Heroes In Uniform (257 page)

When Katelyn didn’t answer, John sat back in his chair and changed the subject. “So, did you end up leasing the space we looked at for your studio?”

Katelyn smiled and nodded. She knew what John was trying to do, but she let him. Her heart was still heavy from the overwhelming news the doctor had given her, but it was hard not to feel a bit hopeful at the idea of having a new studio to work in.

“I did. It needs some remodeling to make it work, but I think it will be perfect when Sam finishes the build-out.”

“Your dad showed me some of your stuff. It’s amazing.”

“Thanks,” Katelyn said, suddenly feeling shy. She’d always been proud of her work, but her heart flipped a little at the idea that John might really like what she did. She was a sculptor but her work was a little abstract. Not everyone liked it. She worked mostly with metal, but she’d been mixing media lately, dabbling with adding glass and polished stone into her pieces. She’d even started painting a little and then adding texture to the paintings by mixing metals right into the surface of the paints.

“So you’ll have a studio and a shop in town?” he asked. Katelyn knew he was trying to take her mind off her father’s condition and all the decisions she had to make, but she didn’t object. She wanted to think about something other than medical terms and hospice choices, and whether she could really give her father the care he needed in what would likely be his last weeks of life.

She nodded. “I’ll have my real studio on the second floor where it’s nice and bright. There will be a small workspace downstairs where I’ll keep one work-in-progress so people can come in and watch me work or see how a piece progresses. I’ll have the gallery in the front and then have the shipping in the back.”

“Shipping?”

“Mm hmm. I’ll still be shipping things back to the gallery that represents me in Austin, and I’ve got a gallery in New York I ship pieces to and go to once or twice a year. I also have a gallery in New Orleans that wants to carry a few pieces on a trial basis.”

John took a sip of his coffee and pushed the muffin toward Katelyn, encouraging her to eat. She picked at it a bit as he talked. “You know about the painters and potter that opened shops here, I assume? They’ve brought a real crowd on the weekends during the summer. You should stop in and talk to them.”

Katelyn nodded as she swallowed a bite of muffin. “I will. I just want to get settled in a little more before I do,” she said, but the truth was, she’d been avoiding people since she came to town.

They sat together in an almost comfortable silence a bit longer. The support John showed her, the incredible help he’d been with her father, the way he’d been almost holding her hand through the whole visit with the doctor—it all served to break down the last bit of resistance to the charm John seemed to exude naturally without any effort at all. Katelyn took a deep breath and spilled the ugly truth she’d been holding onto since she got John’s call about her father.

“I’ve always resented you,” she said. “The other day, when you asked me why I don’t like you, I lied.”

John’s eyebrows shot up but he didn’t say anything.

“Well, not entirely. You are controlling and opinionated and obnoxiously pushy and bossy.” She looked up at him. “You’re very bossy.”

John began to grin and Katelyn couldn’t help but smile back. But her smile was gone in a second as she continued. “But that’s not why I’ve been, well…the way I’ve been with you.”

“You mean there’s more?” he asked, his grin taunting her now.

“I’ve always resented you for being here with my dad. He wanted
you
here with him. Not me,” she said with a little shake of her head as if to shake off the knowledge that she wasn’t wanted.

“Oh, Kate—” John began, his smile gone, but she cut him off.

“No, I know it’s awful and small and petty of me, and I’m sorry. I’ve been treating you like dirt, and you’ve done nothing but help me, help my dad. You really don’t deserve to bear the fallout of my twisted relationship with him,” she said, her smile wry as she tried to apologize.

John looked at her, seeming to study her for a minute, then scooped up their tray and tossed everything in the trash. He returned and took her hand, pulling her up.

“Come here, I want to show you something.” He ignored her protests and pulled her down the hall. They took the elevator up two flights to her father’s room.

“Wait here,” he said and walked in the room, leaving the door open. With the curtain pulled across the near side of her father’s bed, Katelyn could see John and hear her father, but her father couldn’t see her standing outside the door.

“John! Hey, boy, how are you? Everything quiet over in Hayes?”

Katelyn cringed. If her father was asking about Hayes, he was somewhere in the past again. Hayes was the town John had served when he was deputy. Now, as sheriff, he served Evers and ran the rest of the county and its prison system, while one of his deputies had taken over in Hayes.

John played along with Alan’s question as if he, too, were still in the past.

“Yes, sir. Everything’s all right over there. Hey, how’s Katelyn doing, Alan?”

Katelyn listened, stunned as her father’s voice came alive. She could hear his excitement, the pride evident.

“Give me my phone, there, on the table,” her father said. “She found a gallery that wants to show her work. I always knew she’d make it someday. So much talent. That little girl’s got so much talent.” John handed her father his phone and she watched as her father showed John picture after picture of what she could only assume were her sculptures. She’d gotten her first gallery showing six years earlier, so she had no idea what pictures her father still had on his phone, but he seemed so excited to be showing John something.

John nodded and caught her eye briefly as she stepped closer to the doorway. Her father missed the look and kept right on going, telling John all about her latest—well, in his mind anyway—latest works. Next he told John about the sale of her first commissioned work to the corporate headquarters of a publicly traded company in New York City. Katelyn smiled. She remembered that sale. They’d commissioned a large sculpture for the center of the building’s lobby. It had been a huge deal to her at the time. It still was, for that matter.

She listened to her father and John talk as tears ran down her face. Her father seemed to remember every detail of her career, every accomplishment she’d had, and she knew, standing there, this wasn’t the first time John had heard these stories. He would laugh and smile with her father and then he’d say something that spurred the next story from her father, as if he, too, had all of her milestones memorized.

For the first time ever, Katelyn let go of the jealousy she’d felt over her father’s relationship with John. Instead, she let herself be grateful for it. Grateful that her father had someone here with him all of these years. Grateful that she had John with her now to help her. Grateful that he’d shown her this—that he’d reminded her of the love her father had for her, despite her unusual upbringing.

* * *

A few days later, Katelyn and John left the hospital together after a morning spent visiting with her father, who had been surprisingly lucid for much of the time. It turned out that getting her feelings out there about her father’s relationship with John had been surprisingly…cathartic, actually. Katelyn was able to see John’s offers for help for what they were now. Support. Not control.

“So, I’ve been thinking. You should come out with me and my friends this weekend. We’re going to Pies and Pints tomorrow night. It’ll be fun: we’ll play pool or darts, have a few pitchers and pizza, relax. You can’t tell me you don’t need to relax,” he chided, those dimples eating away at her resistance.

Katelyn squirmed. “I don’t think so, John. What if people gawk at me?” She didn’t have to tell him why she asked that. He understood she felt self-conscious about her father sending her away. Or rather, the fact that the whole town knew her father had sent her away as a child.

“Don’t you read the paper? Watch the news? One of the people going is Laura Kensington.
The
Laura Kensington. As in former wife of Patrick Kensington, chased across the country by the man who killed her husband?
That
Laura Kensington. Well, now she’s Laura Bishop because she married Cade Bishop—you remember Cade and Shane Bishop? Cade’s the younger one.”

Katelyn said yes, but in reality, she didn’t remember Cade. They would have been in the same class in school if she’d grown up here and she knew
of
him from her father and aunt, but she didn’t actually
know
him.

John continued. “If no one stares at Laura, they’re not gonna stare at you. And if they do, she’ll know just how you feel and be there for you. Come on. Just one night. Not even a whole night. Stay for an hour. If you’re not having fun, we’ll fake some emergency and I’ll get you out of there.”

Katelyn had to laugh. “You sound like a girl planning the ‘emergency’ text half an hour into a blind date.”

John smiled triumphantly. “I promise. Kick me under the table and I’ll send a girly text. No one will suspect a thing.”

Katelyn smiled back. “Well, at least make sure you slip away to the little girls’ room before you send the text so they don’t see you.”

John laughed. “Perfect. I’ll pick you up at six tomorrow.”

Katelyn hated herself, because she felt her stomach flip just a little bit at the idea of John picking her up. Like a date. Only not. Because she didn’t like John. Well, that wasn’t exactly true. She liked him a lot better now that she’d gotten past her resentment and knew him better. But, she didn’t like him in
that
way. Only, lately, her body seemed to have other ideas about him.

Yup, just keep telling yourself you don’t like this supportive, caring, way-too-gorgeous-for-his-own-good guy with the sexy dimpled smile and the butt you can bounce a quarter off of. Or the shoulders that look broad enough to carry a tank. And, the chest that stretches the limits of his T-shirts in ways that send your imagination running wild. Nope. Not attracted to him.

Yeah, that’ll work.

Everlasting: Chapter Five

Katelyn had to admit, it was a little surreal sitting with Laura Kensington, who seemed a whole lot more down to earth than Katelyn expected her to be. Up close, she realized Laura was just a woman Katelyn’s own age who’d been through much more than any woman should have to go through, instead of the socialite everyone was used to seeing on television. And, Laura’s friends Ashley, Stacy, and Cora were all just as welcoming and friendly as Laura.

“How’s Jamie, Laura?” Cora asked the question as she leaned across the table to scoop another nacho off the plate in between the women. They’d grabbed one of the tall bar tables surrounded by vinyl-covered bar stools near the pool tables. The men were in the middle of a heated game of darts, but it sounded like they were doing more trash-talking than playing. That was all right with Katelyn; it gave her some breathing space from John.

He’d been doting on her since he’d picked her up, but the fact that he was acting so protective and solicitous was only making her cranky. She’d spent so much time resenting John, she didn’t know how to handle her body’s unappreciated response to him. When he placed a hand on her back protectively or ran his hand up and down her arm softly as they talked to his friends, her traitorous body sat up and took notice. Heck, it practically sat up and begged for more. A little space was a welcome thing right now, until her brain and her body could have a little heart-to-heart about what was and wasn’t going to happen with the local sheriff.

She dragged her eyes away from John and the just-right jeans that hugged his hips as he bent over his cue stick. She wanted to wrestle him out of them and see if what was underneath would live up to her imagination, but she forced herself to refocus on Laura.

Laura had pulled out her phone to show them all pictures of her daughter, Jamie, in response to Cora’s question. Katelyn grinned. Babies were irresistible.

“How old is she?” she asked as Laura tipped the phone in her direction to show her a round cherub face and blond hair covered in what appeared to be yogurt.

Laura’s face glowed as she talked about her daughter. “She’s ten months. She turns one in August and she just gets more and more fun each day.”

“And more and more spoiled,” said John as he came up behind Katelyn, resting a hand on her lower back. He grinned at Cade who came up behind Laura and wrapped his arms around her.

“Guilty as charged,” Cade said, not even trying to deny that he spoiled his daughter.

Katelyn could barely focus as John leaned in and whispered in her ear, his breath fanning out to send tingles down her spine.

“Doing okay?” he asked, and she practically had to grit her teeth to keep from yelling at the frustration building in her. She swallowed and nodded her head, then shifted slightly away from him. She wanted to shift into him instead. Actually, truth be told, she’d like to see how well their bodies would mold together. She wanted to melt into him and find out if his body was really as hard and strong as she imagined it to be.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like the way that girl has you wrapped around her little pinky,” Cora said to Cade with a laugh, drawing Katelyn’s focus back to the group. Nothing like talking about a toddler to snap a girl out of a lust induced haze.

“And all of his other fingers, his toes—you name it, she owns it.” Cade’s brother, Shane, said as he turned toward Katelyn. “She isn’t even a year old and she has her own pony.”

As everyone laughed around them and Katelyn tried to keep her jaw off the floor at the idea of a baby with a pony, Laura came to Cade’s defense. “In all fairness,” she explained to Katelyn, “he rescues horses at the ranch. It was a natural to keep Millie for Jamie when we saw how gentle she was.”

John shook his head and laughed harder, his dark eyes sparkling with true affection that made Katelyn’s heart melt just a little. “You can’t explain this away, Laura. You know perfectly well he would have gone out and found her a pony if Millie hadn’t been there.”