She had been wondering that, too. She was only five-four and just over a hundred pounds, hardly a match for this man, who easily had a good ten inches and eighty pounds of pure muscle on her. If he hadn’t been so clearly helpless, with his leg twisted at a dreadful angle, she probably would have found him terrifying.
“I don’t know,” she said. “But I’m willing to try, if you think it’s wise to move.”
He laughed again, a harsh sound that exhaled puffs of cold white air. “It’s wiser than sitting here. That cracking sound is the blood freezing in my veins.”
“Okay, then.” She stood, patting her pocket to be sure the monitor hadn’t fallen out. “Tell me what to do.”
“Put one hand under my arm.” He leaned forward. “You’ll need leverage. Grab hold all the way up, under my shoulder.”
It was an uncomfortable intimacy, tucking her hand under his armpit and letting him grip her by the upper arm. But he was so cold. No warmth made it through her gloves, and in the end it was as impersonal as trying to lift a mannequin.
Unfortunately, it didn’t work.
The first time, he came up several inches, but she wasn’t strong enough to lift him, and he couldn’t get any leverage with his damaged hand. They tried a second time, and a third. Nothing worked. Finally, he dropped back onto the snow with a groan.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Is there someone else I could call? A man might—”
“It’s all right.” He shook his head, and she saw perspiration glisten on his forehead. He must be in a terrific amount of pain. “The ambulance will be here before anyone else could come.”
She felt as if she’d failed him. “Is there anything else I can do? Can I bring you another blanket? Something warm to drink?”
“Just sit with me, if you’re warm enough to stand it.”
She hesitated. Instinctively, her gaze went back to the small light outside the garage apartment door. The beacon that signaled safety. “I—I don’t know—”
“Please. Having someone to talk to will make the time go more quickly.”
She felt like a jerk. But, once again, he had no idea how much he was asking.
“All right,” she said, failing to sound quite as cheerful as she wanted to. “I can do that.”
She tucked the hem of her puffy coat under her bottom, then sat carefully, mindful of the snow, which seemed to have melted, then refrozen, under him, becoming dangerously slick. “Is this okay?”
“It’s great,” he said, closing his eyes in obvious relief as the wind stopped blowing directly on his face. “You’re an angel, Beth, my tenant. Thank you for braving the storm to come help a poor, wounded moron who doesn’t even have the sense to wear a coat in the snow.”
She wondered when the last time was that she’d heard her own name and “brave” in the same sentence. It felt ridiculous, especially since every muscle in her body was clenched.
“It was the least I could do. You did give me a great rent on the apartment.”
She knew she sounded stilted, even kind of gruff. But it was such an unnerving situation, sitting out here in her pajamas, in a snowstorm, with a complete stranger. Fear chased away any social graces she’d ever had.
Tilly had once suggested that Beth might want to try honesty instead of fake bravado, which occasionally could be off-putting. She knew Tilly was right. But she hated sounding pitiful.
Right now, especially, honesty felt dangerous. She couldn’t admit how scared she’d been to set even one foot outside the apartment. She didn’t want him to think he’d let a lunatic into his life. She’d be out on the street by morning.
“Well, if you’d said no, it would have served me right.” He shook his head. “I’m a damn fool, and that’s the truth. When Angela finds out what happened, she’ll never let me hear the end of it.”
“Who is Angela? And…what did happen?”
“Angela’s my ex-wife. She’s says I’m too impulsive. It drives her crazy, since she personally hasn’t indulged an impulse in about a decade. We’ve been divorced for three years, but we have a daughter, and apparently that gives her complaining rights in perpetuity.”
He shifted, as if he wanted to edge a little nearer to Beth’s warmth, which made her heart knock nervously. She couldn’t sit any closer to him. She couldn’t…
But abruptly he groaned, freezing in place. “God, I must have smashed that shinbone like an eggshell.”
He took a couple of steadying breaths. “As to what happened,” he went on, “I’m afraid this time I proved Angela right. I let my temper get the better of me.”
“What happened?”
“She came to pick up Jeannie tonight—Jeannie’s my daughter—and as usual, Angela was a constant stream of complaints. I was ten minutes late bringing Jeannie back, a violation of our terms. Jeannie shouldn’t have had pizza again so soon. The house is a mess. The Douglas fir is going to come down on the roof in the next ice storm. I should have left more lights on in the house. I think she even blamed me because the forecast called for snow.”
“Good grief.” Beth didn’t feel comfortable joining in the criticism of a woman she’d never met, but she could imagine how unpleasant that must have been.
Her father was a lot like that. Nothing pleased him. He seemed to think that his constant disapproval of everything and everyone was a sign of superiority. But it made everyone else feel like dirt.
“I know.” Scott shrugged. “I shouldn’t have let her get to me. Nothing I’ve done has pleased her in ten years—and most of the time I just think it’s funny. But tonight I was tired, and out of sorts because Jeannie was leaving. They’re going to visit Angela’s parents in Chicago. For two weeks. It feels like forever.”
He heaved a sigh. “Anyhow, I let her rile me. The last thing she complained about was that I still hadn’t brought the Christmas sleigh off the roof. So, like a fool, the minute she left I went up there to dismantle it. Seemed like a good way to work off some steam. No gloves, no jacket, nothing but my temper to keep me warm.”
“Oh, dear.”
“Yeah. Climbing on a snowy roof when you’re ticked off and distracted is just about as dumb as it gets. I missed my footing and came crashing down. When I came to, I was here, with my leg in about four pieces and frostbite gnawing at my fingers.”
He sighed. “The sleigh, of course, is still up there, laughing at me.”
Beth slanted a covert glance at him. He seemed so…so nice, so open and self-effacing. She hadn’t known that men like Scott Mulvaney really existed—men who would admit their own mistakes and even find humor in them. Men who would risk their machismo by admitting to any vulnerability, any flaws.
Out of sorts because Jeannie was leaving, he’d said. That was another thing she’d never known. Men who liked being around their children.
She felt as if she should take him to the shelter and display him to the other battered, abandoned and desperate women, like a unicorn she’d found in this snowy fairyland. Just to give them hope.
But it would probably be false hope, and they’d all had enough of that. She’d only known this man for about three minutes here. Anybody could maintain a nice facade for three minutes.
Suddenly the snow at the north side of the house began to change colors. A hint of red, then white, then red again.
The ambulance had arrived.
“I’ll show them where to come,” she said. She scrambled to her feet, trying not to reveal how eager she was to turn him over to someone else.
At the last minute, he reached up and caught her hand. This time she felt the warmth of his fingers. She tried not to flinch.
“Thanks, Beth,” he said. “I owe you one.”
“Don’t be silly. I owe you, for giving Daniel and me a place to live. Lots of people would have said no.” She heard her voice hardening. “Lots of people did.”
“Then lots of people are fools. I may be dumb enough to climb up on the roof in a snowstorm, but even I know better than to turn dow
n my very own guardian angel.”
WHEN DANIEL GIGGLED, Beth’s apartment filled with sunshine, warm enough to melt the snow right off the windows. Her postnatal exercise session, something she’d started at the shelter and had continued since moving in here, was a twenty-minute giggle fest.
She loved it. Daniel’s beaming face definitely took the sting out of getting aerobic.
His favorite maneuver was what Beth called the “flying baby.” He rode facedown on her shins while she repeatedly tucked her knees in toward her shoulders. Now that he was getting so much bigger, it was quite a workout, and it never failed to amuse him. He seemed to find it excruciatingly funny when, on the last few painful reps, Beth began to grunt and groan.
“You’re getting to be as round as a pumpkin, duckie,” she said as she lowered him to the floor. He squealed with laughter and rolled onto his stomach, which he’d recently learned to do. He immediately became fascinated by the fringe on his blanket, with that quick turnaround that babies specialized in.
She leaned back, panting, and ran her hand over her stomach, which was finally almost as flat as it had been before the pregnancy. Just five more pounds. Maybe if she didn’t have anything but salad for lunch this month…
Unfortunately, she could smell the chicken-and-broccoli casseroles she’d put in the oven an hour ago—clearly they were browning, and almost ready.
She could picture Chrissie Allen, who taught aerobics at the shelter, raising an elegant brow to suggest that those last five pounds of baby fat would come off faster if she didn’t indulge in cheesy casseroles, but Beth didn’t really care.
“Some people like to eat, don’t they, duckie?” She did a quick kiss-the-baby push-up, and planted a noisy smack on Daniel’s neck, which of course set off another round of giggles. “Let’s hope our landlord is one of them.”
She scooped him up and arranged him in his carrier, making sure he had his red rattle, which had become his second-favorite toy, right behind his own bare foot.
Then she put the carrier on the small kitchen table, a safe distance away from the bouquet of white roses Scott Mulvaney had sent to her when he got home from the hospital two days ago, with a small note that simply read “Thank you.”
He’d called, too, but Beth hadn’t answered the phone. She hadn’t felt ready to talk to him. She wasn’t sure she was ready, even now, but it didn’t seem neighborly to ignore his injury—or his flowers.
Daniel stretched wiggling fingers toward the flowers, cooing happily while she set to work pulling the casseroles out of the oven.
It was terrific how well he’d adjusted to the move. Three days here, a brand-new crib, new carrier, new everything…and he seemed to feel right at home.
She wondered if she would ever get to that point herself. Maybe, she thought, scanning the small space. It had a lot going for it. The apartment was seven hundred square feet of silent support, furnished without elegance or uniformity, but with something even better—the constant reminders of all the supportive people who wished them well and had donated so generously.
It provided privacy and independence, both things she feared she’d lost forever. And, in her tiny bedroom, the real magic—a computer into which she entered claim information for a local insurance company and actually earned her own keep.
Yes, she thought, inhaling deeply the comforting scent of bubbling cheese, this apartment might become a safe place. Perhaps the safest place she’d ever found.
Of course, that still didn’t mean she could step out on the sidewalk and actually go somewhere. Like across the yard and up those steps to the back door of the main house to deliver the casserole to Scott.
She froze, the glass dish’s heat steaming through her oven mitts to warm her tingling fingers. She felt her chest tightening as she pictured herself knocking on the door. Pictured him opening it—filling it with his imposing, muscular body.
No. She set the casserole down with a bang so firm it made Daniel drop his rattle.
“Sorry,” she said as he fixed her with an openmouthed stare. She retrieved the rattle from the table, gave it a quick rinse and handed it back. “I forgot Tilly’s rule, didn’t I, duckie? Don’t dither. Act!”
She flipped the mitts onto the counter. “Come on, Daniel. We’ve got to get bundled up. We’ve got somewhere to go right this minute.”
Of course, with an infant you never did anything “right this minute.” Daniel thought putting his coat and boots on was a good wriggle-and-giggle game, so it was a full half hour before she was able to get both of them into their winter gear, wrap up the casserole and make her way across the snowy yard to Scott’s door.
But she did make it.
The sense of victory flushed through her as she climbed the stone steps toward the kitchen door. Daniel’s carrier dangled from her right hand, and she glanced down at him, wanting to share the moment with someone. He smiled, as if he wished he knew how to say, “Way to go, Mom.”
Okay. Next step. Knock.
She knocked.
She was certain that Scott was in. His black car was still in the garage beneath her apartment. It hadn’t moved since the accident. The ambulance had taken him away immediately that night. When he came back the next morning, he had a cast on his leg and his arm in a sling.
Her computer desk was in front of her bedroom window, so she had seen him drive up with an older man and a woman in a white uniform, who had helped him into the house.
Since then, people had come and gone. She tried not to be nosy, but she couldn’t help seeing the activity below. FedEx trucks and businessmen with satchels, and once or twice a florist with huge plants and arrangements. Including the one he’d sent to her.
At least three times in the past two days, a pizza-delivery car had pulled around to the back drive.
That’s where she’d gotten the idea that he might be ready for something homemade to eat. She’d always been a pretty good cook. A prompt, well-prepared meal had been one of the few things that would placate her father, so in her house, learning to cook was as important as learning to swim if you lived on a lake.
That, and looking pretty. Her dad had always insisted on that. So had Tony. Putting on makeup and doing her hair had become second nature to Beth. Even when she’d been sleeping in her car, she’d always found somewhere to bathe and fix her hair.
She knocked again, hoping she hadn’t wrestled Daniel into the coat for nothing. Surely someone was here. She smelled wood smoke coming from one of the chimneys. On the north side of the house, in the first-floor round tower room, a warm, amber light was glowing.
Finally, she heard footsteps. A tall, brunette man moved slowly by the kitchen window.
“This is it, Danny,” she whispered. The butterflies threatened to swarm her stomach again, but she realized that this time it wasn’t panic. It was just a fluttery awareness that her landlord was coming, and that he was a very attractive man.
“Beth!” Scott swung open the door, looking pleased to see her. He also looked about ten times as handsome as she remembered. Of course, now he wasn’t half frozen and half delirious with pain.
It had been too dark that night for her to see how green his eyes were, or that his cheek dimpled on the left side when he smiled. The snow had left his hair wet and damp, so she hadn’t noticed how perfectly its glossy waves framed his face.
He leaned down a little and peered at the carrier. “And this must be your son…Danny, isn’t it?” Straightening, he aimed that amazing smile at her. “I’m glad you came,” he said. “I’ve been wanting to thank you in person, but as you can see I’m a little too clumsy on this cast to tackle stairs.”
She glanced down at the crutches tucked under his arms. His left leg was in a large cast, with only his toes sticking out from the white plaster. His left hand was no longer in a sling, but she could now see that it, too, had been shrouded, thumb to elbow, in a cast.
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “They really were broken, then. It must have been pa
inful.”
“Yeah. A big mess. The wrist should heal fine, but the leg took a couple hours of surgery.” He patted his leg cast with his good hand. “I was asleep at the time, but I’m picturing lots of superglue and safety pins.”
She laughed. “I hope not. Where did you go? Sesame Street General Hospital?”
“More like the Marquis de Sade Memorial Torture Chamber. You should see the size of their hypodermics.” He stepped back and held the door open. “Come on in. You must be freezing.”
She almost said yes. There was something so easygoing about Scott Mulvaney. He acted as if he’d known her for years, instead of mere minutes.
Best of all, he didn’t treat her like a second-rate citizen, just because she had come to him from a homeless shelter. She’d seen that attitude so often. People kept their distance, wouldn’t make eye contact, as if you were somehow dirty, as if homelessness were a disease they could catch.
At the last minute, though, she couldn’t do it. It wasn’t that she was afraid of him personally. With that broken hand and a broken leg, he was probably the least threatening man in the entire state of New Jersey.
No, what stopped her was the same old thing, the same demon she’d been fighting ever since she first left Tony and found herself sleeping in one shelter after another. The fear of strange places. More specifically, the fear of having a panic attack in a strange place.
“Come on in,” he repeated. “Actually, you showed up at the perfect time. I could really use another pair of hands. Are you any good with scissors?”
“Scissors?”
“Yeah. Or colored pencils? Glitter? Glue? Papier-mâché? I’ll take any help I can get. Can you make giraffes out of clay?”
She tilted her head. “I…I don’t know. Why?” She leaned forward. “Are you running a preschool in there?”
“Nope. Just trying to put on the world’s best birthday party. As soon as Jeannie gets back from Chicago. She’s going to be six on the fifteenth. It’s the first party Angela’s ever trusted me to handle, so I’ve got a lot to prove. But one tiny little tumble from the third-story roof and now look. I can’t even hold a pair of scissors.”
More Than Words Volume 4 Page 32
