Dream Mender

by Sherryl Woods

  “I’m astonished no woman has snapped you up,” she said with honesty, wondering as she did so why she felt so glad that he was free and unencumbered. She never got involved with her patients. Lately, in fact, she never got involved with any man. Keeping her tone light and bantering, she added, “You’re obviously domesticated. You probably even do dishes.”

  He shook his head adamantly. “Oh, no. Not if I can help it. That’s probably the single greatest advantage I can think of having so many younger brothers and a baby sister. When I was younger, my turn to do dishes only came about once a week. If I was really on my toes, I’d land a job mowing lawns whenever it was my turn, or bribe one of the others to take it. Karyn earned more doing dishes for me than she ever did baby-sitting.”

  Suddenly his gaze fell on the empty plate and coffee cup. His expression became perplexed. “How’d you do that?”

  She grinned at him. “It’s all a matter of technique.”

  “That kind of sleight of hand belongs on stage.”

  “Hey, for all you know, I ate it all myself.”

  “Not a chance.”

  “How come?”

  Before she realized what he intended, he scooted his chair closer, reached over and brushed the tip of one bandaged finger across her lips. The gauze tickled, but there was nothing humorous about the emotional impact. Jenny felt the sizzle of that touch somewhere deep inside. “No jelly,” he said softly. “No powdered sugar.” He looked suddenly regretful. “I almost wish there were.”

  “Why?” she said in a voice that trembled as she lost herself to the intensity of his gaze.

  “So I could see if it tastes even sweeter on you.”

  Jenny’s pulse skittered wildly. She swallowed hard and dragged her gaze away. Countering the rush of unexpected feelings, she was suddenly all business.

  “Talk about distractions,” she murmured, partly to herself. The sizzling tension shattered like fragile glass as she injected an energetic note into her voice. “All this talk has kept you from your therapy. Let’s get to work. Do something a little more challenging. Try squeezing this washcloth.”

  She handed him a cloth that had been folded into a thick rectangular wad. With infinite patience, she closed his hand around it. It would be days before he could complete the closure, days before the tips of his fingers could comfortably touch his own palm.

  Frank, obviously, didn’t understand the difficulty. He shot her a look of pure disgust. “Any two-year-old can do that,” he said, obviously ignoring the difficulty of yesterday’s even less taxing assignment.

  “Then it should be a breeze for you.”

  She deliberately turned her back on him, sat at her desk and attacked her paperwork. When his cursing turned the air blue, she smiled, but she didn’t give an inch.

  “You’re doing this just to break my spirit,” he muttered finally.

  Jenny glanced up and saw the furrows in his brow as he struggled with the simple task. “Mr. Chambers…”

  “Frank, dammit!”

  “Frank,” she said quietly, countering irritation with determined calm. “A rodeo bronc rider couldn’t break your spirit. What I’m going for here is a little spirit of cooperation.”

  “Right,” he muttered between gritted teeth. But when the time came for him to return to his room, she had almost as much trouble getting him to leave as she’d had getting him there in the first place.

  * * *

  Something astonishing had happened to Frank in that therapy room, while doing those ridiculous yet nearly impossible exercises. He’d decided to fight. Not in some half-baked way, either, but with everything in him. Maybe it was because the prospect of doing anything else didn’t sit well with a man used to being firmly in control of his own life. Maybe the smoke had finally cleared from his brain so he could see things straight again.

  Or maybe it was just that one flash of insight he’d had, when he’d realized that he’d do almost anything to earn Jenny’s approval, to win one of her warm and tender smiles. He’d searched a long time to find a woman who was part hellion and part angel. And something told him he’d finally found her.

  He was back in his room, still squeezing the devil out of that washcloth, when his mother turned up. He smiled at her entrance. She was sixty-two now and her once-raven hair had turned gray, but nothing had daunted her spirit. She came in with all the bustle of the briskest nurse on the floor.

  “You’ve eaten your lunch?” she said, fussing around him.

  “Hours ago,” he said, resigned to the straightening of the sheets, the rearrangement of the flowers crowded on top of the room’s small dresser, the quick check of the trash can to assure that the housekeeping staff was on its toes.

  “Brushed your teeth?” She straightened up the things on his nightstand. Flicking away some invisible speck of lint.

  He endured the bustling activity as long as he could, then said, “Ma, settle down.”

  Not used to being still, she spent about ten seconds in the chair by the bed before she was up again, fiddling with the blinds until they let in the pale light of the sun as it burned off the last of the day’s fog. “You still giving that therapist trouble?”

  “No.”

  She nodded. “Good.” She shot him a pointed look. “She seems like a nice girl.”

  “She is.”

  “Pretty, too.”

  The description was far too bland to describe Jenny, but he nodded anyway. “Yes. What’s your point?”

  Shrewd blue eyes danced with amusement. “If you can’t figure that one out, boy, there’s no hope for you.”

  Frank nearly groaned aloud. If his mother got it into her head to play matchmaker, neither he nor Jenny would have another moment’s peace. “Stay out of it, Ma.”

  The remark was met with startled innocence. “Out of what? I was just making an observation.”

  “Your observation is duly noted.”

  “Is she married?”

  “Ma!”

  “Okay, okay, you do what you want. You’re not like your brothers. They’re always looking. Saturday night doesn’t pass, they’re not out with this one or that one. There are times I think I did you a terrible disservice by giving you so much responsibility. Maybe you think you’ve already finished raising your family. I just thought maybe you needed reminding that Karyn and your brothers aren’t the same as having a wife and kids of your own.”

  “Believe me, I’m aware of that.”

  “Are you really? You didn’t exactly rush into marrying Megan. Kept her dangling long enough.”

  At the mention of his ex-fiancée’s name, Frank felt a familiar tightness in his chest. “I don’t want to talk about Megan.”

  “That’s the trouble. You never did. You kept it all bottled up inside. Five years you dated that woman and then, poof, it was over. You never did say what happened, not even which one of you broke it off.”

  “And I don’t intend to say so now. Megan is history.”

  “Then let’s get back to the present. When are you seeing this Jenny again?”

  “Ma!” The muttered warning gave way to a chuckle. “You’re incorrigible.”

  She bent over and planted a kiss on his cheek. “There, then, that’s much better. It’s good to see you laughing again, Son. I’ve been worried about you. You’ve been entirely too glum these past few days.”

  “I’ll survive.”

  “I know that. Even when you were a little boy, you were a survivor. Of all my kids, you were the one who never shed a tear. Your father used to say you’d been born with a stiff upper lip.”

  “Not so stiff,” he countered. “Half the time, it was split from losing control of my bike on the hills and slamming into some wall or car.”

  They were laughing at the memories when Jenny came by. Frank saw her hesitate in the doorway. “You can come in.”

  “I’m so used to hearing shouts from this room, I wasn’t quite sure what to make of this new cheerful sound. Thought for sure I had to b
e in the wrong place.”

  Frank caught the beaming smile of welcome on his mother’s face, the speculative gleam in her eyes.

  “Come on in, child. We were just talking over old times,” his mother said.

  “I could come back later,” Jenny offered.

  “No, indeed,” his mother said. “You sit right over here.” She shoved the room’s only chair even closer to the side of the bed. “I think maybe I’ll go get myself a cup of coffee.”

  Jenny backed away a step. “Really, it’s not necessary. Maybe if you stick around, he won’t grumble quite so much about the therapy.”

  “Don’t you believe it. He enjoys shocking me with his language. He knows he’s gotten too big for me to wash his mouth out with soap.”

  “Ma, you never once washed my mouth out with soap,” Frank protested, enjoying the expression of amusement on Jenny’s face.

  “Only because you didn’t use any of those foul words until you knew you outweighed me.”

  Frank turned to Jenny. “Don’t believe her ‘poor, pitiful me’ act. She wouldn’t hesitate to take on any one of us no matter our size or our age.”

  “That’s the truth,” Kevin said coming through the door just then. “She may be tiny, but she has us all cowed.”

  “Says you,” Tim scoffed, entering right on his brother’s heels. “I’m not scared of Ma.”

  Mrs. Chambers drew herself up to her full height, which was about as intimidating as a sparrow’s. “Well, you ought to be, young man,” she said sternly. “Where were you last night?”

  Tim immediately blushed furiously. Avoiding Jenny’s laughter-filled eyes, he said meekly, “I had a date.”

  “What kind of date lasts until three a.m.?”

  “Whoa,” Frank said, enjoying seeing Tim squirm. “Now you’re going to catch it, baby brother. You know what Ma’s like when she doesn’t get her beauty rest.”

  Tim gave a dramatic shrug. He slid his arm around Jenny’s waist. “Since I’m already in hot water, what are you doing tonight?”

  “She’s going home,” Frank said, suddenly no longer amused.

  Jenny’s gaze shot to him, and her lips formed a mutinous frown. “Oh, really? Who made you the keeper of my social calendar?”

  Frank’s eyes narrowed. His voice dropped. “Do you want to go out with him?”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” she said with a shake of her head that set her curls bounding indignantly. “Whether I do or I don’t is not something I intend to discuss in front of a roomful of people.”

  “We could go outside,” Tim said at once, his eyes bright with mischief.

  “You do and I’ll be right behind you,” Frank countered.

  His gaze locked with his brother’s. In that instant of masculine challenge, a clear message was sent and received. Tim draped an arm around his mother’s shoulders. “Come on, Ma, I guess it’s you and me, after all. Kevin, you, too.”

  “But we just got here,” Kevin grumbled.

  “Now,” Tim said with the kind of firm diplomacy that would have made him the perfect State Department emissary. Of course, the family liked to tease him that by the time he finished law school, he’d probably be too old to board a plane, anyway.

  Blessed silence descended the minute they were gone. Jenny began inching backward toward the door.

  “Sometimes, they’re a little overwhelming,” Frank said. “But they mean well.”

  “I can see that.”

  “Did you come by for a reason?”

  “I just wanted to check and see how things were going with your therapy before I took off for the night. They should be in soon with your dinner tray.”

  “Do you follow all your patients this closely?”

  There was no mistaking the hint of pink that tinted her cheeks. “As a matter of fact, I do.”

  “Then why does it bother you that I asked the question?”

  “Who says it bothers me? Look, if you’re okay, I’ll be on my way.”

  “I’d be a lot better if you’d stick around.”

  “And do what?”

  “Talk to me.”

  “Your family could do that. Why’d you chase them out?”

  “I didn’t chase. They left. Besides, they talk to me all the time. I’ve heard all their stories. I’d like to hear yours.”

  Jenny sighed, but she stopped inching toward the door. “My stories aren’t all that fascinating.”

  “They would be to me.”

  She stared at him, her brow knit by a puzzled frown. “Why?”

  “Does there have to be a specific reason?”

  “There usually is,” she said with a distinct trace of cynicism.

  “I’m not exactly likely to put any moves on you,” he said, holding up his bandaged hands.

  The remark earned him a genuine chuckle. “True.”

  “Then there’s nothing to be afraid of, is there?” Frank wasn’t sure why he was pushing or why she was so afraid. He only knew it was important to his soul in some elemental way to keep her from leaving. When she finally sat, even though she kept the chair a careful distance away, he breathed a sigh of relief.

  “So, Jenny Michaels, exactly what makes you tick?”

  Chapter Four

  Frank scowled at the ringing phone. How the devil was any man with five interfering brothers and one doting sister supposed to get to know a woman? he wondered as the phone rang for the third time in the hour since he’d encouraged Jenny to tell him all about herself. It was not the first time in his adult life that he’d been faced with the dilemma. Which was probably why it had taken him five years to figure out that Megan was the wrong woman for him and another two months to let her down gently. She’d fit in so well with the entire family, he hadn’t noticed until too late that she didn’t suit him. He had no intention of making the same mistake again.

  “Karyn,” he told his sister after listening to five minutes of household-repair questions, “I love you dearly, but why are you asking me how to fix the sink, when you have a perfectly good husband? Is Brad out?”

  He glanced over and caught Jenny’s amused expression. Rather than seeming frustrated by the nonstop interruptions, she appeared relieved. In fact, she seemed to enjoy them. She tucked the receiver between his chin and his shoulder each time and eavesdropped blatantly.

  “No, but my husband races sports cars and sells ritzy sedans,” Karyn retorted. “What makes you think he knows anything about sinks? Talk about sexist remarks.”

  “Any man who can tear a carburetor apart and put it back together again in five minutes flat ought to be able to open a trap under the sink and clean out whatever’s stopping up the drain. For that matter, you ought to be able to do it yourself.”

  Karyn sighed heavily. “With six brothers in the house, who needed to learn?”

  “Now who’s being sexist?”

  “Never mind. I’ll call the plumber.”

  “Are you sure the sink’s actually clogged?” he inquired suspiciously.

  “Well, of course it is. Why else would I call?”

  “Maybe you just don’t want me to feel useless while I’m lying here in my hospital bed.”

  “Frank Chambers, I am standing here in an inch of water and you’re accusing me of lying?”

  “It wouldn’t be the first time, Toots. I love you for trying, though. See you tomorrow.”

  He heard her indignant huff as he signaled to Jenny to put the phone back in its cradle. “I swear to you I didn’t ask you to stay just so you could answer the phone.”

  “It’s okay. I love seeing you with your family. How many are there again? When they’re all here, it seems like dozens.”

  “Five brothers. One sister. One brother-in-law. All trouble.”

  She studied him thoughtfully, her green eyes intent. “Something tells me you don’t really mind,” she said after a thorough examination that nearly left him breathless, despite its innocence. Never before had he been with a woman who had the uncanny ability to
see inside his soul.

  “Am I that transparent?”

  Apparently she detected the nervousness in his voice, because she laughed and reassured him. “No, it’s actually something you said the other day. You understood what I meant about making a difference, about being needed.”

  “You get the same fix from your patients.”

  “Absolutely.”

  “No brothers or sisters?”

  “Nope. I’m an only child. My parents live back East. I don’t see them that often.”

  Frank couldn’t imagine what it was like for her being separated from the only family she had. For all his grumbling, he rarely went more than a day without dropping in to see his mother or one of the other members of the tight-knit Chambers clan. They all checked in daily by phone, just to touch base, exchange news or seek advice. To his occasional regret, the latter was growing increasingly rare.

  “Don’t you miss your parents?” he asked Jenny.

  “Yes, but we were never as close as your family is. We love each other, and they’re great people, but they raised me to be independent. When the time came, they nudged me out of the nest just like a mother bird does. None of us has ever looked back. Holidays generally give us enough time to catch up.”

  The phone rang again. Frank glowered at it. “Tell ’em I’ve gone to Tahiti,” he suggested.

  “You wish,” Jenny countered, answering it and then putting the receiver next to his ear.

  “Well, well,” Jared said. “Look who’s answering your phone at seven o’clock at night. Does she get overtime for that?”

  Frank scanned Jenny’s face to see if she’d overheard the teasing comment with its sly innuendo. She seemed awfully intent suddenly on settling just so in the chair by his bed. She smoothed her dress over her knees, crossed her legs, smoothed her dress again.