Kayla’s night wasn’t as busy as the evening before, and she filled the quiet time with double-checking the numbers in the system. She couldn’t justify leaving the front and going back to Crystal’s office since she was the only one there, but she checked everything in the system she could.

The program had a very easy report view that showed her everything she needed for now. She went over every line since the beginning of the year and calculated that this year alone, there was close to ten thousand dollars missing.

That was more than half of what had been brought in by the yoga classes so far. Which, if Crystal’s deal with Joe was correct, would have been fine. But, according to the program, almost twenty thousand had already been allotted for that purpose. Meaning, Joe had already gotten his cut before the other money had gone missing.

She didn’t like jumping to conclusions, but it looked like the man was scamming Crystal. Still, she knew better than to go straight out and accuse someone without proof.

Starting next week, she was going to have the time to get her hands on all the documents she needed. Maybe there was some proof in Crystal’s office. Until then, she decided to keep her thoughts to herself. It wouldn’t do her any good to accuse the man who may or may not be sleeping with her boss.

When she walked in the front door at Crystal’s place, she knew instantly that Rowan was somewhere around the house. Most likely, holding her sleeping son or sitting next to him.

She met Crystal at the base of the stairs.

“How did it go tonight?” Crystal asked.

“Wonderful. How was your day at the beach?” She glanced around, eager to see her son.

“Connor had a blast. We saw several gray seals.” She chuckled. “If you want to get a kick, ask Connor to tell you what else we saw on the beach.”

“Oh?” Kayla smiled. “I guess I’ll have to ask. Is he…?”

“In the library with Rowan. I left them in there to play. The pair of them are quickly becoming inseparable.”

“Tell me about it.”

“I don’t know who depends on whom, but it’s nice seeing them together like that.” Crystal sighed. “Well, I’m heading up. I have an early class.”

“Thank you.”

“For?”

“Everything.” She shook her head, not knowing which words to use.

Crystal walked over and laid a hand gently on her face. “Honey, your smile and that boy’s laughter is all the thanks I ever need.”

She was silent as the woman turned and climbed the stairs.

Kayla set her bags down at the base of the stairs and made her way back into the library. There, in one of the big chairs where she’d curled up and read her book, sat Rowan holding her son.

The man’s head was rolled back so that all she could see was his chin, covered in a light dusting of stubble, and his Adam’s apple.

Connor was curled up in a tight ball. His head rested on Rowan’s shoulder, and the thumb from his good arm was stuck in his mouth.

She knew she had to break him from sucking his thumb, but he only did it in his sleep, and she didn’t quite know how to go about stopping him. She had read an article that suggested putting tabasco sauce on his fingers before he fell asleep, but she just couldn’t bring herself to do that and figured he’d outgrow it sooner or later.

She moved silently across the room and when she shifted her son out of Rowan’s lap, the man’s head jerked forward.

A low groan escaped his lips as his hands moved up to rub his neck.

“You okay?” she asked, trying to hold in a giggle.

There had been plenty of nights when Connor was younger when she’d fallen asleep in such a position. Kids were a pain in the neck in both the figurative and literal sense.

“Yup,” he said as he rolled his head on his shoulders. “Remind me to never do that again,” he said as she set her son gently down on the sofa.

She moved around to the back of the chair. “Here, let me help you.”

When she started to rub his shoulders and neck, another moan escaped him.

“You’re very up tight,” she said, feeling the tense muscles running down the back of his neck and onto his shoulders.

Just having her hands on his broad shoulders caused her body to react. Her eyes moved over to the sleeping boy laying a few feet away and she reminded herself to be good.

“It probably didn’t help that I had you out in the yard working all day too.”

“I enjoy working outside. Of course, my yard doesn’t take half the time it did today.”

“You do your yard work yourself?”

“Sure, I started mowing yards to make money when I was nine.” She felt his muscles start to relax as he talked about his summer jobs.

“How did you and Lori get together?” she asked after he finished telling her about all the odd jobs he had grown up doing.

He laid a hand over hers to still them.

“I guess we didn’t have a lot in common.” He pulled until she came around the chair. Then he surprised her by tugging until she fell across his lap. “Sometimes two people don’t need a lot in common to get along.”

She tilted her head and thought about their differences. There had always been a list of items blocking them from one another.

Not just age. Now that they weren’t in school, the three years between them wasn’t really a factor.

He’d finished top of his class, had been valedictorian, MVP in football, baseball, and basketball, and had been the most popular boy in his class.

She, on the other hand, had barely passed ninth grade. Of course, Lori’s death and her father’s leaving had dealt a large blow to her schoolwork. She hadn’t been in any sports and had been one of the least popular kids in her grade.

“It looks like you’re overthinking things,” he said softly.

“Am I?” She tilted her head and leaned back slightly. “You know where you’re going. What you want out of life. I…” She shook her head.

“Have plenty of time to figure it out.” He reached up and brushed a strand of her blonde hair away from her face.

“You have everything together. I’m a mess.”

He chuckled. “Who says I have it all together?”

“You know what I mean. You have a house, a job.” She took a deep breath. “Your family is… perfect.”

“Nobody’s family is perfect. Did you know that my cousin doesn’t even call Crystal Mom? She calls her Crystal. My parents left me this house only because they didn’t want to overhaul it themselves. I spent most of the first two years making sure the roof didn’t fall in on top of me or the faulty wiring didn’t cause the whole thing to go up in smoke.”

“You did a wonderful job.”

“Thank you. But we’re not perfect. I’m not perfect.”

“From where I’m sitting… you sure look it.” She didn’t know what caused her to say those words.

His hand moved up to her hair again and this time, instead of brushing a strand away, he pushed his fingers into her hair and pulled her head closer to his.

“You smell like honeysuckles.” His eyes searched hers. “We may have our differences, but there’s some serious chemistry between us.”

She didn’t trust her voice so she nodded her head instead.

“Why don’t we start with that and see where things go?”

He let her make the move. She leaned forward until their lips brushed. She felt his hands tighten briefly in her hair before moving down her neck and shoulders.

“I told myself this wasn’t a good idea,” she said against his lips.

“Why? From where I’m sitting, it’s the best damn idea I’ve had all year.”

She laughed and pulled back. “That’s easy for you to say. You don’t have…” Her eyes moved over to the sofa.

Rowan frowned. “CJ has nothing to do with this.”

“He’s my son. He has everything—”

Rowan stopped her by placing a finger gently over her lips. “When we’re like this, it’s just us. I love that kid and enjoy spending as much time with him as possible, but when I’m kissing you, I’m not thinking about the kid.”

She nodded. “Okay, I’m not either, but I can’t simply keep him out of my mind all the time.”

“Of course not.” Rowan took a deep breath. “Tell you what. After our date on Monday, what do you say we spend the day together on Tuesday. Just the three of us.”

Kayla’s eyebrows shut up. “Don’t you have work?”

He chuckled. “The perks of being your own boss.” He shifted and brought her closer. “That and the fact that I haven’t taken a day off in almost a full year.” He kissed her again.

* * *

If Kayla kept rubbing her soft body against his like she was doing now, he was going to have a tough time walking back across the street to his own house.

He knew he had to slow things down, but that didn’t stop him from enjoying the motion of her lips stilling softly under his.

“I’ll carry the kid up,” he said into her hair. “That is if I can stand.”

She chuckled and wrapped her arms around his shoulders. “I can’t feel my legs.” She sighed next to his ear.

“Good, then I was doing it right.”

Another chuckle had him closing his eyes with the sweet sound.

“Okay, seriously. I’m suffering here.” He shifted in the chair. “Do you know how hard it is not to carry you upstairs right now?”

She pulled back and slowly got off his lap. The look in her eyes and the smile on her lips told him she did know how hard everything was.

He took a couple cleansing breaths before picking up the sleeping kid and following Kayla up the stairs to deposit the boy in his bed.

“He sleeps like a rock.” He set the kid down as Kayla started putting Superman pj’s on the limp boy.

“Yeah, he gets it from me,” she said absently as she worked.

“That cast should be coming off in a few weeks. It’s not giving him any problems, is it?”

“No, he likes this one better than the first one. I think his arm grew, and the first one was too tight.”

When she was done changing the kid and tucking him in, he took her hand and pulled her out of the dark room.

He didn’t stop tugging her until they sat on the long bench under the windows on the stair landing.

“I know I asked this before, but how did he break his arm?”

She glanced down at her hands. “He fell.” She repeated the simple words again.

“Kayla, I’ve been a doctor for a few years now. Before having my own practice, I worked in the ER in Chicago. I’ve seen a lot of different breaks.”

He was silent, since he decided he’d let her tell him what he knew already in his professional opinion.

“He did fall,” she said slowly, “but he was pushed first. Chad isn’t… has never been patient.”

“Is that why you left?” he asked. He’d already guessed what had happened, and he’d thought of a million ways to seriously maim the man.

“No, I was leaving before… We had already packed up to go.”

“What happened?”

She shifted and he allowed her to get more comfortable.

“Like I said, I met Chad one night while I was going out with some girlfriends in New York. The school term had just finished and we were celebrating.” She shook her head. “We had what I thought was a one-night-stand, my first. But he’d gotten my phone number, I guess when I was asleep. He started calling and texting me and, at first, I thought it was sweet. Then I found out I was pregnant.” She tucked her legs under her and continued. “He persuaded me to move to Florida. His family was well established down there and he convinced me they would pay for everything. That we could get married and he’d take care of me and the baby.”

“What happened next?” he asked after she was silent for a moment.

“I quit school, took my refund for the canceled classes, and drove with him to Miami. When we got there, his parents… refused to allow me in their house. They argued with Chad while I sat out in the hot car, watching and listening to them. So, we left, and I checked into a hotel while he drove back to finish the conversation with his family. He didn’t return until the following day. Then he put a deposit down on an apartment for us. He told me he was trying to smooth things out with his folks and that it would be best if I stayed at the apartment until he could get things worked out.”

He watched her face as she talked. She was lost in the memory and he hated the sadness that consumed her.

“When it was time for me to give birth, I took a taxi to the hospital. Chad showed up three hours after Connor was born.”

“Son of a…”

Her eyes snapped to his and a smile played on her lips. “Yeah. He showed up in a very expensive tux and told me he’d been at a charity dinner with his folks. He told me he was so close to persuading them to let me move in with them. At that point, I’d only seen him once a week, if that. He’d stopped paying for the apartment, which meant I had to get a job. Being pregnant and working had taken its toll on me. I was too tired to argue with him when he showed up and demanded things from me. I didn’t have the energy to argue with him or even to deal with asking him questions. Instead, I became zombie-like. That was until Connor was born. I had been on welfare since my minimum wage job wouldn’t pay for childbirth. I had signed up for every government assistance program I could get my hands on.” She smiled. “Thank goodness they were available to me. Of course, it always sucked having to explain that your baby’s father was a deadbeat and that you didn’t even know if he had a job since he didn’t tell you anything.”

“How long did this go on?”

“Until a month ago,” she answered.

“What changed?”

“I got a visit. From Chad’s new wife.”

“What?” Rowan sat forward.

She smirked and laughed. “Yeah, apparently, Chad had gotten married almost a full year earlier to someone his parents had approved of. The woman showed up at my door demanding to know who I was and why her husband had taken an Uber driver to see me. I didn’t know what to say. The real shocker was, she got in my face like I was the other woman. Which was funny, because she hadn’t even met Chad before we came to Florida. Then she threw the last straw in my face and told me that she was pregnant. She warned me that if I didn’t want to get sued, I’d leave the apartment now since her husband was paying for the place, which he wasn’t. He’d stopped giving me any money just before Connor was born. After, he only came around to the apartment once a week. The entire time he promised me that his parents were close to changing their minds and that we could get married soon and he would have the money for us to live. The funny thing was, I’d stopped believing him years ago.”

“Why did you stay?”

“For Connor. I didn’t want my son to grow up without a father.”

“How did he break his arm?”

“After Chad’s new wife left, I packed everything I could into the car. I guess the building manager noticed and called Chad because before we could drive away, he showed up. We had a big fight and he pushed me.” She closed her eyes. “It wasn’t the first time he’d laid a hand on me.” He could tell she was battling with her own feelings about her past. “Connor saw it from the doorway and rushed forward. He hit and kicked Chad, yelling at him to leave his mommy alone.” A tear fell down her face and he gathered her close. “Chad turned and put his hands on Connor’s head and just… pushed.” Her breath hitched. “I can still hear the sound of his arm breaking.” She leaned her head against his shoulder. “I gathered him up and rushed out of the apartment. I drove to the hospital. After they put the cast on, we checked into a hotel and stayed there until I decided to come home.”