The Millionaire's Homecoming. Cara Colter

for a little while longer. But escape was just postponed, not canceled.

      And apparently, she was just as eager not to tangle their lives as he was.

      “I’ve got the neighborhood kids on the case of my dog. I mean it would be nice if you checked, but no, don’t feel obligated. And no, definitely don’t come back. I’ll just walk home. It’s not far.”

      She had been riding her bike on Sugar Maple. Did she live close to there?

      “Where are you staying?”

      She gave him a puzzled look. “I thought your mom would have told you.”

      “Told me what?” he said cautiously.

      His mother, these days, told him lots of things. That someone was sneaking into the house stealing her eyeglasses. And wine decanters. That she’d had the nicest conversation with his father, who had been dead for seventeen years.

      That was part of the reason he was here.

      One of the live-in care aides had called him late last night and said, in the careful undertone of one who might be listened to, You should come. It may not be safe for her to be at home anymore.

      He had known it was coming, and yet been shocked by it all the same. Wasn’t he back in his hometown hoping it was an overreaction? That if he just hired more staff he would not have to take his mother from the only home she had known for the past forty years?

      It seemed to David, of all the losses that this town had handed him, this was the biggest one of all.

      He was losing his mother. But he was not confiding that in Kayla, with her all-too-ready sympathy!

      “You thought my mother would tell me where you lived?”

      “David, I’m her next-door neighbor.”

      His mouth fell open and he forced it shut. That was a rather large oversight on his mother’s part.

      “The house was too much for Kevin’s folks,” Kayla said.

      He’d known that. The house had been empty the last few times he had visited; he had noticed the Jaffreys were no longer there the next time he’d returned to Blossom Valley after Kevin’s funeral. It probably wasn’t the house that was too much, but the memories it contained.

      David had his fair share of those, too. He’d felt a sense of loss, to go with his growing string of losses that he felt when he came home, at seeing the house empty. He had practically grown up in that house next door to his, he and Kevin passing in and out of each other’s kitchens since they were toddlers.

      Both of them had been only children, and maybe that was why they had become brothers to each other as much as friends.

      There was no part of David’s childhood that did not have Kevin in it. He was part of the fabric of every Christmas and birthday. They had learned to ride two-wheelers and strapped on their first skates together. They had shared the first day of school. They had chosen David’s puppy together, and the dog that had been on their heels all the days of their youth had really belonged to both of them.

      They had built the tree fort in Kevin’s backyard, and swam across the bay together every single summer.

      When David’s dad had died, Mr. Jaffrey had acted like a father to both of them.

      No, maybe not a father. More like a friend. Had that been part of the problem with Kevin? A problem David had successfully ignored for years?

      No rules. No firm hand. No guidelines. An only child, totally indulged, who had, despite his fun-loving charm, become increasingly self-centered.

      The Jaffreys’ empty house had looked more forlorn with each visit: paint needing freshening up, shingles curling, porch sagging, yard overgrown.

      That house had once been so full of love and laughter and hopes and dreams. The state it was in now made it seem like the final few words in the closing chapter of a book with a sad ending.

      David wondered if maybe the reason he had stayed so angry at Kevin was because if he ever let go of that, the sadness would swallow him whole.

      “The Jaffreys got a condo on the water,” Kayla continued. “The house would have gone to Kevin, eventually. They wanted me to have it.”

      He let that sink in. Kayla was his mother’s next-door neighbor. She was living in the house he and Kevin had chased through in those glorious, carefree days of their youth.

      He didn’t want to ask her anything. He didn’t want to know.

      And yet he annoyed himself by asking anyway, “Doesn’t that house need quite a lot of work?”

      He hoped she would hear his lack of enthusiasm. And he thought he caught a momentary glimpse of the fact she was overwhelmed by the house in something faintly worried in her eyes. But she covered it quickly.

      “Yes!” she said, her enthusiasm striking him as faintly forced. “It needs everything.”

      Naturally, she would never walk away from that particular gift horse. She was needed.

      He couldn’t stop himself. “Do you ever give up on hopeless causes?”

      CHAPTER FIVE

      KAYLA LOOKED BRIEFLY WOUNDED and then she just looked mad. David liked her angry look quite a bit better than the wounded one. The wounded expression made her look vulnerable and made him feel protective of her, even though he had caused it in the first place!

      “Are you talking about the house?” she asked dangerously.

      He answered safely, “Yes,” though he was aware, as was she, that he could have been talking about Kevin.

      “Do you ever get tired of being a wet blanket?”

      “I prefer to think of it as being the voice of reason.”

      “I don’t care to hear it.”

      David didn’t care what Kayla cared to hear. She obviously was in for some hard truths today, whether she liked it or not. Maybe somebody did have to protect her. From herself! And apparently, no one had stepped up to the plate to do that so far.

      “That house,” he said, his tone cool and reasonable, “is doing a long, slow slide into complete ruin.”

      “It isn’t,” she said, as though he hadn’t been reasonable at all. “And it isn’t a hopeless cause!”

      There. He’d said his piece. Despite the fact that he dealt in investments, including real estate, all the time, his expertise had been rejected.

      He could leave with a clear conscience. He had tried to warn her away from a house that was a little more—a lot more—of a project than any thinking person would take on, let alone a single woman.

      “I’ve already ordered all new windows,” she said stubbornly. “And the floors are scheduled for refinishing.”

      A money pit, he thought to himself. He ordered himself to shut up, so was astounded when, out loud, he said drily, “Kayla to the rescue.”

      She frowned at him.

      Stop! David yelled at himself. But he didn’t stop. “I bet the dog is a rescue, too, isn’t it?”

      He had his answer when she flushed. He realized Kevin wasn’t the only one he was angry with.

      “There was quite a large insurance settlement,” she said, her voice stiff with pride. “Can you think of a better use for it than restoring Kevin’s childhood home?”

      “Actually, yes.”

      She was in his field of expertise now. This is what he did, and he did it extremely well. He counseled people on how to invest their money. Blaze Enterprises was considered one of the most successful investment firms in Canada.

      “A falling-down