Chapter Seventeen
It took Kyle forty-five minutes to get to Sticky Fingers. He didn’t stop to shower or even to consult the team, who were huddled out in the corridor when he emerged. He just ran straight for his car and now he was here, and there she was, at the front door, flipping the sign from open to closed.
Christ, he’d missed her. Just a glimpse of her had his body in an uproar and his heart and lungs so big in his chest they pushed against his aching ribs until he could barely breathe for the pain.
He climbed out of the car and dashed across the road, belting on the glass just as she was disappearing through the swing doors into the kitchen. She turned, and her face went through a gamut of emotions. Surprise, shock, hope, and then a grim, grim countenance, her mouth flattening, her shoulders hitching back.
“Go away,” she snapped, marching toward the door.
Kyle shook his head. “Open up. I just want to talk to you.”
“No.” She folded her arms and glared at him through the glass, but then her brow crinkled, and she gasped, reaching for the dead lock and reefing the door open.
“Oh my god, what happened to you?”
Her change from angel of death to angel of mercy had Kyle temporarily confused, until she took a step toward him, her hand coming up to stroke the bruising coming out on his cheek and the swelling under his eye.
Oh. That. “Your father hit me.”
She dropped her hand. “He hit you?”
“It’s okay.” He shrugged. “I deserved it. Plus I landed a couple as well.”
Which was obviously the wrong thing to say, because her frown was back, and she made some deep, growly noise at him as she took a step back and slammed the door, yelling, “Bloody cavemen,” through the glass.
Well…yes. That was true. Given the fact he couldn’t defend against her statement, he wisely decided to move on. “Look. I screwed up. I know that. There are things to say. Can I please just come in?”
She shook her head with determined slowness. “You can say them where you are.”
Kyle already had to raise his voice to compensate for the glass barrier. He didn’t want to be standing on the doorstep talking loud enough for the neighbourhood to hear. “They’re important.”
“In that case, you better speak up.”
He stared at her for a moment, but it was obvious she wasn’t going to budge. “I love you.”
She lifted an eyebrow. “What’s that?” She cupped a hand around her ear. “I can’t hear you.”
Okay…she was still really pissed off at him. Kyle looked around him. The street was full of parked cars, and an older couple were walking by with their dog on a lead.
“I love you.” He injected enough volume for the mothers of the kids playing in the park across the street to hear.
“Apparently not as much as you love rugby,” she said, her voice also raised.
“Yeah, see—” Kyle took a step closer to the glass and placed his hands flat against it. It wasn’t the same as touching her, but it was the closest he could get at the moment. “That’s where I screwed up.”
“Oh, you think? Jesus Christ, Kyle, I’ve grown up in the shadow of a man who chose rugby over me. Over everything. And I refuse to be with another man who can’t get his priorities right.”
“Just…let me explain.” He was so close to the glass it misted under his breath. “When your father gave me that ultimatum, I didn’t want to choose rugby. But he looked at me and asked me to give him space to get to know you again and—”
“Bullshit.” Val cut him off with her vehemence. “I was listening at the door, Kyle. I didn’t hear him say any such thing.”
“Well, he did.” Kyle shoved his hand through his hair. “Right before the sick daddy revenge bit. He didn’t say it very loud, but the anguish in his eyes, Val…”
She blinked, and he could see she was thinking back to that day. “He did say something I couldn’t hear.”
“Yes.” Kyle nodded, hope sparking to life. “And I didn’t want to jeopardise any chance your father and you had of patching things up. But I was wrong. I should have chosen you anyway. He just told me I should have told him to shove it up his ass, and he was right.”
“My father told you that?”
“Yes. He’s given me his blessing.”
She gaped at him for long moments. “So you’re like best buddies now or something?”
Her voice was laced with sarcasm. That was Kyle’s first inkling that things weren’t going as well as he’d hoped they would after he’d shared the news of her father’s approval. “I wouldn’t exactly say that. But I think we’ve come to an understanding.”
“Well isn’t that cosy,” she sneered. “You and my dad, all loved up.”
“Oh no…it’s not like that. We—”
“I am not,” she yelled, “some possession of his for him to grant some screwed-up kind of permission to you to claim me.”
“Okay.” He held up his hands in surrender. “I didn’t mean it like that.” Christ, he’d never been good at this shit. “Let me start again.”
“How about you don’t? Go away, Kyle.”
“God. Val, please…honey, let me in.”
Val struck the glass with her flattened palm, and Kyle took a hasty step back as it reverberated with her anger. “I’m still angry, Kyle.”
Yeah, he could tell that from the glitter in her eyes and the way the glass still hummed from her assault.
“Angry that you actually thought I had to choose between you and my father, and then you deciding for me which one to make. Angry that you thought I’m not determined enough or smart enough to be able to love both of you and juggle the needs of those relationships. I’m sure as shit too angry to listen to you talk about how, after knowing my father for less than two months, you’re apparently closer to him than I’ve been in twenty-two fucking years.”
She hammered the glass again, her face crumpling a little as she dashed a tear away with the other hand.
“Now go away.”
She turned on her heel, her head held high, her shoulders back, and stormed toward the kitchen, slapping at the swing doors as viciously as she’d slapped at the glass, before disappearing behind them.
Kyle pressed his forehead to the glass. That went well. Not. He shut his eyes. Why did things now feel worse than before he’d made the mad dash here?
He turned around and leaned heavily against the bakery door, staring absently at the park across the road, his brain churning.
Okay, she was angry, that was fair enough. But anger didn’t last. Which lead him to believe that at some point she wouldn’t be snarling at him and might actually be open to listening to him.
She’d said love. To love both of you.
And deep in his heart, he knew it to be true. Had felt her love in so many ways. Knew that only love could drive someone to this level of rage. So he had to patient.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t his strong suit.
But there were two kinds of patience. The keeping-his-distance kind he’d already been employing. And the second kind. A more strategic approach.
And if he’d learned nothing more from the Smoke these past weeks, it was strategy.
So, that’s what he’d do. He’d practice the in-your-face kind of patience. The kind that made him hard to ignore. That would put him close to her every day. Force her to think about him, to be aware of him, and thus examine her feelings rather than pushing them aside.
To confront the Kyle issue, not hide from it.
A little kid screamed in delight as he flew down the slippery dip, and Kyle smiled as a plan formed in his head.
The neighbourhood was about to get a squatter.
…
Val hadn’t slept a wink last night, her conversation with Kyle going around and around her head. Had she not been so angry with him, she might have thought how sappily wonderful it was for Kyle to have sacrificed his love—at her father’s request—to pave the way for her to reconnect with the man who had given her life.
Because of course it was. And she was sure in a couple of weeks, when the embers of her anger had gone cold, she’d be just that sappy about it, too.
But for now, she was angry.
She didn’t care how irrational or petty it might be. That was how she felt, and goddamn it, surely she was entitled to her own bloody emotions?
Kyle could just stew for a while.
Given her tiredness and general irritation, the best place for her today was definitely tucked away in the kitchen, taking out her anger and frustration on unsuspecting pastries. In fact, it was quite therapeutic. Or it was until seven o’clock, when the bell over the front door dinged.
It was the same ding it had been dinging since five a.m. But everything was different about this one, and she knew before he even said a word that Kyle had entered the shop. He hadn’t been since that day at the stadium—since he’d chosen rugby over her—but he was here now.
She frowned and checked the clock again. Seven. Shouldn’t he be at training?
She banged down the rolling pin she’d been using on the croissant pastry, although taking it with her did cross her mind. She pushed open the swing doors, and there he was at the counter, smiling at Sandy, sexy as hell, bold as freaking brass.
“Why aren’t you at training?”
Sandy blinked at the question and glanced around at the customers in the shop, but Val was beyond caring. If they were offended by her, they could go buy their croissants somewhere else.
Couldn’t the man leave her in peace to hate on him for a while?
Kyle just smiled and said, “Good morning.”
He was disgustingly chipper, and Val wished she had brought the rolling pin with her to bang over his smug head. “You’ll get fined if you miss a session.”
“I know.”
“My father will have a fit.”
A lazy shrug lifted his massive shoulders. “Don’t care.”
“You think because you’re besties now he won’t bench you?”
There was a slight tightening at the angle of Kyle’s jaw, which told her the barb had found a mark, but his smile didn’t slip in the slightest. “I’m sure he will.”
Val shook her head. “Don’t be a fool, Kyle. Throwing your career away is not the answer here.”
“I don’t want to throw it away, but I will, if that’s what it takes to convince you that you mean more to me than rugby. I’m staying in that park over there—”
He hooked his thumb over his shoulder, and every customer in the bakery turned to the window. “I’m not training, not going to Henley, not playing in the finals until I can convince you. Hell, I’ll give it up tomorrow and get a real job, if that’s what it takes.”
Val gaped at him. Had he gone mad? “What do you mean, you’re staying in the park?”
“I pitched a tent yesterday afternoon.”
What? Val came around the counter and strode to the window. Sure enough, under the umbrella-like spread of a couple of big Poincianas was a fluorescent-orange tent.
It was the most insane thing she’d seen in her life. She turned back to him, her arms folded. “I think you’ll find it’s illegal to just pitch a tent in a public park.”
He shrugged. “Looks like I’ll be going to jail, then. Won’t been the first time a Leighton’s been in the slammer.”
“And what the hell are you going to do with yourself all day? In a public park?”
“I have a bakery full of food and glimpses of you. What else do I need?”
Oh no. Absolutely not. She marched past him and back behind the counter. “Do not,” she said to Sandy, “under any circumstances, sell Kyle anything.”
She wasn’t above starving the man out.
Sandy blinked, looking from one to the other. “I don’t sell him anything now.” She shrugged. “I give them to him for free. Remember?”
Val almost ground her teeth. “My buns are no longer free to him.”
Kyle tisked, a smile playing on his mouth. “You reneging on your deal, Valerie?”
She flashed him a tight smile. “You bet your ass I am.”
He shrugged. “There’s a bakery three blocks away. I hear they do really excellent Chelsea buns.”
The fact he would even contemplate going anywhere else for his bun fix was a low blow. “I hope you choke on them.” And she turned away, the deep rich timbre of his chuckle following her all the way into the kitchen.
The next morning, there were four tents pitched in the park, and she recognised some of Kyle’s relatives wandering around. She steadfastly ignored them. If he thought he was doing his cause any good, he was sorely mistaken. He was only pissing her off even more.
The third morning, there were two more tents and a sign posted on the main road.
Honk if you think Val should forgive Kyle.
Horns honked all bloody day, and she started getting phone calls and texts from the WAGs.
The fourth morning, another two tents had joined the party. It was getting to be a regular tent city.
Why hadn’t anybody called the police?
Because word had got around that a rugby legend had set up home in the park, and everyone was stopping by for a look. And Kyle was happy to chat and tell all and sundry he was there for love while he signed autographs, posed for selfies, and had impromptu games of footy with anyone who was keen.
Apparently during the night, he and his merry gang of supporters sat around a campfire singing.
To a guitar.
By the fifth morning, Val was over it. This had to stop. She went over the road during a lull in her work schedule to put an end to it. Kyle greeted her with a face full of scruff and a beatific smile, like he was some freaking yogi.
She blinked. What the hell? This was not Kyle. Sure. The scruff was sexy as hell, and she was trying really hard not to wonder how it would feel scratching against her nipples and between her thighs, but that was beside the point.
Perhaps an ever bigger annoyance was the presence of a Chelsea bun in his lap. A Chelsea bun from a bakery that was not hers. That was the last straw.
Deciding to ignore this transgression, she skewered him with a fierce gaze. “Kyle. You have to go back to training. The semis start next week.”
His family had retreated some distance so they could have some privacy, but she knew they were probably all straining their ears to hear what was going down. Apart from young Robbo, who was now waving the honk sign at passing cars.
Who were all obligingly honking back.
“I will. As soon as you know that I choose you. I’ll always choose you.”
“Okay.” Val nodded briskly. “You’ve made your point. I know. Happy now?”
He dropped his head to the side and regarded her for a moment. “Nah.” He laughed. “You gotta mean it.”
Val rolled her eyes. “Kyle. You’re going to owe a fortune in no-show fines.”
He shrugged. “I got plenty of money. None of which I need. All I need is you.”
Val’s heart just about split wide open at that. But now her level of pissed off at his manipulation of her in such a public way reached epic proportions, and she strengthened her resolve.
“You’re crazy.”
He grinned and nodded. “Crazy for you.”
“Oh for—” Val threw her hands up in the air, despite the absolutely perfect response. The man always had known exactly what to say.
This was hopeless—he’d taken complete leave of his senses, and she was getting nowhere. She turned and stormed back to the bakery.
The next day, the first news crew arrived, and Val watched Kyle tell a morning television host he wasn’t leaving because a body can’t live without a heart, and his was across the street.
All hell broke loose.