The Old Fashioned Way (A Homespun Romance)

by Kakade, Geeta

  "Let me help you."

  Abby came up behind him as he picked it up. Standing a little behind his right shoulder she placed her hand over his. "Position the blade almost parallel to the wood. Hold the block with your other hand. Now, move the knife like this."

  Daniel was barely aware of Abby's instructions. Her breath was warm on his cheek and her closeness made it hard to concentrate. Turning his head, he looked up at her.

  Something in Daniel's expression made Abby drop her hand and turn away quickly. "I think you've got the hang of it now. I have to get back to my own work."

  For a few moments Daniel knew Abby had dropped all the barricades she normally put up around herself. His mouth tightened. Had she been motivated by pity? He'd seen how much compassion Abby possessed but that wasn’t what he wanted from her.

  "Are you imagining the object you want to carve Mr. Hawthorn?" Hamish's dry voice startled Daniel.

  "Yes," he said quickly, moving his knife back and forth at random.

  "Good."

  Hamish turned away, and Daniel looked at the piece of wood in his hands. If he could, he'd carve a bird escaping from a net, soaring toward freedom.

  He already had a name for the bird. Abby.

  Abby looked at the bottle of oil. She couldn't put off giving it to Daniel any longer. His hands had been really stiff tonight. The oil would make a difference. Picking it up from her dresser, Abby left the house before she could change her mind. Daniel answered the knock on the door wearing his jogging shorts. Abby swallowed hard. She knew he jogged in the morning with Princess, realized it was the reason he was so fit. She didn’t know he went out after dinner as well. She ought to have checked with him before coming over.

  "Abby, come in." The surprise on Daniel's face was obvious.

  "Gran gave me this bottle of herbal oil for your hands," Abby said quickly. "It's very good for stiffness of any kind."

  Daniel's eyebrows rose. "Is it anything like her brews?"

  Abby smiled, remembering the morning when she and Daniel had laughed about his illness. "Unlike the brew, this has no smell," she assured him.

  "Great," he said fervently.

  The way Abby kept her gaze averted from his bare chest reminded him of the way she had looked when he had asked for help buttoning his shirt. He couldn't resist the temptation to say, "Thank you for bringing the oil over. My hands are very stiff tonight, but maybe I'll be able to use the oil tomorrow night."

  She hesitated and Daniel felt a momentary pang for pretending he couldn't rub the oil in himself. He watched the battle that took place in Abby's eyes, before she said, "I...I can massage it into your hands."

  "I think I'll take you up on that," said Daniel. "I’m going for a walk. Would you like to come with me?"

  "I can’t. I have a lot of work to catch up on.”

  Can't was more like it, thought Abby. Daniel's muscled body made her all the more conscious of the extra weight she carried around. The two buttered rolls she'd eaten at dinner didn't help either.

  "You can ride your bike beside me. Come on, it's a nice night."

  It was. Too nice. It was exactly what she was afraid of. Just being near Daniel was enough to fan the spark of awareness within Abby into a blaze. "Not tonight," she said hurriedly.

  "I'll see you later then."

  "Yes."

  Daniel tackled his guilt as he jogged. It wasn't fair to use Abby's compassionate nature to get close to her. But he would. Right now it was the only leverage he had. She had gotten under his skin. Her reserve, the pain he glimpsed in her eyes, haunted him. While he tackled the problems The Busy Bee faced, he was going to take on Abby as well.

  Daniel hadn't found the best way to bring up the subject of his staying on with Abby. One wrong word and she would start avoiding him again. Daniel had always prided himself on his ability to resolve problems. Technical ones.

  Dealing with Abby was so different. He felt like a cat tangled up in a ball of yarn. The harder he tried to untangle himself, the worse things became. There was no set formula he could follow, no set results he could expect. He would have to play it by ear, just wait for the right moment.

  Abby and Gran looked up when the doorbell rang. "Wonder who that could be?" Sarah murmured.

  "I'll get it," Abby said, as she went to the door.

  She knew who it was even before she checked through the glass peephole in the front door. There was only one person who could set her heart beating so frantically.

  "It's Daniel," Abby announced over her shoulder as she opened the door.

  "Hello Daniel. Would you like another piece of peach cobbler with a cup of coffee?" Sarah asked, as he entered the family room.

  "No cobbler, thank you, but I'll have some coffee if it's not too much trouble," Daniel said quickly. He was eating too much these days.

  "No trouble at all," Gran vanished in the direction of the kitchen before Abby could offer to get the coffee.

  "Is this a good time for you to do my hands?" Abby heard Daniel ask above the thumping of her heart.

  "Of course."

  Gran handed Daniel a mug of coffee, "Agnes's waiting for me in her room. We're going to look at pictures of her niece's wedding. I'll wish both of you goodnight."

  A small silence followed. Abby didn't know what to say to fill it.

  "Were you born on a Friday, Abby?" Daniel's question startled Abby.

  "W...Why do you ask?"

  "I saw this framed picture in the store today and it had this poem about people born on different days. It said Friday's child is loving and giving and that made me wonder if you were one."

  Abby knew the sampler he was talking about. "I was born on a Friday."

  Daniel nodded as if he'd expected the answer she'd just given. Abby asked quickly. "What about you? Which day were you born on?"

  "Thursday," said Daniel.

  "Thursday's child has far to go," quoted Abby softly.

  She wondered if that was why Daniel hadn't put down any roots yet.

  Noticing he'd finished his coffee, Abby said, "Would you like me to massage your hands now, Daniel?"

  He looked surprised. "I forgot to bring the oil with me. I'll get it right away."

  As he hurried to the guest house, Daniel wondered how he could have forgotten the oil. Being absent minded wasn't like him. Neither was the excitement coursing through him. The latter, he supposed, accounted for the former.

  When he returned, the family room was empty.

  "I won't be a minute," Abby called from the kitchen, above the sound of running water and the clink of dishes.

  Daniel looked around. Tonight was the first time he had been in this room. Before dinner, Sarah liked to sit in the living room, and he usually left as soon as dinner was over as they refused all his offers of doing the dishes.

  The photo collages on the wall behind the sofa, caught Daniel's eye. There were quite a few of them, but the ones of Abby held his attention. There were pictures of her at every age.

  "Are these your parents?" he asked without turning around when he heard her enter the room.

  Abby stood beside him and looked at the couple in the khaki outfits holding a trio of chimpanzees. The animals had known her parents better than she had. "Yes."

  "How did they die?"

  "A freak storm in Kenya. They were caught out in it miles from camp. They were so busy observing the chimps, they hadn't noticed the weather."

  "I'm sorry."

  "I didn't know them." Gramps and Gran had been her real parents. "I was unplanned and my parents had no room in their lives for a baby. They left me with Gran and Gramps when I was a month old, and visited once when I was two. They died when I was four."

  Abby talked of them as if they were distant relatives. How different from the relationship he'd had with his parents. "My parents died in a subway accident in New York when I was ten," Daniel said slowly. "I had to go live with my grandparents in Ohio after that."

  "That must have been hard on you
."

  He had never discussed this with anyone else.

  "It was. I remember how warm and wonderful our house always seemed. My parents and I did so many things together. For a long time I couldn't believe they would never come back, that they had really left me all alone."

  Abby's throat tightened. Though his face remained expressionless, instinct told her Daniel's wound still hadn't healed completely.

  "Were you close to your grandparents?" Her own had made all the difference in her life.

  "No."

  His grandparents had been uncommunicative and cold. Venting his grief over the loss of his parents by bad behavior in school hadn't earned him any points at home either. The more they punished him, the worse he had become.

  Daniel looked at the collage again. A close up of Abby's face caught his attention. The smile on her lips was carefree, the look of serenity in her eyes an advertisement of the fact she was happy.

  "How old were you when this was taken?"

  "Nineteen."

  Before she had married the jerk who had robbed her of her self-confidence. Daniel's gaze wandered to the last spot in the collage. It was blank. Had it once held a wedding picture?

  Abby tensed as she noticed Daniel's gaze rest on the blank spot. She hadn't replaced the picture of herself in a wedding gown, taken just before she'd left for the church Rod and she had been married in.

  "If you'll just sit down here?" she said quickly. She'd become an expert at turning off thoughts of the past. Abby only wished she could turn the pain off as easily.

  Daniel seated himself on the sofa, and Abby knelt on the floor in front of him. "Give me your hand." Pouring a teaspoon of oil into her palm she carefully rubbed it all over his hand. Then taking his hand in both of hers she began to massage the palm working her way upwards.

  Instantly Abby became aware of heat scorching a path to her brain. Sensing Daniel's gaze on her face, she avoided looked at him. She had done this so many times for so many people. Hamish's bad wrist, Gran's knee. There had never been this eruption of heat before, this feeling that she was walking a tightrope without a net under her.

  "Where did you learn to do this?"

  Abby barely heard Daniel's question. Without raising her head from her task, she said, "Gran sprained her knee once and it took a long while healing. I watched how the therapist massaged her knee and then I used to do it the same way every night. Gran soon recovered completely."

  "You've got healing hands."

  Daniel's eyes were closed and he looked very relaxed. Abby wondered if Daniel was simply being kind. Gran, Hamish, and Agnes were always very kind to her. Abby knew they felt sorry for her. In their own way they wanted to make up to her for the mess she had made of her life. Had Daniel joined the club as well?

  Abby jumped when Daniel reached out and touched her shoulder. "Abby, why is it so difficult for you to accept a compliment?"

  "I don't know." She did, but she couldn't tell Daniel the reason. Rod.

  The bleak note in Abby's voice whipped up Daniel's anger. "You have this low self-image which you cling to as if it's branded on your mind." Cupping her chin, he demanded, "Who did this to you, Abby?"

  Her lips felt twice their normal size and her vocal chords were stiff. "I don't know what you mean."

  Daniel glanced at the pictures on the wall. "The girl in those pictures didn't lack confidence. Who robbed you of the right to believe in yourself, Abby?"

  She shook her head. It was impossible to say anything.

  Daniel let go of Abby's chin. He wasn't getting through to her. There had to be another way.

  As she picked up his other hand and began to massage it, he said, "I started my own business while I was still in college. One of the lecturers kept telling me I would never do well. For a long time I believed what the man said...after all, he was older, more experienced. He kept bringing the subject up in his class, warning the other students against being in too great a hurry. One day I lost my temper and told him, "I am going to make it because I believe in me." I learned something that day. It didn't matter if anyone else approved of what I did or not. The only important thing was I had to approve of what I did."

  Abby didn't say anything as her gaze meshed with Daniel's. "Try it, Abby. Believe in yourself. Have faith in your abilities."

  The way Abby looked at him told Daniel he had her complete attention. "You're a wonderful person with so much to offer," he said firmly. "I haven't met anyone else with your capacity for caring for others."

  "That isn't hard," Daniel heard Abby mutter.

  "You're intelligent and talented." He tried to sound very positive. "Agnes told me you worked as a freelance interior decorator before you got married. Look at the store, the guest house, this room...they all reflect how good you are. Why did you give up your work, Abby?"

  "I wasn't getting enough orders."

  Rod had told her he wanted his wife to stay home. Rather than argue, she had given in to him. As she always had. By then her growing lack of self-confidence had convinced her she wouldn't be able to make it as an interior decorator anyway.

  After Rod's death, Abby had returned to Carbon Canyon. At the back of her mind had been a plan to start her own business again. Once here, she had realized Gran needed her help. Putting what little money she had into the store had been done automatically.

  Gran's work was more important than her dreams.

  Abby stared at Daniel's hands, her eyes luminous with tears. Daniel wondered if he had trammeled on hurts best forgotten. "When it comes down to it," he said, "each human being has only one cheering section. Ourselves. Think about what I've said, Abby."

  She bent her head. He knew he was pushing it, but there was one more thing he had to say. "You're a survivor, Abby." She looked up, surprised. Daniel felt he had to explain his remark. "The fact you haven't caved in under all your problems, personal or otherwise, proves you're a survivor. Each of us has the spark of survival in us. When things are bad it's up to us to protect that spark till its strong enough to burn by itself. The only losers are those who let the spark go out."

  He'd done enough for one night. Daniel only hoped he hadn't overdone his attempt to restore Abby's self-confidence. Her face was pale and the hand she lifted to cap the bottle of herbal oil, shook slightly.

  "Thank you for the massage," Daniel said gently. "I'll see you tomorrow."

  Upstairs, Abby showered and changed into an embroidered nightie. Settling on the window seat, she drew her knees to her chest. Were all the things Daniel said true? Had she handed Rod the power to bully her, to make her feel she was an idiot?

  If she had, it had been because she was so much in love with him. Later it had been because if she ever opposed him, he threw a tantrum. His dark moods lasted for days, and rather than bring one on, she'd preferred to do things his way.

  When she had found out about Rod's affairs, Abby knew she should have said something, but by then she blamed herself for the failure of her marriage, believed all the cruel things Rod said. It seemed easier just to continue the way she was then cause waves by asking for a divorce.

  It hadn't entirely been apathy that had tied her to the marriage. Gran, grieving for Gramps, who had passed away a year after the wedding, would have been tremendously upset by a divorce. Abby had continued to pretend everything was fine between her and Rod on her visits to Carbon Canyon. Deep down in her heart she had never relinquished the hope that they would work through their problems, and everything would become all right one day. Instead, the circumstances surrounding Rod's death had told the whole world what a mess she had made of her marriage. Rod had been returning from an illicit weekend when he and his current lover had been killed.

  Take back the power, Abby.

  Was it possible to do such a thing? Abby thought of the picture of herself at nineteen. There had been a time when she'd believed in her abilities.

  Each of us has the spark of survival in us, Abby. It's up to us to protect it till it’s strong en
ough to burn by itself. You're a survivor.

  She had to get off the bleachers where she had spent so much time watching life pass her by. There was only one way to find out if she could really regain control of her life. Abby knew she had to test what Daniel had told her.

  Only time would tell if he was right.

  CHAPTER SIX

  At the end of his third week, Daniel stepped into the community room to find Hamish bent over the wooden stork. The smooth, artistic lines of the bird testified to Hamish's talent and Daniel's lack of it.

  "Good morning, Mr. McArthur."

  "Ah, Daniel, come in." Hamish looked up from his carving and actually smiled. "Sarah tells me you've decided to stay a while longer with us."

  "Well..." Daniel didn't know what to say. "I haven't really done anything to help the store. The billboard and the flyers have brought in a few more customers but that isn't enough to get The Busy Bee back on its feet."

  "Glad you're staying," Hamish said with more geniality than he had ever exhibited before. "Maybe we'll make a whittler of you yet."

  That would be the day. Daniel thought of the lopsided object his carving had yielded and a corner of his mouth lifted. He had changed considerably since he'd come here, but there was some things that could never change. One was his whittling abilities.

  In the office, Abby tensed. Why hadn't Daniel mentioned his decision to stay on to her? She hadn't seen much of him this week. Jack Williams was growing steadily weaker, and she had been spending all her free time at Vista.

  A few minutes later she looked up as Daniel entered the office. "Hi!"

  She'd forgotten the effect that half smile of his had on her, the way the lines around his eyes crinkled.

  "I'm just cleaning up," she said quickly, noticing the surprised look on his face. "I'll be out of your way in five minutes."

  Daniel's gaze fell to the drawer she had placed on top of the desk. It was the one with the photographs. Half empty.

  "Want some coffee?" he asked casually, holding up the cup he had poured himself in the community room.

  "No thanks."

  Watching as Abby dumped the rest of the pictures into a large envelope he said cautiously, "I'm going to be here a while longer."