by Gina Wilkins
She was dressed in the navy-and-lime athletic pants and T-shirt set. Her left foot was encased in a white sock, her right foot hidden within the bulky brace. Her red-and-gold hair tumbled around her shoulders in a casual, tousled manner, and she wore very little makeup, if any. It was hardly a seductive scene—and yet, he took one look at her and felt his throat close.
Resisting an almost overpowering impulse to join her on the bed, he moved, instead, to one of the chairs. “What’s on?” he asked gruffly, nodding toward the TV.
“A James Bond marathon. You Only Live Twice just ended and Die Another Day is just starting.”
“You like Bond movies?” he asked in surprise. He would have thought she’d have considered the series too violent and sexist.
“I love Bond movies. Shane got me hooked on them when I was a kid. I’ve seen them all—even the one with George Lazenby playing Bond.”
“But the ultimate Bond is, of course…” He left the sentence hanging, an obvious test.
She passed it with a confident chuckle. “Sean Connery. Duh. Followed very closely by Pierce Brosnan. Though the films with Roger Moore and Timothy Dalton were good—they were Bond movies, after all.”
Strangely enough, this casual conversation made him even more attracted to her than blatant flirtation could have. He was growing entirely too comfortable with her. Found himself enjoying her company too much, even when she completely exasperated him. He didn’t want to grow too close to her—and he sure as hell didn’t want to miss her when he went back to Tennessee without her.
Surely that couldn’t happen after only a few days with her. Right?
He’d have to make darned certain that it didn’t. Someone tapped on the motel room door. Wallet in hand, Kyle answered, paid the smiling young man for the pizza, added a generous tip, then closed the door and set the fragrant pizza box on the table. “I saw a soft-drink machine just down the walkway from your room. What kind do you want?”
“Diet soda is fine—doesn’t matter what kind.”
It amused him that someone who put away food the way Molly did always drank diet beverages, but he didn’t bother to comment. It took him only a few minutes to fetch a couple of sodas—diet for her, caffeine-free for himself—and then they dug into the pizza.
Sitting at opposite sides of the table, they lifted still-steaming slices to their mouths, strings of melted cheese trailing behind, thick sauce dripping over their fingers. It wasn’t a gourmet meal, and their surroundings were far from elegant, but it suited Kyle much more than any fancy restaurant. The pizza was good, but he suspected it was more the company that made this meal so enjoyable.
And that realization made him grumpy all over again. Molly didn’t seem to notice. She appeared to be having a great time, chattering like a magpie, watching the movie—and licking pizza sauce off her fingers in an unselfconsciously sexy manner that made Kyle almost choke on a pepperoni slice.
He’d noticed something slightly different in Molly’s manner toward him since he’d returned from his shower. He couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was—but her smiles seemed brighter and her voice breezier, more familiar in some way. She seemed to be almost studiedly casual with him, as if they’d spent many evenings sharing pizza and soft drinks in motel rooms.
Perhaps this was her way of ignoring the inherent awkwardness of the situation, he mused. By treating him like an old pal, she didn’t have to acknowledge even to herself that she was in any way uncomfortable with him.
Sounded like a good plan. One he should probably utilize himself. The problem was, not only did he find it impossible to feel like a brother to her, he found it increasingly annoying when she treated him like one.
There was only one slice of pizza left when both of them were too full to eat another bite. Carrying the rest of her cola with her, Molly hopped to the bed and settled back into the nest she’d made for herself earlier. She motioned toward the empty bed with one hand. “Might as well make yourself comfortable.”
He looked from her to the empty bed, then cleared his throat. “I think I’ll go on into my own room. I packed a book I’ve been wanting to start.”
“You can bring it in here. I won’t disturb you while you read.”
She seemed reluctant to be left alone, but he shook his head, anyway. “Just knock on the wall if you need me for anything during the night,” he said, moving toward the connecting door. He tried not to think of all the things he would like her to need him for in the night.
“C’mon, Kyle, there’s no need for you to go. We can hang out together for a few hours—watch the movie, maybe play some cards. I’ve got a deck in my bag.”
Her chatty, no-one-could-doubt-that-we’re-just-buddies attitude was beginning to get on his nerves. Sure, it was the safest strategy—but she was starting to carry it too far.
“I doubt that your brother or your parents would like us spending this much time together in a motel room.”
She made a sound that came very close to being a “pshaw.” “Don’t be silly. Daddy and Shane wouldn’t care. After all, you’re—”
If she called him “family” one more time, he was liable to do something incredibly stupid. Like shut her up with his own mouth…
The kiss lasted quite a while. Molly looked stunned when he finally straightened. She didn’t try to detain him again when he stalked through the door, closing it sharply behind him.
He cursed himself colorfully and creatively as he threw himself on one of the beds, his entire body aching from the drive and throbbing with a desire he shouldn’t be feeling. He most definitely should not have done that. Kissing Molly ranked way up in the top five dumbest things he had ever done—no matter how good it had felt.
Maybe now, at least, she would stop trying to treat him like a long-lost brother. A damned platonic friend. Maybe now she would understand that he wasn’t the nice guy she had made him out to be in her imagination. He’d been trying without success to make her understand that ever since she had shown up so trustingly at his door.
He’d tried snapping at her, snarling at her, rebuffing every attempt she made to reach out to him. Nothing had gotten through—but maybe now she no longer thought of him as “safe.”
What would eat at him for the rest of the night—and probably for quite some time afterward—was the knowledge that Molly had made no effort to push him away when he had kissed her. That she had, in fact, kissed him back. And there had been nothing in the least sisterly about the way her lips had moved beneath his.
Chapter Seven
Molly didn’t sleep much that night. When she did manage to doze, her dreams were restless and unsettling, leaving her tired and tense by the time daybreak finally arrived.
She showered, then wrapped herself in a robe and hopped to her suitcase to find something to wear. She wasn’t sure she could tuck her jeans inside the splint and still strap it tightly enough to support her ankle during the long drive ahead, so she donned the hot-pink-trimmed gray pants again, pairing them with a clean white long-sleeve pullover. She braided her still-damp hair, applied enough makeup to hide the ravages of the sleepless night, then settled into a chair, waiting for Kyle to let her know when he was ready to leave.
Kyle. Just the thought of his name made her lips start to tingle like crazy again.
She still couldn’t believe he had kissed her. He had simply loomed over her without warning, grabbed her chin in his hand and crushed his mouth down on hers before she could finish whatever it was she had been saying at the time. Her world had tilted on its axis—and she had a strong feeling that it would never go back to the way it had been before.
No one had ever made her feel like that with just a kiss before. And what worried her most was the fear that no one else ever would.
She had been waiting for almost twenty-four years to find a man she couldn’t turn into an honorary brother. And wasn’t it ironic that the first man who fit that description would most certainly be leaving on the first plane out of T
exas?
She didn’t delude herself for a moment that Kyle was falling for her. That there was any chance he would stay in her life, rather than drop her off at the ranch and run back to his secluded cabin. He had his friends, the McDooleys, and they seemed to provide all the companionship he wanted or needed. Maybe he would be amenable to the occasional sexual liaison—he wasn’t a monk, after all—but nothing more. And certainly not with her.
Which meant it was up to her to protect herself from getting hurt. Plan A hadn’t worked out. No matter how hard she tried, she wasn’t going to be able to turn Kyle into a brother figure.
So it was time for Plan B. Carefully maintained distance. Polite, but detached. Completely uninvolved in his life. No more personal questions, no more friendly touches, no more pressuring him to share his feelings with her. If she occasionally noticed how pretty his eyes were, or how broad his shoulders, or how tight his… Well, if she happened to notice any of his physical attributes, she would simply appreciate the view and remind herself that Kyle was only another guy who was in her life for just a brief stay.
He rapped on the door connecting their rooms, and her stomach clenched. She could do this, she promised herself. She wouldn’t be able to pretend the kiss had never happened, but she would make it clear that she neither expected—nor wanted—it to happen again.
“How’s the leg?” he asked by way of greeting when she hobbled across the floor to open the door.
“It’s fine.”
There was no way to read his expression, which was absolutely emotionless. His voice was cordial enough when he inquired, “Did you sleep well?”
“Like a baby,” she lied through her teeth. “You?” “Yeah. Great. Ready to get on the road?” “Definitely.”
He nodded. “We’ll grab some breakfast at a drive- through window to save time.”
He was really in a hurry to dump her and get back home, she thought with a pang. “That will be fine.”
It was going to be a very long day.
Even considering the occasional outbreaks of orange barrels forcing highway traffic into one lane for construction purposes, they made good time after entering Arkansas. They stopped every couple of hours for breaks, but Molly didn’t try to talk Kyle into any more shopping or sightseeing delays. He thought she seemed as impatient to reach the ranch as he was.
She had been uncharacteristically subdued during the first half of the day, seemingly content to listen to the music playing from the CD player and to watch the scenery passing by her window. It was a beautiful, crisp October Sunday morning. Traffic was light and the moron-driver factor was lower than usual.
Kyle might have been in a fairly decent mood had he not still been so angry with himself for losing controlgrab some breakfast at a drive even so brieflygrab some breakfast at a drivethe night before. He prided himself as a man who always remained in control, and the fact that he had given in to irritation and impulse, especially with Molly, really shook him.
He had lain awake last night, much too aware of Molly lying on the other side of a thin wall. Remembering much too vividly how good her lips had felt. Worrying that she, too, was lying awake and reliving the moment. And wondering why she hadn’t even tried to push him away.
Slanting her a sideways look, he noted that her fingers were interlaced in her lap, and that she was sitting unnaturally still. Normally she would have been bouncing in her seat, tapping in time to the music, chattering a mile a minute about whatever popped into her head, flashing him those smiles that seemed to bring the sunlight right into the car with them.
He realized that she hadn’t really smiled at him all morning. And he missed those smiles entirely too much.
Was she afraid of him now? He tried to read her profile, searching for any sign that he intimidated her in a way he had not before.
“Molly?”
She turned to look at him. “Yes?”
No, he decided. She wasn’t afraid. Maybe a little warygrab some breakfast at a driveas if she weren’t quite sure what he might do next. Maybe still a little bemused by the unexpected kiss. But not afraid, he decided in satisfaction. “Nothing.”
“Oh.” She looked out the window for a moment, then turned to him with a rush of words. “Why did you kiss me?”
He tightened his hands around the steering wheel to keep the car from swerving. He should have expected something like this from her. He should probably be surprised that it had taken her so long. “It would probably be best if you just forget about that.”
“I’ve been trying to,” she admitted. “But I still want to know why.”
“Call it an impulse. An ill-advised one.”
She thought about that for a moment, then said, “You looked annoyed when you kissed me.”
She was going to analyze this to death, he thought with a scowl. “You were annoying me at the time.”
“So you kissed me? I’m sorry, Kyle, but that doesn’t really make sense.”
He heard the low growl of frustration escape him before he said through clenched teeth, “You’re starting to annoy me again.”
“Does that make you want to kiss me again?” she shot back, fearless as always.
Yes. The unspoken reply seemed to hang in the air between them. Kyle wondered if Molly was as aware of it as he was.
Maybe she was. She subsided into her seat again, riding quietly for the next few miles. Even though he kept his own gaze focused fiercely on the road ahead, he could feel her looking at him. Studying him. Trying, most likely, to understand him.
Good luck with that, he could have told her. He didn’t even understand himself right now.
Okay, Molly thought. That was it. No more questions. Questions only led to answers she didn’t necessarily want to hear.
Kyle considered their kiss an ill-advised impulse? Not very flattering.
But he hadn’t said no when she’d asked if he wanted to kiss her again.
No more questions, she promised herself. She would just continue to sit quietly, listen to the music, watch the passing scenery….
“Kyle?”
“Yeah?”
“If we don’t mention the kiss, is it okay if we talk about something else?”
“Talk about whatever you want,” he said in surrender. “Just give me the right to decline to comment if I choose.”
“Permission granted,” she said with a smile and a wave of relief. Maybe if they were talking—it didn’t matter about what—she would be able to finally stop thinking about the kiss. Maybe.
“So, what do you want to know this time?” he asked in that same resigned tone. “My blood type? My bank balance?”
She couldn’t help but laugh. “Did you actually make a joke?”
“No. Just an educated guess.”
“Well, as a matter of fact, I don’t care about your blood type or your bank balance. I was just going to ask if you have any family left in Texas.”
“No.”
“No aunts, uncles? Cousins?”
“Not as far as I know.”
She couldn’t even imagine having no relatives.
“Were your parents orphans?”
“If my father ever had any family, they ran him off long before I came along. He had a talent for getting thrown out of all the best places-jobs, apartments, marriages.”
There was no anger in his voice that she could hear. Only a cool dispassion that didn’t quite mask a lifetime of disappointment.
“What about your mother?”
“Let’s just say she never baked me cookies.”
There was the anger. Whatever his mother had done to him, he still hadn’t forgiven her.
“When’s the last time you were on a horse?” she asked, making a quick decision to guide the conversation into less treacherous territory.
He looked a bit startled, but relieved. “Almost three years ago, I guess.”
Something in his answer told her there might be a story involved. “Tell me about it.”
A
fter only a momentary hesitation, he did. “Several of the guys in my unit were invited to a party at a ranch near Camp Pendleton, where we were waiting to be deployed to Iraq. One of the other guests was a pretty brunette Tommy wanted to, um, get to know better. He had never been on a horse in his life, so he asked me for a few pointers that would help him impress her. I gave him a few.”
Delighted by the nuances of his tale, Molly followed along easily. “And what were the results of your advice?”
Kyle grinned, making him look—just for a moment—young and amused. “The horse went left, and Tom went right. He hit the dirt face-first.”
Molly laughed. “That was so bad of you. Did it ruin his chances with the brunette?”
Kyle chuckled and shook his head. “She felt so sorry for him that she spent the entire night personally tending to his scrapes and bruises. He always had that kind of luck with the ladies.”
“That was before he started dating Connie, I take it.” An odd expression crossed Kyle’s face. “Uh, no.
They were dating then, I guess. But it wasn’t as if they were married or anything,” he added, defensive on his late friend’s behalf.
“I see.” So Tommy hadn’t been quite the saint he’d been made out to be. Interesting.
“Look, he wasn’t perfect. But he was a great guy. And he’d have been a good husband to Connie. Once the vows had been exchanged, he would have lived up to them.”
She reached out to rest a hand lightly on his arm. “I’m not judging your friend, Kyle. I’m sure I would have liked him.”
He seemed appeased. “You would have. Everyone did.” Without moving her hand, she said quietly, “I’ve never lost anyone who was really close to me like that. My family has been extremely fortunate that we’re all still together, even after a couple of close calls. It must have been a nightmare for you.”
“Yeah,” he said after a moment. “It was.”