Knight and Day

Chapter Forty-Four

Kara sat at a small, scrubbed pine table inside the Happy Days Beach Bar nursing her second cup of coffee of the morning, her eyes scanning the sand. The summer crowds had left the island now, leaving the beaches to a different clientele who took Ibizan life at a gentler pace. It was still early as she watched the sunbeds being laid out in ranks across the sands, their padded cream cushions a touch of luxury for the well-heeled off-season crowd.

She couldn’t see the Love Tug from her vantage point, but that was okay. She wasn’t in any hurry.

Dylan strapped Billy to his chest in the cotton baby-carrier that one of the boutique staff from the club had donated to him, along with a box of sleep suits and baby clothes. He’d been astounded by the power of the baby to melt hearts at twenty paces: one look at that shock of hair and big brown eyes and he had them in the palm of his little hand. Dylan hoped for Billy’s sake that his power over the opposite sex never dwindled.

“Come on, small guy. Daddy’s hungry.”

He made his way around the rocky path towards the beach, his path set for the bakery at the far end, his mind set on Kara.

Where was she this morning? Had she gone back to the villa? Lucien was due to go home to England over the next day or two, he’d have been around for her last night. The thought gladdened him. If there was any man he trusted to look out for Kara, that man was Lucien Knight.

Kara tensed as Dylan appeared on the beach. Her breath caught in her throat as she watched him walk by the cafe, barefoot and bare-chested aside from the baby carrier. Even from a distance she could see the baby’s startling shock of hair, and a smile touched her lips.

Dylan walked the beach with the ease of a local, pausing briefly to pass the time of day with the guy who dragged the sunbeds across the sands.

She saw him smile, and wanted his smile to be for her. She didn’t get up. Just watched him, sure of where he was heading.

She caught the eye of the waitress cleaning a nearby table and ordered another coffee, this time to take away.

Dylan walked slowly back along the beach, the warm, scented pastries in a brown paper bag in his hand. He’d visited the bakery as much out of habit as out of hunger; the familiarity of routine had become important in these most unsettling of days.

He chatted inanely to Billy as he walked back towards the boat, even though the baby couldn’t understand a word he said and was half way towards his morning snooze. He didn’t even notice that someone was walking towards him until she fell into step beside him on the sand.

“Hey, Sailor,” she said softly. “You forgot your jacket.”

“You’re supposed to be someplace else,” he said, gladdened beyond belief that she wasn’t. “Anywhere but here with me.”

“I have coffee?” she said, knowing that there was nowhere else in the world she'd rather be.

He held the bag up. “And I have pastries.”

She moved towards a sun-bed set beneath a thatched umbrella close to the azure shoreline and sat down. Dylan sat alongside her, Billy fast asleep on his chest. Kara looked down at him for a few long, silent seconds.

“That’s some hairstyle.”

“I know. I kind of like it.”

“Me too.” She reached out and touched a soft strand of it. “He has a good name.”

“The best,” Dylan said without missing a beat.

She nodded. “Can I still call you Dylan?”

He stroked the baby’s hair and sighed.

“It’s just a name, Kara. I’m still the same man, and for what it’s worth, I was more myself with you than I’ve ever been with anyone else.”

She reached for the pastry bag he’d placed down on the sunbed between them and ripped it open.

“I know that now.” She passed him the coffee, and then teased a warm pastry apart in her fingers. “I couldn’t get on the plane back to England. I tried, I really did. I queued, but when it came to my turn, I couldn’t get on the damn plane.”

He sipped the scalding drink from the tiny hole in the lid, leaning sideways so as not to hold it over Billy’s head.

“You should have.”

“Should I?”

Dylan placed the cup down and accepted the chunk of pastry she held out.

“It would have been the sensible choice.”

“I don’t do sensible. I do full throttle, even though it might break my neck,” she said. “Or my heart.”

“I never wanted to break your heart, English.”

“You put it back together again last night.”

“I broke my own heart too, if it’s any consolation.”

They sat in silence then, man, woman and child.

She screwed up the empty pastry bag, set the coffee cup down in the sand, and sank back against the sun lounger. “Lie with me for a while?”

Dylan swallowed hard. He wanted to lie there with Kara so much that he feared his banging heart might wake Billy. He lay back slowly beside her and offered her the crook of his shoulder. She met his eyes for an uncertain second and then accepted, settling herself against the warmth of his body.

He was so warm. So warm, and vital, and so intrinsically, basically right that she sighed heavily. His arms felt like her home.

“Dylan…” she said.

He stroked her hair. “Ssh. Just for one minute. Don’t say anything.”

And so she didn’t. She closed her eyes and let him stroke her hair, her arm flung across his midriff beneath Billy’s tiny toes.

Little by little she tilted her face, and little by little he dipped his, until his mouth was a breath away from her own.

He opened his eyes, and in hers he found absolution.

She opened her eyes, and in his she found devotion.

“How are we gonna play this thing, English?” he said, cupping her face with his palm.

“One day at a time,” she whispered. “Kiss me?”

His gaze fell to her lips, and then back up to her eyes. No kiss had ever felt so important.

Her gentle sigh of longing filled his head when he lowered his mouth over hers. “Kara,” he whispered, her name his prayer as he closed his eyes and let his feelings take over. Her mouth opened and invited him in, let his tongue slide over hers, into her heart, her everything. He buried his hand in her hair and held her head to his. “I love you so very much,” he breathed, and then he kissed her again, aching all over with how much she meant to him.

She hadn’t said why she was here, or if she intended to stay, but he needed to say it anyway, and he needed her to hear it.

“I love you too,” she said, her hand gentle over the warm skin at the nape of his neck when he lifted his head. “Can I stay?”

Dylan eased back, his fingers still on her jaw. Such a casually phrased question, but he could feel her trembling.

“Are you sure you want to?”

Kara looked at him, clear eyed and very, very clear in her mind.

“I’ll never love anyone else the way I love you. I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life.”

“It’s not just me, Kara,” he said, glancing down at the top of Billy’s head. “We’re kind of a package deal.”

“Hey, the cute baby clinched it,” she smiled, stroking the baby's foot. “You should thank him someday.”

“Every day for the rest of my life.”

“I’m going to stick around to make sure you do, Sailor.”

Dylan kissed her hair as she settled her head on his shoulder and looked out towards the sea, towards the Love Tug nestled at the far end of the rocks.

“I knew the moment I saw that crazy-ass boat that I was in trouble,” she said.

“But you didn’t turn around and walk away.”

“Trouble is my middle name.”

“Then we match.” Kara felt his soft laugh against her hair.

“I don’t know the first thing about babies. Just so you know," she said, and touched Billy’s pink cheek.

“Me neither, but I’m learning,” Dylan said. He reached down and un-clipped the baby carrier carefully, then manoeuvred the still sleeping Billy down onto the cushion of the shaded lounger. Unencumbered now, he stood, and Kara stood with him.

“Come here, English,” he said gently, pulling her near. She wrapped her arms around him and closed her eyes, breathing his scent in deep as his restless hands moved over her back, in her hair, over the flare of her hips.

“You fit me, Kara,” he said. “You know every fucked up part of me, and you still see someone you can love.”

She wrapped him closer. So much man. So much more than he gave himself credit for. “You fit me, Sailor.” She tipped her head back and offered him her mouth, an offer he accepted and then some, kissing her breath away. They lingered at the water’s edge, eyes closed, her face in his hands as his tongue moved against hers. Love and lust sparkled low in her stomach, as warm and welcome as a summer’s day.

“You feel that?” he said, his voice raw with emotion.

“I feel it.” She didn’t have the words to tell him how much.

“Say you’ll never go,” he said, even though he’d promised himself he wouldn’t ask it of her.

“Tell me you want me to stay forever,” she murmured, knowing he was the love of her lifetime.

“Always, English,” he said. “Always.”