Annette Blair (25 page)

The next morning at brunch, Gram placed the Sunday paper beside Jason’s plate. “Great publicity stunt,” she said, “dancing into the pool.”

“Yeah,” Jason said facetiously. “Exactly as we planned, right, Stallone?” he asked, looking at Kira.

“Planned or not,” Gram said, “it was worth the loss of that dress.”

Kira groaned and buried her face in her hands.

Jason frowned.

The girls had stayed up half the night talking, after throwing
him
out.

He wished, then and now, that somebody would tell him why Kira had socked him. He’d waited in bed, and counted the hours until Kira came to his apartment, then when she did, she hadn’t come to his room.

He remembered how scared he’d been in the pool when he realized she could drown in that dress. He’d gone back under when he couldn’t find her the first time
he surfaced, his heart beating so fast, he could barely swim.

When he came up for air the second time, Kira was there, thank God, looking like a drowned rat, but beautiful and dear, more dear than he could stand to admit, even to himself.

But the cameras had short-circuited his elation. Had they been caught practically making love as they danced? He went cold. He’d never wanted to go public with his emotions again. The reality show director used to say, “Don’t think, kiss. Give the world something to talk about.”

Jason tried to give the world something more sensational than their intimate, personal magic on the dance floor to focus on. He’d needed to overshadow it.

“The cameras only see what’s on the outside,” he’d learned well. “They’re not in your head. Just do it. Shut down and kiss her, damn it!” The director’s words had filled his mind.

Jason had done it. He’d taken the press’s attention from the dance and centered it on the kiss, but Kira clocked him for it and hadn’t spoken to him since. What was that about?

He looked at her now, sitting across the dining room table, gazing at him with open hostility. “Why the hell did you sucker-punch me?”

Melody huffed. “If you don’t know, you’re a lost cause,” she said, placing an arm around Kira. “Too bad, too, because I was just beginning to like you.”

“Yeah,” Vickie said, and Logan just grinned.

Jason lowered his head and gave his attention to eating his eggs. There’d be no help from that quarter. Logan knew on what side of Melody’s bed his bread was buttered, or . . . something like that.

Jason scowled at Kira for scrambling his brain and annoying the hell out of him.

“What?” she said in response to the scowl. “You got fresh; I hit you. End of story.”

Jason cocked his head. “I’m guessing that means the pool
wasn’t
a rabbit hole?”

Vickie and Melody’s heads came up. If they were bugs, their antennae would be quivering.

“NO,”
Kira said, looking at him as if he were nuts, “the pool wasn’t a rabbit hole. And if you don’t know why I socked you, then screw you! Sorry, Bessie.”

His grandmother chuckled.

“I have
no
idea why you hit me,” Jason said.

“Oh, please,” Kira said. “Dancing was your idea, and the rest . . . well, let’s just call the dip, and the kiss . . . calamities . . . compounded by bad choices.”

“Yours or mine?” Jason asked.

“Right,” Kira said.

“No wonder I never know who to thank . . . or fire,” Jason said, sounding every bit as ticked off as he felt and not giving a damn.

“Feel free to give me full credit for the auction next Saturday,” Kira said, employing her evil witch grin.

“Thanks for the reminder. Methinks our white witch is turning a bit gray around the aura . . . and don’t you dare make a move on that wand.”

“I want to come to the auction,” Melody said, looking entertained and enthralled.”

“Nothing doing,” Logan said. “No more bachelor kissing for you,
Mrs.
Kilgarven.”

“I’ll come,” Vickie said. “I might bid on Billy.”

Gram laughed. “Get in one of his cars and he’s yours for free.”

Jason gave his grandmother a scowl. “Don’t go giving her ideas. He’ll eat her alive. The man’s a wolf.”

Kira snorted inelegantly. “But you run in different packs, right?”

“If you put Billy in that auction,” Jason told Kira as he stood. “I’m out, and so are my buddies.”

“Jason,” Gram said, as if he were two and throwing sand, so he ignored her.

“Billy is a
great
date,” Kira said.

“You should know.”

“You don’t mean that about the auction,” Kira said, testing him.

Jason bent over the table and went eye to eye with the witch. “Try me.”

She rose and threw down her napkin like a gauntlet. “I knew you were the kind of jock who’d take your toys and go home if I didn’t play your way.”

“Hah, so speaks the schoolyard bully.” Jason touched his nose, which seemed to amuse the hell out of the women, including his traitorous grandmother.

Jason straightened. “I won’t have Billy on the auction block, and that’s my final word.”

“Seven days, boss,” Kira said, getting his point, “and I’m selling
you
to the highest bidder.” She turned to his grandmother. “I don’t need you to stake me, Bessie. I don’t want him.” She rose and left the dining room, her friends behind her.

Jason watched them go and fell back into his chair. “What the hell is eating her?” Jason said to no one in particular.

“I have no idea,” his grandmother responded, patting his
hand. “When I asked her how she felt this morning, her answer made no sense.”

Jason sat straighter. “What did she say?”

“That she felt like a rotten rutabaga.”

Jason smacked his brow, cursed the vibrating pain in his nose, and left the table. As he rounded the corner to leave the dining room, he caught a grin on his grandmother’s face and couldn’t help feeling like he was losing a game in which she was making up the rules. And right now, he didn’t freaking care.

The following week, Thanksgiving week, Jason gave Kira some breathing space, and himself time to think.

He went skating at the rink every afternoon after work to strengthen his legs and leave her in peace. He didn’t cross their neutral zone of a kitchen at night, didn’t get in her way at the office, and said yes to her every auction idea, including having him and Melody as emcees.

Kira never mentioned Billy, but she did begin to smile again.

Nevertheless, every time Jason thought about the auction, he wanted to run and hide in Kira’s rabbit hole, except that he wanted
her
in there with him. But he wondered if she’d still want that. They hadn’t even driven to work together since . . . the kiss.

How did a man apologize for making a woman feel like a decaying root vegetable? Jason wondered over the course of the week.

On Wednesday at hockey practice he let Kira dole out hot chocolate without asking her to put on skates, which left her free to sing Zane to sleep, which left Travis free to skate like a pro.

After practice they walked from the arena, through a light snowfall, toward Cloud Kiss.

“Will Regan be home for Thanksgiving?” he asked, a little worried about what a confrontation would do to Kira, never mind her holiday.

“Yes,” she groaned. “Regan will be there.”

“How about you?”

“I might go to Melody’s.”

“Don’t you think it’s time to decide? Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, in case you haven’t noticed.”

“I don’t know what to tell my mother. If she finds out I bypassed Boston to drive to Salem, she’ll be hurt.”

Jason’s heart skipped. “Stay and have Thanksgiving with us.”

“Oh,” Kira said, but her enthusiasm was short-lived. “No, I couldn’t impose.”

“Impose? You live here.”

“But I’m not—”

“The fact is,” Jason said, stopping her with a hand on her arm, “you’d be doing us a favor. See, even when small families have a lot to be thankful for, they don’t make for a festive Thanksgiving.”

“Your parents won’t want—”

“They’re not coming, and Gram wanted me to ask you weeks ago, but I assumed you’d be going home, until I remembered what you said about staying away if Regan was there. Tell your mother you’re too tired to drive tonight.”

“Well, I am.”

“If you don’t have to drive tomorrow,” he coaxed, “you can sleep late.” He was begging and he knew it. Hell, he wanted to spend Thanksgiving with her. Go figure. “No cooking,” he added. “No cleanup. No argument with your sister. Just good food and great company.”

“What time do you normally eat?”

“Gram likes to eat around two,” he said.

“Yes! Tomorrow, I’m sleeping till
noon
!” She raised a fist in victory, then threaded her arm through his, and they continued on to the house.

“THIS
is great,” Kira said, forking another piece of turkey. Jason looked charming and gorgeous today. Even his face relaxed. He smiled, laughed, and grimaced as his grandmother
told the kind of childhood tales that every man dreaded hearing.

Kira ate them up.

The phone ringing managed to plummet the temperature in the room on the instant. By the sudden set of Jason’s and Bessie’s shoulders, Kira could tell that an uncomfortable phone conversation was about to take place.

Bessie spoke to her daughter, Jason’s mother, first, their conversation formal and stilted. When Jason took the phone, his expression turned stark, as if chiseled in granite. He listened, said, yes, he
was
planning to return to hockey, exchanged a polite pleasantry or two, said Happy Thanksgiving, and hung up.

Jason’s father hadn’t bothered to get on the phone, and Kira didn’t need to ask why.

When Jason returned to the table, his unconcerned air, like a veneer of self-protection, reminded her of Travis the first time she’d seen him. As a matter of fact, the absence of Jason’s parents from his life might explain his empathy for the boys at St. Anthony’s.

Jason’s smile didn’t return until his grandmother covered his hand on the table.

Bessie turned to Kira. “Jason’s mother takes after my husband, always looking for the next party, just like her father.”

“And I take after both of them,” Jason said throwing down his napkin.

“You do not,” Kira and his grandmother said as one.

“Can’t prove it by me,” he said.

“How much did your husband do for the boys at St. Anthony’s?” Kira asked Bessie.

“He never set foot in the place.”

“But he made donations, like Jason does.”

“
I
made our donations,” Bessie said. “Jason makes his own.”

“But if your husband had lived, he would have taken over the foundation, like Jason.”

“That doesn’t count,” Jason said. “She blackmailed me, and I’m not staying. I’m going back to hockey, as I told my mother; therefore, I
am
looking for the next party.”

His grandmother whacked him on the shoulder with the back of her hand. “You’re nothing like your mother or your grandfather, and I can’t believe you think you are.”

He shook his head, denying her words. “How am I different?”

“You’re here, having Thanksgiving dinner with me, like you did last year, and every year before, even if it meant flying halfway around the world.”

Jason relaxed in his chair. “But that’s—”

“When’s my birthday?”

“June twenty-third; why?”

“Neither your grandfather, nor your mother, could name that date, and you’ve never let it pass without a gift, a call, a visit, or any combination of the above.”

“You don’t think I’m like them? Seriously?”

“I never did, and if I’d realized
you
thought so, I would have disabused you of the notion sooner.”

Jason returned his napkin to his lap. “What’s for dessert?”

FRIDAY
morning, getting into the shower, Jason realized that the day before had been one of his best Thanksgivings. His grandmother had reigned supreme and held them in thrall with her stories, including a few he could have done without.

He’d let her show movies of him learning to skate as a toddler, and of the bright moments of his early career.

Kira was interested, beautiful, and amusing.

He enjoyed himself throughout, not so much during the phone call, but afterward, when that thirty-six-year-old weight had slipped from his shoulders.

He’d especially enjoyed their walk after dinner, the
three of them, Gram in the middle, strolling arm in arm down the snow-lined path to the garden.

While Gram sat in the snow-covered gazebo beside her rare copper weeping beach tree, Kira started a snowball fight, which he won, while Gram laughed, and he felt his heart open like the old days.

Though he and Kira had never discussed the reason she punched him, he guessed he was back in her good graces, for now, but he wouldn’t stay long if he didn’t come up with an excellent auction date that every woman would love.

Jason turned off the shower. No. Not every woman. He needed a fantastic date only
Kira
would love. He needed . . . an exclusive, made-to-order rabbit hole with the word
Kira
written all over it. “Yeah.”

ON
the night of the auction Jason tugged his tux out of the closet with all the enthusiasm of a puck in a face-off.