About That Kiss Read online

  Just beyond that, her mom and Kevin stood in a tiny galley, toe-to-toe, nose-to-nose. In unison the two of them turned and looked at Kylie, her mom not surprised, Kevin very surprised.

  “Kylie?” He sounded shocked. “What are you doing here?”

  Feeling oddly emotional at the sight of him, she pointed to the grandfather clock. “Where did you get that?”

  He looked confused. “What’s going on?”

  “Kylie’s question first,” her mom said.

  “Okay.” Kevin looked at the grandfather clock. “Your grandpa gave it to me.”

  Kylie shook her head. “He couldn’t have. It was in his shop on the night of the fire, still unfinished.”

  “He hadn’t finished a lot of things,” Kevin said. “Kylie . . .” Expression warm, he stepped closer. “It’s really good to see you. I—”

  “Hold on.” She held up her hand, staring at the clock. “How is it here if it burned?”

  He hesitated and she let out a rough breath. “You were at his shop that night. And you, or someone, took it and finished it.” She waited for him to say otherwise, hoping against hope there was a good explanation that didn’t involve him betraying her grandpa and one of the few good childhood memories she had.

  But he said nothing.

  “Explain,” her mom said to him. “Explain right now.”

  “Listen,” Kevin said directly to Kylie, ignoring her mom. “Clearly, there’s some confusion. Your grandpa gave me this piece before the fire, and it was finished. But great news, you’ve just confirmed it’s his work. Can I get you to authenticate that in writing?”

  “I’m not confused.” She’d offered to help her grandpa finish the piece and he’d been delighted with her interest. Only they hadn’t had the time before it was too late. She looked around and saw a Polaroid camera on the galley table, which made her heart start a heavy drumming in her chest. “Is that your camera?”

  Kevin followed her gaze and sighed, scrubbing a hand over his face. When he looked at her again, his bafflement was gone, replaced by resignation. “All you had to do,” he said, sounding very tired, “was agree to authenticate my work so I could make enough money to fund my own gallery instead of working for a bunch of big corporate idiots who know nothing about the art of furniture making.”

  “I couldn’t do that,” she said. “I couldn’t authenticate what wasn’t his. Surely you knew that.”

  He shrugged. “You made your choice, I suppose. But now I have to make mine.”

  Kylie’s heart sank to her toes and she slowly slid her hands into her pockets. Her right hand encountered her phone. She swiped the screen and thumbed what she was pretty sure would be her phone app. Then she tapped the screen near the top, hoping like hell that first, she had service now that she was away from all the buildings and on the water, and second, that she was calling the last person she’d attempted to call—Joe.

  “I can’t believe this,” her mom said. “I knew right from the start that you were a bad apple.”

  “Right,” Kevin said dryly. “Or why else would you have dated me?”

  Her mom’s eyes narrowed. “And what’s that supposed to mean?”

  Kevin snorted. “It means you only date assholes. And you’re a mom! What kind of idea was that supposed to give Kylie? It’s amazing that she’s not all kinds of screwed up.”

  Ha. Little did he know, Kylie thought. “Okay,” she said quickly when her mom started looking around, probably for a bat to hit Kevin over the head with. “This is about Grandpa’s work, not you two’s past—”

  “Shut up,” they both said in unison, glaring at each other.

  “You said you were the exception!” her mom yelled at Kevin.

  “And you said you’d changed!” Kevin yelled back.

  Kylie sighed and, keeping one eye on the children, she looked around for something to help the situation and caught sight of a couple of pieces of furniture against the far wall. An armoire and a matching mirror. “Oh my God,” she said. “Those are my grandpa’s too.” She looked at Kevin. “They were also in his shop on the day of the fire, where supposedly everything burned.”

  “Most,” he said. “But not everything.”

  Her mom’s eyes were wide. And pissed. “How did you get this stuff?” she asked. “His stuff?”

  Kevin shrugged. “You know how the guy was. Brilliant artist, shitty businessman.”

  “So you took advantage of him through me?” Kylie’s mom asked.

  “Hey, he’d offered to pay me to finish some things for him,” Kevin said. “And I did exactly that, only he didn’t pay me. He couldn’t.”

  “He’d never do that,” her mom said. “He was the most honest man I ever met.”

  Kylie had gone still. “The horses,” she whispered.

  “What?” Her mom looked at her. “What horses?”

  But Kevin was nodding, confirming Kylie’s fear. “He did love the races,” he said. “And the betting.”

  The truth was, her grandpa had been a gambling addict—though Kylie had believed him to be a recovered addict. Her mom was looking stunned. Kylie’s grandpa had been so good at so many things and it seemed one of those things was keeping secrets.

  “He kept promising me he’d get me the money,” Kevin said. “Only it never happened.”

  “Why didn’t you just tell me?” her mom asked.

  “Because he begged me not to. He didn’t want anyone to know.” Kevin sent Kylie an apologetic glance. “But I needed money too. So I helped myself to one of his pieces now and then and sold them.”

  “That’s stealing,” her mom said.

  “I called it getting paid. He owed me.”

  Kylie’s gaze fell on something right past the Polaroid camera. A high-grade food processor. Her penguin was perched on it, inches from certain destruction by rotating whipping blades if the processor got flipped on. Her stomach fell and in shock, she shook her head. “How is it that he never caught you taking stuff from his shop?”

  She saw the flash of guilt and her gut tightened. “He did catch you,” she said.

  “Once,” he admitted. “He walked in on me late at night loading up a few things into my truck. He said something like, ‘I knew someone was stealing from me. I just didn’t think it would be you.’”

  That was exactly like her grandpa, seeing only the good in people. “He cared about you. I’m sure he was devastated.”

  “Devastated? Not exactly,” Kevin said. “He pulled a gun on me and I dove to the ground when he actually squeezed off a round.”

  “Wait—he shot at you?” Kylie gasped in shock.

  “No, he shot at the ceiling. A warning, I guess. The bullet ricocheted off something and hit the electrical socket where the soldering iron was plugged in. The place went up in flames in seconds. It was a fluke. He just meant to scare me off. Like this.” Reaching behind him, Kevin produced a gun.

  With twin gasps, Kylie’s mom and Kylie both dove to the floor.

  “I’m not going to shoot you,” he said, sounding horrified at the thought. “I’m trying to show you what happened that night and how it couldn’t happen again in a million years. It was truly a one in a million shot.” He squeezed the trigger and bam, a bullet hit the ceiling. And ricocheted off somewhere else.

  And then . . . nothing.

  “See?” he said, shrugging. “Accident.”

  Kylie shot to her feet, such fury flowing through her that her entire body was shaking with it. “You can’t just fire a gun into a closed area. You’ll hurt someone!”

  “I wasn’t aiming at either of you.”

  “Oh my God!” Kylie managed. “There’s a reason they don’t like dumbasses to have guns, you know!”

  “You’re overreacting.”

  “I’m overreacting?” she asked. “Are you kidding me? All these years I blamed myself for that fire!”

  “Well, that was stupid,” Kevin said. “You weren’t even there.”

  “I was earlier in the day! An