A dark look clouded Kyle’s face. Shayna’s nerve threatened to desert her, but she couldn’t quit now. He needed to face this truth, and she bet he didn’t have anyone else in his life who’d dare force him into it.
“A big, stocky guy,” she continued, working hard to keep her voice cool, free of the sympathy she knew Kyle would despise. “A bully who terrorized his son, picked on him for being a late bloomer with a big heart. And poor kid, he probably loved that son of a bitch once upon a time, until it was beaten out of him.”
“Stop. Now.” His jaw clenched so tight she could see the veins running down his neck.
Praying she’d correctly judged his character and his inherent opposition to violence, she pressed on. “Against the odds, that kid survived with his inner goodness intact, but in order to insulate himself from the past, he vowed to be as different from that horrible beast as possible. His solution-his salvation-became money. Money, power and prestige. Those were the keys to freedom, to safety. To happiness. But it didn’t work, did it?”
Tentatively, she reached up and cupped his cheek, her thumb caressing the galloping pulse in his neck. “No matter how much you achieve, you can’t shake that scared little boy. Isn’t that what you told me?”
The resentment and sorrow that had stiffened Kyle left as quickly as they had come. His body sagged, the weight of his head resting against her palm. Touched by his grief and awed by the fact that he trusted her enough to reveal such vulnerability, she feathered a light kiss over his lips before escorting him to the bleachers. With a gently insistent tug on his hand, she sat them both on the bottom riser.
Giving him a measure of privacy while keeping his hand sandwiched between hers, she focused straight ahead and waited. She could feel the rise and fall of his chest, hear the sounds of his breathing as he struggled to regain control.
When he finally spoke, his voice had a rusty, ragged edge that nearly broke her heart. “I hated him.” He didn’t look at her, but his fingers tightened against hers. “I used to jump through hoops trying to please him, but nothing ever worked. Eventually, I quit trying. Then he got arrested for grand theft. They gave him two years and processed me into the system. Foster care was ten times worse than living with the old man. Always feeling like a charity case, knowing people only took me in for the money. It made me feel like a thing.”
Knowing there was only so much demon-facing a person could handle at once, she decided to deflect the conversation from his past. Besides, she needed to make a point, and she figured Kyle was finally in the right frame of mind to listen.
“Yeah, I remember that part. Before James took me in, I’d done a couple of stints in foster homes where I was just one of a dozen. Some of those people didn’t care about the kids, only their monthly payoff from the government.”
He inhaled audibly, turning on the bleacher to face her. She could see the realization on his face as her words sunk in.
“Yeah. It’s taken me a while to figure out, and now that I have, it seems so obvious. My brain understands your point about my having a right to that money and how much good I can do with it, but my heart just sees it as once more being valued as a commodity rather than a person.”
As it always did, talking about the past made her nervous, restless. Her left leg started to jiggle. “I was pretty near the giving-up point myself when James came along. He never cared about money. He sought custody because he loved me and wanted to take care of me, the way he knew Patty never had.”
He moved their joined hands to her lap, the pressure of his touch stilling her jerky movements. “You were lucky to have someone like him come along and rescue you.”
“He did more than just rescue me. He gave me a real life. He got rid of sad, scared, unloved Shayna Hoyt and created Shayna Miller, a happy, safe, cherished
“That’s exactly why you have to accept Walker’s deal. It’s the only way to make sure Patty won’t paint James as a villain.”
“I’ll admit that part of this deal does tempt me.”
He pulled his hand from her grasp and cupped her cheeks, angling her face to his. “You really aren’t tempted by the money?” he ask incredulously.
“No. Not for myself. I’m happy with my life as it is. The temptation comes from how much I could help others, but if I accept the money under Walker’s conditions-” she squeezed her eyes closed and searched for words that would help him understand “-I’m just not sure I could live with myself if I abandoned my principles and went along with his story.”
“You may not have a choice.”
She nodded miserably as a tear slid down her cheek. “I know, and that scares me. Agreeing with Walker’s story means I’ll have to say goodbye to Shayna Miller and become scared, unloved, unwanted Shayna Hoyt again.”
Kyle’s thumb soothed away the fallen tear. “Shayna, I’ve met your friends, seen how this entire community adores you. Unloved and unwanted are two things you will never again be.”
His kind words, spoken with such warmth and sincerity, brought forth more tears. And a desire to be loved and wanted in a whole new way.
By him.
Chapter Twelve
Sniffling softly, Shayna excused herself and retreated to the ladies’ room. Alone in the large gym, Kyle removed his suit coat and laid it over the back of a folding chair. Once again she’d seen through all his bull and found the truth. And this time it was a truth he hadn’t even known himself and one he’d been enraged to have pointed out.
Not many men would have stood their ground when his temper was that hot, but Shayna had never flinched. The woman packed a lot of guts and courage and intelligence into one tiny, alluring little package. A package he wanted more than he’d ever wanted anything before-even that damned partnership.
“And hey, for your information,” Shayna called boastfully as she reentered the gym, breaking into his wayward thoughts. He was glad to see her tears and sadness were gone. “Just because I’m not driven by money doesn’t mean I’m an imbecile. I sold off fifty acres of timber to pay for that van, and if I want to buy another one in a decade, that land will be ready to clear again.”
Her spirited laugh tortured him. It was all he could do not to lay her out on the parquet floor and make love to her, here and now. He had to clear the lust out of his throat before he could respond. “I can’t tell you how relieved I am to hear you have such a stable savings plan.”
The lame joke was punctuated by a chirp from his BlackBerry. Incoming text message.
“So much for your vacation, huh?”
“I’ll just ignore it.”
“No way. Even if you don’t answer it, you’ll be thinking about it.”
“Must be such a drag, being right all the time.”
“Actually, I get quite a kick out of it,” she quipped, picking up a notebook full of scribbly notes.
He unclipped the phone and opened Roscoe Thomas’s concisely worded message.
Tension tightened his jaw. Once again, he’d become so entranced with Shayna that he’d lost track of the job he’d been sent here to do.
“Bad news?” she asked cautiously.
“Reality check. The senior partner wants an update regarding the appointment with your lawyer.”
“Oh, I’m afraid it’s not good news. I called this morning, but he’s out of town. Friday afternoon is the earliest appointment I could get.”
He knew the delay should frustrate him, but it didn’t. Another sign of how far his priorities had slipped.
He keyed in Friday’s date, and once the message was successfully sent, he turned off the phone and slipped it into the pocket of his discarded coat. “Then Dr. Walker will have no choice but to wait a few more days.”
“I don’t imagine he’s going to be very happy about that.”
“No, but as his lawyer, it’s my duty to make him understand the ramifications of coercing you into an agreement without allowing you ample opportunity to seek the advice of counsel.”
