Page 52 of Knox
“Hey.”
The voice made him look over and, shoot, nope. Kelsey stood in the doorway, dressed in her yoga pants and a pink Belles Are Made for Singing shirt. Her dark hair was down, freshly washed, with darker strands still wet amidst the drier tousles.
She didn’t wear any makeup, which made her look about twenty-one, and came in and sat on the recliner. “What are you watching?”
“Hockey. My brother Wyatt plays goalie. For the Blue Ox, the guys in blue.”
“Seriously?” She leaned forward, hands between her knees, watching the screen. “It looks like…oh, they’re losing.”
“Yeah. But they don’t have a terrible record this year. They lost one of their players to injury—Max Sharpe—and that has left a big hole in their offense. But they have good coaching, and usually Wyatt is on his game. Not sure what’s going on with him.”
“So you have a superstar brother. Cool.”
Knox lifted a shoulder. Refrained from saying something that sounded small, like,Actually they’re all superstars. While I stay home and play midwife.
But he had birthed abulltoday. With Hot Pete’s face.
Hopefully, with the late bull’s genes for bucking, too.
She leaned back in the recliner. “I have to admit, when I saw this place…I can see why you don’t want to leave it.”
“It’s not that I don’t want to leave it. I really…I can’t.”
He wasn’t sure why he said that, because given the choice…except hehadn’tbeen given a choice. He didn’t have the option to hit the road with an all-girl band and play bodyguard-slash-plaything. Not when people were counting on him to keep a legacy alive.
“You can’t?”
“When my father died, I was the only one he’d trained to run it. My big brother, Reuben, had left a few years earlier to be a smokejumper, and Tate was also gone. Wyatt was on his way to the juniors, so that left Ford, but he had this dream of being a SEAL—”
“You have a brother who is a Navy SEAL? And another one who is a smokejumper?”
He supposed this conversation was inevitable. “Yes.”
“And Tate is a bodyguard.”
“I wouldn’t exactly call him—”
“Oh, trust me. He’s bossy and shadowy and knows what he’s doing. He has Kevin Costner written all over him.”
“Kevin Costner?”
“That old movie, with Whitney Houston? He’s her bodyguard and falls for her?”
And that might be the last thing Knox wanted to hear. Because yes, Kelsey would be so very easy to fall for, with her sweet smile, those beautiful pale blue eyes. He drew in a breath. “Tate does know his way around a brawl, that’s for sure.”
“We haven’t had any of those, but…” She sighed. “He did rescue me when I sort of…” She met his eyes. “I freaked out onstage, and everybody is completely overreacting. They canceled our shows, and Tate and Carter practically coerced Dix and Glo to mutiny. They refused to go onstage with me until I started feeling like myself again, but …I’m bestonstage.”
He liked her with this much passion. It reminded him of the woman he’d watched singing under the spotlight. “You are pretty amazing onstage.”
She smiled, tucked her hair behind her ear.
“But you’re also pretty amazing offstage.”
She looked away, as if his words hurt.
Shoot. “Maybe Tate’s right. Maybe you just need a few days off. Get your feet back under you.” He went out on a limb. “I’m a safe guy, remember? And this is a safe place.”
She smiled. “I remember.”