“You’re engaged?” The familiar tenor that still haunted her daydreams broke through the quiet of the bookstore, startling Emma as she had been pulling out a book. Hand over her heart she fought to slow her pounding heart. She turned to face the man who had been hers once.
“Kyle.” It came out in a whisper. She backed into the bookcase to steady herself. There he stood, only a few feet away. He was near enough to touch. She’d heard he’d come back to town but didn’t think he would come looking for her. “What are you doing here?”
“You’re really engaged? Did your father never tell you what he did?” Kyle took a slow step back, shoving his hands deep into his pockets.
“Told me what?” Emma fingered the fake engagement ring she had slipped on as she’d driven into town earlier that morning after visiting her parents. She knew it wouldn’t be long before she ran into Kyle and she needed some sort of physical protection for her still-battered heart. She watched, confused as he shook his head. After three years she still it hadn’t stopped thinking about him. Just the sight of him now made her want to pull off the ring and admit the truth. Instead she blatantly stared up into his kind eyes, longing to erase the pain she could see lurking there.
He took one step forward and stopped, an unspoken question written across his face that she couldn’t decipher. After a moment’s hesitation of her own she took a step toward him. She had missed him. A part of her was screaming at her not to open herself up to more rejection from this man whom she once thought was her whole world.
In one earth shattering heartbeat Kyle gathered her up close in his arms. Her body melted into the pulsing powerful calm emanating from his muscular frame, his lips barely an inch from taking hers. He whispered, “You know I’m not one to prevail on someone who is taken. You should know how much I want to kiss you right now.” His breath tickled every nerve ending it brushed; her lips, her cheek, her neck. She flushed and he continued, gazing straight into her eyes. “But I won’t. I respect you too much to kiss you when you’re engaged to someone else.”
Abruptly Emma stepped back into the wall of books behind her. She shook her head fiercely. “You’re the one who left me Kyle.”
Agony wracked his face as he shook his head slowly, sadly. “I didn’t choose to leave you, Emma. I wasn’t given a choice.”
“Kyle, I called you so many times that first year I left for college. I thought we were going to wait for each other. That you would wait for me.” His pained grimace gave her pause; a long enough pause for her to divulge her secret. “I came to see you once, when I couldn’t stand not hearing from you.”
Startled, his piercing gaze snapped up to hers. “When?” He asked desperately.
“I walked in on you kissing Marci. Obviously you were too distracted to even notice my interruption. You looked very occupied.”
“Marci?” He thought for a second. “You were there? How long?”
“Long enough.” She shouted in a furious whisper. “How long should I have watched my supposed boyfriend kiss someone else?”
“You saw the cops come and everything?” He asked slowly, not understanding why she was bringing Marci up. That made her stop.
“Cops? No.” Emma admitted.
He sighed. “Apparently Marci had it in her head that once you left that I would notice her and fall in love with her. When I didn’t, she cornered me and zip tied me to a post at gunpoint before she started kissing me. Luckily someone had seen her with a gun earlier and had reported it. But that’s not the point.”
Emma chuckled, half in shock. “That’s not the point? I went straight back to school and almost failed out of college because of that and I still never heard from you.”
“I’m so sorry Emma.” Kyle held out his arms. “I didn’t cheat on you.”
She shook her head, trying to make sense of it all. “So if you didn’t cheat on me why didn’t you call?”
“Your dad really never told you?”
“What does he have to do with this?” She stomped her foot, hands fisted at her side.
Tyler looked suddenly anxious and pulled her further down the row of books. “I went to see your dad about a week after you left.”
“What?”
“I asked for his permission to date you with marriage in mind once you finished college.” His blush made her blush.
“You did?” Surprise flashed through her and quickly made her freeze up.
Tyler continued, his head tilted towards the floor. “Your father broke my phone, changed your number, and threatened to have me arrested for harassment. He told me that he would never allow me to date you again. That you were going places and I was a money grubber.”
“My dad…” She trailed off, lost in the thoughts of what her father had done to her and her relationship with the love of her life.
Standing there silently, watching her process it all, Tyler waited for her to look at him.
“I remember getting my new number. You were the first person I called.” She mumbled more to herself than to him. “Of course if your phone was broken you wouldn’t have known and never would have gotten my new number. And I never came home after I saw you with Marci and made my parents come see me. My dad…my dad.” Her anger rose. Her eyes flicked up to Kyle’s. Practically throwing herself at him she kissed him, giving in to the temptation to wrap her arms around him. Seconds later she was striding out the bookstore’s door and calling back to a very stunned Kyle. “I’ll be right back. I have a father to kill.”
The front store clerk gave a chuckle as Kyle raced out after her.
