Father to Be (24 page)

O
n Saturday the circus came to town.

Well, not exactly the circus. Carnival, Kelsey supposed, was a more appropriate description for the assemblage on the empty field behind the high school. She’d jogged by there early that morning and watched as burly men in sleeveless shirts that showed their tattoos set up the rides and booths. She’d even earned a whistle from a man with a dark and wicked smile. She’d stick to the safe, respectable type, thank you.

Ten hours later, as she walked through the gate and her gaze lit immediately on J.D., she faced an inescapable fact. Safe and respectable could, depending on its package, be far more dangerous than all the dark, wicked smiles in the world.

He was standing in front of a game booth with the kids. He wore shorts and a T-shirt, like the majority of the men present, and a Chicago Cubs cap pulled low over his eyes.
He looked like any other father out with his family. All that was missing was the mother.

Kelsey turned away, heading off down one side of the midway instead. She felt funny coming to a carnival alone. Everywhere she looked, she was surrounded by couples, families, friends, and there she was, by herself. But she had friends, and when she ran into them, they would invite her to join them.

Just as J.D. would have invited her to join
them
.

She stopped to watch a teenage boy trying to win a prize to impress a pretty teenage girl. The prize was small—a little pink bear—but his success earned him a kiss, and not the chaste peck on the cheek
she
would have given at that age. The pretty girl put a lip lock on the boy that brought catcalls from their friends nearby.

“Would you ever have dreamed of kissing a boy like that in public when you were her age?”

Kelsey turned to find Maggie McKinney and her husband standing beside her. “I wouldn’t have dreamed of kissing a boy like that in private when I was her age,” she replied.

“Me neither. Of course, at her age, I wasn’t even allowed to date.”

“Which probably explains why you were married just a couple years later,” her husband added dryly. He extended his hand. “Ross McKinney.”

“Kelsey Malone.” They shook hands, then Ross immediately reclaimed his wife’s hand.

“Are you enjoying the carnival?” Maggie asked.

“I just got here. Haven’t even had a chance to sample the cotton candy.”

“It’s wonderful, but don’t take my word for it. Try the candied apples too. And the sausage with sweet peppers. And the big pretzels.”

“And don’t forget the antacids,” Ross added. “That’s
where we’re headed now—home to the antacids and to rest.”

Maggie scowled at him. “I don’t need to rest.”

“Right. You walk funny for the hell of it.”

“Jeez, you break a bone or two …”

“You broke your hip and your leg. It took you months to learn to walk again. You—”

Maggie laid her fingers over his mouth. “All right,” she said softly. “Quit frowning like that, and I’ll go home with you. Maybe I’ll even give you a kiss that’ll make that girl look like an amateur.” Drawing her fingers back, she brushed her mouth across his. “Okay?”

Kelsey watched as his entire expression softened. When was the last time a man had looked at her like that? More accurately, had a man
ever
looked at her like that? She couldn’t recall, which was a pretty good indication that the answer was no.

The McKinneys said their farewells, and Kelsey resumed her stroll, feeling more alone than before. What had she been thinking when she’d decided to come? Carnivals were
not
solitary pursuits. Eating junk food, people-watching, riding the rides—somewhere was an unwritten law that those activities required two or more participants. They just couldn’t be done and enjoyed alone.

She was about to slink back to her car and go home, when Holly McBride called her name. She held up two sodas, then gestured toward the picnic tables off to one side.

“Are you here alone?” Kelsey asked as she sat down.

“No, but I might as well be.” Holly skimmed her hand over hair that wouldn’t dare muss. “Tom Flynn’s in town. Ross McKinney’s lawyer?”

Ruthless, arrogant, reasonably attractive. Kelsey remembered.

“I had to get Ross to practically order Tom to take the
afternoon off and come here with us, but ever since we got here, he’s spent the whole time working. His pager’s constantly going off, and if he’s not on his cell phone, it’s ringing, and get this. The man has his computer in the car so he can get faxes and e-mail. It’s a
carnival
, for heaven’s sake!”

“Dump him,” Kelsey said flatly. “Trade him for someone with more potential.”

“You’re right. I should. But he’s such a challenge.” Holly gave a great, dramatic sigh, then her smile turned devilish. “J.D.’s here.”

“I saw him.”

“Doesn’t he make a great family man? If, of course, a family’s what you’re looking for, which, of course, you are, aren’t you?”

Kelsey fiddled with the paper she’d stripped from her straw, rolling it into a tiny ball before tossing it aside. “Tell me about Maggie and Ross.”

“Oooh, changing the subject. How interesting.” Holly took a long drink of her soda before dutifully beginning to speak. “Maggie and Ross were poor college students when they got married. But Ross was ambitious, like Tom, and driven, like Tom, and before anyone knew it, he had his own company and was worth millions, like Tom. The millions, at least. Not the company. Apparently Tom’s quite happy working for Ross.”

“So ruthless-arrogant-and-attractive is worth millions?” Kelsey’s voice quavered a bit at the end. “I just advised you to dump a man who’s worth
millions?
”

In all seriousness, Holly leaned forward. “It’s not the money, honestly,” she said, and Kelsey believed her. “He’s just so …” Eyes wide, she shrugged, unable to finish the sentence. “Anyway, back to the McKinneys. Ross was obsessed with turning his millions into billions, and Maggie never saw him, and their marriage fell apart. She was
leaving him one Christmas Eve in a blizzard, and she drove off the side of the mountain. She almost died. When she got out of rehab eleven months later, he agreed to live here with her while she got settled, and then they would divorce, and instead they fell in love all over again.”

Romantic story. But part of Kelsey’s mind was still focused on Tom Flynn. “Millions,” she repeated. “If you decide to toss him back, could you toss him my way?”

“Tom’s not your type,” Holly said dismissively.

“What’s not my type about handsome, powerful, and rich? And what
is
my type? A poor-as-a-churchmouse preacher? A barely-making-the-mortgage teacher?”

“Or maybe a comfortably well-off psychiatrist.”

Kelsey groaned. “You know, I find it interesting that everyone’s been eager to introduce me to people in Bethlehem, but I haven’t yet met one other single man. Are there any, or is this some sort of matchmaking scam?”

“There’s Dean Elliott. He’s an artist, a little moody. Does these great sculptures that absolutely fascinate me, but I don’t want to look too closely into the mind that creates them. And there’s Sebastian Knight. Nice guy, a carpenter, lives out by J.D.’s new house, but I don’t think he’s ever gotten over his wife.”

“She died?”

“Nah. She left him, just packed up and moved out. Didn’t even kiss him or their little girl good-bye. Let’s see, who else is single …” She tapped a nail against her lower lip while she thought, then suddenly smiled. “Well, well, look who’s wandering back. Say, you look rather familiar. Your name wouldn’t happen to be Tom, would it?”

Kelsey twisted on the bench to get a good look at the second richest man she’d ever been close to. He wasn’t particularly handsome, but there was character in the hard
lines of his face. Not necessarily
good
character, but character all the same.

A certain vulnerability flashed through his eyes when he looked at Holly, as if he didn’t know what to do with her. As if he didn’t trust what she might do to him. Kelsey would have been charmed if it didn’t make her feel like the last unattached person in the whole entire world.

Holly didn’t make introductions, but Kelsey understood. Better snatch what time she could get with the man before business called again.

She returned Holly’s wave, then turned around to sit on the bench, the edge of the table warm against her back. She sipped her soda and watched the people passing by, occasionally responding to a greeting from someone she’d met. She was thinking once again of going home, when suddenly the bench shifted underneath her, and a tall figure slid in close.

“Hey, darlin’. I thought I recognized those legs.”

That morning she’d thought he was dark and wicked—and he was even more so up close. He was the sort of man who would ride a Harley. His jeans were snug enough to leave little to the imagination, and his white T-shirt was stretched to the limits across his broad chest. He was the perfect bad boy for every bad girl—or wanna-be—in the free world.

And he didn’t even make her heart beat fast. Didn’t make her hot. Didn’t make her search her memory for the sultriest, naughtiest come-on she’d ever heard.

Leaning forward, she made a show of looking at the few inches of her legs that showed beneath the hem of her long skirt. “Really? You recognize these legs? Describe them to me.”

“They’ve got ankles, two of ’em. And knees. And thighs.”

“You can see the ankles. That doesn’t count.”

He laughed and suddenly looked neither wicked nor bad. “You
are
the one who went jogging past here this morning though, aren’t you? There can’t be too many women in this little burg with hair like that.”

“I do my best to keep it under control,” she said dryly.

“Oh, no, darlin’. You should wear it down, wild and free, so a man can appreciate it.”

“Uh-huh.” She was about to glance away, when fifty pounds of warm, grubby kid launched itself against her.

“Mama, Mama, there you are! We been looking for you forever! You gotted lost!”

“Mama?” Dark and Wicked echoed.

“No, she’s mistaken. I’m not.” Kelsey maneuvered the wriggling child back far enough to get a look at her. “Gracie. What are you doing?”

Now the wicked smile was adorning a normally cherubic five-year-old face. “We been lookin’ for you, and now we found you. See?” She flung her arm out, one finger pointing, and Kelsey followed it to their small audience: Caleb, Jacob, and Noah, all looking impressively solemn, and J.D., enjoying his joke entirely too much.

Dark and Wicked leaned closer. “Apparently one man’s already appreciated you wild and free. Later, darlin’.”

“Later,” she murmured, watching him walk away with a purely dispassionate appreciation for the view. As she turned her attention back to the others, Gracie disentangled herself and returned to J.D., tilting her head far back so she could see his face.

“How was that?” she asked proudly. “See, I told you I could too pretend.”

“You did, and you were right.”

“So where’s my cotton candy?”

J.D. pulled some bills from his pocket and offered them to Caleb. “Get everyone a soda and a snack, then meet us back here. Hold on to Gracie.”

Caleb scowled but took the money with one hand, Gracie’s hand with the other, and started in the opposite direction.

“Bribing a child with food. Surely an eminent psychiatrist should know better,” Kelsey chided.

“This eminent psychiatrist knows to use what works, and with Gracie, food works.” He sat down beside her, closer than Dark and Wicked had. “Besides, he wasn’t your type.”

His arm rested on the table behind her, close enough so she could feel the warmth, or was that just her imagination overheating?

Forcing her gaze away, she concentrated on the conversation. “You’re the second person this evening who’s tried to tell me what my type is. I find that incredible, since
I’m
not even certain what my type is.”

“It isn’t a guy like that.”

“Apparently
he
disagreed with you.”

“A guy like that picks up women everywhere he goes. If you’re alive and breathing, you’ll do.”

“So you’re saying his standards are so low that any woman can meet them. Gee, thanks, Doc. You work wonders for my ego.”

He didn’t look the least bit chagrined. “His standards are different because he’s looking for something different—a few hours’ fun, maybe even a whole night, and then he’ll never see them again.”

“And what are other men looking for? Or, more to the point, since you’re the one discoursing here, what are
you
looking for?”

J.D. simply held her gaze while he considered the answer. A month ago, he thought, it would have been an easy one, pretty much the same as the tough guy, though on a longer-term basis. A few weeks, maybe even a few months, of pleasure before the woman realized she was
giving more than she was getting. That the relationship wasn’t going anywhere. That whatever he felt for her was superficial and shallow. A month ago he would have been satisfied with that.

Now he wouldn’t be.

But maybe now he wouldn’t have to be. Maybe he could have more.

“Is that such a difficult question?” Kelsey prompted.

“No, the question’s not tough at all. The answer though …” He shrugged and blatantly changed the subject. “Have you ridden any of the rides?”

“I think I’m getting taken for a ride right now.”

“Mrs. Larrabee is going to take the kids home at six and get them bathed, fed, and into bed. We’ll ride the Ferris wheel then. You haven’t lived until you’ve seen Bethlehem at night from the top of the Ferris wheel.”

“I’ve seen Bethlehem from the top of the mountain,” she pointed out, and he shrugged as if that didn’t count.

“Not with me.” After a moment’s silence he glanced at her. “What would you have done if Gracie hadn’t interrupted? Would you have gone with him?”

“Who says he would have asked?”

His gaze slid from her hair, tied back with a scarf, over her dress—mossy green, long, and perfectly modest, yet exposing a good deal of smooth, soft skin. Her sandals were nothing more than a few delicate straps crisscrossing long, delicate feet, and she wore that fragrance again. “He would have asked,” he replied, his voice huskier, his body warmer than they should have been. “Trust me. So what would you have answered?”