Her Unexpected Detour (12 page)

Chapter Fourteen

B
rent stood on the third rung of his stepladder, his gaze revolving between a can of primer and the woman at the far corner of the building doing her damnedest to ignore him. Yesterday, he’d have been fine with that. More than fine. But that was before he learned she might be able to help save the inn.

He dipped his brush into the primer, then dragged it along the porch wall just below the ceiling, wishing for the dozenth time he hadn’t been such an ass to her yesterday. Sure, he’d been beyond frustrated to find her here, but she wasn’t to blame. Nor was Miles, though Brent would never say that out loud. No, the outburst was all on him, his anger boiled over from allowing himself to grow too fond of her, to get so close to letting her in.

Now she probably hated him for it.

Which, at the time, had been the response he’d been looking for. It was safer for him if she was mad, safer if she pushed him away. But safer wouldn’t keep the inn open, and taking care of his grandmother took precedence over protecting his heart.

Damn it.

He dipped his brush back into the primer and sighed. Why him? Why couldn’t she have collided with Miles? Been into the guy who loved women being into him?

It had been a surprising boost to his ego when she’d chosen him over his playboy cousin, though. Brent cast another glance in her direction, and caught a sneak peek of cleavage as she bent forward to retrieve her trowel. As she walked around the corner and out of sight, his mind went right back to their night together, the way she’d—

“Will you be joining us for lunch today, dear?”

“Son of a—” He teetered on the ladder in surprise. Only by some small miracle did he manage not to fall or drop his paint supplies. Once he was sure the hammering in his chest wasn’t the precursor to a full-out heart attack, he turned his gaze upon his stealthy grandmother. “Sorry, Ruby. I didn’t hear you coming.”

“I’m not surprised, what with your heart pounding so loudly for Miss Daniels.”

“My heart is pounding because you scared the bejeezus out of me.”

“Hmm, perhaps.” She looked up at him, too wise for her own good. “Though after the way you’ve been straining all morning to catch another peek at her from up there, I would have guessed differently.”

Busted
. Not good, since his grandmother had always been a hopeless romantic. Brent did his best to act indifferent on the subject as he drew his angled brush along the top of the porch wall. “And I thought you always said you’d never turn into one of those old biddies who like to peek out windows and watch people all day long.”

Ruby answered with an unladylike snort. “I’ve hardly stooped to any such level. Now, if you’re done insulting your elders, will you kindly answer my original question?”

“Your original question…” Brent lowered his brush, dipped it into the small tray of paint atop his ladder, and tried like mad to think of what that question even was. As usual, once Kayla came up in conversation, his thoughts scattered. It was incredibly frustrating, to say the least.

“Yes, yes, about lunch, dear. Will you be joining us or not?”

“Oh.” Brent cast another glance in Kayla’s direction. Lunch would be a good time to break the ice. Test the waters and see if there was any hope of an amicable reconciliation between them. If he could just get her to smile again, earn even the tiniest bit of her trust back, maybe that would lead to more. Then again, if she was furious with him and he went and said the wrong thing… “Uh, no. Thank you, but I really need to knock out as much as I can while the weather holds. Chance of rain in the forecast later this week.”

“Hmmpf. Chance of your heart shriveling up from inactivity, too,” she grumbled in a voice so low Brent wasn’t sure it was intended to reach his ears.

He sighed. Shriveled up sounded a whole lot more appealing than being trampled. Though after the way Kayla hadn’t given him so much as a wayward glance all morning, maybe it wouldn’t come to that. Maybe she’d agree to help Ruby but give him the cold shoulder the rest of her stay. Then whatever appeal she had to him would slowly fade away.

Riiight.

Brent set his brush down at the edge of the tray, then stepped down off the ladder. All that reaching—reaching, not neck craning—had managed to put one hell of a kink in his back. He bent to stretch, then twisted slowly to the left and then to the right. A loud
pop
sounded in his lower back, and Brent felt instant relief.

Well, in his back anyway. Once his feet had hit the ground his anxiety level had spiked. Why was the idea of talking to Kayla—talking, not even something difficult like flirting or seducing—scaring him so badly?

Because maybe it’s just not meant to be
, said a voice in the back of his mind. The voice of doubt. Of fear.

The voice, he realized, he’d been listening to for far too long.

With a scowl he started forward, intent on breaking the silence. But as he rounded the corner of the building, Brent was surprised to see Kayla kneeling before a bed of daffodils, head bowed in an almost reverent gesture. Indecision slowed him to a stop. Maybe now wasn’t the best time to try and talk to her after all.

But the clock was ticking—could he afford to wait?

T
uesday had gone from bad to worse for Kayla. First, she’d awoken all hot and bothered after a spicy dream involving her and a certain handyman, naked in the bed of his damned Silverado under a moonlit sky. Then, as if to add salt to that wound, she’d been stuck working within spitting distance of the hunky grouch. Thankfully, she had plenty of work to keep her busy. Too bad it had done little to silence her mind. Especially with the daffodils in bloom.

Oh, sure, she could stand to look at them in small doses. Could even stand to deadhead them once their lemon yellow blooms shriveled away. But having to mulch around bed after bed full of them? As much as she hated to admit it, the tears that clouded her vision late-morning spoke volumes.

Kayla still hadn’t gotten over her mother’s death. She doubted she ever would.

As she knelt upon the ground, clearing away a handful of last fall’s leaves taking refuge beneath a cluster of daffodils, the tears that had been threatening for several minutes finally broke free from their bondage. She yanked off a glove and hurled it to the ground.

“Hey now,” Brent said from somewhere close by. “What’d that glove ever do to you?”

“Nothing, it just…got in the way.” Kayla swiped at her cheeks and kept her head turned from him. “So you can go back to painting the porch now.”

Which, of course, he didn’t do. Instead, his large frame drew closer and cast a shadow over where she knelt.

“Kayla?” The teasing tone in his voice had gone, replaced now by surprise and concern. He knelt down beside her and rested a hand on her shoulder. “Are you hurt?”

She shrugged out from under his touch and lifted her chin. “No. Please, just leave me alone.”

He made no move to go. From the corner of her eye she saw him turn to look out over the sea of yellow before them. “You know, most people love daffodils. At least, that’s what Ruby insisted when she made Miles and me plant a gazillion of them.”

“Yeah, well, most people haven’t been through what I have.”

Brent reached out and tipped her chin in his direction. “Tell me.”

The anger that had been so quick to surface yesterday was gone, his stormy gray eyes softened with concern. Concern for a woman who didn’t deserve it, not from him or anyone else. She couldn’t stay mad at Brent, not with him looking at her like that. It was almost like he cared about her, like he truly wanted to know what was wrong.

Like she mattered.

It’d been so long since anyone had looked at her in that way, since she’d
let
anyone get close enough to do so. Kayla felt an overwhelming need to comply, to tell him what had brought her to her knees. And yet, the notion of opening up scared her. Because opening up would unleash the grief she’d worked so hard to contain, to suppress.

But it had to be done if the healing was ever to follow, didn’t it? Miles said Brent had dealt with his own grief. Of anyone she’d ever met, he might best be able to relate. It didn’t make the task ahead any easier, though.

When she finally worked up the courage to speak, the words scratched at her throat like broken glass. “Daffodils were my mother’s favorite flower. She loved to garden. Lived for it. When I was little, she’d take me to one of our local greenhouses each spring and steer me toward the annuals: petunias and marigolds, snapdragons and impatiens. She’d say,
Pick anything you like, sweetheart
, and set me loose. Once our cart was full, we’d head back home and spend the day planting.

“Well,
she
would spend the day planting. I usually got bored fairly quickly with the whole affair.” An embarrassed grin tugged at her lips. “But not my mother. She would spend hour after hour out there. My father would bring her water or lemonade every hour or so, just to make sure she didn’t shrivel up out in the sun.”

Kayla could still picture her mother, kneeling before a flower bed, hands protected with pink gardening gloves and dirt smudges on her cheeks. She looked so much younger. So full of life. One whose days were unfairly numbered.

“Gardening was her joy, her passion. If she wasn’t planting, she was pruning, or taking cuttings to bring inside. When the weather cooled in the fall and frost claimed the last of her blooms, she never complained. Instead, we’d venture to the home improvement stores and look for new varieties of bulbs to add to her collection. Daffodils, hyacinths, tulips, crocus—we always came away with something. Then we’d wait for a good planting day and head outside with a trowel and the bulbs. Mom would dig, I would drop bulbs into the holes. She showed me which end went up, and how to cover them just so. And then, we’d wait and see what happened next spring.”

Kayla drew in a long, shaky breath as a familiar weight settled upon her chest.

“Eventually, though, I stopped caring so much about the flowers. The excitement wore off, and the planting rituals got in the way of me playing with my friends, or going out and doing my own thing. And then one day I woke up, and…”

She shook her head, wishing the gesture could sweep away the rest of the story. But of course, it couldn’t. The guilt that weighed so heavily upon her was now joined with another emotion: regret.

“The call came spring of ’08. My mother’s gynecologist requested she come back in, something about test results not looking quite right. She’d been having some issues but never said anything to us kids. Didn’t want us to worry. Tommy and I just assumed it was something minor. Cholesterol or blood sugar. But it wasn’t, not even close. Within a week, the verdict was in: stage four ovarian cancer. The doctor said there aren’t any standard tests for it, and since its symptoms mimic so many other problems, no one made the connection. We had no idea, no idea at all…” A small sob escaped her.

Brent pulled her onto his lap and held her close. For the first time in forever, she didn’t try to resist sympathy or condolences. Instead she savored his warmth, his strength, as the tears flowed freely down her cheeks.

“I’m so sorry, Kayla.”

“Mom fought it as best she could,” Kayla whispered after a long moment. “They had her do chemo and radiation, which seemed to work for a while. But after a few months that type of chemo stopped holding the cancer at bay, so they went to a harsher cocktail. And a harsher one after that. Eventually, her body just couldn’t take it any longer. She passed away the first week of December.”

His arms tightened around her, and she felt Brent lower his cheek onto the top of her head. “She sounds like a true fighter. Something she clearly passed on to you.”

“Thanks. I think.” She felt Brent chuckle. “My mom was a believer, so I try to remind myself that she’s in a better place now. That she’s no longer hurting. But it doesn’t make the pain go away.”

“I know. It doesn’t.”

Kayla looked out over the bed of daffodils, their faces ever sunny, their scent intoxicating. “I’ll never forget sitting on our couch, staring at a vase full of these darned flowers, when she told us about her terminal diagnosis. All I could think was would she be around long enough to plant them with me one last time? Or to see them bloom the next spring?”

Kayla clamped her eyes shut, wishing she could wipe that image from her mind and yet terrified someday the memory would fade. Because when that one faded away, the other memories of her mother would soon follow. Memories were all she had left.

All because she’d been so selfish.

“I took our time together for granted, Brent. Blew off our gardening traditions as I got older. If I’d spent more time with her, been there instead of being so self-absorbed, I might have picked up on her symptoms. Convinced her sooner to see the doctor, maybe bought her some more time—”

“Stop.” Brent tipped Kayla’s face up to his, then ran a thumb gently across each of her cheeks to wipe away the tears. “Thoughts like that will eat you alive. There was nothing you could have done to stop that cancer from happening. When it’s your time, it’s your time, and we just have to learn to accept that.”

“Did you?”

He paused, his gaze wary. Would he close her off? Push her away? She hadn’t meant to hurt him, to dredge up his own painful memories. She’d just been looking for, well, for
hope
.

“I see Miles has been shooting his mouth off again.”

“Brent, I—”

“No, it’s all right. He’s always been better about talking about this than me.” Brent sighed, then looked out over the sea of daffodils. “Did I learn to accept my parents’ deaths? Yeah, I guess so. Do I still think it sucks, that it was unfair to them? To me? Yes. And I don’t think that will ever change.”

“I’m really sorry about your mom and dad,” she said, and laced her arms around his waist.

“Thanks, me too.” He rested his head atop hers and let out a long sigh. “You want me to mow over this flower bed for you? ’Cause if it’d make you feel better, I’d be more than happy to do it.”