What a Girl Needs (33 page)

Clara never had to clear a guest bedroom of extra shoes to make a bed. It feels good to watch her and Kay together. Kay’s always wanted a mother figure, and maybe that’s why she’s become one to a ramshackle group of single engineer Christians. Watching her alongside Clara does my heart good—it’s like they sing together it’s so natural. Both of them could really fill a need in each other’s life. Maybe Clara wouldn’t take in every stray off the street and maybe Kay wouldn’t feel the need to turn a bad man, good.

Clara notices Kay’s left hand. “This is new?”

Kay nods, but self-consciously covers her hand.

A look passes between them. I can’t tell what it means, but something about it gives me hope. And Emily is no longer in need of my attentions.

My work is done here.

‡

B
ack in Palo
Alto, life goes on as it always has. Matt Callaway shows up at breakfast time each day, Kay makes us both a lumberjack’s start to the day and then cleans it all up before I’m even fully awake.

It’s been two days, and not a word from my in-laws – not even a request for me to schlep up after them or find a shotgun wedding venue. Not a peep out of my workaholic husband and I find myself exactly where I was before I left Philadelphia. Only now, not only am I questioning my life’s purpose, but my marriage as well.

“You’re not planning
on staying through the wedding?” Matt asks me over coffee at the kitchen table.

“I was planning on staying until after the wedding,” I answer. Let’s be honest, I have nowhere to be. Kevin has his job to fulfill him, my mother-in-law has a grandchild on the way, and Emily has her own blissful future to plan. Everyone is fine without me, so I may as well stay on vacation.

“I can’t tell if you’re kidding,” Matt says.

“Good.” I wink at Kay. She’s not the same since we got home from dropping my mother-in-law in Sonoma. She and Matt don’t exchange knowing glances across the table any longer. He brings up the wedding plans, and she promptly changes the subject. She’s removed her engagement ring and told Matt she was getting it sized, but the truth is, it’s in her bedroom on her nightstand. The question remains, why would she lie to him? Besides the fact that he deserves it, I mean.

It’s Saturday morning and Brea is picking me up for a spa day. We’re driving to Santa Cruz and a spa that overlooks the ocean. Not a bad way to lick my wounds, I suppose.

“Brea’s here,” Kay says as she looks out the window over the kitchen sink. Her voice is quiet and lifeless.

“You all right, Kay?” I ask her.

She nods.

“Do you want to come with us?”

Kay’s head bobs up. “You don’t think Brea would mind?”

“No, why would she? You can take my place at the spa. I’ll be happy just to read a book overlooking the ocean.” I ponder this. “You don’t happen to have a good book I can take, do you?”

“If you mean a beach read, no I don’t.”

“Take the prospectus with you,” Matt says. “Thomas has been nagging me every day for an answer from you.” He slides the folder toward me.

A job. I suppose I might need one of those.

Matt watches Kay take off her apron. “You’re really leaving me on a Saturday? I thought we’d celebrate today.”

“I need to get out of the house.”

“Yeah, sure. We’ll go somewhere,” Matt offers.

“I think I need a spa day,” Kay says, and this snaps me to attention. Kay has never needed a spa day in her life. Kay’s version of a spa day is a ten-mile run uphill.

I’m willing her away from Matt and out of the house. “I’ll wait in the car, Kay. Hurry up.”

“No, wait Ashley, I want you here for this.”

“For what?”

“Where were you yesterday afternoon, Matt?” Kay asks her beau, and his neatly-coiffed eyebrows rise.

“I was at the office.”

“That’s interesting because I went to your office yesterday and Thomas told me you don’t pay rent there any longer. He had to sign a lease on a smaller place in the same building.”

“Yeah.” Matt shrugs his wide shoulders. “I thought it was a waste for as often as I was in there. Thomas prefers the office environment to meet with clients. I like to go to them, you know, their offices, lunch downtown, a coffee shop.”

“Get out of my house, Matt.”

His face pales, and he looks from me to Kay. “What?”

“Get out of my house, and don’t come back or you’ll find out just how good of a lawyer I can hire.”

“Baby, come on. What’s this about?” Matt rises and crosses the kitchen with his arms outstretched toward Kay.

My heart is in my throat as I see rage in a face that I didn’t think was capable of feeling such an emotion. She holds up a palm. “Don’t. I know what you did with the company funds.”

“Kay, come on. That Thomas is full of garbage and you know it. How long have you known me? You’re going to believe that worm over me? He clearly has a crush on you and he knows the only way you’d date him over me is with a bunch of lies.”

It’s like I’m watching a tennis match between the two of them.

“I’ll get your ring,” Kay says, and leaves the room.

Brea walks into the kitchen and notices you can cut the tension with a light saber. “You ready to go? I’ve only got so much time away from the boys.”

“Ashley, talk to her,” Matt says. “This is crazy.”

Kay comes back into the kitchen wearing her running pants, and a bright salmon T-shirt. “Here’s your ring.” She smacks it on the counter and it makes a hollow, tinny sound. “Do me a favor and give me some time.”

“But Kay, I love you,” Matt says. “I want to spend the rest of my life with you.”

“Then, you can allow me a day at the spa to think things over. There are too many red flags. Things I can’t ignore.”

“I can’t allow you a day at the spa if all you’re going to do is obsess about my ex-business partner and his lies. Thomas wanted you from the minute he laid eyes on you. He’d say anything to break us up. How can you be so stupid, Kay? You’re going to throw away two years, for the word of a stranger?”

The doorbell rings and Brea and I race for it to exit the kitchen. When we open the door, Seth and Arin are standing beside my Kevin. I rush toward my husband and he gathers me in his arms and pulls me towards him as tightly as he’s ever held me. He pulls away, meets my gaze and seems to look deeply into my soul before kissing me with a passion and zeal. There is no question in my mind that my man loves me and isn’t going anywhere.

“Kevin,” I whisper against his neck. “What happened to us?”

I can’t bear to let go of him because I thought I’d never see him again. Not in the same way. I thought there would be a table…lawyers between us…

Seth clears his throat, and I giggle as I look at him alongside Arin. “Kevin never asked you to marry him,” I accuse. “Why would you tell people he did?” I look up at my husband. “You didn’t right?”

“You’re the only woman I ever asked to marry me.”

“I’m sorry,” Arin says. “I was hurt when Kevin moved on so quickly.”

“Didn’t you move on first?” I ask her.

“The point is, I may have said that so you didn’t think you were better than me.”

Seth interjects. “Pastor Max told us we were trying to harm each other rather than saying how we really feel about each other. He said we needed to apologize to you before we harmed your relationship.”

“You didn’t plan this?” I ask them. “To be here with Kevin?”

“Pure coincidence,” Seth says. “Or maybe it’s fate.”

“Kevin, what are you doing here? Who is looking after Rhett?”

“You’re going to kill me. Rhett is in a kennel, but my mother ordered me here.”

“Your mother? She’s not even here. She’s in the wine country with your sister.”

“When I didn’t answer my cell, she called the chief of surgery and said if I didn’t get to California, I was going to lose my marriage, and then he was going to lose any possibility that I would stay in Philly.”

“Your mother did that for us?”

“When I called her to read her the riot act for calling my boss, she told me to get on the next plane or not to be surprised when I found you didn’t return from California.”

“I don’t understand. Isn’t that what she wants?”

“Mom said she recognized herself in in your eyes, during her early years of her marriage when my father was never around. The reason they bought us the house is because she almost left my father during his residency. I never saw them fight, Ashley. I didn’t know any of this. But Mom told Dad if he only had time to be a doctor and no time to be a husband, then she was going home to her mother.”

“I was thinking of going home to my mother,” I admit. “Or at least Kay.”

Kevin presses his lips to mine and I remember why I’d settle for scraps from his table. Kevin is the man I love, and he wants to save lives, but I need him too. And that isn’t selfish. It’s just a fact.

“It’s time to go home, Ashley.”

“I can’t. There’s the whole Tiffany thing—”

“You’re a lawyer. You’ll figure it out. I’m not leaving without my wife.”

The porch gets even more crowded as Thomas Galway strides up the walk in a pair of khakis and a green button-up shirt. It seems about as casual as the formal Thomas Galway gets.

“Is Kay here?”

“She’s inside. With Matt.”

He nods and pushes through the front door. We all pile into the doorway behind him and stand in a small huddle, our eyes glued to the kitchen. Matt dwarfs Thomas, but it doesn’t stop him from getting right in the bigger man’s face. “Get lost, Matt. Or I’ll tell her the whole truth.”

“There’s no whole truth, Kay, come on. You’ve known me for nearly three years.”

Kay seems confused and her eyes dart back and forth between each man when Thomas gets down on one knee on Kay’s kitchen floor and holds up a black velvet box.

“Get out of here!” Matt screams, lifting Thomas by the collar off the floor. Thomas bats Matt away then gets back to his knee when Matt pulls back an elbow and lets a punch fly, knocking Thomas in a lump.

Kevin rushes to the kitchen and checks Thomas. Kevin stands to his full height. “Get out of this house now, Matt, before I throw you out. Ashley, call 9-11,” he shouts to me.

“I’ll do it,” Brea says.

Kay leans over Thomas, who still seems to be unconscious. “Thomas! Wake up, Thomas!”

It’s a long time before his eyelids flutter open, and Thomas smiles widely at Kay. “Did I hit him back?”

“He was an absolute train wreck,” Kay says.

“Did he see the ring you deserved?”

Kay opens the ring box over Thomas and an enormous sparkler of epic proportion glares back at her in all its tacky, ostentatious glory. It makes Emily’s ring look subtle.

“Thomas, what are you thinking? We haven’t even been on one date?”

“What do you think about Italy for a first date?”

“You don’t even know me!” Kay says through a smile.

“A guy knows.”

Kevin applies a frozen bag of peas on Thomas’s left eye. “I’m afraid you’re going to have a shiner, my friend.”

“You knew, right buddy? When you saw your wife, you knew it was her.”

Kevin’s gaze makes me go weak in the knees. “I knew immediately.”

“What about you?” Thomas asks Seth.

“The minute I laid eyes on her,” he says, grinning at Arin.

Thomas groans though his wide grin. “My first fight,” he says with satisfaction.

“I’m not in the mood for a spa day any longer, Ash,” Brea says. “I’m going home to John.”

“You go, I’ll see you soon.”

“We’ll take you and John to dinner before we leave,” Kevin says. Thomas starts to get up, but Kevin stops him. “Wait right there,” he says while sticking a flashlight in his eyes. “You’re not going anywhere until I check for a concussion.”

“I have a rule about men asking me to marry,” Kay says. “They need to be free of brain injury.”

Seth and Arin leave quietly when the EMT’s come in and Kevin explains the nature of the injury and gives his orders. He wants Thomas checked, just to make sure there’s no hidden bleeding. Kay grabs her keys and the ring box and goes along in the ambulance.

“It’s just you and me,” Kevin growls.

“Oh?” I take a deep breath near his neck.

He pulls me away. “Stop that!”

“What did you have in mind?”

Kevin lifts me up off the ground as if I weighed nothing, and he looks deeply into my eyes. “I thought we might prove to my mother those rumors of our fruitlessness are greatly exaggerated.”

I allow my head to fall against Kevin’s chest and fall in love all over again. What a girl needs is to know she matters. And whether I work or don’t, whether I’m a mother or not, whether I’m married or single, I matter.

I matter because God gave me a purpose – even if I don’t always know exactly what that is.

“You want to stay in Philly then?”

“I do.”

“That’s the second time those were the best words out of your mouth.”

The End

Ashley Stockingdale Series:

What a Girl Wants

She’s Out of Control

With this Ring, I’m Confused