Rescued by Mr. Wrong

by Cynthia Thomason

  He turned away from the coffeemaker to stare at her. “Carrie, if you want to know who I was talking to, why don’t you just ask?”

  “Okay. Who were you talking to?”

  “My son. He lives in Seattle. And again I just spent another Christmas away from him.”

  “That can’t be easy.”

  “It’s not, but over the years I’ve missed plenty of holidays, and I’ve got no one to blame but myself.” He pressed the button on the coffee brewer. “You want a cup? It’s decaf.”

  “Sure, thanks. And, Keegan...?”

  “What?”

  “You must be divorced from the boy’s mother, right?”

  “That’s a logical assumption.”

  “Did she not invite you to spend Christmases with your son? Did she keep him from coming to see you?”

  He frowned, and she hoped she hadn’t crossed a boundary of privacy. But he seemed like he was having a tough time with missing his son.

  “My ex-wife isn’t an unreasonable person,” he said. “I’m just not Daddy-of-the-year material. Let’s leave it at that.”

  Wow. Keegan’s conversation with his son had been short and almost awkward. Yet his voice had been comforting, his tone almost sweet. If she had to guess—and since he wasn’t going to say anything else, what other choice did she have—she concluded that he had genuine feelings for his son.

  “Okay,” she said. “Conversation closed. You take the bed. I’ll sleep fine on the sofa.”

  “Never mind.” He took a long sip of coffee and brought a mug to her. “I won’t be sleeping much tonight anyway.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  KEEGAN’S CELL PHONE rang early the next morning. He answered it right away and spoke in a near whisper, obviously trying to keep from disturbing Carrie in the bedroom. His voice was alert, as if he’d been awake a long time, or perhaps, as he’d said, hadn’t slept much at all.

  “Oh, hello, Grady,” he said. “No, she’s not up yet, and I don’t want to disturb her.”

  “It’s all right,” Carrie called out. “I’m awake.” She glanced at the bedroom clock. Eight o’clock. Sunlight streamed through the window blinds promising a beautiful day, just what she’d hoped for.

  Keegan’s head appeared in the opening of the bedroom door. “Can I come in?”

  “Of course.”

  He entered the room, and she sat up against the pillows. She pulled a comforter over her sleeveless nightgown and placed her arms over the top, wrapping herself in a modest cocoon. The only times she had been this underdressed with a man had not turned out well for her. She lightly clasped the amethyst amulet she always wore around her neck, appreciating its smooth familiarity.

  Keegan smiled while his gaze grew more intense. “Warm enough?” he said.

  She brushed bangs from her eyes and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “I’m good. That’s the car mechanic on the phone, isn’t it?”

  “Yep. Hold on. I’ll put him on speaker.” Keegan pressed the appropriate button. “Go on, Grady. Carrie’s listening.”

  “We’ve got a problem,” the mechanic said. “I checked the car out thoroughly yesterday but couldn’t figure out why it wouldn’t start. Finally found the problem. The impact destroyed the steering box.”

  Carrie leaned forward in the bed. “That sounds bad.”

  “It’s not good,” Grady said. “Without a steering box, you can’t...well, I guess it’s obvious. Unfortunately this is not a universal gizmo. I’ve had to contact the foreign automaker and order a replacement. Once it gets here, I don’t know how long it will take me to get the car running again. I’ve never exchanged this particular part before.”

  “I see.” Carrie stared at Keegan, trying to judge his patience barometer. Was this news already ruining his day? She’d taken a week off from her job, so she wouldn’t be expected back in Michigan until after the coming weekend. But that might be too long for Keegan to put up with her.

  “When can we expect the part to arrive?” she asked.

  “Depends how far they have to look to find one. Apparently these things never break down.”

  “But mine did,” she said.

  “Yes, yours did. Plus we’re still in the midst of holiday season. Car-part places may be closed or at least working with partial staff, the mail might be slow. Worst-case scenario, we might have to order one from France. Still, I can’t imagine not having you on the road by the end of the week.”

  A nice prediction, but Grady didn’t know that she wasn’t supposed to drive with a broken leg. Keegan was obviously thinking about that diagnosis. Why else would he be frowning? Maybe he was thinking that since the roads were better today, she had no reason not to call her family—no reason that he knew anyway.

  Today was only Tuesday. Maybe, by some miracle, her leg would heal well enough for her to drive. She believed she could handle a car using the foot with the walking boot attached. But apparently she wouldn’t have a chance to try until week’s end. She was content to stay in the cabin until Friday or Saturday at least and then determine her course of action. Drive or not drive? She stared at Keegan again. The frown was gone, but she feared he might be doing a mental ten count.

  “Do what you have to do,” she instructed. “I can give you a credit card number if it will help.”

  “No need. I’ll order the part and try to put a rush on the shipping. If you’re a friend of Keegan’s, I’m sure you’re good for it.”

  A friend of Keegan’s? Was she, or was she fast becoming his worst nightmare?

  “Thanks, Grady,” Keegan said. He disconnected, slipped the phone in the pocket of his flannel shirt. She thought he would have a comment on what Grady had said, but instead, he asked, “Are you hungry yet?”

  “I could eat. Actually, maybe I could even cook breakfast for both of us today. I don’t like to be waited on.” She was willing to do anything that might make her appear less of a burden.

  He took a step closer to the bed. She instinctively tightened her arms over the comforter. He smiled. “Let me fix breakfast this time,” he said. “Maybe tomorrow you can do it.”

  “That’s very nice of you.” How formal! She sounded like she was talking to a waiter in a restaurant. But in reality she was talking to a man who stood mere feet from her bed, his bed. For all her innocent flirting, and too many men had accused her of just that, she’d never been this close to a man in his bedroom before. Flirting was one thing. But she’d always been careful not to let it go too far. As much as she liked men, she’d learned the hard way that she wasn’t ready for an intimate relationship.

  Seemingly unbothered by her discomfort, Keegan came closer. When he reached the side of the mattress, he leaned down and lightly touched the bandage he’d put on her forehead the day before.

  Carrie flinched, drawing away from him.

  “Did that hurt?” he asked, concern thick in his voice.

  “No. It’s okay. I just...” She didn’t know where she was going with that sentence.

  “I have to change the bandage again,” he said. “Unless you think you can do it. But you’ll have to use a mirror, and the only one I have is in the bathroom. You’ll have to stand.”

  Don’t be ridiculous, Carrie, she told herself. She’d thrust herself into this man’s life, basing her hasty decision on intuition and about thirty minutes of conversation. He’d done nothing to indicate that he wasn’t the man she’d believed him to be—a bit grumpy, a loner, but basically a moral individual.

  She sighed, relaxed. This was Keegan’s house. She wanted to stay here, but she’d have to stop acting like she was afraid of her own shadow. When was she ever going to forget the past...or at least learn to live with it? “No, you change it, please.”

  He raised a corner of the gauze, his finger grazing the skin above her eyeb
row. She sucked in a quick, panicky breath.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked. “You seem so jumpy.” He stood straight. “Good grief, Carrie, you don’t think I’m going to hurt you? I would never...”

  “No, of course not. I don’t think that.” It’s just that someone else did.

  “I’ll get started on breakfast,” he said. “And change the bandage after we eat. You come out when you’re ready.” He left, closing the door to give her privacy.

  Carrie snuggled into the covers again and closed her eyes. She didn’t want to think about that other time, the time her father had been right. The time another male voice had whispered urgently in her ear, “I’m not going to hurt you, Carrie.”

  Thirteen years earlier...

  “Come on, Carrie, it’ll be fun.”

  The boy who clasped her arm with a proprietary authority was her dream date. In fact, he was everyone’s dream date, and he’d picked her, a lowly sophomore, to take to the movies one fateful night. Mark Adelson would soon be leaving for Ohio State and he wanted to get to know her—Carrie Foster—before he left town. Besides being incredibly handsome and funny and everything she’d ever admired in a guy, he was the son of one of the most renowned defense attorneys in Cleveland and therefore would probably be viewed by her parents as an ideal boyfriend.

  They’d attended the movie where Mark hadn’t done more than hold her hand. But afterward he’d stopped at a friend’s house where an unsupervised party was going on.

  He tugged her gently to the top of the stairs in his friend’s Colonial mini-mansion in Fox Creek. When they’d first arrived at the party, she’d looked around for the parents, knowing her own parents would have insisted on chaperones, but they’d been nowhere in sight. Now she realized she was alone with about fifty partying seniors.

  Mark took another pull from his second beer. “Let me show you the house,” he said. “It’s got six bedrooms.” He gave her a sly, suggestive smile. She tried to smile back but instead bit her bottom lip.

  Mark knocked lightly on the first door with his knuckles. A masculine voice called out, “Occupied.” Mark continued down the hall to the next bedroom. The door was partially opened, and he slipped inside, pulling Carrie behind him. She supposed the room was tastefully decorated like the rest of the house, but truly she didn’t see much beyond the full-size bed in the center of the room.

  Mark shut the door. He didn’t bother flicking on the light switch, instead he guided her into the room by scant moonlight coming in the pair of windows.

  “Isn’t this great?” he said. “I can finally be alone with you. It’s all I’ve been thinking about since I picked you up.”

  All she could think about was that his strong grip had dropped from her arm. She took a step away from him. “Did you like the movie?” she asked. That seemed a safe topic.

  He quickly erased the distance she’d put between them. “Sure, but this is better, don’t you think?” His finger slipped under her spaghetti strap and lowered the dainty material to her upper arm. She felt exposed, vulnerable, though she was still covered in the beautiful light green dress she and her mom had picked out for this special first date.

  “I don’t think so, Maggie,” her father had said two weeks before when she told her parents about Mark asking her out. “She’s not old enough. Besides, what do we really know about this Adelson boy?”

  Carrie had been surprised and she said so. “What do you mean, Daddy? You know all about his father,” she’d said. “They’re a good family.”

  “That may be so, but I’m worried about you, at your age, going with a boy two years older. There can be a world of difference between a sixteen-year-old and a high school graduate.”

  Carrie had pleaded with her mother. “Talk to him, Mom. I’ll be absolutely mortified if I have to tell him my parents wouldn’t let me go. And I want to go more than anything I’ve ever wanted in my life. Mark is the most popular boy in the senior class and he picked me!”

  Maggie Foster, always the calm, sensible one, said, “Give us some details, Carrie. What movie theater are you going to? What time will you be home?”

  “It’s the Twenty-four Plex,” Carrie said. “The movie is over at eleven. But Mark said we might go out for something to eat after.”

  “Which means you won’t be home until very late,” Martin had said.

  “I think it will be all right, Martin,” Maggie said. “Carrie is a smart, responsible girl...”

  “I’m not worried about Carrie being responsible! What about her asthma? What if she has an attack?”

  “I’ll have my inhaler, Daddy! I’ll be fine.”

  He’d looked from his wife to his daughter and back again, apparently knowing he was going to lose this argument. “I want you home at midnight,” he said.

  “Midnight? Daddy, no.” Carrie got down on one knee in front of Martin’s chair. “One o’clock at least. We’ll just get to the restaurant and have to leave. That’s not enough time to even order food.”

  He sighed. “No drinking.”

  “No way. I’m sure Mark doesn’t drink. He’s all about sports.”

  Maggie had smiled, placed her hand on her husband’s shoulder. Looking at her daughter, she said, “Just be home by one, Carrie, and if this date is so important, maybe we can get you a new dress.”

  And now Carrie had the most unsettling feeling that her precious dress was going to be removed. She shivered, though it wasn’t cold.

  Carrie cupped the front of the dress to her chest to keep it from falling away, and then it happened. Her lungs felt like they were slamming shut. She couldn’t breathe. Horrible, scratchy noises came from her throat.

  “My inhaler...” she managed to say.

  She found her purse on the floor, rescued the inhaler and administered the medication. “I have to go,” she said when she could breathe again. “I’ll find my own way home.”

  While yanking her zipper halfway up her back, she ran out of the house to the curb by the road. She ignored the shouts from the kids in the yard, dug in her purse for her cell phone and called home.

  “Carrie, where are you? Are you all right?”

  Her father’s voice had never sounded better, like a light in the darkness. “Daddy, can you come and get me?”

  “Give me an address. I’m leaving now.”

  The rest of the night was a nightmare of trying to convince Martin not to call both the police and Mr. Adelson, not to report Mark to the principal of the high school. Carrie couldn’t bear that. She didn’t want to think about the kids in her class hearing this story, maybe even making fun of her. When she stumbled upstairs at nearly three in the morning, she knew she wasn’t ready for some of life’s tests. She’d been so stupid and naive and she’d vowed that night that her father would never see the bruises on her arm, or the emotional ones on the inside. And she wouldn’t rush growing up...

  Dressed in her sweatpants and a clean T-shirt, Carrie padded into Keegan’s kitchen a few minutes later. Wearing flannel pants and a gray Henley, Keegan looked relaxed. He brought a steaming bowl of oatmeal to the table and a plate stacked with buttered toast. How different this older, kinder man seemed. Keegan truly wanted to take care of her. He didn’t appear to have an agenda.

  “Hope this will fill you up,” he said, holding the chair for her.

  She added milk and sugar to the oatmeal and took a bite. “It’s delicious.”

  Keegan devoured his cereal in a few minutes while his gaze remained transfixed on the television.

  “What’s new in the world today?” she asked him.

  “What else? Strife, hatred, earthquakes, people running for their lives. It’s the world we live in these days.”

  Wow, didn’t he ever look for the good? She knew of a few news stations that actually counteracted the horrible pieces with t
ales of redemption and brotherly love. Apparently Keegan didn’t watch those stories. But he did watch the news, almost obsessively, she thought.

  She decided to distract him with conversation, but she knew so little about him that an appropriate topic didn’t come to mind. So she said, “Why don’t you see your son more often?”

  He stared at her a moment, as if the words “None of your business” sat on the tip of his tongue. But he said, “Because I don’t live with his mother, and Taylor does.”

  “How long were you married to his mother?”

  He raised his coffee mug to his lips and took a long swallow. “Ten years. We divorced nine years ago when Taylor was only four.”

  “I’m sorry. That must have been hard on everyone.”

  “Maybe, for a while. But it was the right decision. My ex-wife was all about the kid, you know. And I... Well, I had stuff going on in my life.” He stood and carried his bowl to the sink. When his back was toward her, he added, “I don’t blame my ex for any of it. Like I told you last night, I wouldn’t have won any mugs with World’s Best Dad printed on them.”

  And yet he’d admitted to calling the teenager twice a week. Obviously there was a strong connection.

  “How often do you see Taylor?” she asked.

  He looked over his shoulder. His face was grim as if he wasn’t sure he would answer. But then he did. “Last time was right before I moved here to the campground, over a year ago. I flew to Seattle for Taylor’s twelfth birthday.” Keegan picked up Carrie’s bowl. “I was glad I went, but it was awkward with the grandparents, aunts and uncles and all. Taylor has a lot of family there.”

  “And you? What about your family?”

  “My dad is...somewhere, I suppose. My mom died. I was an only child, something I’d always said I wouldn’t do to my own kid. Guess I failed on that promise.”

  She’d gone this far with the conversation and was actually pleased that Keegan had opened up this much. So she said, “But you’d like to see more of your son, right?”