Which was a ridiculous thing to say. He had seen her ex-husband up close and personal.
“That bare finger on your left hand says otherwise. No recent engagements?”
Her fingers curled into her palm in an instant. But he was right. And she’d stopped wearing her wedding ring a long time ago. She chanced a peek at Kaleb’s hand in case she’d missed something. She hadn’t. “Yours is bare too, so I guess we’re even.”
“It would seem that way.”
She started forward again, afraid if she didn’t she might suggest they take up where they’d left off. That was one thing she definitely shouldn’t do. She didn’t need the complication. And neither did Kaleb. Nor did her daughter, who had been uprooted from her home and dragged three states away from everything she’d known and loved.
Only Chloe seemed to love Seattle just as much as Maddy did.
“Well, this is not going to happen again.” Reaching the kite, she grabbed it. The police officer was right about its condition. The poor thing’s wooden skeleton was broken in four places. One of those, a compound fracture, had the stick coming right through the plastic skin.
“And you’re sure of this why?”
Was he kidding? There was no way he should want this any more than she should.
Except she had. And she did. Definitely not a good combination. “Because I have a daughter, and I don’t want her to get hurt.”
That seemed to bring Kaleb to his senses. In fact, his face seemed to pale slightly. “Right. No parent wants to see their child get hurt. Or suffer.”
There was something in his words that made her pause and blink up at him before her gaze moved lower. His left ring finger was bare, just as hers was. But like hers, it was hard to completely erase an indentation where a ring once was. And Kaleb’s finger had a definite depression across the base of the digit, although the skin stretched across it was as tanned as the rest of his finger. So it had been a while.
Had he had a child? A wife? If so, where were they?
Before she could even form a question, Kaleb had taken the kite from her hands and turned it over in his own. “Speaking of kids, I’d better get this back to my place and fixed up. Or you will have one disappointed child on your hands.” His jaw tightened slightly. “And as for what happened a few minutes ago, I agree with you. It is not going to happen again. I’ll make sure of it.”
* * *
Kaleb paused with the suture material still in his hand—his patient sitting with his lacerated chin tilted toward him. How could he have let himself get so carried away yesterday at the park? He’d been oblivious to everything around him—even the police officer—totally caught up in kissing Maddy. He hadn’t done something like that since...
Since he and Janice had met in medical school. That first semester had been a blur of getting to know each other. Moving in together. Getting married.
Having a child.
They’d waited to get pregnant until they’d both graduated, so they would have time to spend with their child. He hadn’t realized how little of that there would be, in the end. If only he’d been more attuned to what was happening with Grace, he could have...
He stifled the thought, poking the needle through the next section of tissue, and tried to make sense of what had happened at the park.
This weird urge to sketch Maddy had come over him as he’d watched her wrestle with that length of line on the kite. And of course sketching meant looking. And when his gaze had drifted down her body, his own flesh had been busy tightening. His mind had already been traveling down dangerous paths at the speed of light. And when she’d noticed the purring sound he’d worked so hard to perfect, and had recognized it for what it was, it had sent a jagged bolt of sensation arching through his gut—the ill-concealed wonder in her eyes doing a number on him.
When he’d actually bent to kiss her, he’d only meant it to be a quick peck and release. Just enough to whet his appetite but not enough to actually satisfy it. Only once he’d started, he hadn’t been able to stop. Until that officer had made him think past his belt buckle.
Then she’d mentioned her daughter, and sent his thoughts reeling to another place and time. That was when he’d really started wondering what the hell he’d been thinking.
He still wasn’t sure.
“Are you okay, Mr. Jansen?” His patient, a fifty-two-year-old man, had decided to cannonball into his swimming pool and wound up smacking his chin against the hard concrete side. He should have been old enough to know better.
But then again, so should Kaleb. Kissing a woman with a child was one of his unspoken rules. He didn’t get involved with anyone who had little kids. Then again, he didn’t get involved with women at all, with or without children.
And he’d better damn well remember that.
“I’m okay.” His patient’s words were slurred. Not because of alcohol consumption—although Kaleb could bet good old Mr. Jansen had had at least a couple of beers—but because of the local anesthetic he’d been given. All this to impress a woman.
Hadn’t Kaleb tried to do the same thing with that kite? Purring, his ass. What was wrong with him? He should have just made a triangular two-stick kite like every other dad on the planet.
Dad?
Oh, hell. There was something very wrong with him. There had to be.
“Just a few more stitches, and we’ll be done.”
“Will it scar?”
Absolutely. Just like every other spot on the human body that split open.
Like his heart?
Yes, but that had happened far too long ago. He should not be flinching every time he saw a child—interacted with one. Helped build a kite with one.
The stitches that closed his own emotional cut had been removed long ago, the wound sealed tight against all invaders. But the scar was still there. Still sensitive to the slightest touch. Somehow he needed to figure out a way to deaden it, just as he’d numbed his patient’s chin.
Easier said than done. He reacted every time he heard about or saw Chloe Grimes—that old familiar ache making itself known.
She looked nothing like Grace. His own daughter’s hair had been dark brown and her personality had been nothing like Chloe’s, but Maddy’s little girl still affected him on a gut level. And he wasn’t sure how to make it stop.
Or how to make his attraction for her mother go away. Nothing good could come of any of this. For either him or Maddy. So he needed to just let it go—pull back and keep his distance from both her and her daughter. That wasn’t an option as long as the kite festival was under way. But once it was over, he was going to cut himself loose and fly away—just like his runaway kite.
No matter how difficult that might turn out to be.
“WE ARE GRATEFUL to all of our staff who have agreed to participate in next week’s event.” The hospital CEO’s voice had a soothing quality to it. So much so that it was beginning to lull Maddy to sleep. She jammed her fist beneath her chin and pushed down hard to help chase away the feeling. “The winner of the best-kite award will receive tickets for four to the city’s Space Needle and a voucher to dine in the restaurant.”
That perked her up. Chloe would love going up to the observation platform. Her daughter had always been an adventurer, climbing, running, jumping. So much so that a year ago, she’d somehow found her way to the top of the refrigerator, much to Maddy’s horror. A stern