This Very Moment (11 page)

Bill steered the BMW into his garage, thoughts of Kylee pushing everything else aside. Why had kissing Kylee reminded him of Nicole? Was it because he cared about Kylee as he hadn’t any other woman since Nicole? Why should that make a difference?

He knew why, but wasn’t sure he wanted to examine his feelings further. He had loved Nicole. Could he grow to love Kylee too? If so, would loving Kylee demean the love he treasured for his wife?

“Get over it, Bill,” he told himself aloud. “Nicole is gone forever, remember? Nothing you do will change that.”

Yet Kylee believed Nicole existed somewhere. With God, perhaps? Bill didn’t accept that for a minute.
Jourdain does,
he thought.

That was part of what bothered him. Both Kylee and Jourdain were intelligent people—how could they let themselves believe something they couldn’t see? Something they could never prove?

At home, he watched TV again on the couch until his mind numbed enough to forget the pain. Then he pulled the blanket over him and slept.

* * * * *

The yellow roses were delivered at seven, a half hour before the guests were due to arrive at the banquet. The card read:
Yellow means I’m sorry.
Kylee smiled and put her face next to the roses and breathed in their aroma.

“Wow, he must have done something really bad,” Elaina said with a laugh.

“No,” Kylee answered. “Not really. He’s a nice guy.”

“Good guys are hard to come by at our age.” Elaina looked over at Troy where he talked with a group of waiters. There was an unmistakable softness in her gaze.

“Looks like you and Troy are getting along,” Kylee commented.

Elaina turned to her, patting the side of her dark hair self-consciously. “Is it that obvious?”

Kylee grinned. “Kind of.”

“I’ve loved Troy for a long time. I saw him marry his wife and knew they weren’t right for each other. But what could I say? That I was the one he should marry?” Elaina’s blue eyes rolled expressively. “Not hardly. So I waited, I watched, I even encouraged him to stay with her when they started having problems. Sometimes it’d hurt so much seeing him with her when I knew she didn’t love him like I did.” Elaina looked up in the air and shook her head. “About a year ago when things got really tight at the charity, and I had to go back to work to keep it afloat, I thought about leaving. So did Troy. He and his wife had separated again, and one night we talked about quitting and letting someone else take over Children’s Hope. But in the end we both stayed. I know now that it was because he loved me too, or was beginning to, and we couldn’t let the charity go, or we’d be letting each other go.”

Elaina sighed happily. “Now that his divorce is final, we’re together, and our dreams are coming true.”

“Are there any wedding bells in the future?”

Elaina’s mouth widened in a large smile. “Yes, actually. When a little more time goes by. I’ve been waiting for him this long. A bit more won’t hurt.”

“I’m happy for you,” Kylee said. “And it looks as though everything else is also going well. Did you see the news spot last night? Anna was sure excited about getting her first surgery on Monday. I think she did a great job talking to the reporter. I made a few copies of the tape. I’d like to give her one.”

“That’s a great idea.” Elaina paused. “But the surgery isn’t going to happen on Monday.”

Kylee was surprised. “But I thought—”

“The plastic surgeon called this morning to reschedule. Apparently, he’s had some very high paying jobs that came up and he has to take them to make up for the time he’s donating to Anna. So Anna will get her surgery the first week in December. It’s actually perfect timing. I mean, what a great Christmas present.”

“Yeah,” Kylee agreed, but she felt slightly discouraged. “What about the other four children you had scheduled? They’re not all being done by the same doctor.”

“No, but they’ve been rescheduled too. Someone from 60 Minutes called me and wants to follow their stories. That’s big. We can’t pass up the opportunity for the exposure. In fact, I told them you’d call and set up everything. Don’t look so sad, Kylee. Two or three weeks aren’t going to make a difference in the rest of their lives. They’ll get the help the need. You’ll see to that.”

Kylee grinned sheepishly. “We both will. I guess I’m not very patient.”

“Well, remember it’s a virtue. Oh, look, Troy’s calling me.” Elaina gave her a wink and left.

Bill showed up with the first guests. “Thank you for the flowers,” Kylee told him.

“You’re welcome. I was kind of an idiot last night. I’m sorry.”

“Apology accepted. But I meant what I said. I need a friend more than I do a broken heart right now.” That much, at least, was true. But what if she could have a friend who was also the love of her life?

He chuckled. “I’m sure you have friends.”

“Yeah, my best one is a stewardess who called me this morning from Atlanta to tell me she’s dating this really hot pilot, and my other best one just had her first baby. They’re rather wrapped up in other things right now.”

“Well, I’m here at least. Do you have a table I should wait at? Or do you have something else you need?”

“Want to greet people?”

“Not a chance.”

She grinned. “I didn’t think so. Our table is right over there, by the door to the kitchen. You see it, don’t you? It’s the one with the gorgeous yellow roses.” She glanced at the growing crowd of people. “Do you think you can find your way over there yourself?”

He threw her an amused look. “If I really tried.”

“Hey, Bill,” Kylee called as he started toward the table. “You’re walking funny. What happened?”

“I went to the gym this morning and had a good workout.”

“Did something fall on your legs?”

“No, I’m just a little stiff. It’s been a while since I’ve visited the gym.”

Kylee struggled to keep a straight face. “I see.” She put her hand over her mouth, but the laughter bubbled through. Bill grinned with her.

He waved her back to the guests. “Go on and take care of them. I’ll talk to you later.”

For Kylee, the greeting stage of the evening had never taken so long. She glanced often at Bill, sitting alone at his table. Once he put one of the yellow roses between his teeth and stretched out his arms first to one side and then the other as if he were dancing. Kylee laughed and wondered if he liked to dance. Her church was sponsoring a dance for singles in two weeks to celebrate Thanksgiving. That would be so much better than going to the smoke and booze filled dance halls. Maybe Bill would go with her.

* * * * *

When Kylee arrived at the table, Bill was telling the two couples who had joined him the details involved in a facelift. The lady next to Bill turned a pale shade of green. “I would never submit to that,” she said daintily. Her apparently much older husband patted her hand.

“Oh, no?” Bill said. “Hmm. I guess it’s lucky for me that many people don’t feel that way.” He recognized the tiny, almost imperceptible marks on her face that most people would never see. Coupled with her aging hands, Bill judged that the woman had not only had plastic surgery once but possibly twice.

The evening played out much as the benefit dinner two weeks before, and Bill noticed the donations were more generous than Kylee had said was customary for her second list. The commercials, it seemed, were doing their job.

After the guests left, Kylee sat at the table with Bill, watching the waiters clean up around them. “I’m glad it’s over,” she confessed. “You know, I still get butterflies in my stomach when I first get up. It’s okay after I start talking, but before that I’m a wreck.”

“It doesn’t show.”

“That’s good.” As she spoke, she watched Elaina and Troy talking by the outside door, heads close together.

“Is something wrong?” Bill asked. “You seem kind of far away.”

Kylee turned her gaze back to him. “I’m just disappointed. Remember when I told you the surgeries were to begin on Monday? Well, apparently one of the surgeons had to reschedule, and then 60 Minutes wanted some time to follow the stories of all the children, so that delayed the rest of the surgeries as well.”

“60 Minutes will get you some great publicity.”

“I know, but I want to see the children get help now. Little Anna is going to look so great once her mouth is fixed.”

“A bilateral cleft lip and complete cleft palate will require more than one surgery, you know. With a case as severe as hers, she’ll need to have further surgery as she matures. That’s not even including the hearing, breathing, and dental problems she has. Overall, there will be a lot more scarring than if she’d had the lip surgery as a baby.”

“I know all that, but she’ll look good. I just know she will. Certainly a lot better than she does now. We already have a great dentist, Gerald Torgeson, who has volunteered to help with the dental work. And I’m sure other doctors will step forward to help in the other areas. I hate this delay.”

Bill grabbed her arm. “Come on, what you need is to get away from this for a while.” He stood, pulling her up with him.

“Do you like to dance?” Kylee asked suddenly.

He gave her a pained expression. “Tonight?”

“Ha! Even I can see that you can barely walk tonight, much less dance. But we’ll be having a dance at our church in a few weeks. It’s being held on the Friday after Thanksgiving.”

“With preaching and baptism in the intermission?” he said with a smirk.

Kylee punched the sore muscles in his arm, laughing as Bill winced. “Something like that. Of course we always have to smuggle in rock music, and there’ll be chaperones. We’ll have to dance an arm’s length apart.”

“That’s crazy.”

“While the chaperones are measuring the distance between us with hard little rulers and Bibles, and frisking us for rock music, we can talk about a bridge in San Francisco that I’ve been meaning to sell you.” She rolled her eyes. “It’ll make an excellent investment—right after a tract of swamp land in Florida.”

Bill laughed. “I bought into that one, didn’t I? Okay, I’ll go. But no bridge or frisking, all right?”

“Deal.”

“So what should we do now?” He’d wanted to help get her mind off the charity and surgery delays, but he didn’t know where to go this late. If it were summer, he would take her to the beach and they could stroll along the shore and . . .

Maybe it was just as well it was winter.

“I play a pretty mean Yahtzee,” Kylee said. “And Rummikub is fun.”

Bill smiled. “Why not? It’s about all the activity my muscles can stand.”

“I’ll even roll the dice for you,” Kylee said in amusement. “Boy, you really have to start exercising more.”

“I suppose you exercise.”

“Nope. I’m allergic.”

They drove to Kylee’s in separate cars as they had done the previous evening. For two hours they talked and played games, sipping soda Kylee had in the refrigerator and munching cashews from a can Bill kept in his car. Bill noticed that she maintained a comfortable distance between them and part of him was glad. The other part of him was frustrated by the situation, and he fought the strong urge to take her in his arms.

It wasn’t until he had bid Kylee a friendly farewell and was driving home that memories of Nicole returned to haunt him.