The CEO's Unexpected Proposal. Karen Smith Rose

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      “Hold on.” Dawson took it from her before she could lift it to the ground. “That’s pretty heavy. I’ll get it.”

      She flexed her arm. “I guess you haven’t seen my muscles,” she joked.

      Finally he broke into a smile. His fingers surrounded her upper arm and he squeezed gently. It was supposed to be a playful touch. She knew that. But it wasn’t so playful as she looked up into his eyes.

      He removed his fingers and kidded, “Yep, there are muscles there. But I’ll still carry the suitcase.”

      “Chivalry must be alive and well.” She grabbed a duffel bag and a basketball. “I guess a backboard’s in Luke’s future.”

      “Maybe just mine. Anything I’m interested in, doesn’t interest him.”

      “Have you asked him why?”

      “Does it snow on Feather Peak?” After she arched a brow at him, he ran his hand through his hair.

      “If I seem defensive, it’s because I am. That kiss when I was here last—” He stopped, obviously frustrated with himself because it had happened. “I see our move here and Luke’s therapy as a real chance to put everything right. I want to give him a more ordinary life without full security house alarms, gated communities, private schools. I guess I’m trying to leave ‘rich’ behind. I don’t want to throw a new life off track. I feel like I’ve failed him up till now. I wasn’t the greatest dad. Now he’s lost his mom and I’ll never be able to make up for that.”

      “You’re right.” She couldn’t tell Dawson he wasn’t. But she also couldn’t let him take on a responsibility that could be too heavy for anyone. “You don’t have to make up for Kelly dying, and you can’t. You just need to be there for Luke.”

      Dawson mulled that over as he picked up the suitcase as if it weighed nothing at all and they began walking toward the bed-and-breakfast again. When they reached the porch, he asked, “When will you start therapy with him?”

      “Actually I want you to start therapy with him.”

      He set the suitcase on the porch floor. “What do you mean?”

      “If you and Luke go up to your suite, what’s going to happen?”

      “He’ll probably go into his bedroom and shut the door.”

      “Exactly. So instead, surprise him. Why don’t you take him into town and show him around? Point out where you lived, where you went to school and anything else that’s meaningful to you and could be meaningful to him. After you return, I’ll talk to him. Not a formal therapy session, but a get-to-know-you session. Maybe it will help him feel more confident about attending a new school, which is a big adjustment. We can both help him ease into it.”

      Dawson stared up at the winter blue sky, at the pine forests that fringed so much of Miners Bluff. “And if he doesn’t say a word to me in the SUV?”

      “He doesn’t have to. Just talk to him. Let the memories come … and whatever emotions come with them.”

      “Coming back here and remembering could be painful. The idea of it makes me feel … vulnerable. I haven’t been vulnerable to anyone in a very long time.”

      She could empathize. True intimacy demanded vulnerability and she was afraid of letting her guard down as much as anyone. “Nothing’s going to happen overnight, or in one ride around town. But if you can just share one memory with him from childhood—something that affected your life in some way—and he hears the truth in that, he might look at you differently.” Her tone took on a lighter note. “He might actually see that you’re not just his dad, you’re a person.”

      “If you want Luke to see me as a person, we really have a lot of work to do.”

      She laughed.

      Dawson looked as if he wanted to give her a hug … or something. Instead he lifted the suitcase again, opened the door and headed into the kitchen where the biscotti jar and chocolate milk had brought back memories of their teenage years around that kitchen table. Maybe Dawson and Luke weren’t the only ones who would have to let a few walls down. Mikala’s biggest problem would be separating the personal from the professional.

      But she could and would do that. She really had no choice. And while she was doing it, she would not think about Dawson’s kiss.

      An hour later Dawson and Luke both stood in Mikala’s studio looking uncomfortable. If that was any indication of how their drive had gone …

      “Luke, why don’t you go into the music room and make yourself at home. I just have to talk to your dad for a few minutes and then I’ll be in.”

      Luke gave them both an I-don’t-want-to-do-this look, but wandered into the music room and went over to the bench at the piano. Mikala wasn’t surprised. That’s where he probably felt the most comfortable.

      She said to Dawson, “Let’s step outside a minute. I don’t want to leave him too long.”

      They were hardly on the stoop of the studio when Dawson said with some disappointment, “He didn’t say a word. I was hoping … We drove downtown around the park and I tried to explain the celebrations held there. You know. The happy times I remembered. Then I took him past our old house—my old house.”

      She knew Dawson needed some of this return-to-the-past as much as Luke did, so she asked, “How did it look?”

      “Different, yet the same. New shutters, beige trim instead of white, brown roof instead of red. But the yard … I remembered practicing my pitching in that yard. Tossing baskets at the backboard on the garage. Then the garage reminded me of the weeks I worked on my first car in there. I tried to share all that with Luke, but he just sat there as if nothing I said mattered.”

      “He heard you, Dawson.”

      “How can you be so sure?”

      “I’m sure because I can tell from Luke’s comments and his facial expressions and his body language that he hears what everybody’s saying. He’s in culture shock right now. You’ve moved him from the only home he knows. Give him time to settle in. Give yourself time, too.”

      “What do you plan to accomplish today?”

      “Not a whole lot. I just want Luke to get used to me. We’ll get into all the rest of it soon enough.”

      “If you run over, I pay overtime.”

      “We’ll talk about it if it happens.”

      “Mikala, I am paying you for this. I won’t do it any other way.”

      Gazing into Dawson’s eyes, she saw the integrity he’d always possessed, fairness that always made him a good leader. But it wasn’t integrity or fairness that practically mesmerized her as she stared into his eyes. It was something so much deeper than either of them were going to act on.

      Yet even as she thought it, she noticed the tiny scar along his jaw that he hadn’t had as a teenager. She also caught a glimpse of a few silver strands in the hair at his temples. There was a swirl of chest hair in the V-neck of his shirt. In high school she’d seen him at their favorite swimming hole in his bathing suit and thought no boy in their class had looked as good.

      Pushing all those memories aside, she said, “I’ve got to go in to Luke. Just trust me, Dawson.”

      “I’ll try. I’ll be up in my suite. Call my cell if you need me. In fact, call my cell when you’re finished and I’ll come back over for him.”

      Dawson was hovering again and he had to break the habit. “He’s my last appointment today. It might be better if we just walk over to the bed-and-breakfast and he comes and finds you.”

      “Right. I guess I’m supposed to give him space.”

      As she turned toward the studio,