,” she said, and it felt like an act of supreme bravery, in light of his darkening features. “David, I appreciate you playing knight in shining armor to my damsel in distress.”

The look on his face darkened so she rushed on, shooting a look at his car, “I appreciate your riding in on your shining gray steed, but really, I’ll take it from here. I don’t need any more help from you.”

CHAPTER THREE

DAVID CONTEMPLATED KAYLA, and it was hard not to shirk from the impatience that yanked at the muscle in his jaw and darkened his eyes to a shade of brown so dark it bordered on being black.

He looked totally formidable, and not a single remnant of the carefree boy of Kayla’s adolescence appeared to remain in him.

When had he become this? A man so totally certain of his own power, a man not to be messed with?

“I’m not playing a game here,” he said quietly. “I am not playing knight to your princess. Not even close. Life is not a fairy tale.”

“I’m the last person who needs to be reminded of that,” she said, and he flinched, ever so faintly, but still she had to hide a shiver at his intensity, and her face felt suddenly hot.

She was not blushing at the thought of sharing a fairy tale with him! It occurred to Kayla that, despite the shot, her face might be swelling. In fact, with each passing second she probably was looking more like poor Quasimodo, with his misshapen face, than a princess.

“You are highly allergic to beestings,” he said, his patience worn thin, like a scientist trying to explain a highly complicated formula to a fool. “Anaphylaxis is a life-threatening emergency.”

She touched her forehead. She could feel the puffiness in it.

“We have stopped the emergency for now,” he went on. “A secondary reaction is not uncommon. You need to be under medical observation.”

“But my dog,” she said, weakly. She knew he had already won, even before he snapped “Enough,” with a quiet authority that made her stomach dip.

“Kayla, either get to the car under your own power, or I’ll throw you over my shoulder and put you there with mine.”

She scanned his face, and could feel the heat in her own intensify. There was no doubt at all in her mind that he meant it.

Or that her forehead felt like it was swelling like a balloon filling with helium.

“Humph.” She stuck her chin out, but it was a token protest. As annoying as it was, he was absolutely right.

By the time his hand went to her elbow and he used his easy strength to leverage her up, Kayla had no resistance in her at all.

Annoyed with herself, she shook off his hand, marched to his car, opened the passenger-side door and slid in. The deep leather seat had been warmed by the sun, and the rich scent of the luxurious car enveloped her.

It was possibly the nicest car Kayla had ever been in. Her car, now, was a presentable, fairly new economy model that Kevin’s insurance had allowed.

She didn’t even want to think about the cars before that—a string of dilapidated jalopies that always seemed to need repairs she and Kevin could never afford.

That made her even more determined not to give David the satisfaction of thinking his beautiful car made any kind of impression on her.

Apparently not any more interested in small talk than she was, David got in the driver’s side. He checked over his shoulder, pulled out into the empty street, did a tight U-turn and headed back toward downtown, though he had a local’s savvy for navigating a path around the congested main street toward the beach.

Kayla settled her head against the back of her seat and felt a subtle, contented lethargy. The aftermath of the sting, or the drug hitting her system, or surrendering control or some lethal combination of all of those things.

She had always had a secret desire to ride in a convertible, and even though the circumstances were not quite as she had envisioned, she did not know if the opportunity would ever arise again.

She tugged at the elastic that most of her hair had fallen out of anyway, and freed her hair to the wind. If the circumstances had been different, she had a feeling this experience would be intoxicatingly pleasurable.

David glanced at her, and his eyes seemed to hold on her hair before he looked at her face and a reluctant smile tugged at the beautiful corner of his mouth.

Kayla flipped down the sun visor on her side, and it explained the smile. Despite the adrenaline shot, her brow bone had disappeared into puffiness that was forming a shelf over her eyes. She could have hidden under her hat if it wasn’t lying back there on the road waiting to get run over with the rest of her things!

Including her dog. Surely, he could have taken a moment to find the dog.

But no, she came first.

A long time since she had come first. Not that it was personal. It was an emergency responder prioritizing.

She cast David a glance. Thankfully, he had turned his attention back to the road. He was an excellent driver, alert and relaxed at the same time, fast but controlled. His face had a stubborn set to it. He had, in that infernally aggravating way of his, put his priorities in order, and a dog was not among them!

“Can I borrow your cell phone?” Her voice came out faintly slurred over a thick tongue, and much as the admission hurt, Kayla knew he had made the right decision.

He fished the phone out of his pocket and tossed it to her casually.

Who to call about the dog? She barely knew anyone here anymore. The neighbors across the street had their name on their mailbox. And children home for the summer.

She navigated his phone to a local directory, looked up her neighbor’s number and asked whether her kids could look for the dog. She offered a reward, and then as an afterthought, payment if they would go collect her bike and belongings.

“I said I’d look after it,” he said when she clicked off.

She gave him a frosty look that she hoped, despite the swollen brow, let him know she would look after her own life, thank you very much.

Despite her discomfort, Kayla could not help but notice the details of the gorgeous vehicle. Sleek and posh, the subtle statement of a man who had parlayed his substantial talent for being able to discern the right thing into a sizable fortune and an amazing success story.

Not like Kevin.

Again, the thought came from nowhere, as if somehow David’s close proximity was coaxing to the surface feelings she did not want to acknowledge about her late husband.

Guilt washed over her. And then she just felt angry. She had tried so, so hard to put Kevin back together again, and not a word from David.

The ride with him was mercifully short given that his scent—masculine and clean—was mingling with the scent of sun on leather, and tickling at her nostrils. In minutes, his driving fast, controlled and superb, they arrived at the small village emergency clinic.

For practical purposes it was located adjacent to the public beach where the huge influx of summer visitors didn’t always recognize the dangers hidden beneath the benign scene of a perfect summer.

But David knew them. He knew those dangers intimately. Kayla was aware of David’s shoulders tightening as he pulled into the parking lot.

He got out of the car and she followed, watching as he went still and gazed out over the nearby beach.

Fried onion and cooking French fries smells wafted out of the concession and the sand was dotted with the yellow-striped sun umbrellas rented from a stand. Out on the water, people who didn’t have a clue what they were doing paddled rented kayaks and canoes.

Teenagers had laid claim to the floats that swayed on sparkling waters, and bikini-clad girls shrieked as boys splashed them or tried to toss them in the water.

Toddlers played with sand buckets, mothers handed out sandy potato chips and farther back, among the cottonwoods, grandmothers sat in the deep shade engrossed in books or crossword puzzles.

The lifeguards, alone, were not in fun mode. They sat in high chairs, watching, watching, watching.

She hadn’t been there that day it had happened. The day that had changed all of them forever. David was looking at one of the lifeguards, frowning.

What did David see? She saw a young man who was slouched in his chair, looking faintly bored behind sunglasses, as he endlessly scanned the waters between the sand and the buoys that ended the designated swimming area.

For a moment the expression on David’s face was unguarded, and she could see sorrow swim in the depths of those amazing eyes. Her animosity toward him flagged. Was it possible that like Kevin, he could not put it behind him?

“David?” She touched his arm.

He broke his gaze and looked at her, momentarily puzzled, as if he didn’t know who she was or where he was.

“It was a long time ago,” she said softly.

He flinched, and then shook off her arm. “I don’t need your pity,” he said quietly, his voice cold and hard-edged.

“It wasn’t pity,” she said, stung.

“What was it, then?” His voice sounded harsh.

She hesitated. “A wish, I guess.”

“A wish?”

“That it could somehow be undone. That we could have been the same people we were before it happened.”

For a moment he looked like he was going to say something, and that he bit it back with great effort.

“Wishes are for children,” he said grimly.

“And that’s the day childhood ended for you,” she noted softly.

“No, it isn’t. I wasn’t a child anymore.” He didn’t say neither was Kevin, but she heard it as clearly as if he had spoken it. “It was the day childhood ended for her. Not us. That little girl who drowned.”

“It wasn’t your fault.”

“No,” he said firmly, “It wasn’t.”

Which left the cold, hard truth about whose fault it had been. It had been an accident. A terrible tragedy.

But somehow he had always blamed Kevin, never forgiven him. David’s hard attitude had been part of what destroyed him.

That’s what Kayla needed to remember when she was leaning toward him, thinking illicit thoughts about his lips and admiring how posh his car was.

“It was an accident,” she said, “There was a full investigation. Ultimately, it was an accident. Her parents should have been watching more closely.”

His eyes narrowed on her. “How long did he tell you that before you started believing it?”

“Excuse me?”

His tone was furious. “Her parents weren’t trained lifeguards. How would they know that drowning isn’t the way it is in the movies? Would they know sometimes there is not a single sound? Not a scream? Not a splash? Not a hand waving frantically in the air?

“He knew that. He knew that, but you know what? He wasn’t watching.”

Kayla could feel the color draining from her face. “You’ve always blamed him,” she whispered. “Everything changed between the two of you after that. How could you do that? You were his best friend. He needed you.”

“He needed to do his job!”

“He was young. He was distracted. Anybody could be distracted for a second.”

“The end of our friendship doesn’t just fall on my shoulders,” David said quietly. “Kevin wouldn’t talk to me after the investigation. He was mad because I told the truth.”

“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.

That house had once been so full of love and laughter and hopes and dreams. The state it was in now made it seem like the final few words in the closing chapter of a book with a sad ending.

David wondered if maybe the reason he had stayed so angry at Kevin was because if he ever let go of that, the sadness would swallow him whole.

“The Jaffreys got a condo on the water,” Kayla continued. “The house would have gone to Kevin, eventually. They wanted me to have it.”

He let that sink in. Kayla was his mother’s next-door neighbor. She was living in the house he and Kevin had chased through in those glorious, carefree days of their youth.

He didn’t want to ask her anything. He didn’t want to know.

And yet he annoyed himself by asking anyway, “Doesn’t that house need quite a lot of work?”

He hoped she would hear his lack of enthusiasm. And he thought he caught a momentary glimpse of the fact she was overwhelmed by the house in something faintly worried in her eyes. But she covered it quickly.

“Yes!” she said, her enthusiasm striking him as faintly forced. “It needs everything.”

Naturally, she would never walk away from that particular gift horse. She was needed.

He couldn’t stop himself. “Do you ever give up on hopeless causes?”

CHAPTER FIVE

KAYLA LOOKED BRIEFLY WOUNDED and then she just looked mad. David liked her angry look quite a bit better than the wounded one. The wounded expression made her look vulnerable and made him feel protective of her, even though he had caused it in the first place!

“Are you talking about the house?” she asked dangerously.

He answered safely, “Yes,” though he was aware, as was she, that he could have been talking about Kevin.

“Do you ever get tired of being a wet blanket?”

“I prefer to think of it as being the voice of reason.”

“I don’t care to hear it.”

David didn’t care what Kayla cared to hear. She obviously was in for some hard truths today, whether she liked it or not. Maybe somebody did have to protect her. From herself! And apparently, no one had stepped up to the plate to do that so far.

“That house,” he said, his tone cool and reasonable, “is doing a long, slow slide into complete ruin.”

“It isn’t,” she said, as though he hadn’t been reasonable at all. “And it isn’t a hopeless cause!”

There. He’d said his piece. Despite the fact that he dealt in investments, including real estate, all the time, his expertise had been rejected.

He could leave with a clear conscience. He had tried to warn her away from a house that was a little more—a lot more—of a project than any thinking person would take on, let alone a single woman.

“I’ve already ordered all new windows,” she said stubbornly. “And the floors are scheduled for refinishing.”

A money pit, he thought to himself. He ordered himself to shut up, so was astounded when, out loud, he said drily, “Kayla to the rescue.”

She frowned at him.

Stop! David yelled at himself. But he didn’t stop. “I bet the dog is a rescue, too, isn’t it?”

He had his answer when she flushed. He realized Kevin wasn’t the only one he was angry with.

“There was quite a large insurance settlement,” she said, her voice stiff with pride. “Can you think of a better use for it than restoring Kevin’s childhood home?”

“Actually, yes.”

She was in his field of expertise now. This is what he did, and he did it extremely well. He counseled people on how to invest their money. Blaze Enterprises was considered one of the most successful investment firms in Canada.

“A falling-down house in Blossom Valley would probably rate dead last on my list of potential places to put money.”

“Are you always so crushingly practical?”

“Yes.”

“Humph. Well, I’m going to buy a business here, too,” she said stubbornly, her swollen brows drawing together as she read his lack of elaboration for what it was: a complete lack of enthusiasm.

“Really?” he said, not even trying to hide the cynical note from his voice.

“Really,” she shot back. Predictably, his cynicism was only making her dig in even deeper. “I’m looking at an ice cream parlor.”

“An ice cream parlor? Hmm, that just edged the house out of the position of dead last on my list of potential investments,” he said drily.

“More-moo is for sale,” she said, as though she hadn’t heard him. “On Main Street.”

As if the location would change his mind.

He told himself he didn’t care how she spent her money. Didn’t care if she blew the whole wad.

But somehow he did. Given free rein, Kayla would rescue the world until there was not a single crumb left for herself.

There was no doubt in his mind that More-moo was one more rescue for her, one more thing destined for failure and therefore irresistible. It was time for him to walk away. And yet he thought if he did not try to dissuade her he might not be able to sleep at night.

Sleep was important.

“Nobody sells a business at the top of its game,” he cautioned her.

“The owners are retiring.”

“Uh-huh.”

She looked even more stubborn, her attempts to furrow her brow thwarted somewhat by how swollen it was.

It was none of his business. Let her throw her money around until she had none left.

But of course, that was the problem with having tasted her lips all those years ago. And it was the problem with having chased with her through endless summers on the lake. It was the problem with having studied with her for exams, and walked to school with her on crisp fall days, and sat beside her at the movies, their buttered fingers accidentally touching over popcorn.

It was the problem with having surrendered the first girl he had ever cared about to his best friend, only to watch catastrophe unfold.

There was a feeling that he had dropped the ball, maybe when it mattered most. He couldn’t set back the clock. But maybe he could manage not to drop the ball this time.

Whether he wanted to or not, David had a certain emotional attachment to her—whether he wanted to or not, he cared what happened to her.

At least he could set Kayla straight on the ice cream parlor.

“There is no way,” he said with elaborate patience, “to make money at a business where you only have good numbers for eight weeks of the year. You’ve seen this town in the winter. And spring, and fall, for that matter. You could shoot off a cannon on Main Street and not hit anyone.”

“The demographics are changing,” she said, as if she hoped he would be impressed by her use of the word demographics. “People are living here all year round. It’s become quite a retirement choice.”

“It’s still a business that will only ever have eight good weeks every year. And even those eight weeks are weather dependent. Nobody eats ice cream in the rain.”

“We did,” she said softly.

“Huh?”

“We did. We ate ice cream in the rain.”

David frowned. And then he remembered a sudden thunderstorm on a hot afternoon. Maybe they had been sixteen? Certainly it had been the summer before the kaleidoscope, before he had kissed her, before Kevin had laid claim, before the drowning.

A group of them had been riding their bikes down Main Street and had been caught out by the suddenness of the storm.

It had felt thrilling riding through the slashing rain and flashing lightning, until they had taken cover under the awning of the ice cream store as the skies turned black and the thunder rolled around them.

How could he possibly remember that Kayla’s T-shirt had been soaked through and had become transparent, showing the details of a surprisingly sexy bra, and that Cedric Parson had been sneaking peeks?

So David had taken his own shirt off and pulled it over Kayla’s head, making her still wetter, but not transparently so. He could even remember the feeling: standing under that awning on Main Street, bare chested, David had felt manly and protective instead of faintly ridiculous and cold.

How could he possibly remember that he’d had black ice cream, licorice flavored? And that her tongue had darted out of her mouth and mischievously licked a drip from his cone? And that he had deliberately placed his lips where her tongue had been?

How could he possibly remember that he had felt like the electricity in the air had sizzled deep inside him, and that ice cream had never since tasted as good as it had that electric afternoon?

David shook off the memory and the seductive power it had to make him think maybe people would eat ice cream in the rain.

“Generally speaking, people are not going to go for ice cream if the weather is bad,” he said practically. “One season of bad weather, you’d be finished. A few days of bad weather would probably put an ice cream parlor close to the edge.”

“Well, I like the idea of owning an ice cream parlor,” Kayla said firmly. “I like it a lot.”

He took in her eyes peering at him stubbornly from under her comically swollen forehead, and knew this wasn’t the time.

“Your ambition in life is to be up to your elbows, digging through vats of frozen-solid ice cream until your hands cramp?”

“That sounds like I’m selling a lot of ice cream,” she purred with satisfaction.

“Humph.”

“My ambition,” she told him, something faintly dangerous in her tone, “is to make people happy. What makes anyone happier than ice cream on a hot day?”

Or during a thunderstorm, his own mind filled in, unbidden.

He said, “Humph,” again, more emphatically than the last time.

“It’s a simple pleasure,” she said stubbornly. “The world needs more of those. Way more.”

He had a feeling if he wanted to convince Kayla, he had better back his argument with hard, cold facts: graphs and projections and five years’ worth of More-moo’s financial statements. What would it hurt to have one of his assistants do a bit of research?

“I would like to bring in specialty ice creams. Did you know, in the Middle East, rose petal ice cream is a big hit?”

He felt she had already given her ice cream parlor dreams way more thought than they deserved.

David was pretty sure he felt the beginnings of a headache throbbing along the line of his forehead and into his temples.

“I bet people would drive here from Toronto for rose petal ice cream,” she said dreamily.

David stared at her. She couldn’t possibly believe that! Why did he feel as if he needed to personally dissuade her from unrealistic dreams?

Because he had failed to do so when it had really mattered.

Don’t marry him, Kayla.

Tears streaming down her face. “I have to.”

He could only guess what that fateful decision had put her through. He was going to guess that being married to Kevin had been no bed of roses. Or rose petals, either.

And yet here she was, still dreaming. Was there a certain kind of courage in that?

He hated coming home.

“I’ll go see how the kids are doing with finding the dog,” David said gruffly.

He could clearly see she wanted to refuse this offer—a warning she wasn’t exactly going to embrace his unsolicited advice about the ice cream parlor with open arms—but her concern for the little beast won out.

“You have a cell?” he asked her.

“In pieces on the road, probably,” she said wryly.

“I’ll call here to the clinic, then, when I find out about the dog. Is he a certain breed?”

“Why?”

“If the kids haven’t found him, or I don’t find him hiding under a shrub near where you got stung, I’ll find a picture on the internet and have my assistant, Jane, make a poster. She can email it to me, and I’ll have it printed here.”

Under her comical brows, Kayla was transparent. She was both annoyed by his ability to take charge and his organizational skills, and relieved by them, too. No doubt it would be the same reaction when he presented her with the total lack of viability for operating an ice cream parlor in Blossom Valley.

“He’s a toy Brussels Griffon,” she said, hopeful that he would find the dog, yet reluctant to enlist his aid and hating that she was relying on him. But Kayla was as emotional as he was analytical, her every situation driven by her heart instead of her head.

He put it into his phone. A picture of the world’s ugliest dog materialized, big eyes, wiry hair popping out in all the wrong places. The hair springing from the dog’s ears and above his eyes reminded him of an old man, badly in need of an eyebrow and ear trim.

“Is it just me, or does this dog bear a resemblance to Einstein?” he muttered, showing her the picture.

“Hence the name,” she said, and he smiled reluctantly. Damned if the dog didn’t bear a striking resemblance to the high school teacher, Mr. Bastigal, who had emulated his science hero right down to the crazy gray hair and walrus mustache.

When she nodded that the dog on the screen resembled hers, he slipped the phone into his pocket and vowed to himself he would find it. He ran a multimillion-dollar empire. Trouble-shooting was his specialty. One small dog was no match for him. It looked like Einstein. That didn’t mean it was smart.

And while he was tracking down the doggie, an assistant could do the homework on More-moo, not that it mattered. He was willing to bet Kayla would find another failing business to ride to the rescue of once she was given the reality check on More-moo.

“I’ll leave Mary a business card with my cell number on it. You can call me if you change your mind about the ride home.”

“I won’t.”

He scanned her face, nodded and left the room, leaving the card with Mary, as promised. Mary seemed to want to catch up—she’d been the nurse here way back when he was lifeguarding, and she’d seemed old then—but he begged off, claiming responsibility for the dog.

David Blaze had had enough of old home week. Except, as he walked back out into the sultry heat of the July day, he glanced at his watch. He hadn’t been here a week. Nowhere near. It had been thirty-two whole minutes since he had last checked his watch in the snarled traffic of Main Street.

CHAPTER SIX

KAYLA WAS AT HOME, and in bed. She could not sleep. She ordered herself not to look at the bedside alarm, but she did, anyway.

It was 3:10 a.m.

She was exhausted, and wide awake at the same time, possibly from the drugs in her system.

But possibly sleep eluded her because she had become used to her little dog cuddled against her in the night, his sweet snores, his wiry whiskers tickling her chin, his eyes popping open to make sure she was still there, staring deeply at her, his liquid gaze holding nothing but devotion and loyalty.

Unlike her husband.

Wasn’t that why she was really awake? Contemplating what David had told her about the day of the drowning?

She had called David a liar.

But in her heart, she had felt the sickening reverberation of truth.

That, Kayla decided, was what was hateful about being awake at this time of night. She was held hostage by the thoughts that she could fend off during the day. During the day there was so much this old house needed, it was overwhelming.

But being overwhelmed was not necessarily a bad thing. It could occupy her every thought and every waking hour. Between that, the new dog and looking for the perfect investment opportunity, she was blessedly busy.

But on a night like tonight, thoughts crowded into her tired mind. Even before David had said that about Kevin flirting with a girl instead of doing his job, Kayla had lain awake at night and contemplated her marriage.

She tried to direct her thoughts to good things and good memories, like the night he had proposed, so sweet and serious and sincere.

I want to do the honorable thing. For once.

She frowned. She hadn’t thought of that part of it for a long time, and not in the light she was thinking of it now. Had he loved her, or had he done the honorable thing?

Crazy thoughts. Middle of the night thoughts. Of course he had loved her.

In his way. So what if his way bought flowers when they needed groceries? That was romantic! And he had been a dreamer. That was a good memory. Of them sitting at the kitchen table, in the early days of their marriage sipping the last of their coffee, his face all intense and earnest as he described what he wanted for them: a business of their own, a big house, a great car.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.