MINA AWOKE ON the morning after Kiah had taken her to the club by the beach, and lay staring at the ceiling, trying to sort through what had happened the night before. It was a complete departure from her usual self, almost beyond comprehension.
Why’d she been jealous of Niesha monopolizing Kiah’s time and dancing so erotically with him? It wasn’t as though she’d never seen Kiah flirting and dancing with women before. Hell, she’d teased him about his amorous adventures since they were fourteen or fifteen.
But last night had been different. She’d seethed, wanting his attention for herself, not on the beautiful, bountiful Niesha.
And then, if that weren’t bad enough, when they were standing in the parking lot, she’d had the overwhelming urge to kiss him, and she had. The jolt of awareness and desire rocketing through her body when their lips touched had made her sudden physical attraction toward him abundantly clear.
Rolling over onto her side, she stared sightlessly at the window.
She wished she could put it down to the rum, but she knew that while she’d been a little tipsy, she was nowhere near drunk enough to use the alcohol as an excuse.
And there’d been no reaction from him to the kiss. Not that she’d expected him to grab her and ravage her on the spot. That would have been ludicrous and hysterical. But wouldn’t he have at least tried to kiss her back, if the thought had even fractionally crossed his mind? And when she’d seen his expression afterward, it had been blank, with perhaps a hint of a question in his eyes.
No interest or passion.
Not even a touch.
The entire situation was embarrassing. And confusing.
Where had these feelings even come from?
Sighing, she sat up, since she could clearly hear the rest of the household stirring. Hopefully, Kiah would think nothing of what had happened between them, and look at the kiss as one of their usual friendly salutes. If he brought it up with her, she had no idea how to react, or what to tell him.
Thankfully, he didn’t mention it, and everything seemed normal, except for her heightened awareness of his every move.
Kiah came into the kitchen, where she was helping Miss Pearl fix breakfast, and asked, “Hey, you want to go for a drive after breakfast?”
“Sure,” she replied, although wondering if it was a way to get her alone to talk about the night before. Then she turned to Charm. “You coming with us, kiddo?”
Besides the fact that she enjoyed Charm’s company, the little girl would be a good buffer between Kiah and herself, until Mina could figure out what was going on inside her own head.
“Yes,” was the reply, laced with more eagerness than she’d expected. Then she understood why. “It’ll be much better than staying here and reading my history book. I have to do an essay, but it’s so boring.”
“Wasn’t my favorite subject, either,” Mina confessed. “But it’s important to understand why things in the past happened the way they did. You know the famous quote about forgetting the past, don’t you?”
“The one about having to repeat it?” she asked. When Mina nodded, Charm sighed. “Granny says it all the time. Usually when I make the same mistake twice.”
“If you’re tired of hearing it, then don’t make silly mistakes over and over again,” was Miss Pearl’s tart remark from over at the stove.
Charm wrinkled her nose, and Mina swallowed her chuckle. No sense in letting the old lady know her great-granddaughter was silently sassing her!
“When is your essay due?” Kiah asked.
“Not for two weeks,” Charm replied, turning her best begging face to her uncle. “I have lots of time.”
“Okay, you can come,” he said, continuing over her cry of jubilation, “but I want to see a first draft by the end of next week.”
“Can we stop at Salty’s and get roast corn?”
“Sure,” he said, earning another whoop from Charm.
The day was gorgeous, with just a few puffy clouds drifting overhead in the azure sky and a nice breeze coming off the coast. Port Michael, the capital of St. Eustace, was situated on the southeast side of the island, and Kiah turned the car east, following the road that hugged the coast.
Charm was in high spirits and carried on a running, largely one-sided commentary of the music she liked, TV shows she’d watched, and the latest drama going on at school. Kiah put in an observation or answered when necessary, leaving Mina to follow her own muddled thoughts.
But despite doing her best to appear as if nothing at all had changed, she found herself noticing little things about Kiah that she hadn’t really paid attention to for a long time.
The deep, warm timbre of his voice; the rumbling laughter that flowed from him so easily.
How broad his shoulders were, and how the muscles in his arms and legs flexed and relaxed beneath his clothes.
Those sensual hands, with their long fingers and broad palms.
The absolute, breathtaking beauty of his smile, and the way the corners of his eyes crinkled when he was amused.
In a strange way, it was like seeing him anew, all her favorite things about him enhanced and more appealing than ever.
Yet, she was sure she couldn’t, shouldn’t trust what she was feeling right now, as it could be just a by-product of the upheaval in her life. Coming to terms with the losses she’d sustained didn’t automatically inure her to the pain, and the fear of losing more. Maybe Kiah represented stability, and she was grasping at the safest straw she had, because she’d been adrift so long?
Thinking about it that way made her a little sad, and she sighed.
“Everything okay over there?”
Kiah’s question shook her out of her reverie, making her realize the conversation between him and Charm seemed to have stopped. She half turned to send him a smile.
“Fine, just wondering what they’ll have me doing at the hospital on Monday. What time do we leave to get there?”
His eyebrows quirked up slightly as he threw her a quick glance. “I’m on call tomorrow night, but if there’s no emergency and I’m not called in, I’ll leave home at about seven, drop Charm off to school and head into the hospital then.”
“And what happens if you’re called in and already at the hospital?”
“There’s a taxi driver who’ll come for Charm. He can drop you off then, too, or come back for you afterward, if you don’t want to be up so early.”
“My friends at school like it when Uncle Kiah drops me off.” Charm’s comment, dripping with scorn, came from the back seat. “They think he’s cute.”
“I think he’s cute, too,” Mina couldn’t help saying, casting Kiah a mischievous grin. “Don’t you?”
“He’s all right,” Charm said grudgingly. “But my friends get all silly over him and that’s gross. He’s so old.”
They’d turned off the coast road and were going up into the hills. Kiah took his foot off the accelerator.
“Okay, that’s it,” he said, shaking a fist in the air. “I’m letting you out here. You can walk home, missy.”
“How far are we from Salty’s? I’ll just stay there,” came the irrepressible reply, and Mina couldn’t hold back her laughter.
As it turned out, it wasn’t that far from the roadside shack. As they pulled up, Mina was surprised at the number of cars filling the small parking area and overflowing onto the road.
“Ah, the parking gods are with me today,” Kiah said, when a car backed out of the lot just as they pulled up.
After he’d slotted his car into the space, they all got out, and Charm ran off right away to join the line, leaving them to follow at a slower pace. Kiah slung his arm over her shoulders, the way he often did, but today it felt heavier, his muscles more solid, and a shiver of awareness traveled down Mina’s spine.
“So you think I’m cute, huh?”
“Don’t be fishing for compliments, Hezekiah.” She tried to channel Miss Pearl, making her voice stern, but he just chuckled, tightening his grip on her.
“I don’t find it complimentary that a bunch of twelve-year-olds are standing around ogling me. It fills me with self-doubt. Are they the only ones who think I’m cute? Is that why I can’t get a date?”
They’d paused under a shady tree, where they could see Charm’s slow progress toward the head of the line without having to join her in the hot sun.
“You can’t get a date because you’re not looking for one,” Mina reminded him.
“True,” he replied easily. “But speaking of dates, Henkel looked like he was putting some serious moves on you last night. Did he ask you out?”
She glanced up at him. There was something almost too casual about the way he’d spoken, but with his dark glasses firmly in place, she couldn’t read the expression in his eyes.
“No offence to your friend, but I think he’d make moves on any woman who crossed his path. I didn’t take him seriously at all.”
“He’s not a bad guy, and usually is more talk than action, but I got the impression he really was into you.”
“I’m not interested in anything like that, right now.”
“Like what? Going out? Having a little fun?”
She found herself tucking her left arm up under her right, where it was safely out of sight.
“Not interested in being gawked at, like a freak.”
Kiah dropped his arm and, putting his hands on her shoulders, turned her to face him. His expression was solemn, with a hint of temper tightening his lips.
“First off, you’re not a freak, by any means. You’re the same gorgeous, wonderful woman you’ve always been. And secondly, I was not suggesting that you put yourself in a position where Henkel would be gawking at you.”
Even with him saying those lovely things about her, the tone of his delivery sparked her temper in return, and she gave him a narrow-eyed glare.
“What kind of position is that?”
He put his face down close to hers, so his breath brushed across her skin when he spoke.
“Like sleeping with him.”
Although that was what she was expecting, Mina couldn’t find an answer, her brain short-circuiting. It was on the tip of her tongue to say, I don’t want to sleep with anyone, except you. Thankfully, her tongue had cleaved to the roof of her mouth, making uttering even a single word impossible.
Heat trickled out from her core, and her knees suddenly weakened.
What would it be like to make love with Kiah, feel those strong, wonderful hands on her skin? Just the thought had a sheen of perspiration breaking out on her brow.
Mortified at the turn her thoughts had taken, she ducked out from under his hands and away from his too-intent stare.
“Just because I’m recently divorced doesn’t mean I’m desperate,” she said, as much to herself as to Kiah. “You don’t have to worry that I’ll get on bad while I’m here and embarrass you.”
And before he could reply, she changed the subject, asking about the hospital protocols, and if he had any idea of what she’d be facing.
Already she knew she was really just a figurehead, a paper tiger being used to make the hospital look good to the Clinicians’ Union, but that no longer stung the way it had before. She was trying to see it as a foot in the door, and a way to figure out what else might be possible for her in the future.
“I was told you’ll have a staff of administrators to help you get the systems in place,” Kiah said. He knew she hadn’t really paid much attention to the reams of information they’d sent her in Canada, and he hadn’t pushed her to look at it, seeming just content to get her agreement to come back to the island with him. “But I also think you’ll be asked to see patients, like you did for John. Hopefully, that works for you.”
“That should be fine,” was what she said out loud, but inside she was thinking it would be doubtful she’d be seeing many patients. After all, the scuba accident was an anomaly, and surely the hospital had other competent orthopedists?
“Charm’s almost at the counter,” Kiah said, touching her arm. “Let’s go.”
Once they got their food, they found a spot at one of the picnic tables set up among the trees, and tucked in to their chicken, roasted yam, and, of course, roasted corn.
“I remember having this when I came on vacation from med school that year, and it tastes just as good now,” Mina remarked, between licking delicious barbecue sauce off her fingers.
“Clearly we’re going to need more napkins,” Kiah said and got up to head back to the counter for some.
As he passed another table, one of the men sitting there called out to him, and Kiah stopped to chat.
Charm sighed. “Everywhere we go, people know him.”
“Well, St. Eustace isn’t very big, and he’s well known because of his work, so it isn’t too surprising.”
Charm didn’t seem terribly impressed with that explanation and shrugged. “Yeah, but it would be nice to have him all to myself sometimes.”
Ouch. Was that aimed at Mina, too? It seemed to be, when Charm went on to ask, “Auntie, are you going to live with us forever?”
Hoping to reassure the young girl, Mina shook her head.
“No, I won’t be,” she said, giving Charm a smile. “I’ll probably be with you all for a month and then I’ll go back to Toronto.”
Charm gave her one of those level looks that seemed too adult for such a young face.
“I think you should just stay with us,” she said, surprising Mina no end. “Everyone’s happier when you’re around. Especially Uncle.”
Not knowing what to say to that, Mina took a bite of roasted yam, hoping Charm would find something else to talk about. But when the next conversational salvo came, Mina realized the first one would probably have been a better bet.
“Auntie, do you think I’m too young to have a boyfriend?”
Good Lord! Why was she the recipient of this particular question? Then she realized Miss Pearl would probably go ballistic if Charm brought it up with her, and Kiah...well, Kiah, out of sheer terror, would probably tell her to stop her foolishness.
“Do you want a boyfriend?” she asked, trying to buy a little time to gather her thoughts.
Charm twisted her lips to one side, looking so much like Kiah it was almost comical. “I don’t know. Some of my friends keep saying they have boyfriends, but I think most boys are gross and silly.”
“Well, just because your friends say they have boyfriends doesn’t mean you have to, as well, if you don’t want one. Besides, boys don’t grow a brain until they’re a lot older than you all are now, so you’ll probably keep thinking they’re gross and silly for a few years yet. Give it a bit more time before you get into the whole boyfriend thing, is my advice.”
Charm giggled. “You’re joking, about boys not having any brains, right?”
Mina nodded, chuckling, too. “That’s what my mother always said, and it made sense to me. I have a brother, and I thought he was a mess for a long time. It wasn’t until he was in his twenties that I thought he was actually growing up.”
Charm’s eyes widened. “Will I have to wait that long before I start liking boys?”
Mina shook her head, smiling, suddenly happy, and proud to have been chosen for this girls’ chat.
“No. It’ll probably happen sooner than that.”
“Oh, whew,” was the response. “I don’t want to be that old before I start dating.”
“Wait, what’s this about dating?”
Neither of them had noticed Kiah coming back, and both looked up at him as he stood beside the table. The look of horror on his face made Mina want to laugh, and she couldn’t resist giving him a little smirk.
With a shrug, Charm turned back to her roasted corn and said, “Nothing, Uncle. Auntie and I were just talking, and she said boys don’t grow a brain until they’re older. When did yours grow?”
The dirty look she got from Kiah made holding back her laughter impossible. And it got worse when he replied, “I’m not sure I ever grew one. Or if I did, sometimes I think I’ve lost it all over again.”
Even still laughing, as she watched him slide onto the bench and felt another wave of desire rush through her body, Mina understood exactly what he meant.