Alison Roberts - Winning His Heart

A siren gave a single wail behind them and then shut off.

They both whirled.

“Oh, no,” Kayla said. “It’s the same guy.”

“She called the police because we were on her beach?” David said incredulously.

Kayla could feel the laughter bubbling within her. “You and I have become a regular two-person crime wave,” she said. “Who would have thought that?”

The policeman got out of his car and looked at them. And then he reached back inside.

Kayla squealed.

“Bastigal!”

She raced forward and the dog wriggled out of the policeman’s arms and into her own. Her face was being covered with kisses and she realized she was crying and laughing at the same time.

But even in her joy it occurred to her that her dog had been returned to her only when she had learned the lesson: Bastigal was no kind of replacement for human company, for a real friend.

“Did your daughter find him?” David asked. Kayla glanced at him. He was watching her with a smile tickling the edges of that damnably sexy mouth.

“Yeah.”

“I guess she’s going to be getting that new bike,” David said.

“She’ll have to find another way to get her new bike.”

“What? Why?”

“I told her she can’t take the reward. You do good things for people because it’s right, not because there’s something in it for you. To me, teaching her that is more important than a new bike. Though at the moment, she hates me for it.”

“I’m going to buy an ice cream parlor,” Kayla said, the tears sliding even faster down her face.

“Maybe you’re going to buy an ice cream parlor,” David growled in an undertone.

Kayla ignored him. “Tell your daughter she gets free ice cream for life.”

The policeman lifted a shoulder, clearly trying to decide if that was still accepting a reward. Finally, he said, with a faint smile, “Sure. Whatever. Hey, by the way, you were called in for trespassing.”

“Really?” She shouldn’t be delighted, but what had happened to her life? It had surprises in it!

“As soon as I heard two fully clothed people swimming, I somehow knew it was you,” he said wryly. “I told the complainant she only owns to the high water line.”

And then all of them were laughing and the dog was licking her face and Kayla wondered if she had ever had a more perfect morning.

The policeman left and they continued on their way, Bastigal content in her arms.

David reached over and scratched his ears. “He’s so ugly he’s cute,” he said.

“I prefer to think that he’s so cute, he’s ugly,” she retorted. “I think that nice policeman should let his daughter have the reward.”

“Do you?”

“Don’t you?”

“I don’t know. That kind of stand reminded me of what my dad was like,” David said quietly.

“I never met your dad,” Kayla said.

“No. I think he died a year or two before your family moved here. Completely unexpected. He seemed in every way like a big, strong guy. He had a heart attack. It was instant. He was sitting there having his supper, joking around, and he got a surprised look on his face and keeled over.”

“Oh, David.”

“No sympathy, remember?” he said. “But keep that in mind. Bad genetics.”

He said it lightly, but there was something in his eyes that was not light at all. As if she had been considering him as partner material, that should dissuade her.

How could she address that without making it seem as if she were looking at him as partner material?

She didn’t have to address it because he went on, his voice quiet, “In the last little while, I’ve actually felt grateful that he didn’t live to see my mom like this.”

She wanted to say Oh, David, again, but didn’t. She was so aware that he was giving something of himself to her, sharing a deeply private side that she suspected few people, if any, had ever seen.

“My dad,” he went on, “would have been just like that policeman. He knew right from wrong and he taught me that, and he didn’t care if I was happy about it or not. My happiness was secondary to my being a good person.”

“Mine, too,” she said, “now that I think about it.”

“It’s nice to see you looking so happy, Kayla,” David said quietly, as if they had spoken Kevin’s name out loud, as if he knew how desperate she had often felt in her marriage.

She felt as if the tears were going to start again, so she bit the side of her cheek and buried her face in her dog’s fur and said nothing.

“It’s your turn,” he said quietly, as if it were an order. And then, as if she might have dismissed it the first time, he said it again, even more firmly. “Kayla, it’s your turn for happiness.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

HER TURN FOR HAPPINESS?

“I feel guilty when I’m happy,” Kayla blurted out.

David nodded. “I remember feeling that way after my dad died. How dare the world hold laughter again?”

She nodded. That was how she felt exactly, but it was layered with even deeper confusion because her feelings about her husband’s death were not all black and white.

“But then I remembered something my dad said to me,” David said thoughtfully. “My dad said you could never be guilty and happy at the same time. Or afraid and happy at the same time. That’s why he was such a stickler for doing the right thing. That’s what he saw as the stepping stones to building true happiness. And that’s what he would have wanted me to do. To choose happiness. And that’s what I want you to do, too.”

She stared at David. He could have said a million things, and yet the thing he had said was so right.

Despite herself, she shared something else.

“David?”

“Hmm?”

“I’m scared of happiness. Remember you said wishes are for children? I’m afraid that the things you wish for just set you up for disappointment. And heartbreak.”

They had arrived in front of her house, and he glanced at his and then, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, went and sat in his wet clothes on her front step. He patted the place beside him.

“It was awful, wasn’t it?” he asked.

And she was going to say “what?” as if she didn’t know what he was talking about, but she did know, and she could not bear to bring dishonesty between them.

She had known this time was coming when they would have to address the history between them.

And she had expected that exploration would be like there was an unexploded mine buried somewhere in the unexplored ground between them.

“Yes,” she whispered. “Being married to Kevin was awful in so many ways. I mean, there were good things, too, don’t get me wrong.”

“Tell me,” he said.

And she knew he didn’t mean the good things. She ordered herself not to, but she could not disobey the command in his voice.

And so she found herself telling him. Slowly at first, like water that was seeping out a hole in a dam, the steady, small flow making the hole larger until the water was shooting through it with force, faster and faster.

She told him about the late nights waiting for Kevin, not knowing where he was, about the terrible houses they had lived in and the bills not paid. She talked about working as a waitress and a cleaning lady, about babysitting children and raking leaves, trying to hold it all together long after she should have let it fall apart.

And the more she worked at holding it together the more Kevin seemed to sabotage everything she had done, lose interest in her, treat her shabbily, at first in the privacy of their own home, and then in front of other people.

“Sometimes,” she said, finally, “I feel relieved that he died.”

It should have been her biggest secret. But it wasn’t. There was one left, still.