A Little Harmless Addiction by Melissa Schroeder Page B

And he didn’t want to push.”
    “I hate when they go all hero on you.” Cynthia sipped her tea. “But then it makes me all gooey.”
    Jocelyn sighed, thinking about the incident and the tone of his voice. “I know.”
    “Have you talked to him since then?”
    She shook her head. “I thought about it, but then…” She let her words trail off.
    “You didn’t want to chase after him and look pathetic?”
    Jocelyn nodded. “I kissed him right there that night and he rejected me.”
    “Was he good? I always thought Kai would make the world melt.”
    Jocelyn laughed. “Yeah, well, I think I melted right there, on the sidewalk. I could feel it all the way to my toes.”
    Cynthia sighed. “I had a feeling. He’s always sort of been this good guy, but you could sense the naughtiness beneath. Sort of like Chris.”
    “Oh, ew, don’t compare them. That’s icky.”
    Cynthia laughed. “No, I just mean both of them are pretty responsible, and I think not because they have to be. Well, Kai had to a bit. His father and grandfather aren’t the best people to be in charge of three kids.”
    “How old was Kai when their mother died?”
    “Hmm, May was twelve, so I guess Kai was thirteen, fourteen. At the most, he was fifteen. I know he dropped out of school a year or so later to work the docks.”
    “Really? I would have thought with his mind for business he would have at least had some college.”
    “I have a feeling there wasn’t enough money. Plus, May has always said that Kai was a guy who didn’t go for college. He didn’t always do that well in school, never applied himself. But they needed the money more than likely. May’s mother didn’t have much of an insurance policy. They were probably in a bind financially. And as I said, being responsible, Kai understood. Of course, he did pretty good for himself.”
    Jocelyn felt for him. Not pity, but a sense of admiration. As a boy, he had made choices that some men wouldn’t be able to deal with. And dammit, it made her like him even more. She had never had to make the choice of what she wanted to do in life. Her family had made sure that she could make it to culinary school without question.
    “He seems to like his job now.”
    “Yeah, he does. And it doesn’t hurt that he’s a charmer. But I have a feeling working the docks at the age of sixteen isn’t fun. Now he has the money to do what he wants, but before, it had to have been hard.”
    Jocelyn groaned. “And that just makes him even more fascinating. Dammit.”
    Cynthia laughed. “He probably knows something happened with you. Chris was gone and well, everyone knows it was for you. That’s why he’s being so gentle.”
    “That’s what I was thinking.”
    “Plus, he is still trying to recover from Keisha.”
    The way she said the woman’s name made Jocelyn think she didn’t like her.
    “What happened?”
    “Well, Kai is sort of, I hate to say it, but he’s always been a good rebound guy. Not that he minded from what I could tell. But Keisha…they had dated in high school—remember I am getting this all secondhand from May.”
    Jocelyn nodded.
    “Anyway, they went to prom together the year after Kai dropped out. Then they sort of went their separate ways. Keisha went back to the mainland for a while, then came back. Anyway, she was dating this real loser about a year ago, then she kicked him out. May was pretty sure the guy was abusing her. Dee thinks so too. Kai and Keisha started dating and I don’t know, Kai…I have never seen him fall like that. I mean, he dated women, but he started bringing her to our get-togethers, like the one the other night.”
    “What happened?”
    “She dumped him. Dumped for the asshole who abuses her. Keisha has a lot of issues, one of them being that her father was pretty much an abusive asshole. But as you can expect, Kai took it really hard. He didn’t really date for months. Well, you were probably the first date he’d had in a while.”
    “I