by Ward, Susan
The Miller House! Perhaps Katie’s fantasies had been more than fantasy? This man been watching her! What was he doing here now?
Krystal’s face betrayed her wariness as she nervously rose from the stool. “I’m sorry to have disturbed you.”
“No disturbance. I’ve enjoyed listening. Especially to you, Mrs. Dillon. You have a beautiful voice. Have you ever thought of singing professionally?”
The color drained from Krystal’s face. She took a nervous step backward and knocked over the stool. It crashed loudly into Mike’s drums, then the rest of the equipment, like a string of dominoes set into motion, tumbling one by one onto the ground.
“Oh my god,” she exclaimed in raw panic, instantly dropping to her knees to examine the equipment she could never in a hundred years afford to replace if damaged. “I’m sorry!”
“It’s okay, Mrs. D,” Mike assured her. The other boys were staring at her as if she’d gone mad.
For a few finger-snapping moments, she thought she would faint. They were all watching her so intensely. She had to pull herself together.
But who was this man? Did he know who she was?
Glancing over her shoulder, she found the stranger quietly studying her. He wasn’t the least bit threatening looking. In fact, he was rather handsome. Her eyes traveled downward from his bright, green eyes, over his lazily smiling lips to the cleft chin with a tiny scar on it, to the suntanned neck and upper chest peeking out from his open shirt collar. There was nothing on his face except mild curiosity. Nothing that should have sent her alarms into full frantic mode.
“I take it you’re not used to compliments,” he said easily.
A compliment? Was that all it was? She searched his face nervously, trying to still her raging panic.
His smile deepened. “Remember me? You ran me over at Fritz’s. I’m the one who mixed up your Mozart and...?” his words trailed off as if he couldn’t remember, those perfectly formed, golden brows meeting together on his forehead as he frowned.
“My Indian Tom-Tom song,” Krystal finished pointedly. “And as I recall, it was you who barreled into me! If you’ve come to apologize, I assure you that isn’t necessary.”
The man looked amused. “I didn’t come here to apologize.”
“Whatever you’re here for, the lady’s not interested,” Jason barked, placing himself between Mrs. Dillon and the man. “Like she said, this is a private rehearsal, so why don’t you get the hell out.”
“It’s okay, Jason,” Krystal assured anxiously, stepping between the boy and man. The last thing she needed was Jason to punch him and then for all of them to make a trip downtown to answer questions with the police. “I’m sure Mr. ...?”
“Devon,” the stranger supplied, unruffled. “Everyone just calls me Devon.”
“Devon doesn’t mean any disrespect. I’m sure he has a very good reason for stopping by. But Jason is right, Devon. We’re really very busy here, so if you could leave.”
He was halfway into her garage, crouching down before Krystal’s own guitar leaning against the far wall. He had it in his long, tanned fingers before she could stop him.
“This is a custom made Fender. An impressive instrument. M? Can’t make out the rest. One-of-a-kind. Custom made for its artist.”
The blood vessels in her head began to hum again. “How ...how do you know that?”
He turned over the instrument in his hands and bent her a sweet and surprised gaze. “It’s signed,” he replied. “What a magnificent instrument. You didn’t get this at Fritz’s, did you?”
Krystal could barely get the word out. “No.”
It had been a gift from Morgan. He had had it designed and made for her for her twenty-second birthday. She wanted to rip it from Devon’s hands, but quickly checked her panicking impulses. How would she explain that to the boys and this stranger?
“I didn’t think so.” He set the guitar gently back in its resting place. “How did you ever manage to get your hands on a custom made Fender in Coos Bay?”
“However I managed to get it, it’s none of your business!” Krystal snapped, feeling vulnerable, exposed.
Damn the man. She’d lugged that instrument back and forth in Coos Bay for two years with no one ever making comment on it before.
“I want you to leave.” She put it simply, firmly this time.
Devon straightened himself up and turned toward her. Those pleasant green eyes did a quizzical search of Krystal’s pale face. “I didn’t mean to upset you. I have a habit of being overly curious. I’m sorry if I offended you.”
His apology made her wonder if it were just her raw nerves making her overreact to this all. “Why did you stop by?” she managed through vocal cords that had somehow developed a tremolo effect.
Devon slipped the lunch bag into her quivering hands. “Your daughter’s artwork, isn’t it?” he asked.
Krystal turned the bag around, instantly recognizing the picture and the neatly printed handwriting.
Devon gave her lush smile. “She left it for me on the fence. I wanted to thank her and tell her that the cookies were very good.”
All this because Katie had wanted a new friend! Krystal wanted to laugh, except none of this was funny. The panic. The fear. It had come back, all because of a silly lunch bag filled with cookies and left for this stranger. Heavens, what a fool she had made of herself. What must this man think of her?
Slowly, she lifted her gaze to that handsome, smiling face, feeling like an idiot. “I’ll tell her. I hope she hasn’t been bothering you!”
“Bothering?” He gave her another amused look. “That lunch bag was the second nice thing to have happened to me today.”
If he thought she’d ask what the first was, then he was wrong. It was not so much what he said, but how he said it that implied running into her was the first. So it was curiosity of the male kind that had brought him here!
Ignoring, or at least not responding verbally to, his final sentence, Krystal said, “If that’s all you came for, I’ll deliver your message to Katie. I’d really appreciated it if you’d go. We have a lot of work to finish tonight.”
His laughter was husky and soft. “Then I won’t keep you. But I’d like to come back. Tomorrow. When you’re not so busy.”
Krystal’s eyes fluttered open. “Come back? Tomorrow? Whatever for?”
“To thank Katie myself.” He gave her a curious look and then his eyes began to sparkle with laughter. “What did you think I meant?”
Krystal shrugged, then was relieved when he told them all goodnight. She watched Devon disappear from her garage.
Turning back to Jason and the boys, she found that they were all staring at her as if she’d suddenly grown two heads. Groaning, she sank back on her stool, suggesting that they start again.
Devon went into his bedroom, flipped on his light, then the laptop. He rapidly committed each detail of the past ten minutes into the database on his computer, knowing if he didn’t purge himself of her, he’d never find sleep.
As it was, he ended up tossing on the bed, restless, for hours. He couldn’t shake her from his mind. Rolling onto his side, he sorted through the copious stack of research material on the nightstand, pulled open the manila envelope and lifted out the gold locket, popping it open. There was an inscription engraved inside the locket. “To Krystal, my unicorn. Love, Daddy.” It also contained a quote from Terry Brooks’ The Black Unicorn.
The past fifteen years floated through Devon’s mind in wispy images that were not completely comforting. He’d had an impressive professional career, there had been Beth and other relationships, his family. Most would consider it a good life in every way. He was fortunate, but somehow it had grown lackluster and he realized to a certain extent he’d lost touch with a part of himself. That passion he’d had when he’d started his journey had dimmed without him even being aware of it.
What was it that Kara had said? Lets me know that you are aware that you are a man. For a hopeless romantic,
Devon, you’re lousy at it. What was it about Krystal Stafford that was stirring this all upward?
There was something tragic and yet unmistakably uplifting about finding her surrounded by those boys, trying to help them. If anyone needed help, it was her. She was only one wrong step away from discovery and prison. That she hadn’t been caught yet was mind boggling.
It had been on the tip of his tongue, the warning: Lady, what you’re doing in Coos Bay isn’t at all wise.
It might be noble to teach music to children for little more than pennies, and help delinquent boys in an effort to keep them from jail, but the puzzle pieces were a touch too close to the secret she needed to keep hidden. She wasn’t behaving wisely if she wanted to remain safe in hiding. It was dangerous in every way.
It had been astoundingly moving to discover her trapped in this nightmare in a modest detached garage, surrounded by delinquents, chasing her dream as though she hadn’t lost everything. It was almost as though the grimmer facts about her existence, the risk that it could destroy her, didn’t matter.
Or was he being too generous in his opinions? She was a beautiful woman. He’d forgotten that vivid feeling of wakefulness that sometimes runs all through a man at once with a woman who is spectacular. He’d felt it like a landslide from the moment he’d stepped into her garage. For a barrage of reasons, it shouldn’t have come at all. Yet it came on its own, unstoppable.
He thought of the Terry Brooks quote. What an interesting thing to find written inside her locket.
Jonathan Palmer thought his daughter was a unicorn sent to worlds where the belief in magic was failing. A world in need of salvation.
Why was it that Devon had the impression that this unicorn was being sent to him? To test who he used to be? Or as his salvation, so he wouldn’t be lost forever?
CHAPTER FOUR
Krystal sat on her knees by the open kitchen cabinet, glaring down at the pristine diagrams in her home repair manual. It was impossible to match those neat, precise images with the strange, twisting mass of pipes and valves surrounding her garbage disposal. The plumbing in her house was forty years old, the disposal added in a reckless, makeshift manner. And this book had been printed in 1988!
She’d struggled for over an hour, trying to squeeze out of her dwindling cash supply enough money to call a plumber, before finally conceding in defeat that she would have to tackle this problem herself if it were going to get done at all. It had come as a grim shock that after a busy week of lessons, she hadn’t earned enough to cover the bills piled in her kitchen.
Tapping the wrench on her palm, she made another quick examination of the picture and then leaned under the sink to try and turn the valve that she hoped would shut off the water to the pipes. Groaning, she concentrated every ounce of strength into turning that circle of metal, only to see it hold fast.
“You’re supposed to turn. Why are you being so stubborn?” Krystal muttered, putting all her weight behind the downward force of her arm. “If you just turn so I can fix this, I promise to buy you a nice can of oil next time I shop!”
Nothing! The valve was immovable and quite obviously male. Shaking her head in dismay, she wondered if she’d at last gone around the bend. Had she really thought she’d get the foolish thing to turn by indulging in a bit of hardware bribery? A lot of good sweet-talking had done. What it needed was a firm kick in its copper covered—
Rescued! Quite happily, by the doorbell. Springing to her feet, Krystal dumped the wrench back into her small collection of tools and went to the door.
Her eyes searched anxiously through the half opening of her split door. She had heard the bell. Why wasn’t anyone there? She was about to turn away when her peripheral vision caught a shadowy movement against the sun-drenched exterior wall.
She pulled back the lower portion of the door and froze, just before she ran into a figure perched on her stoop. Her foot was two inches away from a beautifully shaped leg, and even the slightest degree forward would have brought her knee in flush contact with a male hip encased in soft, linen shorts. Her eyes ran upward over that broad back, as it strained against the loose confines of a pale pink cotton shirt. She noted a faint sprinkling of gray mingled with the golden waves that fluttered against the collar.
Devon.
It seemed that yesterday’s nightmare had decided to roll unmercifully into today. Though why it surprised her, she was sure she didn’t know.
The day had gone badly. She’d lost her favorite charm bracelet in the relentless clutches of her garbage disposal. Both the disposal and, no doubt, her bracelet were a total loss. Katie was home from school for an unexpected teacher’s in-service day. And after a long morning of music lessons, she had only the afternoon free before Jason and the boys were due back for another practice session. She hadn’t slept well the night before, and didn’t have the energy for Jason today. Her day just kept getting worse.
There was a certain amusing symmetry to having Devon show up, unannounced yet again. Krystal was in no mood for offbeat humor.
Several questions hit her at once. What had Devon found to capture his interest in the meager possessions on her porch? Why did this man disturb her so completely? And how the devil does one get rid of him?
Leaning a touch forward to see beyond his shoulder gave her the answer to one of the questions in her brain. “It’s a pineapple top.”
In a graceful movement, Devon rose to his full height. “Really? How unusual. What does it grow into?”
Krystal shrugged. “Not a clue. A pineapple tree, I suppose. At least that’s what Katie is hoping for. You’ll find five more of them scattered through the house.”
A smile tugged at the corners of his sensual lips. “What does Katie plan to do with six pineapple trees? Or are you venturing out into a new business?”
More than a little charmed by his silliness and his willingness to play along with Katie’s adventure, and definitely unwilling to explore what was nagging inside her, she said quickly, “I just might. As a rule, teaching doesn’t pay very well.”
Krystal felt the amusement surround him. Over her accelerating heartbeat, she heard her mind scream, Not again! What was God trying to do to her?
It had taken an entire sleepless night to pull herself together after spending ten minutes in the man’s company. She couldn’t quite get a handle on what he was about. She was able to reason that Devon was trouble, in a variety of aspects, like his ability to group together bits and pieces of her life by simple observation, and how easily he rattled her, which she didn’t expect.
She stared at him intently, took a deep breath, and said in a steady voice that she was more than a little proud of, “What are you doing here?”
Devon was smiling. Krystal blushed and wondered: Blast it, didn’t the man do anything but smile? And why was he carrying in those long, well defined fingers potted flowers?
“Before you call out for the cavalry, I’ve come to apologize. It took all of ten minutes to realize that I had somehow upset you last night. It wasn’t my intention. I was just being neighborly.”
Krystal frowned. “Only ten minutes? That was quick of you.”
“Not quick enough, I’m afraid.”
That smile again. Krystal bit her lower lip and carefully searched Devon’s handsome face. Katie’s cookies were only a pretext. What did he want? Surely he was aware after last night that she wasn’t interested in him.
“Apology accepted,” she said.
“I’m relieved. We’re practically the only two living out here. It would be very lonely if we weren’t at least on speaking terms. Doesn’t all this quiet get to you?”
Krystal shook her head. “I love it. Quiet is an underrated treasure.”
“I guess it’ll take me a while to get used to it. I’m a city boy. The city never seems to sleep.”
Krystal managed a tense smile in answer to that. She knew what he meant about the quiet out here. The isolation had been hard on her at first. Even after a year and a
half, there were times she missed having someone her own age to talk to. Dare she invite him in? He seemed to be waiting for her to do so.
He stood there looking at her, his green eyes studying her politely, and her thoughts became a quagmire. There was nothing in that attractive countenance that should put her on guard. His manner was courteous. His expression companionable. He didn’t recognize her, she was certain of that. Did he just want to come in and converse because he’s lonely? Is that why he skipped where he was supposed to say goodbye and leave? He was a hard man to read. He just hovered on the porch, smiling at her.
Oh Krystal, you are out of practice with men. What do you do with a man who doesn’t do his part and leave?
Cursing herself a fool, she found herself saying, “I was about to have some coffee. Would you like to join me? I didn’t mean to be rude last night. I was just busy and tired.”
“I know that. I only have to look into those eyes of yours to know that you’d never try to intentionally offend anyone.”
Devon’s voice was soft, sincere. This man could be, conceding a reluctant thought, very appealing.
As Krystal went about making coffee, the incongruity of having Devon, whom she had hoped only moments ago never to see again, sitting pleasantly at her table was impossible to miss. The last thing she wanted in her life was Devon. The man made her unaccountably nervous and, though it was only a neighborly cup of coffee she offered him, she was wondering if she were making a mistake.
As she pulled two cups gaily decorated with farm scenes from her cabinets, her gaze drifted back to him. “Do you always walk around town carrying potted flowers with you?”
“The flowers are for you,” Devon said easily. “I thought I should bring a peace offering in case one was needed.”
Krystal had known the flowers were for her; why did his saying so send her senses into a buzz? And of all things to feel nervous about, a red clay potted patch of daisies? There was nothing romantic or even slightly intimate about that. It was a kind gesture, clear and simple.