herself into his waiting arms.
No key. She’d left them all on the dining-room table. She didn’t plan to...ever...come back.
She wouldn’t even call him.
She never answered her phone. Just her mother. Or her father. Or one of her sisters. Or Goldilocks who ruled the Davie household but was supposed to just be the cook.
All of them just said Kayla wasn’t there.
So...where was she?
They never knew.
She’d been abducted by aliens. No. There wasn’t anything he could do about rescuing her from aliens in star ships. How about slave snatchers?
He’d go out in his cousin Wally’s boat and chase down the bigger boat and rescue all the captives. But like Scan Connery in the film, Tyler would put Kayla into a rowboat and they’d drift away. He’d show her how they’d made love. She liked sex.
Kayla loved him.
When would she remember that?
When would her hungry body go on overdrive and force her to come back to him? She’d kick open the door, come inside and stand, looking at him with greed in her eyes. Her uncontrolled breasts would be heaving with her desire as her hot eyes would rake over him mercilessly. Yeah.
Then he found out she wasn’t living at her parents’ house, she was with a friend. She and those dogs. Henrietta was certainly a tolerant woman. She had cats.
Cats—and dogs who had been rescued from a fighting pit? That must be distracting. Who acted as umpire during the day when the humans were gone?
Kayla would come back to him.
He could handle dogs. He could handle women. He could handle her. Man! How he’d like handling her again. And he about went berserk at the very idea of it.
He always looked for her no matter where he was going. San Antonio wasn’t that big. There were just over a million people. Eventually, he would get to run into her and then he’d exclaim, “I’m so sorry! Oh. Haven’t we met?” And he’d laugh in his throat in the way that turned her on.
But he never once saw her. And he figured that she was grieving. She missed him so badly that she couldn’t go out anywhere at all. She was zonked.
No other woman drew his eyes. He’d thought to date some classy babe and make Kayla jealous. But he couldn’t. He looked at the laughing women and at their bodies, but none of them was Kayla. So he couldn’t. He just couldn’t. He could see no other woman. And he sighed.
His friends dragged him to different places where things would be mixed up and interesting. He was bored. He wandered around with an empty glass, and even knowing he wouldn’t find her, he looked for Kayla.
There were men who mentioned, “Saw Kayla at the boxing match. She was on the first row and she was really involved.”
Unbelievingly, Tyler’s voice squeaked up as he exclaimed, “At a boxing match? She was there?”
The guy laughed. “Yeah. She’s physical.”
That froze Tyler’s heart. How...physical had she been...with who all?
So the TEXAS winter came along. That’s a whole lot like the Yankee spring. But in their winter, the thin blooded TEXANS put on jackets and complained about the cold.
It had snowed twice in Tyler’s twenty-eight years. One of those times the snow had lasted two whole days before the TEXAS winter warmed enough to melt the miracle.
The native TEXANS said, “I don’t understand those Yankees who winter down here. Those Winter TEXANS. They complain so about the northern snow! It’s such a surprise and so pretty! How come the Yankees come down here instead of staying up yonder and enjoying the miracle?”
Now, how was a Winter TEXAN supposed to reply to that?
And for Tyler, time did pass. He worked hard at his office. When he was out, he found he could catch a glimpse of Kayla now and again. Or someone who might have been she. Someone who walked like Kayla...who wasn’t. Several times in those months, he’d run after a woman and then awkwardly apologized.
One of those mistakes had grinned and waited for him to make some move to know her. But Tyler’s disappointment had been such that he couldn’t see the woman as a woman. She just wasn’t Kayla.
Tyler Fuller was a lawyer. The firm Reardon, Miller and Rodriguez had about fifty lawyers downtown. There were branches of the firm in other locations.
Tyler was in an awesome firm in which he was just a growing mushroom. He was under a woman lawyer who was only eight years older than he. She was Barbara Nelson. And she was not married. Not that marriage would have slowed her down any.
Barbara’s secretary handed out work and some was given to Tyler. A buck slip or a route slip was on the document for information.
Through her secretary, Barbara Nelson had Tyler drafting documents, writing briefs, handling the background for labor disputes, Social Security disability petitions and interviews with clients or opponents.
All the problems were run-of-the-mill except for the persons involved. The problems could be divorce, bankruptcy, or pretrial motions or interviews with prospective witnesses.
Some days, Tyler might have to go to the police station and check files, or see doctors who had pro or con evidence. Tyler was busy.
His secretary was from the firm’s pool. And he tried always to get Marian Web because she was so brilliant that she never made a mistake nor did she allow him to make any. She was his mother’s age and tolerant of Tyler. That was clear when she adjusted her commitments so that she could mostly help Tyler.
Women spoiled him rotten.
Well, some women.
His immediate boss, Barbara Nelson, was thirty-six years old. She was a single woman who had control, and she was in charge. She was confident, selective, and she was blunt. She didn’t chew tobacca. That was a plus.
Tyler had no real qualms about her until his divorce. Then, once, the Nelson woman had patted his bottom! He’d been offended.
She’d always smiled at Tyler and watched his body when he was walking toward her. His sex loved it. His brain was offended. But she hadn’t approached him until just after his divorce.
She’d say, “Let’s have a drink after work.”
He’d ask, “Is this important? There’s batting practice.” Tyler was on the legals’ baseball team. And she wouldn’t find out if what he said was true. That’s why he’d never used the excuse of a business appointment. She could check it out.
With his baseball-used rejection, Barbara had smiled and told him, “Since we work together, I just thought it would be nice...to get acquainted.”
He lied to her with great grief-stricken eyes, “I’m going to a shrink. I can’t handle this divorce.”
So Barbara
