by Gina Wilkins
The party had hardly gotten under way before Leslie saw exactly what Tom had meant when he said his friends no longer treated him the way they had before. It wasn’t that they treated him badly—just the opposite. They were so eager and solicitous that as the evening went on, Leslie could almost see him reinforcing the walls he’d built around his emotions.
He would hate being treated differently, she realized. He must have cringed inwardly every time someone kindly asked how he was doing. Or when people suddenly changed the subject each time one of their more adventurous physical exploits of the past year was mentioned—a skydiving outing, a rock-climbing expedition, a full-contact football game in the park, none of which Tom had been invited to participate in. When Tom offered to help Sami carry a heavy tray of appetizers from the kitchen, several others jumped to take his place, all making it clear they thought he shouldn’t be straining himself that much.
Leslie saw the shuttered resentment in his eyes, and she ached for him. Only now was she beginning to understand how much he had really lost in that accident, and that it had nothing to do with his back or his leg.
She suspected that it wouldn’t give him much comfort if she were to point out that his friends were behaving this way because they loved him.
He was talking to Zach and a couple of other guys from the fire department when she approached him as the evening was drawing to an end.
“Will you hold Kenny?” she asked Tom with a smile. “He’s getting a little fussy and wants to be held, and my arms are tired.”
“I’ll take him awhile, Leslie,” Zach immediately offered, even as Tom reached for the baby.
“I’ve got him,” Tom answered, easily handling the hand-off, as though from long experience.
Kenny snuggled comfortably against Tom’s chest and stuck his finger in his mouth, appearing content.
“You’ve been standing for a long time, Tom. Want to sit down with him?” Sherm suggested, motioning toward a comfortable-looking armchair.
Tom shook his head, his head bent toward the baby. “I’m fine,” he said, just a bit curtly.
“Tom’s getting used to this,” Leslie explained with a chuckle. “Kenny had a tummy ache night before last and threw a fit every time we tried to lay him down. Tom walked him around the house for over an hour until Kenny finally fell asleep. My arms would have worn out long before Tom’s did. I guess all that bodybuilding he’s been doing has paid off in more than attractive muscles,” she added, giving her husband a teasingly flirtatious look.
Those who were standing closely enough to overhear her glanced automatically at Tom’s broad shoulders and strong arms. Leslie wondered if they’d really looked beyond his limp during the past few months to see what excellent shape he was in otherwise. She had certainly noticed right away, but perhaps that was because she hadn’t seen him immediately after the accident, when he’d probably looked pretty bad.
A pang went through her at the thought of how much he must have suffered. If she had known—if anyone had called her—she would have come to him, she realized abruptly. The accident had happened just as Leslie was getting well established at the law firm in Chicago, but she would not have hesitated to leave her job behind if she’d thought Tom needed her.
It was, after all, what she had done for Crystal. What she would do for anyone she...
Loved.
The word echoed in her mind, terrifying her. She immediately retreated from it by turning to their hostess and saying quickly, “You really must give me the recipe for those mint brownies, Sami. They’re fabulous.”
An hour later, most of the party guests had departed. Since both the babies had made it clear that they wanted to be fed at about the same time, Sami and Leslie had carried them to the nursery, inviting Kim to join them while the men examined a new fly rod and reel Sherm had recently purchased.
“That man does love to fish,” Sami said fondly, sitting in a huge rocker, tiny Katie nursing hungrily at her breast.
“So does Zach,” Kim agreed, cross-legged on the floor nearby. “Not that he ever catches anything.”
Leslie was sitting on a cushioned window seat, Kenny in her lap with his bottle. “Does Tom still fish with them?” she asked.
“I think Tom and Sherm went out in Sherm’s boat last fall,” Sami replied with a slight frown as she tried to remember. “Sherm is a warm-weather fisherman. He hasn’t been out since the weather turned cold, though he’s looking forward to spring so he can get out on the lake again.”
Kim appeared troubled.
Leslie studied her expression. “Kim? Do Tom and Zach still fish together? I remember they used to sit in a boat for hours, just talking and wasting worms.”
“Actually, I can’t remember the last time Zach and Tom went fishing,” Kim admitted.
“Do they spend any time together anymore?” Leslie inquired, sensing that this was somehow important to her understanding of just how much had changed for Tom since she’d left.
Kim bit her lip, then sighed. “Not much. At least, not without including me or others. Maybe it’s my fault, though I’ve always encouraged Zach to take time to be with his friends. I’m not one to need him around all the time to entertain me.”
“I don’t think it’s your fault,” Leslie said, hazarding a guess. “I think it has something to do with the accident.”
She watched as both Kim and Sami stiffened in reference to that terrible event.
“How much has Tom told you about the accident?” Kim asked curiously.
“Enough for me to know that he could have died or been left paralyzed. That he was extremely fortunate to have recovered to the extent that he has.”
Kim shuddered. “I’ll never forget the way he looked the first time I saw him afterward. It was a couple of weeks later, and I drove to Little Rock to see him in the hospital there. He was so pale and thin and frail looking. There were all those tubes stuck into him, and it was still uncertain how much mobility he would regain.”
“I saw him like that, too,” Sami agreed somberly. “It was heart-wrenching.”
“I wasn’t here then,” Leslie admitted. “Tom and I had broken up for a while and I suppose no one thought to call me. Maybe people thought he wouldn’t want them to contact me. But when I look at him now, I see a strong, healthy man who limps a little and has some occasional back pain. I wonder if the rest of you don’t still see that broken man in the hospital.”
There was a moment of shocked silence in the bright, pretty nursery. Sami stopped rocking, her eyes widening as she stared at Leslie.
“What an odd thing to say,” she said after a moment. “What do you mean, Leslie?”
“Tom thinks everyone is treating him differently since the accident. That everyone feels sorry for him because he has some lingering disabilities and because he can no longer work as an active-duty firefighter. Tom’s a very proud and capable man. He can handle everything that has happened to him except the pity.”
Leslie knew Tom wouldn’t thank her for speaking for him this way. In fact, he was more likely to be furious with her. But someone had to do something about the situation she’d witnessed between Tom and his friends this evening, and since no one else seemed to be taking that first step, Leslie figured it was up to her. She owed Tom this much, she told herself.
“Tom thinks we pity him?” Kim was stunned. “Oh, Leslie, I had no idea. You’re right, that would be unbearable for him.”
“And completely unjustified,” Sami agreed thoughtfully. “The guy’s still more handsome than any man has a right to be. He’s got a good job. Friends. The respect of the community. And now he has a beautiful wife and an adorable little boy.”
“That’s exactly what I’ve been telling him,” Leslie said approvingly. Then blushed at the way that must have sounded. “Except for the ‘beautiful wife’ part, of course.”
“It’s all true, though,” Sami said with a smile.
Her eyes held a new understanding, and Leslie guessed that Sami w
ould be talking to her husband later about the preservation of a man’s pride.
Kim had drawn her legs up and wrapped her arms around them, unhampered by the loosely constructed knit pantsuit she wore. Her expression was grave. “I’ve known for a long time that something was wrong between Zach and Tom,” she admitted unhappily. “I haven’t known how to explain it, but—”
Kim took a deep breath. “Zach and I had dated only for a few months before he and Tom were in that accident,” she explained for Leslie’s sake. “Actually, we’d broken up just a few weeks earlier—a stupid argument that we blew all out of proportion. But during those earlier months, I spent time with Zach and Tom on several occasions, and I could see the relationship they had. They were so close. Closer than brothers. They finished each other’s sentences, laughed at jokes no one else heard, said more in a glance than other people say in entire conversations.”
“That’s the way I remember their friendship, too,” Leslie murmured with a pang of regret.
“It isn’t like that between them anymore.”
Leslie sighed. “I know.”
“You know,” Sami interrupted, “it’s no one’s fault, but relationships between friends, even longtime friends, change when one of them marries. It happened to me and my best friend, for example. I didn’t have as much time to spend with her after I married Sherm, and now that Katie’s here, I have even less. She’s still dating and going to parties, and I’m spending my weekends doing laundry and scrubbing the house with disinfectant. I know Kim never asked Zach to spend less time with Tom, but it was only natural that Zach would want to be with his new wife. Everyone knows he adores her.”
Kim blushed and looked both pleased and troubled at the same time.
“Not to mention the different jobs,” Sami went on. “Before, Zach and Tom were a team. Partners. Same schedules, same work experiences. Now Zach puts out the fires and Tom comes in afterward to investigate the causes. It gives them common ground, but it’s still different from the way it used to be.”
“Everything you’ve said makes sense,” Leslie agreed, “but somehow I think there’s more to it.”
“So do I,” Kim said.
“Did Zach and Tom have a fight?”
Kim shook her head. “Not that I know of. And I think Zach would have told me.”
“Has he talked to you about Tom?”
Again, Kim bit her lip before answering. “Not much. When I bring Tom up, Zach usually ends up changing the subject.”
“Tom does the same about Zach.” Leslie sighed. “I wish I knew what was wrong.”
“Looks like it’s going to be up to you two to set things right,” Sami said matter-of-factly.
Leslie and Kim exchanged searching glances.
“Sami,” Leslie said, “you could be right.”
Chapter Eleven
Leslie and Tom left the Gilberts’ home less than half an hour later. Zach and Kim departed at the same time.
“Here, Tom, you take the baby,” Leslie said, handing a well-fed and warmly bundled Kenny to Tom. “I’ll get the diaper bag.”
“Want me to carry him for you, Tom?” Zach reached out as Tom juggled the soundly sleeping, utterly limp infant into a secure position.
“Looks to me like he’s doing just fine,” Kim said briskly to her husband. “Here, you carry these extra brownies Sami gave us.”
“The baby weighs all of twelve pounds,” Sami agreed dryly. “I don’t think he’ll be too much of a burden for a guy with Tom’s muscles.”
Zach and Sherm seemed surprised by their wives’ comments. Tom shot a suspicious look at Leslie, who gazed back at him with bland innocence.
“What did you say to them?” Tom demanded the minute he and Leslie were alone in the car, he behind the wheel again.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she bluffed, glancing over her shoulder to make sure Kenny had settled comfortably into his car seat.
“Leslie.” Her name was a growl.
She sighed. “Okay, I might have said something when we were feeding the babies.”
“And just what might you have said?”
She’d known he would be mad, but his accusatory tone was beginning to annoy her. “All I said was that you weren’t an invalid and no one should treat you like one. That any man would resent being treated that way by friends.”
“Damn it, Leslie!”
The words exploded from him, startling the baby into a squawk of protest from the back seat. Leslie and Tom both stiffened until Kenny settled down, and then Tom spoke again, his voice considerably lower this time.
“No man wants his wife fighting his battles for him, either. You think that’s any easier than being treated like an invalid?”
“I wasn’t trying to fight your battles for you,” she snapped. “I simply made a comment. How they choose to act on it is their decision. And for the record, Sami and Kim think you have every reason to be annoyed with the way you’ve been treated and you won’t have to deal with it from them anymore.”
“I’m supposed to thank you for that?”
“God, the male ego.” She exhaled gustily. “It must get tiresome carrying that burden around all the time.”
They were still sniping at each other when they reached Tom’s house. He carried the baby inside, then handed him over to Leslie, who swiftly exchanged Kenny’s overalls and striped shirt for a soft sleeper snapped over a clean diaper. She tucked him into the portable crib, then braced herself to go into the living room to rejoin Tom.
He was sitting on the couch, staring at his hands, lost in thought. He looked up when Leslie entered the room, and opened his mouth to speak. He fell silent when a siren suddenly made itself heard inside the quiet room. The wail grew louder as the vehicle sped past the house, then faded into the distance.
Leslie watched Tom as he went tense, his head turning to follow the sound. “Fire truck?” she asked.
“Sounded like one.”
“And you wish you were hanging on to the back of it.” It wasn’t a question.
He didn’t try to equivocate. “Yeah. Knee-jerk reaction, I guess.”
“Will you be called if it’s a fire?”
“Depends on what they find when they get there. If it’s a small kitchen fire or whatever, I won’t be needed. I’ll be called only if it’s a fire of suspicious origin, or if the cause isn’t immediately apparent.”
“Do you really hate your new job so much?”
He looked a bit surprised, then thoughtful. “No, I don’t hate it. The inspections get kind of boring at times, and I’ll never like paperwork—but I enjoy the investigation part. I’ve been doing a lot of studying in that area, and I’d like to get even more deeply into it.”
“So it’s not all bad.”
“No.” His smile was wry. “It’s not all bad.”
She smiled in return.
“What about you? How badly do you miss your career?” he asked, turning the tables on her.
She made a face. “I don’t miss the firm in Chicago. It didn’t take me long to know I’d be miserable there. But the job—well, I miss that. It was what I trained for, what I wanted to do.”
He nodded in total understanding.
Leslie pushed a hand through her hair and sighed lightly. “I still hope to find a new job, using my training and my experience. But given another choice between work and Kenny, I will always choose Kenny. No career could ever make me feel the way that he does.”
“So it isn’t all bad.” Tom threw her words back at her with gentle mockery.
She wrinkled her nose. “No. It’s not all bad.”
He held out his hand to her. She placed hers into it without hesitation. She didn’t resist when he drew her toward him and pulled her down to sit beside him on the couch.
“We’re quite a couple, aren’t we?” he mused without releasing her. His thumb stroked the back of her hand, his fingers entwining with hers.
Odd how such a light touch could cause su
ch a dramatic reaction inside her. She cleared her throat. “I suppose you could say that.”
He lifted his gaze to hers. “Leslie...”
She held her breath.
The telephone rang just as Tom leaned close to Leslie, his mouth hovering only inches above hers. She felt his breath on her anticipation-parted lips when he hissed a frustrated curse.
“Hold that thought,” he said, pushing away from her. “I’ll be right back.”
But to her mingled relief and disappointment, he wasn’t able to take up where he left off. It turned out that his input was needed at the nearby fire scene after all.
“I don’t know how long I’ll be,” he said. “You don’t need to wait up for me.”
She searched his face and saw his regret at the interruption... as well as a flicker of interest in whatever he’d been told over the telephone. His job was calling to him, she could see. She was glad, for his sake, that he was still able to find challenge and incentive in his work, even if he’d been forced onto a new career path against his will.
“Be careful,” she said.
“I’m always careful these days,” he replied.
If there was any bitterness in his words, it wasn’t apparent. So Leslie only smiled and said, “Good.”
He leaned over to brush a kiss across her lips. And then he left, locking the front door behind him.
Bemused, Leslie leaned against the back of the couch and exhaled slowly. What a strange evening it had been. It seemed to her as if she and Tom had been either fighting or kissing since they’d left the house earlier.
Raising her fingertips to her still-tingling lips, she told herself that, on the whole, she much preferred kissing.
Trying to be as quiet as he could, Tom scrubbed the familiar smell of smoke out of his hair, then ducked his head under the shower head to rinse. The house had been quiet and dark when he’d gotten home, the door to the guest bedroom closed. Though he hadn’t really expected Leslie to wait up for him, since it was quite late when he’d returned, he’d been a bit disappointed nevertheless.