First Time, Forever, page 9
“Have you been talking to Ma Watson?” he asked sharply.
“About knights?” she said incredulously. “No.”
“I think a knight would know which fork to use,” he said, recovering, flashing a grin at her.
“Really? I wouldn’t have even thought they had forks back then.”
“Good point. Now the rules for this evening.”
“Rules?”
“Yup. Absolutely no talk of the boys—not one word.”
“All right.”
“And no worries. Not a single one.”
“All right.”
“Now, where was I? Oh, yeah, he had a look of fire in his eye, that bull.”
They were nearly halfway to Medicine Hat when he finished the story, a story that managed to tell her quite a lot about the life of a bull rider, for all its tall qualities. It finished with the conclusion that with any luck they’d be eating that old Mr. Stinky for supper tonight.
“Your turn,” he said.
“After that? You don’t seem to get it, Evan. I’m boring.”
“No, you don’t seem to get it, Kathleen. You aren’t.”
“Well, I can’t think of one interesting thing to say.”
“Start here then—when I was a little girl my favorite thing was…”
“When I was a little girl my favorite thing was going to the Vancouver Aquarium.”
“Really? Now there’s something I’ve always wanted to do. Tell me about it.”
And it was that easy.
Dinner was wonderful. He was charming and funny and endearingly humble about the very lack of finesse that made him so appealing, so real.
She ordered Caesar salad with prawns on it, and he teased her about the garlic.
“Hello, Evan.”
Kathleen looked up. The woman was icily beautiful in an electric-blue silk suit, the skirt four inches above the knee. Her dark hair extremely and stylishly short, her makeup perfect. Red, red lipstick looked fine on her.
“Mary Anne! Hi. You’re not licensed to practice in this province are you?”
“Depends what I’m practicing,” she said, sending a look back to her table, where a distinguished-looking man in a suit was sitting. “Law, no.”
“Kathleen, this is my lawyer, Mary Anne Grey.”
“Hello, Kathleen. Nice to meet you. Look, Evan, I hate to do business when I can’t send you a bill, but I got a fax from your in-laws’ attorney this afternoon.” She shot Kathleen a look, hesitated and looked back at him. Evan nodded that it was okay for her to continue. “They plan to make your life difficult.”
“My life has always been moderately difficult,” he said.
“They want the court to order a home study.”
“I heard.”
“You’re supposed to tell me when you hear these things!”
“But then it’s billable,” he said, his tone teasing.
Kathleen watched the lawyer’s icy composure give way to her obvious affection for Evan.
“I guess,” Evan continued, “I hope if I ignore them, they’ll just go away. Look, Kathleen and I made this pact not to talk about anything that was troubling us tonight. Can I call you later in the week?”
The lawyer turned and regarded Kathleen thoughtfully. “Want some advice, cowboy? Absolutely free?”
“Is this a first in the Western world?”
“Probably.” She turned back to him.
“All right. Advise away.”
“Marry her.” She winked at him, and walked away.
Evan studied his plate. Kathleen studied hers. She dared to look up at him. He looked at her.
“As if a lady like you would ever marry a guy like me,” he said.
“You mean a knight?” she asked. And then it came out, simply and from her very soul. “I would.”
And then she blushed so hard she thought the waiter was going to have to put out the fire on her face. “If I was asked properly,” she said, trying for lightness. “Did I tell you about Whistler?”
He shook his head, looking shell-shocked.
“My second favorite place. I love to downhill ski. Do you ski?”
“In Saskatchewan?” he asked, but it was obvious he was thinking of something else, and she knew she had managed to spoil everything.
Chapter Six
Mary Anne and her beau invited them for a drink after dinner. Mary Anne was becoming less inhibited by the second. Evan drank Pepsi and thought Mary Anne’s man looked like the kind of guy Kathleen deserved.
White collar. Classy. Rich. He owned some sort of computer company.
He’d probably know how to ask properly, a phrase Evan had been mulling over ever since it came off Kathleen’s lips.
She had spoken it casually, he reminded himself. For Pete’s sake, she had been kidding.
“So, were you affected by Y2K, Evan?” Roger asked, when the conversation slowed to a trickle. “The Big Crash?” It made Evan very sorry they’d agreed to join them.
“I rode a bull named that once,” Evan said, drawling deliberately, “and it was a pretty good crash. Busted three ribs.”
Mary Anne sighed, took a long pull on her second Irish coffee and said, “Cowboys are so sexy.”
“Well, not with busted ribs, they’re not,” Evan said. He glanced over at Kathleen, who had ducked her head and was stirring her drink. Had he embarrassed her? Maybe sometimes he was a little too earthy. A flaw.
One of many.
Mary Anne laughed. Roger looked put out.
But Kathleen looked up at him, and the look in her eyes nearly stole his breath away. Whatever she was, it wasn’t embarrassed. He thought, again, that she was better looking than Mary Anne—warmer, fuller, richer. He liked the blouse—soft, prim and yet just a little bit clingy.
Roger gulped down his drink. “Mary Anne and I want to catch the movie, so I guess we’d better move on.”
“Do you want to come?” Mary Anne asked. “Evan, you’d love it. Roger’s been dying to see it forever.”
“I don’t think he’d like it,” Roger said. “It’s not The Cowboy Way.”
“Or Eight Seconds,” Mary Anne said wistfully.
“Uh, Kathleen?” Evan did not want to go see a movie. At all.
Kathleen was looking at Roger. “Is it a movie that takes place on an airplane? With terrorists? And then Arnold saves the plane, the president and North America?”
“The space shuttle, actually,” Roger said with pleasure. “Sylvester.”
“Maybe another time,” Kathleen said. “Thanks.”
Maybe another time, Evan repeated in his head. So much nicer than, hell, no, I don’t want to go. These people all spoke the same language.
They finished their drinks after Mary Anne and Roger had left. She’d had hot chocolate and there was a little fleck of whipped cream on her lip.
“I think your lawyer friend liked cowboys,” Kathleen said.
“Nah, she didn’t. She likes what she thinks cowboys are.”
“And what’s that?”
“Well, you see a guy for a few seconds riding a few tons of raging beef, and the guy probably looks heroic, instead of just plain stupid. There’s something larger than life about riding bulls. It makes the men who do it seem romantic, I guess, brave.”
“A bit like a knight from days gone by?”
Evan snorted. “Not hardly.”
“Then what is he really?”
“Usually a guy like me. Part-time cowboy, full-time dirt farmer, trying to make payments on a truck, up to the top of his boots in poop of various varieties most of the time. Real cowboys aren’t romantic. They’re just real.”
“Maybe some people would find that romantic.”
“Compared to what? A skunk?”
“Compared to, say, Roger.”
“Really?” He found this information astounding.
“Yes.”
“What was wrong with Roger?”
“Nothing was wrong with him. But I’ll bet if he wants his piano moved, he hires someone to do it.”
“He looked pretty good to me. Nice suit. His own business. Six-figure income. No wonder he hires someone to move his piano!”
“Evan,” she said quietly, “are you trying to match me up with Roger?”
“No! I could just see what the attraction was for Mary Anne.”
“Men have no idea what women like, do they?”
“I’ll pay you to tell me.”
“How much?”
“Ten bucks.” He fished it out of his pocket, held it between his fingers.
“Sold.”
“So, what do women like? I’m going to write it down and make it into a book.”
“Muscles.” She plucked the ten out from between his fingers.
He stared at her. “One word is a pretty short book.”
She shrugged, flattened the ten on the table and looked at it with pleasure.
“Muscles? You’re joking right?”
“Nope.”
“It’s pretty hard to build a relationship around that.”
“Who said anything about a relationship?” she said.
“Ten bucks, and it’s not even a relationship. What is it? They like to peek?”
“Yup.”
“I’ve been robbed.”
“I’ll buy you a drink, cowboy.”
“Great. Make it a double. Pepsi. I’m not even going to tell you what men like about women.”
“You don’t have to. I already know. And it’s not their brains.”
“Cynic. What made you so cynical? That guy you were going to marry?”
“How do you know about him?”
“Mac mentioned him on one of those rare occasions when he spoke to me.”
“And what did he say?”
“That he left you. Because of Mac.”
“Oh.”
“Is that true?”
She nodded, unable to look at him.
“I don’t think you should be ashamed about it. He wasn’t worthy of you.”
She did look at him, then smiled. “You know something? I must be a slow learner, because I’m just starting to figure that out.”
“Did you want to do something else?” he asked. “There might be another movie on.”
“Evan, I want to do something that I can’t do in Vancouver, that I won’t be able to do when I get back there.”
“So that’s where you’ll go?” He felt the disappointment. What did he think? That she would really consider staying here? He doubted that. Even if he asked properly. No sense even embarrassing himself by asking. There were limits to chivalry, and marrying the maiden was likely going beyond the boundary.
“I think so. My work experience has all been in big offices. I kind of applied for the job at the Outpost in a moment of whimsy, thinking for once in my life I should be bold and daring and adventurous. It doesn’t seem to be panning out. I should go back to what I know, take Mac back to what he knows.”
He heard the regret in her voice. “I think being adventurous looks mighty good on you, Kathleen Miles,” he told her, and then ducked his head, embarrassed after all. “So, what can we do here that you couldn’t do in Vancouver?”
“You know what I want to do? I want to lie in the middle of the prairie and look up at those stars.”
He was positive there was nothing in that hot chocolate but chocolate.
“You’re not worried about snakes?”
“Of course I am. That’s why I’m bringing you.”
“I don’t think that blouse was made for lying on the prairie, Kathleen. Luckily for you, I keep a blanket in the back of my truck. For emergencies such as this one.”
They stopped a few miles outside of Hopkins Gulch and under a star-studded night sky. She put on her sweater and they hiked up to a knoll. He spread out the blanket, and they lay down on it, flat on their backs, but close.
“Do you know the constellations?” she asked him.
“Some. That’s Orion.”
“Where?”
“See the three stars in his belt?”
“Oh, I do see it.”
“And the Big Dipper, and the Little Dipper. The Morning Star. The Milky Way.”
He looked over at her. Her eyes were huge and full of wonder. He knew now was the time. He moved his arm over slowly, curled it under her shoulder.
“Is that a snake?” she asked, holding her breath, but her eyes full of laughter.
“Uh-huh. Of the human variety.”
He rolled over, and looked at her.
“What are you doing?”
“I like this view better.”
“You’re looking at me!”
“Exactly.”
“Evan, stop it.”
“Okay.” But he didn’t. He leaned toward her. Her eyes got larger. Her hand moved up and covered her heart.
He brushed his lips against hers, and could feel the tentativeness in her response.
Her lips were sweet, unbearably soft. He closed his eyes, and tasted her, felt her response, and was jolted by the innocence in it.
He opened his eyes, rested on his elbows, and looked at her.
“What?” she whispered.
“You haven’t done much of this, have you?”
She looked mortally embarrassed. “I’m thirty-four years old, Evan.”
“That’s not what I asked you.”
It seemed the strangest of ironies. He’d been with women ten years younger who knew ten times more. About what brought pleasure, how to use their bodies and lips and hands.
But nothing had ever made him feel like this.
He wanted her more than he had ever wanted any one of them. And his body was not about to hide that fact.
Probably scare her to death if she knew what was happening to him. He rolled away from her, stared up at the stars.
“Evan, I’m sorry.”
“There’s nothing for you to be sorry about.”
“Could we do that again?” she whispered.
“No,” he said, his voice raspy with thwarted need. “No, we can’t. I think we’d better go.”
He could tell he’d hurt her. That’s why she needed a man like Roger, with more finesse, more grace. She needed someone who would know how to kiss her hand, be familiar with knightly protocol.
He dropped her off at her house, but they picked up the boys first, so even though he wanted to kiss her again, felt compelled to taste that sweetness again, he couldn’t very well with Mac scowling at him.
“Mac, I’ll see you Monday,” he said. That should give him a whole day to set things right in his head. To figure out what it was he wanted from Kathleen Miles and what it was she wanted from him.
But by four in the morning when he still hadn’t slept a wink, he knew it wasn’t going to be that easy to figure out.
Because he was still pondering that I would. If I was asked properly.
Asked properly? He couldn’t even kiss her properly, a department he had never failed at before. Of course, before, he knew it was going one place, and he couldn’t wait to get there. With Kathleen, there was an element of respect there he was not sure he’d ever felt before.
She wasn’t a quick tumble.
She was the kind of woman you took to a church, with all your friends and neighbors watching, and said “This is it. Forever. She’s the one.”
He’d said those words to Dee, of course. In a tacky chapel in Las Vegas, knowing somewhere in his heart it couldn’t work, and wanting to desperately for that to be different because of the life she had inside of her. His baby.
Really, it wouldn’t make any more sense this time. He’d known Kathleen even less time than he knew Dee.
So why did it feel like he knew her? Really knew her?
He supposed it was because she was more honest than Dee; there was nothing hidden about Kathleen.
From the minute he had first looked into her eyes, he had simply felt he’d known her forever, that his heart could find rest with her.
What had prompted Mary Ann to plant that impossible idea in his head? That he should marry Kathleen?
Well, that’s what lawyers did. That’s what you paid them for. To make sense of a world you didn’t understand.
It would make sense for him and Kathleen to hitch their wagons together. She needed a place to go. There was nothing left for her back in Vancouver. That boy of hers needed a man’s influence at this point in his life.
And this boy of his needed a woman’s softness. He had seen how Jesse reacted when she gathered him in her arms in the truck yesterday, relaxed against her, trusted her in a way it seemed like he might never trust him.
Damn Dee.
And that was the other thing. You couldn’t get any further from Dee Mortimer. Dee had been wild, Kathleen was calm; Dee had been hyper; and Kathleen was steady; Dee had been giddy, Kathleen’s good humor ran deep and clear; Dee had appeared strong but had been weak, and Kathleen was exactly the opposite.
It seemed to him that if a man was going to marry, it would make all the sense in the world to pick someone like Kathleen.
If.
Of course, he wasn’t going to. Besides, it wasn’t as if he needed to get married. He was doing a pretty fair job of raising his son, if you didn’t count potty-training.
He realized, suddenly, aghast with himself, he wanted to marry her, and that desire had very little to do with the well-being of Jesse and Mac.
She was the only woman he’d ever met who would choose the cold, hard ground and looking at the stars over Arnold. Or Sylvester.
She was the only woman he’d ever met who’d been so shy and sweet and uncertain of herself—and yet underneath there flowed a spring of strength and good-ness and light and laughter. He could see it in her eyes.
It would be a solution for both of them.
She was only kidding, he reminded himself.
But he made himself think back to her eyes, when she’d said it. They’d skittered away from his—not the look of a woman telling a joke, but the look of a woman terrified, vulnerable. Suddenly he wasn’t so sure that she had been kidding.
Which left him right back at square one. How did a man go about asking properly?
He groaned, smacked his pillow, threw his covers on the floor.
He wondered if he was ever going to sleep again.
“So what did you guys do?” Mac asked.
