by Rachel Lee
“I guess you were afraid.”
“I guess. Afraid of being vulnerable.”
“Afraid of me acting like one of your parents. I hope I’m more mature than that. But how were you to know?”
She just shook her head, unable to speak as her thoughts whirled almost crazily. Seeing herself from a totally different perspective shocked her. She’d thought she knew herself, and now she was looking at a stranger.
Luke spoke after a few minutes. “I’m tired. I think I’ll stretch out.”
“Want something more comfortable to wear?”
“I’m fine. What I’d like is for you to lie next to me.”
“Luke!” The idea seemed fraught with serious peril.
“Just lie beside me, nothing else. I promise. I just don’t want you to be alone right now. You’re looking shell-shocked.”
“I’ll be fine.”
He smiled faintly. “I’m sure you will. But not within the next five minutes, or even within a few weeks. The things you told me...” He shrugged one shoulder. “I just don’t want you to be alone. You don’t have to say a word.”
I never said the important words, she thought. Never. But as she watched him lever himself into the bed, then scoot over to make room for her, she realized she didn’t want to be alone, either. The turmoil inside her felt like an icy gale, and even silent companionship sounded far better than solitude.
So she took the risk, realizing that she trusted his word. He just didn’t want her to be alone. And neither did she.
Chapter 8
Luke was exhausted. He hated to admit it, but the whole accident and the week in bed had left him feeling a bit like a noodle. Not completely, but a bit. He tired faster, too, but that might be part of the healing.
And he still didn’t trust his own mind. They had told him the concussion appeared to be past the worst, but that he might still occasionally have problems, from dizziness to scattered thoughts, until fully healed. If ever you fully healed from one.
Still, he knew what he’d heard Bri say, and he knew her words had plummeted into his heart like a stone. Even the awful, horrid realization that he was failing her in their marriage, that she was going to leave him, hadn’t exceeded what he felt for her now.
He tried to imagine the way she had grown up, and how that must have deprived her of the most important part of her voice: the ability to identify and express her feelings and needs.
He remembered his own frustration, the sense that things were going wrong but he didn’t know why. Couldn’t figure it out. Couldn’t fix it. He’d have laid himself down on train tracks for her if he had thought it would help, but as it was, he had no idea what might work. None.
Now at least he knew why, and he felt sorrier for her than he did for himself. Whatever her dissatisfactions, she had been voiceless. Unable to tell him. Maybe unable to recognize them herself. And if she had figured out what she needed, she’d been trained not to ask for it.
A hell of an emotional box to put anyone in. He supposed it was a huge breakthrough for her to have identified the problem and its source. But it must have left her feeling as if she were an emotional blender, everything swirling around with no place yet to rest.
He cursed the casts that made it impossible for him to lie on his side, because he’d have dearly loved to put an arm around her. Just a light hug to let her know he was there and that he cared.
Probably just as well he couldn’t, though. He hadn’t missed that she had lain down with her back to him. She wasn’t ready for any kind of intimacy with him. She’d exposed herself enough for one day, and he had to respect her boundaries.
But all of this was putting him in a blender, too. He had thought the past was past, except for the little matter of his honor. He’d convinced himself that the only reason he wanted to see her again was because he happened to be in town and he wanted to correct the record about Barbara. Bri’s willingness to believe he’d had an affair had been rankling for years.
But now he wondered if that was the only reason he’d knocked on her door. Maybe there was a whole lot more left to deal with. Hadn’t he just realized it? Just now when she was talking he’d faced how much her emotional cage had scarred him.
He was a man used to getting things done. Fixing things. Taking charge and dealing with matters until everything was right. Bri had made that impossible for him. Of all the things he had done in his life, Bri alone had stymied him. She’d been a puzzle he couldn’t solve, a problem he couldn’t mend. She was the one and only problem in his life that had left him feeling as if he stood on quicksand.
How many times had he asked her what was wrong? And how many times had her frown vanished to be replaced by a smile and the answer, “I’m just a bit crabby.”
Crabby? Maybe that had been true on occasion, but now he was amazed how many times he had let that excuse pass. Or how many times he had watched her mood shift and smooth over without any explanation at all.
What had he been thinking?
Before he could answer that question, however, sleep crept up and carried him away.
Rest, said some corner of his mind. You need it. So he did.
* * *
During the afternoon, the street outside was quiet. Everyone was at work, and it was a day that didn’t exactly invite people out into their yards. Snow and ice still blanketed everything, and the thaw was just making more ice.
Jack took a chance, knowing he had a lot of good excuses if someone happened to see him shinny up the tree beside Bri’s house. It wasn’t likely—the tree wasn’t in plain sight from the street—but his excuses were ready anyway.
He needed to know if anything had changed between Bri and her ex. It was eating him alive that the guy was still with her even though his leg had improved enough that he could have gone back to the motel.
He knew that because he saw Tim and Ted carry him in. Luke’s knee could bend now. With a wheelchair and crutches he ought to be able to take care of himself. He didn’t need Bri’s nursing anymore.
But he’d come back here anyway. Jack felt as if a whole bunch of fire ants had been unleashed in his brain. They wouldn’t leave him alone. They wanted answers. He wanted answers. He needed to know if Luke was becoming a threat to him.
No one saw him climb the tree. Or if they happened to, they didn’t think anything of it. That was one good thing about being known as Bri’s handyman, not just the guy at the hardware store. He was a common sight working around Bri’s place. No reason for anyone to wonder what he was up to.
The attic vent squeaked a little as he opened it, and he made a note to oil it next time he went up there. Then he slipped inside and closed it, becoming invisible to the world.
He crept slowly across the rafters, avoiding making noise. If Bri thought she had another raccoon, pretending to get rid of it could only be complicated by Luke’s presence. He couldn’t rely on Bri’s believing he’d removed the animal while she was at work. Not with that man watching.
His jacket caught on a nail and he fought with it in the dark for a few seconds before pulling free. Trying to be utterly silent frustrated him even more.
He realized he was reaching some kind of internal boiling point, and forced himself to draw some deep breaths. You had to have a plan to act. If he hadn’t figured that out before, he sure got it now that Luke was still alive. That fall should have killed him. Instead he’d gotten hung up on an outcropping that had been invisible under the snow.
So no action without a thoroughly considered plan.
But he still had to know what was going on between these two. Just how much of a threat Luke posed.
Resuming his crawl along the rafters, a very slow crawl, he headed for his peephole over the living room. He couldn’t see a whole lot through that hole, except Luke’s bed, but he could hear, and hearing was what he was after. What did those two talk about? Must be interesting, being divorced and all that. Jack would have found it impossible to talk to someone who’d divorced h
im.
He paused, thinking about it, and it occurred to him that if someone tried to divorce him, he could arrange a fatal accident. Get at least some satisfaction out of it.
But he’d never been married, so he’d never been divorced, and all he wanted to do was make Bri happy, so happy she’d feel like a queen. As the nicest person in this town, with the possible exception of Reverend Laura Potter, Bri deserved it.
Thoughts of making Bri happy settled his mind a bit and made him feel better. He finally reached the hole and put his ear to it, listening. The house was utterly silent. Had they gone out?
But no, Bri’s car was still out there and Luke was too crippled to get out anyway. Bri should let him build that ramp. Not because he wanted to help Luke, but because it would help Bri. She could get some time off babysitting.
He liked that term, babysitting. Yes, she was a nurse, but right now she had to feel as if she were caring for a baby. Hardly romantic.
But the room continued to remain silent.
Finally he looked down the hole and saw the two of them lying on the bed together. They weren’t hugging or anything, but that didn’t matter.
Jack’s brain exploded.
* * *
Luke roused a bit from sleep, with the feeling he’d heard something. He didn’t open his eyes, but waited. When the sound didn’t repeat, he dismissed it. It was enough that he could feel that Bri was still beside him. She never stirred, but he heard the faint sound of her breathing. It soothed him and he dozed off again.
* * *
Bri was astonished to awaken to a day that was darkening into night. When she had climbed into this bed, her brain and emotions had been running around so frantically that she had never believed she would fall asleep. She stirred, thinking she needed to close the drapes against the night’s chill, then call Jack to come build a ramp. She had to at least get that started before she went back to work later this week.
Not that going back to work sounded good to her right then. No, she was feeling too messed up to want to deal with anything other than her own turmoil. Selfish, but true.
She stirred.
“You have a hole in your ceiling,” Luke remarked.
“What?” She scooted until she was on her back. “Where?”
“No biggie. I never would have noticed it except I’ve been staring at the ceiling for the last half hour or so. See?” He pointed. “It’s really tiny.”
She peered until at last she found it. “Must have been that dang raccoon. Probably punctured it with a claw.”
“Probably.”
“Jack will fix it,” she said, yawning. “When I can finally pay him to put in more insulation.” She stared up at it, though. “I wonder why I never noticed it before.”
“Do you spend a lot of time staring at your ceilings?”
At that she had to laugh. “Actually, no. If you were awake, you should have shaken me. You must need something by now.”
“I’m fine, although motoring to the bathroom is beginning to sound good.”
She rolled out of bed and brought his wheelchair close. “Or are you game to try the crutches?”
“Let me try crutching. Just follow close with the chair in case this doesn’t work. I’ve never used crutches before.”
“The important thing is to put your weight on your hands, not on your armpits.”
“Got it.”
* * *
Overhead, Jack had snapped back from the hole and held his breath, as if they could even have seen him from down there. Damn it, how had that guy spied that tiny little hole?
But their voices drifting up to him reassured him. And just as soon as they got to the bathroom and started making noise in there, he had to get out of here.
He couldn’t believe he had fallen asleep. What if he had snored?
He had to get his act together.
And he had to make a plan soon. It sounded to him as if those two were getting a bit too cozy.
The wait seemed endless. He had to endure more laughter as Jack made his first attempt with the crutches. Eventually their sounds faded toward another part of the house. Moving as quickly as he dared, he headed for the attic vent.
Yeah, he thought, he had to figure out something to do soon. Especially since it was beginning to feel as if Bri were in danger of cheating on him.
He wouldn’t allow that. No way. He just had to decide how to prevent it.
* * *
“I can’t believe how tiring that was,” Luke practically exploded as he sank onto the edge of his bed again and passed Bri the crutches. “Damn, I’m as weak as a kitten.”
“Cut yourself some slack,” Bri told him as she tucked the crutches within reach but out of the way. “You were doing that on one broken arm and a broken leg. Which probably meant half your body was doing eighty or ninety percent of the work. I could see you were favoring your injured side. Then you had a week in bed. Amazing how fast that saps muscle strength. I thought you did pretty good considering how banged up you are.”
“I need to get going on that physical therapy. How long did he say?”
She picked up his patient care papers. “You can relax. They have you scheduled for the day after tomorrow. In the meantime, I wouldn’t overdo the crutching. Let them decide what’s best.”
He glared at the crutches. “The doc gave them to me. I ought to be able to use them.”
“You just did. Short hops only. Remember that part?”
He eyed her glumly. “Sorry. I’m a lousy patient, I guess.”
“I’ve had far worse. Now relax for a few while I try to rustle up some dinner.”
Oh, this was bad, she thought as she escaped to the kitchen. First she’d made some stunning discoveries about herself, which put the blame for the failure of her marriage firmly on her shoulders, and now she was feeling a deep ache for him that he was so laid up?
She almost wished she could go back to blaming him for everything. It had been a comfortable world to live in, very black-and-white. He had cheated, therefore it was all his fault.
But it wasn’t. That much had become agonizingly clear to her just a few hours ago. Barbara hardly figured into it at all anymore. If Luke had cheated, given what she had learned about herself this afternoon, she could hardly blame him.
She couldn’t imagine what it had been like for him. As her dissatisfaction had grown, he’d felt it. Occasionally flashes of it had shown. But then, like the good little girl she’d been trained to be, she had buried it and pretended it didn’t exist. She couldn’t discern her own feelings because she was so sure she must be feeling things that were invalid, and even if she had, speaking them would have been taboo.
So how was he supposed to handle that? No incoming information, just a growing perplexity on his part. He knew something was wrong but didn’t know what it was, or what he could do about it.
Yup, crippled was a good word for her.
Standing at the sink, peeling some potatoes while the chicken breasts thawed in the microwave, she tried to reach back in time, to find that woman again, and parse her feelings that something wasn’t right.
But that woman was gone, and would never yield her secrets now. Sure, it had felt more like an affair than a marriage, but what exactly had she meant by that? What had she been missing? She’d never faced it head-on in time to even know for certain. They hadn’t talked about serious things very much, but that was her fault, not his.
She’d just kept sweeping up her emotional detritus like a good maid, but instead of actually getting rid of it, she’d put it under the rug. Eventually that rug had become lumpy enough that it could no longer be ignored.
Then had come the bursts of anger and even fury in which she still couldn’t explain what was wrong. All she could do was attack him, often for imagined slights, sometimes over things so small they shouldn’t have mattered at all.
Except that she had been living on her own personal emotional volcano and when it erupted it magnified everything.
He must have wondered if he was dealing with a madwoman.
She put the potatoes in a bowl of water, then checked the thawing chicken. Almost there. She let it stand, rather than risk partially cooking it in the microwave.
Right now, even with her new self-knowledge, she didn’t know how to sort through this tangled mess. Then there was the undeniable fact that someone had tried to kill Luke.
The fear that pierced her every time she thought of that was enough to let her know her feelings for him weren’t utterly dead. Far from it.
But his for her must be. He appeared to be a well-balanced person, unlike her, and there could be no reason on earth why he’d want to get into her emotional mess again. He’d suffered enough from it, in big ways and small ways.
“Bri?”
She whirled around and saw Luke standing in the kitchen doorway, teetering on his crutches. “Can I come in and sit?”
Even as she pulled a chair out for him, she began to scold. “I told you to rest. You shouldn’t try this yet without someone to keep an eye on you.”
“I know, I know. Just grab me under the shoulders....”
Without a thought, as he readied himself to sit, she slipped her arms under his and locked them behind his back. “Slowly,” she cautioned. “Lean into me so I can keep my back straight.” She spread her legs and tried to keep her back as straight as possible. This could be dangerous for them both. She ought to make that bit clear.
But the whole professional angle vanished quickly as their bodies met. Matters instantly became dangerous in a whole new way.
All this time, even though she had felt the awakenings of her old desire for him, she had managed to keep it at bay. But she had forgotten, she realized. She had forgotten how good it felt to have him pressed to her, to have her face nearly buried in his shoulder. How good it was to feel his arms lock around her.
In an instant, the simmering pot reached a full boil, bubbling over the top of every wall she had ever built. An almost agonizing shaft of desire speared to her core, causing her insides to clench. Breath escaped her and refused to return as if she’d been tossed into a vacuum. Only by the greatest effort could she manage to remember that she was helping him sit.