“You look pretty much the way my mom did when she found out what I’d done,” Kit said ruefully. “She didn’t have to say a word to make me feel like a real jerk. She let one little tear trickle down her cheek, and I threw myself at her feet and cried and promised her I’d never do anything like that again.”
Savannah laughed shakily and ran a weary hand through her hair. “You think that would work for me and Michael?”
Kit rubbed his jaw thoughtfully. “A little motherguilt never hurts,” he said after a moment. “But my dad’s tough punishment was pretty darn effective, too.”
“Then I’ll have to find a way to combine the two, since I’ve had to fill both roles since the twins were born.”
“You’re—er—divorced?”
She’d told him on the island that she’d never been married. Either he’d forgotten, or he was trying to be tactful. Savannah shook her head. “I wasn’t married to their father. He never claimed responsibility for them.”
She figured he might as well understand completely that the lighthearted woman he’d met on the island who’d been free to dance and play and flirt with attractive strangers, the-woman he’d come looking for, didn’t exist. She doubted that he would have been as likely to follow her had he known she was a single mother of twin teenagers, solely responsible for them and their grandmother.
Kit slipped his hands into the pockets of his slacks. “You didn’t tell me you had children.”
“There were a lot of things I didn’t tell you,” she reminded him.
“Why?”
She shook her head, wondering how she could make him understand. “Because it wasn’t real. It was like a…like a fantasy,” she said inadequately. “A tropical island, an attractive man, romantic music. I knew our lives were nothing alike, but for those few hours it didn’t matter.”
He looked momentarily confused. “So you knew all along that I was Christopher Pace?”
“No. Not until Miranda let it slip tonight. I told you, I don’t follow celebrity news much. I didn’t know.”
“Then what made you think our lives were so different?”
“Just a feeling, I guess,” she admitted. “But, obviously, I was right. You’ve caught a glimpse of my life tonight, Kit. I have my kids to look after. And my mother. There’s very little time for fun and adventure. In fact, this was probably the most exciting party my mother’s friends have ever attended. They’ll talk about it for weeks.”
“And you hate that” His dark eyes were focused intently on her face, seeing more than she’d expected.
She nodded. “I don’t like providing grist for the gossip mills. I’ve been in that position enough to know that it can get ugly.”
“Trust me, gossip is
something I know all too well.”
She almost shuddered at the thought of how Kit’s life, like many celebrities, was open to discussion and speculation by anyone with an access to the media, no matter how sleazy or disreputable the source might be. She had often thought that she was glad she’d outgrown her girlhood dreams of fame and fortune, since she would truly hate living her life in a public fishbowl. She couldn’t help wondering if Kit’s appearance in Campbellville was going to thrust her into it, whether she liked it or not.
But even with that fear at the back of her mind, she couldn’t honestly say she was sorry Kit was there.
“Oh, Kit,” she murmured, stress and exhaustion loosening her tongue. “Why did you have to come here? It was so much safer when you were just a fantasy.”
He was standing close enough to her now to reach out and touch her cheek. “I already told you why I’m here. I couldn’t stop thinking about you.”
He slid his fingertips along the line of her jaw, making her shiver. “I wanted to see you. Touch you. Dance with you again.”
Savannah was trembling now, her hands itching to slide around his neck and into the soft thickness of his luxurious dark hair. He had only to speak in that low, sexy voice to take her back to the fantasy, she realized numbly. She could almost hear sultry music begin to play in the background.
“You don’t even know me,” she reminded him in a whisper.
“I know enough to want to know more. Are you going to give me that chance, Savannah, or are you going to send me away?”
She searched his face with questioning eyes. Was he really still interested in her? Didn’t he understand how difficult—if not downright impossible—a relationship between them would be? “And if I ask you to leave?”
“I’ll go,” he answered promptly. And then gave her that pirate’s smile she hadn’t been able to resist on the island. “But not without trying to change your mind.”
With that warning, he lowered his mouth to hers again. And if Kit had any second thoughts about having come looking for her, she certainly couldn’t tell from his kiss. He kissed her as heatedly, as eagerly as he had on the island, when the magic between them had taken them both by surprise. And this kiss, like the last one, might have flared into mutual passion had not a gasp from the doorway broken them apart as effectively as a pail of cold water.