ever tried it?”
He opened his mouth to protest, only to find her finger full of frosting smack dab on his lower lip. With artist’s flair she began to frost his mouth. “There now. No cleanup.”
Kyle snagged her wrist, aghast. “You did that to the boys at camp?”
“Never you mind.” With a squeal she tried to wrench from his firm grasp. Shaking with laughter they stood up and began to tangle for control. In their struggle Kyle pulled her against his chest. Then the laughter died off.
This was her chance. To steal the kiss that had eluded her over and over, as recent as today when Michael stormed in here. Tired of fretting over her every move, she stood on tiptoe to lock lips.
Clasping a hand to her head, meshing the frosting between their lips, Kyle savored the taste of Grace. Her lips were so warm and soft. He was tempted to plunge his tongue into her mouth, until he remembered who she was, where their relationship belonged.
“God, Grace.” With a heaving breath, he let her go. He searched her face in a shell-shocked way. “That was…”
Her mouth curved naughtily. “Much better than camp.”
“I was going to label it an accident.”
As much pride as she had, she couldn’t let that go unchallenged. “I’d rather you consider it a nice experiment.”
He sighed indulgently. “Fair enough. It’s something I wanted to try too, since the moment I saw you.”
“Now you sound apologetic!”
He lifted his brows, perplexed. “You’re taking a great little kiss and beating it to death.”
“Oh, you—you—kitchen cop!”
He broke into spontaneous laughter. “Is that supposed to be an insult?”
“Yes. Now find my knives and cut that cake!”
Tension broken, they began moving about the kitchen like a couple, dodging one another with a twist, a turn and a laugh. Kyle produced a knife and two forks while Grace opened the refrigerator. “I don’t believe it. You brought me a carton of milk!”
He’d brought it earlier with all the other groceries. How scary that she hadn’t even noticed. As Michael intimated, her meal schedule must be a disaster. “Can’t have chocolate cake without milk,” was all he dared to say.
Twirling round she grabbed two plates and mismatched glasses from the cupboard. The tall one was plastic, bearing the likeness of Michael Jordan, the stout glass bore a picture of Wilma Flintstone. She filled them with milk and brought them to the table.
“Take your pick.”
Kyle sank the knife into the cake with practiced strokes and eased layered slices on two plates. “My heart is with Wilma, but I am thirsty. Guess I’ll go for Jordan.”
They settled in cozily at the small round table.
His mouth curved warmly. He reached out and touched some of the smaller auburn curls at her temple. “Never expected to celebrate the tail end of your birthday this way.”
“Mmm…” The feel of Kyle’s roughened fingertips on her face was exquisite. She leaned into his hand as her new kitten might.
But this couldn’t be the beginning of something. Kyle was here because Michael had hired him to nurture her. He was widowed a year, full of secrets and troubles, with a small girl to raise.
She shouldn’t dare to hope for anything.
But neither should he be running the pad of his thumb down her jawline with that dreamy expression. “So, I’ll
call you first thing tomorrow.”
“Really?” she sighed.
“Sure. About the wallpaper.”
“Oh. Right. Whatever you want. Whatever you say.”
“That doesn’t sound like the Gracie I know.”
She sighed in resignation. As if he knew her at all.
IT WAS NEARLY ONE O’CLOCK in the morning when Kyle rolled down Amelia Anderson’s sedate Golden Valley street of modest homes and aged trees. Reaching her Cape Cod home, he expertly pulled into her narrow driveway. He’d swung into this drive so many times during college, when Libby was alive and living here with her grandparents, that dodging the plank fencing against the neighbor’s property and parallel hedge siding Amelia’s yard had become a practiced art.
Kyle parked and shut off the engine, his thoughts turning to his late wife, who had felt trapped here as child under Amelia’s suffocating tutelage. How gladly he’d played the hero, coming to rescue her by night, arranging their elopement, whisking her off to a new independent life in Chicago.
Since then, he’d come to feel more like a thief than a hero. How naive he’d been—they’d both been—to consider only their feelings in the equation. There were many factors over the years that caused him to reflect, all the lonely holidays, the lack of any new long-term relationships. Many of the friends they’d made eventually moved on or had extended families of their own to focus on. Unlike his own dysfunctional parents who’d basically ignored him, Libby’s grandparents—if a bit possessive—had at least wanted her in the bosom of their family.
He emerged from the Jeep, happy enough with the state of the union. Dashing across the shadowed lawn he noted that light streamed through the bay window from the living room. Perhaps Amelia had fallen asleep in her chair again, television droning, a knitting project for Button askew in her lap.
He unlocked the front door and stepped over the threshold into the small living room. The scene was partially as he expected. Amelia was in her recliner all right, her long gray hair loose round her shoulders, dressed in her long terry cloth robe, feet up, skein of pale yellow yarn in her lap. But she proved wide-awake, knitting needles clicking madly upon half a dainty mitten. Kyle often teased her about knitting in July, guessing Button’s size six months into the colder weather, but Amelia assured him she knew these things.
“You’ve been gone a good long while.” She regarded him over the tops of her reading glasses. Her lips puckered in disapproval. Kyle sighed, hanging his zip sweatshirt in the small hallway closet. He knew she was trying to be less controlling, but it was an ongoing effort. Old habits were tough to break.
“Grace showed up before I could leave.” He moved closer, hovering over Amelia’s chair. “So we ate some cake and firmed up plans.” And then she kissed me, with the gusto of a barroom floozy and the sweetness of a prom queen. I felt dismay, shock and complete helplessness for a matter of about sixty seconds.
He could feel a blush rising from his neck. Hopefully, his suntan would disguise it a bit. Avoiding her survey he stretched his arms over his head and glanced around. To his alarm, there lay Button, dressed in her frilly cotton nightie, curled up in the window seat. “What the…” He stalked across the room.
“I would have carried her to her room myself…”
“You know better, Amelia.” He gave the old woman a worried
