by Tami Hoag
“Not really, but I suppose we'd better.”
They walked out of the kitchen together like pals, Matt with an arm draped across Sarahs slim, square shoulders, smiles lingering on their mouths.
“Can I ask you a question?” Sarah said.
“Anything.”
“What's a phallic symbol?”
“Ah … um …” He cleared his throat and dodged her questioning gaze. “I'll tell you later.”
“Maybe you can show me?” she asked innocently.
Matt groaned, rolling his eyes heavenward. “I sincerely hope so.”
Things just got curiouser and curiouser as the evening went on. It was the practice at Thornewood for guests and hosts to gather in the parlor to chat after dinner. Breakfast was the only meal served at the inn, so guests trekked into Jesse for their evening meal. Upon returning they were offered coffee or cocoa or brandy and fresh baked cookies as well as conversation.
This was something Ingrid and John pulled off with great success, both of them having excellent educations and a wide range of travel experiences. Sarah, however, had been outside the county only once, to visit relatives in Ohio, and her formal education had ended, as it did for all Amish children, at fourteen. Confronted with the role of hostess, she seemed to forget that she was quite well-read and had some understanding of current affairs gained through the pages of Ingrids Newsweek.
Of course, it didn't help matters that the current guests were … well, strange.
Sarah sat in her chair unable to think of anything much to say while the Mortons and Lisbeth Parker stared at her as if she were an oddity in a museum.
Matt cleared his throat in an attempt to break the silence. “Mrs. Parker, it's too bad your husband wasn't feeling up to joining us.”
She gave Matt a vacant look, then flinched as if she'd been pinched, and batted her long false lashes at him. “Oh, well, travel doesn't agree with Tim,” she said, pouring a little brandy into her coffee. “He has a delicate constitution.”
“I&d be happy to take a look at him—”
“No! No,” she repeated, calming herself. She resurrected her beauty queen smile and bestowed it upon everyone in the room. “It's nothing serious, I assure you. He simply needs his rest.”
Matt's brows rose and fell as he looked across the room at Sarah. She gave a small shrug. As yet no one had seen the mysterious Tim Parker.
“I can imagine he needs lots of rest,” Marvin Morton growled, his eyes fixed on Mrs. Parkers fantastic bosom. His wife gave him a sharp jab in the ribs.
Mrs. Parker changed the subject abruptly, going into a long, bizarre account of her recent trip to her optometrist, who had prescribed a single contact lens that she could wear in either eye. No one seemed to know any appropriate comment to make about that—except Mr. Morton, who told her the guy was probably a shyster, as were most doctors. Matt ground his teeth for a minute, then launched onto a detailed explanation of the pro bono work he did at a free clinic in North Minneapolis. The point was lost on Marvin, who turned the discussion into a racist commentary on the abuses of the welfare system.
Sarah watched it all unfolding with a sense of dread and helplessness. She tried to imagine how Ingrid would have handled the situation, but could only think that Ingrid and John would never have gotten into this kind of conversational snake pit in the first place. Heavens, her whole adventure of running the inn was turning into a nightmare. She should have known better than to believe she could handle this. She was after all, despite her longings to the contrary, just a simple Amish woman. Dreaming about being a part of that other world and pulling it off were two very different things.
She looked around the room and bit back a moan of despair. Matt was plainly furious with Mr. Morton, who had expanded his monologue into anti-Semitism. Mrs. Parker was pouring another dollop of brandy into her coffee cup. Blossom was sneaking off with one of the beauty queen's heels. Some grand evening this was turning out to be. The evening from hell.
“So, you're Amish, Sarah,” Mrs. Morton said, dragging the topic back to the one thing Sarah wanted most to avoid talking about. She was quite certain the imperfections in her hostess skills were already glaringly apparent to the one person she wanted most to impress—Matt. Now she would have the spotlight thrown on her background and way of life, which couldn't have been more separate from his if she had been from Mars. And he would be able to see how truly unsuitable for him she was.
And what was the difference? she asked herself. The sooner he came to his senses, the better for both of them.
“Yes, Mrs. Morton, I'm Amish,” she answered politely.
“So what's that like?”
What an enormous question. Sarah sat with her hands folded in her lap, struggling to formulate a reasonable answer, but Mr. Morton beat her to it.
“You've seen what its like, Peg. It's like living in a hippie cult commune.”
“Mr. Morton!” Matt protested, all his newfound protective instincts rearing up inside him. He'd sat through the man's diatribe on every other minority group, but this was the end. This ingrate had insulted Sarah, Sarah the sweet and innocent, and Matt wasn't going to have her subjected to abuse of any kind.
“Well, it is,” Morton pressed on, waving his cigar. “I read all about it. They mate up their young folks like sheep and most of them have two or three wives.”
“Mr. Morton, that's enough!” Matt bolted out of his chair, ignoring the pain it caused him. He was too angry to notice something as trivial as cracked ribs. He leaned toward the older man with a menacing expression. “If you want to be a bigot at least have the decency to do it in the privacy of your own home.”
“Bigot!” Morton exploded. He rocked himself up off the couch. “You can't call me that!”
“I just did.”
“Matt, stop it!” Sarah jumped up out of her chair and tried to pull Matt back to his. He paid no attention to her efforts. He and the guest were nearly toe-to-toe, Matt towering over Morton like an angry avenging angel.
“You're a rude, ignorant bigot. And if you think for one minute that I'm going to sit here and let you insult Sarah and treat her like some sideshow tourist attraction, you had better think again. Furthermore, I think you owe Miss Troyer an apology.”
Morton's whole fat head turned the color of a radish.
“Matt, stop it!” Sarah hissed behind him. She hooked a finger through a belt loop on his jeans and tried to tug him backward. He wouldn't budge.
“I'm not apologizing to anybody,” Morton said with a snort.
“Then I think you'd better leave.”
“Matt!” Sarah wailed. This was all she needed. As if her reign as manager of Thome-wood hadn't gotten off to a bad enough start, Matt was going to go and throw out the guests!
“W-el-1,” Mrs, Parker said, drawing the word into three syllables. Her gaze had turned glassy. She seemed to be able to focus only the eye with the contact lens in it, and that one she fixed on Morton. Tm with Dr. Thorne. I think you're insuffer-ufferably rude,” she said with a hiccup.
Morton snorted, “That doesn't mean much coming from a woman whose bra size is bigger than her IQ.”
“I don't have to put up with that!” Mrs. Parker said with a gasp. She reached into her purse and pulled out a pearl-handled derringer and waved it around. She rose to her feet, wobbling on one heel, trying to aim the gun. “You big lump o' Yankee lard!”
Mrs. Morton screamed. Mr. Morton's cigar fell out of his mouth and set the couch on fire. Matt dove for Mrs. Parker and knocked the gun out of her hands. It went off with a loud pop, shattering a decanter of red wine, which spewed all over Mrs. Morton, causing her to believe she'd been shot and making her scream louder. Just to put the icing on the cake, Blossom rushed in howling at the top of her lungs.
The farce had reached its climax.
“I can't believe this,” Sarah muttered. She stood, dazed, on the porch watching the tail-lights of the Mortons' car bob off into the dark distance.
“Good riddance,” Matt grumbled.
Sarah turned on him. “I can't believe you did this!”
“Me!” he exclaimed, splaying a hand across his chest as if she'd just stabbed him. He was the picture of confused, thickheaded male innocence. “What did J do?”
“What did you do?” Sarah rolled her eyes and clamped her hands to the top of her head as if she were afraid her temper would force her hair to stand straight on end. “You had to start a fight with a guest!”
“Sarah, the man was insulting you!”
“Ridicule is nothing new to me. I would have handled it.”
“Well, I handled it for you.”
“I wouldn't have fought with him. It's not our way.”
“Yeah, well, it's my way,” Matt said in a huff of injured male pride. He jammed his hands on his hips and scowled. “If the Silicone Queen hadn't pulled that gun, I probably would have punched him in the nose.”
“Wonderful. Violence to defend the nonviolent.” Sarah shook her head at the irony. “I don't need a protector, Matt Thorne. I can take care of myself. I know you come from a violent world, but I am not a part of that world.”
There it was, plainly spoken, the line between them drawn as clearly as if she had taken a stick and pulled it across wet sand. Matt leaned against the porch railing and knocked his head against a post. She was right. In his attempt to defend her innocence he had sullied it with violence. He had dragged her down to a low level by starting a fight over her. He sighed and closed his eyes. Had the world he lived and worked in so tainted him that he had become a part of the problem? He had only wanted to help, both in going to work at County General and in coming to Sarah's defense.
“I only wanted to help,” he mumbled miserably.
Sarah was too caught up in her own worries to notice Matt s pain. A part of her thrilled to the idea of Matt rushing to her rescue like a knight on a white horse, but having that particular fantasy come true was undoubtedly going to cost her dearly. She could see it now. Ingrid would fire her and she would have no choice but to go back to the farm. Her father would try to take control of her life again, and she would end up miserable and married to Micah Hochstetler, doomed to a life of drudgery, never to have an adventure again.
“I'm going to lose my job,” she said with a morose sigh.
Matt turned toward her, leaning his hips against the porch railing. “You won't lose your job. This was all my fault. I'll explain it to Ingrid.” It was his turn to sigh as he thought of how his sister would receive the news, 'Til explain it to Ingrid and then shell kill me with her bare hands. Will you come to my funeral?”
Sarah s mouth twisted into her crooked little wry smile. “Sure. I wouldn't miss it.”
“Will you dance on my grave?”
“I don't know how to dance.”
Reaching out, he pulled her into a loose embrace and swayed a liltle from side to side as he hummed a few bars of a tune. In the dim yellow light of the porch, his gaze caught Sarah's and held it, and the atmosphere of teasing and camaraderie altered into something thicker and softer and much more serious.
“I'll teach you to dance, Sarah,” he said.
She looked up at him, her heart in her throat. She was leaning against his chest, her hands pressed to the warm cushion of his sweater and the solid muscle beneath it. She could feel his heart beating. He was no dream, no figment of her overactive imagination. He was a man who had defended her honor. He had held her while she cried and then kissed away her tears. He was the embodiment of every romantic fantasy she'd ever allowed herself.
She was falling in love with him. No. She wasn't just falling, she was in love with him. It seemed completely impossible; they'd only just met. But she realized in her heart that she had known him for a long time, for forever. She'd just never really believed she'd meet him or touch him or be tempted by him outside the safety of her dreams.
He leaned down and brushed his lips across hers, and longing pierced her heart like a needle.
“We'd best go back inside,” a voice whispered. It sounded like her own, but she felt strangely detached from it.
“Yeah,” Matt agreed, though he made no move to let her go. “I need to make sure the couch isn't still smoldering.”
“I should check on Mrs. Parker.”
Sarah started to move out of his arms. Matt straightened away from the railing. Their gaze never broke.
I love her, he thought with a jolt. The revelation came as an epiphany, glowing with a wondrous light. It stunned him. That was the “something different” he'd felt along with wanting her. Matt Thorne, Romeo of County General, man of the world, avowed bachelor and slave to his career, was in love for the very first time. He'd taken one look at little Sarah Troyer and fallen like a rock. He looked down at her now with a feeling of awe that couldn't have been exceeded had she suddenly turned to gold.
I love her.
He felt a rush inside him as if a fresh wind were blowing all the dirt out of the corners of his soul. Then he crushed her to him, his arms banding her to his body, his mouth taking possession of hers. He kissed her with a rapacious hunger, eager to taste her sweetness and claim it as his.
Sarah arched against him, responding to his kiss out of pure instinct and need. Her body sought the heat of his, softness pressing into masculine strength. Everything about the kiss overwhelmed her and saturated her, and she wondered dimly if this was what it was like to be drunk. Drunk on passion. Drunk on desire. She gulped it in with a spirit that had been thirsty all its life. She welcomed the thrust of his tongue, the feel of his tender, sensitive hands pressing down her back and over her hips, lifting her into the curve of his arousal.
“Sarah, I want you,” he whispered, peppering her face with quick, ardent kisses. “I want you so much.”
Want. What she knew of the word could have filled a book. She had wanted so much for so long, wanted so many things she wasn't supposed to have, wasn't supposed to need. She wanted Matt Thorne, in her bed, in her life, in her heart. He said he wanted her, but his life wasn't here. It was a world away, a world that would run roughshod over a naive Amish woman. Not that he would take her to it. Matt was by nature a charmer, a womanizer. He might want her now, but in a week or a month he would leave and she would be the one left wanting.
“I have to go inside,” she whispered, and like the coward she was, she turned and Bed to the relative safety of a house where the only other person was a drunken aging beauty queen who wore only one contact lens, carried a gun in her purse, and was married to an invisible man.
Matt watched her go, too undone by the explosion of emotion he'd experienced to go after her. He'd just discovered he was in love for the first time, and the object of that grand emotion was running away from him. Another first: He had no idea what to do about her. He had wooed and won nurses and neurosurgeons and even a CPA who had an MBA from Harvard—no mean feat—but he had no idea how to go about winning a sweet, gentle Amish girl. She wasn't impressed by his possessions or his clothes or his profession. None of the usual props would do. And maybe that was only right. Real love, the kind he was feeling, wouldn't go in disguise.
Blossom clambered up the porch steps, her long body wiggling like a centipede's. She plopped herself down on Matt's feet, looked up at him, and let out a long, mournful howl.
“Yeah,” he muttered, wincing against the noise. “Sing one for me while you're at it.”
The inn was silent. Mrs. Parker had surrendered her pistol for safekeeping in a locked cabinet and had retired, presumably to relate the evening's events to the enigmatic Tim, who hadn't been roused from their room even by the sound of gunfire. Ingrid's lovely hunter-green camelback sofa sat under a thick layer of fire extinguisher foam like a small volcano that had been rendered dormant. The parlor windows had been opened to fumigate the room with fresh night air.
Sarah moved around her small room with no energy, but no desire to go to bed either. She wasn't going to sleep. She would only lie there, toss
ing and turning, yearning for a man she couldn't have.
For a while she just sat on the bed looking at the room around her. The walls were a buttery shade of gold, decorated with a hand-painted ivy vine that trailed along the baseboard and around the lace-draped window. Aside from that, there were no adornments of any kind. In keeping with Amish ways there were no pic tures or wall hangings. The curtain was fancier than anything in her mother's house.
Ordinarily, Sarah thought of this austerity as a simple rule to be followed. Tonight the plainness left an aching emptiness in her. It seemed symbolic of her life, devoid of tangible, touchable happiness. She knew she was supposed to find her happiness in her faith, and she had tried and prayed, but there was simply something missing, and no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't make that feeling go away.
She wondered as she undressed if she would have felt this way had Samuel lived, had their son lived. There was no way of knowing. In all honesty, Samuel had never been able to extinguish the longing in her. Maybe children would have filled that void, but there had been only one, and that child, Peter, had died of pneumonia before he had seen his first birthday.
She hung her plain blue dress in the closet beside her two other plain blue dresses, pulled on a simple white cotton nightgown, and went to the dresser to brush her hair. Sitting on the oak bureau was the little vial of Evening in Paris perfume and her Glamour magazine. Feeling defiant, she took the top off the perfume bottle and dabbed some of the oily liquid at the base of her throat. The smell was strangely sweet and foreign to her, but she de cided she liked it, simply because it was something she wasn't supposed to have.
She flipped through a few pages of the magazine, her sense of rebellion building in her like a ball of compressed energy. Her eyes wandered over ads and articles, and she felt somehow less of a woman for never having worn panty hose or makeup. What possible sin could there be in wearing panty hose? How could a pair of aerobic shoes—whatever they were—corrupt her soul? Of course, she knew the standard answers to those questions—Be ye not of the world and worldly things—but it all seemed so petty to her. The way she saw it, the real issues of life had nothing to do with wearing lipstick or driving a car.