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“Happy to help,” he murmured.
She stood on tiptoe and wrapped her arms around his neck. With her lips pressed to his, her breasts warm against his chest, her hips cupping his bulge, that full-body embrace sent a flood of heat through him.
He returned her kiss, because what else could he do? This was Kendra, and he wanted her. No matter how many questions were running through his mind, his body wanted her. He wanted her.
“See you later?” she whispered against his lips.
Relief flooded through him. They weren’t done. Not yet, anyway. “Absolutely. Text me when you’re heading over.”
They hopped on their bikes and rode into the woods, with her leading the way. He breathed in the piney air, watched her brown legs work the pedals, and tried to reassure himself that everything would be okay.
Eighteen
As soon as Kendra got back to town, she stashed her bike in the garage and hurried inside her parents’ house. Her house, she corrected herself. She’d been living here since she left the Twin Cities, and hadn’t made any moves towards finding her own place. Maybe if she’d gotten the town manager position, she would have moved out and reclaimed her independence. But why bother to do that, when she might end up leaving Lake Bittersweet again?
If she’d gotten the position.
Make that—if Dominic hadn’t interfered and cost her the position.
She ought to be furious. Maybe in some pocket of her heart, she was. But mostly, she wanted to know what he was up to. Dominic trying to sabotage her was a whole different story than Dominic forgetting all about her. She wasn’t sure which was worse.
That fucker always got her twisted up.
“I’m home!” she called into the spacious sunken living room where her father spent most of his time. Her mother was back in Arkansas again with Grandma. She’d come home for a whirlwind three weeks, cleaned the house, done all the laundry, and lectured Kendra about please, please, please making sure Alvin took his blood pressure meds.
She also texted every other day as a reminder.
Kendra sighed and checked her father’s pill tray. On track.
“In here!” her father called. “Mind helping me with something?”
Damn, she really wanted to call Dominic, and with the time difference, her window was closing. She hurried into the living room and saw that her father had gotten one leg of his favorite old track suit stuck in the workings of his recliner.
“Lordy, Pop. The trouble you get into when I’m not around.”
She remembered another time, just recently, when he’d tried to move the refrigerator in the restaurant kitchen and gotten stuck behind that. And a few weeks ago, he’d worn his house slippers to the restaurant. After an hour of shuffling around and tripping over himself, he’d sent her home to fetch his shoes.
What was going on with her dad? She loved and adored her father more than any other human being in the world, even her mother. She and her mom had never been close the way she and Alvin were. Everyone in the family called her a Daddy’s girl, and she never objected. After the Dominic disaster, all she’d wanted was to run home to her daddy. So it fit.
“That’s me, Mr. Trouble.” Her father hummed one of his old songs, “Trouble on my Mind.”
She felt his deep voice in her bones as she worked on freeing his pants leg. That voice had sung her to sleep when she was little, serenaded her and her friends during slumber parties, soothed her lonely moments in Minneapolis when she played her “Redfish” channel on Spotify. For her, there was no voice in the world like his.
“I might have to rip this old thing,” she told him, tugging on his pants leg. “You okay with that?”
“We could call someone to help. Where’s Jason at?”
“It’s Jason’s day off. Besides, the fire department has better things to do than rescue a twenty-year-old track suit from getting torn.”
“It’s at least thirty. Picked it up in Kansas City before a show, there was an old thrift shop right down the street from the theater. They called it Threads Be Bared, I’ll never forget that.”
And just like that, Kendra relaxed. Her father remembered an amazing amount of detail from his days on the road. He was just fine. He wasn’t showing signs of decline, she was just being hypersensitive because he was so important to her.
She pulled the velour fabric away from the metal, limiting the rip as much as she could. “You’re free. There’s a grease stain, but nothing Mom can’t handle when she gets back.”
Her mother always insisted on doing the laundry, claiming no one else could do it right, and neither of them put up a fuss about that.
“Thanks, princess. I was just going to get myself a ginger ale.”
