LITMIR.BIZ

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      “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

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