The Road to Reunion

She seemed more amused than offended by the ques tion. “I’ll be twenty-four in a few weeks.”

Twenty-four. He shook his head slowly in disbelief. Maybe he had thought time had stopped. On the rare occasion when he had pictured Molly, he’d remembered a freckle-faced carrottop with gaps in her teeth and dirt on her face. She had been a bundle of energy, chattering a mile a minute, tagging at her father’s heels whenever he would let her—which was often, since Jared had been able to deny little to his only daughter.

Having no experience with gregarious little girls, Kyle had been rather intimidated by her then. He willingly admitted that she terrified him now. Talk about trouble in a nicely wrapped package….

“You’re twenty-nine,” she murmured. “You were almost seventeen when you came to us. You stayed a couple of months after your eighteenth birthday to finish high school, and then you left for boot camp. I was twelve when you went away. I was heartbroken, you know. It always broke my heart when anyone left us.”

“I remember you cried your eyes out when the kid before me left not long after I got there. His name was Daniel, wasn’t it?”

“Daniel Castillo—though he uses the last name Andreas now.” Her smile turned radiant. “He’s back in the family now. He recently married my cousin B.J.”

“No kidding.” He tried to focus on the conversation rather than the way her smile pushed tiny dimples into the corner of her mouth. “I remember her. Her name was Brittany, but she wanted everyone to use her initials, instead.”

“Everyone pretty much does now—except her mother, who still insists on calling her Brittany.”

“So she married Daniel.”

Molly nodded. “It was a whirlwind courtship, and I think it’s fantastic. They’re perfect together—they always were, even when they were teenagers.”

Kyle suddenly scowled, wondering what the hell he was doing sitting here listening to family gossip from Molly Walker—no longer “little” Molly Walker. If they kept this up, he would find himself all duded up for a silver anniversary party he’d had no intention of attending.

He shifted in his chair, and pain shot through his left leg and up into his back. The feeling was so familiar, he was able to hide his reactions from Molly—or at least, he thought he had, though her sharp green eyes had suddenly narrowed speculatively.

“Your five minutes are over,” he reminded her, his bad mood returning with a vengeance.

Molly thought she had done a pretty credible job of hiding her shock at Kyle’s appearance. She couldn’t help comparing the man in front of her to the photograph that sat in a place of honor in her parents’ living room, along with photos of the other foster sons Jared and Cassie had nurtured during their marriage.

Kyle’s portrait had been taken at his high school graduation. Wearing a black cap and gown, a gold tassel dangling at one side of his tanned face, he had looked young and healthy. His thick brown hair had been freshly cut, and his amber-brown eyes gleamed with satisfaction. During her teen years, even as her memories of Kyle faded, Molly had found herself studying that photograph occasionally, wondering about Kyle, thinking that of all the nice-looking boys who had passed through her family home, his face had intrigued her the most.

Had she not known who he was when he had opened his door to her this afternoon, she might never have recognized him as the same person in the photograph. He was almost painfully thin, and he walked with a pronounced limp. The tan had been replaced by a rather scruffy pallor. His day-old beard did little to conceal the uneven scar that now marred his left cheek along the jawline. His hair was disheveled, and needed a good shampooing and styling.

For just a few moments he had seemed to relax a little with her, and she’d hoped that he was becoming more open to the possibility of attending the party. But then she had seen him flinch, as if in pain, and his expression had abruptly closed.

“I had hoped you would extend that five-minute deadline a bit once you figured out who I am,” she admitted with a wry smile.

He didn’t smile back at her. “I’m not trying to be rude, but you really should go before—”

A shatteringly loud clap of thunder drowned out his words, followed by a deluge of rain that hammered on the roof and rattled the windows.

“—before the storm gets worse,” Kyle finished with a sigh.

Molly stood and walked to the window, rather surprised by the violence of the downpour. “Wow. It’s a real gully-washer out there, isn’t it?”

“To say the least. This is what remains of the tropical storm that hit the coast of South Carolina a couple of days ago. Haven’t you been listening to the weather forecasts?”

She turned away from the window. “Actually, no. The radio is broken in my car, so I listened to CDs during the drive.”

Though she wouldn’t have thought it possible, his frown deepened. “You didn’t drive here from Dallas?”

“Well—yes, I did,” she admitted. “It’s about a sixteen-hour drive, so I left at noon yesterday, spent the night in Memphis, then started out again this morning.”

“Alone?”

She shrugged. “It was a pleasant drive. The weather’s been nice, at least until I reached Gatlinburg, and I don’t often have a chance to spend time by myself just to think and listen to my favorite music. And the scenery in this area is breathtaking.”

“I can’t believe your parents allowed you to make a drive like that by yourself.”

Now it was her turn to frown. “First, I’m almost twenty-four years old, and I no longer have to ask my parents’ permission to leave home for a few days. Second, I wouldn’t have asked them, anyway, because I’m planning a surprise party for them and I don’t want them to know I’m here. And finally, they left almost two weeks ago for a three-week Mediterranean cruise to celebrate their anniversary.”

“Your brother didn’t have a problem with you coming here?”

She cleared her throat, resisting an impulse to shuffle her feet like a kid caught in a fib. “I don’t have to answer to Shane, either—but he thinks I’m spending a few days shopping in Houston with a friend from college.”

“So he wouldn’t approve.”

“He didn’t want me to pester you about coming to the party after you’d already declined a couple of times. And, no, he probably wouldn’t like the idea of me driving so far by myself—but Shane tends to be overprotective.”

“He always was when it came to you—and he didn’t hold a candle to your father. I have a feeling Jared would pop a vein if he knew what you’ve done.”

Molly was getting seriously defensive now. She had been trying for the past few years to convince her family that she was no longer a little girl to be indulged and watched over, but a competent young woman who could make her own decisions. She certainly hadn’t expected to have that same battle with Kyle Reeves.

“I’ll worry about my family’s reactions,” she informed him a bit curtly. “Obviously, I thought it was worth the effort for the chance to talk to you about the party.”

“I’m sorry you wasted the trip. If you had accepted the answer I sent back by way of your representatives, you would have saved yourself a lot of trouble.”

“I don’t take no for an answer very easily.”

His mouth quirked in what might have been the merest hint of a smile, though there seemed to be little humor in it. “From what I remember, you never did.”

She waited through another rumble of thunder, which seemed to echo her annoyance that he still thought of her as the little girl he had known more than eleven years ago. “My parents were very fond of you, Kyle. Your senior picture still sits in the living room, and Mom mentions you every so often with such wistfulness in her voice. It would mean a lot to them if you would come to their party.”

“I’m really just not a party kind of guy.”

She didn’t doubt that, especially now that she had seen the isolated cabin where he lived without even a telephone to connect him to the outside world. “I can understand that you might not like large groups of people—even though this will be a casual, no-pressure party where everyone will be welcome and should be comfortable. I think you might even have a good time there, if you would let yourself. But if you can’t make it to the party, at least think about coming to visit Mom and Dad sometime, will you? It’s important to them to know that their boys turned out all right.”

An odd expression briefly crossed his face, as if it had startled him to be referred to as one of “their boys.” He masked it swiftly as he stood and crossed to the window to look out at the worsening storm. She thought he walked with extra care, perhaps trying to control his limp.

For several long minutes, neither of them spoke, so that the storm seemed even louder inside the quiet room. It was obvious that she hadn’t gotten through to Kyle at all; he had made it clear that he wanted to be left alone to brood about whatever had happened to him. She was beginning to feel guilty for having come at all, invading the privacy he seemed to value so greatly, ignoring the messages he had already sent.

She could almost hear her brother saying, “I told you so.” She was sure she would hear those words as soon as she returned to the ranch and told him what she had done. “Maybe I’d better be going. It doesn’t look as though the rain is going to let up anytime soon.”

“I’m afraid you can’t leave just yet.” He looked glum as he made the announcement in a resigned voice. “You don’t know how dangerous these roads can be in storms like this. Rain falling this hard and this heavily overfills the creeks that run next to the roads, causing them to wash over the pavement. The rushing water can sweep you right off the mountain if you don’t know what you’re doing—or even if you do, in some cases.”

Molly looked at the window again, which was being pounded by windswept rain so hard it looked as if it were falling horizontally. She couldn’t even see her car now. “Do you think it will last long?”

His silence was an answer in itself. She bit her lip and wondered how long she was going to be stuck here with a man who wished she were anywhere else.

Chapter Two