Man Of Few Words (13 page)

Chapter Eleven

Another beautiful sunrise had streamed through Kristen’s bedroom window. A beam highlighted the rug on the floor where Duff had taken his time bringing her to orgasm. He’d made love to her, and last night she’d dreamed of those moments, coming to a realization that woke her as the orange and pink rays seeped into her room. She’d only been interested in sex to distract her from the jumble of feelings she’d experienced since seeing him the night of her job celebration. Their last sex on the beach had highlighted this, brought it forward. She couldn’t make it recede.

Sex, for such a long time, had been her way of getting rid of the negative emotions surrounding her. Stress got replaced by the electric zings from a man pulling a nipple into his mouth. Sadness stood no chance in the afterglow of an orgasm. She’d gone with Duff to his place that night in Seville to douse the anger. In fact, she thought, the fucking kept going that night because she was annoyed at the actions of her father. She never realized how badly she dealt with her own feelings.

And now, this morning, after goodbye sex, she didn’t feel any better. Her orgasm hadn’t made it all go away. Her decision to back away from Duff and his child still rankled her. Why the hell didn’t it work this time? Hadn’t it helped her all those other times?

She remembered a moment after her father shared the results of a CT scan with all of his retired friends sharing beer with him. Boomer sat beside her when her father had said he hadn’t a chance of chemo working. She’d choked back tears for what seemed the thousandth time. Boomer’s hand on her shoulder had kept the waterworks at bay. She felt ashamed to remember why. Especially since he now stood across from her, and she was having some of the same thoughts.

“You’re awfully quiet this morning. Care to share those thoughts?” Boomer dipped his brush into the wood sealant and applied it onto the staircase they’d built the weekend before.

She blushed, and she knew it by the heat shooting from her cheeks. It didn’t matter how close she was with Boomer, she wasn’t telling him her fucked up way of dealing with emotion. She loved sex solely for its ability to help her forget the bad parts of life. She turned to it, no matter how inappropriate. If she’d not had this revelation as the sun shined into her room, Boomer would have been her next conquest. He probably would’ve come to her willingly, not knowing that she would be using his cock as therapy. She muttered to herself, “Fucking avoidance therapy.”

“I didn’t hear the whole thing, but I did catch the ‘fucking’ part.”

The heat from her cheeks spread down her chest. “I didn’t mean it that way. It was an angry fucking not a
fuck
fucking.” She lowered her head onto an unpainted surface in front of her. “Why the hell does that word have so many meanings?”

“Because Americans give every word they can lots of definitions. Let’s not let that get in the way of you telling me why you are angry.” He kept painting, even as he looked at her.

She avoided his eyes. “I’m mad at my coping mechanisms and a particular knee-jerk reaction.”

“Who’d you bring home last night?”

The paintbrush saved her from falling forward in shock. Without it, she’d be covered in stinky sealant. “No one. Why would you ask that?”

“Suzy is worried about you. She called me last night.”

Kirsten pressed her lips together. She’d said very little to her roommate when she came home last night. There didn’t seem to be a need to discuss the situation with Duff. Screwing up wasn’t a comfortable subject for her.

“Do you want to know why she’s worried?”

She avoided his gaze again. The white sands of the dunes with the waving sea oats became her focus. “I’m sure it has to do with Duff.”

“That would be the guy. Want to tell me? Might help to get a male perspective.”

She turned from the idyllic scene before her to frown at Boomer. “You want to hear this? About another man?”

He nodded. “Your dad might have wanted me to marry you, but I’m too old. I’ve got a divorce behind me. I can’t even have kids, now. Got that taken care of years ago. I told him that I didn’t think it was fair to you, who probably wanted to have kids.”

She gasped. Her father had been such a back scenes conniver. “When did he tell you this?”

“After your mother’s funeral.”

“Is that why you kept emailing me?”

“Yes, when Tanner gave an order, I followed it even without the uniform.” Boomer flashed her a shy smile. “And, you’re a good looking woman.”

“But not interesting enough to make a real go at me? You never asked me out on a date or anything like that.” She took that as a sign that she really was messed up and unfit for a relationship. Good-natured Boomer didn’t want her.

“Good lord, no, Kirsten. Not like that at all.” He shook his head. “I fell in love with you over emails, but I get protective of you. I want to do everything for you, not let you fail at anything. You don’t need that kind of presence in your life. That would make you miserable, and I’ve seen proof of it.”

She loved him as a friend even more after that admission. Boomer would have been a great brother. “You have that right. My father tried too much to make everything perfect for me. He pushed one man away and another toward me.” No wonder failing felt so terrible. Her father had made her afraid of failure, when she should have been learning from it, changing her life’s course to adjust to it.

“He’s done this before?” Boomer stopped painting. “Who has he tried to set you up with besides me?”

“Other way around.” No wonder her father had suggested Boomer as a trusted friend. He knew if he told her that he’d like to see her with Boomer, that she would defy him. She endured serious griping from her dad when she took leave of her job to nurse him. His annoyance kept her going even in the most difficult time.

“Ah, he pushed this guy away that’s giving you fits.”

“I’m the one giving the guy problems.” One last step remained to paint. She sat on the ground before it to slap on a coat.

Boomer sat beside her. “How is that?”

“He has a kid, and I let that spook me. I’ve never thought I’d be a good parent, and he ended up with this kid in strange way. She’s bound to have issues. It’s not my thing, helping people with issues.” She paused and sighed. It was more than that. “To be honest, I abandoned the idea of a family after Duff left me. I’d put so much thought into how many years we’d be married before we had kids that I never wanted to put that much energy into building another dream. I’m not sure I can change that about me now.”

“Have you met the little one? They aren’t anything like adults with problems.”

“No. He just told me about her.” She put her paintbrush on top of the can and leaned away from the step before telling Boomer the whole story. She omitted all the sex they’d had, but laid it all about when it came to the incident on the beach last night. A pang stabbed at her chest as she described him walking away from her.

Boomer set his brush beside hers. He sighed. “I’ve not had much success at relationships. I prefer to be talking about an aircraft when I say she, but I’ll try.”

“Don’t feel like you have to give me advice. It might be useless at this point. Duff’s done with me. I messed up so badly.” Bits of thoughts and emotions jumbled in her head, and she couldn’t make sense of it. She wished she could blame her father for everything, but maybe her fear of failure fueled her decisions.

“Guess he felt that way when he followed your dad’s orders instead of staying with you. Took a lot of courage to admit it and try again.”

“You aren’t helping, Boomer.” She nudged him with her elbow. It had taken courage from Duff to admit it all and to persist even when she admitted she’d been after revenge sex.

“I am. If you think he’s worth it, then you have to find courage to really apologize. You took on being a nurse to one of the most cantankerous, demanding men I know. You’ve got the stuff to admit your mistakes and move past them.”

“It hurts right here,” she tapped her chest, “when you say I made mistakes.” She did fear failure. That was why she didn’t want kids. Everyone could see when your kids messed up, and that meant the parents did something wrong. Her father always had that philosophy, and he’d drummed it into her. “How the hell were you friends with my dad?”

“He left us no choice. He collected people into his circle and kept you there. Plus, he proved to be a great mentor. You are more like him than you admit, and don’t shove me for saying it.”

“I’m not going to shove you.” She’d thought about it, though. Being like her dad didn’t make her want to cheer. She wanted to run in the other direction. Be the one marching to the different drummer.

“Good. I’ll clean up. You go give that man an apology and take a chance to really connect with someone. Try the little girl first.”

Her heart raced. Meeting Duff’s daughter and trying to be fun and happy and welcoming? That terrified her more than the first day of lectures with a new crop of students. “What if he slams the door in my face?”

He shrugged. “What would your dad have done?”

“Shove it back open.” Meeting the little girl would be the beat of different drummer, but to get there she had to be like her father.

“Then go in with all your guns a’ blazin’.”

Chapter Twelve

“I got to get out of here, Mom. I’m taking Lizzy somewhere.” Duff had tried for hours to distract his thoughts away from Kirsten’s attitude about children.

During the first few days with Lizzy, he’d constructed elaborate fantasies about how well the women and one little girl in his life would bond. Lizzy would ask Kirsten to point out the elements on plastic placemats covered in the periodic table. His mom would teach her how to bake, and he’d do what he could to keep up with all of them. His mother was doing her best, although she groused at night that she wasn’t young enough for this. That he expected, but he never imagined that the woman he wanted wouldn’t want children. How had he missed this part of her?

“Where will you go?” Mimi looked up from a book perched on her lap and lowered her reading glasses. “You mean in the area, not bugging out for somewhere new. I can’t handle moving twice in so short a time.”

He rolled his eyes and glared at his mother. “I mean something out of the house. When she’s up from her nap, we’ll go to the aviation museum. She said something about wanting to see what I fly. I can do that there. Want to join us?”

“I’d like to stay here if you don’t mind.”

“I don’t. You need your breaks, too. We’ll both end up in a better mood.” He hoped her smiles and attitude about all things new infected him with her zeal.

“Speaking of that. What’s got your knickers in a twist?”

He could easily answer that with a few words, but the situation was so much more complex. He’d found the perfect woman for him and the exact wrong one for his daughter. He could say heartbreak, but he chose the easier path. “A woman.”

“A new one or that lady who came by last night.”

“The one from last night. She freaked when I told her I had a kid.” Even that wasn’t the complete truth, but he didn’t know how to characterize the conversation. The more he played the scene in his mind, the more confused he became. Had his anger kept him from understanding her?

Mimi shrugged. “So did I.”

“You were angry. She was…”

“Did you forget or are you rethinking her reaction?”

What he was doing was finally allowing his anger to die down so that he could begin to think about what she said. Protecting Lizzy had been instinct. If someone didn’t accept her, he was done with them. Done. No questions necessary. His problem was that he wasn’t quite sure if Kirsten had completely rejected him or had been shocked. “Rethinking.”

“Ah, sounds like you need to give her another chance.”

“No. She said it wasn’t a good time. I’m not subjecting Lizzy to another woman who doesn’t want her.”

“But I got the impression from you that this lady—give me her name, please, so I can stop calling her lady.”

“Kirsten Tanner.” As he said her name, his heart hurt. She’d been his ideal for the longest time—smart, athletic, pretty.

“Back to what I was saying. I thought you were gaga about her.”

“I am. I was. I thought she was perfect.” When his mother scoffed and placed her book by her on the couch, he readied for a lecture. Only she and his first commanding officer could get away with an all-out lecture. He’d learned to avoid lectures later in his career. This was a sign that he’d really fucked up if his mother had angled him into accepting her talk.

“That’s your problem right there. I know I say I’m pretty darn close to perfect, but it’s always been a joke. Otherwise, your father wouldn’t have up and left me for a younger woman with permanently tanned skin. There’s not anyone who is perfect, and if they seem to be that way, they are fake. What did your Kirsten say that upset you so much?”

Duff had always thought his father made the wrong decision to get a divorce. His mother, although she drank more than most people, had been the stalwart one, the steady one. For her to say that she wasn’t perfect and that he shouldn’t look for someone perfect amazed him. Could he accept Kirsten’s imperfection? “That she never planned to have children. That she didn’t think she could handle them.”

“If you meet a woman who says she isn’t worried about having children, run away from her. She’s gonna get overwhelmed and run off to Europe.”

“Yeah. I had one of those.” He rubbed a hand over his face as he stared out the glass doors that gave him a view of the Gulf of Mexico. For the millionth time, he wished he could live in this part of Florida for the rest of his life. Of course, if he made that choice now, it wouldn’t be the same without Kirsten. Lizzy would love it. At least he had that.

“You’re free to wallow in sadness, but try one more time with Lizzy with you. That kid charmed your CO. She can charm Kirsten. Ask her to go with you to the museum.”

“I don’t know.” Dealing with Kirsten and Lizzy not liking each other worried him.

“Is Kirsten worth it?”

“I don’t know.” He hated admitting that. All they’d really done with each other since reuniting was have sex. They’d not talked much. “I used to know, but eleven years changes people.”