Page 30 of A Heart to Find
She tried to stop him, but he returned with her hairbrush and a blow dryer.
“Let’s get you a little more upright. Looks like you’ve been sliding down.”
She winced as he repositioned her leg and helped her to sit up with a stack of pillows against her back. But when he started combing her hair and running the heat of the blow dryer over her scalp, she practically purred.
“This is really nice. Thank you.”
“My mom loved having her hair brushed before she died. It was one of our favorite ways to spend time together.”
“Your mom?”
Jared smiled and smoothed a hand over her drying hair.
“Yeah, I found her. After a huge fight I had with my dad, I decided I needed to hear her side of the story. I tracked her down in Germany. She was very sick. Had thought about contacting me, but didn’t want to reintroduce herself into my world when she’d be leaving it permanently soon.”
“Oh, Jared. That must have been horrible.”
“It was and it wasn’t. I consider myself lucky that I had that time with her. I got to know a side of her I had never known.”
“Did she ever tell you why she left the way she did?”
“She apologized. Said she needed adventure in life and couldn’t live in the cage my father had built for her.”
Keira reached her hand over her shoulder to touch his forearm. The gentle caress nearly caused him to drop the brush.
“I’m sure you could relate to that. I guess we know where you got your adventurous spirit.”
Jared grunted in agreement.
“You were able to forgive her?”
“I didn’t feel like I had much of a choice. Sure, it would have been nice if she had found a way to get her needs met without abandoning me, but she thought she was doing the right thing. She was right to think my father would take care of me—my needs were met, and I was luckier than a lot of people.”
“I’m sure she appreciated the forgiveness.”
Keira reached her hand back and placed it on his wrist. The unexpected contact touched more than his skin.
It touched his heart.
She was warming to him. Ah, the magic of the hair dryer!
As quickly as her hand had found his arm, she pulled away, burying her wayward hands under her fuzzy blanket.
“Tell me more about your mom. What was it like seeing her after so many years? I bet she was excited to hear all about you and the things you had been through since she left.”
“She did. Though the stories she enjoyed the most were about you.”
“You told her about me?” Her voice squeaked, and he wondered if he had heard her right.
“Of course I did. You were my whole world.”
Her shoulders visibly stiffened and the warmth in her voice vanished when, after a moment of awkward silence, she politely said, “I feel much warmer now. Thank you so much for doing that for me.”
She didn’t physically pull away, but emotionally she might as well have been on a different continent. Antarctica.
Usually one to think quickly on his feet, Jared struggled to find a way to recover from whatever faux pas he had committed. Rekindling a relationship with Keira was the thing he wanted most at this moment, and he was fumbling badly.
Jared wrapped the cord around the blow dryer and placed it on the small table next to the chair beside the brush. He then shifted his chair so he could face her. She smiled politely, but the tension around her shoulders remained.
