AN INNOCENT MAN

by Margaret Watson

  "You must be having a hard time in this heat," he murmured.

  She looked startled, as if his words were the last thing she'd expected him to say. Then she nodded slowly. "That, and keeping track of two other kids." A tiny smile crossed her face. "I'll try to plan better next time."

  Connor smiled back, but continued to watch her. It was far more than the heat and stress of two kids that was making Mary Johnson's face so pinched. And her hands and feet so swollen. Making a mental note to ask Sarah about her, he turned and followed the direction of her gaze.

  Tom had swung their son, who looked to be about three, onto his shoulders. He held their daughter, a thin, delicate-looking child, by the hand as the trio walked slowly back to the blanket.

  He knew, with a certainty he couldn't doubt, that Tom was hoping they'd be gone by the time he got back to his wife. Connor stood and watched him as he approached. Tom Johnson's behavior was the first odd thing he'd noticed today, and he had no intention of walking away. The tiny frisson of something wrong washed over him again, the same feeling he'd had the first time he'd met Tom.

  Tom swung the child off his shoulders and stood watching as he ran around his mother. According to what the sheriff had said, he hadn't lived in Pine Butte when Connor left. So why did he look so damned familiar?

  Refusing to meet Connor's eyes, the sheriff asked, "Have you remembered anything more about that car that hit you?"

  "No, I haven't." His lips curved slightly upward. "Other than it was big."

  Tom darted a look at him and smiled nervously. "I haven't heard a thing. Nobody's taken their car into Billy at the service station for bodywork, and no one's reported any accidents. I've been checking around, looking at cars and asking some discreet questions. If anybody knows anything, they're not talking."

  Connor looked at the sheriff in surprise. Somehow, with the way he'd been acting around him, Connor hadn't expected the sheriff to be pursuing his problem in more than a very superficial way. It sounded as if he'd been spending some time with it, actually making an effort to find out what had happened.

  "Thanks," he said slowly. "I appreciate that. But I doubt if you're going to find anything."

  "Probably not," Tom agreed. "It's been five days. If it was really an accident, someone would have come forward by now."

  He seemed a lot more comfortable talking about Connor's problem than making small talk, and as Connor watched him, some of the suspicion in his chest began to ease. There were a lot of people who were more comfortable talking about their field of expertise than chatting socially.

  "Let me know if anything turns up."

  "Will do." The sheriff cleared his throat. "You still staying at the clinic?"

  He nodded casually. "Sarah insisted. Said something about head injuries," he answered easily. "I figured it wouldn't be smart to alienate the only medical person in town."

  A quick flash of relief passed over Tom's face. "Our Sarah can be pretty stubborn," he agreed.

  Was he concerned about Sarah, he wondered, staying alone with him? Or did Tom have some other motive for asking where he was staying?

  Connor turned away abruptly. Everyone in this town was a suspect, he reminded himself. Even the sheriff, who had been surprisingly ready to help him. Maybe the man was just a good actor.

  Sarah turned away from Mary Johnson just then and gave him a questioning look. He nodded slightly even as he wondered about the understanding that flowed between then. Why did he seem to know so easily what she was thinking?

  "I'll talk to you soon, Mary," she said. "Remember, I want you to come into the clinic sometime in the next few days. At this stage of your pregnancy, I should be checking you every week."

  "All right, Sarah. But you're worrying about nothing."

  "Come in and prove it to me."

  Connor said goodbye to Tom and Mary and looked at Sarah as they walked away. "What is the nothing that you're worrying about?"

  "I just don't like the way she looks," she answered slowly. "This pregnancy has been a hard one for Mary, and worrying about her daughter, Jenny, hasn't helped any."

  "What's wrong with her daughter?"

  "She needs heart surgery, and Mary's worried sick. About the danger, about the expense, about everything connected with it."

  "I didn't think Mary looked very good, either," he said slowly. Looking at Sarah, seeing the worry on her face for her friend, he wanted to gather her close. "You would have made a good doctor." His voice sounded gruff.

  She looked at him then, a sad smile on her face. "Thank you. I always thought so, too." She straightened her back and said fiercely, "But I am a damn good nurse practitioner."

  "That you are," he murmured. Tell her, he told himself fiercely. Tell her now. But the same fear that had him in its grip when Perry Cummings came to town grabbed him by the throat and wouldn't let go. He wanted to be free to tell Sarah about himself, to tell her his secrets, but the fear and caution he'd learned over his lifetime sealed his lips. He would tell her later, he assured himself, when they weren't in public and surrounded by an audience. She wouldn't want him to tell her now, anyway.

  She interrupted his thoughts by veering abruptly to the left. "Let's go over here."

  He automatically looked the way they'd been going and stopped dead in his tracks. Ralph Wesley was holding court near the center of the picnic activities, and Sarah had obviously swerved to avoid him. "Sarah, wait."

  "Not here, Connor." Her voice pleaded with him. "Save your confrontation for somewhere a little more private. Don't make the people in Pine Butte choose publicly between you and my uncle."

  "I wasn't planning on confronting him. But I don't have any intention of letting him scare me away, either. If he wants an ugly scene, I'm not going to stop him."

  "All I'm asking is that we not walk right into him. That's all."

  He looked at her. Her eyes pleaded with him to walk away with her, and he was helpless against her. "All right, Sarah. Let's pretend we're fascinated with the horseshoe game over there."

  "Thank you," she murmured, looking at the ground as they walked.

  He took another look over his shoulder and saw Ralph Wesley and Harley Harrison, his foreman, deep in conversation. Every once in a while the foreman's eyes flickered in his direction.

  "I can wait," Connor said softly. "But not for long."

  The rest of the day drifted by in a haze of barbecue smoke and memories of long-past Pine Butte town picnics. To his surprise, Connor actually found himself having a good time. More and more people stopped him to say hello, and although most of them were a little tentative, no one was hostile. That seemed to be confined, he thought wryly, to the Wesley family. With one exception. He glanced at Sarah again.

  She hadn't budged from his side all day. He couldn't miss the speculative looks directed at her by some of the towns-people, but she'd merely held her head higher and moved a little closer to him.

  As dusk swallowed the daylight behind the mountains, they wandered toward the edge of the crowd. Suddenly he wanted, more than anything, to be alone with her. He needed to wrap himself in her courage, lose himself in the depths of her eyes that shone like emeralds in the dim light. He needed some of her strength for himself.

  "Let's go home," he whispered, and she turned to look at him. Her eyes flashed with something that made him hold his breath, then she licked her lips and slowly nodded.

  "Yes."

  He reached for her hand, threading his fingers between hers. As the voices and laughter faded away behind them, she moved closer to him.

  They were still in the park when her uncle Ralph suddenly appeared in front of them. For a moment, he seemed just as startled as they were. Then he looked from Sarah to Connor and something dark and ugly flashed in his eyes.

  "Stay away from him, Sarah. He's nothing but trouble." If Connor hadn't reached out with his free hand and grabbed her wrist, she would have stepped in front of him. For a second he looked at her, puzzled; then he realized wha
t she was doing.

  Sarah was trying to protect him from Ralph Wesley. Another door in his heart, one he'd thought nailed shut forever, swung open with a rusty creak. The hand that held her wrist gentled and his thumb stroked her arm softly.

  "It's all right, sweetheart," he whispered.

  Her eyes widened at the endearment and she just stared at him. Stepping in front of her, he looked at Ralph Wesley.

  His fists clenched as he stared at Ralph. A man who very likely knew exactly what had happened to his father. Who might have had a role in his death. Closing his eyes, he tightened his hold on Sarah's hand. Not now, he warned himself. Not with Sarah standing next to him.

  "Sarah's a big girl," he finally answered, his voice carefully neutral. "She can make her own decisions."

  Fury gathered in Ralph Wesley's face, and his eyes narrowed to slits. "I wasn't talking to you," he said with venom.

  "But I'm talking to you. Tell me, Wesley, exactly what is it that you have against me? You've never really said."

  Ralph Wesley's face mottled with rage. "As if you had to ask. Coming back here, after the way you left, after what you did to my niece…" His voice trailed off and he stood staring at Connor with hard eyes. Finally he said, "You're no damn good, MacCormac, just like your father before you."

  "It always comes back to my father, doesn't it?" Connor answered softly. "But he's been dead for eighteen years."

  Still holding Sarah's hand, he stepped around the older man and walked away. He didn't have to turn around to know Wesley was staring after him. The spot between his shoulder blades burned.

  As they turned a corner and disappeared from Ralph Wesley's view, Connor heard Sarah draw a shaky breath. Dropping her hand, he draped his arm over her shoulder and pulled her close as they walked.

  "I'm sorry. I promised no confrontations today."

  "It wasn't your fault." She took another deep breath, and it seemed to Connor that she moved closer to him. "He came looking for us."

  "I don't think he did," Connor answered thoughtfully. "I think he was as surprised as we were."

  "If that's true, he sure made a quick recovery."

  He heard the chagrin in her voice and looked at her in amazement. "You're not responsible for what your uncle says or does. Why are you ashamed?"

  It was a while before she answered. Finally she burst out, "He makes me ashamed to be a Wesley, to be related to someone who thinks like that. What he said was … was despicable."

  He felt his eyes burn. He couldn't remember the last time anyone had defended him so passionately. "What he said about Barb?" he forced himself to ask.

  "No, what he said about you." Her answer was immediate. "And about your father. He sounds like he was an honest, hardworking man."

  "He was." His mouth tightened. If Ralph Wesley was responsible for his father's death, it would give Connor great pleasure to make him pay.

  "I'm going to the mine tomorrow," he said abruptly. "It's time to have a little talk with both Ralph and Richard."

  "I'm coming with you." Her response was immediate.

  "You can't, Sarah. It could be dangerous."

  "All the more reason for me to go. Not even my cousin Richard is stupid enough to do something in front of a witness."

  They'd reached the door of the clinic and she fumbled with the lock. Stepping inside, she reached for the light, but he stopped her. "I don't want anything to happen to you, Sarah. I couldn't leave here with that on my conscience. I have no idea what's going to happen tomorrow at the mine, but I think it's a safe bet that it won't be pretty. You're too … important to me to let you take that kind of chance."

  She faced him in the darkness, only her silhouette visible in the faint moonlight. Her eyes gleamed like the sea at midnight. "And you're too important to me to let you go alone. I can't do it, Connor."

  "Sarah, no," he groaned. "Don't say things like that."

  "Why not?" She lifted her chin a notch. "It's true. It's too bad if you don't want to hear that people care about you. I do." Her voice softened. "You're a good man, Connor MacCormac. It didn't take long for me to see that."

  "You blame me for your sister's death." He desperately brought up the one thing guaranteed to push her away from him. He had no defenses against her. She had to be the one who stopped him from making a fool of himself.

  "You told me it wasn't you," she said slowly. "And I believe you." Guilt, sorrow and pain flashed over her face. "God help me, I do believe you."

  "Sarah," he whispered, closing his eyes and reaching blindly for her. "Sarah, I'm sorry."

  He pulled her against his chest and held her there, burying his face in the fragrant mass of her hair. A hot dampness burned through his shirt, and he realized she was crying.

  "I'm sorry," he said again, his arms tightening. "I should have let you go on believing it was me."

  Raising her tear-drenched face to his, she said fiercely, "No! Why would you want to let me think something so wicked of you?"

  "I would do anything to spare you this pain." He smoothed one hand down her hair, letting the silk flow over his fingers. "You shouldn't have to face this kind of betrayal after losing your sister."

  "You'd rather I think you were capable of abandoning her and her unborn baby?"

  "It would be less painful for you," he muttered, trying to ease away from her. He was supposed to be comforting her. Some comfort he would be if she realized how aroused he was.

  "Barb's been dead for almost twelve years." She leaned back in his arms to look up at him. The light in her eyes made him want to pull her close again. "Yes, it hurts terribly to think that she didn't trust me with the truth. It would hurt far more, though, to think you were capable of such a terrible thing."

  "I'm trying to do the right thing here, Sarah," he groaned. "You can't get involved with me." He sounded desperate, even to his own ears.

  She inched her arms around his neck. "It's too late, Connor. I already am involved with you. I think it was too late the moment I saw you lying on the side of the mountain on Eagle Ridge Road

  ."

  He closed his eyes while the need stabbed him. Tensing every muscle in his body, he tried to step away from her. "It's not too late to stop. I don't want to hurt you, Sarah. And if you don't go upstairs to your apartment right now, alone, I'm going to hurt you. Eventually."

  "Maybe you will. But I don't want to play it safe anymore. I can't."

  She paused, and his hands crept up to frame her face. In the darkness he felt the heat sweep into her cheeks. "I want you, Connor." Her whisper echoed in the darkened room. "Do you want me?"

  "More than life itself," he groaned, lowering his mouth to hers. "God help us, Sarah. I think I'll die from wanting you."

  * * *

  Chapter 11

  «^»

  As Sarah stared at Connor she saw pain and desperate need in his eyes. His heart boomed against hers where she pressed against his chest, and his arms were like steel bands around her.

  His struggle to step away from her was mirrored in his face. As she tightened her arms around him, she wondered briefly what had happened to the cautious, careful woman who hadn't been involved with a man since she'd come back to live in Pine Butte.

  Now all her caution, all her good sense, had flown out the window, along with all her inhibitions. Her face flamed as she thought about what she'd just said. Sarah Wesley most definitely didn't ask men if they wanted her.

  "Sarah?" he whispered. "Tell me to stop now. Please. If you don't, I won't be able to stop."

  Slowly she shook her head. "I don't want you to stop, Connor."

  The rest of her words were swallowed as his mouth descended on hers. She tasted his pounding need, his passion, in a kiss that seemed to draw out her soul. She gave it to him freely.

  He pulled her even closer, until every inch of their bodies was touching. Suddenly he lifted her up and moved a few steps until her back pressed against the wall. His mouth fastened to hers, he let her slowly slide d
own his body. She had no doubts about the degree of his desire for her.

  He swept his tongue into her mouth, searching out all the secret places and twining around her tongue in a sinuous dance. He tasted of passion and heat, like every forbidden pleasure she'd ever wanted. Cupping her hips in his gentle, clever hands, he rocked against her, making her cling more tightly to him as wave after wave of sensation washed over her.

  His hands fumbled with the buttons of her blouse. She could feel them trembling as he tried to push the tiny buttons through the buttonholes. Feathering her hands over the soft material of his polo shirt, she traced the outline of hard muscles as shudders wracked him.

  Her fingers found his hard, flat male nipples through the thin fabric and lingered for a moment, softly exploring. He surged against her, his hands clenching in the soft cotton of her blouse.

  "Ah, Sarah, be careful. That couch is too close for comfort." He leaned back and looked at her, his eyes glittering. "And I remember how it feels all too well."

  She pressed against him again and reached up to kiss him. "I didn't want to stop then, either."

  He groaned. "I want to make love with you all night long, in that big bed of yours upstairs. If you're not careful, we'll never make it that far."

  Sliding her hands slowly down his chest, she lingered for a moment at the waistband of his jeans. Dipping one finger inside the fabric, she twined it around the hair that feathered down his flat, hard belly. "I don't think I would mind standing right here with you all night," she whispered.

  He shifted suddenly and pulled her toward him. Nuzzling her neck, he took her hand and led her toward the door to her apartment. "Not a chance, Sarah. I have plans for you. And they don't include the floor of your clinic."

  "Who said anything about the floor?" she murmured as he started up the stairs. "I was having fun just where we were."

  Curling his arm around her, he led her up the dark stairwell. His hand casually brushed her breast and she stiffened. "I know some games, too, love." He dipped his head and kissed her thoroughly. When he raised his head she looked around, disoriented. They were in her bedroom. The moon dappled the white lace of her bedspread with a pearly light, making it glow in the darkness.