by Rachel Lee
She remained hunched beside him, her arms wrapped tightly around herself as if she were holding something in. He doubted Lisa could have done anything to make her feel that bad. God, she had said she wanted to talk; he couldn’t help in any way unless she talked and here they were, barreling through the night in silence.
He forced a lid on his impatience, reminding himself that she had called out to him and now the best thing he could do was give her space and time until she let him know what else she needed.
At least she’d called him. Turned to him as a friend. A week ago he would have said he never wanted to see her again. Now here he was all wrapped up in her with no idea whether he’d be left like roadkill again.
Okay, maybe that wasn’t entirely fair, but it was how he had felt. He could look back now and see how egotistical he’d been. He’d ignored all her intentions to pursue a career, just so absolutely certain she wouldn’t be able to say no to his proposal. Certain she loved him enough to spend the rest of her life here, with him. She hadn’t misled him—he’d misled himself.
Not until the lights of his house appeared out of the darkness did she speak. “Your ranch?”
“I figured it was warmer and more comfortable than this truck. Plus, I can get you something hot to drink.”
“Thanks.”
Her voice sounded steadier to him now, and that was a huge relief. He brought them to a stop at the front door. Hardly had he turned off the ignition when Jean stepped out.
“Everything okay?” she called.
“Fine,” Cliff answered. “I brought Holly over for a visit.”
He walked around the truck to help Holly out. She didn’t resist, and moments later Jean had enveloped her, leaving Cliff to stand there bemused, keys in hand. Well, maybe it was woman stuff. Maybe Holly would rather talk to Jean. Crazy, but he felt as if he’d just been cut off at the pass.
Chapter Six
Holly was beginning to feel stupid. She’d called Cliff out late at night because she was having an emotional crisis? She should have called Laurie or Carla or Sharon. And now elderly, gray-haired Jean was fussing over her like a mother hen, getting her settled in the living room, asking what she wanted to drink.
It was embarrassing. She had reached out because she needed not to be alone, and now she was surrounded by caretakers, with a man who was certainly going to want some kind of explanation, whether or not she felt like talking about it now.
She accepted the offer of tea with honey, thinking that she should have just handled her emotional storm by herself. The way she usually did. She could have walked it off. What had possessed her to call a man who had absolutely no reason to want to be her confidant?
But he had come racing to the rescue nonetheless, and that hug he had given her had meant the world. All by itself it had been healing. She wondered how she could possibly thank him.
“I’m going to bed,” Jean announced. She bent to give Holly another quick hug. “Cliff knows where everything is if you need something. The guest room is ready, too, if you want to stay.”
Not a word about Lisa. A coded message, perhaps? Maybe Jean thought she was here because of something Lisa had done. Boy, would she like to leave it that way.
She gave Cliff credit, though, for not pushing her in any way. Hell, he hadn’t even asked a single question, which was kind of amazing considering the way she had called him and then sobbed in his arms. He must want to know what all this was about, but now that she was looking at him, she wasn’t sure she could explain it.
She curled in one corner of a big leather couch. He’d settled in a matching chair facing her and sat forward with his elbows on his splayed knees and hands clasped. He ignored the tea Jean had put on the table at his elbow.
“Feeling a little better?” he asked finally.
“I’m sorry I called you.” The words burst from her.
He lifted his brows, but didn’t move. Those darn turquoise eyes of his kept right on looking at her. She wished she had a hole to crawl into.
“I hope,” he said, “that you mean you’re sorry for bothering me, not that you’re sorry I came.”
Ouch! She grabbed a throw pillow and hugged it, staring down at it because it was easier. “I’m sorry I bothered you.”
“No need. It was no bother at all. Obviously you needed someone. Excuse me, but I just can’t imagine you dumping those tears on Lisa.”
In spite of herself, she saw the humor in the notion. “Uh, no,” she said finally. “But I’m still sorry to have bothered you. Honestly, I should be able to deal with things myself, not call you out late at night.”
“It’s not that late. And the amazing thing is, well...” He paused. “My mother always used to say that a joy shared was a joy multiplied. I think it goes the other way, too—a burden shared is a burden lightened. That’s what friends are for, right?”
“Are we friends?” That burst from her, too, and she began to wonder seriously about the state of her mind. What was she doing? What was she trying to get at with him?
“I think we’re getting back to friendship,” he said. “Admittedly, we avoided each other like the plague for the past ten years. Admittedly, when I saw you at the lawyer’s office I was nasty. I think there was a buildup of things not said a long time ago.”
“Then maybe you should say them.”
“Why? That was a long time ago. Anyway, this isn’t about me, it isn’t about us. Is it?”
She shook her head, pulling on the fringe that rimmed the pillow.
“Was it Lisa?”
“That woman couldn’t push me to that point. Ever.”
“Then...?”
Holly sighed, darting a glance his way. Damn, he looked concerned and sympathetic. “I was just thinking generally about things. About myself.”
“And?”
She picked at the pillow some more, then tossed it aside. “I was thinking about how driven I am. Some of my colleagues have been pushing me to take a rotation to an easier job for a while. It’s not unusual. Casework, the kind that takes you on the streets and into homes, can get to you. They even warned us to leave the job at work and not bring it home.”
“Why do I think you find that difficult?”
She gave him a humorless half smile. “I guess you know me.”
“A little, anyway. So even your colleagues think you need a rotation?”
“Yeah. And I haven’t been listening. And that got me to thinking about why social work was so important to me, and just what demons might be driving me.”
“I gather the answer upset you.”
“Very much.” She was grateful that he didn’t press her, just waited for whatever she wanted to say. At this point she didn’t know. “It’s quite a mess,” she said finally. “Hard to explain. But then I made a link I hadn’t made before and I kinda fell apart.” That part embarrassed her. She was tougher than that, right? Well, maybe not, and it appalled her to be faced with her own weakness.
“There are,” she said slowly, “a lot of good social workers. I could name a dozen right off the top of my head who could take care of my clients. They’d do a fine job. There’s no need for me to feel like I can’t turn it over to someone else for a little while.”
“Are you worrying about your relationship with the children?”
“A little. You develop them, you know. No matter how hard you try to maintain a professional distance, a balance, with at least some of those kids you become a trusted person, someone they can rely on. To just shift myself out of the picture, even if only for a month or so, might not be good.”
He hesitated. “You came out here for two weeks. You explained to them, right?”
She nodded.
“Are any of them too young to understand that you need to go away for a little while but that y
ou’ll be back?”
“Probably not. And that’s when I looked hard at myself. Just by its very nature, social work results in kids and their families getting different caseworkers from time to time. We try to ease the transition, both of us showing up together at least once, but it happens all the time.”
“So the kids get it. You’re not a parent but a professional they work with.”
“Yeah, and that’s what makes what I’m doing so ridiculous. It’s not like I’m the fairy godmother with the only magic wand in town. I started thinking that I’m getting too full of myself. Started feeling too important. The truth is, if I dropped off the earth tomorrow, plenty of competent people would step in to help my clients and they’d be just fine.”
“Maybe so. Aren’t you being a little hard on yourself? I mean, you care. That’s not something to apologize for.”
“Another thing they warn us about is that if we don’t take care of ourselves, we won’t be able to take care of anybody else. I’ve been pushing that line for the past year. Driven. Driven to the point that my colleagues are commenting. That’s bad.”
“Wouldn’t a supervisor step in?”
“If we weren’t always so shorthanded, maybe. Right now, if I rotate, I’ll probably increase someone else’s load.”
He gave a low whistle. “That’s a rock and a hard place all around.”
“But it’s not the whole story. I’ve been taking my work home with me. I think about nothing else anymore. So anyway, as I was standing in the bedroom, I caught sight of myself in the mirror. I’ve lost twenty pounds in the past year.”
“I noticed. A little too much?”
“Too much. Five pounds needed to go. Maybe even ten. But not twenty.”
He waited, and she got the feeling he wasn’t going to accept her weight loss as an excuse for her tears. She sighed again and put her head down. When her voice emerged, it was muffled. “That’s when I made the connection.”
“To what?”
“To the attack a year ago. I’ve been avoiding dealing with it by working myself to death. By letting my job consume me. It was easier. Yes, easier. I got sick of people saying how strong I was because I came back to work two weeks later. Because it wasn’t true. I was a scared, nervous wreck, and I think tonight I finally had the breakdown I should have had back then.”
There, it was out. She’d admitted that she was a coward, that she couldn’t deal with what had happened to her and that she was driven not as much by concern for her clients as by a need to escape her own mind and emotions.
From where she sat, that was a pretty ugly, cowardly thing.
Worse, she felt she had just revealed something sordid to Cliff. This wasn’t a light she wanted him to see her in. Then another thought struck her. Why should she feel sordid about what had been done to her? God, she was losing it.
“Holly?”
His voice pulled her back from a dark cliff. She dared to look at him.
“I’m not asking for details here. I’m not an inquisitor or a prosecutor. Hell, I’m just an ordinary guy who probably knows more about sheep and goats than people. But can you give me an outline of what happened? Martha just said you were attacked but you were okay. I’d like to know generally what we’re talking about here.”
She closed her eyes.
“You don’t have to tell me if it’s too painful.”
“I think,” she said in a thin voice, “that facing this is exactly what my mind is trying to tell me to do. I can’t bury it any longer.”
He waited, giving her space and time to gather herself enough to look into that black pit she’d been avoiding for a year now.
“I stayed out way too late. Not that that area of town is exactly safe in broad daylight, but I stayed too long with a client. They were having some serious trouble in that house and I was worried about violence erupting. Nothing had happened that I could call the police for. I mean, nobody got hit, nobody threatened anybody, but it was building that way, and I was trying to mediate and calm it down, and wondering if I should get the children out, at least for the night. Anyhow, I lost track of time.”
She opened her eyes in time to see him nod.
“So when I came out of the complex, the streets were fairly empty, although not completely. They seldom are. But at least in the daytime, there are plenty of people out and about. It helps. But I knew I was in trouble when I was halfway to my car and all of sudden there was nobody at all on the street. They just melted away, except for three guys. I knew I needed to get to a safe place or into my car fast. I didn’t make it.” She fell silent, fighting for control as her heart hammered and her fists clenched so tightly her nails bit into her palms.
Cliff rose swiftly and came to sit right beside her. His powerful arm wrapped around her shoulders. She turned into him as if he were a bastion of safety.
“I was lucky,” she said. “Very lucky. As soon as they grabbed for me, I started screaming my head off. They just laughed. They thought they had me. Except...” Her voice broke. “Do you know how much courage it took for someone in the surrounding buildings to call the cops? I do. I didn’t expect it. I thought I was done.”
“Why so courageous for someone to call?”
“Retaliation. It’s another world, Cliff. People there don’t dare call the police about much. Between gang retaliation and the way the cops themselves can behave, it’s all too often a lose-lose situation for them.”
“God!”
“But somebody called. And for once the cops did it right.”
“What do you mean?”
“They didn’t come in with a dozen cars, sirens screaming. They didn’t give away that they had been called. I barely remember, I was down on the ground by then, but I heard this engine purr, and then the spotlight came on, and some time later there were a half dozen patrol cars there. It’s all confused. You’d think something like that would be etched so clearly in my brain I couldn’t forget a bit of it.”
“Maybe not remembering is better.”
“Maybe. I don’t know. I remember the terror, I remember fighting as best I could, I even remember the way one guy’s breath smelled. He was so damn drunk. Anyway, I got off easy, with a few bruises and scrapes and some torn clothing.”
“I don’t know that I’d exactly call that getting off easy.”
“Cliff, I was lucky. Very lucky because someone took a huge risk for me and called for help. I’ll never know who it was. I’ll never know who to thank.”
He twisted a little and drew her closer, so that he could stroke her hair and cuddle her better. Liking it, she almost wanted to burrow into him.
“Maybe,” he said slowly, “you need to think a little less about how lucky you were and face up to the fact that you suffered a horrible attack.”
“That occurred to me tonight when I started thinking about how work obsessed I’ve become. I’m not leaving room for anything else.”
“Not even eating, evidently.”
She didn’t answer for a few minutes. She was still trying to put pieces together in her mind. “I think I was putting myself in a prison of work because I was afraid of what was outside of it. Trying not to face what had happened to me. What could happen again. A lot of people were surprised I could go right back to work, that I didn’t even ask for another neighborhood.”
“You weren’t going to let them defeat you, were you?”
“I guess not. Which is where my stubbornness comes in. I thought of it like getting back on the horse that threw you. Maybe I was afraid that if I gave in even a little bit, then the fear would grow and start encompassing more things.”
“I suppose it might.”
“But the end result is I never dealt with it, and to avoid thinking about it, I’ve been working myself to the ragged edge. As if I could beat those guys th
at way.”
“You might just be too brave and stubborn for your own good.”
She fell silent, not certain she wanted to say more, unsure of how much she wanted to share with this man who had returned to her life only a few short days ago. At first he’d seemed so determined to dislike her but now... What had happened? Had he forgiven her? Had she forgiven herself? She felt so messed up right now that she didn’t know what was really going on inside herself.
He began to rub her back gently, soothingly. She tucked her head into his shoulder and risked winding her arms around his waist. His offered comfort started to fill her.
Then he asked the question, the one that gave her no quarter. “So what are you really afraid of here, Holly? Except for not being able to bury yourself in work, nothing changed by you coming out here.”
“Yes, it did,” she said, unable to silence the words, no matter how hard it was to speak them. “I don’t want to go back.”
* * *
Holy hell, Cliff thought. That was momentous. It left him speechless. He knew as well as anyone how much being a social worker meant to this woman. The scars of her determination still resided in his heart. Come to that, the scars of her determination probably resided in her heart and soul.
He couldn’t think of a damn thing to say. All he could do was hold her close and let her go wherever she wanted or needed to go with this. He wasn’t comfortable with feeling helpless, but he felt utterly helpless right now.
He vastly preferred to deal with matters, get them taken care of, pleasant or not, and move on. Not that he’d been great about the moving-on part with Holly. He remembered moping for a long time.
But now he certainly understood why she had needed someone to talk to. Just thinking that she shouldn’t go back would have rocked her to her very core. The attack was bad enough, and the single detail of the guy’s breath was enough to tell him what they’d been after. He had to admit he was surprised that she’d been able to return to her work in that same neighborhood. He couldn’t imagine.
