“My, but we’re so formal,” he said into the beating silence.
She picked up on the note of humor in his tone along with an imagined smile. “What can I do for you, Mr. McFarland?” Hopefully her tone had the right amount of distant politeness without sounding offensive.
“Cutler. Remember?”
“All right, Cutler.”
“I believe the question was what can I do for you?”
“That’s right.”
“It’s simple. Have dinner with me.”
His unexpected invitation took her so aback that for a second Kaylee was at a loss for words. She hadn’t had much time to wonder why he was calling, but dinner would never have occurred to her no matter how much advance notice she’d had.
“Are you there?”
“I’m here,” she responded, desperately trying to regain a semblance of control. In her mind’s eye she could picture him looking relaxed, sitting at his desk, his boots resting on the edge of it.
Like a cobra ready to strike.
“So, how ’bout it?” he pressed.
Kaylee jerked herself back to the moment at hand. “No can do, but thanks anyway.”
A significant pause. “Maybe another time.”
“Maybe,” Kaylee said, hearing the slight tremor in her voice.
Another pause.
“I’ll hold you to that.”
The next thing she knew she was holding the receiver with the dial tone assaulting her ears. Feeling as if she’d just gotten off a roller coaster, Kaylee slowly hung up the phone, then sat unmoving, waiting for her stomach to settle. Had she heard him right? Had he actually asked her out?
Absolutely. But why her, when he could have any woman he wanted? Even though she’d had no confirmation that he was a ladies’ man, her instinct told her that he was. For all she knew, he might even be a married one, though she didn’t think so. It would be so easy to find out details about him, but she didn’t want to. Cutler McFarland was not for her and she was not for him.
While his invitation was flattering, if not the stuff dreams were made of, she couldn’t allow herself the luxury of even considering such a move.
Once he learned her limitations, he would lose interest.
That had happened during her senior year in college. She had met a guy at a friend’s birthday party. Even after he’d seen her in her brace, he had kept after her to go out with him. Because he’d made her feel good about herself for the first time since the accident, she had thrown caution to the wind and acquiesced.
Their relationship had been great. In the beginning. Only after their friendship blossomed into something more did things turn sour. She hated thinking about the crushing moment she’d prayed to die, aching to be released from the torment that raged inside her.
They had been in his car one evening at twilight, headed to another party, when Kenny Johnson had pulled off the road into a secluded area, grabbed her and kissed her. Shock had been her first reaction, and she had stiffened like a piece of wood in his arms.
“Hey, baby, relax and enjoy,” he whispered against her lips. “I’ve been wanting to do this a long time.”
“Oh, Kenny, I don’t know. I…I don’t know—”
“Sure you do,” he countered passionately, kissing her hard while thrusting his tongue into her mouth. “You want me as much as I want you.”
He was right; she wanted him. She wanted to learn more about that crazy feeling that made her head spin and her body melt. So she went limp in his arms and returned his kisses with a passion that had both shaken and frightened her.
She’d heard her friends talk about making out, about what they did with their boyfriends, but because she’d never had one, she had been ignorant. When given the opportunity to change all that, to be accepted by her peers, she wasn’t about to snub the invitation.
It was when he began fumbling with the buttons on her blouse that panic had nibbled around the edges of her subconscious. “I don’t think—”
“Shh,” he said in a scolding tone. “It’s okay, baby. You and me are going to have a little fun. I promise you’re going to love it, too.”
With his mouth still devouring hers, Kenny finished un-buttoning her blouse and unzipping her jeans. She had been so taken with the feel of his mouth and the fact that someone actually wanted her that it was a long moment before she realized he was no longer holding her, that he had pushed her to arm’s length.
It was then that she stared at him through wide, dazed eyes, and saw the look of horror on his face.
With a muted cry Kaylee recoiled, but couldn’t stop herself from looking down, seeing her body through his eyes.
Nausea replaced her panic, rendering her useless. Finally, though, she found the wherewithal to cover herself and back as far away from him as she could possibly get.
“God, what happened to you?” he asked, continuing to look at her as if she were a freak out of a circus sideshow.
Her heart, already mangled, twisted to the breaking point. Yet from somewhere deep inside, she pulled together the broken strings of her pride and said with amazing strength, “Please take me home.”
“I didn’t—”
“Don’t…don’t say anything. It doesn’t matter. Believe me, I understand.” Her voice was barely audible. “I just want to go home.”
Kenny hadn’t argued. Once she’d struggled out of the car and reached the sanctuary of the apartment she shared with two other girls, she had locked her bedroom door, lain across the bed and sobbed until her entire body jerked with fatigue.
Then she got angry, angry at God for letting the accident happen, and angry at herself for being such a stupid idiot. She rolled off the bed, picked up the first item in view and tossed it across the room. The shattering sound of glass brought her back to her senses, revealing that she had broken the one picture of her mother and daddy that she most treasured.
Crying out loud, she had dropped to her knees, wrapped her arms around her upper torso and rocked back and forth until sleep had mercifully overtaken her.
The following morning she had awakened to a numbness that had stayed with her for weeks. She had existed in a zombielike state. But she had finally made a promise to herself never to let her guard down ever again. She would never subject herself to that kind of pain and humiliation.
To date, she had kept her word.
But she had to admit that Cutler’s phone call had made a tiny dent in her shield of steel. Dredging up that awful memory had, however, served as a wake-up call.
She had to keep her vow uppermost in her mind or she would sink back into that black hole from which she might never recover. She wasn’t about to let that happen. She had worked too hard, gone through too much hell to get where she was today. There wasn’t a man in this universe for whom it was worth sacrificing her peace of mind.
Not even a hunk like Cutler McFarland.
“Good morning.”
“Hey, Sandy, come on in.” Her assistant couldn’t have chosen a better time to make her appearance. The past was just that, Kaylee reminded herself. She didn’t need to keep dragging it out of storage and rehashing it—for more reasons than one, the most pressing one being her work.
“I knew you’d want to see me first thing, so here I am.”
“And none too soon either.