“Just a few.”
Dawn listened carefully as he told her about each piece he’d bought, where he’d gotten it, how Sara had reacted to it. He had no idea how the poor woman could stomach his dull, one-sided conversation, but she took it in like an eager student trying to memorize information for a midterm. Dawn couldn’t possibly give a fig about how happy Sara had been on their first Christmas together when she’d opened the jewelry box shaped like a dolphin and found an engagement ring inside. In fact, he was pretty sure Dawn wanted to fling the pretty box with the mother of pearl inlay out the nearest window. That was what he would want to do if he were in her position, but she merely smiled at him.
“Very romantic of you,” she said. “I figured you were more the grand gesture type.”
“Is that what you’re expecting when a man proposes to you?” Not that he was planning on proposing any time soon, but her answer would reveal a lot about her, and he might need that information at a much later date.
“I’ll probably be the one to do the proposing,” she said. “I’m not a patient woman.”
He snorted. “You’re infinitely patient, Dawn. I don’t know how you can stomach listening to all my stories about Sara.”
“I want to understand her so I can understand you better.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re worth getting to know, and that makes her worth getting to know.”
She pointed at the wooden sculpture of a dolphin in the center of the top shelf. The teak had gathered dust, so it lacked the usual shine that accented the dark and light grain of the wood to perfection.
“What’s the story behind that one?”
“Her father gave her that when she graduated from high school.” He grinned. “Well, that and a car.”
“My father bought me a car when I graduated as well.”
“Was it a Prius?”
She flushed from the roots of her lovely red hair to the hint of cleavage at the open neck of her button-down shirt. He wondered if she also flushed in the places he couldn’t see.
“Uh, no. A Mercedes.”
He laughed. “I should have known.”
“I shouldn’t have accepted it, but it was so lovely.” She sighed as if enraptured.
“Why shouldn’t you accept his gifts? Your father has the means to give you nice things. You shouldn’t feel guilty about taking them.”
“I suppose not, but he isn’t the type who gives gifts without expectations. He uses them to pressure me into doing his bidding. He said that if I didn’t go to the University of Pennsylvania and major in business, he wasn’t going to pay my tuition and would take the car away.”
“So how did you end up at Curtis?”
She laughed. “That’s simple. I was good enough and it was free. Everyone who gets in automatically gets a full scholarship, so it didn’t matter that Daddy wasn’t paying my tuition. I earned it myself.”
“And the car?”
“He let me keep it when I wiped out on some girl’s bike and he got a call from the hospital.”
“Did you wipe out on purpose?”
She laughed and shook her head. “Now wouldn’t that have been fabulous if I had? But no. I’m sort of all legs, and my brain can’t seem to keep them coordinated.”
He had noticed how long and sexy her legs were, but had witnessed no signs of clumsiness. “I would never have guessed. When you walked in those heels of yours at the bar in New Orleans, I was the one tripping over myself.”
“Walking in heels took years of practice to perfect. I’m still working on the riding a bike thing.”
As far as he was concerned, walking in heels suited her far better than riding a bike, but then he was partial to those long legs of hers. Dawn held his gaze for a moment and then turned toward the case overflowing with Sara’s books. Damn if the back of her looked as spectacular as the front.
“Are these all hers?”
Kellen pulled his appreciative gaze from the curve of Dawn’s ass and turned it to the batch of books that had never interested him in the slightest. “Yes. She insisted on keeping up with her major even after she graduated.”
“So what did she do? As a career? Something with animals?” Dawn scanned the titles on multicolored book spines. “Or the environment?”
“She’d just started working for some PhD at UT doing research on the long-term effects of the Gulf oil spill on crabs or oysters or something when I found that lump in her breast.”
Dawn’s head swiveled in his direction. Her eyes were wide with surprise. “You found the lump?”
“We used to joke around that if I’d been less of a gentleman and felt her up sooner, I might have saved her life.”
Dawn’s brow crumpled. “That’s an awful responsibility to place on yourself.”
It was. He hadn’t really ever thought of it that way. And Sara had been so distraught about her diagnosis that she probably hadn’t considered how it had made Kellen feel to think he might have saved her if he’d been more diligent.
“Do you mind if I ask about her illness?” Dawn asked. “I know you don’t like to dwell on it, and I won’t blame you if you don’t want to discuss it, but I’m curious.”
“You can ask,” he said. “I don’t have to answer.”
“How long did she suffer?”
He bit his lip, a huge lump forming in his throat. That had been the worst of it. Sara had suffered, and though she’d fought to live, she’d lost her battle, so the suffering had been for nothing.
“I . . .” He swallowed. He’d lost his ability to speak.
“Forget I asked,” Dawn said, squeezing his hand. “What else happy can you tell me about her?”
Kellen was already getting tired of talking about Sara. He turned and bumped his shin on a chair next to the bookshelf, trying not to dwell on the memory of pulling the thing out of someone’s roadside trash heap at Sara’s insistence, stuffing it into the trunk of his Firebird, and later helping her reupholster the hideous burnt-orange monstrosity. It wasn’t even a comfortable chair, but it was a recycled chair, so Sara had loved it.
“Let’s go for a walk on the beach before it gets dark,” he said as he stepped around the chair.
“It won’t get dark for hours,” Dawn said with a smile.
“I’m expecting I’ll need an exceptionally long walk to clear my head. Don’t you like to walk on the beach?”
“I love to, but I want to ask something of you first, and I won’t take no for answer.”
He loved the spark of mischief in her eyes almost as much as the challenge she presented.
“What?”
“Kiss me.”
“Every five steps up the beach,” he promised, walking backward toward the door and urging her forward by the hand he still held. “And every three steps back.”
“Okay, but that’s not my request.”
She was so wonderful to him, so caring and understanding and patient—how could he refuse her anything?
“Kiss me right here. In Sara’s living room.”
He could refuse her after all. “No.”
She tugged her hand free of his and turned back to the room. He’d almost had her to the door. Almost.