Molly laughed. “That was so bad of you. Did it ruin his chances with the brunette?”
Kyle chuckled and shook his head. “She felt so sorry for him that she spent the entire night personally tending to his scrapes and bruises. He always had that kind of luck with the ladies.”
“That was before he started dating Connie, I take it.” An odd expression crossed Kyle’s face. “Uh, no.
They were dating then, I guess. But it wasn’t as if they were married or anything,” he added, defensive on his late friend’s behalf.
“I see.” So Tommy hadn’t been quite the saint he’d been made out to be. Interesting.
“Look, he wasn’t perfect. But he was a great guy. And he’d have been a good husband to Connie. Once the vows had been exchanged, he would have lived up to them.”
She reached out to rest a hand lightly on his arm. “I’m not judging your friend, Kyle. I’m sure I would have liked him.”
He seemed appeased. “You would have. Everyone did.” Without moving her hand, she said quietly, “I’ve never lost anyone who was really close to me like that. My family has been extremely fortunate that we’re all still together, even after a couple of close calls. It must have been a nightmare for you.”
“Yeah,” he said after a moment. “It was.”
And was still, she mused. Kyle was a long way from coming to grips with the loss of his friend.
But this wasn’t a counseling session. She drew her hand from his arm and asked lightly, “So, tell me the truth, Kyle. Were you as lucky with the ladies as your friend?”
He snorted. “Hardly. I never had Tom’s knack for flirting. Put me in a social situation and my tongue glues itself to the top of my mouth. Maybe you remember that I’ve always been like that.”
“Mmm. Some women are drawn to the silent, brooding type,” she teased lightlyshe teased lightly—and thought that it apparently applied to herself. Especially when it came to Kyle.
Looking mildly embarrassed, he growled, “Time to change the subject again.”
“So I take it you didn’t fall off your horse?”
“No. I remembered just enough of what your father told me to stay in the saddle.”
“Do you think you could still rope a calf if you tried?” He grunted. “Only if the calf walked up and offered to put his feet in the lasso for me.”
She giggled.
With a shrug, Kyle said, “It was painfully obvious when I lived on the ranch that I had no real talent as a cowhand.”
“So you went into the military.”
He nodded. “Your dad told me about his stint in the navy. It sounded like a good deal, so I went to sign up, though I chose the Marines rather than the navy.”
“Did you like it?”
He gave her a look that made her feel foolish for asking, but he replied evenly, “It suited me at the time.”
Embarrassed about asking such a blatantly insensitive question—even though it was partially his fault for being so hard to converse with—she moved on. “You said you were considering several options for your future. What do you think you’ll do next?”
He shrugged and turned his attention back to his driving. “Maybe I’ll take Mack up on his offer to go into property management with him. I’m not too good at the dealing-with-people part, but I’ve always been pretty good at making repairs.”
She wondered if that was what he really wanted to do, or if he felt obligated to step into the place Tommy would have taken had he survived. Jewel and Mack had obviously accepted him as a surrogate son, trying to fill the hole their own son’s death had left in their lives, and Kyle was probably grateful for the assistance they had given him since he’d been injured.
She was trying to think of a relatively tactful way to ask that question when Kyle turned the tables on her. “I think it’s my turn to ask you questions.”
Though she was a bit surprised, she replied, “Sure. Go ahead.”
“Doesn’t it cramp your social life to live with your parents at your age?”
Social life? She almost laughed. The closest she had come to a social life in the past year had been the family barbecues the Walkers threw every chance they got. “Since I’m not seeing anyone in particular right now, it isn’t really an issue.”