"Good." Most of the tension he'd been holding in seeped away as he brought her hand to his lips again. "Now that you're relaxed, why don't you tell me about this fascinating day of yours?''
"My day?'' Absolutely blank, she stared at him. Then her eyes cleared, went bright. "Oh, Jesus, my day. I'd completely forgotten."
"I can't tell you how gratifying that is." He laid a hand on her thigh again, slid it slowly up. "If you'd like to forget about it for a while longer…"
"No." As she pushed his hand firmly away, she chuckled. "I was bursting to talk about it, and then I started thinking about getting you into bed, and it slipped down a couple of notches on the priority list."
"How about I let you get me in bed again, and we talk later?"
"Nope." She scooted out of reach. "I've already had you, pal. The encore can wait."
"That sound you hear is my ego deflating." He sat back with his cigar, his wine, gestured with the glass. "Okay, kid, spill it."
She wondered how it would feel to simply say it aloud. "In March I found out that my father had embezzled funds from the ad agency he worked for before he was killed." She let out a breath, pressed a hand to her stomach. "God."
It was, he thought, the piece he'd been sure was missing, falling into place. "In March," Byron repeated, studying her face. "You hadn't known about it before?"
"No, nothing. I keep expecting people to be shocked. Why aren't you shocked?"
"People make mistakes." And his voice softened when he calculated just how much she'd suffered. "Cut you off at the knees, didn't it?"
"I didn't cope very well. I thought I was. I thought I could bury it, just push it in. Didn't work."
"You didn't talk to anyone?"
"I couldn't. Margo found out she was pregnant, and Laura, she's handling so much and… I was ashamed. That's what it comes down to. I couldn't face it."
And had made herself ill, he thought, with worry and stress and guilt. "Then you got hit at Bittle."
"It didn't seem that it could really be happening. Some sort of cosmic joke. It paralyzed me, Byron. I've never been so afraid of anything, or felt so helpless. Ignoring it seemed the only solution. It would go away, somehow just go away. I'd just keep myself busy with other things, not think about it, not react, and it would get better."
"Some snap," he murmured, "some collapse, and some dig their trenches."
"And I pulled the covers over my head. Well, that's done." In a half-toast to herself, she lifted her glass. "I talked to my aunt and uncle. Instead of making it better, that made it worse. I hurt them. I was trying to explain why I was grateful to her and Uncle Tommy, and I said things wrong. Or I was wrong, and it
came out badly. She was so angry with me. I don't remember her ever being that angry with me."
"She loves you, Kate. You'll square this with her."
"She's already forgiven me. Or mostly. But it made me realize I had to face it. All of it. I went to Bittle today."
"Now you're digging the trenches."
She let out a shaky breath at his response. "It's past time I did."
"Now are you going to beat yourself up because you weren't iron woman, because you needed time to pull your resources together?"
The corner of her mouth twitched. She'd been tempted to do just that. Apparently he knew her very, very well. "No, I'm going to concentrate on dealing with now."
"You didn't have to go to Bittle alone."
She looked down at the hand that had covered hers. What made him offer support so easily? she wondered. And what was making her count so heavily on the offer?
"No, I did have to go alone. To prove to myself and everyone at Bittle that I could. I used to play baseball, in school. I was a good clutch hitter. Two out, a run behind, put Kate in the box. I'd concentrate on the feel of the bat in my hands because my stomach would be churning and my knees shaking. If I concentrated on the feel of the ash solid in my hands and kept my eyes dead on the eyes of the pitcher, I'd still be terrified, but nobody would know it."
"Trust you to turn a game into life or death."
"Baseball is life or death, especially in the bottom of the ninth." She smiled a little. "That's how I felt when I walked into Bittle. Two out, bottom of the ninth, and they'd already winged two strikes past me while I stood there with the bat on my shoulder."