time it broke down he would do the manly things required with such ease: checking the oil, turning it over and cleaning out underneath it. As she looked on he would run his finger along the blade and frown, but then apparently decide it was okay and flip it back up again.
Moments later the air would be filled with the sound of the mower once more. She had always liked that sound and the smell of fresh-mown grass.
Kayla had told herself to keep busy. She could look up the manual for her batch freezer on the internet after all! But there was no reason she could not do that from her perch on the deck.
So she ended up, day after day, taking the computer out on the deck, liking the feeling of being close to him, of covertly watching him work.
Seeing David—willingly working, liking to help out—was such a poignant counterpoint to the life that she had had and the choices she had made.
After watching David struggle through her jungle of a lawn until he was wiping the sweat from his brow, Kayla took pity on him and went in and made lemonade. She had it done by the time the lawn mower shut off, and she called him up from the yard.
He eyed her offering with pretended suspicion.
“This looks suspiciously like pee, too. Is it the Dandelion ice cream reincarnated?”
“No, but what a great idea! Fresh squeezed lemonade at More-moo.”
“You need to let me do some homework before you go any further on the More-moo thing.”
She went still. Oh, it felt so good to have someone offering to do things for her! But it was a weakness to like it so much, a challenge to her vow to be totally independent.
“Duh-veed,” she said, her tone teasing, “I can do my own homework.”
He lifted an eyebrow and put down his lemonade in one manly gulp. He handed her the empty glass. “I have people who do nothing else all day long. You should let them have a look at it.”
To refuse would be churlish, pure stupid pride. “I’d have to pay,” she decided.
“At least that would be a better investment than the batch freezer.”
“The ice cream eruption was just a minor glitch,” she said. “I can fix it. I’ve been on the internet looking at that model. The snap-down lid is missing, that’s all.”
“It’s kind of putting the cart before the horse, getting that contraption before you know about the ice cream parlor.”
“It was a good deal!”
He rolled his eyes but took the glass from her. He casually wiped the sweat off his brow. She refilled the glass and he took a long, appreciative swig.
There was something about the scene that was so domestic and so normal that she wanted to just stay here, in this sunny moment, forever.
His phone buzzed and he took it out of his pocket, frowned, read a message and put it back. “Could I tap into your internet for a few minutes? A video is coming through that I’d like to look at on my laptop instead of my phone.”
“Of course.”
He went and retrieved his laptop from where it was now stored on her kitchen counter. He sat outside on one of her deck chairs. He looked uncharacteristically lost.
Kayla refilled his lemonade one more time. “I hope you don’t get a splinter,” she said when he thanked her and settled more deeply into the chair.
He looked like he hadn’t even heard her.
“Because, Duh-veed, it would be very embarrassing for you if I had to pull a sliver out of your derriere.”
“That would be awful,” he agreed, but absently.
Suddenly, she was worried about him. He seemed oddly out of it since he had taken that phone call. Now he was scowling at his computer screen.
“Hey,” she said softly.
When he looked up he could not hide the stricken look on his face.
“David? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“That’s a bald-faced lie,” she said.
“You’ve got to quit calling me a liar,” he said, but even that was a lie, because while the words were light, his tone sounded as if his heart was breaking.
She had never known a stronger man than him. Not ever. And so it was devastating to watch him turn his computer to her so she could see what he was looking at.
The strongest man she knew put his head in his hands, and she thought he was going to weep.
KAYLA TURNED HER ATTENTION to the screen to give David a moment to compose himself. It took her a minute to figure out what she was looking at. And then she knew. It was some kind of retirement home. Unbelievably posh, and yet...
“Oh, David,” she whispered.
“I have to put her name on a list. If they have an opening,” he said, his voice a croak, “I have to decide right away. I need to go meet with the director and look at the facility in person this afternoon. I’ll come back in the morning.”
“I’m going with you,” she said.
She could not leave him alone with the torment she saw in his face.
He looked at her as if he was going to protest. But then he didn’t.
“Thank you,” he said quietly.
“I’ll go pack an overnight bag. And make arrangements for Bastigal to go to the kennel.”
And it wasn’t until she was in her room packing that bag that Kayla considered the implications of it. She sank down on the bed.
Life seemed, suddenly, to have been wrested from her grasp, to have all these totally unexpected twists and turns in it.
But there was something about making this decision to go with David that felt as if she had been lost in a forest and suddenly saw the way out.
She needed to be there for him. His need and his pain were so intense, and she needed to be there, to absorb some of that, to ease his burden.
Kayla realized there was the potential for pain here, tangling herself deeper in his world. And yet, she had to do it.
The word love whispered through her mind, but she chased it away. Now was not the time to study this complication.
Wasn’t it enough to know that something amazing was happening, and that it was happening to both of them?
She didn’t have to—or want to—put a label on it. She just
