Page 6 of Second Time Around
Chapter 3
Kyra picked up the scrub brush to work on one of the battered pots in the Carver After-School Care Center’s kitchen. Today’s so-called snack had been taco macaroni, a one-pot kid-friendly dish made from a recipe Felicia, one of the fifth graders, had brought in. That meant the child helped to prepare the meal, and Kyra posted her photo, in which Felicia was grinning with pride as she held a steaming plate heaped with the casserole, on the chef’s wall of honor. The kids had wolfed down the pasta, their eyes lit with appreciation, partly because sometimes the “snacks” were the only dinner they got.
As Kyra scrubbed at the sticky remnants of the casserole, she recalled her meeting with Will ... again. It had been a week and he kept striding into her mind—sometimes in his business suit, sometimes in his college jeans and polo shirt—at odd moments. She hadn’t thought of him in years—well, not very often—but now she couldn’t stop. It was like being back in college when he was the Big Man on Campus and she was the mousy girl from the boondocks with a giant crush on him.
“Unfinished business,” she muttered to herself. That had to be it. For one brief, dreamlike moment, she had thought she would have the ultimate experience in Will’s arms ... but then it hadn’t happened. She’d gone back to being the blue-collar girl from Nowhere, PA.
“Hey, Ms.Kyra, could I ask you something?” Diego’s voice, soft as it was, made her drop the scrub brush as she spun away from the sink.The kid’s long dark hair hung to the shoulders of his gray Knicks sweatshirt, and his hands were shoved in the pockets of jeans so new they still had a crease down the leg. His recently appointed guardian, Violet Johnson, one of the center’s board members, took good care of him.
Kyra used the back of her rubber-glove–covered wrist to shove a strand of hair away from her face. “Sure thing, sweetie. Ask away.”
Diego was huge for his thirteen years—tall, broad, and muscular. Yet when he touched one of the motley array of rescue dogs that the kids took care of at the center, known as the K-9 Angelz, his hands moved as delicately as butterflies, and his chocolate-brown eyes were soft with concern. The local veterinarian had even given him an internship at her clinic because Diego was so good with animals.
“One of the dogs, Shaq, keeps throwing up his food. He ain’t ... isn’t sick that Doc Quillen can tell, so we think he’s got a sensitive stomach.”
Kyra scanned her memory of the resident dogs. She didn’t interact with them much because they were banned from her domain of kitchen and dining room due to health department regulations. However, she’d seen how devoted the children were to their adopted pets and how much the dogs’ unconditional love meant to them.
“Isn’t Shaq the giant pit-bull mix?” She was about to say that it seemed ridiculous for such a tough-looking dog to have a picky stomach when she remembered whom she was talking to. Diego was a huge, scary-looking kid—so scary, in fact, that his moneylender father had wanted to use him to intimidate his nonpaying customers, while the boy wanted to take care of every small creature he encountered.
Diego nodded. “Yeah, he’s the biggest dog of the K-9 Angelz. And his kid is Felicia. Why that little girl picked such a big Angel ...” He shook his head. “Anyways, I was wondering if you got an idea for food that might not upset his stomach so much.”
“Don’t they make hypoallergenic dog food?” She stripped off her gloves as she headed for her laptop to look it up.
“Yeah, but he can’t tolerate that neither and it ain’t ... isn’t cheap. Doc says we need to figure out what ingredient bothers him, so we need to try foods that got just a few ingredients and we know what they all are. And fresh is better ’cause the premade stuff might have some preservative or something that makes him sick.”
“Huh.” Kyra put her hands on her hips. “I don’t know anything about dog food. Let me do some research and I’ll come up with some recipes.”
The worried furrows in Diego’s forehead eased. “Hey, you want me to clean that pot for you? I got more muscles than you.”
“You’re the best, kiddo.” She ruffled his long hair, making him duck away from her with a grimace that covered a smile. The staff never discussed it, but she knew that Diego used to sleep at the center because his father had thrown him out and his mother was MIA. The boy had found a happy foster home with Violet, but Kyra still tried to give him the affection a family member would, kind of like a favorite aunt.
She glanced at the clock over the kitchen door and grabbed her backpack and sweatshirt. “You saved my butt from being late to work, too. Thanks, Diego!”
After racing home to change into her “sexy bartender” outfit, she stood on the subway platform, hoping the train would arrive soon so she’d have time to grab a lamb-and-yogurt wrap at Ceres. She hadn’t been back since she saw Will there, partly because she was afraid she’d run into him again, partly because she was afraid she wouldn’t.
His business card lay on her dresser. Every now and then, she flipped it over to see his bold handwriting where he’d jotted down his cell number. Once she’d even run her finger over the ink, which was one of those stupid gestures people made in sappy movies.
She’d wanted him with every fiber of her body back in college, even though she knew the handsome golden boy from an upper-class family in Connecticut would never consider her as a girlfriend. And the differences between them had only gotten greater in the present, so there was no point in reviving that pipe dream.
But he had reminded her of her other dreams. The ones in which she got a master’s and became a brilliantly perceptive editor, carefully cultivating the budding literary talents she would rescue from the publisher’s slush pile. When she’d discovered all her mother’s debts—with Kyra’s name as the unwitting cosigner on the credit cards—she’d shoved those goals aside and focused on paying off the bills. Now those dreams had faded so far into the background she’d nearly forgotten them. Until yesterday.
She still had significant debts to pay off, but she also had a reliable income now. The encounter with Will had made her wonder. Was she using the debt as an excuse? Was she afraid to try again?
The thunder of the arriving subway train scattered her thoughts. When she walked into Ceres twenty minutes later and stepped into the line to order, she noticed some changes at the café.
The tables were farther apart, not crammed in for maximum seating. It made the space more inviting and quieter. The lighting seemed brighter, although she hadn’t been conscious that it was dim before. The room had appeared a little dingy previously, but now it didn’t. There were additional staff members in tan shirts circulating around the floor, and they were smiling. For that matter, the cashiers had more pleasant attitudes, too.
Will must have really chewed out the manager.
When she sat down to eat her lamp wrap, she peeled it open to find the pureed avocado and yogurt spread evenly in a thin layer over the inside of the tortilla. The lamb was moist with just a tiny hint of pink, since they weren’t allowed to serve it rare without a warning about undercooked meat. And there were crunchy bits of carrot that had never been included before.
It was delicious and bursting with freshness. She raised her water bottle in a silent toast to Will’s impressive results.
The limousine eased to a stop in front of a white canopy with a silver lining. Will smiled at the sly reference to the saying about clouds, since the canopy hovered over the entrance to the Stratus Club. He swung open the car door, only to have a white-suited doorman catch and hold it, while he stepped out onto the gray carpet that stretched across the sidewalk.
After Nathan had planted the idea of inviting Kyra to his parents’ garden party, Will hadn’t been able to shake it. She would be a breath of fresh air in the rarefied atmosphere of the Connecticut high-society gathering.
Not to mention staving off his mother’s introductions of what she considered marriageable young women. When he went home, Will sometimes felt as though he’d slipped through a time warp into Regency England, where eligible bachelors were expected to choose a suitable wife from the assortment at the soiree.
