Twenty-four. He shook his head slowly in disbelief. Maybe he had thought time had stopped. On the rare occasion when he had pictured Molly, he’d remembered a freckle-faced carrottop with gaps in her teeth and dirt on her face. She had been a bundle of energy, chattering a mile a minute, tagging at her father’s heels whenever he would let her—which was often, since Jared had been able to deny little to his only daughter.
Having no experience with gregarious little girls, Kyle had been rather intimidated by her then. He willingly admitted that she terrified him now. Talk about trouble in a nicely wrapped package….
“You’re twenty-nine,” she murmured. “You were almost seventeen when you came to us. You stayed a couple of months after your eighteenth birthday to finish high school, and then you left for boot camp. I was twelve when you went away. I was heartbroken, you know. It always broke my heart when anyone left us.”
“I remember you cried your eyes out when the kid before me left not long after I got there. His name was Daniel, wasn’t it?”
“Daniel Castillo—though he uses the last name Andreas now.” Her smile turned radiant. “He’s back in the family now. He recently married my cousin B.J.”
“No kidding.” He tried to focus on the conversation rather than the way her smile pushed tiny dimples into the corner of her mouth. “I remember her. Her name was Brittany, but she wanted everyone to use her initials, instead.”
“Everyone pretty much does now—except her mother, who still insists on calling her Brittany.”
“So she married Daniel.”
Molly nodded. “It was a whirlwind courtship, and I think it’s fantastic. They’re perfect together—they always were, even when they were teenagers.”
Kyle suddenly scowled, wondering what the hell he was doing sitting here listening to family gossip from Molly Walker—no longer “little” Molly Walker. If they kept this up, he would find himself all duded up for a silver anniversary party he’d had no intention of attending.
He shifted in his chair, and pain shot through his left leg and up into his back. The feeling was so familiar, he was able to hide his reactions from Molly—or at least, he thought he had, though her sharp green eyes had suddenly narrowed speculatively.
“Your five minutes are over,” he reminded her, his bad mood returning with a vengeance.
Molly thought she had done a pretty credible job of hiding her shock at Kyle’s appearance. She couldn’t help comparing the man in front of her to the photograph that sat in a place of honor in her parents’ living room, along with photos of the other foster sons Jared and Cassie had nurtured during their marriage.
Kyle’s portrait had been taken at his high school graduation. Wearing a black cap and gown, a gold tassel dangling at one side of his tanned face, he had looked young and healthy. His thick brown hair had been freshly cut, and his amber-brown eyes gleamed with satisfaction. During her teen years, even as her memories of Kyle faded, Molly had found herself studying that photograph occasionally, wondering about Kyle, thinking that of all the nice-looking boys who had passed through her family home, his face had intrigued her the most.
Had she not known who he was when he had opened his door to her this afternoon, she might never have recognized him as the same person in the photograph. He was almost painfully thin, and he walked with a pronounced limp. The tan had been replaced by a rather scruffy pallor. His day-old beard did little to conceal the uneven scar that now marred his left cheek along the jawline. His hair was disheveled, and needed a good shampooing and styling.
For just a few moments he had seemed to relax a little with her, and she’d hoped that he was becoming more open to the possibility of attending the party. But then she had seen him flinch, as if in pain, and his expression had abruptly closed.
“I had hoped you would extend that five-minute deadline a bit once you figured out who I am,” she admitted with a wry smile.
He didn’t smile back at her. “I’m not trying to be rude, but you really should go before—”
A shatteringly loud clap of thunder drowned out his words, followed by a deluge of rain that hammered on the roof and rattled the windows.
“—before the storm gets worse,” Kyle finished with a sigh.
Molly stood and walked to the window, rather surprised by the violence of the downpour. “Wow. It’s a real gully-washer out there, isn’t it?”
“To say the least. This is what remains of the tropical storm that hit the coast of South Carolina a couple of days ago. Haven’t you been listening to the weather forecasts?”
She turned away from the window. “Actually, no. The radio is broken in my car, so I listened to CDs during the drive.”
Though she wouldn’t have thought it possible, his frown deepened. “You didn’t drive here from Dallas?”
“Well—yes, I did,” she admitted. “It’s about a sixteen-hour drive, so I left at noon yesterday, spent the night in Memphis, then started out again this morning.”
“Alone?”
She shrugged. “It was a pleasant drive. The weather’s been nice, at least until I reached Gatlinburg, and I don’t often have a chance to spend time by myself just to think and listen to my favorite music. And the scenery in this area is breathtaking.”
“I can’t believe your parents allowed you to make a drive like that by yourself.”
Now it was her turn to frown. “First, I’m almost twenty-four years old, and I no longer have to ask my parents’ permission to leave home for a few days. Second, I wouldn’t have asked them, anyway, because I’m planning a surprise party for them and I don’t want them to know I’m here. And finally, they left almost two weeks ago for a three-week Mediterranean cruise to celebrate their anniversary.”
“Your brother didn’t have a problem with you coming here?”