~ Only Yesterday ~

by

Kay LeGrand

He felt like a bully. A big, ignorant, overbearing, cowardly jackass of a bully.

"Coffee?" he asked, and didn’t wait for her to answer. He poured two cups, and carried them back to the counter.

His bare forearm touched hers when he shoved one of them in front of her. It was just a brush of skin against skin, just for a fraction of a second. But it crackled like wildfire. Throbbing all the way through him, it electrified every muscle and jolted every fiber of his nervous system before instinct kicked in, and he jerked his arm away.

The touch--the wildfire--had reminded him of so many things.

Of that afternoon. The one he’d never been able to put out of his mind, even on the rare occasions when he’d tried. The afternoon in Vanessa VanDiver’s boathouse.

It also reminded him of everything that had happened as a result of that afternoon--the way he’d felt when Kathy had been taken away from him in almost the same instant that he’d found her, of how much he’d realized he loved her only after he’d lost her, of the way he’d vowed never--ever--to let himself suffer love or loss like that again.

"I’m sorry I upset you." Folding his arms on the counter, he leaned forward and tried to see her face. "I don’t know why I say the things I say. Because I’m a... I just don’t know, Kathy."

She kept her face turned away. But her feelings were visible in the way she held her head and her shoulders, the way she stared out the window, looking at nothing, and in the way, obviously trying to look careless, that she shrugged.

"I’m not upset. I’m just confused."

"I know." He touched her arm again.

This time he’d been ready for it, and the wildfire didn’t seem so terrifying. Now it felt warm. Almost right, almost good, almost perfect.

Catching her chin with unsteady fingers, he turned her head so that she could no longer avoid looking into his eyes.

Deep and liquid, soft brown touched with flecks of pure and shining gold, her eyes seemed to see all the way into his soul. To know things. All kinds of things.

To know that?

A cold chill slithered through him, cooling the throbbing warmth and leaving in its place a black and crawling dread.

Did she know about the police?

It was all he could do to hold back a shudder.

If God had any mercy at all--a possibility he’d seriously begun to doubt--He wouldn’t let Kathy know what had happened on Recluse Island after she’d left. Wouldn’t let her know what her father really was. Not for him, because he didn’t deserve that kind of mercy. But for her, because she did. Because she deserved better.

Blushing furiously, Kathy jerked her chin free and ducked her head, hiding her face again. "I’ve had a... strange... reception around town."

Alex almost laughed. His belief in God, and mercy, and things working out right once in a while had been redeemed. Just like that. And he really would have laughed and been giddy with relief, if Kathy hadn’t looked so sick, and scared.

"Oh." He kept his voice calm and even. Kept it free of even the tiniest hint of laughter. "You heard that. About... you know."

Kathy didn’t lift her head. Didn’t look at him. She didn’t do anything but sit there with wave after wave of the brightest red he’d ever seen, staining the tips of her ears and the little sliver of cheek he could see.

Wishing he’d never brought up the subject, he also wished he could drop straight down through the floor and out of sight.

But there was no going back now.

"My mother confronted Vanessa," he said, wincing when his voice came out all hoarse, and nervous, and terrified. "She confronted Vanessa the minute she heard about it. But she... I... never thought you would go away without a word if you really were..." He couldn’t finish the sentence.

Pregnant.

The word hung in the still air between them, seeming to take on a separate, horrible life of its own.

"For the love of God." Panic crept into his voice, to match the panic that kept trying to explode his heart. "You didn’t... weren’t... Kathy, were you?"