But those instincts were also telling her to leave well enough alone. As long as the man kept his word where her boys were concerned, she had no interest in him, whatsoever.
“Have dinner with me sometime,” he said.
He was walking a step behind her in the parking lot. Valerie didn’t turn around. Didn’t answer.
She stopped at the Mercedes, her key in the lock.
“You didn’t give me an answer.”
She wondered which of the vehicles left in the lot was his. It couldn’t be the Corvette. Not on a crossing guard’s salary. Which meant it was either the beater in the corner that looked like a combination of a couple of different cars. Or the Ford Taurus.
She couldn’t see him driving either one.
“No.”
“No, what?”
He was leaning on the outside of her open door.
“No, I won’t have dinner with you.”
He radiated confidence. The man had not learned how to look like that while standing on a street corner. As much as she wanted to, she couldn’t tear her gaze from his.
“Do you mean that?”
“No.”
She didn’t know where the word came from. She just knew she had to get out of there. Immediately.
Before she did something else that contradicted her position. She had no intention of having dinner with him, yet she’d just undermined her own refusal.
Kirk Chandler had an alarming habit of getting that reaction from her.
Forcing herself to look away, she slid into her car and drove off.
It wasn’t until she was halfway home that she realized she still didn’t know which of those cars he’d been driving.
THE GRANITE TOMBSTONE shone bright in the afternoon sun. Kirk pulled at the grass around its edges, but there was really no need. Sunny Acres’ landscaping was immaculate, as always. Reaching over to prune a slightly browned petal from the sprig of baby-pink roses he had delivered there every Friday morning, he fought back the helplessness that plagued him every single day.
This was a lesson he’d learned the hard way. One that had irrevocably changed his life. There was no going back. No closing the door on a knowledge he didn’t want. Or wished he’d had ten years sooner.
He didn’t really know why he’d come today. Why, every single Saturday afternoon for the past two years, he hadn’t missed a date with his little girl. He was rubbing salt in a wound that would never heal. Keeping alive a regret that was already choking him.
And still he came. In spite of the self-loathing he always experienced here, Kirk had also come to know a level of peace as he tended to a child who no longer needed his attention. Pulling a paper towel from the back pocket of his jeans, he wiped off the top of the stone. In Arizona, dust could settle in a matter of minutes.
Then he stood. Blinked back an emotion he’d never thought himself capable of feeling, resigned now to its constant companionship.
“Sleep well, little angel,” he whispered, walking slowly away.
They were the only words he ever said to her.
ABE BILLINGS HUNG OUT at Sunny Acres sometimes. It was the only nearby place where no one would bother him.
Not many people liked to hang out at cemeteries.
As for Abe, he thought it was pretty cool. Here he was never alone. And no one ever did raunchy things. The way he saw it, the cemetery was as safe a place as he could find.
Pulling out the cigarettes he’d snitched from the pocket of a pair of pants that had been hanging on the outside knob of his mother’s bedroom door, Abe dug for the lighter, then slung his backpack over his shoulder. A year ago he’d