Claimed by the Rebel: The Playboy's Plain Jane / The Loner's Guarded Heart / Moonlight and Roses. Jackie Braun
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thought of his parents. Maybe marriage burned everyone, given enough time. Which was why, for the past year, he’d been intent on not getting serious, not committing, not caring. Katie needed to learn just that. You could still live, without risking your heart. He bet he could have made her laugh. He bet he could show her laughing again didn’t have to mean hurting again.
If he was so determined to tangle his life with hers a little more deeply it occurred to him it was going to require more of him than he had required of himself before. He would actually have to think a bit about her, not just about himself. He would have to be a better man.
Right there at Doofus’s, with the tang of beer in the air, and pool balls clacking, Dylan McKinnon had an epiphany.
This is what his sister had tried to tell him: that he could be more. That he had not expected enough of himself. That to get a decent girl to even have dinner with him he had to be a decent man, someone capable of putting another person’s interests ahead of his own, capable of venturing out of a place where he risked nothing.
His sister had seen a painful truth. Dylan McKinnon was known as being fearless. But in the area of caring about other people, he was not fearless at all.
He was not the man his mother would have wanted him to be.
So, it was a good thing Katie hadn’t shown. Because that type of total attitude shift was the type of thing a man wanted to think about long and hard before he committed to it. Dylan didn’t want to be a better man. He liked the man he was just fine. As far as erasing that flit of sorrow from the flower lady’s eyes, he was the wrong man for the job.
“Rack ’em, Rafe. Cy, bring everyone a drink.”
“What are we celebrating?” Cy asked, suspiciously.
“Freedom,” Dylan said, remembering he’d ordered the kiss-off bouquet for Heather today, too.
That announcement was followed by some serious whistling and whooping.
But for all that he tried, and hard, to catch the mood of his own celebration, in the back of his mind a single word worried him.
Terrified.
And he just wasn’t giving up on her that easily. Not even, damn it, if it did require that he be a better man.
The fact that a bright bouquet of flowers awaited him on his desk when he arrived the next morning only made him more determined. He flicked the card open.
“Sorry I couldn’t make it last night, Love K.”
Well, at least he’d taught her something in the year he’d known her!
He sat down and thought. Obviously, a burger at a sports bar had limited appeal to Katie. He’d always been able to count on his own appeal to convince women to take a leap out of their comfort zone, but Katie just wasn’t most women. He needed a Plan B.
What would be irresistible to her? It was humbling to realize for Katie it was not him! Dylan McKinnon had become accustomed to being irresistible to women!
Whether she knew it or not, Katie had thrown down the gauntlet.
He was going to help her get back in the swing of things whether she liked it or not! To prove to his sister he could be a decent guy. Or maybe to prove it to himself.
By midafternoon he had two tickets to the most sought after event in Canada—the NHL All-Star hockey game.
He went into her store. She glanced up, looked back down hurriedly. She was blushing. “Sorry I couldn’t make it last night. Something came up.”
“What?”
She glared at him, annoyed he was rude enough to push. “Sanity.”
He reminded himself, firmly, of his goal. One outing, or two, to make her feel attractive. Confident. Happy. To be who he guessed she once had been. He’d just help her get her feet wet again, so she didn’t end up a tragic cat lady.
He guessed she had never been gorgeous, but lovely in some way that transcended whatever the current trend or fad was. She’d always had a way of holding herself that had seemed proud, as if she was above caring what others thought.
He’d just be a knight, for once in his life, show her that she didn’t have to roll over and die since her marriage had failed.
Looking at her, he realized she seemed to have worked extra hard at not being attractive today. The dress was billowing around her like a tent city, and her hair was pulled back a little too tightly from her face. Not a scrap of makeup, though now that he’d noticed her lips he realized she didn’t really need it.
“Thanks for the flowers,” he said.
“You were supposed to think it was funny.”
“Ha-ha,” he said.
She glared at him again. That was more like it, the green suddenly dancing to life in those multicolored eyes, snapping with color.
“So what can I do for you today?” she said. “Heather has been history for a full twelve hours or so. Someone else on the radar?”
If he told her she was on the radar, she’d run. He wouldn’t catch her until Alaska, and then she’d probably throw herself into the Bering Sea and start swimming. It was an unusual experience for him to be having this kind of reaction from someone of the female persuasion.
“Um, no. I’m going to take a break for a while.”
She was punching flowers into some sort of foam thing, but she lifted her eyes, looked at him, squinted.
“Uh-huh,” she said, skeptical and not even trying to hide it.
“Here’s what I was thinking. Maybe while I took a break, you could do a few things with me. Like the All-Star Game next weekend in Toronto.”
Getting tickets to that game was like winning a lottery, and he waited for her face to light up. Maybe she’d even come around the counter and give him a hug!
He was a little surprised by how much he would like to be hugged by Katie.
But instead of her face lighting up, she stabbed herself in the pad of her thumb with a rose thorn, glared at it, distracted.
“The what?” She stuck her thumb in her mouth and sucked. She really did not have to wear lipstick. Even watching her suck on that thumb was almost erotic. That was impossible! Look how the girl was dressed. He had just finished dating Miss Hillsboro Bikini, and never once felt the bottom falling out of his world like this.
Well, impossible or not, there was no denying how he was reacting.
“Haven’t you got a Band-Aid?” he suggested, just a bit too much snap in his voice.
“Oh, it’s just a little prick. They happen all the time. So, what kind of game is it you have tickets for?” she asked.
“Hockey,” he said. Obviously she was in a completely different world than him if she didn’t know that! “Canada’s national game,” he supplied when she looked blank. “Our passion, our pastime, our reason to be, during the long months of winter. You know the game?”
She took her thumb out of her mouth, thank goodness, went back to her flower arrangement. “Oh.”
She wouldn’t sound so unenthused if she knew what it took to get those tickets!
“The best players from the Western and Eastern Conferences get together and play each other. Every great player in the league on the ice at the same time.” He began to name names.
She looked as if what he was discussing was about as interesting as choosing between steel-cut and quick cook oats for breakfast.
“Everybody wants tickets to that game,” he snapped, feeling his patience begin to wane. He was being a knight, for goodness’ sake. Why was she having such difficulty recognizing that?
“Oh,”