by Tina Beckett
“I’ll ask her, just to make sure, but I’m pretty sure she would love having Jetta immortalized in kite form. Without the horn.”
“You got it.” He pushed the button to get back into the elevator. It was then that she noticed her department was bustling just as much as it normally was with nurses running here and there as they went about their tasks. It was strange that she hadn’t been aware of any of that until just now. No, she’d only had eyes for the man with the kite. And it looked as if he was aiming to win.
He already had, as far as she was concerned. That worried her. But she could think about that later.
“Thank you again, Kaleb, for doing this for her.”
“My pleasure.” This time when his hand came out, he didn’t stop midmotion. Instead, he pressed his fingers to hers for several seconds until the elevator door dinged its arrival. Only then did he move away. But the feel of his skin against hers followed her long after the doors had closed behind him.
* * *
Kaleb woke with a start. Staring up at the dark ceiling, he tried to figure out where he was. His room.
He untangled himself from the sheets and hung his legs over the side of the bed, propping himself up with his hands. He was drenched in sweat.
Again.
Dammit.
He dragged shaky fingers through his hair, trying to slow his breathing.
Those dreams were now following him from sleep to sleep. He shifted his head from one side to the other, letting the crack of his cervical vertebrae anchor him back to reality.
His daughter was not trapped in a bottomless well. Nor had he been trying everything in his power to reach her: ropes, life preservers, scaling the walls with his bare hands. He lifted his fingers to look at them. No bloody stumps.
“It was a dream.”
A never-ending nightmare was more like it.
Because the reality was that Grace had never been trapped in a well. Instead the vision always morphed to something closer to reality. His daughter, splayed on a hospital bed, her face paler than pale. Only in his dream, he reached for her chart to see what treatment her doctors recommended only to find the first page stamped with the words Too Late. As was the next. Page after page held the same terrible phrase. He flipped faster and faster, looking for some sign of hope. There had to be something. Something the doctors—something that he—could do. Panic engulfed him, along with a horrible premonition. He slowly turned back toward the bed.
This was where he’d woken up each night. With the horror that it was no longer Grace’s lifeless form lying on that bed, but Chloe’s. And on the other side of her was Maddy. And in her face an accusation he’d lobbed at himself.
Too Late.
Hell! He climbed out of bed and pulled on a pair of sweatpants. Maybe if he burned some calories, he’d feel better. But thirty minutes in his weight room only left him tired and sweaty. It did nothing to erase what he’d seen in his dream.
Grace had been dead for five years. He hadn’t had nightmares about her in ages. Was it because of Chloe and Maddy? Were they dredging up old regrets and flaying them open all over again?
Chloe was a normal healthy girl. She and Grace had nothing in common. Not their age, not their appearance.
Going into his drawing room, he sat at the drafting table to look at the designs for the kite. It was almost done. Almost ready for Chloe and Maddy to come over and...
Was that what it was? He was worried about them coming into his space and upsetting his equilibrium?
It was much more likely that Maddy would do that than Chloe. She’d already upset him in more ways than one.
Like that kiss? The one he couldn’t seem to forget?
Why couldn’t he dream about that? About laying her softly down on his bed and...
Dammit. This was no better than his nightmares. Yes, actually it was. Because at least this was something he could comprehend. The man-wants-woman thing was much easier to understand and accept.
All of a sudden, being a winner didn’t sound like such a great idea.
He pushed the kite a little to the left on the table. Maybe he should purposely sabotage the design and lose. Handing Maddy a promise that they could win the prize wasn’t one of his brighter decisions. Because if they won, Kaleb would not get to walk away as he’d told himself a few minutes ago. Winning had consequences. Like the trip up the Space Needle. He could tell Maddy to give his ticket to someone else. But then he’d have to explain why he didn’t want to go. A talk he didn’t want to have. Not with her. Not with anyone on the committee who might also wonder.
And Roxy, Maddy’s sister, who’d asked him to figure out if she could add fur to a kite and still get lift off, or if it would be too heavy to move.
Kind of like Kaleb’s life nowadays.
He sighed and pushed back from the table.
Maybe he was going about this all wrong. Maybe he shouldn’t be trying to avoid the inevitable. He was attracted to Maddy, and he was pretty sure from that kiss that the attraction was mutual. If he couldn’t get her out of his head one way, maybe he should go at it from a completely different angle. How about if he approached it as he did any other woman? Spend a quick night together at his place. Maybe then he could walk away from that night the way he always did. No strings. No promises. Just a single night of pleasure.
His gut churned at the thought. Maddy wasn’t like all those other women. And for years, he’d avoided being with women who had children.
Could it be that that tactic had backfired, though? Had made him dig a rut that just got deeper and deeper with each new person?
He had no idea. But maybe it was time to test that theory. And working together with Maddy gave him the perfect opportunity to do just that: see if he could get past this particular roadblock. And he could think of no person he’d rather experiment with than her.
Kaleb yawned, the muscles in his body finally relaxing, probably wondering what had taken him so long to figure this whole thing out.
Well, tough luck, buddy. You wanted to wake me up, well, now you can just stay awake. Because we have a kite-making contest to enter. And to win.
* * *
Chloe pasted the last of the glittery claw stickers onto the body of the kite. Maddy had to admit her sister had done a great job painting the kite, solid black with various areas of shadow and light. Kaleb had warned them against adding too many layers of color to the kite, saying it would make it too heavy. She was amazed. He’d calculated the weight down to the gram, had even weighed the faux claws and the two custom eye stickers—one green and one amber—that Roxy had designed herself. They’d made the smaller demo model that would hang over their table look identical. Only it wouldn’t need to fly.
This one did.
They wouldn’t get a chance to test it, as they had its prototype. She would have to trust that Kaleb had got it right. Besides, if they tried and it crashed and burned as the last one had, they wouldn’t have time to start over.
That disastrous flight hadn’t been Kaleb’s fault. It had been hers for letting go of the string.
But the result of her goof up? Well, that had been pretty spectacular. She could only thank her lucky stars that a police officer had retrieved the string and set her and Kaleb back on their feet.
But watching him as he painstakingly checked the new kite after each addition, she had to admit he was pretty damned hot. And not just in the looks department. He’d been kind to Chloe, even as he looked uncomfortable whenever he had to work directly with her.
Some men just didn’t like children.
But he’d been married. So what had happened between him and his wife? Had they disagreed over whether or not to have kids?
Or maybe they’d had some and Kaleb, for whatever reason, hadn’t got visitation rights. He’d never mentioned havin
g children, though.
Kaleb picked up a foam roller and went over each of the claw stickers one by one, making sure they were tightly adhered to the body of the kite.
“Did you really make the last one purr?” Roxy asked.
He sent her a quick grin. “I know right where the purr buttons are, so yes.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw her sister’s eyebrows shoot up. Roxy jabbed a thumb toward Chloe. “Little pitchers, big ears.”
“I’m talking about the kite, Roxy. Those cutouts you grumbled about earlier? They’ll vibrate in the wind and make a kind of purring sound.”
When she looked skeptical, Maddy pointed out one of the gill-like slits that lined the cat’s torso. “It works. I heard it when we flew the unpainted version.”
Kaleb nodded. “It’s one of the reasons the paint had to be lighter in those areas. The plastic has to be able to flutter in order to make the sound.”
“Well, I’ll be.” Her sister looked at the kite again.
Chloe’s feet got dangerously close to the edge of the chair as she tried to see what they were talking about. Kaleb scooped her up, one arm under the backs of her legs, making her squeal with laughter before he turned her so she had a clear view of Jetta’s twin. “Pretty, pretty kitty!” she declared.
Maybe the purring was overkill. Chloe seemed more taken with the way the kite looked than with its functionality. Maybe if it survived its maiden flight, Maddy could buy it off Kaleb and put it on her daughter’s wall. A sweet memory of a fun event.
These were the kinds of memories normal fathers made with their children.
Maddy gritted her teeth. Kaleb was not Chloe’s father, and he never would be. She needed to get that notion out of her head immediately. Not that it had ever been there in the first place, but she needed to be careful. Chloe had taken a liking to this man. So had Roxy.
So had she. It was time to dial back on the Dr. McBride fan club. She held out her arms for her daughter, only to have Chloe nestle closer to Kaleb’s chest, wrapping her tiny arms around his neck.
Maybe he sensed her unease, because he knelt on the floor next to the table. “What do you say we go to work on Roxy’s kite next? We still have some more fur to glue to it.”
This time her daughter willingly let go of him. “Can I help glue?”
Roxy stepped forward and took Chloe by the hand. “Oh, most definitely. We’re about to make ourselves a flying unicorn. How does that sound?”
“Not too much glue,” Kaleb warned. But when he acted as if he was going to follow them, Maddy touched his arm.
“Hey. Can I talk to you for a minute?”
He tucked his fingers into the pockets of his jeans, hooking his thumbs over the tops of them. “Sure. What’s up?”
Now that she had made her mind up to say something, she wondered if she was doing the right thing. She glanced over to where her daughter and Roxy were busy working. “Chloe is young...and...” Taking a deep breath, she tossed the rest of the sentence out before she could back out. “She seems to be developing a tiny bit of a crush on you. If you could keep that in mind when you’re around her, I would appreciate it.”
His eyes narrowed slightly. “As in you want me to watch my p’s and q’s.”
“Or maybe maintain a little distance between you and her.”
“Between me and her.” His head tilted. “And what about you? Should I keep my distance there as well?”
Maddy’s mouth watered. That hadn’t been exactly what she’d been trying to say. “I’m a big girl. I think I can handle myself.”
“Can you?”
Okay, the man was playing word games, and she had no idea what he meant by that. But if he wanted to lob a few serves her way, she could match him stroke for stroke. “You can bet on it.”
“I might like to take you up on that wager.” Rubbing his chin with his thumb, he paused, something dark flashing in his eyes. But before she could look closer, it winked back out.
“Don’t worry, Maddy. I’ll keep my distance from your daughter.” He took a step closer, reaching out to take a strand of her hair and sliding it over her temple. “But I have no intention of keeping my distance from you.”
CHAPTER SIX
FOUNTAIN PARK WAS awash with people on the big day. There were kites of every shape and size imaginable.
Kites weren’t the only things being celebrated today, it would seem.
“Why didn’t you tell me it’s your birthday?”
Kaleb had overheard Roxy offer to take Chloe off her hands, so she could go home and celebrate by soaking in a hot tub.
“I’m trying to forget I’m another year older.”
Older? The woman was stunning. And right now, he was trying to keep his eyes on Maddy’s sister, as she tugged the string to her kite, and off the birthday girl and the image of her naked in a sea of frothy white bubbles.
Roxy’s kite made it off the ground and hung suspended for a minute or two. Suddenly, it began to spiral out of control, plummeting to the ground in the strong wind.
“I warned her about that glue and using too much fur,” he muttered as it crashed and burned—the first casualty of the day. Luckily for Roxy, though, all the kites’ prototypes were on display in the gathering tent, including her furry unicorn. It made sense, because once the kites were sent into the air, anything could happen. Including smashing into dozens of pieces. And since Roxy’s looked as if it had exploded on contact, it was a good thing.
“I can’t believe it crashed so soon. Is ours going to do that?”
“It shouldn’t.” He said it with as much conviction as he could muster, but kite-flying was more an art than a science. There could be a defect that avoided detection, even in the most flawlessly executed design. Even in the most beautiful creation.
Like the human body. His daughter had been a prime example of that.
“Oh, well.” Maddy settled into a lawn chair on the grassy area surrounding them. “Roxy said she handed out most of her business cards to people who came by to look at the kites. She said even if hers didn’t make it into the air, the effort had been well worth it. And at least she got it up.”
He brought his mind back to the present. “Are you doing anything special for your birthday? Other than a night at home alone?”
“Alone?” She glanced at him with a tilt of her head. “You make it sound like a bad thing. It’s not, you know. Sometimes it’s a luxury.”
Not always. Not when you’d gone from having a healthy, active daughter and a happy marriage to being alone. Every day. Every night.
Roxy came over moaning in despair, her poor tattered kite wilting in her hands. “It’s definitely ruined. Maybe you two will have better luck.”
The kites were sent into the air according to assigned numbers. It didn’t matter if the entrant’s kite stayed up for hours and hours, but it had to go up and be stable for at least five minutes to be considered in the running for the grand prize. They still had another ten minutes before they were set to launch their cat. Chloe was bursting with excitement, jumping up and down.
Roxy held out her hand. “Let’s go get a snow cone and burn off some of that energy until it’s time.”
“Jetta isn’t going up without us, is he?” Chloe gave her aunt a dubious glance.
“We’ll be back in plenty of time.” She shot Maddy a look. “You don’t mind, do you?”
“Mind?” She settled deeper into her chair. “I’ll just sit here and figure out what the city looks like from the Space Needle. Because we’re going to... Go! Fight! Win!”
Kaleb couldn’t hold back a chuckle at the impromptu cheer. He had to admit, he liked seeing Maddy and her daughter this enthusiastic about the kite. He hadn’t felt this amalgamation of anticipation and dread in a long time. Probably not since
Janice had left him.
No. It would have been before Grace died. Because since then his life had been consumed with more dread than anticipation. Dreading sleep. Dreading wandering into the pediatric oncology wing—even when Brenda Marlin had spotted him in the hallway as he was coming out from the meeting and hugged him last week. He’d thought of transferring hospitals to get away from those memories, but by staying here, he felt he still had some type of connection with his daughter. His ex-wife, on the other hand, had wanted to move away immediately after Grace’s death. One of the things they’d clashed about during that last year. And then she’d cheated, and he’d been left totally alone.
“We’ve got about five minutes left. Is there anything we need to do to get ready?” Maddy’s voice forced him from his thoughts.
He focused on her bright, shining face. This was the example Kaleb should follow. Despite everything that had happened with her ex-husband and that vicious attack, she’d maintained an inner glow that was undimmed.
Then again, she hadn’t lost a child.
He stopped himself right there. She’d lost a husband. But from what he’d seen, the man had been a bastard.
How could anyone have wanted to hurt this woman?
Not him. In fact, he was enjoying being here with her today. Maybe a little too much.
And when the day was over?
Kaleb didn’t want it to end. A thought came to him. It was her birthday. The perfect opportunity to prolong their time together. Not a wise choice, maybe, but it seemed a shame to let her go home to an empty house, despite her earlier words. It could be wishful thinking, but surely as a single parent she looked forward to indulging in adult conversation from time to time?
His mind put a subtle emphasis on the word adult. An emphasis he carefully ignored. He focused on her question instead.
“We should be good to go.” He checked the rope sitting in its holder. “Do you want to let your sister know we’re just about ready?”
“I just did.” She held up her phone, and even now Roxy and Chloe were waving in the distance, snow cones in hand.