Oh, she was good enough to be a mother to his son, good enough to warm his bed at night, good enough to marry out of convenience, but she did not lay claim to his heart—and suspected she never would. Heather supposed she should thank him for being honest with her rather than leading her on like Josef had, but at the moment it was everything she could do to keep her composure in front of him.
Inside she was falling apart.
"I'm sorry," she said plainly enough.
* * *
Her refusal stung. Pride kept Toby from begging. He was sorry that he ruined the moment with his inability to express what was in his heart. It wasn't exactly like he had a lot of experience in proposing. He'd never asked anyone to marry him before. Sheila had popped the question herself on the heels of announcing that she was pregnant with his child. Being of honorable character, he had simply gone along with her wishes and done the right thing. And although his brief marriage had brought him little happiness, because it had given him a wonderful son, he could not bring himself to regret it. He could not imagine what Heather's leaving would do to him, let alone Dylan.
Toby got off his knees and put his weight squarely back onto the same two feet that had carried him this far into life with his backbone, if not his heart, intact.
"I'm sorry, too. Sorry that I don't have the right words for you. It's obvious where my son gets his inability to communicate."
Heather held up her hands to stop him. She gestured toward the open doorway. "That doesn't affect his hearing any."
Dylan was standing there, clutching his favorite blanket and looking at them with a worried expression on his face. Though unable to verbalize his thoughts, he was clearly upset to hear the two most important people in his life raising their voices to one another. Heather rushed to his side and bent down to wipe away the single tear that rolled down his cheek.
Taking him in her arms, she hastened to assure him. "Everything's going to be fine."
"Don't lie to the boy," Toby barked. "His mother told him that just before she left for good. Until you showed up, the last word he ever said was goodbye."
He extended a hand to his son. Dylan looked to Heather. Unable to utter a single word herself, she simply nodded her approval and gave him over to his father without a fight. She didn't know what she could possibly say to make Toby stay and work out their problems, what she could possibly say to make him love her as much as she loved him.
"Come on, son. Let's get out of here before I say something I'll regret."
The door swung shut behind them with a bang that reverberated throughout the house. The immediate silence and a feeling of being completely alone again engulfed Heather. She put her head in her hands and sobbed without making a sound. How ironic, she thought, that she had come here to help Dylan find his voice and lost hers in the process.
An hour passed without any sign of the two men in her life. She imagined they had gone into town, leaving her to her own devices. Evening cast a long shadow over the gleaming piano in the center of the room. Having no other way to express herself without fear of further repercussions, Heather turned to the one friend who had never abandoned her—even in the dark days when she deliberately turned her back on it. Approaching the piano with a sense of trepidation, she hoped her hands remembered their training.
Nimble fingers gave voice to her angst. The song she played in the fading light was moving in the depth of emotion it conveyed. Echoing off the walls, the highs and lows of those notes resounded off mountain walls that sheltered them from the outside world. A world that did not understand the complexity of a woman's heart.
How good it felt to let the music speak for her. Heather was bent over the piano keys, immersed in a heartbreaking melody, attempting to loosen the pain deep inside of her, when Dylan appeared out of nowhere. Scratched and bloody, he tugged at her sleeve to get her attention and struggled to convey a message of grave importance.
"What's wrong?" she asked, jolted from her trancelike state by his appearance.
He opened his mouth, but no sound came out. Grabbing him by the shoulders, Heather implored, "Please. Dylan, tell me what's happened."
Tears pooled in eyes the exact shade as his father's. Squeezing them shut, he concentrated hard and opened his mouth again.
"D-d-d … D-d-daddy … hurt…"
Fear swallowed Heather whole. She was off the piano bench in an instant and racing toward the front door. Her feet never hit the floor. Dylan was right behind her. Not knowing which way to go, Heather stopped only long enough to scoop the frightened toddler into her arms.
"Where's Daddy?"
Dylan pointed with a dirty finger. Heather spied a tractor in the back pasture. Her heart stopped beating. All too often, ranch accidents proved fatal. Praying she didn't twist an ankle, Heather sprinted across freshly tilled soil with Dylan on her hip. The roar in her ears drummed out all other sounds, even the screaming of her own voice as she called Toby's name again and again.
As she closed in upon the scene, Heather saw that the tractor was overturned. She might have known Toby would take his frustrations out on big machinery, trying to score a drought-hardened earth he found softer than her own hard heart! What she would give to replay the incident that drove him to fate's destructive path.
Looking like a fallen dinosaur, the tractor was still running on its side. Going nowhere, one wheel spun uselessly in the air. Even if Toby were able to respond to her frantic calls, Heather knew it would be impossible to discern his voice over the roar of machinery. Setting Dylan on the ground, she prayed the man she loved was not pinned beneath the immovable mountain of metal. When the tractor had toppled and Toby realized there was nothing he could do to prevent it, she imagined his first thoughts were for his son. In her mind's eye, Heather could see him throwing Dylan clear before giving thought to his own safety.
Thunder boomed in the distance.
Heather circled the tractor and found Toby's lifeless form next to it. His blood stained the long prairie grass and seeped into the parched earth. One arm was bent beneath his twisted body. He had fallen on the side of the field that he had just plowed, somewhat cushioning his fall. Dropping to her knees beside him, she sobbed and pressed her head to his heart. The faint sound of its beating kindled hope in her breast.
Checking his pulse, she imagined minuscule pressure in return when she squeezed his hand. Her lips upon his caused his eyelids to flutter open briefly. She bathed his bloody face with her tears.
Dialing 911 was of little use in this situation. By the time an ambulance arrived, Toby could well bleed to death. Heather looked to the gathering storm clouds and tore back across the open field. Promising to be back in a minute, she told Dylan to stay put. Their only hope was to get Toby to the emergency room as quickly as possible.
Out of breath by the time she reached his pickup, she silently thanked him for always leaving his keys in the ignition. Snakebites, grizzly maulings and unforeseen accidents were far more likely than theft in such a remote region. The only crime that concerned Heather at the moment was the possibility of Toby dying without her ever telling him she loved him.
A few scattered raindrops splattered against the windshield as Heather started up the one-ton pickup. Any other day she would be grateful for the moisture. Today she could scarcely afford to run the risk of getting mired in the mud. Swearing, she turned the vehicle toward the scene of the accident and lurched forward, mindless of nothing but getting to Toby as quickly as possible. She threw the vehicle into four-wheel drive and fastened her seat belt on the fly. Had she not, it was likely she would have knocked herself out by hitting her head on the roof as she raced across the rough plowed field.
Dylan was crying next to his father when Heather pulled up beside them. She parked the pickup as close as she possibly could without endangering either of them. She didn't have enough adrenaline to lift an entire tractor off a man, but there was enough of that life preserver flowing in her bloodstream to manage to hoist a 175-pound ma
n into the cab of a pickup. It wasn't until she tried getting Toby to his feet that she realized how grotesquely disfigured his arm was. Try as she might to be gentle, it was all she could do to fold him into the front seat. He groaned before slipping back into unconsciousness, his arm flopping uselessly at his side.
Heather tossed Dylan into the truck beside her and told him to hold his father's head in his lap. It seldom rained in Wyoming, but when it did it usually arrived in a torrent, flooding gullies and washing away precious topsoil. If she could make it out of the field before it turned to clay, Heather figured there was a good chance they wouldn't get stuck.
Her wheels spun. Every minute counted, but she didn't want to bury the pickup by gunning it in her haste. She pressed down on the accelerator slowly and eased her way toward the gravel road. The only thing separating her from that road was a nasty-looking barbed wire fence. It stood no chance against her will and seven thousand pounds of Ford-tough truck hurtling toward it in the rain.
Like the pop of a starting gun, the twang of barbed wire signaled Heather's hope of making it to the hospital in record time. Gravel churned in all directions as they hit the county road. Just about that time, the hail started. The size of marbles, the hailstones plinked off the roof and the hood of Toby's new vehicle, rippling it with dents. Considering the new barb wire bra across the front of the truck, Heather doubted the insurance company would quarrel over the cost of such mundane repairs.
Once they reached the main highway, she placed that 911 call on the cell phone that was considered standard equipment on most Wyoming trucks, and alerted the hospital to expect them shortly. She flipped on her emergency flashers. The road was slick, and she took care not to hydroplane at high speeds. The last thing she wanted to do was cause yet another accident in her haste to save a life. All the way into town, Dylan petted his father's head and cooed reassuringly into his ear.
Without taking her eyes off the road, Heather told him, "You're a real hero."
In light of his own traumatic experience on that tractor, Dylan's speaking in order to save his father was nothing short of a miracle. Heather always believed that the boy would talk when he was ready. She just hadn't counted on a life-and-death situation proving her right. Nor had she realized just how important it was to speak from the heart while there was still time for those precious words to be heard. If God would but spare Toby's life, Heather vowed to never again let pride get in the way of love's true course.
"I love you. I love you. I love you," she repeated over and over to the rhythm of the hail and the swish of windshield wipers.
* * *
"Looks pretty bad. We may have to amputate."
The emergency room nurse was not aware that Toby was conscious when she uttered that dire prediction. Even if she was, she would have sworn that the shot, she administered immediately thereafter would make him forget anything he heard while she was prepping him anyway. She was wrong.
Because his son needed him and because he was a fighter, Toby Danforth hung on to those words through a fog of pain as he clung to life itself. Tenaciously.
When he came to, hours later, he was surprised to see Heather asleep in the chair next to his bed. Her neck was bent at an uncomfortable angle causing her hair to spill over her shoulder in a waterfall of gold. Dark circles rimmed her closed eyes. Toby longed to reach out and touch this delicate creature just once more, but his strength failed him. It hurt to think that any chance they may have had for a future together was as shattered as the arm he heard crack just before he passed out.
Wrapped tightly in blankets and as yet unable to move, he couldn't tell whether that arm was still attached to his body beneath his hospital garb. The nurse's remark about amputation echoed in his ears. If Heather hadn't wanted him when he proposed to her before the accident, he couldn't imagine asking her to accept him as less than a whole man—without two strong arms to hold and protect her.
As if the incredible woman who rescued him needed his protection. Thinking it unfair to ask her to marry him given the reclusive nature of his life and his son's special needs, he wouldn't expect Heather to sign away her youth and vitality to a cripple. The sight of her stirring in a shaft of light filtering in through the window touched all of his senses at once. Her eyelids opened to reveal a pair of dove-gray eyes that softened the instant she saw him.
"God, but you're beautiful," he mumbled. Toby wasn't sure why that would cause her to burst into tears, but she did. Smothering him with kisses, she told him just how happy she was that he was alive. He wasn't so sure about that. Once Heather left for good, his life wouldn't be worth much to anyone—except to a sensitive little boy who needed him to be both his mother and father. And the parents who would likely expect Toby to move home so they could treat him like an invalid for the rest of his life.
Heather tucked a strand of hair behind one ear and stepped back to stare at him earnestly. Having an epiphany on the long, perilous ride to town, she was ready to bare her soul.
"If it's okay with you, I'd like to reconsider that proposal you made earlier today."
The jump in Toby's heart rate registered on the monitor next to his bed.
"You think you could do a better job, I suppose," he said. His voice, though weak, reflected an amusement that his eyes did not share.
Giving him a lopsided smile, Heather knelt beside his bed in a classic proposal position. "I love you."
As much as Toby needed to stop her from making a fool of them both, those words filled him with such a sense of joy that he wanted more than anything else in this world to believe his ears.
"Ssshhh…" he whispered. "You don't have to—"
"Don't shush me. God and I had a nice, long talk on the way to getting you here, and we decided that you need me. Not just Dylan, big boy, but you. It seems I need you, too. I'm willing to work at marriage on whatever terms you think fair. If you'll just give me a chance, I think I can make you learn to love me."
Toby choked on the fist that was stuck in his throat. "Learn—to love you?" he stammered. For a woman who said she wanted romance in a marriage proposal, she certainly made hers sound more like a business proposition than a matter of the heart. A man who believed in proving himself not by words but by actions, he couldn't fathom that she didn't know how out-of-his-mind crazy in love with her he was.
Was it possible she truly believed he proposed to her simply because she was good with Dylan? Was she really so thick that she believed he would make a lifetime commitment based on anything other than his feelings for her? Didn't she know that the kind of earth-moving passion they shared was something so special that poets couldn't find words to describe it adequately?
He was such an idiot! When she rejected his proposal out of hand, he had reacted like some hotheaded kid, rushing off without getting to the heart of the matter. Attempting to assuage his wounded pride by getting behind the wheel of a monstrous tractor and running it into the ground wasn't the smartest move he'd ever made, either. Luckily for him, Heather was made of sterner stuff. If not for her cool head, he could well have died within walking distance of his house.
He berated himself for not staying to work things out when she first called his motives into question. Now it was much too late for mending fences or limbs.
"My arm—" he began.
"What about it?"
That she looked so genuinely surprised he would mention it made Toby ache for opportunities lost.
"I can't expect you to marry half a man."
"Tobias Danforth!" Heather exclaimed. "I can't believe you think I'm so shallow that I care more about how you look than what's inside you."
She, too, had heard the hospital buzz that his arm might be amputated, but refused to believe it until she heard it straight from the doctor's mouth. Even then, Toby's parents, who she called immediately after admitting him, assured her that they wanted a specialist to look at their son before any such drastic measure be taken. Having booked a private jet, Harold and Miranda were d
ue to arrive any moment to lend their support and help their son and grandson any way they could. Heather envied Toby their limitless love—and longed to share it with him.
"Whether you have one arm or three makes no difference to me. I love you. Not your arm or your pocketbook or your family name or some stupid, strong-and-silent cowboy stereotype that you'd let ruin your life if it weren't for me. Understand this—nothing is going to change my feelings for you. Nothing. I love you, and I love your son. It's that simple. Let's not make it any more difficult than that."
"I love you, too."
Seeing the tears spill down her cheeks at the admission, Toby rebuked himself for not saying those words long ago. They had the power to make him feel whole.
Even though he wasn't.
No matter what he wanted for himself, Toby could not in good conscience let such a young, vibrant woman throw her life away without giving serious consideration to what it would be like to be married to a man who would need help simply getting dressed every morning. On more than one occasion, Heather had told him his disposition was less than sweet on his good days. He imagined he would be a bear to live with as he learned to function without an appendage. It wouldn't be right to hold her to a declaration of love made under the duress of such a terrible accident. He didn't want her to make a commitment to him out of a sense of pity.
Again Toby tried to explain. "I love you and I'd ask you to marry me again, but my arm—"
"Is full of pins, and you won't be doing any manual labor for a while. But don't worry. A little mending and a lot therapy and you should regain full use of it in time for the fall stock show."
The doctor who stepped into the room was young and cocky. The fact that he happened to be wearing cowboy boots and was the bearer of tremendous news excused his high-flying bedside manner. Toby closed his eyes and exhaled the accumulated fear from his lungs as the surgeon continued with his prognosis.
COWBOY CRESCENDO Page 12
