Kara frowned. She might have known that Dave would be perverse. “Well, I can see why she likes you so much. I’m surprised my mother thinks that I’m good enough for you.”
He moved behind her, taking her arm to avoid walking into two teens busy texting, their eyes glued to their cell phone screens. Electronics should be banned in certain places, he thought.
“And I can see why you have trouble getting dates with that winning personality of yours.”
Her back went up instantly. “I get asked out plenty, thank you.”
“So why aren’t you with someone?” His eyes pinned her. “You’re certainly attractive enough.”
“I could ask you the same thing,” she declared tersely, then did a mental double take as Dave’s second sentence registered in her head. “What did you just say?”
Dave obliged and repeated, “Why aren’t you with someone?”
Kara shook her head. “No, not that. The other part.”
He knew what she was referring to the first time around, but decided to draw this out, curious to see her response. “You have a mirror, you know what you look like.”
This caught her completely off guard. “You think I’m attractive?”
The last time he’d said anything about her looks, he’d said she had a face that not even a frog would want. He’d been eleven at the time and she’d just put a red-striped ribbon snake on his shoulder. He didn’t know they were harmless and it had scared the hell out of him until he heard her laughing. He’d been furious.
Maybe he’d said too much, he thought. Still, she really was a knockout. Especially in that outfit. “What I think doesn’t matter. Certain things are just self-evident.”
What did she say to something like that? If she thanked him, she might discover that it was all a gag. But if he was serious, then shouldn’t she say something?
Kara shook her head. “I have no idea what to make of you.”
She saw the corners of his mouth curve. “Good. It goes both ways.” Dave looked out on the fairgrounds. “So, what do you want to go on first? How about the Ferris wheel?” he suggested since they were standing only a few feet away from the ride.
She didn’t answer him immediately, which was highly unusual for her. Ordinarily, no one could get her to stop talking. At least, that was the case with the Kara he remembered.
Looking at her more closely, he noticed that she seemed uncomfortable. What was that all about? he wondered.
“What?” he prodded. “You don’t like riding on Ferris wheels?”
“They’re fine,” she retorted a little too quickly and a little too forcefully. “C’mon,” she declared, looking for all the world like someone who had made up her mind to face a firing squad with bravado. “Let’s go.”
“Wait a second.” Grabbing her arm, he pulled her back and held her in place. He knew that look in her eyes. That was definitely fear. He put two and two together. “Are you afraid of heights?”
“No!” she cried angrily.
“You are, aren’t you?” It seemed incredible. She’d always been fearless to the point of being reckless. He tried to make sense of it. “But you used to climb trees like a monkey.”
She frowned, turning away. When he looked at her, she felt as if he could see right into her. “Very flattering image.”
She wasn’t denying it, which meant he’d guessed right. “What happened to change that?”
She shrugged, still avoiding his eyes. “I found out I can’t fly.”
The woman had to learn how not to talk in code. “Care to explain that?”
She looked at him resentfully. Why was he poking at her sore points? She hated admitting a weakness. Hated being shackled by fears. “I fell out of a tree, okay? I’ve been a little leery of high places ever since then. Satisfied?” she challenged.
“Okay, we don’t have to go on the Ferris wheel.”
Oh no, she wasn’t falling for that trap. “What? And have you hold it over me? No, thank you. We are going on the Ferris wheel.” Grabbing his hand, she pulled him after her as she deliberately walked toward the end of the line for the ride.
She didn’t get very far because he wasn’t about to allow himself to be dragged along. “What are you, twelve? If you’re afraid to go on, we don’t have to go on. Plenty of other things to do here. It’s not like it’s the only ride.”
She was not going to wimp out. Kara was determined to be brave.
“I’m facing my fears,” she announced between clenched teeth. But despite her yanking at his arm, he wasn’t budging. “Now what?” she demanded.
“I changed my mind.” His tone was simple, but anyone could see he was not a man who was about to be budged. “I don’t want to go on the Ferris wheel.”
She began to say something terse, then relented. Maybe this was his way of giving her a way out. She let go of his arm and stepped back to look at him.
“You know,” she began slowly, almost shyly, “if I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were being nice.”
Dave looked at her, and the moment felt strung out in time, moving toward infinity. It didn’t help. All he could think about was her. About the way her lips had felt beneath his. The way her body, all soft curves, had yielded against his.
Damn if he didn’t feel a pull within him. With effort, Dave shut out the surge of desire that threatened to overrun him.
“But you know better, don’t you?” he asked quietly.
Before she could answer, they heard someone screaming for help. Turning, they saw a distraught-looking woman running in their general direction with a child in her arms. The little boy—he couldn’t have been any older than six—was bleeding from a gash on his forehead. His eyes, usually the liveliest part of a boy’s face, were shut.
“Help me!” the woman cried desperately as she ran, looking around wildly. “Someone please help me!”
Before Kara could do anything, Dave quickly moved in front of the woman, causing her to stop in her tracks.
“I’m a doctor,” he told her, his eyes never leaving hers. “Can you tell me what happened?” His voice was calm, soothing, in order to pull the woman back from the brink of hysteria.
Suddenly, the woman all but melted before him, her legs giving way as if they couldn’t support her any longer. Dave caught the little boy before she could drop him. At the same time, Kara grabbed the woman, keeping her reasonably upright.
“It’s okay, I’ve got you,” she told the woman, doing her best to mimic Dave’s tone. “Tell us what happened,” she repeated.
By now people were beginning to gather around them, drawn by the woman’s cries and the drama that was unfolding.
The woman looked at them, wild-eyed, as if she couldn’t believe what was happening herself. “He was running ahead of me and he tripped and hit his head on the side of a cart. I told him not to run, I told him,” she insisted frantically.
“Kids don’t always listen,” Dave assured her, his voice still low. He needed to keep her talking. “Go on,” he urged while he continued working on the boy, pressing a clean handkerchief against the gash on his forehead.
The woman swallowed. She was beginning to shake. She was going into shock, Dave thought.
“There was so much blood.” Her eyes filled with tears. “When I got to him, he wasn’t moving. I can’t get him to open his eyes. Why can’t I get him to open his eyes?” she demanded hysterically, her voice cracking as she looked to Dave for an answer.
But it was Kara who answered her. “It’s going to be all right.” She continued holding on to the woman. Her voice was low, comforting. Unshakable. “Don’t worry, he’s in very good hands.”
As she said it, she looked at Dave, silently raising an eyebrow, waiting for him to say something. He’d place
d the boy down on the grass on his back and was checking him for a pulse. The slight nod told Kara he’d found it.
Glancing up at the woman, he asked, “What’s your son’s name, ma’am?”
It took her a moment to pull her thoughts together. “Um, Kyle. His name’s Kyle. Kyle Taylor.” Her breathing was growing erratic. “Is he going to be all right?”
“He’s going to be fine,” Kara assured her, cutting in, afraid that Dave would say something practical and conservative, hedging his bets. It wasn’t something the woman was up to hearing. “You have to calm down,” she told her. “He’s going to need his mom to be there for him when he opens his eyes.”
The woman hiccuped, as if repressing a flood of tears, then nodded.
“All right,” she murmured. “All right.” Her eyes never left her son’s inert body on the ground.
Dave pulled out his cell phone. Tucking it against his shoulder and neck, he quickly placed a call for an ambulance while he worked to stop the blood from oozing out of the boy’s head wound.
“Wake up, baby, please wake up,” the woman begged her unconscious son. The boy’s eyes remained closed, and the woman’s panic grew.
The paramedics arrived within minutes. In short order, the boy was strapped onto a gurney and placed inside the rear of the ambulance, his mother beside him.
“Maybe you’d better come along with us, Doc,” one of the paramedics suggested. It was obvious from his manner that he knew Dave. “We’re short an EMT this run.”
Under normal circumstances, Dave would have complied without hesitation. But he wasn’t alone today. He couldn’t just leave Kara behind without a second thought. Dave looked at her quizzically now.
She knew what he was asking and had to admit, if only to herself, that she was pleasantly surprised at this unexpected act of thoughtfulness. He really wasn’t such a bad guy after all.
“Go,” she told him, her gesture reinforcing her words. “Don’t worry about me.”
Nodding, Dave climbed aboard and took a seat beside Kyle’s distraught mother. When the ambulance doors closed, the last thing he saw was Kara, standing where he’d left her, watching the ambulance as it pulled away from the fairgrounds.
He had no idea why that struck him as so melancholy. With a shake of his head, he turned his attention to his patient.
It took a while to stabilize the boy and to stop the bleeding. When Kyle Taylor finally opened his eyes, several hours had passed. Dave had ordered a C.T. scan of his head to confirm that he’d sustained only a minor concussion and that there was no brain damage, minimal or otherwise. In between, he found himself reassuring the boy’s mother and wishing that Kara was around. She seemed to be able to handle the woman better.
It wasn’t exactly the way he’d intended on spending his day off. When he was finally finished, Dave walked out into the parking lot toward where he usually parked his car. And then he remembered. His car wasn’t here. It was still parked at the fair.
At least, that was where he’d left it. Which was why he was surprised to actually see it parked in the lot near the E.R. exit. And even more surprised to see Kara leaning against the hood like a model waiting for the photographer to get busy and earn his keep.
Curiosity had Dave picking up his pace as he crossed to his car. And her.
“What’s up, Doc?” Kara grinned. “Sorry. I always wanted to say that.” Straightening, she stood back from the vehicle. “I was beginning to give up hope that they’d ever let you out. The boy okay?” she asked.
“He’s asking for ice cream and saying he wants to go back to the fair, so yes, he’s okay. I’m not so sure about his mother. I’m keeping him overnight for observation. His mother’s staying with him.” He couldn’t hold it back any longer. “What are you doing here?”
“Talking to you,” she answered innocently, then said more seriously, “And I thought you might want your car. I was pretty sure they weren’t going to bring you back in that ambulance.”
“Good call.” He frowned, still mystified. “I didn’t give you the keys.” As if to prove it to himself, he felt his pockets—and found the outline of his car keys.
“No,” she agreed, “you didn’t.”
She knew what he was asking her, he thought, but he put it into words anyway. “Then how did you get the car here?”
The grin on her lips was pure mischief, he couldn’t help noting. And damn if it wasn’t getting to him. Big-time.
“How to change the oil and jump-start a car weren’t the only things my dad taught me,” she told him, her eyes shining.
Chapter Ten
Dave would have been the first to admit that his memory of Kara’s father was rather vague at this point, but he was pretty sure he remembered the man being easygoing and likable. Neil Calhoun hadn’t struck him as the kind of man who would have passed on this sort of larcenous knowledge to his daughter.
“Your father taught you how to break into a car and hot-wire it?” he asked incredulously.
“That’s all a matter of your point of view,” she replied. “What my dad taught me was how to get into my car and start it if for some reason I lost my car keys and found myself stranded somewhere. As it happens, the procedure is pretty much the same for all standard cars.”
He supposed her explanation sounded a bit more plausible, as well as in keeping with what he remembered of her father’s character. But he was also having a little trouble accepting another piece of this puzzle that was Kara Calhoun.
“And you’ve been waiting here all this time for me to come out?” He found that really hard to believe, given how much they rubbed each other the wrong way.
“Had to,” she told him innocently.
“You had to,” he repeated incredulously. This he had to hear, Dave thought. “Why?”
“Because you’re my ride home,” she answered with a straight face. “A girl always goes home with the guy who brought her.”
That sounded like something his mother would say. Or hers. Which brought him to another question.
“What about our mothers?” Because everything happened so abruptly, he’d left the park without letting his mother know he wouldn’t be there to have lunch with her. It hadn’t even occurred to him until now—and he knew his mother had a tendency to worry.
“I found them and let them know what happened—not that I had to,” Kara told him. She saw him raise a quizzical eyebrow, debated stringing it out, then took pity on him and explained, “Story’s already spreading around the fairgrounds. ‘Local Doctor Saves Kid.’ Our mothers put two and two together before I ever found them to say that you were off being super-doctor.”
He supposed his stepping up as the situation occurred had ruined what she’d had in mind. But for someone who’d suffered a setback, she certainly looked pretty chipper about it.
“What about your great plan to teach them a lesson?” he asked.
Oddly enough, that was going perfectly. “Oh, as far as they’re concerned, that’s still moving forward,” she assured him. “I told them I was coming to bring you your car and that I was going to wait for you until you finished taking care of the boy. Your mother wanted me to tell you that she’s very proud of you.”
Kara opened the car door on the passenger side, but instead of getting in, she asked him, “Are you hungry?”
Breakfast was a misty memory. He didn’t even remember what he’d had. Then he’d been too busy with the boy from the fairgrounds to stop for lunch and now it was close to dinnertime. He saw no reason to pretend that he wasn’t close to starving.
“I could eat,” he allowed.
“Good.” She bent over and reached into the passenger side. Straightening, she emerged with a foam container, the kind restaurant leftovers were usually packed in.
The
instant he smelled food, his stomach began to cramp up, protesting its empty state. Nodding at the container, he asked her, “What’s that?”
“Food,” she answered simply. “I figured even heroes have to eat.”
Opening the lid, he saw that she’d brought him one of those fast-food chain specialty burgers that were a limited-time offer. Currently out, this one threatened to disappear from the menu in the next thirty days. Somehow, that was supposed to make it more desirable to the consumer, and right now it was working.
“I’m not a hero,” Dave told her, rejecting the label she’d just awarded him.
Kara smiled. He was surprised at how sunny that smile seemed. “You are to Kyle’s mother.”
Dave shrugged, unfazed. Turning sideways, he sat down in the passenger seat. As he bit into the cheeseburger, a look of sheer contentment came over his face.
Watching him, amused, Kara asked, “Tastes damn good, huh?”
As a doctor, he should know better. After all, this came under the heading of junk food, but right now he didn’t care.
“When you’re really hungry, there’s nothing better,” he confessed, taking another bite. For a second, he closed his eyes, relishing the taste.
Kara smiled, watching him eat for a moment. He really seemed to be enjoying that. She was glad she’d thought to stop and get him something.
“You know,” she told him genially, “you’re not as much of a dork as I thought you were.”
She’d almost kept that to herself, thinking it might give him something to use against her, to poke fun at her. But then she told herself she couldn’t go through life being paranoid, and besides, maybe it was time to hold out an olive branch to Dave. One of them had to be the bigger person and take the first step. And, after all, he had done a pretty selfless thing.
Dave slanted a glance toward her. “Thanks. I think.”
“Hey, I don’t mind giving credit where it’s deserved,” she told him. She had a hunch he’d be expecting a little of the “old” Kara to remain within the new, updated version. “Why don’t you get in and I’ll drive so you can finish eating your cheeseburger?” she suggested.
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