by Floyd, Jacie
Sighing, she suspected it was already too late.
With a tap on the door, she straightened, sensing Wyatt’s presence even before he spoke.
He opened the door and waited to speak until she turned toward him. “Maria said you were home.”
She struggled to find a smile. “Come in.”
Flinty eyes searched her face as he stepped inside. She noted not only an absence of delight, but an unusual coolness as well. “How are you feeling?”
“Fine, thanks.” She touched her fingers to her jaws as if testing. “I’m not up to eating popcorn yet, but Dr. Conley said everything looked great at my follow-up today.”
He nodded. “That’s good.”
Kara wondered about his restraint. She hadn’t expected him to fall at her feet, but she’d seen him exchange more intimate conversations with bellmen. Perhaps he regretted their Valentine’s Day tryst.
“I wanted to see how you’re doing.”
“I’m glad you stopped in. I wanted to thank you for your help.”
His stare sharpened with disapproval. A hand to ward off her gratitude. “Don’t mention it.”
Ah, perhaps her recent neediness was what he regretted. He detested high-maintenance women. “You always say that, but I really am grateful.”
“I don’t want your damned gratitude any more than you wanted my help.” His voice lashed out as cold as the sleet glazing her window.
She studied the muscle twitching in his jaw. “Are you angry with me?”
“Angry?” he echoed softly. “I wouldn’t say I’m angry so much as freaking furious!” The sentence ended on a roar.
Kara flinched, more from the source than from the sentiment. Seldom had anyone raised their voice at her and never in her own home. And certainly not Wyatt Freaking-Perfect Maitland.
“Keep your voice down!” Imagining Maria and Sean running in to check on the disturbance, Kara hurried to close the door behind him. “Now, sit down and talk to me like a rational human being.”
Dropping into a chair beside Kara’s desk, he continued to seethe. “Why didn’t you tell me you were going to have your damned wisdom teeth removed?”
Kara frowned. “Why would I? It had nothing to do with you.”
“Oh, I don’t know.” A semblance of his normal control returned, but Kara could see the effort it took on his part. “We’re friends, acquaintances, lovers. It might have come up in conversation.”
“I’m not in the habit of confiding in you.”
He sat forward in his chair like a predator intending to pounce. “You don’t trust me at all, do you?”
She chewed her bottom lip. Did she trust him? As much as she did anyone. “Yes, of course, I do.”
“No, you don’t,” he contradicted. “I used to believe your story about not telling me about Sean because I had said I didn’t want to be a father. I assumed you did what you thought was best for all of us. I didn’t think cutting me out of your life was anything personal. But lately, I’ve come to realize—it is personal. When you came to Atlanta to get pregnant, you never intended for me to have anything to do with you or the baby afterward, did you?” His glare pinned her to her seat, but she didn’t try to look away. “Did you, Kara?”
“No.” She swallowed, sad to see she’d hurt him with her thoughtless, self-centered plan. “I thought once I explained the situation, you’d be happy to participate in the conception and leave the responsibility for the baby to me.”
“Even now, you’re willing to sleep with me again, but you don’t want to include me in your life.”
“Especially now.” She looked out at the ice coating the windowpane. “This is the worst possible time. I could get hurt, Sean could get hurt.”
Wyatt swiveled her chair around toward him. “Kara, don’t you know I’d die before I let anything happen to you or Sean?”
Putting her hands on his chest, she shoved him away. Fear wrenched the truth from her. “That’s exactly what happened with Mike, and believe me, it’s no consolation.”
For a moment, he looked stricken, and then his face softened with compassion. “Oh God, Kara, is that why you’re so afraid?” He drew her over to the love seat and sat down beside her, tugging her against his chest. “Tell me.”
Within the comfort of his arms, she let her pain spill onto him. “I know it’s stupid. I know it’s irrational. But Sean’s the same age Adam was. It’s the same time of year. He went somewhere with his father, and they died. I won’t let that happen again.”
Wyatt smoothed her hair behind her ear. “That would be too much for anyone to bear.”
If he had tried to argue or reason with her, she would have defended her position, but his sympathy left her weak and empty. “You probably think I’m insane.”
His chin rubbed against her hair as he shook his head. “Not at all.”
“For a long time afterward, I thought I would die myself. I wanted to.”
He hugged her tightly.
“Sometimes I thought if it had just been one of them, I could have stood it. But then I would be lashed by more guilt, like I could have chosen one over the other.” She plucked repeatedly at the collar of his shirt.
“Why did you feel guilty?” He covered her hand with his.
“Because I was alive and they weren’t.” Her heart convulsed, releasing more of the pain. “It was all my fault.”
“How?”
“I should have been the one to pick up Adam, but I was tired or running late or distracted or something that at the time seemed like a valid excuse, but wasn’t. Nothing should have been more important to me than picking up Adam from daycare. We would have taken a different route. Mike would never have been on that exit ramp if he hadn’t been the one to pick up Adam.” She had thought these things so many times, but had never said them aloud. She expected her carelessness to disgust Wyatt, but he turned aside her self-condemnation.
“You’re tormenting yourself over things beyond your control.”
“I’d blame Mike instead of myself, but that doesn’t work. How can I blame someone who’s dead? And I loved him, too. I loved them both. So much.”
“I know.”
She pulled back and studied his face. “You don’t know. Stop placating me.”
His hand on her shoulder offered warmth and consolation. “I’m waiting for you to reason through it yourself. Maybe talking about it will release some of your fear and you’ll see that the past and the present are totally unrelated.”
The cold fear gripping her heart coiled through her stomach as well. “The circumstances are exactly the same.”
“They’re nothing alike.” He cradled her face in his hands, his eyes compelling her to listen. “The only similarity is that you have a son and you’re concerned for his welfare. But your fear is based as much on being hurt by your feelings for me as it is about anything that might happen to Sean.”
“Well, there’s ego run amuck.” She tried to laugh in his face, but the sound emerged as a sad squeak. “If I care anything for you beyond friendship and gratitude, it’s for the harm you can cause my son.”
“You’re forgetting something.” He lowered his hands from her face to her neck. His thumbs rested in the dip of her collarbone, where her pulse accelerated beneath his touch. “Is this racing pulse the way you respond to fear? There’s a lot more going on beneath the surface, isn’t there?”
Just having his hands on her, his fingers lightly grazing her skin, Kara’s mouth turned dry, her heart pounded against her ribs, and her toes curled. The warmth of his gaze licked her features like a hot tongue. As his head bent toward hers, her breath caught in her throat. She willed his mouth to touch hers, but he paused, only a sigh away, waiting.
“Isn’t there, Kara?”
She swallowed then nodded.
His lips, gentle, smooth, and warmly possessive, settled on hers and set off a bell sound of recognition within her at the sweetness, the rightness, and the inevitability of his kiss. Their tongues me
t and moved voraciously, recognition of desire, perhaps of more, until Wyatt tore himself away.
“Good answer, but not good enough.” He removed his hands from her. “I want you to say it.”
She wondered if the admission would cost her more than she wanted to pay. The words just wouldn’t come. “My fears spring from many different sources. Not the least of which are my feelings for you.”
His disappointment separated them as clearly as a glass partition. “Hardly a heartfelt pledge, now was it?”
“I haven’t heard one from you, either.”
Tugging on an earlobe, he paused. “I don’t suppose either one of us has the courage to admit where we’re headed. Maybe because we started in the wrong place.”
“California?”
His mouth twitched. “Bed.”
“Too late to change that now.”
“Now that I know what’s behind your distrust, I can be more patient. With each day that passes, you’ll see that you and Sean are safe with me. And you’ll begin to trust me and your instincts.”
“Meanwhile, where does that leave us?”
He smiled. “We’ll take a daring step.”
“What?”
“We’ll start dating.”
Her eyes bugged out in surprise. “That seems unnecessary.”
“We’ve never done anything in the right order before. Why start now?” Taking her hand in his, he stroked his fingers over her palm. Goose bumps marched straight to her heart. “We’ll get to know each other in the ways we skipped the first time around. We’ll talk about our real concerns and everyday topics that weren’t on our agenda before. We’ll leave the back doors of our lives open for the other to come and go as they please, forging a path between desire and familiarity.”
“You’ll be bored to death in a week.” She tried to ignore the frisson of heat settling in her belly.
“With you?” He nibbled her thumb. “Never.”
“You’re already doing it.” Her breath catching in her throat. Her eyelids fluttered shut.
“What?”
“Trying to relieve the boredom with sex.”
“This is a long way from sex.” He nuzzled her neck. “But we’re very close to making love.”
Her eyes opened in a flash of panic. “Love! Wyatt, you don’t—”
“Shhh.” His fingertip pressed against her lips. “One step at a time, Kara mia. One step at a time.”
After a productive Adam Enderley Foundation board meeting a week later, Wyatt and Kara sat together in a Chinese restaurant waiting for their entrees. Kara had done her homework before the meeting and stayed on top of the investments and disbursements for the first quarter. Although Wyatt garnered a very real and personal satisfaction from the foundation’s success, his pleasure in the day’s events came from being with Kara, watching her efficiency and her personal interest in the patients and their families.
“I’m very proud of how well you’re doing with the foundation.”
“Not me.” Her eyes lit up from the compliment, even as she deflected it. “The credit goes to you. It was your idea. You instigated and funded the whole project.”
“I wish there hadn’t been the need.”
She fiddled with a button on her trim turquoise blouse. The same color she’d worn the day they met. Had she chosen it for that reason? Probably not. She wasn’t the sort to make sentimental gestures. “I wish I’d thought of something half as effective during the years when I sat there cursing and bemoaning the circumstances.”
“You’re more than making up for it with your involvement now.”
Their food arrived. They lifted chopsticks and began eating. The scents of soy sauce and ginger floated around them.
“Tell me about your day,” Wyatt said after a few moments.
“There was nothing fascinating, believe me. Do you want to hear the good parts or the bad?”
“Both.” He took a sip of tea. “The good parts first.”
“Mmmm.” She fingered the thick leaf of a jade plant that grew in a pagoda-shaped pot on the table. “Sean is always the best part of my day. This morning we played race cars, made pictures on the computer, and worked on learning to lace his shoes.”
Wyatt scooped up another bite of Kung Pao chicken. “Was he the only good part of your day?”
“There was the foundation meeting. I was pleased with the way that went, and now, there’s dinner with you.”
Without being immodest, Wyatt knew there were at least a thousand women he could call in New York City who would jump at the chance of having dinner with him. A few of them would even be at least as interested in him as in the Maitland name and fortune. But he felt a ridiculous surge of satisfaction at being included in the good part of this one particularly prickly woman’s day. He couldn’t contain the smile that accompanied the feeling. “Now, tell me about the bad.”
“Nothing terrible happened. Just minor annoyances.” A small frown knit her brows. “A reclusive neo-impressionist I had planned to interview tomorrow canceled, Sean spilled grape juice on my white wool suit just as I was leaving the house, and my car overheated on the way into town.”
“What did you do?”
“Cursed the neo-impressionist, but not until after I broke the connection, changed clothes as quickly as I could, dropped the suit off at the cleaners, and called my local mechanic to see if I could take my car in.”
He held his lips firmly together while he swallowed his irritation. “I guess you didn’t think to call me?”
“Several times,” she said, “but I was pretty busy. I did text you once, remember?” Her cheeks flushed.
“Yes, your text was one of the best parts of my day.” He’d sent her a suggestive message in response to her flirtatious text. “I mean, did you think to call me about your car?”
Her eyes widened. “Why would I? Do you know anything about cars?”
“Of course.”
“Well, of course.” She squinted his way, mining his expression for the truth. “You’re a guy, so naturally you’re genetically programmed to understand the fine points of the internal combustion engine.” She looked totally unconvinced. “But other than that, what part of your education would tempt me to trust your opinion as an auto mechanic?”
“Didn’t I ever tell you about the summer I worked on Jeff Gordon’s pit crew?” He thought she might buy it, but when she looked him in the eye, he couldn’t keep a straight face.
“Liar,” she said as they both laughed.
“Well, it could have happened. I do know Jeff Gordon.”
“And if I had called you about my car that friendship would have come in very handy if he or any of his crew had been with you.”
Even as he rued her exasperating independence, he enjoyed seeing the sparkle in her eye while she teased him. “What did they say at the garage about your car?”
“They’re going to keep it overnight.”
“How did you get into town?”
“The train.”
He wanted her to ask, but suspected he’d grow old waiting. “Do you need a ride home?”
Chapter Seventeen
On the way home, Kara turned the tables on Wyatt by asking about his day. “Don’t you normally come see Sean on Thursday mornings?”
Was she truly interested or merely making conversation? He threw her an assessing glance before returning his attention to the road. “I had a student request a meeting with me about a problem before class.”
She turned down the radio. “What was the problem?”
“Student requests for meetings always fall into three categories. Curriculum-related, love life, or substance abuse.”
She mulled that over. “I thought you normally keep student contact to a minimum. When did you change that policy?”
“Since Xander’s drinking problem was exposed a couple of years ago.” Their enclosure in a small dimly lit space while compelled to look straight ahead encouraged him to reveal thoughts and secrets he normally
left unspoken. “I realized that many kids are at the same kind of risk and have a genuine need for assistance.”
From the corner of his eye, he saw her shift in her seat and tuck a foot under her. “Didn’t you know that before?”
“I guess I did, but I didn’t think there was anything I could do about it.”
“That may be true.”
“Sometimes it is, but if they’re desperate enough to come to me, that means they want someone to try to help.”
“And was that the case this morning?”
He shook his head, as uncertain in retrospect about the depth of the student’s need as he had been then. “I think so.”
“What did you do?”
“Sent him to Student Services. If they can’t do anything, I’ll see about getting him some private counseling.” Involving himself in other people’s lives was an entirely new arena for him, and there wasn’t anyone he felt comfortable talking to about it. Until now.
“How?”
“There are ways through the school, but they’re limited. It bothers me to know how many kids need help, and that there’s not nearly enough help available. I’ve been toying with an idea for a while now...” On the verge of sharing his big secret, he hesitated. He didn’t want to come off sounding like some kind of egotist who thought he could cure the world by throwing some money around. He looked over at her. She looked curious. What the hell? He’d tell her. “I’ve been giving some thought to setting up a foundation for troubled teens. Similar to the one we now have for the accident victims.”
With an encouraging smile, she leaned forward and put her hand on his forearm. “That’s fantastic. Can you do it?”
Covering her hand with his seemed like the natural response. He tried it and she didn’t jerk away from the contact. “I’m not sure how much the family will kick in. They may think we’ve already done our philanthropic bit for the year.”
“Don’t you know other rich guys like you who might get involved? You’re friendly with Dylan Bradford and Ryan Eastham. They’re probably in your stratospheric tax bracket.”
Everyone knew he granted favors. He never requested them. “You mean ask them for money?”