Alison Roberts - Winning His Heart

She felt she had, somehow, revealed too much of herself on the basis of a starry night and an old friendship.

Now she felt the vulnerability of her confessions, felt faintly ashamed of herself and as if she had betrayed Kevin.

But worse than any of that? The yearning she had felt when David had reached out and touched her hair.

Kayla felt she had to escape him.

Being determined that he would not see any of that, she gave David a cheeky wave as she drove away in the police car.

And then she let the relief well up in her, a feeling as if she was escaping something dangerous and unpredictable and uncontrollable.

She liked being in control. Especially after Kevin.

“Hey, good luck with your dog,” the cop said, a few minutes later. He very sweetly got out and opened the car door for her before he drove away.

Despite the fact her day had unfolded as a series of mishaps, and her dog was missing, and she had discovered, within herself, an unspoken bitterness toward Kevin, Kayla was uncomfortably aware of something as she climbed the dilapidated stairs to her house.

She felt alive. She felt intensely and vibrantly alive, possibly for the first time since she had left Blossom Valley.

She could not even remember the last time she had laughed so hard as when the police light had been turned on her and David.

Her life, she realized, had been way too serious for way too long. When had she lost her ability to be spontaneous?

But she already knew. Her marriage had become an ongoing effort to control everything— fun had become a distant memory.

Yearning grabbed her again. To feel alive. To laugh.

Despite the hour, Kayla didn’t feel like sleeping. She didn’t feel ready, somehow, to leave the night—with its odd combination of magic and self-discovery and discomfort—behind. She went into the kitchen, turned on the light, opened the fridge.

Somehow, drinking lemonade on her front porch and watching the sun come up sounded wonderful in a way it would not have even a day ago.

And who knew? Maybe she would even see Bastigal wandering home from his own adventure.

But it was the thought that maybe she was really waiting to see David again that made her rethink it. She closed the fridge door—and the door on all her secret longings. She turned off the lights and ordered herself to bed.

But not before having one last peek out the window. She told herself she was having one last look for Bastigal, and yet her stomach did a funny downward swoop when she watched David come down the street.

Kayla sank back in the shadows of her house as she watched David take the front steps of the house next door. He pulled up the screen and tried the handle.

Kayla realized the care aide had decided to do her job now. The front door was locked up tight.

Telling herself it was none of her business, she went to a side window and watched him go to the back door of his house. It was the same. Locked.

He tried a window. Locked. Kayla noticed all the windows were closed, which was a real shame on such a beautiful night—but she realized all sorts of precautions would be in place to try and ensure his mother’s well-being.

As she continued to watch, David went back to the door and knocked lightly. Kayla could tell he did not want to wake his mother if she was sleeping. Presumably the care aide was not, but she did not come to the door, either. Watching television, maybe?

He stepped back off the steps, and Kayla could tell he was contemplating his options.

She could offer him her couch, of course. He had rescued her today—no, given the lateness of the hour, that was yesterday already—after she’d been stung.

She’d only be returning the favor.

But she remembered his deeply sarcastic tone when he had said earlier today: Kayla to the rescue.

And then, a certain wryness in his tone, he had remembered her working at that camp, those children trailing her through town.

Really, more of the same.

Kayla to the rescue. It made her aware that she needed to resist whatever was going on in her.

She was going to go to bed, and she was going to mind her own business and not feel the least bit guilty about it, either.

Not even when she peeked back out her window and saw him dragging a thick cushion off the patio furniture down the deck steps and onto the lush grass of his mother’s backyard.

She watched him lay it out a few feet from the bottom of the steps, and then lie down on top of it, on his back, his face toward the sky as if he could not get enough of the stars tonight. Some tension left him, and she was not sure she had ever seen a person look more relaxed.

And she envied him for the place he had among the stars. Had she offered her couch and had he taken it, she would have deprived him of this moment.

It occurred to her that maybe that’s what rescuing did: gave the rescuer a feeling of power while keeping the rescued person from their own destiny, from finding their own way to where they were supposed to be.

And in light of her relationship with Kevin, that was a deeply distressing thought.

Kayla decided, right then and there, that she was going to avoid David for the rest of the time he spent here with his mother.

She did not need the kind of introspection he seemed to be triggering in her. And she certainly did not need the complication of a man who could cause her to ache with yearning just by touching her hair!

CHAPTER TEN

DAVID CONTEMPLATED THE STARS above his head. He could sleep in his car, except he had put the roof up at dark and locked it. His keys were inside the house. Ditto for his wallet, or he could go get a hotel room somewhere, though of course hotels would be booked solid at this time of year in Blossom Valley.

If his mother managed to get out the back door again, he had her escape route, and the route to the garden shed, blocked.

What do you mean “at first”? Kayla had asked him about his choice not to marry, not to have children.

At first it had been because he had never found the right person. Now it went so much deeper. Some forms of his mother’s illness had a genetic component. What if he had it?

And his father had died young of heart disease, plunging the family he had protected so diligently into a despair deeper than the ocean.

David’s doctor had assured him his own heart was the heart of an athlete. And the other? There was a test they could do to determine the presence of the “E” gene.

But so far, David had said no. Did you want to know something like that? Why would you? Just for yourself, no. If there was someone else involved in his life...?

Was it the strangely delightful evening with Kayla making him have these wayward thoughts?

He decided firmly, and not for the first time, that he was not going there, that these kind of thoughts were counterproductive. They had snuck by his defenses only because he was exhausted. He closed his eyes, drew in one long breath and ordered himself to sleep. And it worked.

David woke up feeling amazingly refreshed. The sun was already warm on his face, and he glanced at his watch, astounded by how late he had slept and how well. He realized he was glad to have slept outside.

The inside was not really a house anymore: doors locked, cleaning supplies hidden, windows never opened, stove unplugged. One of the live-in care aides had moved into his boyhood bedroom, and he was relegated to a tiny den with a pullout sofa when he came.

David got up swiftly, not wanting to dwell on all the depressing issues inside his mother’s house. He returned the cushions to the deck that was never used anymore, except by that care aide he suspected of slipping outside to sneak cigarettes.

What had he said last night to Kayla? That his mother’s house looked like normal people lived here. He was aware, the feeling of being refreshed leaving him, that he had probably kept that particular illusion alive too long.