up." Then he tossed her something, and she automatically grabbed for it - a set of keys. "Wanna take a test drive?" he asked.
Belated embarrassment kicked in. Kitty grimaced, knowing this wasn't the usual woman's idea of an evening's entertainment. "Oh, I don't know..."
"Come on." He opened the door and leaped into the passenger side, then patted the driver's seat. "Jimmy insists."
Still feeling foolish, Kitty ducked into the spot behind the steering wheel. She looked over at Dylan, noting the contrast between him, with his powerful body and rebel's hair, and the vehicle's built-in baby-seat, powder blue, vinyl-and-faux wood-trim interior. "Are you sure?"
"Kitty, it was my idea, wasn't it?"
The minivan didn't have nearly the float factor of Aunt Cat's T-bird, Kitty noticed as she took a right-hand turn out of the auto dealership. In the rearview mirror she could see their salesman waving them off, and she returned a tentative half salute. "Guess we surprised Jimmy, huh? He never pegged us for an interest in minivans."
Dylan grinned. "A fact for which I'm truly grateful."
Embarrassed again, Kitty bit her bottom lip and fumbled around to find the knob that operated the headlights. "I suppose you are. But ... thanks." She took the first exit off the highway, driving onto a narrow rural road that led them farther away from the town of Colter.
They rode without speaking for a few more minutes until Kitty couldn't stand the silence any longer. She glanced over at Dylan, his face unreadable in the blue dashboard glow. "This isn't exactly fixing the situation between my mother, Pearl, and Red."
"Nope, though I was hoping this might get your mind off it," Dylan admitted. "Kitty, you've got to realize that some calamities can't be prevented. It's not your responsibility or your fault, no matter what happens."
"But it will reflect on me," she insisted.
"I know you think so," he said. "But I wish you wouldn't. Hell, Kitty, you're sweet, you're beautiful, you've been a loyal friend to Hot Water and everybody in it. What do you have to be ashamed of?"
She shook her head. "You've been away for too long. You've forgotten how it is at home."
"Maybe. Maybe I have been gone too long."
Her stomach lurched and she squeezed the steering wheel. "Do you mean that?"
There was a moment of silence before he barked out a laugh. "No." His voice changed then, going softer, deeper. "But I'm not so sorry I came back for this visit."
Kitty swallowed. "Why is that?"
"I'm glad I got to know my wife."
The words wrapped around her like a warm blanket. "Oh, Dylan. I'm glad I got to know you too."
"Then why did you give me the brush-off tonight?"
Oops. She'd forgotten all about that. "The brush-off?"
He wasn't buying her feigned bewilderment. "I believe you said you had an important, long meeting of the Preservation Society tonight. Not fifteen minutes after you claimed it was to start, I find you meandering around Kemper's. If you didn't want to be with me, Kitty, you could just have said so."
"No!" She took a breath, then quieted her voice. "It wasn't that. I mean, it wasn't you. But all your friends were going to be around and I just couldn't see how the two of us - how I was - "
"How you were what?"
"How I was going to pretend we were just ... acquaintances." Hours of watching him without touching him, longing to be close but making herself stay clear, had sounded like that torture he was always threatening her with.
"Why the hell would you pretend that?" He sounded sincerely baffled.
"A Wilder and a Matthews - "
"Could certainly be attracted to one another and act on that attraction. For God's sake, Kitty, I know I wasn't planning on keeping away from you. Believe me, by the end of the evening I'm sure everyone would have known how things stand between us."
Which was exactly how? Before she could voice it, he answered the unspoken question.
"We're married. Nobody needs to know that but you and me. But the fact that we're ... spending time together needn't be a secret. You're not ashamed of me, right?"
"Of course not."
"And you said you don't have a reputation to ruin, not that I think a twenty-six-year-old woman has to apologize for having sex. So what's the big deal?"
Kitty didn't like the turn this conversation was taking. "You're using logic and reason to confuse me," she complained.
He chuckled. "No flies on you, honey. So you'll say yes the next time, right?"
"The next time for what?"