Hero at Large (5 page)

Ken shook his head. “I wouldn't want to guess what just went through your mind. I've never seen emotions parade across anyone's face like that before. One minute you were on the verge of a good night kiss and in a matter of seconds you were considering homicide.”

“You're pretty sharp when you're tired.”

He flopped down on the bed. “Mmmm, and I'm even better when I'm horizontal.”

“You're impossible.” Her mood seesawed back to poignant affection. “I'm sorry I broke your arm.”

He closed his eyes and smiled. “I'm not.”

Chris resisted the urge to help him with his boots. She turned quickly and left the room before he could open his eyes and see the glow of plea sure his words had produced.

Chris sat in evening rush-hour traffic, one hand resting on the leather-wrapped steering wheel of  Ken's custom truck, the other hand pressing against her churning stomach. She'd done something incredibly stupid. She'd allowed Ken into her house—into her heart. She would have been better off if she'd simply allowed him into her bed. That would have been sex. That would have been something she could handle.

She inched the truck forward in the endless traffic and slumped in her seat. Who was she trying to kid? Sex with Ken would be a disaster.
I'm like a dinosaur. I'm practically an extinct species. I'm a  mental virgin, for Pete's sake.
She couldn't even imagine casual sex. And even if she could divorce sex from love, sex with Ken would probably ruin her for life—how would she ever top it?

Chris turned left off Little River Turnpike and headed for her subdivision. Her street looked
normal enough. Her town house seemed just as she'd left it, but she knew it was merely a deceptive facade. Nothing would be normal as long as Ken had the key to her front door. She parked at the curb and tried to squelch the turmoil in her chest.
This will never work,
she told herself as she hopped from the truck.
He has to go.
She stomped up the sidewalk, berating herself. “How could I ever have agreed to this?” she muttered, throwing her arms in the air. “This is absurd.” The front door crashed open and Chris stormed into the room.

“Well, here she is,” Aunt Edna said to Ken. “Just like I told you. Muttering and stomping. All in a dither. Just look at her. Ain't she a pip?”

The last sentence was uttered with such unadulterated pride and love that Ken had to smile in appreciation. He adjusted the little girl on his lap to a more comfortable position and carefully laid a picture book on the coffee table.

Lucy smiled happily and held out her arms for her hello kiss. “Mommy, you're just in time to hear Ken finish the story.”

Chris tipped her head in Ken's direction and gave him her most withering stare. “Little Bear?”

“Uh, no. I tried that, but I didn't feel entirely comfortable with a bunch of bears. I found one
about a steam shovel. It's about this guy and his old steam shovel, and they've got to finish this job by sundown or…” Ken paused. “I suppose you already know the story,” he added with an embarrassed grin.

I'm in big trouble,
Chris thought. No woman in her right mind could hold out against that grin, and how could she possibly evict a man when he had her daughter enthralled on his lap? She bolstered her flagging hostility with the thought that this was just a temporary setback. She would kick him out after supper. She would do it the sneaky way—when Lucy and Aunt Edna were in bed and couldn't come to his rescue. Chris walked cautiously across the room to receive her daughter's hug, noting that the afternoon nap had erased the dark circles around Ken's eyes, and the tension lines had faded from his bearded cheeks. The corners of his mouth twitched with suppressed deviltry. There was no need for him to speak—his crackling blue eyes told her he had won this round and was openly gloating over his victory.

Chris bent to kiss her daughter's orange curls and upturned nose, unavoidably coming inches from Ken's freshly washed hair. She recognized the lemon-and-lilac scent. He had used her shampoo
and bath soap. She paused for a moment, astonished at the wifely feelings this knowledge produced. It seemed perfectly natural and surprisingly intimate. A pang of longing for crushed dreams pierced her heart. It was such a simple thing—the intermingling of male and female fragrance. Emotions long buried were evoked and produced a pain that lodged in her throat like a huge silent sob.

She had always imagined that her marriage would be long and happy—like her parents'—a collection of shared intimacies, communal goals, loving memories. She had jumped at the first man who'd come along because she'd wanted all those things so badly. And she'd ended up with nothing.

No, that wasn't true. She had Lucy. And Lucy had been enough until this Ken Callahan had popped into her life. Damn him. Ken resurrected tender, hungry feelings that couldn't be trusted. He had the potential to be heartache and grief—and trouble with a capital T.

“This is ridiculous,” she mumbled gruffly.

Ken chuckled at her exclamation. His laughter rumbled warm against her ear, and he feathered a kiss against her hair as she bowed her head to hug Lucy. “I'm not sure I follow you,” he teased. “Care to elaborate?”

“This whole thing is ridiculous,” she hissed in a stage whisper. “And I'll tell you more of what I'm talking about after supper.”

She stiffened her back and fled to the kitchen to sort out her emotions. What was wrong with her? How could she be feeling so comfortably bound to a man that she'd picked up on the highway twelve hours ago? And if she did feel so comfortably bound to him, why did he make her so
un
comfortable? The answer to that was obvious. Because he was slick and handsome and too good to be true; another Prince Charming. A Steven Black clone. She pulled four plates from the kitchen cabinet and marched into the dining room. She thumped them on the table.

Lucy, still on Ken's lap, giggled. “Isn't Mommy funny when she's mad? She always makes so much noise.”

Chris glared at the two of them, and Ken suppressed a smile. “Maybe we'd better finish this book,” he suggested tactfully.

Chris made a frustrated gesture as she swished back through the kitchen doors. Twelve hours ago she'd picked up a construction worker on the highway and now he was living in her house and reading books about steam shovels to her daughter—and very shortly they'd all be sitting around feeling
used and abandoned. Chris thrashed around in the silverware drawer. Everyone liked him. Aunt Edna liked him. Lucy liked him. She had to admit it—she even liked him. Why couldn't he have been some frog? Someone everyone hated. Someone that would have been easy to get rid of.

Aunt Edna turned from the stove with a disapproving look for the havoc Chris was causing among the silverware. She paused for effect, her wooden spoon held at half-mast. “He fits right in, don't he?”

“Mmmph,” Chris gurgled, an expletive strangling in her throat. “I don't want him to fit right in. I want him to leave. I liked my life the way it was…without a man in my house.”

Aunt Edna plopped her spoon back into the spaghetti sauce. “Nonsense. You've lived without a man long enough. Lucy needs a father, and you need a husband.”

“I've already had a husband, and I didn't like it.”

“That horse's rump wasn't a husband. Spent the whole day looking in the mirror, fixing his hair.”

“What makes you think Ken's any better?”

The old woman wiped her hands on her apron and faced her niece. “I'm not real book smart, and every now and then I worry I'm getting a little senile, but I've got some common sense, and I know
something about people. Ken Callahan is a good man. He's got gentleness and humor.” Edna turned back to the stove, then shot her niece a sidewise look and smiled broadly. “And he's got a great body.”

“Aunt Edna!”

“I might be old, but I know a great body when I see one. Uh-huh!”

Chris threw her head back and burst out laughing. She crossed the kitchen and hugged her aunt. “You're right, as always—he does have a great body.”

Ken pushed through the kitchen door and snatched a breadstick from the glass jar on the counter. “So, you think I have a great body, huh?”

Chris grimaced. “God is really out to get me today.”

“Don't be blasphemous,” Edna warned.

Ken looked sadly at the cast on his arm. “My body used to be perfect.”

I don't doubt it for a second,
Chris thought.

 

“This is the second time I've had spaghetti today,” Lucy announced. “We had spaghetti for lunch in school.” She looked at the plate in front of her, piled with whole-wheat spaghetti noodles and Aunt Edna's chunky homemade sauce. Lucy sprinkled
the freshly grated parmesan cheese on her meal with painstaking care. “The spaghetti we had in school was yucky. The noodles were white…like dead worms. And it didn't have any sausage in it or nothing. And the sauce was orange and watery. And I didn't eat it.”

Ken nodded sympathetically. “What did you do with it, if you didn't eat it?”

Lucy looked at him suspiciously. “How do you know I did something with it?”

“Lucky guess.”

Lucy giggled. “I gave it to Tommy Hostrup. Beth Ann Cristo gave hers to him. And Sally Winthrop. And Audrey Schtek. We gave him all our spaghetti, and we told him we'd give him a dollar if he could eat it.”

“Did he eat it?”

“He tried, but he couldn't get it all in. It was awful. There were noodles hanging out of his mouth, and he had sauce all down his neck.”

“When I was your age they served spaghetti in my school cafeteria, too,” Ken told her. “We used to empty our milk cartons and fill them with the spaghetti. Then we'd take the cartons and put them behind the wheel of the principal's station wagon. When he drove away at the end of the day,
he'd run over the cartons and all the spaghetti would squish out.”

“Oh, gross!”

Ken leaned across the table and whispered to her conspiratorially. “There was this big bully in my school, Larry Newfarmer. He was really fat, and he used to pick on all the little kids. Everybody hated him. One day when we had spaghetti, I got his spelling workbook and put spaghetti noodles between all the pages without him knowing it.”

Lucy's eyes got wide, and she clapped a hand over her mouth to control the giggles. “Then what?”

Ken leaned back in his chair and grinned sheepishly. “Then I sat on it. And the noodles got smashed between the pages. And when Larry Newfarmer went to spelling the next morning, those pages were stuck together forever.”

Aunt Edna had bent her head and tried not to laugh. “Sh-sh-shame on you!” she managed when she was finally able to speak.

Chris' mouth curved into an unconscious smile. Her family was thoroughly enjoying Ken, and he seemed to be enjoying them. Other male guests had always politely tolerated Lucy—Ken actually liked her. He had a place in his heart for childish activities.
That's a nice trait to find in a man,
she
thought, watching him in open admiration. He was lean and hard with broad shoulders and muscles in all the right places—but it was his face that intrigued her the most. There was an inherent strength in it. A magnetic confidence that could only be found in a man who had come to terms with himself and was not unhappy with what he saw. The fledgling beard enhanced the aura of virility that radiated from compelling blue eyes and a wide mobile mouth. An easy man to fall in love with, she mused…if you were the sort of woman who wanted to fall in love.

Ken raised a forkful of spaghetti to his lips and caught Chris watching him. His eyes searched her face, reaching into her thoughts. She decided to partially oblige him. “I was thinking about Mike Mulligan. You really enjoyed that, didn't you?”

The tips of his ears reddened. “I…uh…I've always liked steam shovels.”

There was a loud rapping at the front door followed by a mournful howl.

Ken looked puzzled. “That sounds like Dog, but I know I left him in the backyard.”

Edna got to the door first. “Well, Mrs. Thatcher,” she smiled, opening the door wide.

Mrs. Thatcher stood flat-footed and ready for battle on the porch. She held the cowering Rott
weiler by the collar. “Someone told me this dog came from the truck parked in front of your house. Is this your dog, Edna?”

“I don't know. What's he done?”

“He's destroyed every bush in my yard chasing rabbits, that's what he's done.”

“Then he ain't my dog,” Edna told her.

Ken took Edna by the shoulders and removed her from his path. “That's my dog, Mrs. Thatcher.”

The huge black beast looked at his owner mournfully. Telltale sprigs of evergreen and pieces of bark clung from his collar.

“I'll be living here for a while,” he told the woman. “Have the landscaping repaired, and I'll pay for it.”

“Hmmm,” she said, handing the dog over to him.

Ken closed the door and shook his finger at the dog. “You were bad.”

Lucy bounded over. “A dog! I didn't know you had a dog.”

The Rottweiler thumped his tail against the floor. It stood on all fours and looked Lucy in the eye, waggling its body side to side as it followed the happy tail.

Lucy hugged the dog enthusiastically. “What's its name?”

“Dog.”

Edna sniffed disapproval. “Dog? What kind of a name is that?”

Ken shrugged. “He was given to me as a puppy a year ago, and I was so busy I never had time to think of a name. I just always called him Dog.”

“Poor creature,” Chris murmured, patting the sleek ebony coat. “Imagine if someone named you Human,” she scolded Ken.

The slight curve at the corners of his mouth indicated his amusement at her concern. “Would you like to choose a better name? I don't think it's too late.” He looked affectionately at the dog. “What do you think? Would you like a new name?”

Lucy looked at Ken with large round eyes. “Could we call him Bob? I always wanted a dog named Bob.”

“I think Bob would be a great name for him. Why don't you take Bob into the kitchen and give him a breadstick while I talk to your mom a minute.”

They both watched Lucy trot off with the dog. Chris felt Ken step closer to her. An electric flash ran along her spine and tingled at her fingertips. She felt his breath in her hair. “Uh”—she blinked in warm distress—“you wanted to talk to me?”

“Mmmm,” he hummed in a raspy whisper, “but the words I want to say to you can't be said in front of Aunt Edna.”