by Edie Claire
"No," she heard her voice answer. "I’ve been fine."
"That’s good to hear," Melissa answered, sounding genuinely relieved. "But if you should have a dizzy spell, or anything you even think might be a dizzy spell, you should call the office and let me know right away. All right?"
It was the perfect opening. Sarah could backtrack now.
She didn’t. "Am I cleared to drive, then?"
The doctor took a moment to answer. "I can’t say I’d recommend it, no. Maybe with one loss of consciousness, but two still raises concern, even with normal tests. I think we need to watch you a while longer—be on high alert for any more symptoms. Do you have any other questions?"
"No," Sarah answered quickly, before she could decide otherwise. "Thank you."
They hung up. Sarah sat still, staring at the phone. She had lied to her own doctor.
Why?
She knew why. She had lied because she was a coward. She knew how the doctor would respond to the truth, and she didn’t want to hear it. She wanted to be fine, so she pretended that she was. It was the same thing she had been doing for years. Sarah the Ostrich. Head in the sand.
She realized she was twisting her hair again. She quit.
She sank down into her office chair, unshed tears burning behind her eyes. Why did she always have to be so afraid? Why couldn’t she stand up to things like other women—other people—could?
Did it even matter if she had a serious arrhythmia? Her last will and testament had been signed, sealed, and filed; her grandmother would be fine. The Alzheimer’s Foundation would have a nice windfall coming, and her uncle could even buy a few more toy cars. No one would miss her anyway—she had seen to that.
She sat there, feeling sorry for herself, for a full five minutes.
Then she got a grip.
She had always known that the truth about her past would come to light eventually. She had expected it, waited for it. When the eminent domain case arose, she was certain that this, at last, was to be her final battle. She was also sure that by the end of it, she would be ready to accept her fate. Strong. Noble. Willing.
She was not.
She wasn’t ready, and she could see now that she never would be. Living as a sitting duck wasn’t living at all, and she wasn't going to do it anymore.
Whether it was noble, or not.
She rose from her chair and headed for the nonfiction section.
***
"Why did you change cab companies? Was there a problem with the first one?"
Adam’s brown eyes searched hers. She remained standing at her front door, determined not to invite him in. It wasn’t easy. Just the sight of him—so spirited, so vital, so alive—was enough to boost her spirits. She hadn’t seen him in two days. It seemed like longer.
"Not a problem, exactly," she responded. "I just didn’t want to party with the driver."
Adam's eyes hardened. Anger flushed his face, and he stepped forward. "What happened?"
She backed up, startled. She had been trying to make a joke, not to incite him. "Nothing happened," she said quickly. "He just asked me out. So I told him no and called another cab. That’s all."
"Are you sure?" the wrath in his voice was not assuaged.
"I’m sure," she said quietly. She looked at him quizzically, and he averted his eyes. The incident had bothered her far more than she let on, of course, but she hadn’t expected him to know that. The fact that he seemed to both moved and disturbed her. Clearly, he had noticed her wariness around men. But he couldn’t know its source.
And he wasn’t going to.
"Is that all you came by for?" she asked, employing her distant-polite voice.
His eyes searched hers again. "No," he answered. "Do you mind if I come in?"
She stiffened. She did mind. The last thirty seconds had only reminded her how vulnerable she was to him. He would come in and make himself comfortable, smile at her with that charming smile of his, and then resume prying into her past. And she craved his company enough to let him.
"I’m kind of in the middle of something," she responded.
He hit her with the charming smile up front. "It won’t take long. I promise."
Cursing her weakness, she opened the door. He was already heading out of the foyer before she remembered the books. The volumes she had brought home from the library were lying exposed in the center of her coffee table.
Her breath caught. "Would you like something to drink?" she asked, moving toward the kitchen. If she could keep him out of the living room, he wouldn’t see them.
"Sure," he responded, following. "Anything’s fine."
She smiled with relief. "I’d offer you some of Rose’s zucchini bread, but I ate it all in three sittings. That stuff is delicious. I’ve been thinking of hinting for some more."
"I’m sure Rose would give you as much as you want," he replied, sounding distracted.
She pulled out two cans of ginger ale, gave him one, and sat down on one of her kitchen counter stools. He joined her on the other.
He sat for a moment without drinking. "I wanted to apologize," he said finally.
She was in mid swallow, and she sputtered a little. "Apologize for what?"
He breathed out heavily. "For pestering you with questions about your past. I realize you don’t owe me any explanations. I was only trying to help, but it’s obvious I pushed too hard, and I’m sorry."
Her heart sped up again, but this time she didn’t worry about it. She was too pleased with what she was hearing. Perhaps she could still enjoy Adam’s company—in small doses—without an unacceptable amount of risk. The thought delighted her. She couldn’t explain to him how much their outing on Saturday had meant to her—to do so would only highlight her inexperience, and she didn't want him to think her pathetic. But she would dearly love a repeat performance.
"Do you really mean that?" she asked seriously. "You can be happy with what I’ve told you and let it go?"
He looked back at her, his expression troubled, but sincere. "I’ll try."
She considered. The statement was hardly an oath; then again, oaths got broken. His words weren’t absolute, but she did believe he meant them. She smiled. "Well, good. I was beginning to miss that rapier wit of yours."
He grinned, but his eyes were guarded. "So you were avoiding me."
"Yes," she admitted. "But I won’t anymore, as long as you keep up your end of the bargain."
He smiled for real this time and raised his ginger ale can. "Deal."
She started to smile back, but a pang of guilt accosted her stomach. She hadn’t left Kansas City just to find herself in the same mess somewhere else, but that’s exactly where she was headed. Whether he asked any more questions or not, just being around him was courting disaster. She liked him too much.
She rose from her stool. "Would you like to see that book I was telling you about?" she offered, trying to entrench herself in librarian mode. "The one about historic landmarks from the Civil Rights movement?"
He said that he would. She walked toward her bookshelves, and he set down his drink and followed her. Her stomach still ached. She didn’t want another library client. She wanted a real friend—someone her own age. As different as she and Adam seemed, she had learned in Atlanta just how many interests they shared, and she would love nothing better than to explore them with him.
But she would have to be careful. Their friendship would have to stay casual, light, and superficial. Then what he didn’t know about her couldn’t hurt either one of them.
She put a hand to her stomach. Her eyes drifted over the second shelf from the left, and she frowned. She always kept her travel books together. Could she have left that one unpacked, with her historical texts? After a moment’s contemplation, she remembered that the book had been too tall for the top shelves, and that she had put it on the bottom. She stepped toward the lower shelf on the far right side, hand outstretched.
***
She looked up at Adam, and he lo
oked awful. His tanned face was as pale as it could get, and he was breathing heavily.
"Are you okay?" he asked, his voice uneven.
She blinked. Was she okay?
Then, with a start, she realized where she was. She was lying on the couch, her head and shoulders in his lap. She struggled to rise, and he put an arm beneath her back to steady her.
Grim understanding dawned.
"I passed out again," she said miserably. "Didn’t I?"
"Yes, you did," he answered, his voice unexpectedly gruff. "And I really wish you’d cut it out. I told you—I’m no good in medical emergencies. You almost gave me a heart attack."
His expression was deadly serious, but she couldn’t help grinning a little. "Sorry."
His speech was only part of the reason for her mirth. The greater part was difficult to describe.
He was holding her, sort of. Not closely, but enough to support her from falling back again. She would have guessed that, finding herself in such a position, she would instinctively pull away. But that wasn’t happening. She didn’t want to go anywhere. To her surprise, she felt warmly, wonderfully comfortable.
"What happened exactly?" she asked. She didn’t want him to move.
"You reached for a book, and then you just kept going down," he answered, his voice still strained. "I sort of caught you, but you banged your hip, I think."
The hip she had injured in her original fall was indeed sore again. But until he mentioned it, she hadn’t noticed. Actually, she felt fine. More than fine.
Images filtered slowly through her mind, images from a part of her youth she could still remember fondly. She had had a boyfriend once. His name was Jimmy Jones, and his appeal had come from his simplicity. He was a farmer’s boy, her neighbor across the highway, and not the type of person she had ever envisioned being with for long. But he had been tall, with wavy brown hair and large green eyes that sparkled when he laughed, and he had always been sweet to her. Their dates consisted of dinner, a movie, and an hour or so of parking at some quiet nook on his father’s cattle farm, necking with relative innocence in the front of his fire-engine red mini pickup.
The romance had run its course as most teenage pairings did, moving from exciting to lackluster to over in a matter of months. It was the kind of dalliance most people forgot as soon as the next one blossomed. But for Sarah, there had never been a next one. She’d had nothing to do with any man since Dee died.
"You should call Melissa," Adam urged. "She may want you to go to the ER."
Sarah made no response. The ER was the last place she wanted to be. She felt safe right where she was, with Adam's benign, gentle touch bringing her a much-needed sense of serenity. With the exception of brief hugs from her aunt or female friends, her life since the tragedies had been devoid of affection. She had nearly forgotten how calming—how satisfying—such closeness with another human being could be.
She had been missing something. What happened with him had messed up her mind. But perhaps she wasn’t a lost cause.
She looked up into Adam’s kind, handsome face. And she wondered.
Chapter 18
"Sarah," Adam repeated. "Are you listening to me? Are you feeling lightheaded—or anything?"
"I feel fine," she answered softly. "I’m just not in any hurry to move, that’s all."
His own heart skipped a beat. His breathing was still ragged. First she had fainted on him, now she—. Well, he didn’t know what she was.
When she had fallen he had scooped her up and carried her to the couch, fully expecting that she would wake up uneasy, perhaps even upset with him for holding her. He had been halfway prepared to dodge a blow. But that wasn’t what happened. Instead, she had relaxed into his arms.
He supposed he should take that as a good sign—that she was still capable of giving and receiving affection, that she felt comfortable with him, that she had finally begun to trust him. If she had been anyone else, he could accept her acquiescence as a victory and celebrate. But she wasn’t anyone else. And that was the problem.
She was the woman with whom he had just spent one of the most enjoyable Saturday evenings of his life, and the one whose image had been plaguing his mind ever since. The one whose flowing hair and subtle curves now tortured him at every turn, monopolizing his thoughts and cutting into his sleep. He’d been working very hard, for the last forty-eight hours, to convince his brain that she was off limits, and he did not need an impromptu situation such as this playing havoc with his resolve.
A physical relationship with Sarah was out of the question. First off, because toying with a woman without any kind of commitment went against everything he believed. But even if he was ready to move on, even if he thought the relationship was right for him, there was no question that it would be wrong for her. She had been sexually assaulted, and that trauma was still unresolved. Heaven only knew what other demons she was fighting.
So why didn’t she squirm from his grasp? She should be getting up right now, moving toward the phone. She should be talking about what had happened and apologizing for having scared him to death. She should be doing anything—anything—but nestling so comfortably in his arms, looking up at him with those beautiful blue eyes of hers. Looking at him so…
Damnation.
In one movement he lifted her off his lap and shifted her to a sitting position beside him. Then he backed away, perching on the edge of the couch to face her. "Either you call Melissa," he ordered, "or I will. What’s your preference?"
She blinked at him, startled. She probably thought he was angry at her. Maybe he was.
"I’ll call her in a few minutes," she answered. "I just talked to her this morning. There’s no rush."
"No rush?" he challenged. "You just passed out again—cold. You don’t think that’s significant?"
The expression in her eyes changed from dreamy to defiant. He breathed a sigh of relief. The old Sarah was back.
"Of course it’s significant," she retorted. "But it’s not an emergency. I already know what she’ll do. She said if it happened again she would have me come in for another Holter monitor—but for a longer period this time. It’s not like I need to be hospitalized."
"I’m not so sure about that."
She stared at him with surprise, but then her expression softened. "Please don’t worry about me, Adam. You really don’t need to. I’ll be fine. I promise."
He could tell that she was thinking about Christine. She thought he was being overly paranoid, overly protective, because his wife had died so young. She was right. But only partially.
He got up off the couch, went to the kitchen, retrieved Sarah’s cell phone from the counter, and placed it in her hands. "Call now."
"I don’t have the number memorized. Besides, it’s after hours."
Adam took the phone back. "I can get her home number from information. Her husband will be listed." He began to dial, but Sarah stood up.
"I told you I would call her," she said firmly. "But not now. Not this second."
"Why not?" he demanded. "What are you afraid of?"
The same, trite question hung in the air, heavy as lead. She stared back at him, her eyes angry. "I have to go to the bathroom first," she said stiffly. "Do you mind?"
He shut his mouth. She was good at getting him to do that. He just wished he knew when she was bluffing. She was quick-witted enough that he couldn’t always tell. He sat back on the couch and set the phone on the coffee table. "Fine," he answered, allowing some of the humor to return to his voice. "The phone will be here when you get back. But don’t try climbing out the windows. I know where you live."
She rolled her eyes at him. Then she rose and walked out of the living room.
He sat and stared into the air ahead of him, mulling her actions. Most likely she was afraid of what the doctor would say, afraid to face more tests. If he hadn’t been here when she collapsed, would she have told anyone? Had it already happened more often than she was admitting?
; He wished he knew exactly what had transpired at her last appointment. He had been assuming that Sarah’s fainting spells stemmed from some past injury, and that Melissa was aware of the abuse. But what if he was wrong? What if Sarah hadn’t been honest about her medical history? Or more frightening still, what if her problems weren’t related to trauma at all? What if she was suffering from something else entirely, something even more serious? He rubbed his face with his hands. No. Not that.
What he had gone through with Christine had been sheer hell. She had suffered for weeks without telling him—headaches, blurred vision, all the way up to the first seizure. It was his job, his duty, to support her, but she’d been too much of a martyr to let him. She had tried her best to hide what was happening, telling herself she could handle it alone, that it would be wrong to worry him unnecessarily. But in her heart she had to want him to see it. She had to hope that he would read the signs, care enough to demand an explanation.
He hadn’t. He hadn’t realized how sick Christine was, how stressed she was, until it became impossible for her to hide it anymore. He’d done everything in his power to support her, then. But the end had come more quickly than anyone imagined.
He let out a muffled groan. He couldn’t bear a repeat of that nightmare. He might not have been able to help Christine, but he was committed to helping Sarah, and he was going to succeed. He just had to keep his head straight. There were a hundred reasons why he should fight any romantic feelings for her in the process—and if he had to, he’d write every blasted one of them on the backs of his hands.
He stood up. Maybe the answer, for him, was to date again. He’d waited longer than necessary already, but the idea still didn’t appeal. A single pastor was always prime quarry for a congregation’s every spinster daughter, granddaughter, niece, and cousin, and exactly one year after Christine’s passing he’d been deluged with third-party propositions. He had put them all off then, and he’d been doing so ever since. But maybe he was wrong. Maybe hanging on to celibacy was what had gotten him into this mess.