Unfortunately, yeah. The last woman he’d gone out with had found someone else, someone with more money and more time, and he’d gotten over her fairly quickly but hadn’t yet moved on. He couldn’t tell that to Sheila, though, or she’d set him up with her niece, as she’d been trying to do all year…
“My niece would be perfect for you, Mr. 2008.”
He winced. “You saw the calendar.”
“Honey, I saw, I bought, we all drooled. Now about my niece…”
Her niece was divorced with four kids, and while she was a very lovely woman, a waitress at Sunrise, in fact, he wasn’t anxious to help create yet another fractured family. “I’m sorry, Sheila. But at the moment, I’m-”
“Enjoying being alone,” Sheila finished for him with a sigh. “Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard it before.”
Standing, he handed her back the phone book, then gave her a hug. “How about you? You could marry me.”
She cackled good and long over that one, and walked to the roof door. “If I was thirty years younger, you’d be sorry you said that…”
He laughed, but his smile faded fast enough. With no idea how to track down Kenzie, he left and drove home, thinking he’d just go horizontal for a little while and then figure it out, but as he drove up to his house, he saw a red convertible Mercedes Cabriolet in his driveway.
And the outline of a woman sitting on his porch, lit from behind by the setting sun.
She was wearing two hospital gowns layered over each other and a pair of hospital booties, reminding him that her clothes had gotten sliced and diced pretty good and probably any luggage she’d had on the boat was long gone.
Her hair, wild on the best of days, had completely rioted around her face in an explosion of soft waves, the long side bangs poking her in one eye and resting against her cheek and jaw, where she had a darkening bruise that matched the one above her other eye, accompanied by a two-inch-long butterfly-bandaged cut. She was cradling her splinted left wrist in her lap. Her good hand was cut up as well, and so were both her arms-nothing that appeared too deep or serious, but enough to make him wince for her. Her legs were more of the same.
She was alone and beat up, and hell if that didn’t grab him by the throat and squeeze. Then there were those melt-me eyes that lifted to his and filled.
Jesus. He thought he was so damn tough but one soft sigh from those naked lips and he was a bowl of freaking jelly.
She had a plastic bag beside her, and one peek at it tugged at him harder than he could have imagined given what he did for a living and how often he’d seen this very thing.
Her clothes from the fire.
Probably all that she had left here in Santa Rey. In her unsplinted hand she clutched a small prescription bottle, most likely pain meds. Hell. He was such a goner.
“I haven’t taken any yet,” she whispered, shaking the bottle. “Couldn’t, because I took a cab from the hospital to the docks where I had my car, which I drove here.”
“Kenzie-”
“You had a package. It was torn, so I looked in.” She lifted one of a stack of firefighter calendars, with his own mug and half-naked body on the cover.
“Nice,” she said, a ghost of a smile crossing her lips. “Mr. 2008.”
He bit back a sigh. “It’s for charity.”
“And you definitely contributed.” She waggled her eyebrows, then winced. “Ouch. I’m not allowed in Blake’s house-evidence. And the hotels are all booked up, just my luck. Did you know you have a convention of dog trainers in town? Why are there five hundred dog trainers in Santa Rey?”
“Because we let dogs on our beaches.”
“Oh.” She sighed. “So we let dogs on our beaches, but not me into a hotel. Kinda makes sense when you think about it.”
How that made sense, he had no idea.
“Because my karma sucks.”
“Okay, come on.” Gently, he pulled her up, taking the bag. Letting her hold onto the medication, he led her inside, telling himself he was going to give her Tommy’s warning and that was it.
Other than that, he was going to stay out of it entirely.
But holding onto her, he realized she was trembling, and as he took her into his living room, she went directly for his couch, which she sank onto with a grateful little sigh. “I think she went on vacation.”
“Who?”
“My karma.” She gave him an exasperated look, like he wasn’t listening to her, and then very carefully leaned her head back and closed her eyes.
“Hey.” Squatting down before her, he put his hands on her thighs, looking into her eyes when she opened them. “You okay?”
She let out a sound that might have been a laugh, or a sob.
He hoped to God it was the first. “Rough twenty-four hours,” he murmured.
Another nod, carefully slow and precise, giving her away. She definitely wasn’t laughing. In fact, she was in pain, lots of it; rising, he went into the kitchen for a glass of water. Bringing it back to her, he pried the prescription drugs from her fingers, read the label-yep, painkillers-and shook one out.
“I’m okay.”
“You don’t look it. You look like hell.”
“You say the nicest things.”
With another sigh, he once again hunkered down at her side. “Look, you’ve been through a lot. I know you’re alone and…”
“If you say helpless, I’ll slug you with my good fist.”
Once upon a time she’d been the most amazing thing in his life.
The. Most. Amazing. Thing.
On the outside she’d been so mind-blowingly, adorably, effortlessly sexy. Inside, she’d been pure warmth and sweetness, loyal to a fault, always believing the best in everyone, willing to defend what she believed in to the death if necessary.
From their very first moment together, she’d wreaked havoc with his common sense. Before her, nothing in his world had been warm or sweet or particularly loyal. She’d brought lightness into the dark.
Until he’d sent her away. “Not helpless,” he said a little thickly. “Never helpless.”
“Okay, then.” She hugged herself and shivered.
With a frown, he moved to the fireplace. For late summer, the evening did have a chill to it, and she probably was still in some shock. He set up kindling and held a lit match to it until it flamed with a low whoosh.
With a startled cry, Kenzie shrank back from the small flames, covering her face.
Yeah, still in shock. He should have thought about how she’d feel about a flame of any kind, and cursing himself, he rose and went to her.
“I’m okay,” she whispered, peeking out from between her fingers, very carefully not looking at the flickering fire. “It’s the crackling.” She grimaced. “And, okay, the sight. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
“It’s normal.”
“I don’t feel normal.”
He didn’t feed the small fire, letting it burn out. “I’m sorry. Let’s go with the heater instead, okay?”
Once again she leaned her head back, carefully not moving a single inch more than she absolutely had to. “Thanks.”
She was killing him. “Kenzie-”
“Could we not talk? It’s threatening my head’s precarious perch on my shoulders.”
“Take the pill.”
“I guess I could use a little oblivion. Okay, I could use a lot of oblivion…” Turning her head, she eyed the fireplace as if it were a spitting cobra. “You know, they don’t call me Kenzie in Los Angeles.”
“Or in the gossip rags.”
Without moving another muscle, she arched an eyebrow, appearing to be genuinely surprised. He’d given himself away.
“You read them?”
“Hard to miss when you’re going through the grocery store,” he said defensively. “They’re right next to the candy bars.”
The smallest smile crossed her lips.
“You dated that underwear model. The one who danced naked on all the commercials. Chad.”