by Gina Wilkins
Though it was only a small, few-frills apartment, this felt more like a home to her than anyplace she had lived since her mother fell ill. Everything had been going along so nicely—and then Shane and her father had both made unexpected overtures that threatened to change everything.
Just as she’d been unable to stop the change in her relationship with Shane, she knew she was going to be forced to make some sort of decision about her father. She couldn’t ignore his request forever. She only wished it hadn’t come at a time when she was already feeling overwhelmed by so many other pressures.
She spent the remainder of the afternoon straightening her apartment and doing some laundry. And then it was time to get dressed for the dance. She didn’t have to debate this time about what to wear. This was the perfect occasion to wear the red dress she’d bought on the shopping trip with Brynn.
Yet the dress that had seemed so perfect when she’d tried it on in the store suddenly looked different when she donned it in her bedroom. The spaghetti straps left a lot of bare skin above the low bodice. The clingy fabric left little to the imagination about her figure. And the skirt was rather short, making her legs look longer than usual, an illusion reinforced by flirty red sandals—lowheeled, of course, since her limp made high heels too precarious.
Maybe she should change into the black satin pantsuit she’d worn for the holidays last year to cover the thenfresh scars of her operations. Those scars were still there, but they had faded considerably, and the shimmering hose she wore further camouflaged the ones on her legs, though the one on her arm was still revealed. She had never been particularly embarrassed by her scars. She knew exactly how fortunate she was to have come through that accident as well as she had. She considered her recovery a testament to Joe’s surgical skills. A limp and a few scars were of little significance when she considered that she could have spent the rest of her life in a wheelchair.
It was that bracing thought that made her lift her chin and decide to wear the dress with confidence. Brynn had said it looked good; Kelly would trust her friend’s judgment.
As she donned a swingy, black evening coat in preparation to leave, she couldn’t help wondering what Shane would think about the dress.
Chapter Ten
Shane was beginning to get concerned. He’d been at the country club at which the charity dance was being held for nearly forty-five minutes and Kelly still hadn’t arrived. He’d asked around, but no one had heard from her. Brynn and Joe had explained that they’d offered her a ride, but she’d wanted to bring her own car. They didn’t know why she was late.
Where was she, damn it? He tugged irritably at the bow tie that felt as if it was choking him. He hated evening clothes.
“Hey, Shane. You look bored. Thinking of bolting already?” Michael Chang asked, approaching with a glass of wine in one hand.
He forced a smile. “No, I can tolerate it awhile longer. Where’s your date?”
Michael grimaced wryly. “She and Heather went to the ladies’ room. Why do women want to do that in groups?”
“Why else? So they can talk about us. I like Judy, by the way.”
“Yeah, me, too. It’s our third date. So far, so good.” Michael took a sip of his wine, then asked, “How come you didn’t bring anyone tonight?”
Scanning the crowded, elaborately decorated ballroom, and still seeing no sign of Kelly, Shane replied, “There wasn’t anyone in particular I wanted to bring.”
It was a lie, of course, but he’d made that stupid promise to Kelly. He wished he knew what was keeping her. Maybe he should try calling her apartment.
He glanced across the room to where Cameron stood with his statuesque blond date, Julie Fields. They were talking with Scott Pearson and Scott’s companion, Paula, the woman Heather disliked so intensely. Shane suspected that Paula figured prominently in the ladies’ room gossip.
Heather was determined to keep her brother from becoming Paula’s fourth husband. Not that Shane thought there was any danger of that. In his opinion, Scott and Paula were merely having a little fun until something better came along.
“Have you met the woman with Cameron yet?” he asked Michael.
“Yeah. She’s a weekend anchor on local TV—I forget which station. Cameron said she’s got her eye on a network spot eventually, and he thinks she’ll get there. He seems to admire her, but I don’t think there’s anything more to it.”
Shane shook his head. “It will be a while before Cameron gets involved again. His usual pattern is to play the field after a breakup.”
“Too bad Amber didn’t come tonight. She usually enjoys things like this.”
“She wouldn’t have enjoyed it tonight,” Shane murmured, glancing again at Cameron, who had the anchorwoman draped all over him at the moment.
Following Shane’s look, Michael grimaced. “No, probably not.”
Michael’s friend, Judy, joined them then. A sweet-faced, generously rounded young woman, she worked at the airport where Michael’s air-charter service was based. She chatted with Shane for a moment, then persuaded Michael to dance with her, leaving Shane to worry again about where Kelly was.
It was probably a good thing he was alone when he finally spotted her. He suspected that if he’d been in the middle of a sentence, his voice would have trailed into stammering incoherence. As it was, he must have frozen for a full minute before he got himself under control.
She looked...stunning.
Reminding himself that Kelly wanted him to act normal—whatever that was—he headed across the room toward where she stood visiting with Joe and Brynn. As he made his way through the well-dressed crowd, he practiced suitably casual greetings in his head.
“Where have you been?” was what came out when he reached her.
He couldn’t read anything in particular in her expression when she turned to reply. “Oh, hi, Shane. I was just telling Brynn and Joe that when I went out to my car this evening, it wouldn’t start. It kept making a terrible, grinding sound. I finally just called a cab.”
“See? You should have let us pick you up,” Brynn fussed. “Why didn’t you call when your car wouldn’t start?”
“I figured you’d already left,” Kelly explained with a slight shrug that drew Shane’s attention again to the soft expanse of shoulder revealed by her frivolous little dress.
He cleared his throat. “When’s the last time you had your car checked out? What if something like this had happened on a deserted road?”
“Don’t fuss at her now, Shane. You sound like an annoying older brother,” Brynn chided him. “You haven’t even told her how pretty she looks tonight.”
“Oh. Yeah, you look great,” he said lamely, motioning awkwardly toward Kelly’s dress.
Brynn rolled her eyes. “Try to control your flattery, you’ll embarrass her. Trust me, Kelly, any guy here who isn’t family is going to think you look drop-dead gorgeous.”
Shane scowled. He thought Kelly looked drop-dead gorgeous. She just wouldn’t allow him to say so. And he didn’t like the thought of any other guy thinking of her that way. He and Kelly weren’t family, damn it. If only he could convince her to let him remind others of that significant fact
“Speaking of guys,” Brynn continued with an arch smile, “there’s someone here I want you to meet, Kelly. His name is Steve Carter and he’s a single surgeon who just moved to Dallas. He doesn’t know many people here yet. He works at the hospital with Joe and he’s here tonight with the hospital administrator and his wife. Steve is probably eight or nine years older than you, but he’s really nice. I think you’ll like him.”
“Brynn,” Kelly interrupted, just as Shane was prepared to do so. “I’m really not in the mood for a fix-up right now. I just got here, for Pete’s sake. Let me take at least a few minutes to have some refreshments and greet my friends.”
“I’ll take you over to the gang,” Shane volunteered. “Cameron will probably want to introduce you to his date.”
She made a face.
“Do I want to meet her?”
He shrugged. “From what I’ve heard, she’s okay. A bit predatory, but she is a television reporter.”
“I just can’t help thinking about poor Amber.”
Shane hoped she wasn’t starting to compare their budding relationship with the disaster between Cameron and Amber again. “Come say hi to everyone,” he said. “They’ve all been asking about you.”
“Oh, look, Joe, there are the Lamberts. We should go speak to them,” Brynn said, touching her husband’s arm. “Kelly, we’ll see you later. Let us know if you need a ride home.”
“I have to pass her apartment on my way home,” Shane said casually. “I’ll drop her off.”
Neither Brynn nor Joe seemed to find anything remarkable about his offer. And why should they? he asked himself. He was getting as paranoid as Kelly.
He placed a hand on her arm to guide her through the crush of people mingling at the charity dance. He didn’t know that many people in attendance, outside his own cozy circle of friends, so they weren’t interrupted as they made their way slowly across the room.
“Why didn’t you call me when your car died?” he asked. “You know my cell phone number.”
“I decided it would be quicker to just call a cab—even though it was a bit expensive,” she added ruefully.
“I would have come after you. No one would have found it unusual if you called me for help.”
“By the time you picked me up and drove back here, the dance would have been half over. Stop fussing, Shane, I took care of it.”
“I was worried,” he said simply.
“I didn’t mean to worry you.”
“I know.” They were only ten feet away from their friends when he lowered his voice and said, “By the way, you look stunning. You’re the most beautiful woman in the room.”
He heard her choke just as the others noticed them.
“Kelly, there you are!” Heather hurried toward them. “I was beginning to think you weren’t coming. You look great! Love the dress.”
“Thank y—”
“Can you believe Scott brought Paula to this dance? I swear he only did it to annoy me, since she obviously hates this sort of thing. He...”
Still talking, Heather drew Kelly away from Shane’s side. Mentally repeating his promise to her, he let her go, but he was unable to stop looking at her. It really was a great dress. But Kelly didn’t need glamour and glitter to turn him on; he found her every bit as appealing in jeans and T-shirts.
“What held her up?” Scott asked, nodding after Kelly and his gossiping sister as he approached with the muchmaligned Paula on his arm.
“Her car wouldn’t start. Sounds like a dead battery—maybe the alternator.” Shane almost growled the answer, still cold inside at the thought of Kelly being stranded on some dark, lonely road with a dead battery. Anything could have happened to her.
“What did you do, chew her out? You’re still glaring at her.”
He made a deliberate effort to smooth his expression. “I pointed out that she should take better care of her car.”
“I’ll bet you did.” Scott grinned. “Probably sounded a lot like some of the conversations I’ve had with Heather. She’s doing better now, but she used to think the warning lights on her dashboard were merely hints that she should have her car serviced when she had some time to spare.”
Again, Shane was struck by the way everyone seemed to think of him and Kelly as family—cousins, perhaps, or even a sibling-type relationship. No one seemed to suspect that what he felt for Kelly was anything but fraternal. How could they not see the truth in his eyes when he felt as if it burned there like a neon sign?
Maybe he and Kelly could keep this new development a secret, after all. Though he didn’t know how long he could continue the pretense, he thought as he realized exactly how many pairs of appreciative male eyes were focused on Kelly at that very moment.
“Excuse me,” Paula said, her hands on her hips, her generous breasts sticking out provocatively as she stood defensively. “I happen to take very good care of my car. I have the oil and filters changed and the tires checked every three thousand miles. When I was in college and didn’t have money to pay someone to do it, I changed the oil myself.”
Shane smiled to himself as he thought that money was certainly not an issue for Paula. Alimony and divorce settlements from three wealthy, older ex-husbands had given the thirty-something—she would never admit how far past thirty—divorcée the freedom to live on her own terms now. Scott gazed indulgently at her, obviously having no interest in whether or not she could change the oil in a car.
While Shane had experimented a bit with relationships based on nothing more than physical attraction, he had long since decided he needed more. The women he admired most—his stepmother, his aunts and cousins, Judge Carla D’Alessandro—were all woman of intelligence, competence and integrity. Women who were perfectly capable of taking care of themselves, but valued family above all else. Women who stood beside, not behind, their equally competent mates.
He found his eyes turning toward Kelly again. Kelly, who had been on her own for a long time. Kelly, who had pursued her advanced degree with unwavering determination, who had fought her way back from a terrible car accident, enduring two operations, nearly six weeks of hospitalization, months of painful therapy and occasional lingering discomfort from the resulting quarter-inch difference in the length of her legs. And she had come through it all with a positive attitude, and an optimism he had always admired.
Other people might have complained about the bad luck of being involved in that accident. Shane had heard Kelly say several times that she felt fortunate the accident hadn’t been worse, that she had come through alive and still able to walk, and to have made so many friends as a result of the accident.
Kelly was a very special woman, he mused. He suspected the reason no other woman had particularly interested him during the past year and a half was that no other woman compared in his mind to Kelly. Why hadn’t he done something about it earlier? Was it because he’d instinctively sensed her fears—or because he had been battling some of his own?
“C’mon, Scott, dance with me,” Paula said, tugging his hand. “If we have to spend an evening at a charity dance, we might as well enjoy the music.”
Scott gave her a lazy nod. “Sure. See you later, Shane.”
“I really dislike that woman,” Heather muttered as she and Kelly rejoined Shane, Heather glaring seethingly after her twin and his date.
“Get a life, Heather,” he replied with the affectionate bluntness of a very long friendship. “Stop worrying about Scott.”
“What if he marries her? I do not want that woman to be the mother of my nieces and nephews.”
“He’s not going to marry her. He can’t afford to marry her. She likes ’em old and rich, remember? She and Scott are just friends.”
Heather sighed. “I hope you’re right.”
“Speaking of your social life, I thought you were bringing someone tonight.”
The sigh that escaped her this time was even more heartfelt. “I was. I had a date with a homicide detective. His pager went off two minutes after he arrived at my place to pick me up. He said he’ll probably be tied up for hours. I thought about just staying home, but after spending more than an hour getting ready for this thing, I wasn’t about to let my efforts go to waste.”
“Your efforts paid off,” he assured her, looking away from Kelly long enough to notice that Heather did look exceptionally nice in a deep green dress embellished with sparkling gold threads, a theme repeated in the gold stuff woven into her upswept auburn hair. “Very festive.”
She caught his arm. “Come dance with me. I want everyone to see how gorgeous I look.”
Shane glanced at Kelly. “You two go ahead,” she said with a smile. “I’m going to talk to Michael and Judy. And I’ll introduce myself to Cameron’s friend.”
“Save me a dance,” he ordered.
&n
bsp; She lifted an eyebrow. “You know I don’t dance.”
“You will tonight.” With that, he turned and gave in to Heather’s tugging at his arm.
“That was nice of you, Shane,” Heather announced as she claimed a few inches of dance floor and turned in to his arms.
He told himself to concentrate on his dance partner and not the slender woman in the flame-red dress across the room. “What?”
“Offering to dance with Kelly. The only time I see her get self-conscious about her limp is when someone mentions dancing. I bet she danced very well before her accident.”
Since Shane knew firsthand that Kelly still danced very well—but couldn’t mention that without revealing too much—he merely said, “I just thought she might like to give it a try tonight.”
Heather nodded. “Dancing with you will be comfortable for her because you’re pretty much family and she knows you won’t be making judgments about her, or anything like that.”
Family. As much as he had always liked the word before, it was beginning to annoy him a bit when it was used so often in reference to him and Kelly.
Kelly had greeted all her friends, and Brynn and Joe had just introduced her to Dr. Steve Carter. They’d been making polite small talk for only a few minutes when Shane and Heather suddenly reappeared. “Kelly, did Michael tell you his big news? Oh, sorry,” Shane said blandly, “Am I interrupting something?”
“Well, actually...” Brynn began.
Shane stuck out his hand to the tall, dark-haired man standing at Kelly’s side. “I don’t believe we’ve met. I’m Shane Walker.”
“Steve Carter. Nice to meet you.”
“I hear you’re new in the area.”
“Yes. I just moved here from Tulsa.”
Without glancing at Kelly, Shane pulled Heather in front of him. “Let me introduce you to my friend Heather Pearson. Heather, this is Dr. Steve Carter.”
“Doctor?” Heather’s eyes lit with interest. “It’s very nice to meet you, Dr. Carter.”