Born of Passion

“Does something have to be up for me to want to hear my eldest son’s voice?”

Kyle smiled as a vision of his mother filled his mind. Beatrice Ramsey had always been a stay-at-home mom. She’d raised her three sons with discipline, love and a sense of humor. There was no woman on earth Kyle loved and respected more than his mother. “It’s good to hear your voice, too, Mom.”

“Are you taking care of yourself? Eating proper meals and getting your rest?”

His smile widened. Even though he was thirty-one years old, his mother still worried about him as if he were ten. “Don’t worry. I’m taking good care of myself.”

“If you had a wife, I wouldn’t worry so much about you.”

“Don’t start,” Kyle exclaimed, unwilling to be a recipient of one of his mother’s frequent lectures on the joys of marriage. Something must have happened recently for her to even begin one of her lectures.

“Sandy Dennison just had her third grandbaby yesterday,” Beatrice continued. Bingo, Kyle thought. The incident that had prompted this phone call extolling the pleasures of married life. “Three grandbabies, and her son is two years younger than you.”

“Mom, you know that isn’t what I want for myself,” he chided softly. It wasn’t as if they hadn’t had this conversation before.

Beatrice sighed, the long-suffering sigh Kyle suspected every mother in the world had down to perfection. “I can hope, can’t I?”

“You’d do better to aim your hopes toward Jake and Tyler. The odds of them giving you a daughter-in-law and a grandchild are much better than me.”

“I don’t know what’s wrong with you boys that none of you has found a wonderful, loving woman yet. I’ll probably be in my grave before one of you finally gives me a grandbaby to love and to spoil.”

Kyle wisely didn’t reply.

“Well, dear, your father wants to talk with you. I’ll put him on.”

Instantly, tension filled Kyle. Conversations with his father were difficult for him, especially lately. There was a tiny part of Kyle that believed he was a major disappointment to his dad, that Edward Ramsey had never really forgiven him for his decision not to work for Ramsey Enterprises.

“Kyle.” His father’s deep voice boomed across the line.

“Hi, Dad.” Kyle swung his legs over the side of the bed and stood. For some reason he felt as if he needed to be on his feet to speak to his father.

“How are things in Montebello?”

“Fine. Everything is just fine.”

“I heard you tell your mother you’re working a lot. Anything interesting going on?”

Kyle heard the unspoken questions in his father’s voice. The old man wanted to know what sort of mission Kyle was on, but Edward had lost his right to know about military missions when he’d turned his back on the armed forces and joined the race for bucks.

“Just the same old, same old,” Kyle replied.

There was a moment of silence between father and son, a weighty silence that raised Kyle’s tension several notches. “Kyle, I have a favor to ask you,” his father finally said.

“What kind of a favor?”

“I know your tour is up in a couple of weeks, and before you do anything about that, I’d like to have an opportunity to sit down face-to-face and talk to you.”

“About what? Dad, we’ve been through this a million times,” Kyle began. The last thing he wanted was a sit-down discussion with his father that would only make Kyle feel guilty about the path he’d chosen in his life.

“Kyle, please. I’m just asking you to hold off making any decisions until we can talk. I should be able to get to Montebello in the next week or so. All I’m asking is that you wait until after that to reenlist.”

“All right, I can do that,” Kyle replied, already dreading the conversation they would eventually have and certain that it would be nothing but a rehash of their collision of dreams.

After saying goodbye to his father moments later, Kyle paced the living room restlessly. He didn’t have to be back at the base till late that night and he’d planned on sleeping most of the day. However, the conversation with his dad had chased any sleepiness away.

He wandered over to the bookcase and stared at the various photos that lined the shelves. There was several of his father in his Air Force uniform.

When Kyle was growing up, his father had been his hero. Edward Ramsey had been doing what Kyle wanted to do, dreamed of doing—flying planes. And for much of his childhood, Kyle hoped to grow up to be just like his father.

Then, when Kyle was fourteen, his father had quit the military and sold out. He’d traded his country’s uniform for a business suit, and exchanged jet engines for power lunches. It had been at that moment that Kyle and his relationship had undergone a drastic change.

For years Kyle had heard his dad talk about the honor and duty of serving his country. Then, in what felt to Kyle to be a split-second decision, Edward Ramsey had been seduced by the corporate world.

To say that Edward Ramsey had been successful was an understatement. Not only did the Ramsey family have oil interests all over the world, but Ramsey Enterprises was a multimillion-dollar industry. His father had taken his contacts and the friendships he’d developed while serving his country and turned them to personal profit.

Kyle knew what his dad wanted to discuss with him. He wanted to plead one more time for Kyle to turn his back on his military career and go into the family business. It was to be a rehash of the same argument they’d been having for years.

Kyle made himself a late lunch, then napped on the sofa, but by nine that evening he thought he might go mad if he had to spend another minute in the confines of the family apartment. He’d showered and done a load of laundry, and could find nothing else to do to waste time. On impulse he picked up the phone and dialed Joanna’s residence.

In the four days they had been working together, he hadn’t called her at home, although he’d thought about it more than once.