Like that kiss? The one he couldn’t seem to forget?
Why couldn’t he dream about that? About laying her softly down on his bed and...
Dammit. This was no better than his nightmares. Yes, actually it was. Because at least this was something he could comprehend. The man-wants-woman thing was much easier to understand and accept.
All of a sudden, being a winner didn’t sound like such a great idea.
He pushed the kite a little to the left on the table. Maybe he should purposely sabotage the design and lose. Handing Maddy a promise that they could win the prize wasn’t one of his brighter decisions. Because if they won, Kaleb would not get to walk away as he’d told himself a few minutes ago. Winning had consequences. Like the trip up the Space Needle. He could tell Maddy to give his ticket to someone else. But then he’d have to explain why he didn’t want to go. A talk he didn’t want to have. Not with her. Not with anyone on the committee who might also wonder.
And Roxy, Maddy’s sister, who’d asked him to figure out if she could add fur to a kite and still get lift off, or if it would be too heavy to move.
Kind of like Kaleb’s life nowadays.
He sighed and pushed back from the table.
Maybe he was going about this all wrong. Maybe he shouldn’t be trying to avoid the inevitable. He was attracted to Maddy, and he was pretty sure from that kiss that the attraction was mutual. If he couldn’t get her out of his head one way, maybe he should go at it from a completely different angle. How about if he approached it as he did any other woman? Spend a quick night together at his place. Maybe then he could walk away from that night the way he always did. No strings. No promises. Just a single night of pleasure.
His gut churned at the thought. Maddy wasn’t like all those other women. And for years, he’d avoided being with women who had children.
Could it be that that tactic had backfired, though? Had made him dig a rut that just got deeper and deeper with each new person?
He had no idea. But maybe it was time to test that theory. And working together with Maddy gave him the perfect opportunity to do just that: see if he could get past this particular roadblock. And he could think of no person he’d rather experiment with than her.
Kaleb yawned, the muscles in his body finally relaxing, probably wondering what had taken him so long to figure this whole thing out.
Well, tough luck, buddy. You wanted to wake me up, well, now you can just stay awake. Because we have a kite-making contest to enter. And to win.
* * *
Chloe pasted the last of the glittery claw stickers onto the body of the kite. Maddy had to admit her sister had done a great job painting the kite, solid black with various areas of shadow and light. Kaleb had warned them against adding too many layers of color to the kite, saying it would make it too heavy. She was amazed. He’d calculated the weight down to the gram, had even weighed the faux claws and the two custom eye stickers—one green and one amber—that Roxy had designed herself. They’d made the smaller demo model that would hang over their table look identical. Only it wouldn’t need to fly.
This one did.
They wouldn’t get a chance to test it, as they had its prototype. She would have to trust that Kaleb had got it right. Besides, if they tried and it crashed and burned as the last one had, they wouldn’t have time to start over.
That disastrous flight hadn’t been Kaleb’s fault. It had been hers for letting go of the string.
But the result of her goof up? Well, that had been pretty spectacular. She could only thank her lucky stars that a police officer had retrieved the string and set her and Kaleb back on their feet.
But watching him as he painstakingly checked the new kite after each addition, she had to admit he was pretty damned hot. And not just in the looks department. He’d been kind to Chloe, even as he looked uncomfortable whenever he had to work directly with her.
Some men just didn’t like children.
But he’d been married. So what had happened between him and his wife? Had they disagreed over whether or not to have kids?
Or maybe they’d had some and Kaleb, for whatever reason, hadn’t got visitation rights. He’d never mentioned having children, though.
Kaleb picked up a foam roller and went over each of the claw stickers one by one, making sure they were tightly adhered to the body of the kite.
“Did you really make the last one purr?” Roxy asked.
He sent her a quick grin. “I know right where the purr buttons are, so yes.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw her sister’s eyebrows shoot up. Roxy jabbed a thumb toward Chloe. “Little pitchers, big ears.”
“I’m talking about the kite, Roxy. Those cutouts you grumbled about earlier? They’ll vibrate in the wind and make a kind of purring sound.”
When she looked skeptical, Maddy pointed out one of the gill-like slits that lined the cat’s torso. “It works. I heard it when we flew the unpainted version.”
Kaleb nodded. “It’s one of the reasons the paint had to be lighter in those areas. The plastic has to be able to flutter in order to make the sound.”
“Well, I’ll be.” Her sister looked at the kite again.
Chloe’s feet got dangerously close to the edge of the chair as she tried to see what they were talking about. Kaleb scooped her up, one arm under the backs of her legs, making her squeal with laughter before he turned her so she had a clear view of Jetta’s twin. “Pretty, pretty kitty!” she declared.
Maybe the purring was overkill. Chloe seemed more taken with the way the kite looked than with its functionality. Maybe if it survived its maiden flight, Maddy could buy it off Kaleb and put it on her daughter’s wall. A sweet memory of a fun event.
These were the kinds of memories normal fathers made with their children.
Maddy gritted her teeth. Kaleb was not Chloe’s father, and he never would be. She needed to get that notion out of her head immediately. Not that it had ever been there in the first place, but she needed to be careful. Chloe had taken a liking to this man. So had Roxy.
So had she. It was time to dial back on the Dr. McBride fan club. She held out her arms for her daughter, only to have Chloe nestle closer to Kaleb’s chest, wrapping her tiny arms around his neck.
Maybe he sensed her unease, because he knelt on the floor next to the table. “What do you say we go to work on Roxy’s kite next? We still have some more fur to glue to it.”
This time her daughter willingly let go of him. “Can I help glue?”
Roxy stepped forward and took Chloe by the hand. “Oh, most definitely. We’re about to make ourselves a flying unicorn. How does that sound?”
“Not too much glue,” Kaleb warned. But when he acted as if he was going to follow them, Maddy touched his arm.
“Hey. Can I talk
