Lacy (The Doves of Primrose) (6 page)

“That’s okay.” Lauren waved a dismissive hand. “You can have your things out of it and I won’t harm anything. We’re g
oing to be so busy with the film I’ll hardly ever be in it.”

Lacy hadn’t seen Lauren venture outside since their arrival, the only exception
being when she tracked Lacy down to complain.

Two hundred
thousand dollars.
She could give her room up for that. It was only three weeks, she prayed that it was only three weeks. “Sure, Miss Michaels. If that’s what you want, I’ll be happy to get it ready for you. Just give me thirty minutes or so.”

“Oh, thank yo
u. And please call me Lauren.”

Her smile was so genuine Lacy couldn’t help but feel churlish for the way she had been bashing the woman in her
mind. Perhaps she simply had a thing against yellow. Lacy didn’t like lilac, couldn’t stand it in fact. This was probably the same thing.

“I’m sorry I’m troubling you with this.”

“It’s no trouble. Really.” Lacy walked through the doorway, feeling better about accommodating Lauren.

Chapter 5

Lacy was wrong. It was a whole lot of stinking trouble.

She had basically tossed everything into her pickup when she left the house she had shared with Brice
,
and moved back into her old room. Moved was such a loose term for what she had done. Evacuated was more like it. Half of her things were still in boxes after six months.  Her mother had decided that what Lacy needed was a project to take her mind off her failed marriage so she had taken off with her boyfriend on a cross-country journey in his RV and Lacy took over the operation of The Dove House.

In that time she had accomplished several things, one of them booking this movie to be filmed here.
That was going to be a huge boost to the checkbook which hovered in the negative most of the time. The upkeep of this place was a hefty sum, not to mention trying to pay Scarlett for all her help. Lacy hadn’t had a paycheck since she left the salon.

Looking around the disaster she had created by moving the boxes out of the closet
, Lacy realized that thirty minutes wasn’t going to be enough. Thirty days might just about do it. She tossed her boots on top of the half-empty box labeled
Scrapbooks
and heard glass break.

“Great.” Lacy bent over the box
, carefully plucking through the junk looking for the mysterious broken object.

To the side of two photo albums was the head of a figurine. Lacy pulled it up staring at the blown glass head of a girl. She sucked in a breath with the memory that came sweeping back.  Suddenly she was in the meadow by the pond where an old blue and white pickup was parked.  She was leaning with her hand wrapped around the open door, her cheek pressed against her fi
ngers, staring into the bluest eyes she had ever seen. Kyle’s jet black hair ruffled with the breeze. He smiled and bent to reach under his seat. He removed a small white box and held it out to Lacy. Their hands grazed when she lifted it up.

She pulled the red ribbon loose and it fluttered off with the summer draft. She couldn’t take her eyes off of Kyle’s handsome face. Her heart was racing in her chest
; she remembered thinking that they weren’t at the gift-giving stage yet. But here was this small box. When she removed the lid the light warped in the carved glass and sent a shower of rainbows everywhere. It was delicate and beautiful; she hesitated to touch it for fear of it breaking in her hand. But Kyle encouraged her to look at it closer.

Lacy plucked it free from its velvet bed. She marveled at the tiny figure of a girl, her dress
appearing to blow in the wind while she twirled with a flower in her hand. It was the sweetest gift she had ever received from another person.

“You kept it.”

Lacy jerked her head to the doorway and found Kyle parked against the door frame with a look she had never seen before. She hated the swooping of her stomach and weakening of her knees that happened every time he was near.

She moistened her lips and swallowed.
“Um, yeah. I just found it in this box.”

Kyle entered the room slowly, his sharp eyes surveying the carnage. “Cleaning out your closet?”

Lacy wasn’t sure but she thought there was some sort of double meaning there. “No. I was moving these things out to the barn.”

He nodded and puckered his lips in thought. “Good timing.”

She couldn’t help but laugh. “It’s your fault. If you hadn’t brought your friends here to shoot your movie I could’ve left the boxes in there. But now I have to find a new place for them.” Lacy was self-conscious and found it difficult to keep eye contact with the man who filled the entire room with his presence. The memory of his last visit to this room hung in the air like fog, clogging her brain. He moved his hands and she tensed with the resurrected feeling of them moving over her skin.

“Why?” His voice was like silk gliding over steel.

She wished he would stop moving closer to her and wished even more that she wasn’t glued to the floor. He was on a path straight towards her. Her breath snagged and she gripped the broken glass digging it into her hand but Kyle veered towards the open window.  Night was settling in and the fresh air was wafting through the window screen. The moon was starting to rise, making it easy for Lacy to make out every one of Kyle’s well-defined muscles beneath his shirt.

She heard Kyle take a deep breath as he leaned on the sill and looked out over
the lawn.  “I’ve missed that.”

Lacy could feel him relax. It was torture realizing that even a
fter all these years her body was attuned to his. Having him here was at once settling and disturbing. He was all she ever wanted eight years ago and it was clear that her heart hadn’t forgotten. Her head was fighting a losing battle against the more potent feeling of this moment.

She wanted him to leave. She knew
those feelings were her imagination playing tricks. Somehow they were always able to alter the wrong man into the right man. The wet ink on her divorce papers was proof of that.

“I’m sure you’ll think differently after a couple of days here.” Where
she got the guts to say that she didn’t know, but she was proud of herself for it. Until he turned his thoughtful, sad eyes to her.

“No. I’ve missed this place.” He opened his mouth as if to continue, then closed it and looked away. He shook his head and when he turned back to her his eyes were clear. “So you never answered my question. Why are you moving the boxes out now?”

The charged air dissolved in that instant and Lacy again realized who Kyle was. She tossed the glass head back in the box and brushed her heavy hair over her shoulders. “Because Lauren wants to change rooms and this is the one that suits her.” Lacy bent and hefted a box into her arms.

Kyle narrowed his eyes and made some strange noise in his throat. “Okay. Well
, I appreciate you being so nice to her.” He stacked two boxes and lifted them like they were full of air.  “Lead the way.”

Lacy wanted to tell him not to bother, but seeing how many boxes she had and how heavy some of them were made her r
ethink his offer. “Fine. They go in the tack room. It has a lock.”

“Okay.”

He motioned his head for her to go first. She took the stairs slowly, praying she didn’t topple headfirst. She had a tendency to fall on her face or her tuckus when he was around. Glory be, she made it safely and was even able to lead him to the barn without tripping in the grass.

After several more trips,
every box was neatly stacked in the corner of the tack room. She brushed her hands on her shorts, wishing for cooler weather. The September air hinted at it but she was looking forward to October and November.  They were her favorite months in Nebraska.  The changing of seasons was marvelous to witness.

Kyle pushed the top box into place and turned
, placing his hands in his pockets. That made his biceps look twice as large and Lacy would be lying if she didn’t appreciate the strength in his body. He had always been fit and muscular, but now that he was a full-grown man she had to admit that he had filled out nicely.

“Well, was that the last of them?”

God, he was gorgeous, the activity had made him just a touch sweaty and mussed his hair.  She wanted to taste his skin and run her fingers through those soft locks. She closed her eyes, lecturing herself and getting a firm hold of her desire. That was all it was. She hadn’t been with a man in a very long time and Kyle was familiar. With him it had never been boring.

“Yes. That’s
it,” she forced herself to say, but she couldn’t force herself to leave the room.

Neither could Kyle. He looked aro
und, clearly stalling for time.

“We
ll, thanks for all your help.”

He lifted his shoulders. “You’re welcome.” He closed the short distance to the doorway and leaned against the frame
, gazing out over the dark prairie.

She watched him suspiciously. He was acting like the Kyle she had known so many years ago. Being alone with him brought back all the same feelings of being on a rollercoaster; the danger and exciteme
nt were making her pulse soar.

“I forgot how nice it gets in the evenings here.” He appeared content to stand in the quiet and breathe in the night air. An owl hooted from a nearby tree and it echoed in the barn setting the mood.  “I’ve missed this, too.”

Lacy tilted her head and crossed her arms. “I’m sure you’re anxious to get back to the city.  All the excitement. Hordes of women shouting your name and throwing themselves at you in coffee shops and at premieres.”

He turned towards her with his mouth quirked in a half smile
, half grimace. “Is that what you think my life is like?” He turned fully and rested his back against the tack room door. “You think I’m some pansy prima donna?”

The outraged disgust of his words got under her skin. He had this good
ol’ boy persona down pat. “Isn’t it?”

“Does it matter?”

The dim light from the barn caressed his pronounced features.  Lacy could make out every expression that crossed his face in the moments that passed and it hurt her heart. She realized that it did matter to her. She wanted to believe that what they once had mattered to him. That she wasn’t just his dirty little secret. She had fallen in love with him, after one week she was in love with him, but she knew that she was not the kind of girl he was allowed to be seen with. She was a wild child of questionable lineage and he was a straight arrow from the town’s founding family.

His parents would never have approved
of their relationship and so she treated it like what she knew it was. A fling before he left for college, sowing his oats so to speak. She wished it had been more but she knew she hadn’t meant anything to him. Still, she couldn’t tear her eyes from him. He seemed so much like the sweet and considerate Kyle she had known for three wonderful months.

“No. It doesn’t matter. You’ll film your movie and leave and we’ll all go back to our lives, right
?” He turned away from her and looked to the sky, growing darker with every passing minute. “See, then? I guess it doesn’t matter. ”She tried to ignore the fact that he hadn’t answered her question. She heard her mare shuffle and knew she needed to make sure that Betty was doing all right. Scarlett had come out earlier when Lacy had been distracted with Lauren’s bird issue. She walked to the door but he was blocking the path with his large body. She assumed he would move when she approached; instead he stood solid.  The smell of him slipped into her nostrils sending a pleasure jolt to her abdomen.

**********

Standing in the sweet-smelling barn brought back all the good memories of his youth. It brought back the years he spent on the ranch, his home and his family. It brought back rodeo, the rush and the power he felt every time he settled in the saddle and the horse broke from the chute with Kyle on his back. His heart ached with homesickness, even more than the first time he left home. And having Lacy here only made it worse. She was a part of all of it. She was the apex of his youth.

When he glanced in at her standing in her bedroom and saw her holding that glass figurine he had given her he automatically stepped in
to the doorway.  He had to. And offering to help her had been the excuse he needed to be near her. That was all he had wanted to do since he arrived and was struck by how little and yet how much she had changed. She had roped his heart and never let loose; he was determined to either accept it or break free.

She had been so cute moving those boxes around. It was the perfect distraction to keep her from raising her hackles against him. The slight glean of sweat across her forehead and chest drew his eye to her cleavage more than once. He wanted to run his hand over its dewy softness and taste the musk of her skin. And damn it if she wasn’t telling him to get the hell out of her house
just as soon as he could make tracks. He wanted her so bad he hurt and she couldn’t wait to get rid of him.

He must be crazy. He had beautiful women throwing the
mselves at him, he had his choice of just about anyone. Not that it mattered much to him, he was never into that sort of lifestyle no matter what the magazines chose to say. He wasn’t the playboy type and somehow that just created more headlines. They said he had a heart of gold and the manners of a gentleman. He didn’t realize that good manners and upbringing were such a hot commodity. Had he ever acted any other way his mother would have flown to his ranch and tanned his hide in front of God and everyone.

He shook his head, staring out over the swaying grass of the prairie. The trees rustled with the breeze as it attempted to cool his overheated skin. Lacy didn’t even know where he lived.  A
pparently any interest in him had been abandoned like that last day together when she took off on him. He was an idiot, this place was twisting his sanity. He should know better. He couldn’t relive the past. Only that was just what he wanted.  He was home and hadn’t realized how much he missed everything about it. And maybe Lacy was just a piece of that. He wanted the simplicities and familiarities of home. He had been gone too long.

He wished their talk would have loosened her
up, that those glimpses of the old Lacy would stay. He liked the old Lacy. She was feisty and sarcastic, but all of that was to cover up the big heart she had. He didn’t understand the wall she put up between them or the edge he sensed she had developed in the years they spent apart. He could feel the anger inside of her. He didn’t know the details of her divorce; unlike those of her marriage, he hadn’t asked his mother for all the scuttlebutt. He had quit listening when his mother called with news about Primrose. His only interest had become the money his parents needed to keep going.