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CHAPTER SIXTEEN
KIRK WASN’T GOING to sleep with her. He knew that. He didn’t even want to. On an analytical level. But physically… Emotionally…
“I don’t even know where you live.” They were standing at her front door, allegedly so he could leave. He just hadn’t opened the door yet. Neither had she. And they’d been standing there for more than twenty minutes.
“Not far.”
She frowned. “Kirk, don’t you think, after all this time—after I bought you dinner and acknowledged that you were right in the way you handled my son—you could lose at least some of the evasiveness?”
She had no idea what she asking.
“Is our friendship only one-sided, then?” she asked, taking a step back.
“No.” It was because he valued her friendship that he didn’t tell her who he’d been before he became Kirk, the crossing guard. Didn’t tell her he’d been exactly the same as her ex-husband. The things that man had done to her had raised enough walls inside Valerie to keep Kirk locked out forever if she ever saw the two of them in the same light.
“I live a couple of blocks over.” He named the street.
She stared at him. “It backs up to the mountain.”
“Right.”
She stepped forward again, so close he could smell her perfume. And the wine on her breath.
“Those are the most expensive homes here in the foothills.”
He nodded, his gut tight. She was getting too close to something he’d shut away. His past? Or a future he couldn’t have?
“Let me guess, your father gave you that, too?”
The knot in his stomach loosened slightly. “It was his house, yes.” One Kirk had built for his parents ten years before. And then moved into himself after the divorce. They’d already been in Florida by then, and the house had been sitting empty, anyway….
She blinked, her eyes a little cloudy from the late hour, the wine—and maybe something more? Some of the same confusion that was clouding his usually rational and single-focused mind? “And you can afford the upkeep?”
One corner of his mouth turned up. “You afraid I might end up on the street?”
“No.” But she was still frowning.
“I can afford the bills.”
“Do your parents send you money?”
Kirk lifted a hand to smooth
the frown from her forehead, trailing his fingers down the side of her face. Distraction was his only goal.
“I made some money on the sale of the family business,” he said. It was more than he wanted to tell her. More than he’d told anyone in his new life. He couldn’t seem to lie effectively to this woman.
“So you’re independently wealthy.”
She hadn’t stepped away or removed her face from his touch.
“I can afford to pay my electric bill,” he said dismissively, much more interested in the smooth skin beneath his fingertips. It had been a long time since he’d allowed himself the luxury of caressing a woman.
He discounted that night with her in the park, when he’d kissed her but hadn’t been able to give in to the need to enjoy a simple touch. The last time had been with Susan. The evening he’d seen her at their daughter’s grave…
“Still,” she said, her voice soft, growing huskier, “a man should use his talents….”
Kirk kissed her. He hadn’t made any kind of conscious decision. Just needed to shut her up.
