the door. Then leaning both forearms atop it, he kept his gaze on her and said, “I just ran into Mrs. Holden at the PX.”
“Ah…”
“She said to say thank you again.”
Lilah smiled. “Tell her she’s welcome.” She gathered up her skirt, preparing to slide onto the front seat.
“Why’d you do it?” he asked.
She stopped and stared up at him. “Do what? Get the jackets for the kids?”
“No,” he said dryly. “Invent penicillin.”
“Funny.”
“Thanks. So…why?”
Lilah shrugged, trying, unsuccessfully, to make light of the situation. “The kids needed the jackets and it was a good deal for both sides. The store gets a tax write-off and is able to do something for the community and the kids get new winter jackets. Everybody wins. Why wouldn’t I do it?”
“Most people wouldn’t have gone out of their way to go and talk some department store into donating clothes.”
She smiled at him. “As you’ve already pointed out more than once, I’m not ‘most people.’”
“Point taken,” he said and watched her as she sat on the seat and swung her legs inside. He closed the door, walked to the driver’s side and got in himself before looking at her again and saying, “All I wanted to say was, it was a nice thing to do.”
Just a little uncomfortable, as she always was when being thanked for something, Lilah pulled her head back and stared at him in mock amazement. “Gee…is this a compliment I hear?”
“Could be.”
“And me without my journal again.”
“You keep surprising me,” he said.
“Good. I do hate being predictable.”
“I like predictable,” he said and fired up the engine.
“Now why doesn’t that surprise me?” she murmured. Quickly, she hooked the seat belt then turned her head to look out the side window. He put the car into gear and backed out of the drive onto the road.
Lilah barely paid attention to the passing scene. Instead, her mind rattled along at its own pace, dredging up one thought after another. She’d been happy to arrange for the new jackets for the kids. It hadn’t taken much effort—if there was one thing Lilah was good at, it was talking to people—and after all, it had worked out well for both sides.
But she never had been comfortable with compliments. She preferred doing her volunteering and then slipping away into the mist—like the Lone Ranger, she thought with an inward smile.
They drove through the main gate, and waited for a break in the cars to join the traffic. Once they were a part of the streaming line of lemmings, Kevin spoke up, breaking the silence in the car.
“At least Sea World shouldn’t be crowded. This time of year and all, there aren’t many tourists.”
Grateful that he’d apparently decided to drop their earlier conversational thread, Lilah looked at him and smiled.
He was right. When they pulled into the parking lot twenty minutes later, they had their choice of slots. The weather probably had something to do with that, she thought. Leaden skies and a cold, wintry wind would keep even the locals away from the park. It was almost as if they’d been given the place to themselves for the day.
Kevin watched her as she studied the pamphlet and decided what she wanted to see first. Something inside him shifted uncomfortably. She was just so damned…tempting.
She always had a rumpled, tousled look that made him think of rolling her around on silky sheets—and as that thought strolled through his mind, it was all he could do to keep from reaching for her. But it wasn’t just what she did for his body. He liked how her mind worked. Even when it frustrated him. Talking to her was like walking in circles and her sense of humor was a little unsettling at times, too. But the sound of her laughter was enough to set off sparklers in his bloodstream.
And now he knew that she was thoughtful enough to arrange for kids to get brand-new jackets. And that she was selfless enough to be embarrassed about it when he found out and faced her with it.
She couldn’t be more different from his ex-wife. Alanna couldn’t see further than her own reflection. She’d tossed him over without a thought, to get the one thing she’d wanted and wasn’t able to get without him.
Entrance to the United States.
Old hurts rippled through him, but he buried their memory into a dark hole in the corner of his heart and hoped they’d stay there for a while. It wasn’t often he thought about Alanna. And he liked that she was becoming more and more a part of his past. Though even he had to admit that she’d influenced his present and certainly his future. Never again would he trust that “head over heels” feeling. Never again would he believe a woman when she told him that she loved him more than life itself.
And most important, never again would he allow himself to be as vulnerable to pain. If that meant living alone, then that’s just how it would have to be.
Grumbling to himself, he pushed thoughts of Alanna aside and concentrated on the woman standing in front of him. Lilah tossed her head to one side, swinging that long, glorious fall of hair back over her shoulder and he studied the line of her throat, the delicate curve of her jaw. Air jammed up in his lungs and he had to fight for his next breath. Not a good sign, he told himself, but didn’t know how to keep from feeling that nearly electrical jolt of awareness.
Especially when memories of that kiss kept plaguing him.
She turned those big blue eyes on him and gave him one of her damn near nuclear smiles. And Kevin knew for sure that he wanted her more than his next breath. His entire body was practically humming with a kind of need he’d never experienced before. Not even with Alanna.
And that fact worried him.
“What time is it?” she asked.
Why wasn’t she wearing a watch? Crystals, yes. Silver bells, of course. But a simple watch? No way.
“Ten hundred,” he said with a quick glance at his left wrist.
“Ten o’clock,” she said and checked the pamphlet again. “Good.” She lifted her gaze to his and dazzled him with a smile bright enough to start a fire. Then she grabbed his hand and tugged at him. “We just have time to make it to the dolphin show.”
Obediently, he followed after, trying to keep his gaze from settling on the curve of her behind or the damn near delicious sway of her hips.
Dolphins.
And that’s how it went all day. They hurried from one show to another, stopping only for lunch. He’d never seen a woman so completely entranced by the little things. She loved cotton candy and hot chocolate. She dipped her French fries in ranch dressing and ordered a diet soda with an ice-cream sundae. She laughed easily and teased him mercilessly and he enjoyed it all.
