Claimed by the Rebel: The Playboy's Plain Jane / The Loner's Guarded Heart / Moonlight and Roses

Here he came again, but instead of popping it up this time, he slowed down and pulled into a vacant parking spot outside her shop.

She ordered herself to drop the curtain, but was caught in the poetry of watching him dismount, throwing that long, beautiful leg up and over the engine.

She prayed he was going back to work, and not—

Her shop door squeaked open. She pretended a sudden intense interest in rearranging the flowers in the pot in the window, letting her hand rest on the white heather, which promised protection. But also could mean dreams come true. She hastily turned her attention to a different pot of flowers.

“Dark in here, Katie-my-lady.”

She glanced at him, and then quickly away. She had to keep remembering his restless nature when he turned the full intensity of those blue eyes on her. Blue like sapphires, like deep ocean water, like every pirate and highwayman who had ridden before him.

“These flowers in the window were wilting. That’s why I closed the drapes.”

“Uh-huh.”

“What do you want?”

“Play hooky with me,” he said. “Come for a motorcycle ride.”

One of the flowers snapped off in her hand. She stared at it. A pink carnation, rife with its multitude of meanings: fascination, a woman’s love, I can’t forget you, you are always on my mind.

She dropped the flower on the floor and stammered, “Are you crazy? You’ve just demonstrated to the whole neighborhood how you ride that thing!”

“Oh, were you watching? I could have sworn your drapes were closed.”

It was like being caught red-handed at the cookie jar!

He bent and picked up the flower, smelled it, drawing its fragrance deep inside himself, his eyes never leaving hers. There was no way he could discern the secrets of that flower. He held it out to her, but she shook her head as if it was inconsequential, as if it meant nothing to her.

Absently, he threaded the carnation through the button hole of his leather jacket. How many men could do that with such casual panache? Wear a flower on their leather?

“We could cruise out of town,” he said, just as if she had not refused him. “The fields are all turning green, the trees are budding. I bet we’d see pussy willows. Babies, too, calves and ducks, little colts and fillies trying out their long legs.”

She could feel herself weakening, his voice a brush that painted pictures of a world she wanted to see. She knew spring was here: so many wonderful flowers becoming available locally, but somehow she had missed the essence of spring’s arrival, its promise: gray and brown turning to green, plants long dormant bravely blooming again, sudden furious storms giving way to sunshine. It was the season of hope.

In fact, Dylan McKinnon was making her feel as if she had missed the essence of everything for a long, long time. He looked so good, standing there so full of confidence, the scent of leather in the air, his hair windswept, his eyes on her so intently.

She could almost imagine how it would feel to go with him, to feel the powerful purr of that bike vibrating through her, to wrap her arms tightly around his waist, to mold herself to his power and confidence, feel them, feel him in such an intoxicatingly intimate way.

“Say yes,” he whispered. “You know you want to do something wild and crazy.”

Yes. Yes. Yes.

“No!” The vow. Do the opposite of what she wanted. “I did something wild and crazy once. It involved saying yes, too. And it was a mistake.”

They both knew she was referring to her marriage.

“You can’t go through life without making mistakes, Katie.”

“You can sure as hell try.” It was because of his bad influence on her that she was using bad language. If she let this go any further, there was no telling what his influence would do. She would become a different woman than the one she was today.

She could picture herself with her head thrown back, laughing into the wind, while she clung to the motorcycle and him. Sensuous. Exhilarated. On fire with life. Willing to take chances.

Heartbroken! she snapped back at all those dreamy voices.

“Everybody makes mistakes, Katie. You learn from them, you let them make you better, and you move on.”

“You with the charmed life!”

For a moment something so sad crossed his face that she was taken aback. But then he grinned, all devil-may-care charm again, and she could almost, but not quite, convince herself that she’d imagined it.

“What mistakes have you made?” she said. Oh, boy! She was getting sucked into this conversation when it was the last thing she wanted.

“Jumping out of an airplane a few months after signing my Blue Jays contract probably wasn’t one of my more brilliant decisions,” he said.

Was it that memory that had caused that brief sadness to chase across his features?

“So, why’d you do it?” All of Hillsboro still talked of his legendary jump. He’d agreed to do it as a fund-raiser for the local chapter of Big Brothers. Something had gone dreadfully wrong. He’d broken his arm in three places, ended his career as a pitcher before it had ever really even started. All of Hillsboro had gone into mourning over the misfortune of their most favored son.

He smiled. “I did it because I wanted to.”

His lack of regret over the incident seemed to be genuine, but it proved exactly what she had already decided about wanting.

“Wanting is not a reliable compass with which to set the course of your life,” she told him sternly. “You made an impulse choice that ruined your career.”

He touched one of the flowers in the window, absently. Surprise, surprise, a red rose. Passion. His fingers caressed the petal with such tenderness that she could not help but wonder if it wouldn’t be worth it. To give in. Just once. To give in to the impulse to play with the most dangerous fire of all: passion.

“You could look at it as an impulse choice that ruined my career,” he agreed mildly. Thankfully, he decided to leave the rose alone. “I prefer to think a series of events played out that led me to my true calling.”

She was startled by that. She had no awareness that he had moved on from his brush with fame without looking back, the same as he moved on with everything else. She shivered.

She didn’t really want to know that about him. Nor did she want to start thinking about the events of her own life in ways that took down her protective barriers, instead of putting them up, in ways that made her more open to the vagaries of life, instead of battened down against them.

Mostly she didn’t want to think about how that finger, tender on the petals of a rose, would feel if it brushed the fullness of her bottom lip.

Gathering all of her strength, she said, “I am not getting on that motorcycle with you. I like living!”

“Do you?” he asked softly, the faintest mocking disbelief in his tone. “Do you, Katie, my lady?” And with that, he turned on his heel and left her.

But the question he asked seemed to remain, burning deeper and deeper into her heart, her mind, her soul. Did she?

Did she like the nice safe predictable world she had created for herself? Were her flowers and her cats and her love of the library and her visits with her mother enough?

The road she had not taken teased her, the choice she had not made pulled at her, tantalized her, tormented her. Katie could imagine how the wind would have felt in her face, the touch of sunlight on her cheeks. She could imagine laughter-filled moments, clinging to him on the back of his bike; relying on him to keep her safe. She felt intense regret for the courage she lacked.

She pulled herself to her senses. Ha, as if Dylan McKinnon could be relied on to keep anyone safe! Safe was the least likely word association that would come up in the same sentence as Daredevil Dylan McKinnon.

Then again, a little voice whispered to her, maybe safety was entirely overrated. She decided, uncaring of how childish it was, that she hated him.

Which, of course, was the safe choice. So much safer than loving him. Or anybody or anything else.

It occurred to her that if he had even noticed the hideousness of her outfit, it had not deterred him one little bit.

She had to do better. Tomorrow she was wearing her Indian cotton smock dress. And she’d look through that old trunk in the attic. She was sure there were flowered pink and green overalls in there. Of course, that was assuming he was dropping by again tomorrow, and in the days after that, too.

Considering she had decided she hated him, why was she looking forward to the possibility so much?

A charmed life, thought Dylan, hanging up the phone a few days later after his morning call to the nursing home. He contemplated Katie’s assessment of him. In some ways it was so true. But he lived with another truth now.

He would trade it all—every single success he had ever enjoyed—to have one day to spend with his mother the way she used to be. After his mom’s speedy decline into Alzheimer’s, his father had made the unspeakable decision, last year, to put her in a home.

His grief was not just for his mother, but for the death of what he had believed. He had believed that someday he would have what his parents had, a quiet, steady kind of love that raised children and paid bills, that lived up to the vows they had taken, a love that stayed forever.

Instead his father, his model of what Dylan thought a man should be, had bailed.

His mother didn’t even seem to know she had been betrayed. She was oblivious to her own illness, a blessing. The only thing that seemed to bring that spark to her eyes that Dylan remembered so well, were the flowers he brought her once a week. And then, only for the moment it took to name them, before the spark was gone, and she was looking at him blankly, as if to say, “Who are you?”

A knock on the door, Margot popped in.

“Sorry, a bad time?”

He had always disliked it when people could read him. It made him feel vulnerable. Margot was getting good at it. Katie had developed a disquieting gift for seeing through his fearless facade to what lay underneath. Maybe he should be remembering that when he was so intent on rescuing her, so intent on proving he could get a decent girl. That there might be a personal price to pay.

No, he was good at protecting himself. He proved it by grinning at Margot, seeing the faint worried crease on her forehead disappear with relief. “No, of course it’s not a bad time,” he assured her. He nodded toward his in-office basketball hoop. “I just missed a few. You know how I hate that.”

“Here’s the, er, research you asked me to do.” Margot seemed uncharacteristically uncertain as she placed an untidy mountain of papers in front of him.

He didn’t remember asking her to do any research, except maybe about the new running jacket. Puzzled, he picked up the first paper on the stack, and flinched. It had a title on it, like a high school essay. It said “My Dream Date with Dylan McKinnon.”

Whatever he’d asked her for, Margot had misinterpreted it. Or maybe not. He couldn’t remember exactly what he’d said to her.

Sheesh. Katie Pritchard had him rattled.

“Thanks,” he said, and Margot looked pleased and left him alone with the monster he’d created.

Now because Katie had him rattled, Dylan’s receptionist had presented him, pleased with herself, with a sheaf of papers from Lord knew where—girlfriends, acquaintances, women on the street—all of whom were just a little too eager to share highly personal information about themselves and what they liked to do in their spare time.

He looked at the stack of papers, rifled through. Tidy, messy, typed, printed, handwritten, perfumed. Someone extremely original had submitted her ideas written in red felt pen on a pair of panties. He disposed of the panties and wanted to just throw the rest of this self-created mess out, too.

But then again, there might be something in here—one small idea—that would help him unlock the fortress that was Katie.

He began to read the essay entitled My Dream Date with Dylan McKinnon. Considering that it was quite neatly typed and double spaced, he wasn’t ready for what it said. He was no prude, but he was shocked. He hastily crumpled up the paper and threw it in the garbage along with the panties.

Then he wondered if he should have done that. If he got any more frustrated with Katie, an evening with Ursula, a bottle of spray whipping cream, and a bed wrapped in plastic, might be a balm.

No, he left it in the garbage, reminded himself of the new decent Dylan, forced himself to read through the rest of the papers on his desk. Some of them had some ideas that were not half bad: a night at the ice hotel in Quebec, for one.

Not that he’d even think of asking Katie to spend the night with him, because she wasn’t that kind of girl, but a tour of the ice hotel, and a few drinks of vodka out of ice mugs after the tour had a certain appeal. It was original, and what more perfect date for someone who was proving she could not be easily melted by his charms?

Plus, he liked the idea of feeding Katie a bit of vodka, straight up. He’d be willing to bet he could figure out what she was really thinking then.

The idea was taking hold, but then he looked at his calendar. It was spring, and a warm one at that. The ice hotel was probably nothing more than a mud puddle now. Maybe it could be a possibility for next year.

Next year? How long did he think it was going to take to bring Katie around? He thought of the stubborn look on her face when he’d invited her out on his motorcycle. He sighed. It well could be next year. He filed the ice-hotel idea in case he needed it later.

Margot came back in with something else.

“Is that what you meant?” she asked uncertainly, gesturing at the untidy stack of mismatched papers in front of him. “I wasn’t quite sure what you wanted when you asked me to canvas my friends about a perfect date.”

Ursula was a friend of Margot’s? Good grief. His secretary had a whole secret life…that he absolutely didn’t want to know about!

“Hey,” he said brightly, “I wasn’t quite sure myself. Just tossing out ideas. It wasn’t actually for me, personally.”

“I told my cousin the, um, personal item was a little over the top, but again, I didn’t quite know what you were asking for.”

“I thought Daredevils should try and take a hard look at how to grow our female market. I was interested in how women think. What they like. Tap into their secret romantic desires as part of a marketing scheme.” He was babbling, and he let his voice drift off. “You know.”

She looked, ever so faintly, skeptical. “You seem to have a pretty good grasp on what women like.”

“I just needed some original ideas. I wanted to think outside the box.” His box anyway, because to date, not a single item in his little box of tricks seemed to have even the remotest appeal to Katie.

“This isn’t about business, is it?” Margot guessed suddenly, her eyebrow lifted, her hand on her hip.

He coughed, glowered at her, took a sudden interest in tossing a foam basketball from the dozen or so he kept on his desk through the hoop above his office door.

“I’ve never seen you like this,” Margot said.

“Like what?” he said defensively. He missed the basket with his second effort, too. He had not missed that basket for at least three months, no matter what he had said to Margot earlier.

“I don’t know. A little unsure. I hesitate to use the word desperate but it comes to mind. Have you met somebody special?”

“No!” he said. Despite the quickness of his reply and the empathy of it, a little smile appeared on Margot’s lips. Knowing. His fear of being easy to read grew.

“Somebody has you rattled,” she said, not without delight, when he missed the basket for the third time. It was horrible that she had stumbled on his exact turn of phrase for how Katie Pritchard was making him feel.

“That’s not it at all!” he said.

“Boy, I’d like to see the girl that has you in a knot like this.”

“I…am…not…in…a…knot.” He said each word very slowly and deliberately. If Margot had seen what the girl who had him in a knot was wearing today she probably would have died laughing. Katie had had on some kind of horrible wrinkled smock that made her look pregnant.

But the outfit was deceptive, because it made her look like the kind of girl who should have fallen all over herself when he suggested in-line skating in the park. Instead, she had slipped her glasses down her nose and looked at him, regally astonished by the audacity of his invitation, as if she was the queen.

“I’m not dressed for skating,” she’d said, just as if it wouldn’t have been a blessing to wreck that dress in whatever way she could.

“It doesn’t have to be today,” he’d countered, registering he might be making progress. It had not been an out-and-out no.

“In-line skating,” she’d said, making him hold his breath when it seemed as if she might be seriously contemplating the suggestion. But then, “No, sorry, it’s not on my list of the one hundred things I have to do before I die,” she’d said.

“You have a list?”

She’d gone quiet.

“Come on, Katie, give. Tell me just one thing on it.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because it would become part of this ridiculous campaign you’re on, and before I knew it I’d find myself riding an elephant in Africa.”

“Is that on your list?” he asked. He couldn’t have been more surprised. She didn’t even want to ride a motorcycle right here in North America!

“It was just an example.”

“You sure like to play your cards close to your chest.” Which, since he’d mentioned it, he snuck a quick look at. Gorgeous curves, neatly disguised by the wrinkly sack she was wearing. He looked up. She was blushing. With any other girl that might mean progress, but with her you never could tell. More likely his sneaked peek had set him back a few squares. Since he had yet to get past “go,” that was a depressing thought.

To offset the depression, he said, aware he was pleading, “Just tell me one thing off your hundred must-do’s. I promise I won’t use it. I’ll never mention it again.” He gave her his Boy Scout honor look, which was practically guaranteed to win the instant trust of fifty per cent of the human race—the female fifty per cent.

She had fixed those enormous hazel eyes on him—they had taken on a shade of gold today—and looked hard at him over the rims of her glasses. No one looked at him the way Katie did. The rest of the world saw the image: successful, driven, fun loving, daring, but it always felt as if she stripped him to his soul. The rest of the world fell for whatever he wanted them to believe he was, but not her.

Still, when she gave him that look, so intense, so stripping, the ugliness of whatever outfit she was wearing suddenly faded. It was an irony that he didn’t completely understand that the uglier she dressed, the more he felt as if he could see her.

She shrugged. “I’d like to swim with dolphins,” she admitted, but reluctantly. He was sorry he’d promised he wouldn’t use it to convince her to go out with him, because he had suddenly, desperately, wanted to see her swim with dolphins.

Hopefully in a bikini, though he was startled to discover that was not his main motivation. He wanted to see her in a pool with dolphins: laughing at their silly grins, stroking their snouts, mimicking their chatter. He wanted to see her happy, uninhibited, sun kissed. Free.

Had she been that once? Before her marriage had shut something down in her? He wanted to see her like that!

Okay, the bikini would be a bonus. Though judging from what she was wearing at the moment, Katie in a bikini was a pipe dream. If she owned a bathing suit at all, it was probably akin to a bathing costume from the twenties, complete with pantaloons.

“I’m going to put that on my list, too,” he’d said, amazed by how deeply he meant it.

“You promised you wouldn’t do that!” she said, and actually looked pleased because she had assumed he had broken his word so quickly.

“Not with you,” he said. “I’m putting swimming with dolphins on my list to do by myself someday.”

For a moment in her eyes, he saw the answer to why he was keeping at this when she wanted him to believe he would never succeed. She had flinched, actually hurt that he didn’t want to pursue the dolphin swimming with her.

She’d snorted, though, to cover up that momentary lapse in her defenses. “You don’t have a list.”

“Okay, so I’m going to start one.”

“And you don’t do things by yourself. If you ever swim with dolphins, I bet you have a woman with you. A gorgeous one, not the least bit shy about falling out of a bikini that is three sizes too small for her.”

“You’re talking about Heather,” he sulked. “It’s over. You should know. You sent the flowers.” No need to tell Katie the flowers had been dumped on the seat of his open convertible. It would probably up her estimation of Heather by a few notches.

“Dylan,” she said patiently, “your women are largely interchangeable, which is why I am determined not to become one of them.”

“Planet Earth calling Dylan,” Margot said, giving him a bemused look.

“Sorry. I was thinking about something. But that doesn’t mean I’m in a knot!”

“Of course you aren’t in a knot,” Margot said soothingly. “Want some advice?”

“No.”

Margot ignored him. “Just be yourself.”

Well, that was easier said then done because as his sister had very rudely pointed out to him, in the past year he had become someone none of them knew. He was trying to find his way back to himself, and somehow, in a way he did not quite fully understand, Katie could help him back to that. In the same way he could help her back to the woman he sensed she once had been. But trying to get through to a woman who did not want to be gotten through to was brand-new and totally frustrating territory for him.

He waited for Margot to leave, picked up yet another letter from the pile. This wasn’t half-bad. Celeste’s dream date was a trip to the city, a quiet dinner, live theater, and a horse-drawn carriage ride afterward. He made a few calls. There was lots going on in Toronto, just a short drive away, but for live-theater options he narrowed it down to The Phantom of the Opera or a light romantic comedy called The Prince and the Nanny.

Both sounded equally as oppressive to him, so what girl could resist that? For a moment, Margot’s voice sounded inside his head, Just be yourself, but he managed to quash it. He’d already tried being himself, with the motorcycle and the in-line skating offer.

No, this was much better. He’d go to her world. Not today, though. He didn’t want to seem too eager or too persistent. He didn’t want her to think he was a stalker, after all.

Still, the next afternoon he felt like a warrior girding his loins as he began the long walk to the business next door.

CHAPTER FOUR

THE GODS hated her. There was no other reason she was being subjected to such torture. In the last ten days Dylan had pulled out all stops. He was making it so much harder to say no to him that he no longer seemed to even notice what she was wearing! No matter how hideous the outfit—and many of them were plenty hideous—he seemed to see her. He seemed to see right through all the disguises to who she really was.

Still, despite that, it was more than evident to Katie that this had become a game to him. Dylan McKinnon was a competitor and a formidable one. He did not lose, he did not take no for an answer.

But he also took no prisoners. She knew that from a year of sending flowers for him. That fourth goodbye bouquet was as inevitable as the coming of the darkness after a day of luscious sunshine. Her effort to protect her heart from him had triggered his most competitive impulses.