Misty Reigenborn Romance Boxed Set (33 page)

Kimber

When Luke took her aside when he dropped off the kids and told her that he was planning on proposing to Sierra, she found that it didn’t hurt nearly as much as she’d thought that it would.  Her life was going so well that she wasn’t going to let anything bring her down. 

Her online bookstore was now up and running.  Sales had started off slow, but she was planning several promotions that she was sure would draw in customers.  She was happier than she had been in a long time, and the kids were happy, so that made her even happier. 

She had had several offers from men in the neighborhood or men she ran into here and there when she was running the kids around for dates, but she wasn’t interested in any of them.  She was still thinking about Paul.  But she didn’t want to think about Paul.  She didn’t appreciate the way thinking about Paul made her feel.  So the night that she ran into him, she almost turned around and walked the other way.

Paul

When he saw Kimber, Paul knew that he had to approach her.  She had been on his mind so much lately that he had found himself avoiding areas where he thought there was a greater chance of them running into each other.  So when he saw her walking into the out of the way sandwich shop when he was on his way out, he felt as if someone was trying to tell him something.

He cleared his throat as he held the door open for her, thinking that he had never seen a more beautiful woman in his life.  He felt silly having such a thought, but it felt true in the moment.  He couldn’t take his eyes off of her face. 

He realized he had been staring when she cleared her throat and said “Hello Paul.”

Though she had been the one who had spoken first, it looked to him as if Kimber wanted to run away.  He felt a little stab and felt color rise to his cheeks.  He felt as ridiculous as he had back in college when he had been afraid to ask Sierra out, unsure of whether she liked him or not.

“Hi Kimber.”

He realized he had no idea what to say to her.  Divorce certainly didn’t seem like a good conversation starter, nor did the reunion of Sierra and Luke.  He figured that it might be safest to ask about her kids, and had opened his mouth to speak when she said “It’s good to see you Paul.”

She was smiling at him.  Paul wondered if he was being a complete idiot, or if Kimber was flirting with him.  She looked sincere, but then again he thought that right now he might as well have been wearing rose colored glasses where she was concerned.  She looked so damned beautiful that it almost hurt.  He could remember the feel of her body wrapped around his.  They had fit perfectly together, and as that thought rose to Paul’s mind his cheeks colored even further.

“It’s good to see you Kimber.  You’re beautiful.”

His cheeks felt as if they would never return to their normal color.

Kimber laughed.  “Thank you Paul.  You’re not bad yourself.  Luke mentioned that you had a new job here.  How has it been going?”

Paul hid a sigh of relief.  “It’s been going well.  I feel like I’m always working though.  I’ve never felt like I had enough time to spend with my son.  And now with the divorce, it’s even harder of course.  Not that I wouldn’t drive any distance to see Nathan.”

“I know what you mean in both cases.  Luke makes the trips here but I know those car trips aren’t easy on anyone.  I felt like I was always working before too.  That’s another reason I made the decision to sell my old bookstore.  I need to be there for my kids.”

“What are you working on now?”

“I opened a bookstore online.  It’s different and it’s going to take some getting used to, but I think I’ll have the hang of it pretty quickly.”

“I’m sure you will.”  Dirty thoughts were trying to enter his mind again.  He wanted to ask her out for coffee or something, but he found that his courage had failed him once again.  “How are your kids?”

Kimber smiled again.  It lit up her face.  Her blue eyes lit up in the way that he had dreamed they would when she saw him.  He hoped her eyes lit up like that for him someday.  “They’re happy.  They love the new house.  They miss their Dad of course, but they do seem to get along really well with Sierra.  I guess you have to know that your divorce was the right thing to do when everything seems to be going so well.”  She laughed.

Paul nodded.  “I know what you mean.  I really like my new house, my new job.  This is a nice place to live, lots to do.  I miss Sierra of course, but it felt for so long like everything was a lie, or that we were just pretending that we could make things work when we both knew that we never really would.”

“I know how that feels tenfold.  I wish Luke had been honest with me from the beginning.”  She bit her lip, and Paul wondered if dirty thoughts about him had entered Kimber’s mind.  A blush rose to her cheeks and she looked away from him.  “Well, I guess I should let you go.  It really was good to see you Paul.”

But he couldn’t see the look in her eyes, so he couldn’t be sure if she meant it or not.  He knew what he was feeling.  His body was making him aware of his attraction to her.  She had turned
back to him and still looked a little flustered, so he knew that she was feeling something too.  He wanted so badly to touch her.  He could imagine how good it would feel to touch every part of her.  Color entered his cheeks again.

“It was good to see you too Kimber.”  He knew that it was now or never and wondered if his courage would hold.  “I. . .”

“Yes Paul.”  Her blue eyes seemed huge as she looked at him. 

He swallowed the lump that had risen in his throat.  He was afraid of what he was feeling.  It was too soon and too muddled with his hormones being thrown so strongly into the mix.  He suddenly couldn’t ask her what he wanted so badly to ask her.  “Nothing.”  He gave her a smile that felt more than a little weak.  “Maybe we’ll run into each other again sometime.”

“Sure.” 

He couldn’t be sure if there was a note of disappointment in her voice or not.  He turned away, back towards the door, his heart sinking a little.  His hand was on the door when she called out to him.

“Paul.”

He turned back to her and saw something in her eyes that made his heart soar.  She liked him too, he could see it in the slight blush in her cheeks, in the way that her eyes were sparkling.  His heart pounded as he said her name “Yes Kimber.”

The blush didn’t leave her cheeks and he had the thought that maybe she had relived their night together too. 

“I know that you’re probably busy with work, and your son, but would you like to have coffee with me sometime?  I sometimes feel like I don’t have any meaningful adult conversation.”

“All I ever talk about is work.  I would like that.  A lot.”

Kimber smiled.  “I would too.  Let me give you my number and you can call me and let me know a time that would work for you.”

Paul still couldn’t quite believe that Kimber had asked him out as he put her number into his phone.  But he felt like he was walking on air after he left the sandwich shop.  He agreed with her that sometimes his divorce had felt like such a relief to him that he knew it was right for his marriage to end.  It felt right to be seeing Kimber too, and he knew that he was going to have to make time to see her as soon as possible.  His attraction for her had grown even more after talking to her, and he was sure that Kimber being a part of his life would be a wonderful thing.

Kimber

Kimber wasn’t sure whether offering Paul her phone number was a good thing or not.  Her first instinct had been to run away from him almost as soon as she had seen him.  But she had felt drawn to him at the same time too.  When he had told her she was beautiful, she had known that he meant it.  She knew that Paul wasn’t a man that took things lightly, and she figured he rarely offered compliments to women that he didn’t mean.  She wasn’t sure how Luke was going to feel when she told him that she had asked Paul out, but she wasn’t sure that he even had a right to care when he was planning on proposing to Sierra.

She found that she was looking forward to seeing Paul again more than she liked to admit to herself, and her hormones seemed to be forever reminding her of their night together.  She wasn’t sure whether she was disappointed or relieved when days passed and he didn’t call her.

Paul

There was a part of Paul that wanted to call Kimber as soon as he left the sandwich shop, and set up a date with her before she changed her mind about him, but at the same time, he knew that he had other responsibilities that had to be taken care of first.  His job was so demanding than he was unsure of whether he would have time for a relationship even if things happened to progress between him and Kimber the way he hoped they would more and more as the days passed.

But even though he couldn’t keep the fantasies of Kimber away, especially when he laid down to sleep at night in the bed that felt so empty, he was so damned busy that he began to wonder if taking the new position hadn’t been a mistake.  He had worried that with the divorce he would have an even harder time being a real father to Nathan, but he worried more and more as the days passed that he wouldn’t have time for any kind of a real life with the new job. 

He was depressed one night and desperately needed someone to talk to, so he dialed Kimber’s number with a hand that had a slight tremble to it, wondering if she had been looking forward to his call anywhere near as much as he had been looking forward to speaking with her again.

She answered on the fourth ring, sounding a little breathless “Hello.”

“Hi Kimber.  I wanted to call you before, but I’ve been so busy with work that I haven’t really had a chance.  Have you ever felt like you made a decision that seemed like a good idea at the time, that honestly seemed like the best thing that could have happened to you but then you begin to wonder if you’ve gotten yourself in over your head?”

Kimber laughed.  “When my Aunt died and I took over the book store, it felt like the exact right thing at the right time, but I was in over my head for a while there.  Is your new job not what you thought it would be?”

Paul sighed.  “The problem is that it’s exactly what I thought it would be, but right now it seems like too damned much.  I don’t seem to have time for a life.”

“That is definitely a hard thing to deal with.  It was harder and harder for me to run the bookstore after I had the kids, especially Halden.  My daughter is so attached to her Dad.  I think she would probably be just as attached if he hadn’t been her main caregiver, but at the same time it always made me feel bad.  It’s really hard to feel like you don’t have enough time for all of the things that are important in your life.”

“It is.  I always thought that I knew exactly what I wanted in my life.  I wanted a good job where I could make enough money to take care of my family.  A nice house.  But now that I have the kind of job where I can make the money I want, it seems to be taking away from the things in my life that are really important.  I feel sometimes that my son hardly knows me.  I want to have more time with him.  He’s always been closer to his mother, and I know that that’s partly because she was his main caregiver, but it’s always seemed to come so much more naturally for her than it has for me.  I’m always afraid that I’m going to do something wrong.”

“Parents are always going to make mistakes.  It’s part of being human.  All you can do is do your best and your best may not always be good enough.  It’s scary to be a parent, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world.  I’m sure you’re a wonderful father Paul, and you will get everything worked out so that you have more balance in your life.”

Kimber was so understanding, so easy to talk to.  The more he talked to her, the more he wanted her to be a part of his life.  He vowed to himself that he was going to make room in his life for her, and that he was definitely going to make more room in his life for Nathan.  He knew that every day he spent away from his son was another day that he missed seeing his beautiful boy grow and it made his heart ache to think about it. 

“You’re so easy to talk to Kimber.  I feel like I could talk to you for hours.”

“I feel the same way Paul.”

There was no hesitation in her voice, and his heart set to pounding again. 

“I’m not quite sure how I’m going to work out my work issues, but I would really like to see you.  I know that I’ll have some work to do this weekend, but would you like to meet for coffee on Saturday afternoon?”

He was hoping that he might be able to complete the work that he needed to complete on Friday night after work.  He didn’t care if he had to stay up all night to complete it.  He was looking forward to seeing her.  Even the sound of her voice was getting to him.  He wondered what she wearing and then chastised himself internally since he had been thinking of her both with and without her clothes on all too often lately.

“That sounds good.  Luke is picking up the kids this weekend.”

“Would you like to meet there or should I pick you up?”

“We can meet there.”

“Okay.”

He was a little disappointed that he wouldn’t be picking her up, but he didn’t let it bother him as he told her the address of his favorite coffee shop.  They planned to meet at eleven o’clock.  Paul had hopes that they might have a good enough time together that he would be able to talk her into having lunch with him.

The rest of the week was even busier at work.  His new job was starting to feel like more and more of a trap.  Everyone else around the office seemed more dedicated than he felt, even though many of the people that he worked with had families of their own as well.  He wondered when his priorities had changed and started to wonder if taking the job had been the right decision at all.  But he didn’t let that thought get him down either.  He worked his ass off all week and even managed to finish the project he had brought home with him by ten o’clock Friday night. 

He didn’t sleep well that night, and had a very vivid dream of making love to Kimber.  He woke up bathed in sweat, hoping his hormones didn’t get in the way so much when he was with her that he said or did something completely stupid.