Storm clouds darkened by the time Katy pulled into the parking lot and took the space next to the silver Camry, the one she’d seen Dayne drive off in earlier. Any moment lightning was bound to unleash over the campus.
“Figures,” she mumbled. “You must be giving me a sign, Lord. Severe thunderstorms ahead.”
She climbed out of her little red car, slammed the door behind her, and scanned the campus. Then she spotted him sitting at a picnic table beneath an overhang near the stadium’s front gate. The temperature had dropped, and she wasn’t sure she’d be warm enough. She wore a jacket and a white tank top beneath a black V-neck T-shirt. Her black jeans were loose, and in her flats it was easy to run the forty feet that separated them.
“It’s freezing.” She ducked into the covered area and stared at the sky. “That’s gonna be a big one.” She looked at Dayne. Her pounding heart had nothing to do with the coming storm or the run from her car.
“I know.” Dayne had two steaming Starbucks cups beside him and a bag of what looked like food. He gave her a hesitant smile. “I thought you might be hungry.”
His kindness touched her. “Thanks. That was nice.” The first bolt of lightning cut across the dark sky. Katy jumped and scurried to the table. “That was close.”
Thunder shook the stadium and rattled the ground beneath their feet.
“Hmm.” Dayne winced. “Not many thunderstorms in LA.”
“No.” She did a nervous laugh. “Not like this.”
“What should we do?” He looked ready to run. “What’s the safest place?”
Rain started suddenly, pouring down buckets on the cement promenade that separated the stadium and the parking lot.
“Well—” Katy looked around—“lightning hits the tallest object around. Still . . .” There were lots of higher places, but anywhere outdoors was a risk. “Honestly?” She took one of the hot coffee cups and moved to the edge of the covered area. “I think we should make a run for it.”
As she finished her sentence, another lightning bolt shot down and hit somewhere in a neighborhood maybe a mile away. The intensity of the rain doubled.
Before the thunder hit again, Katy motioned to Dayne and shouted so she could be heard above the storm, “Let’s go!”
She led the way, and Dayne stayed close behind. The thunder exploded around them just as they both slid into her car—she in the driver’s seat, Dayne beside her.
Katy was breathless and drenched, soaked from the deluge. She held up her hands. “Ever notice—” she made a silly face at Dayne—“we’re always running out of rainstorms?” She settled back into her seat. “Why is that?”
Dayne looked stunning. His wet hair looked darker than usual, plastered against his light tan. The effect made his blue eyes electrifying.
Katy turned the key in her ignition and tried not to notice. “Let’s go to my house. The Flanigans are running errands.” She pulled out of the parking lot. “I think that’d be the safest. I’ll bring you back later to get your car.”
“Okay.” Dayne wiped the water off his face and turned slightly so he was facing her. “Can I tell you something?”
Katy couldn’t slow her racing heart. What was she doing, driving with Dayne Matthews through a pounding rainstorm, heading for the Flanigans’ house? She wanted to tell him yes, that he could tell her something. He could tell her about Kelly and her pregnancy and how it felt now that he was a few months from becoming a father. She kept her gaze straight ahead. “Sure.”
Lightning ripped across the black sky, lighting up the air all around them.
Dayne hesitated, staring out the window. “Wow—” he chuckled—“I’ve never seen anything like this.”
“Wait till it’s mixed with tornadoes.”
He rested his head against the side window. “It’d be wild, an adventure. I’ve watched those storm-chaser documentaries. LA has fog or sunshine, pretty much.” He was quiet for a minute. “When it rains, we get about three weeks of dreary gray. But lightning and thunder are an event.”
“Really?” Katy hadn’t thought about that.
“Yeah.” Rain dripped from his hair onto his forehead, and he wiped it again. “I think seasons would be fun.”
They were almost to the Flanigans’ house. Katy felt herself relax a little. Whatever had caused Dayne to get on a plane and come here, she would know the reason soon enough. In the meantime, he hadn’t crossed any lines, hadn’t suggested with his words or tone or body language that he was interested in more than talking with her. She let her shoulders sink back into the seat. “You were going to tell me something?”
“Oh, right.” His tone was gentle, pensive. “About the kids at CKT, the battle scene of Narnia.”
Katy was impressed, but she didn’t let on. The light ahead of her turned red, though she could barely see it through the pounding rain. She brought her car to a careful stop and smiled at him. “It’s a great show.”
“One of my favorite series of books as a kid.”
“Chronicles of Narnia?” There was no way she could hide her surprise. “I thought you didn’t . . .”
“I was a missionary kid, Katy.” He slung one arm up along the back of the seat. His sweatshirt was soaked through. His grin grew a little lopsided. “I knew pretty early on that it was me versus God in the battle for my parents’ attention. But I loved reading.” He raised one shoulder. “Still do. C. S. Lewis was one of the masters.”
“True.” The light turned green, and Katy returned her attention to the road ahead of them.
“Watching you and—what’s her name, the choreographer?”
“Rhonda.”
“Right, Rhonda. That’s it.” Dayne’s smile filled his voice. “The two of you are amazing with those kids.” His tone grew more serious. “I bet this is your best show yet. I can feel it.”
“I know what you mean.” Katy turned into the Flanigans’ neighborhood. “The music is so powerful, and the message . . .”
Dayne remained silent, and the distance between them felt awkward for the first time that afternoon. Katy kept her eyes on the road. What had happened? The conversation was easygoing and upbeat—one more reason Dayne was so attractive to her. But as soon as she mentioned the message of Narnia, everything between them seemed to change.
From the moment they set out for the Flanigan house she’d been thinking about where she and Dayne could sit and talk. Not her apartment, certainly. It was little more than a chair and a small sofa. With the house all to themselves, there wasn’t a single reason why they should go there.
She was still mulling over the options as she pulled into the driveway. “Well, here we are.”
“Wow.” Dayne peered at the house. “I never get over the size of this thing. I thought the homes in Malibu were big.”
Whenever someone visited the Flanigans’ house, Katy saw it with fresh eyes. The place felt like home to her, but it was a mansion, purchased with a small sum of the money Jim Flanigan had earned as a player in the NFL. Jim and Jenny had created a charitable foundation with a bigger piece of his earnings, and through it they quietly supported a dozen ministries.
More than seven thousand square feet of style and warmth painted in a welcoming taupe with white trim and a heavy black roof. The Flanigans lived on several acres, so an expanse of dense, well-manicured grass stretched out on either side of the blacktop driveway.
“Jim and Jenny think of it more as a youth center.” Katy pulled up the driveway to the garage. She clicked a button on her visor, and the door began to open. “Jim says when the day comes that kids don’t fill all this space, he’ll sell and get a cabin on the lake.”
“Jim . . . I don’t think I’ve met him. I remember Jenny and the kids—Bailey and Connor. I don’t think Jim was there that day. He played in the NFL, right?”
“Right. He wasn’t here when you came by that morning.” As she pulled into the garage, twin lightning bolts struck in what felt like the field across the street. “Yikes.” She hit the
garage button again. “Just in time.”
Dayne hesitated. “They won’t mind, will they? If I’m here?”
“Not at all. They’ll be back in a few hours.” Katy thought about the reaction they were likely to get when the Flanigans got home. Bailey would be so giddy she’d barely say hello, and Connor would be tempted to pull up a chair and ask Dayne a hundred questions about acting. She turned off the engine and looked at him. “The kids will know it’s you. Bailey saw you at practice earlier.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. It’s okay.” She unbuckled her seat belt. “I asked her not to say anything.”
He grinned and grabbed both coffees and the bag of food. “She and Connor played it off pretty well when they stopped by my location shoot last October.”
The memory made her smile. One afternoon last fall she had given a note to Jenny and the kids and asked them to deliver it to Dayne at his shoot downtown. The kids had pretended to be autograph seekers, and they’d patiently waited along the rope. “They were good, weren’t they?”
“No one knew a thing.” He winked at her and opened his door. “I think I trust the Flanigan kids.”
She slipped her keys into her purse and took her Narnia script from the backseat. She felt a wave of fear and hesitancy. What was she doing, taking Dayne into the Flanigan house? Why had he come now? She could hardly wait to get inside and find out.
As they walked through the great room and into the kitchen, Katy made up her mind about where they would meet. The formal living room, the one with an entire wall of windows and the black grand piano. She set her things down on the counter and took her coffee from Dayne.
“Coffee cold?” He made a face and held up his drink. “Like this one?”
“A little.” She opened the cupboard and grabbed two tall mugs from the third shelf. “A little microwave action and we’ll be all set.” The tone between them was better than before, but Katy sensed something big coming, something so serious that Dayne had to tell her in person. She poured his drink into one of the mugs and slid it into the microwave.
While she worked, he set the bag down. “Hungry?”
She looked at him. “What’d you bring?”
“Chocolate-chip muffins.” He grinned. “I don’t know . . . sounded like the right thing for a stormy day.”
Much as she feared the conversation ahead, Katy couldn’t help but smile. “I think you’re right.” She slid open a drawer, took out two small paper plates, and handed them to Dayne. “Here.”
He pulled the muffins from the bag and set one on each plate.
When the coffee was hot again, they sat side by side at the kitchen bar and ate their muffins. He told her about the romantic suspense movie he was wrapping up. It was edgy enough that people were suggesting it could receive a nomination for several awards.
“Best actor, even?” Dayne was popular, no doubt, but he’d never been nominated for an Oscar.
He looked down at his half-eaten muffin. “Yeah. I guess.”
Katy was stunned. “Dayne, that’s amazing.”
“Thanks.” He took a drink of his coffee. “It hasn’t happened yet.”
“Still . . . tell me about your role.”
Lightning flashed outside, and seconds later, the thunder made a cracking sound.
He made wary eyes at the window, but he answered her question.
By the time they finished eating, Dayne was talking about the plot of the movie, but Katy was too distracted to listen. This wasn’t the reason he’d come to Bloomington, to tell her about his current film project. She finished her coffee and set her mug on the black granite counter.
He probably wanted to tell her that Kelly had agreed to marry him. Maybe he didn’t want her to read the news in the tabloids, so he’d come here first. She steeled herself. That would be fine, right? Better than fine. It’s what the two of them should do.
“Katy . . .” His expression told her he knew she was distracted. “This isn’t why I’m here.”
“I know.” She held up her empty mug. “More coffee?”
“No thanks.” His eyes never left hers.
“Okay, then—” she nodded toward the living room—“let’s talk in there.”
She hadn’t quite finished her sentence when lightning and thunder hit at the exact same time, exploding in the air around the house and instantly knocking out the electricity.
It was still midafternoon, but the sky was too dark to allow much light through the windows. The house was suddenly bathed in shadows.
Dayne set his cup down. He went to the window and looked out. “So . . . do we need to go down to the basement, maybe?”
“No.” Katy felt herself smile. “No tornadoes today. Not for a few weeks.”
“How long before the lights come back on?”
“Could be a few hours.” She set their mugs in the sink. “There’ll be more light in the living room.”
“I’ll follow you.”
They walked through the cherry-paneled dining area into the carpeted room where the Flanigans held most of their heart-to-heart talks. The room had a vaulted ceiling, furniture that was solid and comfortable, and a fireplace almost as big as the piano.
Katy’s favorite spot to hold a conversation in the entire house was the sofa that backed up to the entire wall of windows. The couch had six overstuffed pillows, so it was comfortable no matter how you sat in it. She took one side and brought her leg up so she was facing sideways.
A foot from her, Dayne did the same.
The room was shadowy but not as dark as the kitchen. And through the window it was fascinating to see just how much lightning was piercing the dark clouds overhead.
Katy held her breath as they settled into the sofa. This was it. Whatever had brought Dayne from LA this morning, she was about to find out.
For a while Dayne just looked at her.
Katy tried to deny it, but there was no question he had longing in his eyes—a longing that had been there since the first time she saw him sitting in the back of the theater today. He didn’t look at her the way some guys did—as if they wanted to undress her with their eyes. No, the look on Dayne’s face was nothing like that.
His was a different kind of longing—a wanting for love and laughter and family and simplicity. All the things he had never been able to find.
She exhaled and pulled one of the pillows close to her. “Please talk to me, Dayne.”
The feelings evident in his eyes were so genuine and raw they almost hurt to look at. “Kelly and I . . . we’re finished.”
“What?” The word was a whisper, the slightest gasp. Katy had been certain he was going to finish his sentence with a dozen other choices. Kelly and I are in love . . . Kelly and I are getting married . . . Kelly and I are working things out. Never—not for one single moment—had she considered that this was what he’d come to tell her. She felt herself bristle, felt her back stiffen. So what if he and Kelly were through? What did that matter, given the circumstances? He was going to be a daddy, after all. She found her voice. “What about the baby?”
For a few seconds, fear and regret took turns coloring his face, and as he opened his mouth, his eyes grew damp. He shook his head and dropped his gaze.
“Dayne . . .” Katy couldn’t fathom what was causing this reaction. What had Kelly done? Told him he couldn’t share custody of his firstborn child? She waited, her hands trembling.
His eyes lifted to hers, and there was no mistaking the pain there. “There is no baby.” He blinked, and two tears fell onto his cheeks. “Not anymore.”
Katy was confused. There wasn’t a baby any—?
The truth hit her all at once, like a wrecking ball. She felt the blood drain from her face, felt her heart breaking. “Kelly had an abortion?”
Dayne squeezed his eyes shut and pressed his fist to his forehead. “She didn’t ask me.” For a long while he said nothing, couldn’t say anything. When he opened his eyes, there was no denying his depth of loss. “Ka
ty, you’re the only one who would understand what I’m feeling.” He glanced out the window at the storm. “Abortion’s not a big deal in my world. Simple solution, a woman’s right to choose.” Anger hardened his tone. “But that was my baby too.” He looked at her, broken. “What choice did I get?”
“Dayne—” her own heart filled with sadness for him—“I’m so sorry.” This time she didn’t analyze whether it was right or wrong, whether it would only prolong this . . . whatever this was between them. Instead she took hold of his hand, the one resting on his knee.
He wrapped his fingers around hers. For a long while they just sat that way. Dayne’s quiet tears making paths down his cheeks, and the two of them holding hands. He was strong even now. Strong yet broken.
Katy studied him, trying to imagine what he was feeling. What she’d be feeling if she were him.
A deep, unspeakable pain filled her soul. Of course abortion would hit him this way. He’d been raised by missionary parents. The people who adopted him. Whatever direction he’d gone, whatever place in life he’d found, and whatever choices he’d made along the way, his upbringing had convinced him of this: Life was precious, unborn or not.
And in his Hollywood life, he didn’t know one person who could sit with him and grieve the loss of his first child. No one except for her.
Katy tried to think of something to say, but he didn’t need her words. She simply waited for him to talk.
Finally, he brushed the back of his other hand across his cheeks and sniffed. “She told me at the premiere.”
“For Dream On?” Katy leaned forward, horrified. “Are you serious?”
He narrowed his eyes, as if he were seeing the scene play in his mind once more. “We found a private patio. She told me she was staying with Hawk Daniels.”
“That’s why?” The storm was still raging outside. Thunder rumbled low and long, and Katy’s words were barely audible over it.
“No.” He held her hand with both of his now. “She told me that the whole time she lived with me I never . . .”
“Never what?”
He looked deep into her eyes, deeper than at any time since he’d walked into the church earlier today. “Never loved her the way I loved you.”