“Great help you are,” Rachel muttered, following him into the room.
“I try, Rach, I try.” Cameron looked toward the door when he heard the bell. “Poor old Kirk.”
Rachel stopped and looked at her brother. “What makes you say that?”
The broad grin threatened to split his face. “He won’t know what hit him.”
“No, but you will,” she countered, one hand on her hip. “And it’ll be me, if you don’t stop.”
Cameron laughed and nodded toward the door, an innocent look in his sea-green eyes. “Want me to get that?”
She could feel Ethan’s eyes on her, and she did her best to remain playful. He was going to come around, she swore to herself. Any day now.
“No.” When she swung her head, the tips of her light blond hair brushed along her shoulders. “It’s my house now,” she reminded him. She had bought it from their parents. Somehow, having clear title to it helped center her and place things in perspective. “I can get my own door, thank you.” Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Ethan heading for the back bedroom. “You can drag your nephew back out. I want him to meet Kirk.”
Taking a deep breath, she crossed to the door and opened it.
This time, Kirk was on her doorstep. Right on time. “You always were punctual.”
His eyes washed over her, absorbing her quickly, the way he had trained himself to absorb every fleeting detail in his life. In his line of work, there wasn’t always time for second takes or refocusing. Not on the plane he operated on.
“And you were always full of surprises.” And never more than now, he thought as the light of appreciation crept into his eyes.
Chapter 4
“Wow.”
Kirk remained standing in the doorway as he looked at Rachel slowly, appraising her as a connoisseur would a glass of fine wine. This morning hadn’t quite prepared him for the way she appeared tonight. Had she really lived next door to him all those years without giving an adequate hint of what was to be? He found it difficult to believe, and yet here she was, as gorgeous now as she had been plain then.
A smile glimmered at the corners of his mouth, nearly reaching his eyes as they swept up to her face. “Or am I repeating myself?”
“Yes, but twice in one day is fine with me. I certainly don’t mind hearing it again.” More than that, she could go on hearing it forever, she thought. Rachel grinned as a warm feeling burrowed through her with long, far-reaching fingers.
Because Kirk made no move to come in, she took his hand and ushered him into the house.
Amusement flickered over Cameron’s face. “See you still know your way.”
Kirk nodded a greeting at Cameron. “Very funny.”
There was a tall, thin boy standing next to his friend. Against his will, from the look of the hand Cameron had firmly on his shoulder.
Rachel’s son.
Kirk studied the small, defiant face, looking for similarities with his mother. The boy resembled Rachel as she was today. There was very little there to recall the girl she had been. For that matter, the boy hardly looked like Cameron, either. Cameron was large-boned, and Rachel had a slight bone structure, like a porcelain doll. More like his mother, the boy appeared fragile standing next to Cameron. His fine, artistic features could almost have been called pretty.
They probably teased him a lot at school, Kirk guessed.
The scowl on the young boy’s face marred the delicate features. No doubt he saw him as a threat, Kirk thought. It seemed rather funny. The only threat he posed these days was to himself.
Cameron cleared his throat as he urged Ethan forward a step. “What time are you planning on getting my sister in?”
Kirk arched a brow, amused by the question, and by the way Rachel’s mouth dropped open in stunned surprise. There were some who thought of him as unsavory, as a dangerous renegade who would risk anything for the right photograph, the right story. But he doubted that part of his reputation had ever reached here.
“Playing the role of the worried parent, Cameron?”
“Playing the role of the tired older brother,” Cameron told him. “It’s been a long day, and I’m not sure I can outlast Ethan here.” He nodded at the boy.
There was no corresponding smile on Ethan’s face.
A sullen child, Kirk observed, and immediately wondered why. He would have thought that having Rachel for a mother would be the answer to any child’s prayer. Kirk had little doubt that Rachel was as warm, as loving and giving, as her own mother had been. Families usually followed certain set patterns.
Which was why he would never have children of his own, he thought. Kindness bred kindness, abuse only abuse. There were things still locked within him that he was afraid to let out into the light of day. Afraid because of what he would find out.
As a child, he’d pretended more than once, as he lay cowering under his blankets, praying for morning to come and his parents’ raised voices to cease, that Mrs. Reed was his mother. More than that, when he was still naive enough to wish, he had wanted Mr. Reed to be his father. He would have sold his young immortal soul to belong to their family, to know the unconditional love, the comfort, that Rachel and Cameron knew.
Instead, he had sold his soul for freedom. And lost it in the bargain.
Rachel was embarrassed by Ethan’s defiance. Ethan was her pride, her joy, and she didn’t want Kirk’s first impression of her son to be a negative one.
Forcing a smile to her lips that she hoped would be infectious, she hooked her arm through Kirk’s and drew him over toward Ethan.
“Kirk, I’d like you to meet my son.”
He’d never been good with children. Even as a child, he’d never been good with them. It always filled Kirk with wonder how a loner like him had attracted the warm friendship of people like Cameron and Rachel.
There was something in the boy’s eyes that struck a distant but familiar chord within him.
Kirk put his hand out to Ethan. “Hi, I’m Kirk Callaghan.”
Ethan kept his hands at his sides and looked at Kirk’s as if it were a strange object being thrust at him. His lips curled in what looked like the beginnings of a sneer.
Humiliation and frustration rose up like a wave in Rachel’s throat.
“It’s a hand, Ethan,” she prompted. “You’re supposed to shake it, not examine it.”
Ethan’s head jerked up in his mother’s direction. “I know what it is.”
Kirk recognized something vaguely disturbing beneath the angry words. He cut through the rhetoric and took the boy’s hand in his, surprising him. Kirk gave it a quick press in greeting before releasing it. Ethan stared at him, his small, light brows drawing together over his perfectly shaped nose in puzzlement.
“Done and over with,” Kirk said simply, in reply to the unspoken question. “No big deal, right?”
In response, Ethan shrugged indifferently. It was, Kirk knew, a flippant gesture meant to mask his feelings of awkwardness and inadequacy.
No one recognized the gesture or the significance better than Kirk. He’d been there himself, before Cameron and Rachel had managed to crack his outer shell and befriend him. It had been Kirk against the world then. He saw the same painfully familiar stance assumed by the boy now.
Kirk’s eyes shifted from Ethan to Rachel, his brow arched in a silent question.
Rachel merely shook her head slightly. Her apology was in her eyes.
Kirk turned to Cameron, thinking it best to drop the matter.
“In answer to your question,” he continued, as if there hadn’t been an awkward break. “I should have Rachel back in a couple of hours or so. However long it takes to make amends.”
Cameron ran his hand along a cheek that was already beginning to need a shave. “Amends?”
Kirk nodded. He noticed that, although Ethan was attempting to appear disinterested, he was listening. “She found out that I wrote to you.”
Cameron was more lost than ever. “And you’re apologiz
ing for that?”
“Maybe he should,” Rachel cut in, “but he’s apologizing for not writing to me, even after I wrote.”
The short laugh was knowing and dismissive. “That’s because he didn’t want to get inundated with ten-page letters.” A self-satisfied smile lifted Cameron’s mouth as he elaborated for his sister’s benefit. “Real men like to be terse, quick. They don’t have time for embellishments.”
Rachel jabbed an elbow sharply into his ribs, catching him off guard. “And how would you know what real men do?”
Cameron nursed his side, shaking his head. “On second thought, keep her out as long as you like.” His eyes narrowed to slits as he contemplated the next image before voicing it to Kirk. “Lose her even, maybe.”
Kirk laughed, pleasure wrapping itself around him like a warm woolen blanket on a cold January night. The scene before him was reminiscent of so many others that had been played out within these walls.
These walls.
As the laughter slipped away on soft cat’s paws, Kirk looked around the house. From what he could see, little had changed here. The feeling of homecoming permeated through him the way it had failed to do when he entered his own house earlier.
No, he amended, it had never been his house. It had always been his parents’ house. It had been merely a place where he had eaten and slept. And, at times, wept. Until he was old enough not to care.
Or to believe he didn’t.
Kirk saw the expectant look on Rachel’s face and knew which side he was going to have to take to find peace this evening.
“I didn’t write to her,” he explained to Cameron, “because I just couldn’t put anything down eloquently enough.”
At least it sounded like a good excuse. The real reason was that he had been too busy. And then too tortured by what he had witnessed. Cameron was right about the way men corresponded. A few words were enough. An entire tome wouldn’t have begun to adequately cover what he felt. And he hadn’t had the time to even attempt it. So he had written nothing.
“I wasn’t going to grade them,” Rachel protested, then stopped herself. This could go on all night, if she let it. On another occasion, she might have, but tonight she wanted to go out, to get Kirk alone and possibly unravel the mystery that seemed to be cloaking him. “But that’s in the past. Now you have to make amends.”
She picked up her purse from where she had left it on the table next to the door. Slipping the thin strap onto her shoulder, she turned to the boy who had been watching all this in brooding silence.
Looking at him, Rachel realized that Ethan made her think of a smaller, younger version of Kirk. Withdrawn, unreachable. Kirk masked it better, but there was that same strange, wary, distrustful look in his eyes. It was almost as if there were a link between them.
Thank God for Cameron, she thought, shifting her eyes to her brother.
Cameron saw the flash of gratitude immediately. He smiled reassuringly at his sister. “Make the devil pay, Rach. We’re going to be fine, aren’t we, Ethan?” He laid his arm around the boy’s shoulders.
Ethan flinched before he caught himself and stiffened. Watching, Kirk could feel the movement echoing within him. When he was young, he’d reacted just the same way whenever anyone touched him. Because of what his father had done to him, Kirk had trusted no one. It had taken seeing what life was like in the Reed household for Kirk to realize that ridicule and beatings weren’t the norm.
Had the boy been beaten? The question ricocheted violently in his mind.
None of his business, Kirk told himself, shaking off the thought.
Rachel moved toward her son. “Ethan, I want you to behave tonight,” she said to him softly. “Please.” Her eyes echoed her entreaty.
Ethan looked uncomfortable being talked to this way in front of a stranger. He shrugged indifferently, the weight of his uncle’s arm heavy on his shoulders.
“Don’t worry, I won’t burn down the house or anything.”
She cupped his chin in her hand and forced him to look up at her. “That’s not what I meant, and you know it.” She pressed her lips together, wishing she had a magic wand that would allow her to change her son back to the child he’d been before all this ugly business began. “I know you’re a good kid, Ethan,” she whispered.
There was more, so much more, but she knew she would only embarrass him if she voiced it now. Embarrass him, and accomplish nothing.
Rachel dropped her hand to her side. Maybe Cameron was right. Maybe this was just a rebellious phase Ethan was going through, and she was making too much of it. Maybe, just this once, if she ignored it, the problem would go away.
But she had ignored a problem once before, and it had just snowballed until it had nearly engulfed her completely. Until Don had nearly destroyed her and Ethan.
Not tonight, she told herself. Tonight was for homecomings and Kirk, not for any troubled memories.
Rachel looked at her brother. “We’ll be back after we exceed his credit limit,” she promised, forcing a smile to her lips again.
“That shouldn’t take long,” Cameron commented as he followed them to the door. Ethan had flopped down on the sofa and returned to switching channels. “Have a good time,” Cameron instructed. It was hard to tell who the order was aimed at, Kirk or Rachel. “And don’t worry.” The last comment was obviously directed toward Rachel.
Rachel nodded. “Thanks.” She waited until they were both in the car before she said anything to Kirk. “I’m sorry about Ethan.”
Kirk kept his eye on the side mirror as he guided the minivan out of the driveway and onto the street. He didn’t have to look at Rachel to detect her embarrassment. “Sorry?”
She sighed as she folded her hands in her lap and stared straight ahead. It felt good to get away. Scanlon’s was just a nice neighborhood club, yet right now, in her present state of mind, it seemed like an exotic retreat. It had been a long time since she had taken a break from the tension. A long time since she had dared.
“About the way he acted.” Rachel glanced at Kirk’s profile. “Don’t pretend you didn’t notice how sullen he was.”
For Rachel’s sake, Kirk made light of the situation. It probably involved nothing more than a boy testing his limits. There was no point in his reading things into the situation. Ethan wasn’t him. “Not everyone comes off like an effervescent champagne bottle.”
She saw just the smallest hint of a dimple in his cheek. He was biting back a smile. That alone was hopeful, she thought.
“Is that the way you see me?”
He saw her in terms of rainbows. And himself in terms of dark clouds and thunderstorms. Kirk glanced in her direction as he turned right at the corner. “In comparison to me, yes.”
Rachel’s laugh was just short of a snort. “In comparison to you, flat soda is effervescent. You were never given to overt displays of excitement.” She paused, reflecting. “Now that I think about it, I don’t believe I ever saw you get excited about anything.” It had frustrated her when she was younger and attempted to get Kirk to become enthusiastic about a score of things, all to no avail.
The smile that rose to his lips came of its own accord, and was that much more surprising because it did. “You took care of that department for both of us.”
Rachel shook her head. “You make me sound as if I were your familiar.”
He had no idea what she was talking about. That, too, had echoes of the past, and was vaguely comforting to him. “My what?”
“Familiar,” she repeated. She shifted in her seat so that she faced him. The seat belt dug into her hipbone. “You know, like witches and warlocks were supposed to have.” She could see that she wasn’t striking a chord. “A pet that carries about the essence of the master within it,” she elaborated.
The terrain on either side of the road had changed somewhat, yet he could still find his way around after all this time. Scanlon’s was just ahead.
“I never thought of you as my pet.” That wasn’t entirely t
rue, he remembered with a tinge of fondness.
“No, mascot was more like it.” Rachel noted that at least he had the good grace not to contradict her. “You and Cameron both treated me like one.”
For a while they had thought of her as one, he mused, he and Cameron. She’d dogged their tracks like a faithful, playful puppy. “You were the one who wanted to tag along,” Kirk reminded her.
Fiercely, she remembered. She had worshiped her older brother, though in those days she would rather have died than admit it. Some of that worship had been transferred to Kirk when Cameron all but adopted him. “That’s because your life seemed to be so much more exciting than mine.”
Exciting was the last word he would have used to describe his life back then, he thought. He spared her a glance before taking his foot off the brake. He drove the car through the intersection. “I thought I was as dull as dishwater.”
“You were, your life wasn’t,” she pointed out. There was a difference. One that, knowing him, he probably was unaware of, she thought.
Rachel laughed as they drew close to the small strip of restaurants and shops. Scanlon’s was located at the very end of the block. “Don’t you know that you always had an aura around you?”
“Auras. Familiars,” he echoed. “This is all sounding very mystical.” Amused skepticism highlighted his angular face.
She wasn’t going to be teased out of this. He had to know that he attracted a following. Didn’t he? On second thought, Kirk had always been oblivious of the ripples he generated. It wasn’t modesty, as much as disinterest, that kept him from knowing, she decided.
“You were brooding and mysterious. I didn’t know a single girl in school who wasn’t in love with you.”
That seemed absolutely ludicrous. He’d hardly dated while in high school, not wanting to become entangled in relationships of any sort beyond the one he treasured with the Reeds. “I don’t remember ever tripping over any of them.”
That was just typical of him. She shook her head, dismissing his protest. “That’s because you never noticed anything as mundane as a worshipful female.”
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