The anger of those first awful days, the doubts he’d had before about his professional future, were nothing compared to the agonizing emptiness that now stole into his soul. He would never know the sweetness of an intimate moment like that, never to allow himself to sully her perfect beauty with his ugliness.
There was a bitter irony to discovering a woman he could love, only to realize that a relationship between them could never happen. Gentle, tenderhearted Jenny was filled with compassion, not just for him but for the entire world. He’d seen it in the way she cared for her other patients, in the way she worried about Otis. It was sweet temptation to let himself bask in that warmth, to accept her pity and call it love.
He couldn’t do it. Filled with a raging anger at the injustice, he vowed he wouldn’t. He steeled himself against all the longings that had been building for the past days. It would take every bit of his strength not to act on the desire that teased his senses whenever she was near. That one deep, drugging kiss they had shared the night before would never be repeated, not if he could help it. The minute those discharge papers were signed, he’d walk out of this hospital and out of her life.
* * *
As the last days of his hospital stay passed, Jenny knew exactly what was going through Frank’s mind. She’d seen it all before. She recognized that gut-deep uncertainty that had him shouting at everyone within range again. The reaction might be typical, but in Frank it was magnified a thousand times because of the kind of man he was. Used to creating flawless beauty, he was being forced to come to grips with imperfection. It might be superficial and unimportant in her eyes or anyone else’s, but to his artistic view that first this-is-it view of his burn-scarred hands must have seemed devastating.
After that one instant of raw anguish she’d read in his eyes when the bandages had come off for good, he’d shut himself off from her—maybe even from himself. For the past three days he had come into the therapy room on schedule, but he’d barely spoken. Today was more of the same.
He sat now, his back rigid, doing his exercises with ferocious intensity, oblivious to the beads of sweat forming on his brow, ignoring the tension that was evident in the powerful muscles across his shoulders. When she could stand it no longer, she pulled out the chair next to his and sat. Her heart aching for him, with one hand she reached over and stilled his.
“Enough,” she said.
The quiet order brought his head up, his combative gaze clashing with hers. She sensed he was about to argue, but then his gaze slid away. He slowly and deliberately withdrew his hands and hid them beneath the table, his emotional and physical retreat complete.
“No,” she insisted and held out her hand. “Please don’t ever hide from me. Don’t hide from anyone.”
As she waited, she could hear each tick of the clock as its big hands clicked off the passing minutes. Finally, an eternity later, Frank put his hands back on the table. Jenny took the right one in hers and gently stroked the marred skin. The muscles in his forearm jerked, then stilled. His jaw clenched, but this time he didn’t draw away from her. Nor did he look at her.
“Such wonderful, powerful hands,” she murmured. “I’ve been to see your work, you know. I’ve never seen anything so beautiful.”
“That’s over now,” he said, his expression bleak.
“You know better than that,” she said impatiently. “You’ve had a temporary setback because of the fire, that’s all. You’ll work again. You’re improving every day. Can’t you see that?”
He shrugged with clearly feigned indifference. “Maybe. Maybe not.”
She studied him, the way he avoided looking at her, the way he glanced at his hands—and hers—then at the floor, his dismay evident. “You’re worried about how the scars look, aren’t you?” When he started to shake his head in denial, she stopped him. “No. Don’t even try to deny that little bit of vanity. It’s perfectly natural.”
He regarded her with angry astonishment. “You think this is about something as trivial as my vanity?”
“Isn’t it? We’re the sum of all our parts, you know, not any one. Yet we have a way of focusing totally on what we perceive as our flaws.”
She watched him closely, trying to gauge his reaction. His eyes were shuttered. “Have you ever noticed that?” she prodded. “We’re the first to mention an imperfection in ourselves, to draw attention to it, joke about it, just to let everyone know we’re aware of it, just to get in the first critical remark. You’ve heard women joke about their thighs or men kid about their baldness. They want the world to know it doesn’t matter to them, when what they’re really proving is that it does matter terribly…to them.”
Frank listened attentively, but his expression remained skeptical. Not even her touch seemed to reassure him. She tried again to coax him out of his self-pity.
“If you let the scars become important to you, then they’ll be important to everyone you know. Accept them, Frank. Accept them, just the way you do the color of your eyes and the beat of your heart. They’re a part of a man who’s very special.”
As she spoke she could feel her throat clog with emotions she rarely allowed herself. Her words had a too familiar ring, dredging up old hurts, old emotions she had thought long buried. A tear clung to her lashes, then spilled down her cheek. When the dampness fell onto Frank’s hand, he lifted a startled gaze to meet hers. Whatever he was feeling, though, he covered it, as usual, with anger.
“What the hell do you know about it?” he demanded roughly. “Is this lesson number ten on the road to recovery? It’s all so pat. You’re good, Jenny. I’ll give you that. You almost had me believing you. The tears did it. Did you major in therapy and minor in acting?”
This time she was the one jerking away. This time she was the one who could feel the fury building up like the winds of a hurricane. “Damn you!”
“Someone beat you to it. I’ve already been damned. I look at these hands and all I see is the ugliness, all I feel is the pain. How can you even bear to touch them?”
“What you feel is self-pity, you arrogant, self-centered jerk!”
For the first time in her career, Jenny allowed her fury to overrule her professional demeanor. It felt wonderful. She couldn’t have banked the anger now if her entire career had depended on it. Emotions that had little to do with Frank and much to do with her own tattered pride came pouring out.
“Do you think you’re the only person ever to be badly scarred? Do you?” she demanded. “There are a dozen patients in the unit right now who are worse off than you. Some will have hideous facial scars that no amount of surgery will fix. Some will be lucky to survive at all.”
He waved a hand dismissively. “I’m not talking about them. I know that compared to them I’m damned fortunate. I look at Pam and it makes me sick to think what she’ll go through. Right now, though, I’m talking about you. Where do you get off telling me or any one of the others how to feel, how to live our lives and accept ourselves? I’m sick of the platitudes, sick of the condescension.”
She stared at him in astonishment. “Condescension? You think that’s what this is all about? Damn you, Frank Chambers hasn’t it ever occurred to you that I could know exactly how you feel? Exactly! Maybe my scars aren’t visible, but they’re there.”
He opened his mouth, but she cut him off, her outrage unmistakable. “You listen to me for once,” she insisted. She sucked in a deep breath, then said more quietly, “When they cut off my breast to rid me of cancer, they left me with an ugly gash across my chest. Oh, the surgeon was good enough. He prettied it up with neat stitches, but there’s no mistaking that kind of wound. You try telling me, telling any woman that losing a breast doesn’t matter. Try telling us we’re still whole. We won’t believe you. Every swimsuit ad, every television commercial, says otherwise. We know what feminine beauty is all about.”
She was barely aware of Frank’s sudden indrawn breath, the tenderness that instantly replaced cold fury in his eyes.
“Don
’t you get it?” she asked him. “We can only learn to live again when we can say it to ourselves, when somewhere deep inside we do believe that we’re whole and attractive despite the scars. So, don’t you act like some macho jerk because your hands aren’t pretty. You’ll live, dammit, and in the end that’s the only thing that matters.”
“I’m sorry,” Frank whispered, his voice ragged. He was shaken to the very depths of his being by Jenny’s astonishing tirade and even more unexpected revelation. When she turned away, when she would have run, he grabbed her, oblivious to his own pain, tormented by hers and the inadvertent way he’d added to it.
“Don’t you know how beautiful you are?” he said, holding her. He raised his fingers to her cheek, hesitated, then forced himself to caress the silken curve of her jaw, knowing as he did so that from this moment on he would be lost. There would be no turning back now from the love he felt for her, from his need to protect and cherish her. He wouldn’t be able to make the noble sacrifice of walking away, not when she was filled with so much pain, so many doubts of her own. “Don’t you know how proud any man would be to be with you?”
A deep sigh shuddered through her, but still she wouldn’t look at him. Her gaze was fixed firmly on the floor as if there were something in the pattern of the tiles more fascinating than anything he could possibly say.
“Jenny, I’m sorry. I’m sorry for being such a fool.”
She sighed heavily and her arms slid around his waist. She pressed her cheek, damp with tears, against his chest. “You don’t get condemned to hell for being a fool,” she muttered finally.
“Maybe not by God,” he agreed. “How about by you?”
She lifted her head then, very slowly. More tears had welled in her eyes and were spilling down her cheeks. “I’ve never condemned you for hurting, Frank. I’ve just wanted to make it stop. I’ve just wanted you to know that I understood what you’re going through. It’s not easy picking up the pieces and going on when life slams you with a setback like you’ve had, but you have to do it. Sooner or later, you have to let go of the anger and do whatever needs to be done.”
“And have you done that?” he asked, certain that she hadn’t been nearly as good at taking the advice as she was at dishing it out. “Have you let go of the anger?”
“Most of the time. Maybe it’s easier for me, because I can hide the scar. I don’t have to deal with it, not out loud.”
He studied her closely and sensed that there was so much she wasn’t saying, so much she might not even be admitting to herself. “But out loud isn’t the hard part, is it?”
She gave him a wobbly smile. Like Pam’s brave attempts, it shattered his heart.
“No,” she admitted. “It’s what happens deep inside in the middle of the night. That’s when there’s no stopping the doubts, no holding back the terror.”
As Frank held her, he prayed she could feel the compassion surround her, strengthen her if only she’d let it. For some reason, though, he could tell she was holding back, refusing to take what he was offering.
“Have you been with a man since the surgery?” he asked out of the blue, guessing suddenly at the real reason for her torment. Some fool had fed her doubts, had failed to offer the reassuring touch that she had just offered him. His voice was gentle, but from her instantaneous transformation, he saw that the question ripped through her defenses and opened old wounds. Jenny reacted to the raw pain with instantly renewed fury.
“How dare you ask me that? Have you forgotten what our relationship is? It’s professional. I’m a therapist. You’re my patient. No more. That doesn’t entitle you to pry into my personal life.”
“You opened the door. From the first day you walked into my room, we’ve both known there was something more between us, something we couldn’t walk away from if we tried.”
“No,” she denied too quickly. She raised her hands as if to ward off any further painful intrusions. “You’re wrong.”
Backing away from him, from the emotions, she said, “I have to go. Dr. Wilding intends to discharge you in the morning. I’ll try to come by before you leave.”
But she didn’t come by. Frank waited, watching the door all morning. When he could stand it no longer, he left his room and walked down the hall to the therapy room. Otis was standing just outside the door.
“Hear you’re going home today,” the orderly said. “How am I supposed to win any money with you gone?”
“I’m afraid my gambling days are over.”
“So she got you, too?” he asked with a chuckle. “That woman thinks she can save the whole wide world. She’s got a good heart.” Eyes the color of melted chocolate watched Frank’s reaction. “You ain’t mistaking that for something else, are you?”
Frank shook his head. What he felt for Jenny was no mistake. What she felt for him was just as powerful. He had to convince her of that. He had to apologize, though, for the way he’d intruded so crudely into her personal life last night, asking questions that he hadn’t led up to first with flowers and sweet words to prove how much he cared. He had to show her that there was no need for secrets between them. He had to know if some foolish man had shattered her fragile self-esteem with a careless remark, a flicker of revulsion at the sight of her scars. He would spend the rest of his life making that up to her, proving that she was all woman, both inside and out.
“Is she in there now? I need to see her.”
“She’s with a patient.” He didn’t move an inch, his body blocking the door.
Frank’s gaze narrowed. “Otis, did she say something to you about me?”
The orderly’s expression remained perfectly bland, but there was no mistaking the streak of protectiveness in his stance. “Is there something to say?” he countered.
Frank sighed. “No. Nothing. Tell her I’ll be in my room another hour or so. Kevin’s picking me up on his lunch hour.”
* * *
Jenny had recognized what was happening with Frank even before last night. Hell, she and Carolanne had even talked about it. She’d had patients think they were in love with her before. She’d blithely ignored their protestations, knowing that as soon as the link of therapy was broken, they would resume their old lives. They had. And once Frank left today, he would be no different.
Except in her heart. Something about the wonderful, foul-tempered beast had gotten to her. He had so much love to give. He was a living monument to the theory that the more love you gave, the more you had to give. She’d never met a man who had more people relying on him and who thrived on it so.
For nearly two weeks now she’d been on the fringes of all that love and loyalty, and she’d felt like a kid with her nose pressed to the window of a toy store. But as much as she’d come to care for Frank, as recklessly as she’d indulged in her fantasies about sharing the warmth of his family, a life for the two of them simply wasn’t in the cards. Once he’d coped with his own scars, she wouldn’t burden him with hers.
She hadn’t planned to tell him as much as she had about the breast cancer. It wasn’t something she hid from her friends, but it certainly wasn’t relevant to their patient-therapist relationship. At least it never had been with any other patient. If they’d thought her compassion deeper than most of the staff’s, they’d never seemed to wonder why. With Frank, though, a lot of things about that professional relationship were shifting like sands at the whim of an angry tide.
She was standing just inside the door of the therapy room when she thought she heard his voice. She could hear Otis’s mellow tones countering Frank’s. Her heart climbed up to her throat and seemed to lodge there. When it was finally silent again in the hallway, she peeked out.
“He’s gone,” Otis said dryly, “though why you’d want to be avoiding him is beyond me. I ain’t seen a man so far gone over a woman in a long time.”
“I think the psychological term is transference.”
“Funny, I thought it was lust.”
She glowered at him. “You can leave
now, Otis.”
“I’ve done my part, so you don’t need to listen to what I have to say? I don’t think so,” he said, backing her into the room, his big hands shooing her toward a chair. “You sit for just a minute, miss, and let me tell you what I see here.”
“Otis!” she warned.
“Don’t you go all prim and proper on me. You and me, we’ve always understood each other, from the day I wheeled you down the hall to surgery and back again. You held this hand of mine and spilled your guts, so I guess I’ve got a pretty good idea what’s on your mind now.”
“Otis, I really don’t want to talk about this,” Jenny said.
“That’s okay by me. You can just listen. That’s a fine man who just left here. Any man who’s got the love of a family the way he does has done something special to deserve it. You’d do well to hang on to him. If you don’t, that’s up to you. The way I’ve got it figured, though, you owe him.”
She opened her mouth to argue, but he kept right on lecturing. “You’re the one who single handedly gave him the will to fight. You abandon him now, he just might give up, and we both know he’s a long way from being recovered. Now you can send Carolanne or one of the others over there to help him settle in at home, and you can assign one of them to work with him when he comes in as an outpatient, but that’s the coward’s way out. Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t think you’re a coward.”
He waited a beat, his gaze expectant. Jenny could feel her cheeks turn pink. Satisfied with her embarrassed reaction, Otis nodded. “I guess I’ve said my piece. You think about it.” He turned on his heel and walked out, leaving her with more to think about than he could possibly imagine.
“But I am a coward,” she whispered to his retreating back. She wasn’t just running from Frank. She wasn’t simply afraid of loving.
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