“That sounds perfect. Are you sure you didn’t read my childhood diary?” she giggled.
He lifted the pair of their hands that was intertwined and brought hers to his lips. Kissing it lightly, he smiled at her, his eyes lighting up brightly as he held his lips against her skin for a long moment.
“I promise, sweetness. But I’m glad I’m knocking it out of the park.”
There was a little gelato shop right at the edge of the beach, and they stopped inside, taking turns trying all the flavors. The older lady behind the counter was more than happy to indulge them with a myriad of samples, some flavors over and over again, as they compared and contrasted, feeding each other with the little sample spoons. When they finally made their choices and ordered their cones, the older lady insisted the order was on the house.
“No, no, we’ll pay,” Kyle said, trying to hand some cash to the woman.
She shook her head passionately. She said something in Spanish so quickly that Drea couldn’t translate it, then walked away into the back room, ending the conversation. Kyle looked at Drea with a guilty look on his face before slipping the cash onto the counter by the register.
“I need to tell you something,” Drea said when they were about halfway to the dock, breaking the silence they had maintained since the gelato place. Kyle stopped in his tracks, looking at her with concern.
“What’s wrong, sweetness?”
“Nothing, absolutely nothing. Tonight has been a dream come true. I just need you to know how much of one.”
“I’m happy to hear you say that. The look on your face has told me all night how happy you are.”
“I don’t think it really does,” she sighed. “I have my mom’s journal from when she met my dad. She dedicated multiple pages to talking about their amazing first date and all the things they did. Ever since Uncle Miller gave me the journal, I’ve dreamed of going on a date as magical and romantic as the one she described on those pages. And you...you pretty much recreated the whole date. You gave me my own magical evening.” She blinked rapidly, trying to hold back the happy tears she could feel springing to life.
“Stop for stop?” he asked, looking a little perplexed.
“Well, we went to the umbrellas instead of the fountain, but my favorite place versus her favorite place, so yeah, pretty much,” she shrugged.
“Wow.”
“I know.”
“I didn’t mean to, had I known…” he trailed off.
“No, it means more because you didn’t know. I meant it, it was magical. You gave me something that I can't even begin to put into words—you gave me a connection to them.”
She saw the proud smile pull on the corner of his lips as he took in her words. She meant them. He gave her something she’d thought she’d never be able to find. For years she wondered what it would feel like to fall like this and experience something as powerful as her mother described. Kyle had made it happen.
“For you, sweetness, I’d do anything.”
It had been quite the day, with emotions all over the place. Now, curled up on the trampoline on the front hull of the Runnin’ Down a Dream, the highlight reel kept flashing through Kyle’s mind, preventing him from sleeping. When he came up with the idea of a day in Old San Juan he hadn’t had much of an agenda other than to have fun and make Drea smile. The city had been a familiar one, but he had hoped that would lead to a relaxed feeling and would ease expectations that they were doing anything other than enjoying each other’s company. Overall, it had been more of a success than he could have ever imagined.
The sounds of Drea’s giggles tangled with those of her sobs in his head, pulling on his heart strings. Nothing would ever take away the pain of never knowing her parents, he knew that. But he would do everything in his power to not ever have to hear her cry like that again.
When she asked if she could show him something, he had been immediately excited. The look on her face had shown so much—happiness, excitement, nervousness. He knew whatever it was would be something incredibly special to her and he felt honored that she wanted to show him. The church itself was beautiful. For all the times he had passed it, he’d never been inside. Sitting inside, listening to her talk about her parents’ whirlwind engagement and their wedding day, he couldn’t help but picture Drea as a bride. He wondered if she would want a church wedding just like they had, or if she would prefer a low-key affair like Vaughn and Simone were planning. He knew he should be freaked out about thinking about her walking down the aisle, but somehow the thoughts didn’t seem out of place.
However, when the conversation turned to the loss of her parents and aunt, he saw the pain she hid away come through and it sliced straight through him. He had known there had been an accident when they were rehabbing the resort that resulted in their deaths—it was part of the resort history each new employee learned when they started working there. The brothers made sure that every employee knew that “safety first” was a lifestyle, not some cute motto to be floated around and that if someone did something that didn’t have the safety of the guests and other employees as the primary focus, then it was a terminable offense. He hadn't realized that Miller had been so close to losing his life, and had essentially watched his wife, best friend, and sister-in-law lose theirs right in front of his eyes. He also had no idea about the scars the man apparently bore as a daily reminder.
Kyle felt like he’d been given a decoder ring for so much of the Quinlan/Miller family dynamics with this. Why Miller insisted on taking custody of Drea and why the brothers had changed around so much of the plans for the resort to accommodate this new lifestyle. It explained on some level why Vaughn was so over-the-top about safety overall, but Drea’s in particular, and why she gave him so much leeway with his overprotectiveness. Prior to this afternoon, he’d thought he’d known pretty much every side of the angelic woman who was lying beside him wrapped up in a blanket, but now he wondered what else there was to discover.
The magic of the day hadn’t been lost on him. He’d felt how special it had been every second of the way. But when she dropped the bomb on him that he’d somehow duplicated the events from a date twenty-seven years earlier, it had knocked the wind out of him. It had really been sheer dumb luck on his part that it happened this way, but he didn’t want to
take away from what she was feeling. Maybe somehow the late Mr. and Mrs. Miller were looking down on them. Whatever it was, he was thrilled he could give Drea that connection to them.
The connection she was feeling with her family was something Kyle had wished he felt toward his own dad. He had so few memories of the man apart from the stories his mother would tell him. Tom Egan had managed a weird schedule, often working nights and weekends. Being a drug interdiction officer for the Coast Guard meant that you spent little time behind a desk and a fair amount of time out and about doing search and seizures. As a child, Kyle hadn’t thought much about it. Sure, his dad wasn’t home a lot, but when he was home, he was certainly an involved and present parent. He attended soccer games and school concerts, and they’d even gone camping once, just the two of them. But then one morning when Kyle got up he found his mother in tears in the kitchen. When he asked what was wrong, she simply told his six-year-old self that Daddy had been in an accident and wouldn’t be coming home.
Kyle remembered the funeral, all the men in the Coast Guard dress uniforms telling him he was “the man of the house now.” He remembered being handed the flag while at the gravesite and wondering what he was supposed to do with it. But more than anything, what he remembered was watching his mother cry and knowing then that it was up to him to take care of her.
His mother had done an excellent job raising him by herself, and he knew that she missed her husband. More than anything, what Kyle missed was the idea of his dad. It was the loss of having someone to do all the things a boy should do with his dad that Kyle felt most of all. It had been his mom who had taught him to tie a tie, lectured him after his first fight, explained the birds and bees, and who had enlisted a neighbor to help teach Kyle all about boat mechanics after seeing him express interest. It had been his mom who shoved condoms in his pocket before his senior prom, telling him that this is where his father would be reminding him to “wrap it up or else.” She’d been trying to do what she felt was best and he owed her everything for that.
It was for this reason he’d been so focused since moving down here. He’d gotten so lucky meeting Grayson that day and being offered a job at the Indigo Royal. The job paid enough, on top of covering most living expenses, that he could save to one day start his own company and still send money home to help his mom. He was so close to having enough saved. If the math he ran in his head most days stayed true, he only needed to hold out another six months or so. He’d broken every rule he’d made for himself by falling for Drea, and then broke the rewritten rules when he kissed her the other day.
