Chapter Fifteen
At half past three in the morning, Dax sprang up the steps of his cottage with more energy than was reasonable.
Otto was lying outside the door, and he lifted his head as Dax approached. He did not, however, wag his tail as was his habit. “Don’t get your panties in a wad,” Dax said and opened the door. Otto slipped inside and halted just at the threshold so that Dax had to step over him. “Look, I know you don’t like it, but I’m entitled to be a man every now and again,” Dax said and bent down to scratch the dog’s head.
Otto wasn’t buying it. He sashayed off in the direction of his dog bed.
Dax went into the kitchen for a glass of water. He was parched after that magnificent romp. He looked out his window at the tiny bit of light glowing through Kyra’s kitchen window. He’d left her in her bed, wearing a T-shirt and some thong panties that she’d pulled on at the last minute. Her hair was all over the place—thick, rich, black Greek hair. He didn’t know if she was actually Greek, but that’s the way he thought of her now—a Greek goddess.
It had been a good evening. A spectacular evening. He was privately pleased to discover that he still knew how to ride that bike, but more than that, he was in awe of how he’d been moved by her response to him. She’d been all-in, an eager participant. He thought of how routine it had been between him and Ashley in the last year of their marriage, and the two trysts Dax had had since then were more about sex than anything else. But with Kyra . . . there had been something unexpected and intense about it. Dax wasn’t sitting on his invisible shelf high above the rest of the world any more. Tonight he’d tumbled right off and had landed in soft, gooey happiness.
He went to bed smiling.
Otto woke him the next morning, whining to go out. Dax stumbled out of bed and opened the door and was surprised to find Ruby. “How long have you been standing there?” he asked.
“I don’t remember.” Her hair was in a long braid down her back and she was wearing overalls. “Mommy said to tell you that, um . . . we’re, um . . .” She paused to pet Otto.
“Spit it out, kid,” Dax pressed her.
Ruby’s fingers began to flutter, and Dax realized he’d forgotten to mention the seizures to Kyra. He squatted down and touched Ruby’s face. “Wake up, Coconut.”
She blinked rapidly, then managed to focus on him. “Mommy said we’ll bring you something from the store if you want. Do you want ice cream?” she asked hopefully.
He laughed. “No. Tell your mom I’m good. I’ve got all that I need.”
“Not even ice cream?”
He couldn’t help his smile. “Yeah. I want some ice cream. What kind should I want?”
“Chocolate.”
“I want some chocolate ice cream.”
“Awesome!” she said, thrusting her fist in the air. She whirled around, leapt off the porch, and landed on all fours, then bounced up and began to race toward her house. “Mommy! He wants chocolate ice cream!”
Dax walked out onto the porch and looked over at Number Three. Kyra was standing on the steps. She waved. He waved back.
Yeah, he was going to like this. A lot.
As it turned out, Kyra didn’t have to work today, and they ended up in neighborly companionship during the afternoon. Ruby went back and forth between their cottages. Kyra brought Dax some iced tea she’d made. Dax finished a piece he was working on and put it in the truck, then invited Ruby to ride along to the John Beverly shop. Ruby was thrilled.
“You don’t have to do that,” Kyra said. She was wearing loose jeans and a gauzy white top and had her hair tied back with a bandana. She looked like she’d just walked back from the market on Mykonos Island and could not possibly have been more attractive to Dax.
“I know I don’t have to. But I need a helper, and you need to study.”
She smiled, her eyes sparkling with what he interpreted to be affection, and it rained glitter inside him.
“I’m making spaghetti for Ruby tonight. Will you at least let me feed you?”
“Meatballs?”
“Are you kidding? Of course meatballs. Did you think I was some sort of bizarre health nut?”
He laughed and couldn’t help himself—he stroked her cheek. “I think you’re a beautiful nut.”
“Stop it,” Kyra said sheepishly, blushing. But she was obviously pleased with the compliment—her smile was luminescent. She turned to go inside but said over her shoulder, “Hurry back, okay?”
Oh, he was going to hurry.
At John Beverly Home Interiors, Wallace eyed Ruby as she hopped out of the truck, then Dax. He frowned. “I wouldn’t let Janet see that child if I were you.”
“Too late,” Dax said and nodded toward the shop door. Ruby had already disappeared inside. She’d been chattering about bath toys since they left the cottages.
Wallace looked over the pull-up chair Dax had made. “We need more consoles,” he said as they went inside for the check. “The two we had sold before we could put them on the floor. You’re becoming quite the furniture guy around town, did you know that?”
“No,” Dax said.
He did not get to hear more about what a stud he was in the furniture field, because Janet met them at the door from the storeroom into the showroom, her hands on her hips. “Are you kidding me, Dax? What’s going on here?” she asked, jerking her thumb over her shoulder. “Isn’t that your neighbor’s little girl?”
“Ruby, put that down,” Dax said, and Ruby returned the candlestick to the display table. He shrugged and said, “She’s my helper.”
“Helper my ass,” Janet said. “I know what’s going on, Dax, I’m not stupid. You do know that Heather thinks you have a date Wednesday.”
Dax snorted. “I don’t think so—”
“You do. You told her you’d go.”
“I didn’t . . .” He sighed. “I didn’t tell her I would go. I was answering someone else when she asked me, and she misinterpreted—”
“She is counting on it, Dax. She bought a new dress!” Janet made it sound like Heather had donated her kidney to him.
Great. “Okay, Janet. I’ll handle it.”
“You better,” she said, pointing a finger at him.
He collected his check and Ruby and got away from Janet as fast as he could. As they headed home, he realized he would have to call Heather and break a date he’d never made. If he’d learned anything from this experience, it was that he would never, never let anyone set him up again. People tended to get a little bit too invested in it.
That evening there seemed to be a lot of chaos around the preparation of dinner. Kyra tried to cook and bathe Ruby at the same time, while Otto tried to take a bath with Ruby. Dax made himself useful by repairing a loose doorknob and a window that wouldn’t latch. Twice, he noticed Ruby’s seizures, but Kyra was talking and Ruby was talking, and Kyra seemed not to think much about it.
He figured she knew about them. Of course she did.
The spaghetti was standard fare, but the real treat was the conversation around the table and the delight with which Ruby squealed every time Otto would lick her. The dog had staked out his claim underneath the table, monitoring the floor closely for any food droppings.
Dax was a little surprised by how much he enjoyed the evening, but moreover, he was reminded of his truest desires. This was exactly the sort of scene he used to envision when he was married to Ashley. Somewhere along the way, he’d let that dream drift away from him and rarely thought of it now. This evening had brought it all back to him, and he realized that he still wanted it.
After dinner they played a game with Ruby until just before bedtime. As Kyra was putting the game away, Ruby had another petite seizure.
“Okay, come on,” Kyra said. She didn’t remark on the seizure, and honestly, Dax couldn’t say if she’d noticed it at all. He reminded himself to speak to her about it after Ruby was in bed. He sat on the couch and listened to their voices as Kyra read her daughter a story, and Ruby interrupted her with questions.
Was he crazy to be thinking about this long-term? Had he allowed himself to return to an old, but failed, fantasy? Maybe it wasn’t a fantasy. Maybe this thing between them could actually work. Dax felt a little foolish for even thinking about it after a couple of pseudodates with Kyra, but he was comfortable, and he was astonishingly happy. After all this time since Ashley had laid her bombshell on him and destroyed his good humor, he did not want to lose that.
He heard Ruby’s door close, and then Kyra appeared. She leapt across the tiny living room and landed on his lap, straddling him, and then began to kiss him.
“Hey,” he said between kisses. “There is something I need to tell you.”
Kyra lifted her head and stared down at him. “Already?”
He laughed. “It’s not bad.”
She sighed with relief. “For a minute there I thought I made you my signature spaghetti and meatballs and you were going to tell me it’s been swell, but.”
“Please,” he said gravely, “I would never do that on spaghetti night.”
She laughed. “So then what are you going to tell me?”
He kissed her again. “Just in case you should hear about it, I’m breaking a date with Heather I never made.”
She pushed herself up completely, bracing her hands against his chest. “With Heather, huh?”
He nodded. “We had a miscommunication, and she thinks I agreed to go. I didn’t.”
Kyra slid off his lap. “Hey, you don’t have to explain,” she said and pretended to pick up the game she’d already picked up. “I mean, I knew you were dating her, and we were having a ‘moment,’ so please don’t feel like you owe me any explanation.”
“Wait—what are you talking about?” he asked, feeling suddenly and annoyingly anxious.
“That’s what you called it, remember? A ‘moment.’ And I . . . I took that to mean that it’s mutually beneficial as long as it’s mutually beneficial.”
“That makes no sense. Who thinks that way? I never meant that.” He reached for her hand and made her drop the game box. “Does this,” he said, gesturing between the two of them, “feel like a ‘moment’ to you?”
“No. It feels like a thing,” she admitted. “Are we having a thing?”
He pulled her down onto his lap again. “What do you want it to be?”
Her gaze settled on his eyes. “I don’t know,” she said, then instantly shook her head. “No, that’s not really true. I do know. I want it to be a thing.”
Dax drew a deep breath. Before he could respond, she said, “Is that the wrong thing to say? I’m out of practice here, and I know I’m not supposed to jump the gun, and I know I’m supposed to be coy and play hard to get, but I want it to be a thing, Dax. I would really like to see where this goes between us, because I have a feeling it could be amazing. So if you don’t want it to be a thing, now is the time to pack your dog and go.”
He chuckled softly and ran his hand roughly over her head. “I want it to be a thing, too.”
Her eyes widened with delight. “You do?”
“Yes.”
“So . . . we’re a thing?”
“We’re a thing,” he said and smiled at the craziness of it all before he kissed her. He wrapped his arms around her, and he kissed her, and she sank into him and kissed him back.
They eventually and quietly made their way to her bedroom, and Dax found himself floating in that space between conscious thought and blissful release again. He didn’t know why her, what it was about Kyra Kokinos that drove him to such heights of pleasure, but the sex felt almost new again. It was different and exciting, and he was . . . damn it, he was falling for her. Plummeting, really.
The thing was, he thought later, when he’d untangled his arms and legs from her, that he was old enough and wise enough to know a good thing when he saw it, to know when someone’s pieces fit so well with his. Maybe the infatuation would fade away, but Dax didn’t care at the moment. He was enjoying this too much. He’d been dragged out of his cave and into sunlight, and he wasn’t going back in by overthinking it.
At a quarter ’til midnight, he reluctantly climbed out of her bed. He could see that Kyra was tired, and she had to work in the morning. He pulled on his jeans and T-shirt while she watched him with a sated smile on her face. “Oh, by the way,” he said casually, “I’ve been meaning to ask—I assume you’ve had Ruby’s seizures checked out?”
“Her what?”
Dax looked up from the buttoning of his jeans. “The absence seizures she’s been having.”
Kyra frowned and slowly pushed herself up. “What are you talking about?”
Dax gaped at her. Was it possible she didn’t know? “She has absence seizures,” he said. “Have you ever noticed how she sort of zones out? She does that finger thing,” he said, mimicking it.
“That’s a habit. I know she zones out, but she’s easily distracted, that’s all.”
Dax mentally congratulated himself for stepping into this with the finesse of a cow. He sank down on the edge of her bed as Kyra hastily donned her T-shirt. “Look, don’t be alarmed. These things are common with some kids. They check out for a few seconds. Most of the time, they don’t know it. Most of the time, they grow out of it.”
“You’re wrong,” she said, shaking her head. “I would know if Ruby was having seizures. How would you know, anyway?”
“I’ve been a medic and a paramedic, remember?”
Kyra stared at him. Then abruptly climbed out of her bed and stacked her hands on top of her head. “Oh shit! Are you kidding? That can’t be right—I thought it was a behavioral thing!”
“Don’t panic,” he said and tried to take her in his arms, but Kyra shook her head and batted his hand away. “It’s a childhood thing she’ll grow out of.”
“You said most of the time.”
Dax wondered why he’d said anything at all. “Like, ninety-nine point nine percent of the time,” he said reassuringly.
“And the point one percent?” she demanded.
“That’s why I asked. I just wanted to make sure you ruled out anything else, even though it is highly, highly unlikely that it’s—”
“My mother had a brain tumor and she died,” she said flatly. “I was twelve years old, and she died. And in the end, she had horrible seizures.”
What a clod he was, blurting that out without thought. “No,” he said sternly and took her by the arms, forcing her into his embrace. “No, no, no. If she had a brain tumor, you would know it. Calm down, Kyra. Just see her pediatrician, and he will put your mind at rest, I promise. There is nothing wrong with Ruby. She’s perfect.”
“She doesn’t have a pediatrician!” she said tearfully.
He leaned back to look at her.
Kyra shook her head. “I have this horrible insurance, and we moved here, and I haven’t done anything about it because my deductible is so high, and she’s been good, she’s been really good.” Tears were sliding down her cheeks now.
“Jesus,” he muttered. “I never meant to upset you. I assumed you knew. Look, we’ll make her an appointment. I made some furniture for a pediatrician here in Lake Haven. I’ll give her a call. It’s going to be fine, Kyra. Don’t worry, everything is fine.”
She nodded and sniffed back another sob.
“Promise you won’t freak out.”
She nodded again.
She could nod all she wanted, but when he left it was clear she wasn’t fine at all. She looked distant as she chewed on her bottom lip at her front door.
She was better the next morning when she dropped Ruby off, but still distracted. Dax tried to talk to her, but Kyra shook her head and pointed at Ruby.
“I understand,” he said. “I’ll make a phone call today and set you up, okay?”
“Thank you,” she said. “Thanks for everything.”
“Kyra—”
“Okay, pumpkin, I’m off to work,” she said and leaned down to her daughter. “You promise to mind everything Dax says, right?”
“Right!” Ruby said. “Bye, Mommy!” She turned from the door and dashed into the kitchen, calling for Otto.
Dax watched Kyra get into her car and drive away. She didn’t look back at him but seemed intent on the road ahead of her.
He watched her until he couldn’t see her any longer.
He put Ruby to work washing dishes. But she was six, and she was more interested in playing in the suds and revealing every thought in her head. When she was done, Dax had to mop the floor. While he was mopping, Ruby followed Otto outside and into a flower bed. She came back covered in streaks of dirt. Dax had to hose her down in the yard while she squealed with laughter. He let her dry off with Otto while he worked in the shed.
At lunchtime, he put her to work making sandwiches—an art form she really enjoyed and was horribly bad at—and then sat her down in front of an old TV with a roof top antenna. He didn’t have cable, and could only get one channel. So Ruby watched Days of Our Lives and seemed engrossed with it.
Dax took the opportunity to make a couple of calls. The first was to Heather.
“Hi!” she said with far too much cheer.
“Hi,” Dax said. “So, look,” he said and managed to end any hope of dating with all the panache of a caveman.
He next put in a call to the pediatrician he knew. She called him back within the hour and he explained his unusual request.
“Sure,” she said. “I’ll have my receptionist give you a call to schedule. Summer is slow—I’m confident we can get her in this week.”
“Thanks, Nora,” Dax said. “I really owe you.”
“Make me another beer box and we’re even,” she said laughingly.
He could make a rustic beer box in a single afternoon, and he would do it in exchange for this favor.
After lunch, Dax oiled some wood for a new project while Ruby dug up weeds with his trowel. His phone rang, and he gingerly fished it out of his pocket with two fingers. He looked at the display and groaned, then punched the phone icon. “What do you want, Stephanie?” he said gruffly.
“Hello to you, too,” Stephanie said, just as gruffly. “I thought you might like to know that Ashley is in labor.”
Dax’s heart seized. He turned away from Ruby and shoved a greasy hand through his hair, then grimaced and rubbed his fingers on his shirt. “She’s early. How long has she been in labor?”
“She’s only a week early. And she’s been having contractions a little over an hour. We just got to the hospital.”
“What am I supposed to do?” he asked, more to himself than to Stephanie.
“I don’t have time to help you figure it all out, Dax.”
“I meant, should I come now?” he asked curtly. The moment of dread had come—he couldn’t imagine anything worse than standing shoulder to shoulder with Stephanie as they watched his baby being born. And he could guarantee Stephanie wasn’t going to bow out of the experience. He would just have to shoehorn his way in.
“If you want, I’ll call you when she delivers,” Stephanie suggested, perhaps a little too hopefully.
Dax didn’t say anything. He felt a little woozy, like he’d been in the sun too long. It suddenly hit him—this was his baby. His baby. His boy.
“Dax?”
“She’s at Holy Name Medical Center?” he asked gruffly.
Stephanie sighed. “So you’re coming.”
“Of course I’m coming. This is my kid, Stephanie.”
“Fine,” she said irritably. “Yes, she’s at Holy Name.”
“I’ll be there as soon as I can,” he said and hung up.
He stalked off to the shed to calm down a little. He was momentarily distracted by the wall unit he was making for some socialite on the north end of the lake. “Rustic,” she’d said. “But not too rustic.” She’d touched her finger to his chest and smiled up at him.
“Not too rustic,” he’d repeated and had stepped far away from her reach. But now he noticed a gash in the pallet wood he was using and stepped closer to assess if he could sand it out. He spent a few minutes working on it, his hands moving by rote, his mind on Ashley giving birth to his son right now.
Forget Stephanie—Dax was wasting time. He could not imagine his son coming into this world and him not being there to witness it. He threw down the sandpaper and looked at his watch. Kyra should be back in an hour. He could make it to Teaneck in a little under an hour.
He walked out of the shed. “Coconut!” he called.
Ruby started and turned around. He eyed her up and down. “Let’s go clean up. Do you have a dress in that mess you call a room?”
“I have a red one,” she said.
“Go get it. And come right back here. We have some work to do before your mom gets home.”