That First Special Kiss

“Are you saying you aren’t still besotted?”

With wide eyes and a broad smile, Brynn patted his arm. “I am still most definitely besotted,” she assured. Then, without pausing, she asked, “What about you, Kelly? Are you besotted with Cameron North?”

“No,” she said firmly. “I am not besotted, infatuated or in any other way taken with Cameron. He’s a friend, that’s all. And I don’t think he should have to take all the blame for a relationship that was always destined to fail.”

She, Kelly assured herself, was not besotted with anyone. And she would just as soon keep it that way for now.

The talk turned to other topics, and inevitably Joe turned onto the road that led to the Walker ranch. The closer they came, the more tension Kelly felt building inside her. She had practically thrown Shane out of her apartment Sunday evening. She hadn’t heard from him since. Would the awkward incident cause him to treat her differently today than usual? Would the others notice, and wonder why?

She had her answer as soon as she climbed out of the car. “Hey, Kelly! Heads up,” she heard Shane yell.

She turned, and was nearly hit in the face with a football. She caught it at the last moment, using reflexes she hadn’t known she had.

“Shane!” His aunt, Michelle, who had seen the incident as she’d hurried to greet Brynn, Joe and Kelly, scolded him as if he were seventeen rather than ten years older. “You nearly hit Kelly in the face with that ball. She could have been hurt.”

“Not Kelly,” Shane answered with an impudent grin. “She moves pretty fast when she wants to.”

“Besides which,” Kelly replied, deciding to follow his lead with joking, “if you had hit me in the face, I would have made you eat this football.”

Michelle’s eleven-year-old son, Jason, laughed. “She sounds pretty scary, Shane. You’d better watch our.”

“She is scary,” Shane answered with a laugh, taking the football back from Kelly and then ruffling her hair. “But I like her, anyway.”

“Me, too,” Jason’s little sister, Katie, who’d been tagging behind the others, declared. She threw her arms around Kelly’s legs and beamed up at her. “Kelly’s nice.”

“Thank you, Katie.” Kelly was touched by the six-year-old’s ingenuous gesture. “I like you, too.”

“Do you like Shane?”

Kelly briefly met Shane’s eyes, finding nothing there but amusement. If he even remembered the incident Sunday night, he wasn’t letting it show. “Yes, I like Shane, too,” she replied casually. Then added in a stage whisper to the little girl, “Most of the time.”

Katie giggled. Shane and Jason laughed aloud. And Kelly, relieved that everything seemed to be just the same as always, turned to help Brynn and Joe unload the food they had brought with them for the Thanksgiving celebration.

Chapter Five

During the first twenty minutes after they arrived, Kelly, Brynn and Joe were greeted by a dizzying number of family members. Though the six surviving Walker siblings had been orphaned and separated as small children, they had become very close during the years that had passed since they’d found each other again. All six had married and had produced a total of fourteen offspring—not counting Brynn, the daughter of the one brother who hadn’t survived for the reunion. All but one sister, Lindsay Grant, lived near Dallas, Texas. Lindsay and her family lived in neighboring Arkansas, but visited as often as their busy schedules allowed.

Everyone had been able to attend this Thanksgiving Day gathering, which meant there was total chaos at the Walker ranch—adults talking, laughing and good-naturedly arguing, children running, squealing and occasionally crying, dogs barking and horses whinnying. No one there would have had it any other way.

The traditional Thanksgiving fare of turkey and all the trimmings—side dishes provided potluck-style by the guests—was served on the tree-shaded back lawn, where several long tables and plenty of folding chairs had been set up. The weather had cooperated nicely; it was sunny and warm enough that a sweater or light jacket was all anyone needed. An occasional breeze toyed with the crisp white tablecloths and carried the tantalizing aromas of the food and the more delicate scent of the masses of fall flowers Cassie had used for centerpieces.

It had always seemed natural for the young singles in the family to cluster together. Shane, the eldest at twenty-seven, usually held court at the “singles table.” He did the same on this day, insisting that Kelly take the chair at his right. His cousins, the Samples siblings, joined them—twenty-one-year-old Dawne and eighteen-year-old Keith, both college students, and Brittany, a fifteen-year-old high school sophomore. There was a newcomer at the table this year, sixteen-year-old Emilio Ramirez, a foster son of Shane’s Aunt Lindsay and her husband, Dr. Nick Grant.

Painfully shy and recently orphaned, Emilio seemed a bit dazed by the pandemonium of the Walker Thanksgiving celebration. It took Shane less than twenty minutes to have the young man joining shyly in the conversation, looking almost happy to be there.

“He’s something else, isn’t he?” Dawne murmured into Kelly’s ear.

Kelly turned to the young woman beside her. “Who?”

“Shane.” Dawne nodded toward her cousin, who was practicing his rather rusty Spanish, to Emilio’s obvious amusement. “He’s already got that boy feeling like a member of the family.”

“Shane’s very good at putting people at ease,” Kelly agreed quietly. “I remember the first time he visited me in the hospital. He was a complete stranger to me, but he’d heard about the accident and he thought I might be lonely and afraid, so he and Jared stopped by to visit when they made a trip into Dallas for supplies. By the time they left, I felt like I’d known them for ages.”

“I have to admit, I adore Shane,” Dawne said with a sigh. “It’s just too darned bad he’s my cousin. Sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever meet a guy as special as he is.”

“Of course you’ll meet someone,” Kelly assured the wholesomely attractive college senior.

“When I do, I hope he’s just like Shane. Sweet and funny and kind and good-natured. He loves kids and animals and little old ladies. Have you ever even seen him lose his temper?”