Instead of chastising him like his own mother would’ve, she beamed. “Thank you, son. Here, try it with some honey.”
There were definite pluses to the old Southern viewpoint, he thought as he drizzled honey on the hot corn bread.
“I saw you talking to Emma,” Sylvia said.
He hesitated. Though he felt disloyal discussing their problems with Emma’s mother, he needed an ally. Since Emma knew about their past and he didn’t, he needed all the help he could get.
“She won’t let me take Gabe and Randy swimming on Saturday.”
Sylvia shook her head. “That girl.”
“What’s wrong, Sylvia? Why doesn’t she trust me enough to take my own son to a pool?”
She glanced at him, her lips pressed together. Emma said Sylvia was on his side. He was about to find out how much. Would she confide in him?
Finally Sylvia nodded, as if making a decision. She stepped over to the door and glanced down the hall, then turned back to him. “Emma wouldn’t let Billy Graham take Gabe to Sunday School. She just doesn’t trust people anymore—especially men.”
“Why? Because I left her? I couldn’t help it.”
Sylvia shrugged as she went back to the stove. “You’re part of it, but not all. She’s had some rough times in the past six and a half years, mostly with Jerry and Cecil. It hasn’t been easy for any of us, but she’s the one that had the brunt of their... behavior. And she’s had to shoulder the burden ever since.”
“What happened with...Jerry, was it? Why did she marry him?”
Sylvia took the lid off a pot of stew and stirred it. “Cecil made her. He couldn’t stand the thought of everyone knowing his grandchild was sired by a...by you. Emma held out until they officially called off the search for, you. Then she sort of gave up. I think she just wanted to get away from her father.”
Needing to know what he was up against, Rafe couldn’t help pressing for information. “How long was she married?”
“Almost two years. Gabe was about eighteen months old when she left Jerry.”
“She didn’t love him, did she?”
“No. They’d known each other since they were little, but they were never in love.”
Relief flowed through him like a narcotic. He hadn’t realized until that moment how important Emma’s feelings for Jerry were to him. “Why did she leave him?”
Sylvia set the large spoon on a small plate. “She never said for sure, but she keeps talking about how men want to control women. She says they’re like the Borg, whoever they are.”
“On Star Trek,” he told her, half his mind on the implications of Sylvia’s revelations. “They’re these creatures who—”
He broke off at the sound of a door opening.
Two pairs of footsteps came down the hall, one running, one walking.
Gabe entered first. “Is supper ready?”
“Just about,” his grandmother told him.
The boy rubbed his stomach. “I love stew. Do you like stew, Rafe?”
Rafe grabbed his son and threw him in the air. “I sure do.”
Gabe squealed with delight.
As Rafe set him back on the floor, Emma entered. Her gaze immediately clashed with his. He held onto it, trying to see past the green shutters to the wounded woman hidden inside. He wished he could’ve been there for her, to relieve her of the burdens she’d taken on her slender shoulders.
But she wouldn’t let him help with anything. Wouldn’t even tell him she needed help. She’d planted her mistrust so deep, lived with it so long, she probably wasn’t even aware it was a problem.
Could he overcome such an obstacle?
He had to, or risk losing the family he’d so recently found. He had to find some way to teach her how to trust again. At least to trust him. He had to show her that he didn’t want control of her life, just control of his own. She was the only one who could help him get it back.
Emma tore her gaze away and reached into a cabinet for plates.
Rafe opened the drawer behind him that held the silverware.
How did one go about teaching someone else to trust?
He supposed by being trustworthy. That meant he couldn’t let her avoid him. In order for her to learn to trust him, she had to be around him. And she had to let him be around his son.
So the first thing he had to do was confront her about this weekend. He could hide most of his damaged body if he wore a T-shirt for “protection against the sun” and got into the pool before they arrived so his legs were obscured by the water.
As they set the table, he debated on how to bring the subject up when Gabe saved him the trouble.
As he placed the napkins at each place, Gabe looked at his mother, his dark eyes dancing. “Mom, Rafe’s gonna take Randy and me to his pool on Saturday.”
Emma threw Rafe a nasty look. “He is, is he?”
“Yeah. He said there’s a slide and everything! Randy called his mom today, and she said it’s okay with her if it’s okay with you.”
“Sure. Let me be the bad guy,” she murmured.
“What’s that?” Sylvia asked as she came in with the plate of corn bread.
“Nothing.” Emma placed the last plate on the table. “I’m sorry, Gabe. Y’all won’t be able to go.”
“Mom!” Gabe cried. “Why?”
“Aw, honey,” Sylvia said. “It’s all the boys could talk about all day.”
“I’m sure.” Emma turned the plate so the design faced her. “I have too much work to do. I found a computer system at lunch today. I was hoping Rafe could pick it up tomorrow, so I can spend Saturday installing software.”
Rafe shook his head. “I can’t go tomorrow. I’ve got a meeting in the morning with a possible printer, and furniture coming tomorrow afternoon.”
She looked so dismayed, he felt like he’d won the argument by cheating. He wanted to win it by making her trust him. Then it occurred to him that he could start showing her how to trust him by trusting her.
He reached into his wallet and took out a credit card. “Here. You go pick it up.”
She looked at his card as if she’d never seen one before. “I can’t use your card.”
“Sure you can.” His mouth twisted. “Just sign it Mrs. Rafe Johnson.”
Her eyes widened, and she threw a warning glance toward her son, who watched them with curious eyes.
Seeing he was unmoved, she lifted her chin. “That’s not my name.”
He held the card steady. “No?”
She frowned at him. “Computer boxes are huge. I can’t fit them all in my car.”
“If you pay for it, so it’s ready to load, I can swing by and pick it up.”
“Then why can’t you pay—”
“I won’t have time. If you go at lunch and pick everything out and pay for it, they’ll have it ready to go.”
Emma finally took the card. “I can’t believe you’re just handing over your card. It’s the one without a limit, isn’t it? I could buy anything.”
“I trust you,” he said simply.
She studied his face, as if trying to decide what planet he’d come from.
He cleared his throat. “Now, back to our discussion...”
She rolled her eyes. “I told you, I don’t have time to go swimming. It takes most of a day to set up a system like this. If I don’t do it this weekend, I’ll have to wait a whole week, which will delay me starting on the magazine.”
“You don’t need to go to the pool with us,” Rafe pointed out. If he couldn’t be with her, at least he could spend time with Gabe.
“Yes, I do.”
“Why?”
“Motel pools rarely have lifeguards. What if something happened?”
“I’ll be there.”
“But you’re—” she pressed her lips together, then went ahead and said it “—not in the best physical condition.”
His eyes narrowed. He’d be damned if he’d let her use his bum leg to keep him from spending time with his so
n. If she was going to win this argument, she was going to have to come right out and say she didn’t trust him—in front of their son. “I move just fine in the water. In fact, that’s how I’ve been keeping in shape. That and lifting weights. My parents have a pool, and I swam every day.”
“But—”
“Are you crazy, Mom?” Gabe cried. “Rafe can swim. He can do anything.”
Emma frowned at her son. “Rafe isn’t some superhero, Gabe. I just—”
“No, but even President Roosevelt, who was crippled with polio, could swim,” he said.
“Gracious me, Emma.” Sylvia crossed her arms over her stomach. “You can take off a couple hours on Saturday to go swimming with these boys. Rafe isn’t such a slave driver as that.”
“Thank you, Sylvia.” He smiled at his collaborator, then turned back to Emma. “I didn’t expect the system to be up and running for another week, anyway. We have plenty of time.”
“But the sooner we get started, the sooner you’ll have something to show potential advertisers.”
“My schedule will allow a few hours for a swim on Saturday. If you don’t finish then, can’t you do the rest on Sunday?”
Cornered, Emma glared at him. Was she so reluctant to trust him that she’d shatter her son’s expectations?
“Please!” Gabe cried. “I’ll go to bed on time tonight.”
Emma glanced at her son’s anxious face, then closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Finally, through clenched teeth, she said, “Fine.”
Rafe actually felt proud of her for giving in. Maybe teaching her to trust him wouldn’t take as long as he’d thought. “You’re coming, too, aren’t you?”
“You can bet your Speedo.”
He smiled. “If I have to wear a Speedo, you have to wear a bikini.”
Gabe giggled.
Emma’s eyes narrowed. “My bathing suit is thick and black and comes to my knees.”
He chuckled. “Oh, well. I can dream, can’t I?”
Chapter Six
Rafe leaned back in the rolling chair he’d just assembled to enjoy the view.
Emma’s derriere was at eye level, just an arm’s reach away. Her jeans were stretched tight as she bent around the computer to plug in the wires attaching the scanner. Round and luscious, the curves dared him to touch. And, God help him, he could barely restrain his hands from taking the dare.
A gentleman would discreetly avert his eyes, but at the moment he didn’t feel very gentlemanly. He wanted to pull her onto his lap where his own jeans were getting tighter by the second and cover her mouth with his. He wanted to drag her T-shirt over her head and fill his hands with—
“How’s it feel?”
“Damn, I wish I knew,” he whispered.
She straightened and twisted to look at him. “What?”
His daydream shattered, he blinked. “What?”
Her brow furrowed. “The chair. How does it feel?”
“Oh.” He glanced down at the blue armrests. “Great. Want to try it?”
She shook her head. “I’ll be in it enough when I’m installing software.”
“What can I do to help you finish?”
She sent him a dubious glance. “Can you get under the desk and plug everything into the surge protector? I just let all the plugs dangle back there.”
His mouth twisted wryly. “I think I can manage.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t know what you can or can’t do.”
His smile faded. She really did think he was crippled. This was exactly what he’d been afraid of. She wasn’t focusing on him as a man, she was focusing on his injuries. “I can do just about everything you can. Maybe not as well or as quickly, but I get along. Except run. I can’t run.”
“You used to run every day to keep in shape.”
“That’s what I understand.” He shrugged. “Now I swim and lift weights.”
She nodded.
He dropped to his knees and crawled under the new computer table to plug in the cords. “There sure are a lot of wires back here.”
“I know,” she said from behind him. “That’s one drawback with computers. Everything has to have its own separate plug, and it gets to be a real mess.”
He fitted all the plugs he could find into the surge protector. “There’s five, right?”
“Hmm?” she murmured absently.
He backed up and twisted enough to see her. She was staring at his rear end. So she was thinking of him as a man. A smile of deep male satisfaction broke across his face. “Either kick it or grab it. The suspense is killing me.”
Her wide eyes rose to his. “What?”
“You were examining my butt like you were thinking about buying it. Go ahead.” He flexed his gluteus maximus. “You can touch the merchandise.”
Crimson crept up her neck to stain her cheeks, and her eyes narrowed. She picked up a large piece of foam that had protected the monitor and broke it across his butt. “Here’s my touch.”
He emitted an exaggerated moan of pleasure. “More.”
She laughed and quirked her brow. “Into kinky sex now, are you?”
He leaned back on his heels. “Whatever clicks your mouse.”
“Oh, be quiet.” Emma threw the broken piece of Styrofoam at him, then rose. His sexy, daring smile was so provocative, so familiar, she could barely keep herself from falling to her knees and seeing how many times she could wrap herself around him.
“There were five plugs, right?” he asked again.
She had to stop and count. Monitor, CPU, printer, scanner and backup drive. “Five. Right.”
“Then it’s ready to go.”
She inserted the tools disk into the external backup drive, then turned all the peripherals on. After giving them a few seconds to warm up, she pressed the power key on the keyboard. A deepthroated chord chimed from the tower as the unit began to hum.
She turned to Rafe with a smile. “It’s alive.”
He rose to his knees, peering at the computer as if it were a being from a distant galaxy. “Is that good?”
She chuckled. “It means we did everything right. So far.”
“You mean you did everything right. I just watched. You seemed to know what you were doing.”
“I do,” she said with confidence.
“I’m glad someone does.”
As he slowly lifted himself to his feet, he paused. “Who’s that?”
Emma heard the distinct sound of someone climbing the stairs to Rafe’s apartment. “Too heavy to be Gabe or Momma. Are you expecting any more deliveries?”
“Not today. At least I know no one can sneak up on me.” He walked into the small entryway and opened the wooden door. “Jay Patten. How the bell did you find me so fast? I just moved in today.”
Surprise made Emma blink. Who was this? She thought Rafe didn’t remember anyone in Memphis. Though she leaned to the side, she could hear puffing but couldn’t see Rafe’s friend.
“I’ve still got a few investigative skills left from my reporter days,” said a deep voice with a thick Southern accent.
“Come on in.” Rafe led the man into the room. “Emma, this is Jay Patten. We worked together years ago at the Commercial Appeal. Jay, this is Emma, the competent half of this operation.”
Jay had a round face—which at the moment was red—a round body and round dark eyes. He and Rafe looked like “before and after” pictures in some fitness ad. “Ah, she must be your computer expert.”
Rafe met her eyes across the room. “Emma’s the best graphic artist in Memphis. She’s setting up the computer system.”
“Ah. Better her than us, huh, old buddy?”
Emma shook her head, trying to keep her insides from melting at the warmth of Rafe’s confident praise. She hoped she could live up to his expectations. “I don’t understand how two grown men could live in this day and age and not know how to plug in a computer. Don’t you use one at the newspaper?”
“Sure do,” Jay told her. “But we have a whol
e department of people to handle all that technical stuff. To me it’s just a glorified typewriter.”
“Let’s sit down.” Rafe cleared the old couch of the stuff Emma had thrown on it as she dug into the boxes.
She stepped over to rescue the manuals. “I can come back later if you—”
“You won’t bother us,” Rafe said. “Besides, you need to finish by four if you can, so we can take Gabe.”
With a heavy sigh of relief, Jay settled on one end of the couch. “Who’s Gabe?”
Rafe sent her another I’d-sure-as-hell-like-to-tell-him look, then said, “He’s Emma’s son. We’re taking him swimming at the motel. I haven’t checked out yet.”
Pulling her attention away from the two men, Emma dug through the debris for the software boxes. She couldn’t help but notice that Rafe never lied about his relationship to her and Gabe. He told just enough of the truth to satisfy whoever he was talking to.
As she tore the plastic wrap off the screen saver, she remembered how honest he’d always been. He’d told her that as a reporter searching for the truth from his sources, how could he expect any less of himself? It was one trait she’d always admired, and it bothered her to know he still had it. Bothered her because she didn’t want to admire him any more than she already did.
Installing software was a boring task, consisting mostly of clicking a few times, then waiting while the computer did all the work. So for the next several hours, Emma had nothing to do but listen to the two men as they talked, mostly. about Rafe’s ordeal. She learned a lot of the more gruesome details he’d left out of the version he’d told her—about the condition of the village that had captured him, of the many operations it took to heal his broken body, of the years of painful rehabilitation. He talked about it so matter-of-factly, as if it had happened to someone else.
But it hadn’t. Here she thought she’d had a hard time during the past six years. What she’d been through was nothing compared to what had happened to Rafe.
His stories brought home her conviction that he wasn’t the man she’d loved so long ago. No one could live through what Rafe had without being fundamentally changed.
Though she’d known it all along—indeed, had counted on that fact to keep her distance from Rafe—she suddenly felt depressed.
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