Winning His Heart: The Millionaire's Homecoming / The Maverick Millionaire

Crazy thoughts. Middle of the night thoughts. Of course he had loved her.

In his way. So what if his way bought flowers when they needed groceries? That was romantic! And he had been a dreamer. That was a good memory. Of them sitting at the kitchen table, in the early days of their marriage sipping the last of their coffee, his face all intense and earnest as he described what he wanted for them: a business of their own, a big house, a great car.

Disloyal to think his dreams had been grandiose and made it impossible for him to settle for an ordinary life. Within days of finding a job, it would seem his litany of complaints would begin. He wasn’t appreciated. He wasn’t being paid enough. His boss was a jerk. His coworkers were inferior, his great ideas weren’t being listened to or implemented.

She never stopped hoping and praying that he would find himself, that he would grow up to be a man with all the best characteristics of that boy she had grown up with—so fun-loving and energetic and full of mischief.

Kevin had rewarded her unflagging belief in him by increasingly taking her for granted. He had become careless of her feelings—though the old charm would return, temporarily, when she threatened to leave or when it managed to bail them out of one of his predicaments yet again.

The old charm. The one thing he was good at. What had David meant about Kevin flirting with a girl? Had he been talking to her? Or more? Touching her? Kissing her?

Had Kevin had affairs during their marriage?

There. She was there, at the place she had refused to go since her husband’s death. It felt like she had just plunged into a hard place at the core of her, that did not go away because she pretended it was not there, that had not been a part of her makeup before she had married Kevin.

Was it this very suspicion that had caused it? This suspicion, and so much disappointment that it felt so disloyal to look at?

She had wondered about Kevin’s fidelity even before David’s shocking revelation outside of the clinic that afternoon. It seemed to her the more Kevin failed at everything else, the more she had become lonely within their marriage, the more he had exercised his substantial charm outside of it.

Where had he been, when speeding toward home too late at night, the car sliding on ice and slamming into a tree?

No seat belt. So like Kevin.

He had been chronically irresponsible, and others had picked up the tab for that.

It felt like David’s fault, David’s sudden unexpected presence in her life, and his revelations of this afternoon that had brought these thoughts, lurking beneath the surface, surging to the top.

Kayla blinked back tears. It had just all gone so terribly, terribly wrong. The tears felt weak, and at the same time, better than that hard, cold rock she carried around where her heart used to be.

And now David was back, and words she had not allowed herself to think of in those five long years of marriage to Kevin were at the forefront of her mind.

Don’t marry him, Kayla.

She considered the awful possibility that David, who had withheld his forgiveness, had not been the cause of Kevin’s downward spiral, but that he had seen something about his oldest friend that she had missed.

And who was withholding forgiveness now? It was pathetic. But now that her feelings had surfaced, she was aware one of them was anger. It was useless to feel that way. Kevin was dead. It could never be fixed.

“Stop it,” Kayla ordered herself, but instead she thought of how David’s hand had felt on her thigh, how she had leaned toward him, wanting, if she had only seconds left, one last taste of him.

Those thoughts made her feel restless, and hungry with a hunger that a midnight snack would never be able to fill.

Irritated with the ruminations of an exhausted mind, she yanked off the sheet that covered her, sat up and swung her legs out of the bed.

She padded over to her open window, where old-fashioned chintz curtains danced slowly on a cooling summer breeze. The window coverings throughout the house were thirty years behind the current styles, and one more thing on the long “to-do” list.

Which Kayla also didn’t want to be thinking about in the dead of night, a time when things could become overwhelming.

She diverted herself, squinting hopefully at her backyard. The moon was out and bright, but the massive, mature sugar maple at the center of the yard, and overgrown shrub beds, where peonies and forsythia competed with weeds, cast most of the yard in deep shadow where a small dog could hide.

Her little dog was out there somewhere. She had no doubt he was afraid. Poor little Bastigal was afraid of everything: loud noises and quick movements, and men and cats and the wind in leaves.

It was probably what was making him so hard to find. All afternoon he had probably been quivering under a shrub, hidden as the hordes of Blossom Valley children ran by, calling his name.

And it was hordes.

Walking home from the clinic there had been a poster on every telephone pole, with a picture of a Brussels Griffon on it that looked amazingly like Bastigal.

Under it had been the promise of a five-hundred dollar reward for his return.

And David’s cell phone number. Well, she could hardly resent that. Her own cell phone had been left with her bicycle, her purse, her hat and her crushed sunflowers on her front porch. Blossom Valley being Blossom Valley, her purse was undisturbed, all her credit cards and cash still in it. But her cell phone had been shattered beyond repair, and since she had opted not to have a landline, it was the only phone she had.

So she could not resent the use of his number, but she did resent the reward. Obviously, she could not allow him to pay it, and obviously she did not have an extra five hundred dollars lying around. It hadn’t been a good idea, anyway. She had no doubt the enthusiasm of the children, reward egging them on like a carrot on a stick before a donkey, was frightening her dog into deeper hiding.

She looked out the window, willing herself to see through the inky darkness. Was it possible Bastigal would have found his way to his own yard? Would he recognize this as his own yard? They’d only been back in Blossom Valley, in their new home, for a little over two weeks. She hadn’t even finished unpacking boxes yet.

But through the open window, Kayla thought she heard the faintest sound coming from between the houses, and her heart leaped.

Grabbing a light sweater off the hook behind her closet door, glad to have an urgent purpose that would help her to escape her own thoughts, Kayla moved through her darkened, and still faintly unfamiliar, house and out the back door into her yard.

Hers.

Despite the loss of the dog and her undisciplined thoughts of earlier, the feeling of having a place of her own to call home calmed something in her.

She became aware it was a beautiful night, and her yard looked faintly magical in the moonlight, not showing neglect as it did in the harsh light of day. It was easy to overlook the fact the grass needed mowing and just appreciate that it was thick and dewy under her feet. There was a scent in the air that was cool and pure and invigorating.

She heard, again, some slight noise around the corner of her house, and her heart jumped. Bastigal. He had come home after all!

She rounded the corner of her house, and stopped short.

“Mrs. Blaze?”

David’s mother turned her head and looked at her, smiling curiously. And yet the smile did not hide a certain vacant look in her eyes. She was in a nightgown that had not been buttoned down the front. She also wore a straw gardening hat, and bright pink winter boots. She was holding pruning shears, and a pile of thorny branches were accumulating at her feet.

Kayla noticed several scratches on her arms were bleeding.

It occurred to her she hadn’t really seen Mrs. Blaze since taking up residence next door. She had meant to go over and say hello when her boxes were unpacked.

In a glance she could see why David’s mother had not told him who had moved in next door. She was fairly certain she was not recognized by the woman who had known Kayla’s husband all of his life, and Kayla for a great deal of hers.

“It’s me,” Kayla said, gently. “Kayla Jaffrey.”

Mrs. Blaze frowned and turned back to the roses. She snapped the blades of the pruners at a branch and missed.

“It used to be McIntosh. I’m friends with your son, David.” Why did I say that, instead of that I was Kevin’s wife?

Not that it mattered. Mrs. Blaze cast her a look that was totally bewildered. A deep sadness opened up in Kayla as she realized she was not the only one in Blossom Valley dealing with major and devastating life changes.

She stepped carefully around the thorny branches, plucked the dangerously waving pruners from Mrs. Blaze’s hands and set them on the ground. She shrugged out of her sweater and tucked it lightly around Mrs. Blaze’s shoulders, buttoning it quickly over the gaping nightie.