CHAPTER Six
What felt lower than dirt? Mud…definitely mud. Worm-filled mud crawling with insects might be the closest thing Katelyn could compare herself to as she watched Dean walk away.
She could convince herself all day long that Dean had run full speed into her ego, knowing damn well she had one and would defend it to the death. But the look of longing that had passed over his beautiful gray eyes before he told her to return the plans to his desk would live inside her for some time to come.
The last thing she wanted was to involve Dean with her life. He needed to be free to find a life with another woman, one who could give him the large family he wanted.
That wasn’t her.
It didn’t escape her notice when his eyes followed the length of her legs and settled on her breasts a time or two during their brief conversation. Oh, he’d been tactful, but he hadn’t been invisible. Maybe she should wear something a little less her while at work.
Dealing with Dean on the job site would be complicated, but she assumed he’d see her in passing. She did the finishing work and he did the major construction. Yet as she looked deeper into what it would take to pull off designing the hotel after construction, she knew she needed to have more involvement from the beginning.
A teen club would require more lighting, more soundproofing. Katelyn was certain that Jack and Dean had considered some of these things, but not the design aspect of them. Her being involved this early on would save money in the end and make her job easier once Dean completed the job.
Putting emotional distance between her and Dean was a must from the beginning. For more reasons than he would ever know. It didn’t matter that their chemistry had always been combustible. Hell, she remembered phone conversations with him that left her breathless and wanting.
All of that was before. Before she learned just how inadequate she was to be with anyone, let alone a man as good as Dean.
After shifting the papers in her hands and gathering her purse, she left the shell of a room and took one more walk in what would be the main lobby.
A couple of construction workers craned their necks to watch her as she avoided multiple hazards in her high heels to visualize the space. With the right lighting, table lamps wouldn’t be necessary. She wrote a note to herself to ask about the electrician’s plans. She’d taken one course in architectural design and could fake her way around a set of blueprints. But she’d need a hell of a lot more knowledge if she was going to make hotel design her life’s work in the next few months.
She tucked her notebook into her oversized purse and strode from the room. She had a couple of days’ worth of homework she needed to do before involving Dean.
Maybe by then she’d forget the look in his eyes before he had left.
There was a slight hesitation in her step as she neared the stairs leading to the construction trailer. Dean was probably in there…doing whatever it was that he did. She’d see him again and need to meet his gaze without emotion. With anyone else, that was easy. Not with him. Never with him.
The cool, dry air of the trailer met her skin with welcome relief. She hadn’t realized how warm it was outside. Texas heat was so much thicker. The dry Southern California air might be warm, but it didn’t weigh on her.
“Hi, Jo,” she addressed the surly secretary. “Dean wanted me to return these before I left.”
Jo didn’t look up from her computer. “Leave them on his desk.”
Katie looked toward his office, the one where she’d found the plans earlier that morning. The door was nearly closed and she couldn’t tell if he was in there.
“I wouldn’t want to bother him. How about I leave them with you.”
Jo released a gruff laugh. “He doesn’t hide inside all day. Leave them on his desk. He’ll find them when he gets in at lunch.”
Oh, good, he’s not here.
Instead of voicing her relief, she quickly returned the plans to his empty office and left the trailer.
It wasn’t until she’d pulled out of the parking lot, and the hard hat on her head started to slip in the wind, that she realized she still wore his stupid hat.
She tossed it into the passenger seat and turned the car toward Monica’s apartment.
Katelyn avoided the job site for two days. Which wasn’t difficult considering the life-changing event known as Savannah.
In the corner of the small room, Katie placed a bassinet adorned with pink and brown baby blankets. A plush pad had been affixed to the top of a dresser for use as a changing station.
She’d taken a crash course in all things baby in the past week. She’d purchased a stroller, a reclining swing, and more clothes than the infant could possible wear while she stayed in the zero- to three-month age range.
A trip to the bookstore resulted in half a dozen parenting books along with developmental expectations in children. And a baby milestone book.
The baby book she pondered. What would happen if the mother returned for Savannah? Writing down milestones and taking pictures somehow cemented her in Katie’s life.
It was silly to think a baby book was some kind of glue. Already Savannah had wiggled her tiny fingers around Katie’s heart and squeezed hard.
Monica returned home after seven that night. Her twelve-hour shifts had to be hard, yet Katie never heard her new friend complain.
“Look who’s still awake.” Monica motioned toward Savannah who was lying on a blanket in the middle of the floor kicking her feet.
Katelyn glanced up from the reference book she was using to understand Dean’s construction plans. Blueprints and furniture catalogs were worlds apart.
“And quite content just sucking her fist for about an hour now. I’m hoping to keep her up a little later to see if I can get her to sleep for three hours in a row.”
Monica placed her purse on the kitchen counter and poured herself a glass of water. “You look like you could use the sleep.”
“I can.” Surprisingly, the tiny smiles that greeted her at two a.m. were worth waking up for. The irony was, if Katelyn could have told the world about the baby from the beginning, she probably would have hired a full-time caretaker to help at night. Those two a.m. smiles would be awarded to a nanny and not her.
“If she doesn’t sleep tonight, you can look forward to tomorrow at the hotel.”
Monica had agreed to watch Savannah all night between her days off in order for Katelyn to keep the appearance of living at the hotel. She had yet to actually sleep in the penthouse suite since arriving in California.
She kept up the appearance of living there. She left laundry, ate lunch, and even messed up the bed so it appeared she slept there. She would arrive before one personnel shift ended, change clothes, and then leave a short time later.
Gerald drove her from time to time back and forth to the apartment, but Katelyn never let him see her with the baby.
“Did you call the private detective today?” Monica asked.
“I did.”
“And?”
Katelyn pushed the book aside and focused on Monica.
“He’s flying here on Monday to discuss the case.”
Patrick Nelson came highly recommended. He was exclusive, discrete, and expensive. Hiring him to dig into Savannah’s parentage was as necessary as eating. If Katie took the birth certificate and didn’t question it, she would forever look over her shoulder. There were already times she felt like a criminal. She tensed when a police officer drove by and hid her eyes behind sunglasses when she bought diapers. It was crazy, and not the way she wanted to live her life.
Monica covered Katie’s hand with hers. “It will be all right. You’re doing the right thing. I spoke with social services today at the hospital.”
Panic rose in Katelyn’s throat. “You told them?”
“God, no. I’m getting our facts straight. What the laws are about abandoning infants. We have a safe baby surrender program here in California. Babies are dropped off in ERs and fire departments all the time. No questions asked. A baby isn’t considered abandoned unless it’s left to its own defenses. When we find Savannah’s birth mother, she can’t be prosecuted because she left her with you, gave you custody. There’s a whole bunch of legal shit involved that I don’t understand, but there are several cases of babies being given to someone without an adoption agency.”
“The laws in Texas probably aren’t the same as here.”
“Probably. You might want to look into them…or have that PI look into them for you. The more knowledge you have, the better you’re going to feel about it.”
Monica had a point. Katelyn’s education needed to involve infant care, construction plans, and legalese about adoptions or baby abandonment clauses. I hated school when I was in it.
Monica removed a frozen dinner from the refrigerator and popped it into the microwave. “Have you heard from Dean?”
Just hearing his name made her squirm in her seat. “No. Not a word.”
“Don’t you find that odd? I mean, you still have his hard hat and you haven’t returned there since the first day.”
Katelyn shrugged. “I’ll go in tomorrow to see how far along they are. Jack made it sound like it was taking forever for things to move forward. I doubt I’m needed every day.”
“You’re avoiding Dean.”
“I am not.”
“Are, too.”
Katelyn opened her mouth to protest again and promptly shut it. “Lord, Jessie must have hated growing up with you.”
Monica smiled and winked. “I call ’em as I see ’em. Jessie tried to hide her true emotions about all kinds of things growing up, but I could see the truth in her eyes. You have a thing for Dean and don’t even try and deny it.”
“Dean is my brother’s best friend.”
“Doesn’t mean you don’t have a thing for him. The man is gorgeous. I’m not sure why you of all people would deny your attraction to the man. He obviously feels the need to watch over you.”
“Misguided loyalty to my brother.”
Monica snorted. “Bull. Dean might feel the need to watch out for a weak sister,” she air quoted watch out with her fingers. “You’re not weak. You might have lost a little bit of snark with the lack of sleep, but you’re far from fragile.”
No, she wasn’t made of glass. She didn’t go out of her way to gossip and let anyone inside her head either. Yet talking with Monica, living with her for the better part of two weeks, boiled the need to talk and spill the entire story about her and Dean.
Maybe if Monica knew their history, she’d understand how desperate Katie was to keep Dean at a distance now.
“If I tell you something, will you promise to keep it only between the two of us?”
Monica lifted her lips into a cat-ate-the-canary smile. “I’m almost offended you need to ask. You’re living in my place with a child that isn’t yours. I can keep a secret.”
Katie glanced over at Savannah who hadn’t made much of a peep since Monica came home.
“Dean and I…” Katie ignored the chill down her spine. “We, ah…”
Monica placed her hand in the air. “Wait. This needs wine.”
Boy, did it ever.
Monica uncorked a bottle of wine and poured two glasses before settling into the sofa with her legs curled under her. It was as if she were getting ready to watch a movie. Her sharp gaze focused on Katie before she uttered the words, “Let me have it.”
After drawing in a fortifying breath, Katie started again. “Dean and I dated…secretly.”
Why Katie thought the sky would fall as she voiced her past, she didn’t know…but she did.
Monica sipped her wine and smiled. “I knew it.”
“We hadn’t set out to. It just kinda happened. And no one, not my brother, not my diary, knows about it.”
Monica put a hand in the air. “Why the secrecy?”
Katie shrugged. “We run in some tight circles back home. We thought it would be better to keep our relationship to ourselves to avoid any of those awkward Do we invite Dean or do we invite Katelyn? situations.”
“Sounds like you anticipated the breakup from the beginning.”
The memory of their first kiss surfaced in her mind. The softness of his touch, the pine scent of his skin. The way he cupped her head so she couldn’t pull away…
“Oh, to be a fly on the wall of your brain,” Monica said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you blush before.”
Katie sighed and covered her face with her hands.
Maybe Monica would understand if she started from the beginning. “Dean and my brother have been best friends since high school. Being the younger and annoying sister, the two of them didn’t pay a lot of attention to me. But you’ve met all the boys and none of them are hard on the eyes.
“When I hit thirteen, my hormones went crazy. My mom, if you can call her that, had already run off. She’d call once in a while, but I didn’t have another woman to confide in. My dad tried by having our housekeeper keep tabs on me, but I wanted nothing to do with her. I started wearing clothes that made me feel grown up and loved the attention the guys gave me. I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t always had a crush on Dean. But he didn’t look. Not once.”
“He looked eventually,” Monica pointed out.
Yes, he did. There were times over the years Dean would stand beside her brother Jack as the two of them confronted her with another tabloid article about her dating life. She took Dean’s sharp disapproval like she had her brother’s or her father’s. She ignored it. Eventually Jack backed off…hell, even her father didn’t bother with anything more than a grunt or a shake of the head these days.
But not Dean. He’d suggested she find a different guy to date, or different club to hang out at.
It was one of those Change what you’re doing, Katie conversations with Dean that resulted in that first kiss nearly two years ago.
“This guy is scum,” Dean had spit out between his teeth as he slapped the tabloid on the table in front of her. They were celebrating Jack’s birthday at the ranch and Dean had pulled her into an empty room to talk.
Katie tossed her chin up in defiance. “I’m not sure who died and left you as my fairy godmother. Not even my father tells me who I can sleep with and who I can’t.”
Dean’s face had grown even harder. The cleft in his chin was so tight she could probably bounce a golf ball off it.
“You’re sleeping with him?”
The him Dean referred to was an actor. And in reality, only a friend. But the tabloid had snapped a picture of the two of them leaving a club and suggested that Mason was cheating on his current girlfriend and that Katelyn was the “other woman.” It was laughable, really. The tabloids seldom painted a clear picture. Dean knew this but still raged on as if the magazine were gospel. A few times the rags would get the story somewhat right but she hadn’t slept with nearly as many people as the public thought she had.
As Dean obviously thought she had.
“That,” Katie poked her finger into Dean’s broad chest, “is none of your business.”
“It damn well is my business, darlin’.”
“Oh, really? How so?”
“You’re Jack’s sister. I’ve known you since before you wore a training bra.”
Katelyn glanced down at her ample cleavage and purposely tugged her shirt a little lower to reveal more skin. “Are you telling me you’re looking out for me like I’m your sister?”
Dean opened his mouth and then closed it.
That was the moment she knew that Dean didn’t look at her as a sister. His gaze had heated and desire flashed over his face.
Katelyn’s knees suddenly felt weak. As if sensing her inability to stand, Dean slid into her personal space and cupped the back of her head. She froze, hardly believing he was touching her. Then his lips met hers in a kiss that defined the art of kissing. He was soft and warm and made her tingle. Her eyes closed while she opened to him like a flower did to sunshine.
It ended too soon. Both of them were stunned by the kiss.
Neither of them acknowledged what had happened the rest of that day.
Not twenty-four hours later, Dean knocked on the door of her suite. When she asked what he was doing there, he told her he wanted to kiss her again. To make certain he hadn’t imagined the experience.
Suddenly Katie was a young girl again, giddy with his attention. He left her suite the next day, and she knew her life would never again be the same.
“We didn’t date in public. When we were with friends, it became a game to tease each other without anyone noticing,” Katie explained to Monica.
“How long did this go on?”
“A few months.”
“What happened to break it up?”
Katie’s gaze slid to the floor where she had been lying next to Savannah for the last hour as she talked about her past. Savannah had fallen to sleep, her pouty lips moved with every breath.
“We fought…things ended.” She wasn’t about to tell all her secrets. About how she’d ended up pregnant with Dean’s baby only to have a miscarriage. About how the awful monthly cycles she’d endured were actually a severe case of endometrioses that messed up not only her fallopian tubes, but made her uterus inhospitable to carry a pregnancy to term. The fact she ended up pregnant to begin with was a small miracle. “Six months after our breakup Dean was engaged. He obviously wasn’t heartbroken.”
“But you were.”
She shook her head. “No…please. We had a fling. That’s it.”
Monica was sipping her second glass of wine. “A fling? You sleep with your teenage crush and you think it’s a fling?”
“Yeah, I do.”
“Hmm. Do the two of you ever talk about your affair?”
“No.” Not out loud anyway.
“Is it awkward? Working with him?”
“As much as can be expected. I’m sure it would have been worse had we told the world about us.”
Monica moved off the couch quietly and placed her wine glass in the sink. “I’m sure you think what you had is over, but Dean watches you whenever you’re in the room. I noticed it at the wedding. He obviously still cares.”
“He nearly married another woman. If he felt anything for me, it was lust and that’s it.”
“Time will work that out.”
“Time will work what out?”
“Whether he only wants you for the crazy-hot sex or something more.”
“I didn’t say it was crazy-hot.”
Monica rolled her eyes. “You didn’t have to. The temperature in the room rose five degrees while you talked about it. Listen, all I’m saying is this. If you’re going to be working beside him for the next few months, and he still has a thing for you, you’re going to find out about it. My gut says he does.”
Katie started to shake her head.
“And…my gut is also saying you have a thing for him.”
“Had a thing.”
Monica waved her hand in the air, dismissing everything Katie was saying. “Whatever! De’Nial is a river in Egypt yet you’ve parked your brain right next to it. Deny you care about him all you want. But when he starts sniffing around asking where you’re spending your time, you’ll know without a doubt that he’s thinking about you.”
Monica slipped past her and started down the hall. “I’m taking a shower and going to bed.”
“G’night, Monica.”
Left alone with her thoughts, Katie wondered if it was possible that Dean thought about her at all. She’d severed their relationship with a hacking knife instead of a quick clean blade.
Two weeks after the miscarriage and all the follow-up tests her doctor put her through determined that she would never carry a child, Katie found Dean in her suite looking at pictures on his cell phone. They were pictures of his nephew and Dean’s large family visiting the baby in the maternity wing at the hospital.
For the first time in weeks, Katie had felt like getting dressed and joining the world. She’d surprised Dean by coming up behind him.
He snapped his phone away, but Katie had already seen the pictures.
“Hey,” he said, pecking a kiss on her cheek. “You’re dressed.”
He’d been strong, a shoulder to cry on…a friend. “I’m feeling better,” she said. “What were you looking at?”
“Nothing.”
“Really? Nothing?”
Dean tucked his phone into his jeans as he stood. He placated her with a smile, but it didn’t reach his eyes.
“Just pictures. So, what do you have planned today?” His changing of the subject wasn’t unnoticed.
“How old is your nephew now?”
Dean shuffled his feet. “A year and a half.”
“You still keep a baby picture of him on your phone?” The hurt of losing their child hung just above the surface of her skin, it burned.
“He’s a cute kid.” There was more to his walk down memory lane than glancing at a picture of his nephew. Dean was thinking about the magnitude of Katie’s problem. At least that’s what she thought. If she asked him, he’d probably tell her she was wrong. But she knew he wanted to be a dad. He’d been right there with her from the beginning of the pregnancy and never once said he wasn’t ready. Quite the opposite.
They’d never kept secrets from each other and the moment Katie suspected she was pregnant, she told Dean. They drove together to a drugstore far outside of town, hoping like hell that there weren’t any cameras pointing her way. They’d been together when the double lines on the stick told her that her period wasn’t late, it simply wasn’t coming. Instead of staring at the stick and cursing it, Dean gathered her in his arms and kissed the living daylights out of her. “Yeah, we didn’t plan it,” he’d said. “But I was born to be a dad and you’re going to be the best mom.” He’d made love to her that night and the next morning she woke up to a plush teddy bear on the pillow next to her.
Within a week, she’d miscarried.
All the joy, all the excitement, left Dean’s eyes. Until she’d seen him staring at the picture of his nephew.
Her inability to have kids was her problem.
It wasn’t too late for Dean.
For the next few days, Katie cloaked her emotions with her debutant persona, slid into her tight skirts, and avoided Dean. No one knew about them. No one knew about the miscarriage. Katie knew she had to cut her ties and the only way she’d be able to do that was with bloodshed.
The nightclub was packed the night Dean found her. She’d had a couple of drinks, but was far from drunk. She was contemplating leaving when she spotted him looking for her. She ran her hand up the arm of a man who’d been trying to get her attention all night and asked him to dance.
The weight of Dean’s stare followed her, watched her, as she wiggled her hips, and didn’t brush away the stranger’s hand when he spread his palm on her ass.
Dean cut in, damn near taking the other man’s arm off at his shoulder. Katie stormed away and Dean followed.
Outside the club, Dean lit into her. “What the f*ck, Katie?”
“What’s the problem, Dean?”
His face was red with fury, his fists clutched at his side. “What are you doing?”
“I’m dancing, what does it look like?” She trembled, hating the look on his face.
“You shouldn’t be here.”
“And where should I be? Home? Alone?”
“No, you should be with me.”
“Why? I’m not pregnant. You’re off the hook.”
“Our baby was never a hook!” he yelled.
“Maybe not to you.”
His eyes turned to steel. She couldn’t have shocked him more with a slap across the face. “When are you going to grow up?” he asked through clenched teeth.
“Whenever I damn well please.”
Dean swore under his breath, turned, and walked out of her life.
Now, a year and a half later…he was strolling back in.