“It was flighty and unreliable, and you still had to pick up the slack and be responsible to make up for it.”
“Yeah,” she admitted. “I don’t know...maybe being with him—somebody my parents would have been thrilled with—was my tribute to them so soon after they died. Or maybe it was so much like the way things were when I was growing up that it was comforting, somehow, when I’d just lost them. But the longer it went on, the more I knew I didn’t want to be with Cal or in California anymore, either. That was when I decided to go back to Northbridge.”
Beau nodded sagely, apparently finding that story not as difficult to hear as he’d anticipated. “And back in Northbridge you had another Northbridge romance?” he asked, with a bit of that edge back in his tone, as if he was the only person she was allowed to be romanced by in the small town.
But that was where her second serious relationship had been, so Kyla nodded. “I got involved with Northbridge’s former city treasurer—Alden Briggs. Divorced. Two kids he used to have custody of...”
“Former city treasurer and kids he used to have custody of? Do the two go hand in hand?”
“Kind of. At least he said that losing them both was my fault,” she confessed with a hint of chagrin.
“Why?”
“We met at a back-to-school night the first year I started teaching in Northbridge. His youngest was in second grade, but our paths crossed and things clicked. The next day Alden called and asked me out. And I said yes. I thought he was great—a single dad making sure he did everything right for his kids, conscientious and family oriented—”
“With that family you wanted already started.”
“Right. I liked his kids—a boy and a girl—and they liked me. We had as many family outings as dates and everything seemed good.” In fact, Alden had seemed like the first person to measure up to Beau.
“Until?”
“Until I realized that Alden wasn’t just a conscientious parent—he was kind of a tyrant. Those poor kids had to toe the line. Mud on their shoes was a crisis because they were so worried that it would rock the boat with their father. I tried to talk to Alden, to get him to ease up, but he just got mad at me. He said his ex-wife had been lax, too, and that didn’t fly with him. He ran a tight ship—his words—and that was the best way, and that’s all there was to it.”
Kyla wasn’t sure if Beau saw the similarities between what she was describing and the way he seemed to like things. He didn’t comment on it to agree or disagree that that was how things should be.
“Anyway,” she continued, “as much like my parents as Cal turned out to be, Alden was too much not like them. I just ended up feeling sorry for his kids. Somehow that got back to the kids’ mother after I broke it off with him—you know, word travels in a small town. Alden hadn’t told me his ex-wife was still battling for custody, and the ex’s attorney subpoenaed my testimony at the hearing. I had to say what I’d seen—that the kids were more afraid to mess up than actually well-behaved—and his ex ended up getting custody back.”
“Was that bad?”
“I think it was good for the kids—I didn’t see or hear anything about their mother that made me think there was something wrong with her, she just hadn’t been a match for Alden’s iron fist in the courts during the first custody hearing any more than his kids—or I—had been a match for it outside of them.”
“She hadn’t been a match for him until she had you as ammunition, anyway.”
Kyla confirmed that with a shrug. “But the whole thing was ugly and I ended up in the middle of it. Alden was convinced that losing custody made him look bad to voters, so when he lost the next election for treasurer he blamed me for that, too. Like I said, it all got ugly. I was relieved when he moved to Billings.”
“And that was all when?”
“About a year ago.”
“There hasn’t been anybody since then?”
“No. I thought I’d take a little time. Alden sort of shot a hole through what I thought I wanted and I needed to sort that out—”
“How so?”
“Well, Alden seemed great. Exactly what I was looking for—the opposite of what I grew up with. A devoted father, family oriented. Organized, settled, reliable. But being with him made me realize that there might be a little of my parents in me—I don’t want things too shipshape—”
“But there has to be a firm foundation. Rules and guidelines, codes of conduct.”
Of course he would say that.
“Rules are okay, but I don’t think being bound to anything, at all costs, is good. Especially when there are kids involved,” she argued.
“If you tell fifteen-year-old Immy her curfew is ten o’clock but that she isn’t bound to that, she’ll come home whenever she pleases—you know that, right? Kids test boundaries. And anything you’re wishy-washy about is a battle you’ll be on the losing end of.”
“I’m going to try not to look at raising Immy as waging war,” she said. Then, pointing to herself she added, “Not a marine—or a city treasurer, either—remember?”
Beau laughed. “You know, I’ve always heard that comparison made—marines, small-town city treasurers, exactly the same...”
“Maybe not exactly,” she said, as if the distinction was minimal.
“Because, after all, not even good old Alden was me,” he said with some exaggerated cockiness, as if that’s what she’d meant.
“I don’t know...” she said to take him down a peg. “Alden might have been a little too much the you you are now.”
“And you don’t like me now?” he challenged, still cocky.
“Hmm...rugby in sweltering heat yesterday, gluttony today... Those do seem to help, but—”
“Gluttony? You’re the one who overate. I told you, I’ve learned to pace myself.”
“Oh, yeah, that’s true. The march of the wooden soldier,” she said, doing a mock stilted march with her shoulders, stiffly thrusting them back and forth.
Until she realized that Beau’s gaze went from her shoulders to the breasts she was thrusting forward, too...
She stopped and his eyes met hers again. One brow rose in challenge as he pivoted in her direction on the couch. “You want me to speed things up?”
She wasn’t sure what things he was talking about.
Although those two kisses that had left her wanting more the night before came to mind as he bent forward enough so that she had to lean back to keep her distance.
“Because if you don’t like the pace...” he said “...I can do something about that.”
She hadn’t meant to do anything sexy. Anything tempting or teasing or alluring or inviting. She really hadn’t.
But there she was, with his ruggedly sculpted face not far from hers, and even though she planned to tell him she’d just been making a joke, she didn’t. Not when suddenly the only thing she could think about was him kissing her again.
In fact, all she could make herself do was raise her chin at him as if she were issuing a challenge of her own.
A challenge that everything in her was screaming for him to accept...
Which he did.
He closed the distance between them as his mouth found hers again. There was nothing sweet or gentle about his kiss tonight. It was a kiss from a man who knew how to kiss and wasn’t shy about doing it.
His lips were parted, and after a moment, so were hers. A moment that went on for just so long before mouths drifted open a little more and his tongue came to show techniques he certainly hadn’t had at seventeen. Techniques that canceled every thought, every voice in Kyla’s head that advised her not to do this, and left her merely kissing him back, meeting every game his tongue initiated and beginning one or two of her own.
Somewhere along the way she slipped down until her head was on the arm of the sofa and her arms went around him—around those broad shoulders her eyes loved to feast on—and she laid her hands to his back, hating the brace on her right that blocked full contact and barely re
gistering any pain in fingers that pressed into him despite it.
She marveled at the feel of improvements to his hard and unyielding body she’d only been able to look at before this.
His arms went underneath her, around her, his mouth opened wider and the kiss deepened as his hands splayed on her back, too.
Big hands she could feel the strength in. Hands that were so much more confident than they’d been the last time he’d touched her.
Hands that coursed over every inch of her back. That rubbed their way down to her hips, then up again in a massage that turned her own muscles to putty and made her yearn for that same thing in front...
But she knew that yearning for anything was dangerous and after letting it go on awhile longer—just because she couldn’t make herself stop something so, so good—she took her arms from around him and laid her left palm to his chest.
Granted, it was only feebly at first, because she couldn’t resist spending a little time learning the glorious feel of that, too, but then she reminded herself that she’d inadvertently started this and it was up to her to finish it. She used her uninjured hand to push him up.
And up he went, far enough to move to the side slightly and drop his forehead to the couch arm beside hers as he muttered in a deep, raspy voice, “Okay...breaking my own code of conduct already.”
“Your own code of conduct?”
“That’s what should have kept that from happening after you already told me no last night.”
Had she told him no?
He sat up, moved away. “You said it wasn’t a good idea,” he reminded her.
She had. But that had seemed to her more like an observation than a no...
“You said that I should behave,” he added.
And of course he’d taken that as laying down the law.
“I guess I did say that,” she agreed.
“So I swore to myself I wouldn’t kiss you again.”
Kyla was torn between knowing she should tell him to make sure he didn’t and just wanting to be kissing him again right that minute.
“It’s probably not smart for either of us,” she said without a drop of conviction.
“Probably not,” he responded without any more of it himself before he said softly, “And I’m trying to care about that, but I’m not having much luck.”
She smiled to herself. But she also knew that if she didn’t get up, if she didn’t move farther away from him, they could easily lapse into making out the way they had as teenagers.
And she wasn’t sure where that might go.
So she sat up and swung her feet to the floor, breathing a long, deep sigh.
“I’m not behaving any better than you are, but we should probably try to,” she said.
“Probably,” he confirmed.
Probably, probably, probably...
But she had the impression that he wasn’t taking anything as law tonight because he was agreeing without really committing.
“Northbridge tomorrow,” she said then.
“The flight plan has us leaving about an hour and a half after Immy usually gets up in the morning. We use a private hangar, so we don’t have to get there too much before that.”
Kyla nodded. They’d packed while Immy napped that afternoon. “Darla got a sub for school so she can stay home and help me with the stuff at the apartment if you’ll keep Immy with you.”
“Sure. But if you need my help I can take care of her at your apartment.”
Kyla knew she had to talk to her friend alone. Maybe Darla could give her some perspective on what was going on when it came to Beau, some tools to resist what was urging her right at that moment to just get him to kiss her again.
So she said, “Darla’s help will be enough if you’ll keep Immy.”
“Okay.”
Kyla stood to go.
But with one catch of her hand, one tug of her down toward him, he was kissing her again—tongue and all—and she had to fight not to collapse on top of him.
Then he ended the kiss and let go of her.
“Sleep well,” he said, his voice raspy again.
“You, too,” she answered, knowing it was unlikely for her.
Because she was so confused and baffled and bewildered by what was happening in her when it came to him.
And whatever it all was, it didn’t feel like kid stuff.
Which was the scariest thing of all.
Chapter Seven
“It’s like hooking up with an old high school boyfriend at a class reunion—you relive some of the past, you get to be nostalgic and feel a little rush, and it might be fun for the reunion weekend. But after that you have to go back to real life. And in real life, you’re just not looking for someone as rigid as it sounds like this guy is, Kyla, so where can anything with him go?”
“Nowhere,” Kyla answered Darla’s question definitively.
They’d been packing since Kyla had arrived in Northbridge that morning. Seth Camden had been waiting at the airport in Billings when the Camden family plane landed and after the drive to the much smaller town, he’d dropped Kyla off at her apartment before taking Beau and Immy on to the ranch.
Kyla hadn’t held anything back in telling Darla what was going on with Beau. She’d confessed her attraction to him but also made it clear that she knew she needed to resist that attraction and all the reasons why.
As always the raven-haired, dark-eyed Darla was supportive. And patient, because as the afternoon began to wane and most of Kyla’s belongings were loaded into the trunk of her small sedan, Kyla realized that she’d spent the entire time with her friend talking primarily about Beau. Yes, she’d also discussed Immy and the changes she was facing in her life and all she needed to take care of for Immy’s future, but still everything had somehow circled back to Beau.
“Right—nothing with him can go anywhere,” Darla confirmed as they sat at the kitchen table. “On the other hand,” her friend said, “you seem kind of fixated on the guy—”
“Fixated?”
“Fixated, obsessed, infatuated... If I had a nickel for every time you’ve said his name today I could pay next month’s rent. Without any help from a roommate.”
“I know,” Kyla lamented. “You’d think with all I have going on now with Immy and dealing with her inheritance and becoming a single parent and having my whole life shaken up, that it wouldn’t be this guy who’s on my mind nonstop.”
“You’d think,” Darla agreed. “But apparently he is. And since he is...I don’t know. Maybe he’s unfinished business for you and you have to finish it.”
“By cutting it off with him?” Kyla said. “My wrist is getting better, so I’ll be able to do everything with Immy soon, and I know I can move into your sister’s place in Denver anytime.”
Darla had told Kyla just this morning that her sister had decided to move in with her boyfriend and needed someone to take over her Denver apartment for the last three months of the lease.
“But I still need some guidance and tutoring to deal with Immy’s inheritance,” Kyla continued. “So I’ll have to have something to do with Beau for a while longer.”
“Actually, no, I don’t mean you should just cut it off with him. I mean that maybe it’s like when you’re wishing for peanut butter, you know? You can’t stop wishing for it until you get some. Maybe you have to get some of this guy before you can close the book on your feelings for him.”
Kyla laughed. “Get some?”
“Maybe. Like the peanut butter—what do you do every time?”
“I buy a jar, eat a couple of spoonfuls—”
“And then the rest of the jar sits around until I’ve finished it.”
“Because after I’ve satisfied the craving I don’t want any more,” Kyla concluded.
“Things never got finished with this guy,” Darla went on. “You thought you had reason to hate him and that sort of put an end to it. But now you’ve found out that you didn’t have a reason to hate him and maybe that’s pu
t it all back to being unfinished. And the fact that he’s so hot, well, that just makes it worse. Maybe if you have a few spoonfuls of that peanut butter, you can get past the past and see through his hotness the way you saw through how perfect you thought Alden was. And then you can stop fixating and just move on—regardless of what you need him for, for the business and financial stuff.”
Kyla laughed again. “That’s not advice I expected you to give me.”
“I can’t even find a way to make you stop talking about him and I know how you are when you need peanut butter, so I don’t know what else to tell you. Get some.”
They both laughed at that.
Then Kyla said, “But what if he’s chocolate and not peanut butter?”
“Oh, then you’re in trouble and I guess you better buy marching boots and learn to say yes sir.”
Kyla grimaced at that option. “We’re really not right for each other,” she repeated, as much to herself as to Darla.
“But I don’t think you’re going to really be able to embrace that until you have those spoonfuls.”
Kyla sighed audibly and stood to go. “You were supposed to talk me off the ledge,” she complained.
Darla shrugged helplessly. “I can’t ever talk you out of buying that whole jar of peanut butter, what made you think I’d be able to talk you out of this?”
“Yeah, well, you weren’t supposed to talk me into it, either.”
“I didn’t talk you into it. I just presented the maybes.”
“Maybe you just got me into more trouble.”
“Then don’t do it. Maybe you’ll just stop fixating on him any minute now...”
There was a taunt in that because they both knew it was unlikely.
* * *
“I was beginning to think you were hiding, marine, scared of what I’m about to show you,” Kyla said to Beau when he finally came out of the rear of the ranch’s main house at eight thirty that night.
Kyla had arrived from her apartment at five twenty and Beau had walked her to her room at the ranch. She’d showered and changed into clean clothes—a pair of black twill capri pants and a white tank top with braided straps that crossed in back. Then she’d joined Beau, his brother Seth and Seth’s very pregnant wife, Lacey, for dinner poolside.
Her Baby and Her Beau Page 13