winced inwardly, but said nothing as she turned and hurried back toward her bungalow. After tonight it would truly be over. She would deliver her long-overdue apology, he would hopefully accept it when he understood she was as embarrassed as he, and they could both put that night behind them.
“I’m going with you.”
“No,” Paige said firmly. “You’re not.”
Kyle eyed her stubbornly from beneath the old, dirty baseball cap he still insisted on wearing backward despite the brilliant flood of sunlight here. The two earrings that pierced his left earlobe glinted, one gold, one silver and black. The second was a rather grim representation of a skull she hated but hadn’t made an issue of, for fear it would make him determined to keep wearing it whether he really wanted to or not.
“Why not?”
“To start with, you weren’t asked. Mr. Rider and I have things to talk about.”
“You’re going to talk about Dad, aren’t you? So I want to go. He knew him. I want to ask him some things.”
“We have school business to talk about.” That much was true; she did want to give him at least a brief report on the school and the students’ progress. “Besides, he didn’t know your father well at all.”
“How do you know?”
“Because he said so. Mr. Rider only met him briefly a couple of times.”
“Then why did they send him, after he died?”
She’d wondered that on more than one occasion herself. Wondered what would have happened—or not happened—if they’d sent someone else.
“I don’t know. Perhaps I’ll ask him.”
She gathered up the lightweight blue shawl to toss over her shoulders; the breeze had been picking up at night lately, and while it was hardly cold, it could be cool on bare arms. At the door she paused and looked back at her son.
“Don’t forget you’ve got that history assignment, and the next chapter of Beowulf to read.”
She thought he swore under his breath, but wasn’t sure enough to call him on it. “Bad enough to have to go to school, but living with the teacher sucks.”
“You’ve been living with a teacher all your life,” she pointed out.
“Yeah, but you weren’t my teacher.”
She gave him a long, steady look. “I tried to be,” she said. “About the things that really count, at least.”
He turned and walked away, into his bedroom, without a word. He’d taken to doing that recently, walking away from any discussion he didn’t want to have. She was going to have to call him on that soon, convince him that running away from the unpleasant didn’t work. She was certainly living proof of that.
As she walked toward the lookout, she rehearsed in her mind yet again what she would say. There was no easy way to apologize for having so embarrassed them both, and having thought about how she would do it countless times hadn’t helped.
How did you apologize for something like that? The man had been there as a representative of her husband’s company, he’d been doing his job, nothing more. They’d been kind enough to send him to see if she was all right or needed anything they could provide. Her emotional state had been so very tangled and fragile, and she had clung to him. And he had let her, comforting her, giving her his strong arm to lean on and broad shoulder to cry on. He’d helped her through the ugly process, even made the arrangements to have Phil’s remains shipped home on one of Redstone’s own planes.
For nearly two weeks he’d been there to help. And then, one night after a nasty emotional outburst from the grieving Kyle, a night when she’d felt more alone than she ever had before, she’d leaned on his strength once more. He’d held her, soothed her…but when she’d looked up into his eyes she’d thought she’d seen something more, something warm and hungry.
She’d responded to that look, imagined or not, with a speed and urgency that had astounded her even as it was happening. The next thing she knew she was kissing him. Hotly, deeply, in a way that made her blush at the memory even now, five years later. And the fact that he kissed her back, the fact that after a few moments his strong hands had begun to caress her, to rouse in her startling sensations that made her shiver, didn’t ameliorate her own responsibility for what had happened.
And what might have happened, had Kyle not just then slammed back into the house, fortunately through the kitchen door, giving them time to recover before he walked in on them. If she thought he was angry with her now, she could only imagine how he might have felt had he seen his mother kissing another man before his father’s body was even home, let alone buried.
Of course, Kyle didn’t know what she knew. At least she’d managed to keep that from him. It hadn’t been an easy choice, but it was the only one she could make. Her son had already been in agony. She couldn’t risk any further damage.
Rider was there, waiting for her. She stopped a distance away, looking at him silhouetted against the fading light. He was leaning forward, hands braced on the railing, staring out at the sea. The light breeze caught his shirt and swirled it. He’d changed into casual clothes, she saw. Khaki pants, it looked like, and a Hawaiian-style shirt in muted colors. Navy-blue and tan, the same shade as the khakis, she thought. And realized with a little jolt she’d never seen him, this man who had taken up permanent residence in her memory, in anything other than a suit. Until now.
He seemed to sense her presence and turned. She started up the last few steps and walked out onto the deck. Just say it and get it over with, she told herself. Just apologize. Just do it.
Instead, when she reached him she found herself asking inanely, “So, does it meet your standards?”
There was a second before he answered, and she wondered if she’d startled him, if he’d been expecting her to plunge right into the emotional depths. Since that had been her plan, she couldn’t blame him; it wasn’t his fault that she’d chickened out at the last second.
“It’s solid. Well built, good materials.”
She couldn’t help the half laugh that escaped her. “Most people would be raving about the view.”
He shrugged. “It takes advantage of it.”
She sighed. “I suppose when you’ve seen views all over the world, it takes more to impress you.”
He gave her a puzzled look. “You must have seen a place or two.”
“Nope. Never been out of California, until now.”
His puzzlement shifted to a frown. “But your husband traveled extensively.”
“Yes. Alone.” Maybe, she added bitterly to herself.
“You never went with him?”
“No. With Kyle so young, I preferred it that way.” Not that he would have wanted me along, anyway.
“And now you’ve traveled halfway around the world.”
“I had no
