McKnight in Shining Armor (11 page)

Kelsie bit her lip as she sank down onto the
bed. She didn’t think she’d ever dreaded anything so much in her life as having to tell her son he wasn’t going to this ball game.

“Jeff,” she said softly, barely able to look at him, “that was your dad on the phone.”

As he sat up, the boy’s expression went carefully blank, but he couldn’t erase the look of fear from his warm brown eyes. He knew what was coming; Kelsie could see it. Jack had disappointed him too many times for him not to know. It didn’t make it any easier for her to tell him.

“He can’t make it tonight. Something came up. I’m so sorry, honey.”

The day had come for him to find out there wasn’t a Santa Claus, Kelsie thought as she watched his fragile hopes for a relationship with his father shatter into a million irreparable shards. Her eyes filled with tears as quickly as Jeffrey’s did.

Fighting valiantly to not cry, Jeff looked down at his magazine. “Why does he hate me so much?”

He sounded so small and lost, it tore Kelsie’s
heart in two and defeated her in her own battle against tears. They spilled over their boundaries and ran down her cheeks as she took her son in her arms and held him close.

“I’m sorry he’s not the father you want him to be, Jeff,” she whispered into his hair.

He let go of his pride, all the hurt and disappointment pouring out of him in heart-wrenching sobs. Kelsie wanted to do something, to say something to comfort him, but all she could do was hold him and whisper over and over how sorry she was, as if it were her fault because she had married Jack.

Alec turned his car into Kelsie’s drive and parked it, whistling as he climbed out. He was going to have Kelsie all to himself for the entire evening. If luck was with him, Jeffrey would be spending the night with his father. Alec looked up at the cloudy black sky and whispered,
“Please.”

His overactive imagination had spent the better part of the afternoon mapping out the scenario. After the North Stars won the hockey game in a thrilling overtime finish, he would drive Kelsie
back to her house—because it was closer to the Met Center—and spend the next five or six hours making love to her. If he could stand it, he would spend at least an hour undressing her, lingering over her lacy lingerie. His body tightened at the thought. Maybe he would have to make love to her first and then spend an hour peeling off her underwear, he thought, grinning as he punched the doorbell.

His grin faded as the door swung open to reveal Kelsie’s tear-stained face.

“Kelsie! Honey, what’s wrong?” He didn’t wait to be asked in. He was through the door and had it closed behind him before Kelsie could sniffle. His cold hands stroked her mussed hair back from her face as he took in every nuance of her expression—the pale strain, the trembling of her soft mouth, the agony in her red-rimmed eyes. “What is it, sweetheart? Are the kids okay?”

Kelsie pulled together what little strength she had left; she felt so tired, so drained. “I’m sorry, Alec,” she said in a rusty voice. “I can’t go with
you tonight. Jeff’s dad backed out on taking him to the ball game.”

It took a moment for the importance of what she’d said to sink in. Why would she be crying because of that? They could simply hire a sitter, couldn’t they? Then the sound of crying came to him from somewhere in the house and he realized there was more to the situation than a minor disappointment and inconvenience.

He remembered what Kelsie had told him when he’d asked if Jeffrey was close to his father. “He would like to be,” she had said. Now the little boy was sobbing his heart out because the one man who should have adored him hadn’t seen fit to keep what was to Jeffrey a very important promise.

“I knew this was coming,” Kelsie said, turning away from him. She raked a hand through her tangled blond hair and leaned against the back of the brown tweed recliner, her foot absently shoving stray shoes beneath it. She’d never felt more miserable or more of a failure. “I knew it was coming, but now that it’s here, I don’t know what
to say to him. How do you tell a little boy his father doesn’t care about anyone but himself?”

She swiped a rumpled tissue under her red-tipped nose and pounded her fist against the chair. “Dammit, I feel so helpless!”

Like magic Alec’s arms were around her and her cheek was pressed to his chest, her tears soaking into his jewel-blue sweater. She leaned against him, her hands clutching at his back, because she couldn’t muster the strength to pull away. She felt utterly helpless and it terrified her, just as it had terrified a shy farm girl with no job skills when she had first realized she would have to go it alone with two small children to raise. How she hated that feeling. How she had fought to overcome the need to be dependent on someone. Yet here she was, leaning on Alec.

Deep inside it felt right to have him hold her, her knight in shining armor. It frightened her, too, but instead of trying to deal with all the conflicting emotions within her, Kelsie did her best to push them to a far corner of her mind. She had more important things to worry about at the moment.

“I’m sorry about the hockey game, Alec. You can still go—”

“Would you mind if I have a little talk with Jeff?”

“You?” Kelsie asked skeptically as she pulled back enough to look up at him.

Alex tried to smile. “I know he hasn’t exactly welcomed me with open arms, but I’d like to give it a shot.”

He almost chickened out when he reached the door of Jeffrey’s room. What did he know about kids? You used to be one, didn’t you, he asked himself. His own father had taken him to more ball games and hockey games than he could remember. All he had to do was imagine how he would have felt if his dad had backed out on one of those special outings and brushed him off without a second thought.

Jeffrey was facedown on the bed, hiccuping and sniffling. Alec took a deep breath to steady his nerves, then sat down beside the boy.

“Tough break about that basketball game,” he said, tugging methodically on his earlobe.

Jeffrey peered up at him with one bleary brown eye. “What’s it to you?”

Alec shrugged. “I was just thinking. When I was about your age, my dad promised he’d take me with him to Lake Mille Lac for the opening of the fishing season. I don’t think I talked about anything else for a month beforehand. I would have felt awful if he hadn’t kept that promise.”

Kelsie’s son pressed his head back down on his forearm. “My dad hates me.”

He sounded so forlorn, it nearly broke Alec’s heart. It was hard to remember he was the same little ruffian that had regarded him with such disdain. Now Jeffrey was a little boy who’d had his dreams shattered, who felt deserted and unwanted by the most important man in his life. Alec wondered if Jack Connors had any idea what he’d done.

“Maybe he just doesn’t know what’s important, Jeff.” It was difficult for Alex to imagine that the man even had a brain. The guy had let Kelsie and two beautiful children go. He was
probably more deserving of pity than anything else.

He gave his head a shake and cleared his throat, glancing around the room at the posters of sports celebrities, several hockey players among them. Here goes my dream date, he thought to himself, not nearly as disappointed as he might have been.

“I know you’re a big hockey fan,” he said to Jeff. “I happened to get my hands on tickets to the Stars-Bruins game tonight. Your mom said she’d go with me, but I don’t think she really wants to. Besides, it’d be more fun with another guy along…. You interested?”

Jeffrey raised his head and turned to give Alec a long, suspicious look.

“I’d really like it if you went with me,” Alec said, surprised at how much he meant it.

“You mean it?” Jeff asked hesitantly.

Alex gave the boy his most sincere look. “I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t mean it, Jeff.”

The boy dodged the man’s gaze as he sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed. “I haven’t been very nice to you.”

“I don’t have anything against starting over,” Alec said, offering his hand. There was only a second’s hesitation before it was met by a smaller, chubbier one.

“Go get washed up,” Alec said with a wink and a grin. “We can still make the opening face-off.”

Jeffrey dashed for the door, pausing when he reached it and turning back toward Alec. “Did you catch anything on that fishing trip?”

Alec’s grin widened in remembrance. “A couple of bullheads and a major league case of poison ivy. It was the best time I ever had.”

   Kelsie woke up on the couch at eleven o’clock with the television rumbling in the corner and the lamp turned on low on the end table. She felt as if she’d been sleeping for years. The three cats sat in a row on the floor, staring up at her. They weren’t allowed on the good furniture.

Trying to shake the cobwebs from her head, Kelsie sat up, rubbing her eyes. She shooed the cats away. “You know I hate it when you guys
stare at me,” she complained. “It gives me the creeps.”

The cats trotted away with their tails in the air.

The hockey game would be over by now, she thought. Alec and Jeff should be on their way home. She wondered how the evening had gone. Alec had no experience with kids, and Jeffrey could be a pistol. They had probably killed each other. She’d been shocked that her son had agreed to go with Alec. She’d been shocked that Alec had offered to take the boy.

That’s the kind of thing knights do, Kelsie, she told herself, rubbing her hands up and down her arms to get her circulation going. A girl could get used to being rescued by him. But it wouldn’t be a good idea, a weak voice cautioned her from somewhere in the back of her mind.

She sighed and tried to comb her fingers through her hair. She was too tired to listen to dire warnings from her psyche. Not tonight, she told the little voice, hoping she could dredge up the energy to make a pot of coffee.

The sound of a car turning into her driveway gave her the incentive to get off the couch and
walk to the front door. She swung the door back, her eyes widening at the sight of Alec carrying a sleeping Jeffrey toward her.

In that instant Kelsie fell deeply, irrevocably in love with him. Or perhaps it just suddenly hit her that she’d been in love with him for some time and simply hadn’t recognized the feeling for what it was. Either way, the realization left her feeling exhilarated and frightened all at once, like the gravity-defying rides at the state fair had.

Never uttering a word, she followed Alec to Jeffrey’s room and watched as he eased her son down onto his bed, slipped off the boy’s sneakers, and covered him with a quilt. Only after they had retreated to the hall did either one speak.

“I never saw anyone sleep so soundly,” Alec whispered. “He was out before we got to the parking lot exit and never moved a muscle the whole way home.”

Kelsie smiled. “He’s like that. He’ll be out now until breakfast tomorrow. You’d never believe he had insomnia as a baby. Thanks for taking him, Alec. It really meant a lot to Jeffrey.” And to me, she added silently.

“What are knights for?” He shrugged. “Taking little boys to hockey games is on the list a few notches below carrying damsels across crocodile-infested moats.”

“So who won?” she asked, leaning into Alec as he slipped his arm around her waist.

“Boston. Five to four in overtime.”

“Too bad.”

He shook his head. The evening wasn’t going exactly the way he’d dreamed, but he couldn’t honestly say he felt like complaining. He had genuinely enjoyed taking Kelsie’s son to the game. He had to laugh at himself—the confirmed bachelor playing father and liking it. “We had a great time.”

Kelsie stopped and smiled up at him. “Did you really?”

“We did,” he assured her, his dimples creasing his cheeks as he looked down at her. With a little imagination and a few props, she might have looked like a bag lady. Her hair was a mess, her makeup long gone. She wore a pair of light gray sweat pants and a baggy red top that buttoned down the front and looked like half of a matched
set of thermal underwear. Wool socks bagged around her ankles. Alec thought she looked like an angel. “Did we wake you?”

She shook her head. “I was about to make some coffee. Want some?”

“No,” he answered, steering her toward the couch. “I want you.”

Kelsie’s eyes widened, but she said nothing. They had been headed toward this for a long time, she thought, perhaps from the day they’d met. For it to happen tonight, when she’d discovered she was in love with him, seemed right.

Alec sat them both down and took Kelsie into his arms for a long series of deep, drugging kisses. His mouth took complete yet gentle command of hers. Her surrender was unconditional. She sighed as his tongue slid over hers, and she drank in the warm taste of him. Her hands came up to cradle his face, her fingers gliding back into the dark silk of his hair and down to the strong muscles of the back of his neck. It seemed as though they kissed for hours, never rushing as they sampled the tastes and textures of each
other’s mouth as they adjusted angles and degrees of pressure.

When Alec finally eased her away from him, he looked into her eyes and very deliberately raised his hands to the top button of her jersey. He had to see her, touch her, taste her. Kelsie made no move to stop him. She sat patiently with her hands in lap, her soft blue eyes on his as his fingers freed one button then another. Finally he pushed the garment open, his breath catching in his throat as he bared her breasts.

They were lovely, small but full and proud, with dusky brown nipples that had hardened and jutted forward, begging for his touch. Mesmerized, he stroked his fingertips down the sides of the soft globes, thinking he could feel them swell and tighten with desire as his own body swelled and tightened. His thumbs caressed the center buds, hardly touching them at first, increasing the pressure until he was rubbing them over and over.

Kelsie’s head fell back as she gasped for air. It had been so long since she had been touched by a man, and then, never like this, with such exquisite
care and attention and patience. She loved Alec. Giving herself to him was her way of wholly accepting that knowledge. She wanted to give him pleasure but had never dreamed of being given so much pleasure in return. When he leaned forward and touched her breast with his lips, she thought she would go mad. When he took the tip of her breast into his mouth and began to suck, she was certain she had.