The Road to Reunion

“He always was when it came to you—and he didn’t hold a candle to your father. I have a feeling Jared would pop a vein if he knew what you’ve done.”

Molly was getting seriously defensive now. She had been trying for the past few years to convince her family that she was no longer a little girl to be indulged and watched over, but a competent young woman who could make her own decisions. She certainly hadn’t expected to have that same battle with Kyle Reeves.

“I’ll worry about my family’s reactions,” she informed him a bit curtly. “Obviously, I thought it was worth the effort for the chance to talk to you about the party.”

“I’m sorry you wasted the trip. If you had accepted the answer I sent back by way of your representatives, you would have saved yourself a lot of trouble.”

“I don’t take no for an answer very easily.”

His mouth quirked in what might have been the merest hint of a smile, though there seemed to be little humor in it. “From what I remember, you never did.”

She waited through another rumble of thunder, which seemed to echo her annoyance that he still thought of her as the little girl he had known more than eleven years ago. “My parents were very fond of you, Kyle. Your senior picture still sits in the living room, and Mom mentions you every so often with such wistfulness in her voice. It would mean a lot to them if you would come to their party.”

“I’m really just not a party kind of guy.”

She didn’t doubt that, especially now that she had seen the isolated cabin where he lived without even a telephone to connect him to the outside world. “I can understand that you might not like large groups of people—even though this will be a casual, no-pressure party where everyone will be welcome and should be comfortable. I think you might even have a good time there, if you would let yourself. But if you can’t make it to the party, at least think about coming to visit Mom and Dad sometime, will you? It’s important to them to know that their boys turned out all right.”

An odd expression briefly crossed his face, as if it had startled him to be referred to as one of “their boys.” He masked it swiftly as he stood and crossed to the window to look out at the worsening storm. She thought he walked with extra care, perhaps trying to control his limp.

For several long minutes, neither of them spoke, so that the storm seemed even louder inside the quiet room. It was obvious that she hadn’t gotten through to Kyle at all; he had made it clear that he wanted to be left alone to brood about whatever had happened to him. She was beginning to feel guilty for having come at all, invading the privacy he seemed to value so greatly, ignoring the messages he had already sent.

She could almost hear her brother saying, “I told you so.” She was sure she would hear those words as soon as she returned to the ranch and told him what she had done. “Maybe I’d better be going. It doesn’t look as though the rain is going to let up anytime soon.”

“I’m afraid you can’t leave just yet.” He looked glum as he made the announcement in a resigned voice. “You don’t know how dangerous these roads can be in storms like this. Rain falling this hard and this heavily overfills the creeks that run next to the roads, causing them to wash over the pavement. The rushing water can sweep you right off the mountain if you don’t know what you’re doing—or even if you do, in some cases.”

Molly looked at the window again, which was being pounded by windswept rain so hard it looked as if it were falling horizontally. She couldn’t even see her car now. “Do you think it will last long?”

His silence was an answer in itself. She bit her lip and wondered how long she was going to be stuck here with a man who wished she were anywhere else.

Chapter Two

Resisting an impulse to curse, Kyle pushed away from the window. “I’ve been working out and I’m sweaty. I’ll take a shower and then we’ll decide what to do.”

He didn’t give Molly a chance to respond. Making an effort to control his limp, he crossed the room toward the hallway. Maybe he’d feel more in control of this situation once he had showered and taken a few minutes to recover from the surprise of finding little Molly Walker all grown up on his doorstep.

It was just his luck that she had arrived right in the middle of a storm. As much as he wished he could send her on her way, he couldn’t allow her to head out in this weather. The steep, winding roads around here were tricky enough, but the risk of flash flooding was very real under these circumstances. He wished she hadn’t come, but since she had, it looked as though he was going to have to play reluctant host for a few hours.

At least, he hoped that was all it would take until the roads were safe again. Unfortunately, it was late afternoon, and wet asphalt in the dark wouldn’t exactly be ideal traveling conditions, either.

Though he was well aware that he was procrastinating, he took his time showering, shaving and dressing in a clean gray T-shirt and comfortably faded jeans. He even ran a comb through his wet hair—not because it mattered particularly how he looked, he assured himself. But being caught off guard had put him at a disadvantage earlier, and he wanted to regain the upper hand in this situation as quickly as possible.

Finally reassured that he looked presentable, he headed back down the hallway. He was having little success controlling his limp now. He had probably overdone the workout that afternoon. Had Molly not been here, he might have pulled out his cane for the rest of the evening, just to give the leg a rest. Needless to say, her presence meant that wasn’t going to happen.

Molly wasn’t in the living room. Since he knew she wasn’t in the back of the cabin, that left only the kitchen. But the kitchen, too, was unoccupied and he felt his stomach tighten with nerves. If she had tried to leave, driving down the mountain in this storm…

The back door was ajar. Muttering a curse, he moved toward it, jerked it open and stepped outside. Protected from the downpour by the overhang that shaded half the deck, Molly stood with her arms crossed, watching the rain sweeping over the cloud-draped mountains. Dark, heavy clouds hid the afternoon sun, turning the landscape into a gray, impressionist scene that seemed to fascinate her.

“It’s so beautiful,” she said, though he hadn’t realized until then that she’d heard him step out beside her.

He was tempted to agree with her. But because he was all too aware that he wouldn’t have been talking about the scenery, he scowled and motioned toward the door. “Go back inside. You’re so cold your lips are blue.”

He wasn’t exaggerating much. He could see the goose bumps on her arms, and the tip of her nose was pinkened by the damp, chilly air.

She gave him a look that told him she didn’t like being given orders now anymore than she had when she was a spunky kid. “I’m fine.”

He shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

Maybe she felt as though she had made her point. Molly was only a few steps behind him when he walked into the kitchen. Kyle set the teakettle on a burner and pulled two mugs out of a cabinet. “I don’t drink caffeine, but I have several blends of herbal tea,” he said, waving a hand toward the assortment of boxes arranged for easy access. “Pick what you like.”

He tossed an orange spice tea bag into a mug for himself, then stood aside so Molly could make her own selection. She debated for what he considered to be an absurdly long time over the six selections available to her before finally choosing cinnamon apple. By that time, the kettle was whistling.

Kyle carried his steaming mug into the living room, leaving Molly to follow if she wanted. She did—and her next comment indicated she had been watching him more closely than he liked.

“What happened to you, Kyle? How were you injured?”

“A close encounter with a bomb in the Middle East,” he answered shortly. “I don’t like to talk about it.”

“How long has it been?”

“Eight months.” And three weeks, and four days. And counting.

“I’m sorry,” she offered quietly.

He shrugged with practiced nonchalance. “Don’t be. I was luckier than the three guys who were with me and didn’t make it back.”

It had taken him a while to come to that conclusion, and there were still days when he wondered if his friends had been the lucky ones. He had learned very soon after the attack to hide those feelings, which always drew far too much attention from the military shrinks.

“Is that why you don’t want to come to the party? Because you were hurt?”

“No.”

She seemed completely undaunted by his curt tone.

“Because if you’re worried that anyone there will think less of you or pity you or anything like that, that would just be silly.”

Kyle set his mug down with a thump and glowered at his uninvited guest. “Either you like living dangerously, or you’re totally oblivious when it comes to taking hints.”

Molly sighed and spread her free hand, cradling her tea mug in the other. “It’s the latter, I’m afraid. Shane always says it takes a two-by-four upside the head for me to recognize a hint. He jokes, of course, but he’s not exaggerating by much.”

“Then let me put it in short, simple words you’ll be sure to understand—I don’t want to talk about this.”

Molly blinked at him for a moment, then absolutely floored him by smiling broadly. “You sounded just like Daddy when he’s in one of his grumpy moods. Maybe he rubbed off on you more than you realize.”

Kyle was rendered almost speechless by that artless observation. Grown men had been known to pale when he had spoken to them the way he’d just snarled at Molly. And she just grinned and compared him to her daddy?

He wondered grimly how much longer it would be before the rain stopped and he could send her safely on her way.

The visit with Kyle was not going as well as Molly had hoped. She supposed she had been rather arrogant in thinking she could charm him into changing his mind about attending her party. She had thought a little friendly reminiscing, accompanied by a couple of soulful looks and maybe a few winsome smiles would accomplish exactly what she wanted.

That sort of thing always worked for Shane, she thought with a slight pout.

Amazingly enough, she didn’t think even Shane could get through to Kyle at this point. It was a shame, too. Molly suspected that Kyle was a lonely, unhappy man who was just too stubborn to admit he needed anyone else.

She glanced at her watch. It was just before 6:00 p.m. and still raining heavily. Deepening shadows blurred the corners of the room now as dark gray clouds obscured the skies outside. Kyle reached out to turn on a lamp on a table between the two recliners. “Are you hungry?”

She was, actually. She had stopped for a light lunch and a stretch break at just before noon, and she hadn’t had anything since. “I’m a little hungry.”

He put his hands on the arms of his chair and pushed himself to his feet. “I’ll see what I’ve got.”

Maybe this was his way of apologizing for snapping at her—not that an apology was necessary, since she was the one who’d tried to push him into talking about something that he’d already said made him uncomfortable. “There’s no need to go to any trouble on my behalf.”

He shrugged and kept walking. “I’m hungry. I’m going to eat, anyway—you might as well have something, too.”

It was hardly a gracious invitation, but considering she had arrived unannounced and uninvited on his doorstep, she considered herself fortunate that he was being even somewhat tolerant of her presence. She followed him into the kitchen. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

He opened the refrigerator door. “I can handle it.”

“I’m restless, Kyle. I’d like something useful to do to take my mind off the weather.”

He sighed gustily and tossed something onto the counter with a thump. “You can clean the lettuce and chop tomatoes and cucumbers for a salad. I’ve got a package of pasta and a jar of pesto sauce we can have with it.”

“That sounds good.”

With one of his characteristic shrugs, he said, “I eat a lot of prepackaged stuff. I’m not much of a cook.”

“Neither am I.” She stuck the lettuce under running water to wash it. “I’m sure you remember how Mom is about her kitchen. She loves to cook, and doesn’t like anyone underfoot when she’s busy. Since I was always happier outside with Dad and Shane anyway, I never did much cooking. A few years ago, Mom decided belatedly that I should learn how. Maybe she waited too late, but it was not a raving success. After eating a few of my meals, Dad and Shane begged me to go back out to the barns.”

She was babbling—but then Shane had always accused her of seeing silence as a vacuum begging to be filled.

Kyle didn’t chuckle in response to her story, nor did he pause in his dinner preparations. For a moment she wondered if he had been listening to her at all, but then he spoke. “Do you still live with your parents?”

Something about the way he asked annoyed her. She had told him she was almost twenty-four. Did he think she had accomplished nothing for herself since he’d left? Oh, right—he still thought of her as “little Molly.”

“I live on the ranch at the moment. I moved back full-time after I obtained my master’s degree in education last spring at Rice University in Houston. I’ve been tutoring the foster boys we’re housing now to bring them up to grade level while I wait for a full-time teaching position to open up in the local schools. I’ve been told a position should become available in January, and if it does, I’ll look for an apartment then.”

Again, she had given him way more information than he’d asked for. Maybe she was just the tiniest bit defensive about being unemployed and still living at home at almost twenty-four. She could easily have found a teaching job in the Dallas metroplex, probably, but the small school district closer to the ranch tended to have less turnover.

Her father had talked her into coming back to the ranch, rather than moving more than an hour away to live in Dallas. He had told her he needed her assistance now that he’d begun to take in more foster boys, turning the small ranching operation into a full-time group home for at-risk teenage boys. The truth was, Jared would be perfectly happy to have her live at home indefinitely.

“Shane still lives on the ranch, too,” she added when Kyle didn’t comment. “He added on to his house when he and Kelly had their two girls. Now he handles most of the livestock and general maintenance chores so Dad can concentrate on the day-to-day business aspects of running a group home.”

“How many boys are in residence there now?”

She was pleased that he had asked a question. Surely that meant she’d piqued his interest, right? “There are four now, but we’re approved to accept up to six. It isn’t officially a therapeutic foster home, since we don’t take boys with serious emotional or behavioral problems, just the ones who don’t seem to fit in anywhere else. I know when you were there we could only take one or two at a time, but we’ve made some changes. One of the barns has been converted into a dormitory, complete with a dining room and a study area with computers for homework. That’s where I spend most of my time with the boys.”

“Still no girls?”

“No. They’ve decided to focus solely on boys, since having girls there would open up a whole new set of challenges.”

He grunted, and she assumed that was an assent.

“So Shane has kids of his own now, huh?” he asked after working a few more minutes in silence.

“Two girls. Annie and Lucy. They’ve taken my place as the little girls all the boys become big brothers to.”

Fifteen years older than Molly, Shane had been a grown man when Kyle lived on the ranch. Shane had already built his house on the property and had been busy with his own life and friends—among them, Kelly Morrison, whom he had married not long after Kyle left.

“The girls have Shane—and Daddy—wrapped around their little fingers,” she added with a chuckle.

“That doesn’t surprise me. So did you.”

“I know.” She smiled unrepentantly. “I was shamelessly spoiled—and now Shane’s girls are being treated the same way. It’s a good thing Kelly is more like my mom when it comes to being the disciplinarian, or Annie and Lucy would be little brats.”

Kyle poured the strained, hot pasta into a bowl. “I saw your dad lay down the law to you a few times.”

“Let’s just say I knew exactly how much I could get away with before he drew the line. He got a bit more strict with me as I got older.”

“I’ll bet.”

Had that been a note of amusement in his voice? Encouraged, she carried the salad to the round oak table that sat at one end of the narrow kitchen. “It’s funny, but when it comes to the foster boys, Dad’s the disciplinarian and Mom’s the one who spoils them.”

“I remember that, too.”

“He knows so well what it was like to be an angry teenager, separated from his family and shuffled from one foster home to another. He knows what it takes to get through that anger and give the boys hope for their futures. His record of success has been amazing.”

Kyle had the table set now with plain, mismatched dishes and sturdy flatware. Without asking, he filled two glass tumblers with ice and water, setting them on the table along with the bowl of pasta and a plate of bread.

The rain was still falling heavily outside, and for some reason the sound of it hitting the windows made their simple dinner seem more intimate. Falling back on her usual habit, Molly started talking again to ward off any awkward silence.

“I’ve never been to this part of the country before. It’s really beautiful. How did you happen to end up here?”

Concentrating on his dinner, he shrugged. “I visited the area with a buddy and I liked it. When I had to choose a place to live after I got out of the Marines, I decided to come here.”

“I like your house.”

“It’s small,” he said. “Needs some repairs. A little isolated for some people’s tastes. But it was affordable and it suited me.”

“I think it’s great,” she assured him, entirely sincere. “The view alone is priceless. As for the location, it’s not so very far from Gatlinburg.”

He glanced at the window and the storm that raged outside. “Sometimes it seems farther than at other times.”

Like now, for example, his tone implied. With the storms making the roads so hazardous, the closest town might as well be hours away.

After they’d cleared away the dishes, Kyle looked at the window again. “It looks to me as though you have two choices. I can try to drive you back down the mountain, or you can spend the night here and leave in the morning.”

She crossed her arms and frowned at him. “You neglected to mention the third choice. I can drive myself down the mountain.”

“Not an option.”

“Why not? If it’s safe for you to drive…”

“I didn’t say it was safe. It would be a reckless and foolhardy drive with me at the wheel—and I know this mountain like the back of my hand. You’d never make it down. The best solution is for you to stay here tonight—but if that’s unacceptable to you, I’ll drive you.”

“Why would it be unacceptable to me?”

He looked decidedly uncomfortable. “I wouldn’t blame you if you have reservations about spending the night in a house with someone you barely know….”

She couldn’t help laughing, though she doubted he would share her amusement. “Give me a break. I’m not worried about being here with you.”

His sigh seemed to hold sheer exasperation. “Do you have no sense of self-preservation? You set off on a crazy, solo drive halfway across the country without telling anyone, then have no qualms at all about spending the night with a total stranger in an isolated house on a mountainside?”

“Kyle, you are not a total stranger. You were a member of my family for more than a year.”

“I was never a member of your family. I just lived there for a while when I had nowhere else to go.”

With that, he turned on one heel and stalked into the other room. Molly took a moment to admire how fluidly he moved, despite the limp—kind of a sexy, rolling gait that made her pulse rate increase before she shook her head and started after him. “So are you telling me I should be worried about staying here with you?”

“No, of course not,” he snapped impatiently, throwing himself into a chair. “You’re perfectly safe with me.”

“So, what’s your point?” She planted her hands on her hips to study him.

“The point is—hell, I can’t remember.” Slouching in the chair, he glared at his feet.

“Okay, then.” She dropped her arms. “Since I have no intention of risking either of our lives on the road, I might as well crash here until the storm’s over. I’ll take the couch.”

“Damn straight.”

She giggled, even though she knew he wasn’t joking. Funny how he could annoy her at one moment and amuse her at the next. Rather like Shane—except that she didn’t in any way think of Kyle as a brother.

“I have a computer in my bedroom,” he said, still looking grumpy. “You can send your brother an e-mail, if you want to.”

“That’s not necessary. He isn’t expecting to hear from me today.”

He shrugged. “Whatever you think best.”

Exactly what she liked to hear—that someone thought she knew what was best for her. “I’ll call him tomorrow morning, as soon as I have a cell phone signal.”

“Fine.” He glanced at a clock on the wall—the only thing he’d bothered to hang on the white-painted Sheet-rock. “I don’t know if you’re interested in football, but there’s a college game starting, and I was planning to watch.”

“Go ahead and watch your game. You don’t have to entertain me.”

“I didn’t intend to,” he replied, reaching for the remote to the big-screen TV in one corner of the room— the only luxury he had apparently treated himself to. A few minutes later, he was engrossed in the game, leav ing Molly to wonder if he was even aware that he still had company.

She wondered if his rudeness was his odd way of reassuring her that she really was safe from any unwanted advances from him. If so, she could have told him it wasn’t necessary. Maybe her libido had kicked into overdrive when she had watched him cross the room, but he seemed totally oblivious to her, other than as an inconvenience.

She stood and wandered toward the windows, debating whether she wanted to risk going out to her car for her bag. A painfully loud clap of thunder and a gust of wind-driven rain answered that question.

One corner of Kyle’s living room held a small bookcase, overflowing with paperbacks stacked two deep on the shelves. Since he was making so little effort to play the gracious host, she figured that relieved her of some of the rules of etiquette, as well.

Without asking, she knelt to scan through the titles. Thrillers, mysteries, science fiction, a little fantasy. No real surprises there, except for the sheer number of books. Living alone here as he did, so isolated in his mountain cabin, he probably turned to his books for company.

She plucked a promising-looking novel from the selection. “D’you mind if I read this while you watch your game?”

Without glancing at her, he gave a grunt that she assumed was an assent.

She curled up on one end of the couch and opened the book. She managed to read a page and a half during the next half hour. The writing was fine, the premise interesting—but when it came to holding her attention, the story could not compete with the reality of the man in the recliner a few feet away from her. He sat without moving, his full attention seemingly focused on the game playing on the screen, proving again that she wasn’t nearly as distracting to him as he was to her.

He fascinated her.

Granted, her memories of him were hazy. She had been so young when he left, and there had been several boys in her family since. He had been quiet even then, standing apart from group activities. So many of the boys had arrived rebellious and angry at the circumstances that had landed them in foster care, but Kyle had kept his emotions carefully locked away. From what Molly had been told, he’d been obedient and cooperative, though so obsessively guarded that it had taken Cassie and Jared several months to coax a genuine smile from him.