Swiping at her eyes, Kendall listened to silence at the other end of the line. Something that sounded like a hiccup filled the space. “Mom, are you there?”
“Yes, sweetie, I’m here.” Her mother’s voice was soft and thick with tears. “Well, it’s a good thing we didn’t go anywhere for Easter. You’ve got me crying like a baby. My makeup’s running down to my knees.”
She heard the muffled honking of her mother blowing her nose away from the phone. “Sorry about that.”
“Don’t you be sorry, Kendall Lee,” her mother said forcefully. “Don’t you be sorry. Your daddy and I couldn’t be more proud of what you made of yourself. It wasn’t easy for you, rubbin’ elbows with all those fancy families. I wish we could have done more to help you, but you did right well on your own. I guess you showed all those ritzy-titzies what it takes to be a success.”
“You did so much for me, Mom, so much.”
“That’s what mothers are for, baby doll.”
Libby Bishop’s disapproving scowl flashed across Kendall’s mind. “Mom, I may be switching jobs this summer. I know I haven’t been back home for a while. I could try to take a week to visit before I move.”
“That would be wonderful.” She could hear her mother’s smile across the phone line.
“It’s a plan. I’ve got to go now. I’ll call again in a few days. I love you.”
“I love you too, baby. You take care and don’t work too hard.”
“Bye, Mom.”
She hit the button to end the call and slipped the cell phone back into her purse. If she got the job in New York City, the network would want her to start right away. Too bad. Come hell or high water, she was going to spend a week in the hometown she hadn’t seen for more than three years.
She walked slowly down the path that led to the small outdoor waterfall. She could picture Ty, his face glistening with sweat, hauling each stone and setting it carefully into place as he built the wall around the small pond. Kendall’s idea of a good workout was a three-mile jog around her neighborhood or a spin class at the gym. Her back ached just thinking about the effort it would have taken to lay the rock, move the dirt, and plant all the trees, bushes, and flowers in Ty’s yard.
It was more than the physical strength the job required. The design of the yard was a work of art itself. It was early spring, but tulips and daffodils were already sprouting through the earth in cheerful groupings. She guessed that as the season progressed, the bulbs would be replaced by wildflowers and other summer blooms.
Behind the garden, the fireplace rose from the side of the porch at the back of the house. The memory of her night there with Ty had warmth pooling in her belly.
She took a deep breath to steady her nerves. The air smelled clean but different than it had when they’d been hiking through the burn area. There was none of the spiciness she associated with the mountains. A sweet freshness permeated the air around her. When she’d first stepped through the garage door, she’d felt like Dorothy emerging from her black and white world into the brilliant color of Oz.
A branch snapped to her left, and she saw a bushy-tailed squirrel scurry up the limb of a tree. She watched it climb until it jumped out of sight. A flash of color on the other side of the tree trunk caught her eye. She walked forward around a bend in the path and smiled. Two short Adirondack chairs, painted cherry red, sat in a small clearing of grass. Several iron torches flanked the walkway next to the opening.
“I thought we could sit out here.” Ty’s voice came from the path behind her.
He’d changed from his dressy clothes to a faded gray college T-shirt and jeans so worn a sliver of his thigh peeked through a frayed tear above his knee. His approach had been silent thanks to the soft-soled sandals he wore.
At the sight of him, the warmth in her stomach grew hotter and traveled lower in her body.
Easy there, her inner voice warned. She swallowed to relieve the sudden dryness in her throat. “Ok,” she said, mortified when the word came out a croak.
Ty didn’t seem to notice. He walked forward, a glass of white wine in one hand and some brownish liquid—probably Scotch—in the other. “Since you’re such a fan of flannel, I thought you could use this,” he said, lifting one arm slightly. Kendall noticed a green and blue plaid shirt hanging across his forearm.
She reached for the shirt, careful not to touch him directly. She felt so charged even the lightest contact with him could set her on fire.
Although she’d slipped into her cardigan sweater on the way home, the early evening air was chilly enough to warrant multiple layers. Ty stared at her as she rolled up the sleeves that dangled over her hands. “What?” she asked.
“I knew you’d look good in those colors. Your eyes are as vivid green as the grass after a good, soaking rain.”
She scrunched up her nose. “I try to stay inside when it rains. Was that a compliment?”
“Yes, indeed, Princess, that was a compliment. But I should warn you, the shirt you’re wearing is my favorite. Don’t get too attached.”
Lifting the wine glass from his hand, she rolled her eyes. “No worries there, buddy.” She wasn’t about to admit how much she liked the soft, cozy feel of the well-worn fabric. Liked having something that belonged to him—that smelled of him—wrapped around her.
Nope, she’d keep that revelation to herself.
She took a seat on one of the wooden chairs and watched as Ty lit the candles inside the glass holders that hung next to the path. When the luminarias were lit, he folded himself into the seat next to her, stretching his long legs in front of him.
For several minutes, they sat in silence, water splashing into the small pond the only sound Kendall could hear. The waterfall’s gurgle blocked out any of the city’s noise, so she felt enfolded in a private paradise. If someone would have told her a month ago that she’d consider sitting on a wooden chair in a backyard paradise, Kendall would have laughed. But now she couldn’t imagine wanting to be anywhere else.
Uh, oh. Bad sign.
Despite the cool evening air, beads of sweat broke out against the back of her neck. Her heart beat faster. One of the tricks she used to stay focused on the future was not to get overly attached to the present. This feeling of contentment might be fine for the moment, but it was not good for her long-term peace of mind. She had to get out of here, back to the well-ordered and empty existence that made it easy to think about leaving.
“Don’t go.” Ty’s voice sliced gently into the silence.
She turned to stare at him. She hadn’t spoken aloud, she was sure. Was she that transparent? “What are you talking about?” she said with a forced laugh. “I’m not going anywhere.”
He straightened in his seat, taking a slow sip from his glass. “You look like you’re about to bolt, and I don’t blame you. You’ve had long enough to think about the fiasco at my parents’ house. I’m sure you want to be as far away from me as possible right now.”
That was true. Just not for the reasons Ty suspected.
She laughed softly. “Actually, I should thank you. Being with your family opened my eyes to some good things I hadn’t recognized about my own.”
Abruptly he stood, pacing back and forth along the edge of the grass. “Can you believe I wanted you to meet them? I’m so freaking stupid.”
In the space of a few minutes, dusky twilight had filled the backyard. The flickering glow from the luminarias shone against the glass of liquor he held in front of him, but his face remained hidden in shadows. “I know you don’t think we’re right for each other.”
“Our plans and goals are so different.”
“Plans change, Kendall.”
“Not mine,” she whispered.
He stopped pacing and stood directly in front of her. The lines of his face were hard in the murky light. “If it smells like crap and looks like crap, you can c
all it whatever you want. It’s still going to be a load of crap.” He began moving again. “The thing that pisses me off is that I bought into it. I took you up there to prove that I was worthy. Although it may not look like it, I have the background to run in the fancy circles that mean something to you.”
“They don’t . . . that isn’t it. Ty, I need to tell you something.”
He held a hand up. “What you should understand is that I chose to leave that life behind. I don’t regret that decision. Almost every time I talk to my mother or my dad, they pressure me to ‘return to the fold,’ as they see it. Hell, I’m pretty sure there’s an empty office at GoldStar just waiting for me. But I’m not going back. Not for them. Not for you.”
He spoke the words with more conviction than anger. His posture was rigid, his jaw set against the dim candlelight. She knew he expected her to condemn him for that decision, the same way his mother had done earlier. “Would you please sit down?” she asked quietly. “There are some things I’d like to explain.”
He didn’t move for several moments, then dropped back into his chair. “What kind of things?” he asked, his voice hard and doubtful.
Kendall fidgeted. She placed her wine glass beneath her chair and squeezed her hands together, not surprised when the tips of her fingers were ice cold. She’d never told anyone, not even Sam and Chloe, the whole truth about her childhood. But she’d begun to see that she was only hurting herself and her parents, who loved her, by hiding her background.
“Those fancy social circles you mentioned,” she began nervously. “I don’t belong there.” She picked at a loose string along the flannel shirt’s hem so she wouldn’t have to meet Ty’s gaze. “I guess I could because of my job. Television opens a lot of doors. But I didn’t grow up belonging the way you did.”
“Kendall, not many people can match my dad for the money he’s made over the years. You went to some prep school, right? That’s not exactly the outside looking in.”
“You don’t understand. I attended Graves on a scholarship. I told your parents my father was involved in the automobile industry. That was true. For thirty years, he’s parked cars at an exclusive country club, barely making more than minimum wage. There were a lot of times he was out of work due to his drinking, and things got pretty desperate for my mom and me. She has rheumatoid arthritis so she couldn’t hold down a decent job either.”
She shook her head. “One of my teachers was a Graves alum. She saw that I wasn’t being challenged and arranged to have me tested at the academy. I must have done pretty well because she drove out to our place the next day and told them I could enroll at Graves for no cost.”
“Your parents must have been pleased.”
Kendall blinked back tears and gave a short laugh. “Hardly. They couldn’t see why going to some uppity school in a fancy neighborhood was so important when I was getting a fine education right there in Grady. But I knew,” she added quietly. “I knew that Graves was my ticket out of that town. So I convinced them. It was a big sacrifice. Even with the scholarship money, there was a uniform and other things to buy. The school was forty minutes from our house so someone had to drive me both ways and pay for the gas to get us there.”
Kendall worried the loose string of the shirt between her fingers. “It was right around the time my dad got sober for good, and he picked up work with a local mechanic to bring in more money. So many years of that routine and they never complained. They were happy to make me happy.”
“You’re lucky.”
She looked at him now, not caring if he saw the tears shining in her eyes. “Would you believe I didn’t realize that until today? When I got to the school, I was in over my head. Not academically. But in every other way, I was clueless. All of those kids had so much and they took it for granted. The first week, I pulled a notebook out of a box sitting in one of the halls. The cover was bent, but otherwise it was unused. I figured the school provided supplies to students. Wrong.”
She winced at the memory. “It was a recycling box. Somebody had thrown away a perfectly good notebook because the cover was bent. Heck, where I came from recycling was using old tires as flower beds.”
Ty’s white teeth gleamed in the soft light as he smiled. “Grady, Kansas, environmental hotbed of the Midwest.”
She appreciated that he was trying to make this easier for her. “Yeah, right. Anyway, one of the girls in my class—she was a real brat—saw me take the notebook and told anyone who would listen. The nickname ‘trash girl’ stuck through my first semester.”
He grimaced. “That’s rough.”
“There were lots of things that happened that first year to show me that I was out of my league. All I wanted was to fit in. But the way I went about it was wrong.” She stopped speaking, the emotion of that time—the fear, the doubt, the insecurity—washing over her in waves.
She could almost smell the unique mix of chalk and sweat that would always remind her of the school. She wrapped her arms around her waist, leaning her head forward to breathe in his scent from the shirt collar. Needing to stay in the reality of the moment.
Ty’s voice coaxed her back to the present. “What did you do?” he asked.
“I reinvented myself. Most people at the school knew I was a charity case, but you never would have guessed it by the way I acted. I watched how the other girls dressed, talked, walked, combed their hair. I became one of them. But I cut my parents off in the process. I could change myself but not my mom and dad.” She shook her head. “I was so mad at them for being who they were, embarrassed about where I came from.”
“You were a kid,” Ty said gently. “Give yourself a break.”
“That excuse doesn’t fly. I knew exactly what I was doing. I wouldn’t even let them come to graduation, and I was the valedictorian.” She buried her face in her hands as the shame of her actions washed over her. “They gave up so much to send me to Graves, to give me the future I wanted even though they couldn’t understand it. I treated them horribly.”
“Kendall—”
She waved him to silence. “The worst part is I haven’t changed a bit. All through college, I did everything I could to stay away from Grady. I used any excuse I could think of—my class schedule, exams, part-time jobs, internships. You name it.”
Her tears were flowing freely now but she didn’t care. Talking to Ty was like going to confession. She had to get her sins off her chest before they ate away any more of her soul. “I’ve visited my parents twice in the past eight years. I have two real friends in the world. That’s it. Two. I don’t let anyone get too close. It’s easier than dealing with my feelings about the past.”
Stabbing one hand in the air, she yelled into the night, “I grew up poor. Big flipping deal!” More quietly, she continued, “My parents live in a double-wide trailer. Why does that embarrass me? They’re good people. I’m the one with the problem, not them.”
She wiped her nose on the sleeve of his shirt and pushed her hair behind her ears. “I’m sorry I made you feel like I thought I was better than you. That you had to prove something to me. It was never really about that. It’s me and my insecurities.”
He reached over and covered her hand with his. “Come here,” he said gently. She looked into his eyes and let herself be tugged off the seat.
When he pulled her into his lap and wrapped his arms around her, Kendall sank against the warmth of his chest. “I never break down like this,” she sniffed into his shirt. “You’re a bad influence.”
She felt his smile as he pressed his mouth into her hair. “You knew that from the beginning, Princess. That’s why you ran so hard.”
“I’ll probably keep running,” she said, snuggling deeper into his embrace.
“Then it’s a good thing my legs are longer than yours.”
“A good thing,” she agreed. Her breathing was finally returning to normal and she noticed how r
ight Ty’s arms felt holding her tight to him. She thought about all the words that had spilled out of her tonight. She’d bared her soul to him in a way she never had before to anyone.
Hell, not even to herself.
She could imagine what he must think of her. But she didn’t regret telling him about how she’d acted. She needed, for once in her life, to be honest with someone.
She inhaled the combination of crisp night air and Ty’s warm scent. She was glad he didn’t speak right away. Her body and mind were drained after everything that had happened today. Her eyes drifted shut. A few more moments of peace then she would listen to whatever he had to say.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Ty felt Kendall’s body grow limp in his arms. The candles flickered along the path, illuminating the small circle that enclosed the chairs. Everything beyond was shrouded in darkness. It didn’t matter. Ty knew his backyard like the back of his hand. He concentrated on the sound of water warbling over the stones in the fountain. He needed the noise to help him relax, as it had on so many previous nights.
All he could think about was the woman he held and what she’d shared with him. He didn’t understand the insecurities that came from growing up as she had. How could he? Thanks to his family’s wealth and power, he’d never had to struggle that way. He’d had everything he needed, except his parents’ unconditional love. There was no amount of money that could make up for the dysfunction in his family, but he was tired of letting his past have power over his future.
He’d taken a stand against his father six years ago and been firmly slapped down. In the world according to Eric Bishop, a son’s first responsibility was to protect the family name and bank account, no matter the cost.
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