Just a Kiss: The Bradfords, Book 5 (24 page)

She didn’t mention that he was at least the twelfth guy she’d dated and slept with by that time. She’d also drank, smoked, partied, nearly flunked out and spent some time in jail. She’d also stolen money from her father, practically starved herself and nearly ruined her life. She’d tried it all. Tried to find a thrill, a good feeling again. Supposedly.

Now, looking back, she knew exactly what she’d really been doing. She’d been pushing and pushing, wondering how far she had to go until someone,
anyone
, stepped in and pulled her back. How gone did she have to be before someone cared enough to find her?

Ultimately, she’d had to find herself.

“Zach, huh?” Kevin asked, nudging her gently.

She’d been so lost in thought that she’d forgotten the question. “Zach? Oh, yeah. He was…pretty serious.”

Zach had been the first guy she’d dated who wasn’t a
complete
fuck-up, frankly. He didn’t do drugs, had a college degree and a real job. He looked fantastic next to the guys she’d been hanging out with—and the guys who her crazy roommates had dated.

Sure, he’d enabled her partying—he was right there beside her. He had never been concerned about her eating disorder—he liked skinny girls. He had even been okay with sharing her with his best friend—which
she’d
said no to. But overall he’d been nice, didn’t cheat on her and remembered her birthday.

But he’d had a final straw—like everyone. He’d dumped her when she got arrested. He didn’t even wait around to see the final verdict.

“But you didn’t love him?”

Hell, no. She shrugged. “I wasn’t too worried about that.”

“Why?”

“I’d already been crazy in love. I didn’t really want it again.”

Kevin pulled in a deep breath. “Why?”

“Because having it with you…” It had been the one thing that was special, the one thing she’d only given to him. She’d regretted all the craziness, the sex, the…everything after she’d cleaned up. After that the only thing that Kevin had that no one else had was her heart. “I never expected it to get better with anyone else than it had been with you. So what was the point?”

He breathed deep again. She wanted to see his face. Yet, she didn’t. She wasn’t sure what she wanted to see in his expression—regret, apology, love?

“Wait,” she said, as a thought occurred. She pushed up onto her elbow wanting to see his face now. “What about you? Someone serious in your past? Did you fall in love with someone?”

Her stomach cramped at the thought, nausea threatening.

“I um…” He focused on her shoulder instead of her eyes. “I tried to.”

Ugh. Another cramp. “You did? What do you mean?”

He sighed. “I wanted to. I wanted to be in love. Especially since my friends have started getting married and having families. I want that. So I tried to be in love. With more than one girl. But…”

“But?” she asked, nudging him. “But what?”

“It hasn’t worked. No one’s been right.”

Relief poured over her. “Good.”

He smiled. “I’m glad you feel that way.”

“How did you
try
to be in love?” she asked, thinking that sounded odd.

“I focused on all the reasons I
should
love them. Tried to convince myself that I felt things that I didn’t really feel. I tried to tell myself that they were good enough, that they didn’t have to be
perfect
, just close.”

She frowned, the stomach cramp suddenly back. “What reasons did you think you
should
love them for?”

“They were beautiful, intelligent, wanted the same things in life, got along with my friends, were committed to their faith.”

Eve curled her legs up a little, trying to relieve the feeling in her gut. “What was the problem?”

He frowned. “I don’t know. It’s been driving me nuts. They
should
have been perfect. They had everything I wanted. But—” he squeezed her hip and gave her a smile, “—now I know why. It’s because of you. I was only supposed to be with you.”

“Supposed to, huh?” she asked weakly.

“You have to admit that there has to have been some divine intervention here,” he said, rubbing her hip. “What are the chances that all of this—my dad, Drew, Heather, everything—would line up like this? That our feelings would still be so strong? That we would still be
married
, so that we can be together, fully, like this?”

“So you think that God arranged it for us to still be married so that we could have headboard-rocking sex when we saw each other again?”

He grinned. “Isn’t He awesome?”

She sighed. Terrific. Not only did Kevin think she was perfect based on a few carefully-left-out details that would prove otherwise, but now he thought that this was all part of God’s divine life plan for them both.

No pressure there at all.

Chapter Eight

They finally got out of bed, showered and made it to the kitchen to eat. But it took awhile. The shower was another first for them.

It was fortunate that Kevin had been a bachelor for so long because that meant he could cook. Kind of. It was true that he spent a lot of meals with his friends, at their houses. But if he needed to make an omelet, grill a cheese sandwich or throw together some chili, he could do it.

He made chicken salad sandwiches for Eve.

“So what’s your dad going to think?” he asked as he served her sandwich and passed the barbecue potato chips. The question had been pressing on him. Her mom and dad didn’t live here anymore, and if her father had reservations about them being together, Kevin would have a hard time demonstrating how he’d changed.

“Think about what?” she asked, taking the first bite.

“Me. Us. The fact that we’re married.”

She stopped chewing. “Oh.”

“You haven’t told your parents, have you?”

She shook her head quickly. “No. Definitely not.”

“
Definitely
not?” He frowned. So she still didn’t want Daddy to know? Was she going to keep it a secret until their fiftieth wedding anniversary? Or forever?

He made himself take a deep breath. They’d been back together, aware of their marriage, for three days. Maybe that wasn’t enough time for her to call them. He hadn’t told his parents either. Though that had everything to do with being mad at them and not wanting to open the whole can of worms surrounding Drew yet, and nothing to do with Eve and his feelings for her.

“I don’t…talk to my parents much,” she said, pushing chips around on her plate with her finger.

“What?” The parents who had been her conscience, her moral compass, whose expectations outweighed everything else? The parents whose approval—or lack thereof—had been the whole reason they’d broken up?

“We, um, don’t talk much.” She sighed. “Or at all.”

Kevin grabbed her plate and pulled it out of her reach. “Eve, what are you talking about?”

Her father and his influence over her had changed Kevin’s life. He’d been without her because of the man. And now she didn’t even talk to him?

She looked so sad when she looked up that he wanted to pull her onto his lap. But that passed when she blinked, the sadness replaced by a hard glint of anger. “We…broke up.”

He couldn’t help it. He smiled at the strange phrasing. “You broke up with your parents?”

She slumped on the tall stool. “Yeah. Once I told them about us eloping they got pretty upset. Then I left for college and went through a rebellious stage. Then he got reassigned and left Grover. They’re in Arkansas right now. They don’t call me and I don’t call them.”

He knew he was staring, but he couldn’t quite wrap his mind around everything she was telling him. “So your dad knows we got married? You told him?”

“Yes.”

“What did he do?”

She took a deep breath. “Told me how disappointed he was and…”

She stopped and Kevin felt his heart lodge in his throat. It was pure instinct, but he felt a surge of protectiveness brought on by nothing more than the down turn of her mouth.

“And?” he prodded.

“He asked me for an apology.”

“
Apology
?” he repeated, anger surging. “What the hell were you supposed to be sorry for?”

She lifted a shoulder. “All of it. Mostly not doing things his way.”

“Did you apologize?” He could feel the tension in every inch of his body and he gripped the edge of the table.

She shook her head. “No. And then he asked me to leave.”

“Leave?” Kevin felt shock rush through him. “What did you do?”

“I left.”

He didn’t know what to say to that.

She sighed. “I wasn’t sorry. And I was so angry and hurt and disillusioned about everything—him, you, my plans, what I wanted—that I didn’t come home until Christmas.” She stared into her glass of water. “And then it was pretty obvious that I’d changed. I was drinking and swearing.” She looked up. “I was as far from their angel daughter as I could get. I’d cut my hair and dyed it. I lit up a cigarette in my mom’s kitchen. I was dressing very inappropriately. Basically, I was trying to shock him.” She laughed humorlessly. “But it was pretty blatant. Cliché even. I was playing the angry, rebellious teenager but it was a few years later than most.”

He tried to picture her with short hair and a cigarette and—he couldn’t help it—dressed inappropriately. “I didn’t know any of that,” he said quietly.

“Why would you have known?”

He’d come home for that first Christmas from college. He’d remembered dreading and hoping to see her at the same time.

He’d even rehearsed what he’d say if he saw her.

Now, knowing what she’d been going through he felt a sharp stab of regret and pain. If he’d seen her he would have known immediately something was wrong. He’d known her better than anyone. One look in her eyes and he would have known she was hurting—and he would have cracked. His own hurt wouldn’t have mattered. He would have swept her up and taken her far away.

Kevin forced himself to unclench his hands. It was his fault she’d gone through that, his fault she’d been alone to face it.

But he was here now.

Freaking out and wrapping her in cashmere and tucking her away someplace where nothing could ever hurt her again, then driving overnight to Arkansas to tell her father what he thought of him would be too much. Probably.

But dammit, he’d missed
years
of being there for her, of holding her when she cried, of telling her that her father was an asshole who didn’t deserve her respect.

Kevin swallowed. He couldn’t act on any of these emotions—mostly because he couldn’t even name them all.

Finally he said, as lightly as he could, “Eve Donnelly with a short skirt and swearing like a sailor? Someone would have noticed and the gossips would have gone crazy.”

She shook her head. “I was home for an hour before Dad told me to get out. He didn’t want anyone else to see me like that, of course. I should have marched up and down Main Street but, after getting up my nerve to walk into their house like that and then the emotions of fighting with them, I didn’t have the energy. I drove back to Kearney that same afternoon. I didn’t come home again after that for a couple of years.”

He stood up, unable to sit with the emotions coursing through him, and paced to the fridge. He pulled it open without a clue as to what he wanted. “What about your mom?”

Eve sniffed and he gripped the fridge door, wanting to grab her and strangle her parents at the same time.

“She never stood up to Dad,” she said quietly. “His was the final say, in all things, all the time. She never argued with him. I’m not saying she
wanted
me to leave, but if came down to picking sides, Dad would always win.”

Kevin stared into the fridge, seeing nothing but a red cloud of anger and resentment. “And he didn’t come to you? Didn’t call? Didn’t try to reach out or anything?”

“Nope. His ideas weren’t going to change. He was never going to think what I was doing was okay and if I was going to keep doing it, then he didn’t have anything else to say. I knew what his expectations were and if I wasn’t going to meet them, then he didn’t see the point in fighting.”

Kevin finally pulled a soda that he didn’t want from the fridge and slammed the door. He’d let her go? Said “see ya’ later” to his only daughter, his only
child
?

He turned to face her again. “But then you did finally talk to them again?” he asked. He wanted to feel better about this. He wanted to know that they’d at least
tried
.

She nodded. “That really crazy stage lasted about two years, then I was with Zach—and still not living a life my dad would have been proud of—for another two. But then I…” She bit her bottom lip, running her finger up and down the side of her glass, clearly thinking. “Finally I got into trouble where I really needed some help and I swallowed my pride and called him.”

He wanted to know what trouble. He wanted to know everything. Instead, he gripped the edge of the counter and made his voice calm when he said, “What happened?”

The sadness was back in her eyes. “He said I needed to live with my choices. I’d purposefully followed a path I knew he didn’t approve of. He told me that he’d taught me right and wrong for eighteen years and he didn’t really know what else he could add that hadn’t already been said.” She stopped and swallowed, blinking rapidly. “He said that if I was going to ignore everything I knew and then cry when it turned out badly, he was no longer obligated or motivated to be involved in my life.”