Authors: Gena Showalter
K
ENNA
’
S
INTERVIEW
WITH
Mr. Porter, owner of Swat Team 8, went well. He told her that he was too old to spray houses for roaches, ants and terminates—which he was—and too mean to answer phones when potential customers called—also true—and that his only grandson had just left for the army and he needed someone to take over every aspect of the business for minimum wage, no tips, and since Kenna was the only person to apply, she could have the job, he supposed, and he didn’t care what Mrs. Christine Michaelson offered him to turn her away.
So, two birds, one stone. The mystery of Kenna’s unemployment had been solved, and she now had a job.
When she wasn’t spraying houses, which was quite often, she stayed in Mr. Porter’s house and answered his phone, keeping him company, or ran all of his errands. He was a grouchy, lonely old man who needed a friend, but didn’t want to admit it. She kind of loved him.
The doorbell rang, and Mr. Porter called out, “Better answer that, Kenna. My knees are aching something fierce.” He was perched in his favorite recliner, a beer in one hand and the TV remote in the other.
“Sure thing, Mr. Porter.”
“How many times do I have to tell you to call me Virgil, girl?”
“I’ve lost count.”
He mumbled something disparaging under his breath.
“I’ll call you Virgil after hours.” Grinning, she opened the front door. When she spotted her mother, the grin faded and she sighed. It was too early in the day for insults about life choices, weight and failures. “This is my place of employment, Mom.”
Roanne stepped past her and into the small house, removing her sunglasses. Her distaste for the well-used furniture and stained carpet was clear. Had she always been such a snob? “I need to speak with you.”
“It’ll have to wait. These are my office hours.”
“I’ve heard startling rumors about you and Dane.”
“You also heard the girl,” Virgil piped up, without moving from his recliner. “Office hours are from seven to three, and all breaks have to be scheduled two weeks in advance.”
Roanne bristled, but ignored him. “At least tell me if the rumors are true, Kenna. I’m your mother. I deserve to know.”
She’d expected this. Sooner, really, considering the show she and Dane had put on the day she was fired from Two Farms. But her feelings were so new and raw, she wasn’t yet willing to share them.
She kissed her mother’s cheek and gave her a gentle shove out the door. “I love you, and I will talk to you about this later. All right?”
Roanne put her foot in the door, preventing Kenna from shutting it. Worry added several years to her features. “Darling, are you sure you know what you’re doing? Dane is never going to settle down. That’s what Thomas says, and I don’t want to see you and Norrie hurt.”
The concern, genuine as it seemed, nearly shattered her. “We will talk about it
later.
Goodbye, Mother.” She shut the door without another word, and Roanne returned to her car.
Kenna pressed her forehead against the cool wood, fighting a sudden well of tears. Hadn’t she herself called Dane a “bad bet”?
“Don’t you go listening to her, you hear,” Virgil said. “Just because a man hasn’t settled down in the past don’t mean he won’t settle down in the future.
You
haven’t settled down yet, now have you?”
Right. Yes. He was right.
“I was a wild man before I met my Mary, and if the cancer hadn’t gotten her, we’d still be together.”
Kenna sat at the edge of his chair and patted his weathered, age-spotted hand. He would have been a tall man, if not for the stoop in his back, and he was super lean, with the thinnest cap of white hair. He wore glasses as thick as her wrist. “What’d she do to win a wild man like you?”
“She breathed. Now get yourself off my chair and get back to work. Gosh dern kids,” he mumbled. “Always trying to get unscheduled breaks with pay.”
Kenna was smiling as she stood. The rest of the workday flew by with no sprays and only one call. At this rate, she wasn’t sure how Virgil was going to be able to afford to pay her. Well, hell. She’d take only what she absolutely needed to survive, she thought, and return the rest to him.
With that in mind, she almost called and canceled the appointment she’d set up in the city. But she didn’t. She got in Brook Lynn’s car and drove. This was something she had to do, a surprise she’d arranged for Dane.
But what if he didn’t like it? It probably wasn’t as romantic as she’d originally supposed, was probably a bit creepy. And lame.
What are you doing? Wussing out?
Yeah. Maybe. But she walked into the tattoo shop with her head held high, anyway.
* * *
D
ANE
FELT
LIKE
a drug addict. Any time away from Kenna made him go into withdrawals. It was inconvenient and awful to need someone so desperately, and he didn’t like it. Especially when she seemed to be pulling away from him more with every day that passed.
He knew why. He’d felt her eyes on him every time he and Norrie were in the same room. Which wasn’t often. He’d made sure of that.
“We’re a package deal,” she had said the other day.
“I know,” he’d replied, thinking it was the only wrench in their relationship.
Then they’d spoken no more about it, but even the idea had become a noose around his neck. She wanted him to relax around the girl, that much was obvious, but he just hadn’t been able to manage it. A sense of dread had begun to grow inside him, as if a timer had been placed on their life together and it would zero out any day.
He had to do something. He wasn’t ready to lose her.
He’d just found out a deal he’d been working on for months was about to crash and burn, so he was flying out to L.A. tomorrow. Maybe he could convince Kenna to go with him, spend some quality time in the hotel room and get
her
addicted to
him.
Earlier, she’d texted and asked him to come over. Now he opened her bedroom window from the outside and climbed into her room, per her instructions. She’d filled the bedroom with strawberry-scented candles, a soft glow cascading over her as she sat at the edge of her bed wearing only a tank and a pair of panties.
So sexy. So mine.
“Did my parents see you?” she whispered.
“Your—” Realization dawned. Looked as if they were going to have themselves a good old-fashioned role-playing session. He was hard in an instant. “No, honey, I made sure to be real quiet. No one will ever know the hottest cheerleader is banging the sexy bad boy who’s new to town.”
A smile broke free before she was able to control it. “I thought you were the shy poet. That’s who I invited to this intense study session. Maybe I typed in the wrong number.”
A poet, huh? “Pillow’d upon my fair love’s ripening breasts, to feel for ever its soft fall and swell, awake for ever in a sweet unrest, still, still to hear her tender-taken breath, and so live ever—or else swoon to death.”
Her jaw dropped. “You can quote Keats?”
He scratched his chest. “Is that what I did?”
She threw a pillow at him, but he caught it and dropped it to the floor, then took off his shirt and joined her at the bed. She held him off by flattening her foot against his chest.
“Before we study,” she said, “I have to show you something.”
“Is it your books?” His gaze dropped to her chest, letting her know exactly what genre he wanted to read. Erotica. “I’m eager to give an oral report.”
She shook her head and chewed on her bottom lip; a sign of nervousness, he’d come to learn. Slowly she turned to the side, revealing the back of her shoulder—and the wild strawberry tattooed there. It was a match to the ones climbing up both his arms.
“Kenna,” he rasped.
“Do you hate it?”
He pressed her against the mattress and loomed above her. This woman constantly surprised him. And every time he thought she couldn’t possibly please him more, she did.
“Honey, I may be a sexy bad-boy poet, but even I don’t have the words to articulate how I feel about this. I’m going to have to show you.”
* * *
K
ENNA
ROSE
EARLY
,
as was her habit, and studied Dane while he slept in her bed. He was so relaxed and at ease—and so long his feet hung off the end of her bed. But he hadn’t complained once. Had just made such tender love to her and fallen asleep with her snuggled in his arms. Any time she’d rolled away, he’d brought her back to his side.
Now, he stretched awake, his eyelids fluttering open. When he realized she was sitting up beside him, he yanked her against his chest. “Too far away,” he grumbled.
She covered her mouth to stop a round of laughter. “What do you consider the perfect distance?”
“This. You on top of me.”
“Should I have myself surgically attached?”
“Yes. I’ll make arrangements later today.” He scrubbed a hand down his face. “Actually, it’ll have to wait. I’ve got to fly to L.A. in a few hours. I’ll be gone two weeks.”
Two weeks without him?
Don’t pout.
“I’ll miss you.”
“Don’t miss me, come with me.”
“I can’t. I have work and my daughter. I can’t just pack up and leave at a moment’s notice.”
A flicker of irritation passed over his face. “And that, right there, is one of the reasons I’ve never dated mothers.”
Kenna stiffened. He was complaining about Norrie? Wishing she wasn’t around?
Does Uncle Dane like me, Momma?
Of course, sweetheart.
Are you sure?
She’d assured her daughter that he did. But for the first time, Kenna suspected she’d outright lied to her daughter.
Can’t fool myself anymore.
Dane sat up, his gaze shuttering, hiding his emotions. “Look, I just think you work too hard, and that you need a vacation.”
A vacation away from her child.
Inhalation...exhalation...good, that was good. “Look, I appreciate that you want some company...”
“It’s not about company. I won’t be alone. I just want you with me.”
“You’re not going to be alone?”
“No. My assistant always travels with me.”
His assistant. One of the pretty young things Kenna had seen at his office, most likely. “Have you and your assistant ever slept together?”
He paused before jerking his shirt over his head—and she knew. They had.
Won’t commit.
Bad bet.
Doesn’t like Norrie.
“And you think it’s okay to travel with her?” she demanded.
“Yes. But I’m not attracted to her anymore.”
Argh! She picked up Dane’s shoes and tossed them out the window. “Do you know how disrespectful you’re being to me right now?”
“Me? You just tossed my shoes out the window.”
“You’re traveling across the country with a woman you’ve slept with.” And that wasn’t even the worst of it!
“Doesn’t mean I’m going to sleep with her again. I’m with you, and I’m not a cheater.”
“But you’ll be spending time with her. Probably after hours. Alone in a hotel room. Probably having meals with her.”
“Yes, and we’ll be working.”
“I don’t care if everyone else in the world disagrees with me. A committed man should not travel with a former lover.” It opened up all kinds of doors to temptation and really, it looked bad. And the fact that he couldn’t see that...the fact that he wished Kenna had never had Norrie...”I want you to get out, Dane. Now.”
He glared at her. “You don’t trust me?”
“Trust has nothing to do with it. Mistakes happen. Like this one, you and me. You treat my daughter like she’s a leper, and I’m tired of it. You’re never going to accept her, I realize that now, and that means I’m never going to have a future with you.”
“I don’t like kids. I made that clear from the beginning. It has nothing to do with Norrie herself.”
“She’ll never understand that. Neither will I.” Kenna turned away from him, unable to face him a moment longer. “I’m such a fool. I thought if I gave you time, you’d soften toward her. At least a little. But all I’ve done is allow you to hurt my baby. Well, that ends now. Get out and don’t come back.”
K
ENNA
CRIED
AT
least once a day for two weeks. Brook Lynn and Jessie Kay tried to console her, and when they failed—#LifeSucked—they called West, who came and got her and Norrie for swim time at his house.
Kenna sat under a large umbrella with him, doing her best not to break down yet again as she watched Norrie play and have fun. When West couldn’t draw her into any kind of mundane conversation, he sighed and said, “He’s a mess, you know.”
As if she really needed to ask who “he” was. Her palms began to sweat. “How do you know that?”
“I’ve seen him.”
Was he dating anyone else? She wouldn’t ask. She
wouldn’t.
“So he’s back in town?”
“Yes. Got in two days ago.”
Two days. And he hadn’t come to her house, hadn’t even texted to say
hi, how are you.
What was left of her heart withered.
What? I expected him to ride in on a white horse and beg for my forgiveness? To throw his arms around Norrie and tell her how much he loved her?
Kenna’s phone rang, and with a shaky hand, she answered it.
“Kenna! You...I don’t even have words,” her mother said without bothering with pleasantries. “Dane came to see his father last night to make amends. They talked for hours, even hugged. I just wanted to say thank you. Thomas is so happy. He says Dane told him you’re the reason he thought about the past, and the present, and realized it was better to let go of hurt than to hold on to it.”
“Me?”
“Yes, you. I—”
Her mother’s voice was drowned out by the sudden ring in Kenna’s ears as she saw him.
Dane stepped out of West’s house and walked into the backyard. His hair was mussed. His eyes were bloodshot and his cheeks hollowed. She almost bolted, but managed to remain in place. This was good. They needed to have a final showdown. Needed closure.
“Mom,” she said, “I’ve got to go.”
“But—”
She hung up on Roanne.
“Hi, Uncle Dane,” Norrie said from the pool. There was far less excitement in her voice than there’d been the weekend they’d spent at his ranch, and Kenna’s stomach twisted.
“I’d like to talk to you,” he told the girl, stepping up to the pool’s edge.
She reluctantly swam over to him.
Dane gulped, even as he went to his knees. He met her daughter’s gaze and said, “I missed you.”
Norrie blinked at him, suspicious. “You did? Really?”
“I did. And I want to apologize to you for being so rude. I once had a little brother, but I didn’t take care of him the way I should have and he died. I was so afraid of doing something wrong with you, and you getting hurt, that I tried to pretend you weren’t there.”
“That wasn’t a very nice thing to do,” she said quietly.
“No, it wasn’t.”
Kenna could hardly breathe. Her dream was coming true? Right before her eyes?
“I’m not going to let fear rule my life anymore,” he said. “I think you’re a pretty special kid.”
“Duh. I know. Momma and my aunts tell me
all the time.
”
He smiled at her. “I’ve redecorated your room. Picked everything out myself. It’s covered with pizzas. There’s even a kitchenette inside it, where you can bake as many plastic pies as you want.”
“I want to go see it now,” she squealed happily. “Can we, Momma?”
“Not yet,” West replied as Kenna struggled to speak. He walked over and helped Norrie out of the water. “Your Mom needs to talk to your uncle Dane. Let’s give them some time alone.”
“Five minutes,” Norrie said.
“Ten,” West countered.
“Twelve,” she said, not exactly an expert negotiator yet.
“Done.”
They disappeared inside the house. Fighting for calm, Kenna pushed to her feet.
“Kenna,” Dane said. He straightened and focused on her. “I tried to forget you and move on, but I couldn’t. I thought about you the entire flight, picturing you traveling with a former boyfriend, and I wanted to kill him. I sent Tamera back as soon as we landed, and I worked without her the entire time. Without anyone.”
She gulped. “I would have liked to have heard this the day it happened.”
“I know, and I’m sorry,” he said, running his hand through his hair. “A life without you isn’t any kind of life at all, and when I realized how stupid I’d been, I flew home to talk to you face-to-face. But I kept thinking about the way I had treated Norrie, and I decided I needed to get myself ironed out first. Prove myself with my actions rather than words.”
“Dane—”
He took a step toward her. “I’ve spent my life agonizing over what happened to Daniel. I realized I needed to forgive myself for his death, and not let it tarnish what could become of my future.” He looked at her, his eyes warm. “I thought about Norrie a lot, the things she said and the way her face always lit up when she was happy. How she is a miniature version of you. How there was no way I could resist her, when I couldn’t resist her mother. No way I couldn’t love her...the way I love her mother.”
What? What!
He loves me?
“You’ve changed me, Kenna. You’ve opened my eyes and my heart, and you have made me better. I talked to my dad—”
“I know.”
“You do?” he asked, taking another step toward her.
She nodded. “My mom called me.”
“I was letting bitterness keep me from seeing he’s just a man who made mistakes. Just like all the rest of us. I always insisted you forgive me, but then I never extended anyone else the same courtesy.” He reached her and stared down at her. “I’m not going to be a bad bet anymore. Not for you.”
“Dane,” she said again.
“I ordered new equipment for Virgil Porter,” he rushed out. “I will buy Two Farms if you want it, and give it to you to do with as you will. I’m having a new playground put in Strawberry Park. I have a puppy picked out for Norrie. I only need your approval. I love you, Kenna. I love you, and I don’t ever want to be without you. I want legal ties between us, so you’ll always know I’ll come home to you, that you are mine, and I am yours. That we belong together, now and for the rest of our lives. The three of us, a family.”
Her jaw dropped, her mind reeling. “Are you asking me to...”
“I’m not asking, I’m begging. But before you answer, I want to show you something.” He held out his hand.
She remained in place, frozen by shock. There was
more?
He used two fingers to close her mouth, then did what he’d done the day she was fired from Two Farms and hefted her over his shoulder. This time, she didn’t fight. He didn’t walk through the house, but shouldered his way past the gate, entering the front yard.
A horse-drawn carriage waited on the street.
“You wanted to be a princess for a day,” he said, “but I want you to be
my
princess. Forever. And I don’t care if that is the cheesiest line in the history of ever. I will say anything, do anything,
be anything,
to have you, now and always.”
He set her inside the carriage, and climbed in to crouch between her legs. “One more chance, Kenna. That’s all I need. I’ll get it right this time, I promise you.”
“Because you love me,” she managed to croak.
“More than anything. I meant what I said. I want to be a family with you and Norrie. I want to make a home with you and cherish you and most importantly never be without you.”
Tears welled in her eyes. He meant it. He wanted her, was willing to do anything to have her, and keep her...to make this relationship work. “You were miserable without me,” she said, trying to wrap her head around it.
“I was.”
“And you love me,” she said again.
“I do.” He looked at her, hopeful. “Do you love me?”
She’d never given him the words, she realized. “I do. I love you with all that I am. I want to marry you, and be a family with you.”
“Thank God.” He released a heavy sigh and just kind of fell forward, resting his forehead against her shoulder. “That is, quite possibly, the best thing I have ever heard.”
She hugged him tight, saying, “What are the other contenders?”
“
More, Dane, harder,
is a good one. So is,
Dane, you are always right about everything.
”
“Hey!” she gasped out with a laugh. “I’ve never said that last one.”
He lifted his head and gifted her with his most devastating smile. “But one day you will. I’ll make sure of it.”
* * * * *