Family: The Secret Ingredient

His blue eyes brightened. “Anything?”

Her heart tripped alarmingly. “What have you in mind?”

“I wasn’t going to impose this soon, but if you know something about wallpaper…”

“What about wallpaper, Kyle?”

“The bistro needs some and I am a dunce when it comes to decorating.”

“Oh.” She was sinking in quicksand, pure and simple. “Well, I guess I could help with that.”

“Busy tomorrow?”

“I can spare some time,” she stumbled.

“Super. You’re the best.” He shifted in his chair. “Suppose I should be going. Unless you’d like to share this cake first.”

“I’d love to,” she retorted, “if I could find my knife set.”

“It might have been a knife set once, Gracie. Now, it’s a pile of ragged steel blades with dried wooden handles.” He eyed her knowingly. “You aren’t supposed to put them in the dishwasher.”

“Oh, never mind.” With a crooked grin she dragged a manicured finger into the thick fudgy frosting.

He was aghast. “Hey, you didn’t learn that at home.”

“Did it at summer camp. Have you 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.