Читать книгу Winning His Heart: The Millionaire's Homecoming / The Maverick Millionaire - Melissa McClone - Страница 13

CHAPTER SEVEN

DAVID’S CHOCOLATE HAIR was sleep tousled, and his dark eyes held faint, dazed amusement as he gazed at the two nightie-clad women in front of him.

Kayla gazed back. He stood there in only a pair of blue-plaid pajama pants that hung dangerously low over the faint jut of his hips.

He didn’t have on anything else. His body was magnificent. He was deeper and broader than he had been all those years ago when he had been a lifeguard. The boyish sleekness of his muscle had deepened into the powerful build of a man in his prime. There was not an ounce of superfluous flesh on him.

In the darkness of the night he looked as if he had been carved from alabaster: beautiful shoulders, carved, smooth chest, washboard abs on his stomach.

Kayla gulped.

David came full awake, and the faint amusement was doused in his eyes as he took them both in, lingering on Kayla’s own nightie-clad self a second more than necessary. It occurred to her the nightie, light as it was and perfect for hot summer nights, was just a little sheer for this kind of encounter. Her shoulders felt suddenly too bare, and she could feel cool air on the thighs that had already been way too exposed to him.

David seemed to draw his eyes away from her reluctantly. Kayla could feel her pulse hammering in the hollow of her throat.

“Mom,” he said gently, swinging open the screen door, “come in the house.”

His mother looked at him searchingly and then her expression tightened. “I don’t know who you are,” she snapped, “but don’t think I don’t know my wallet is missing.”

“We’ll find your wallet.” His voice was measured, and the tone remained gentle. But Kayla saw the enormous pain that darkened his eyes as his mother moved toward him.

“And the roses need pruning,” Mrs. Blaze snapped at her son.

He winced, and at that moment, a woman came up behind them, dressed in a white uniform.

“Mr. Blaze, I’m so sorry. I—”

He gave her a look that said he didn’t want to hear it, and passed his mother into her care. “It looks like she has some scratches on her arms, if you could tend to those.”

“Yes, sir.”

There was something faintly shocking about hearing David—the boy who had romped through the days of summer with her, and played tricks on their teachers, and sat in with her at bonfires licking marshmallow off his fingers—addressed in such a deferential tone of voice.

The door shut behind his mother and the care aide, and he stepped out onto the porch. His face was composed, but Kayla saw him draw in a deep, steadying breath, and then another.

It filled his chest and drew her eyes to the masculine perfection of that surface.

“Thank you,” he said quietly. “Where was she?”

Her eyes skittered away from his chest, and to his face. The lateness of the hour and the pain in his face made all the hurts between them seem less important somehow. She found that she wanted to reach up and ease the stern, worried lines that had creased around his mouth.

“In my yard, pruning the roses.” Kayla handed him the pruning shears, and he took them and stared down at them for a moment, then looked out at the garden shed, the door hanging open.

“I guess that needs to be locked,” he said.

“I didn’t know,” Kayla said softly. “I haven’t been over yet since I got back. The house and yard looked so beautifully maintained, I just assumed your mom was going as strong as ever.”

“One of my property managers makes sure the maintenance gets done, and the yard is looked after.” He looked around sadly. “It does look like normal people live here, doesn’t it?”

“I’m so sorry, David,” she said softly, and then again, “I didn’t know.”

He smiled a little tightly. “No pity,” he warned her.

“It wasn’t pity,” she said, a little hotly.

“What, then?”

“It was compassion.”

“Ah.” He didn’t look convinced, or any more willing to accept whatever she was offering no matter what name she put on it. “What are you doing out here, anyway? What time is it?”

“After three.” No sense confessing all the terrible thoughts that had kept her from sleeping. “I was worried about my dog. I couldn’t sleep. I heard a noise out here and thought it might be Bastigal.”

“And it was Mom. It’s a mercy that you found her before she wandered off or hurt herself with the pruners.” He shook his head. “She can’t remember what she had for breakfast—”

Or her own son, Kayla thought sadly.

“—but she worked her way past two security locks, a dead bolt and a childproof handle on the door.”

Kayla was afraid to tell him, again, how sorry she was.

“There’s a live-in aide, but obviously she was distracted by something. I think she sneaks the odd cigarette out here on the deck. Maybe she left the door open behind her.”

Kayla shivered a little at his tone, very happy she was not in the aide’s shoes.

“How long has your mom been like that?” Kayla asked softly.

It looked like a conversation he didn’t want to have, but then he sighed, as if it was a surrender to confide in her.

“She’s been deteriorating for a couple of years,” he said softly. “It starts so small you can overlook it, or wish it away. I’d notice things when I visited: toothpaste in the refrigerator, mismatching socks, saying the same thing she just said. When I wasn’t here, she’d phone me. She lost the car. Where was Dad? That was when she could still remember my phone number.”

David stopped abruptly, took a deep breath, as if he was shaking off the need to confide. His voice cooled. “I’ve had live-in help for her for nearly two months. The last few weeks, the decline has seemed more rapid. I don’t think she’s going to be able to stay here any longer.”

So what could she say, if not “sorry”? But Kayla had dealt with her own grief, and sometimes she knew how words, intended to help, could just increase the feeling of being lonely and alone.

Instead of words she reached out and placed her palm over his heart. She wasn’t even sure why. Perhaps to let him know she could feel it breaking?

His skin felt beautiful under her fingertips, like silk that had been warmed in the sun. And his heartbeat was steady and strong. She didn’t know if the gesture comforted him, but it did her. She could feel his strength, and knew he had enough of it to cope with whatever came next.

For a moment he stood gazing down at her hand, transfixed. And then he covered it with his own.

Something more powerful than words passed between them, and she felt a shiver of something for David she had not felt ever before.

Certainly not with her own husband.

Shaken, and trying desperately not to show it, she withdrew her hand from under the warm, resilient promise of his.

For a moment, an electric silence ran between them. Then David ran his freed hand through the crisp darkness of his hair. “No dog, I assume?”

Kayla was inordinately relieved at the change of subject, at the words sliding like cooling raindrops into the place that sizzled like an electrical storm between them. “No. I hoped he might have found his way back to the yard.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t find him.”

“It’s not for lack of trying. Thank you for the posters—they brought out an army of children. I’ll reimburse you, of course.”

He shrugged. “Whatever.”

“And naturally, I’ll pay the reward when we find him.”

“It’s okay, Kayla. I offered it, I’ll pay it.”

“No.”

“It’s probably a moot point, anyway.”

“You think we aren’t going to find him?” she asked, trying to keep the panic from her voice. David obviously had bigger things to think about than her dog.

“Oh, I think you’ll find him. I just don’t think the kids will. He’s a timid little guy, isn’t he?”

“Yes. How did you know?”

“Well, I saw him scurry away after he fell out of the basket when you got stung.”

“Did he look hurt?”

“Not at the rate he was running, no. I had spotted you before that. Riding down Main Street. Even then the dog had a distinctly worried look on his face.”

Despite herself, she chuckled. “That’s him—my little worrier. I’ll probably never get him to ride in the basket again!”

“A pair well matched. You’re both worriers!”

To be standing with such a gorgeous man and pegged as a worrier! What did she want to be seen as? Carefree? Lively? Happy?

But David always saw straight to the heart of things, and the last few years of her life had been rife with worry. Kayla self-consciously touched her brow, wondering if there was a permanent mark of it there.

Thankfully, David was scanning the bushes. “I don’t think he’s going to come out for the reward-hungry children running through the streets shrieking his name. Sorry. A misstep on my part.”

“He’ll show up,” she said, but she could hear the wistfulness—and worry—in her own voice.

“I hope so.” She knew she should say good-night and leave his porch, cross the little strip of grass that separated their properties and close the gate firmly between them.

But she didn’t.

When had she become this lonely? She felt like she ached for his company. Anyone’s company, probably. She didn’t want to return to that empty house, the wayward direction of her restless thoughts.

He was looking at her, smiling slightly.

“What?”

“There is a quality about you that begs to be painted.”

“What?” She wanted to press her brow again!

“I noticed it when I saw you on the bike. I could almost see a painting of you—Girl on a Bicycle.

“And now, out here in your white nightdress on the porch. Girl on a Summer Night.” He shrugged, embarrassed.

But she felt as if she drank in the words like a flower deprived too long of water.

In that Lakeside Life feature on David and Blaze Enterprises, it had said, almost as an aside, that David had one of the largest private collections of art in the country. Again, the man who stood in front of her did not seem like the same boy who had raced her on bicycles down these tree-lined streets.

This David, this man of the world and collector of art, thought she was worthy of a painting? He saw something else in her besides a furrow-browed worrier?

Kayla could feel tears smarting her eyes, so she said swiftly, carelessly, turning her head from his gaze and pressing her fingers into her forehead to erase any remaining worry lines,“I guess the swelling has gone down, then.” She pretended she was concerned about the swelling from the beesting rather than the worry lines!

She felt his fingers on her chin, turning her unwilling gaze back to him.

He searched her face, and she felt as if she was wide open to him: the loneliness, the crushing disappointment, the constant worry, all of it. She felt as if he could see her.

And she realized, stunned, she had always felt like that. As if David could see her.

The longing that leaped within her terrified her. The longing and the recrimination. She suddenly felt as if every choice she had ever made had been wrong.

And she probably still could not be trusted with choices!

Kayla reminded herself she had made a vow that she was not going to offer herself on the altar of love anymore.

She had vowed to be content with the house Kevin’s parents had given her—restoring it to some semblance of order, never mind its former glory, should be enough to fill her days! Add to that her dog, when she found him, and eventually her business when she discovered the right one.

Those things would fill her, complete her, give her purpose, without leaving her open to the pain and heartache of loving.

She hated it that the night was working some odd magic on her, that she would even think the word love in the presence of David.

She broke free of his fingers and his searching gaze, darted down the steps and across the back lawn.

“Kayla,” he called. “Stop.”

But she didn’t. Stop why? So that he could dissect her heartbreak? Lay open her disappointments with his eyes? No, she kept on going. Nothing could stop her.

Except his next words.

“Kayla, stop. I think I see the dog.”