Honeymoon for One (8 page)

“Hardly ever.” She grabbed a fork and knife, and set it beside a plate. “Sometimes on Thanksgiving, or Christmas.”

He handed her another set of silverware and waited. He didn’t have a whole lot of practice in reading teenage girls, but he knew how to read women. Since girls grow into women, something in the quiet way she moved told him she had more she wanted to say.

“Before we’d eat in here all the time. Not just holidays, but dinner every night.” She grabbed the napkins and set one on top of the nearest plate. “Mom used to fold the napkins into pretty shapes. She used real cloth though, not paper.”

Used to?

Without looking up, Corrie inched over and placed another napkin. “Do you have a big family?”

“Only child.”

She laid the last napkin on the third plate and raised her head to meet his gaze. “Still have your mom and dad?”

He nodded. Though some might consider not having spoken to either parent in over a decade the same as not having them, he knew that wasn’t what she was asking.

“Corrie.” Michelle walked into the room carrying a large steaming pot. “Bring the bread, please.”

Corrie nodded and swept passed him.

He leaned into Michelle. “How long has it been just the two of you?”

“I need a trivet, too,” Michelle called over her shoulder before turning to him. “Seven years.”

“Here you go.” Corrie hurried into the room, a trivet under one arm and the bread in her good hand. “Okay, guys, I'm famished.”

All signs of her earlier melancholy at eating in the dining room seemed to have completely vanished. Corrie prattled on, skipping from one topic to the next. From the bits of information he could glean between breaths, chemistry was a sure A, Coach Davis was an incompetent idiot, and apparently some kid named Billy Webb thinks he’s all that and a bag of chips, whatever the heck that meant.

At varying intervals Michelle nodded and smiled, offering encouragement and support, and bristled ever-so-slightly at the mention of Billy Webb. She played the mother role well.

Single mother.

Reports and statistics and dollar signs started dancing about in his head. More jobs were going to be cut. HR was only the beginning. No matter how long he stalled, eventually her job would be absorbed. He would have to fire her. And how the hell was he going to manage that?

"Thank you. For yesterday." Michelle stood just inside the door of Lloyd Kirkland McEntire's office. She felt two inches tall. How could she have been so wrong?

Kirk swiveled away from his computer to face Michelle. "I'm glad it all turned out well. Your sister's a nice kid. Despite the attitude.”

"Well." She turned the doorknob behind her back. "That's all I wanted to say." She pulled the door ajar. "Thank you.”

"Have dinner with me?"

She pushed the door closed again. "Excuse me?"

"Dinner. Tonight. You and me." He paused a moment and added, "And your sister.”

"Oh, that's very kind of you, but you don't—"

"I'd like to." His voice dropped. "Very much.”

And heaven help her, so did she. The man whose company she'd shared on the ship had come out to play at dinnertime. He'd made her laugh and smile, and reminded her how special he'd made her feel. Her fingers clutched at the golden charm. His parting gift.

Maybe. No. Getting close to the real Kirk could only lead to trouble. Soon he would be leaving for Montserrat, or Kokomo, or for all she knew Timbuktu. Instead of just having her memories of their time together in a different world, if she spent more time with him here, then her memories would creep into her everyday world, and she couldn't handle that. "I'm sorry. Corrie has homework. Finals. We have to work on the holiday decorations. And..."

He raised a hand, palm out. "That's okay. I understand. Maybe another time."

Nodding, she opened the door behind her again. "Yes, thank you. Another time.”

Before she could change her mind and run to him screaming yes, yes, yes, Michelle scurried back to her desk and buried her head in the latest sales reports. Why did he have to be so damn nice? Couldn't he have stayed icy Lloyd?

Having read the same page three times, she finally set the file aside and looked for busy work that wouldn't involve coherent thought.

"I never thought I'd see five o'clock quitting time again." Pam dropped her purse on the corner of Michelle's desk. "You working late?"

"Not me." Michelle hadn't even noticed the time. She must have been staring at the jumble of dismal numbers longer than she thought. "I'm right behind you.”

"Want to join Rusty and me for dinner?"

"Thanks for the invite, but I have to cook dinner for Corrie, and I promised her we'd start working on the Christmas lights.”

"I really do wish you'd ask one of the guys to help you. The thought of you and Corrie on ladders stringing lights gives me the heebie-jeebies.”

Michelle had to laugh. Who said
heebie-jeebies
anymore? "We'll be careful. I promise.”

"Well. Maybe Rusty and I will drive by after supper, just in case you need some help."

"Help?" Kirk sauntered up beside Pam and dropped a file on Michelle's desk. "What do you need help with?"

"No—" she started.

"Hanging lights on the house. At least the Rat Bastard used to be good for something. If you ask me, some things were just not meant to be women's work, and climbing on ladders to hang lights along a rooftop is one of them.”

With a huff and a good-bye nod, Pam walked away leaving Michelle up close and personal with the man she most wanted to avoid.

"Is she right?"

"Yes and no."

He raised both dark brows.

There wasn't anything that she wanted to share about Steven, the Rat Bastard. "Yes, we'll be decorating, but no, even I don't try to hang lights in the cold dark of night." She flashed him her best I'm-faking-comfortable smile.

"I see." He hesitated long enough for her to worry what he might be thinking, but all he finally said was, "I'll see you on Monday."

"Monday." She watched him turn to walk back to his office and blew out a relieved breath, resisting the urge to call back, "Not if I see you first.”

***

Every instinct Kirk had told him to stay the hell away from Michelle Bradford and her sister. The pair was instant family personified. The bill of goods. The trap. And yet, when he stopped for lunch, he found himself ordering spare ribs, shrimp fried rice, moo goo gai pan, sweet and sour chicken, and beef and broccoli. To go.

Now with enough Chinese food to feed the entire block, Kirk rolled down Michelle's street. No one was in sight, but several large boxes were stacked along the shrubs in the front yard. He parked his car in their driveway and, like the ancient Greeks, approached the front door bearing gifts. Or in this case, food. Though the way to a man's heart was through his stomach was usually applied to men, years of experience had taught him that good food could go a long way with winning over women, too.
Was that what he wanted? To win her over?

Sanity, or terror, had him ready to turn around when Corrie stepped out of the house onto the porch.

"Hey." The screen door slammed shut behind her. "You come to help with the lights?"

"If your sister will let me."

Corrie smiled. "I see Siszilla has struck again.”

Kirk smothered a laugh. "I didn't say that. But I did bring food."

Corrie poked her nose into one of the brown bags and sniffed. "Hmm. I say the lights can wait." Relieving him of one of the paper bags, she turned and walked back into the house, shouting for her sister.

"Run next door and ask Angie if she has—" Michelle stopped short in the hall.

Wearing a worn-out Moody Blues sweatshirt over a plaid flannel shirt with faded baggy pants and her hair tied back in a red bandanna, the woman looked absolutely edible. He held out the bag. "I brought lunch.”

"Chinese," Corrie offered, as if it weren't obvious from the paper bags and tantalizing aroma of fried rice wafting down the hall.

Michelle ran her hands down the side of her sweatpants before taking the bag from him. "You shouldn't have.”

The gentle twitch at the corner of a forced smile told him she wasn't just being polite. She meant it. But after almost four hours at his computer and next to nothing to show for his time, he really did need to come by and see his Micki. He missed her. Missed the feel of her in his arms. The sound of her laugh. The throaty little sound she'd make when he touched her in just the right spot.

Slowing his gait, he shook off any more thoughts that would get him into serious trouble. Especially if he walked into the kitchen sporting the hard-on currently pressing against his zipper. Damn, he needed to get this assignment over with. And fast.

***

"The nail should be just under the ridge of shingles." Michelle pointed to the spot where she used to see Steven reaching when he hung the Christmas lights.

"If there was a nail here before, it's not here now." Kirk turned in place, lowered a few steps on the ladder, and bowed one swinging arm impersonating a gorilla. "Hand me a new nail and the hammer."

Corrie took off for the porch and reappeared carrying a hammer and a broad smile. "Is Michelle going to have to pay you in bananas?”

"All donations accepted." He clipped her chin with one finger before wrapping his hand around the handle of the hammer and returning to his earlier perch at the top of the ladder.

"Well, it's certainly been a lot more fun hanging lights with you than stuffy Steven."

"Stuffy Steven?”

Michelle noticed him fumble briefly with the cord before she shot her sister a don't-go-there look.

Kirk secured the string of lights to the new nail and leaned over to hook it around the next nail before coming down to move the ladder over.

"So," he asked, climbing back up. "Would this stuffy Steven be the same friend I met at the office not long ago?"

Michelle wished her sister was close enough to kick. "Don't slip." She pointed to the ladder, ignoring the question and urging him back to work.

Stopping halfway up, he turned to glance at Michelle. Memories of a ripped hunk making his way up the rock wall filled her with an unexpected heat.
Damn him.
More recent memories from the hospital of a calm, steady hand urging her on, assuring her all would be well, squeezed her heart.
Double damn.

Still waiting for an answer, he tossed a glance Corrie's way. His eyes asking the same question.

Shrugging an apologetic shoulder, Corrie offered her sister an overly sweet, it's-not-my-fault-he-asked look. "Tall, skinny guy, sort of good-looking in a metrosexual sort of way?"

Kirk hung another stretch of lights before he answered, "Could be." Descending the ladder he directed another question to Corrie. "Works at a bank?"

"Yep. The Rat Bastard. Steven Williams the Fourth."

"The Fourth?" He made a good effort to hide a smile before moving the ladder a few more feet. "That might explain that metrosexual thing.”

"Might." Corrie tested another string of lights before passing it on to Kirk.

For the next couple of hours Michelle and Corrie tested lights, changed burned out bulbs, and held the strands so Kirk wouldn't get tangled climbing up and down the ladder.

"I gather you don't need to raid my tool box anymore?" Angie strode across the short stretch of lawn between the two houses. "Who's the hunky handyman?"

"That would be my boss. At least for now.”

Angie's eyes circled round. "
That's
the guy who holds your job in the palm of his hand?"

Michelle opened another box of replacement bulbs. "One and the same.”

Holding her hand to shade her eyes, Angie watched Kirk and Corrie work. "So why is he stringing your lights?”

Why was he stringing her lights?
"I think he likes heights."

Hand still on her forehead, Angie closed one eye and cast a sideway glance at Michelle before dragging her attention back to Kirk and Corrie. "He seems to be having a good time."

"They both do. When Steven would help, it was like being in the army.
Do this. Do that. Not here. There.
"

Her ex-fiancé's rigid style and Kirk’s thrill-of-living attitude couldn't have been further apart. Occasionally Kirk would look her way and offer a reassuring smile, but mostly he'd laughed at Corrie's jokes, smiled at her efforts to hang the lower lights, and grinned like a fool every time she squealed with excitement at another row of lights turning on. For a man who didn't believe in the American dream, he knew how to do family.

With every strand, Michelle had tried to come up with an excuse not to invite him to stay for supper. But flashes of Kirk from the ship clogged her mind. The man on the ladder was the same lighthearted man who had encouraged her, had made her feel she could accomplish anything, who, despite all her insecurities, never once had made her feel silly or out of place. He'd showed her how to laugh, play, and just enjoy life. Even now, standing in her front yard, he'd done it again. She hadn't felt this alive since…well, since her honeymoon cruise for one.

"They look like they're finished.”

Lost in her thoughts, Michelle had almost forgotten Angie was standing next to her.

"All done." Kirk brushed his hands together and smiled at her before casting his glance at Angie.

"Kirk McEntire this is my neighbor Angie Cannon."

"How do you do?" He extended his hand.

"A pleasure." Angie's cheeks flushed as she stretched her hand out to accept his. "And, on that note, I need to run. My date will be picking me up shortly, and I still haven't changed."

"Nice meeting you." Kirk waved a hand at her.

Hurrying back to her house, Angie smiled over her shoulder and waved back.

Kirk turned his wrist to glance at the time. "Another hour before sundown."

This was it. The moment Michelle had been trying to avoid. Her heart took off at a fast gallop, and her palms were actually sweating. It was all so unfair. Why couldn't Steven have made her heart race and her palms sweat? Why did it have to be this man she couldn't bring herself to say good-bye to?

The last syllable had barely formed in her mind when everything stopped. Her heart, her breath, her hopes, her dreams.
Oh, my God.

They were right. Steven and Beth were right. She'd never been in love with him. With Steven her heart never raced the way it did when Kirk came into view. Not even in the sweltering heat waves of August had her palms sweat the way they did when Kirk looked at her with steam in his gaze. And heaven help her, not once in the two years she and Steven dated, or the five years they'd been engaged, had she been so desperate to wrap herself around him that she'd seriously considered ignoring all decorum and making love in a public hallway.
Making love.

"Oh, God," she mumbled, raising her hand to her mouth.

"What?" Kirk and Corrie echoed.

Crap. Had she said that out loud?

"What's wrong?" Corrie asked, moving closer to her sister, a look of earnest concern crinkling her brow.