Solitude Creek (Kathryn Dance 4)

He rose. "Here's my plan and I think it's a good one. Come back every couple of weeks, keep an eye on my house, visit friends. Hack some code with Wes, come to some of Maggie's recitals. And--if you make the decision you ought to make--you and Michael can have me over to dinner. And--if I make the decisions I ought to make--I imagine I'll meet somebody and bring her along with me. And you can hire me to perform my cogent forensic analysis, though I have to say that the CBI's outside vendor pay rate is pitiful."

"Oh, Jon..."

She laughed through the tears.

They walked to the door and embraced.

"I do love you," he said. And touched her lips with his finger, saving her from a stick-figure response. With a rub of Dylan's sleek muzzle, Jon Boling stepped through the front doorway and, for all intents and purposes, out of her life.

Dance returned to the Deck, sat back in the chair, embraced by the damp chill she hadn't been aware of earlier. Embraced too, far more strongly, by Jon Boling's absence. She slipped the repaired watch on and stared at the face while the second hand made a full circuit, just visible in the amber light from a maritime sconce mounted on the wall above and behind her.

Then she closed her eyes and sat back, as Michael O'Neil's words, from forty minutes earlier, came back to her now.

"So, here's the thing. I've thought about this for months, and tried to figure out some other way to say it."

Kathryn Dance had readied herself for ex-wife Anne's name to rear itself in the next sentence.

"I know you're with Jon now. He's a good guy and I've seen you both together. It clicks. The kids like him. That's important. Real important. He'll never hurt you."

She'd wondered: Where was this going? These words, amounting to rambling from Michael O'Neil, were disorienting. Why was he justifying to her his getting back together with his ex?

His eyes fixed on the ugly yellow ceramic cat, he'd continued, "I was saying, months and months. But there's no way except meeting it head-on. I don't think you're going to want to hear it but I've--"

"Michael."

"I want to get married."

Remarried to Anne? she'd thought. Why the hell ask my permission?

Then he added, "You can say no. I'll understand. You can say Jon's in your life forever. But I have to ask."

Oh, my God. Me. He's proposing to me.

"I thought Anne was back," she'd said. Well, stammered.

He'd blinked. "Anne? Sort of, I guess. She and her boyfriend are getting a small place in the Carmel Valley. She knows she hasn't been the best mother. She's resolved to change that and's going to spend a lot more time with the kids. I was proud of her." He'd given a shallow laugh. "Anne has nothing to do with us. You and me."

"Oh, my," Dance had whispered. Her eyes too fell on the jaundiced feline sculpture squatting on her desk. It had never been examined as much as in the past three minutes.

Now, sitting on the chill Deck she recalled perfectly O'Neil's next words: "So there, I've said it. Will you marry me?" He looked her over closely. "You know, I'm thinking after all these years knowing you, working with you, I don't believe I've picked up a lick of kinesics. I have no idea what you're thinking."

And Dance had risen from her office chair and walked around the desk to O'Neil. He too rose.

She'd said, "Sometimes, it's better to leave kinesics out of it. And stick with words. Well, one word." She'd put her arms around him and, her mouth close to his ear, gripped him as tightly as she could. And answered his question. "Yes," Kathryn Dance said. "Yes."