The Last First Kiss (Harlequin Special Edition) (10 page)

The woman swallowed. She was beginning to shake. She was going into shock, Dave thought.

“There was so much blood.” Her eyes filled with tears. “When I got to him, he wasn’t moving. I can’t get him to open his eyes. Why can’t I get him to open his eyes?” she demanded hysterically, her voice cracking as she looked to Dave for an answer.

But it was Kara who answered her. “It’s going to be all right.” She continued holding on to the woman. Her voice was low, comforting. Unshakable. “Don’t worry, he’s in very good hands.”

As she said it, she looked at Dave, silently raising an eyebrow, waiting for him to say something. He’d placed the boy down on the grass on his back and was checking him for a pulse. The slight nod told Kara he’d found it.

Glancing up at the woman, he asked, “What’s your son’s name, ma’am?”

It took her a moment to pull her thoughts together. “Um, Kyle. His name’s Kyle. Kyle Taylor.” Her breathing was growing erratic. “Is he going to be all right?”

“He’s going to be fine,” Kara assured her, cutting in, afraid that Dave would say something practical and conservative, hedging his bets. It wasn’t something the woman was up to hearing. “You have to calm down,” she told her. “He’s going to need his mom to be there for him when he opens his eyes.”

The woman hiccuped, as if repressing a flood of tears, then nodded.

“All right,” she murmured. “All right.” Her eyes never left her son’s inert body on the ground.

Dave pulled out his cell phone. Tucking it against his shoulder and neck, he quickly placed a call for an ambulance while he worked to stop the blood from oozing out of the boy’s head wound.

“Wake up, baby, please wake up,” the woman begged her unconscious son. The boy’s eyes remained closed, and the woman’s panic grew.

The paramedics arrived within minutes. In short order, the boy was strapped onto a gurney and placed inside the rear of the ambulance, his mother beside him.

“Maybe you’d better come along with us, Doc,” one of the paramedics suggested. It was obvious from his manner that he knew Dave. “We’re short an EMT this run.”

Under normal circumstances, Dave would have complied without hesitation. But he wasn’t alone today. He couldn’t just leave Kara behind without a second thought. Dave looked at her quizzically now.

She knew what he was asking and had to admit, if only to herself, that she was pleasantly surprised at this unexpected act of thoughtfulness. He really wasn’t such a bad guy after all.

“Go,” she told him, her gesture reinforcing her words. “Don’t worry about me.”

Nodding, Dave climbed aboard and took a seat beside Kyle’s distraught mother. When the ambulance doors closed, the last thing he saw was Kara, standing where he’d left her, watching the ambulance as it pulled away from the fairgrounds.

He had no idea why that struck him as so melancholy. With a shake of his head, he turned his attention to his patient.

It took a while to stabilize the boy and to stop the bleeding. When Kyle Taylor finally opened his eyes, several hours had passed. Dave had ordered a C.T. scan of his head to confirm that he’d sustained only a minor concussion and that there was no brain damage, minimal or otherwise. In between, he found himself reassuring the boy’s mother and wishing that Kara was around. She seemed to be able to handle the woman better.

It wasn’t exactly the way he’d intended on spending his day off. When he was finally finished, Dave walked out into the parking lot toward where he usually parked his car. And then he remembered. His car wasn’t here. It was still parked at the fair.

At least, that was where he’d left it. Which was why he was surprised to actually see it parked in the lot near the E.R. exit. And even more surprised to see Kara leaning against the hood like a model waiting for the photographer to get busy and earn his keep.

Curiosity had Dave picking up his pace as he crossed to his car. And her.

“What’s up, Doc?” Kara grinned. “Sorry. I always wanted to say that.” Straightening, she stood back from the vehicle. “I was beginning to give up hope that they’d ever let you out. The boy okay?” she asked.

“He’s asking for ice cream and saying he wants to go back to the fair, so yes, he’s okay. I’m not so sure about his mother. I’m keeping him overnight for observation. His mother’s staying with him.” He couldn’t hold it back any longer. “What are you doing here?”

“Talking to you,” she answered innocently, then said more seriously, “And I thought you might want your car. I was pretty sure they weren’t going to bring you back in that ambulance.”

“Good call.” He frowned, still mystified. “I didn’t give you the keys.” As if to prove it to himself, he felt his pockets—and found the outline of his car keys.

“No,” she agreed, “you didn’t.”

She knew what he was asking her, he thought, but he put it into words anyway. “Then how did you get the car here?”

The grin on her lips was pure mischief, he couldn’t help noting. And damn if it wasn’t getting to him. Big-time.

“How to change the oil and jump-start a car weren’t the only things my dad taught me,” she told him, her eyes shining.

Chapter Ten

D
ave would have been the first to admit that his memory of Kara’s father was rather vague at this point, but he was pretty sure he remembered the man being easygoing and likable. Neil Calhoun hadn’t struck him as the kind of man who would have passed on this sort of larcenous knowledge to his daughter.

“Your father taught you how to break into a car and hot-wire it?” he asked incredulously.

“That’s all a matter of your point of view,” she replied. “What my dad taught me was how to get into my car and start it if for some reason I lost my car keys and found myself stranded somewhere. As it happens, the procedure is pretty much the same for all standard cars.”

He supposed her explanation sounded a bit more plausible, as well as in keeping with what he remembered of her father’s character. But he was also having a little trouble accepting another piece of this puzzle that was Kara Calhoun.

“And you’ve been waiting here all this time for me to come out?” He found that really hard to believe, given how much they rubbed each other the wrong way.

“Had to,” she told him innocently.

“You had to,” he repeated incredulously. This he had to hear, Dave thought. “Why?”

“Because you’re my ride home,” she answered with a straight face. “A girl always goes home with the guy who brought her.”

That sounded like something his mother would say. Or hers. Which brought him to another question.

“What about our mothers?” Because everything happened so abruptly, he’d left the park without letting his mother know he wouldn’t be there to have lunch with her. It hadn’t even occurred to him until now—and he knew his mother had a tendency to worry.

“I found them and let them know what happened—not that I had to,” Kara told him. She saw him raise a quizzical eyebrow, debated stringing it out, then took pity on him and explained, “Story’s already spreading around the fairgrounds. ‘Local Doctor Saves Kid.’ Our mothers put two and two together before I ever found them to say that you were off being super-doctor.”

He supposed his stepping up as the situation occurred had ruined what she’d had in mind. But for someone who’d suffered a setback, she certainly looked pretty chipper about it.

“What about your great plan to teach them a lesson?” he asked.

Oddly enough, that was going perfectly. “Oh, as far as they’re concerned, that’s still moving forward,” she assured him. “I told them I was coming to bring you your car and that I was going to wait for you until you finished taking care of the boy. Your mother wanted me to tell you that she’s very proud of you.”

Kara opened the car door on the passenger side, but instead of getting in, she asked him, “Are you hungry?”

Breakfast was a misty memory. He didn’t even remember what he’d had. Then he’d been too busy with the boy from the fairgrounds to stop for lunch and now it was close to dinnertime. He saw no reason to pretend that he wasn’t close to starving.

“I could eat,” he allowed.

“Good.” She bent over and reached into the passenger side. Straightening, she emerged with a foam container, the kind restaurant leftovers were usually packed in.

The instant he smelled food, his stomach began to cramp up, protesting its empty state. Nodding at the container, he asked her, “What’s that?”

“Food,” she answered simply. “I figured even heroes have to eat.”

Opening the lid, he saw that she’d brought him one of those fast-food chain specialty burgers that were a limited-time offer. Currently out, this one threatened to disappear from the menu in the next thirty days. Somehow, that was supposed to make it more desirable to the consumer, and right now it was working.

“I’m not a hero,” Dave told her, rejecting the label she’d just awarded him.

Kara smiled. He was surprised at how sunny that smile seemed. “You are to Kyle’s mother.”

Dave shrugged, unfazed. Turning sideways, he sat down in the passenger seat. As he bit into the cheeseburger, a look of sheer contentment came over his face.

Watching him, amused, Kara asked, “Tastes damn good, huh?”

As a doctor, he should know better. After all, this came under the heading of junk food, but right now he didn’t care.

“When you’re really hungry, there’s nothing better,” he confessed, taking another bite. For a second, he closed his eyes, relishing the taste.

Kara smiled, watching him eat for a moment. He really seemed to be enjoying that. She was glad she’d thought to stop and get him something.

“You know,” she told him genially, “you’re not as much of a dork as I thought you were.”

She’d almost kept that to herself, thinking it might give him something to use against her, to poke fun at her. But then she told herself she couldn’t go through life being paranoid, and besides, maybe it was time to hold out an olive branch to Dave. One of them had to be the bigger person and take the first step. And, after all, he
had
done a pretty selfless thing.

Dave slanted a glance toward her. “Thanks. I think.”

“Hey, I don’t mind giving credit where it’s deserved,” she told him. She had a hunch he’d be expecting a
little
of the “old” Kara to remain within the new, updated version. “Why don’t you get in and I’ll drive so you can finish eating your cheeseburger?” she suggested.

He was tempted, but it still didn’t seem fair. “What about you? Aren’t you hungry?”

“I ate waiting for you,” she told him, which was partially true. Although she hadn’t been hungry when she got his food, that changed as she waited. So she’d had a candy bar that she’d found at the bottom of her purse, vintage unknown. It was a wee bit stale. “Go on, get in,” she coaxed. “Unless, of course, you’re afraid to let me drive.”

“Well, you got here in one piece without the keys. Which reminds me—take the keys.” Digging into his pocket, Dave retrieved his car keys and held them out to her. “I’ll feel better if you do it the conventional way.”

“Spoilsport.” She laughed. But she took the keys from him and got back in on the driver’s side. She buckled up then waited for him to swing his legs inside the car and secure his seat belt. “Here, I’ll hold your cheeseburger,” she offered.

He surrendered the cheeseburger, placing it back into the box on top of the now-spilled French fries and handing that to her while he slid the metal tongue of his seat belt into place.

“Thanks,” he told her, taking the meal back.

The slight movement of her shoulders in a careless shrug blended in with her verbal response. “Don’t mention it.”

“I mean for everything,” he emphasized, his eyes holding hers. “Bringing the car, bringing food. I get caught up in a patient’s care, and I tend to forget everything else,” he confessed.

“Well, that’s a good thing, isn’t it? Aren’t all doctors supposed to be that selfless? Oh God,” she groaned, as if suddenly becoming aware of something.

When she didn’t follow it up with an attempt at an explanation, he looked at her. “Oh God what?” he prodded.

“I keep saying these good things about you. If I’m not careful, somebody overhearing us might think that we’re actually friends,” she told him flippantly.

He knew what she was doing. She was trying to make him think that she was still the old Kara with the flinty tongue. But she wasn’t. She was caring despite her attempts to seem otherwise. His thoughts went to Gary that morning in the clinic. She had a good heart, as well. That went a long way to balancing things out in his book.

“Heaven forbid,” he said, just before taking another bite of his cheeseburger.

“Yeah,” she agreed, backing the car out of the parking space. “That’s what I say.”

She wove her way across the hospital grounds until she came to the exit. Within a few minutes, they were on the main thoroughfare, heading for the freeway.

Time for directions, she thought. “Okay, how do you want to do this?”

“Do what?” he asked.

She gave him his options. “Shall I drive to my place so you can drop me off and then drive yourself to your house, or do you want to stop by your place first and then take me to my apartment?”

The second choice seemed to be rather convoluted, but he kept that to himself. Instead, he said simply, “I pick option number one.”

“You know, if you’re not careful, you’re going to have me thinking that you’re actually a real person instead of this plaster saint I always believed that you were.”

“Why on earth would you think I was a plaster saint?” he asked, completely mystified.

She looked at him, stunned. He didn’t remember? It hardly seemed possible. She remembered perfectly. “Because that’s the way you used to behave. As if you were holier than thou—or at least holier than me.”

Was that it? Dave laughed quietly, shaking his head. “As I recall, it wouldn’t exactly have taken much to be holier than you. You were hell on heels back then.”

She was about to get slightly defensive of the girl she’d once been—the woman she still believed herself to be—but what he said next completely took the wind out of her sails.

“I really envied you that freedom.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Freedom?” Kara echoed, a little confused.

“My father had certain expectations of his offspring,” Dave confided.

Having made short work of his cheeseburger, he crumpled up the paper it had been wrapped in within the container and turned his attention to the French fries. They had long since ceased to be warm but they still tasted good. He couldn’t remember when he’d last had fries. He allowed himself to savor the first one before continuing what he was saying.

“When you came right down to it, my dad expected me to be mature by the time I took my first step.”

That didn’t jibe with the man Kara remembered from those summer vacations.

“Your dad was a lovely man who was always a lot of fun,” she protested, remembering the tall, robust man fondly.

Now that she thought about it, Dave looked a great deal like his late father. The same thick, dark hair, the same green eyes and broad shoulders. The only difference was that Dave’s hair was a bit unruly while his father’s had always appeared to be perfect.

“With you,” Dave agreed readily. “Because you were a girl. Had I had a sister, I don’t doubt he would have been more or less the same with her. I guess in his own way, he was a chauvinist,” Dave theorized. “He didn’t expect nearly as much from ‘the softer sex,’ as he liked to call them, as he did from the male of the species, namely me.” He spared her a look. “I have no doubt that you and he would have probably gone a few rounds once you got older,” he told her with certainty.

She felt for him. Your father was the parent you were supposed to bond with if you were a boy. How awful for Dave if his father had gotten so caught up in rigid expectations that there was no place for the more memorable moments. She had a boatload of the latter not just with her mother but with her father, as well.

She began to see Dave in a whole different light. “Was he hard on you?” she asked.

Was that pity in her voice? Or sympathy? Either way, it surprised him. He hadn’t thought her capable of that sentiment, at least not where he was concerned. But then, he wouldn’t have expected her to be thoughtful, either, and he was obviously wrong in that department.

In response to her question, he shrugged. “No more than was necessary, I suppose. He told me there were no do-overs in life and that I had to get it right the first time because the world had no patience for the losers and the inept.” The corners of his mouth twisted in a mirthless smile. “God knew that he didn’t,” he added almost under his breath.

She thought how his relationship with his father had differed from hers with her own father. She worshipped the ground her father had walked on, and he had always made her feel secure in his love. She’d wanted to please her father, to reward him for his faith in her, but he’d never asked anything more of her than that she be a good person and that she be happy.

Because of him—and her mother—she was.

Kara took a breath. Dave probably didn’t want to hear this, but she needed to say it anyway. “I’m sorry you had a rough time of it.”

The French fry he’d just popped into his mouth went down the wrong way. He coughed, his eyes beginning to water. One hand on the wheel, Kara reached for her soda. Pulling it out of the cup holder, she held it up to him. He took it without offering a protest and drank deeply. The coughing subsided.

“Thanks,” he said, finally catching his breath. And then he looked at her as he wiped away the dampness from the corners of his eyes. “You keep sounding like that and I’m going to ask to see some ID pretty soon. Either that or we need to swing by your mother’s garage to check for a pod.”

“Invasion of the Body Snatchers.”
She laughed. “Who
are
you and what have you done with Dave? Talk about pod checking, I should be looking in
your
garage for one.” And then she grinned. “You really are getting to be a revelation. I didn’t picture you as someone who was a movie buff.”

“I’m not,” he told her honestly.

The hell he wasn’t. “Then how do you explain all the movie references? The
accurate
movie references,” she emphasized.