by Peggy Webb
Still, Jim couldn’t unbend. Wouldn’t unbend. Embattled warriors never gave an inch. That’s how he saw himself, now. Though at the moment he couldn’t have said whether his battle was with his wheelchair or the merciless attraction that was turning his blood to fire.
Retreat was out of the question. Attack was his only option.
“As you can see, something did happen.”
That ought to send her running for the hills.
“I would never have pictured you as a man given to self-pity.”
Her remark was like a dash of icy water. It cooled his anger but not his ardor. Damn it all, her courage in the face of his ire only served to stoke the flames that were already raging out of control.
His common sense told him to retreat. His pride told him to stay and fight.
“It’s not self-pity you see, Miss Sloan. It’s honesty.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Standing Bear. I was out of line, and I sincerely regret that.”
She didn’t look regretful: she looked like a woman on a mission, though only God knew what it was. If not pity, what? Curiosity? It could be. He’d known folks who were drawn to other people’s tragedy, who found a sort of oddball comfort in knowing that fate had caught somebody else in its cross fires and spared them.
Sarah didn’t look like that kind of woman. Nor did she appear to be the kind who hung around stage doors and trespassed on private property for a glimpse at somebody the media had made famous.
Beyond Sarah’s shoulder a series of contrails mushroomed across the sky. Jim could feel the controls of the jet in his hand, see the gold-tipped clouds as he skimmed their tops. He clenched his jaw and squeezed the arms of his wheelchair so tightly his knuckles turned white.
There was a sound like the strangling of a baby bird, and suddenly Sarah was kneeling beside his chair, one hand on his arm.
“I didn’t mean to upset you,” she whispered. “Is there anything I can do to help?”
Her touch sent shock waves through him. She was so close he could see the burst of gold in the center of her green eyes. He could smell her hair, her skin. Something soft and floral and utterly enticing.
With color blooming across her cheeks and her head tilted sideways on her slender neck, she reminded him of a rose.
Need became a riptide, swamping him without mercy, dragging him under. He was drowning in her. Drowning.
He had to have air. He had to break free.
“You can leave me the hell alone.”
Chapter Three
Sarah sank into herself, trying to shrivel in her own skin. She felt foolish. Ridiculous. But above all she felt sick at heart. Not for herself. Not because she was embarrassed and uncomfortable and wished she were anywhere except on the Bear’s front stoop, wished she were anything except an unwanted guest.
No, she was sick at heart for him, for the proud handsome warrior in the wheelchair who guarded his private grief like the bear he was called, for the dashing pilot who had once soared the skies like an eagle, for the proud hero who had fought for his country without regard for his own well-being.
He deserved better than this. He deserved more than the crippled body, the dashed hopes, the broken dreams.
He was a man of great dignity…and even greater privacy. Too late she realized her enormous blunder in coming to his house.
She was an intruder. A stranger. She had no right to impose herself upon him. She had no right to bake him chocolate cakes, to speculate about his house and yard, to breach the fortress he’d built around himself.
Leave, her mind said, while her heart bade her stay.
He was her Bear, her rooftop angel, the man she’d come to rely upon as surely as she relied upon the sun and the moon and the stars. Somehow when he was on the rooftop, everything seemed right with her world. Somehow looking up to see him while she tried to bring order out of chaos reassured her. As long as he was watching over her, she could not be daunted by the tumult in her life. Problems would not overtake her and swallow her soul.
His face was fierce, but oh, his eyes… Looking into them, Sarah wanted to brush the lock of black hair from his forehead. She wanted to cradle him against her breast and whisper sweet words that would soothe his soul. She wanted to plant tender kisses all over his face and say, I understand. I know you don’t mean what you said.
She wanted to hold him, merely to hold him.
His shattered eyes held hers, and the moment became an eternity. She forgot her chocolate cake, she forgot reason, she forgot everything except tenderness.
And something more. Something she dared not explore.
Her hand was still on his arm. She felt the tremor that ran through his body. She sensed that he was on the edge of control.
It was time to go. Past time.
She opened her mouth, but what was there left to say? Without another word she wheeled around and left his house, left his yard, left her cake sitting on the doorstep like an orphan.
At the hedge between their houses, she turned back to get her cake. Why insult him with unwanted food? He would only construe it as pity.
The Bear was still in his doorway, watching her, his expression as unfathomable as the skies he once claimed as his own.
Riveted, she stood at the hedgerow, prisoner of the fallen warrior, slave to the currents that passed between them. Her breath stalled, her heart stopped beating, her skin caught fire.
She would have stayed there forever for a glimpse of him, merely a glimpse, for somehow in the past thirty minutes he’d gone from guardian angel to obsession, and she didn’t know how she was going to live the rest of her life without seeing him. Even from afar.
The sun beat down on her, and her overheated skin felt sticky inside the blue sweater she wore. Perspiration beaded her upper lip and ran down her throat into the collar of her white blouse.
And still the Bear watched her. Something inside her yearned toward him, and even across the distance she felt his response.
Or was she merely dreaming with her eyes wide open?
Abruptly the Bear shut down. The change was as dramatic as if he’d flipped off a light switch. His body stiffened, his expression became guarded, his eyes shuttered.
Loss washed over Sarah. And regret, almost too much regret for a heart to hold.
“Don’t shut me out,” she wanted to scream.
And yet…Jim Standing Bear was a stranger to her. Everything she knew about him she’d heard from Delta or read in the back issues of the newspaper. She didn’t know what kind of breakfast cereal he preferred, whether he liked cream in his coffee, and whether he read the paper before breakfast or afterward. She didn’t know if he folded his socks or stuffed them together like sausages. She had no idea of the kind of music he loved, the kind of literature, the kind of pastimes.
Nor would she ever know. Abruptly the Bear wheeled back into his house and closed the front door, shutting out the chocolate cake as surely as he’d shut out Sarah.
Sarah slid through the hedge and back into her own life, a life that was suddenly bereft of magic.
“Did he like that chocolate cake?”
Delta didn’t pussyfoot around. If she wanted to know something, even if it was none of her business, she came right out and asked.
Sarah pulled off her sweater and hung it on the coat rack. “I don’t know.”
“What do you mean? You don’t know?” Delta studied her so closely she felt like a bug under a microscope. “Mm-hmm. So that’s how it is.”
She sounded none too pleased, and all of a sudden Sarah wanted nothing more than to put a pleasant face on the ill-fated visit.
“I barged in without even bothering to call and find out if he wanted company. Goodness, I didn’t even bother to find out whether he was free. As it turns out, he was in the midst of a physical therapy session.” Sarah got lemonade from the refrigerator and poured two tall glasses, one for herself and one for her dad. “For Pete’s sake, I should have known better.”
Delta
was still scrutinizing her. “Mm-hmm. I see how it is. I most surely do.”
Sarah never was good at hiding her feelings. They were always written plainly on her face for the entire world to see. She didn’t want Delta or anybody seeing how it was.
She could just hear what people would say. Who does she think she is? Jim Standing Bear wouldn’t look twice at a plain woman like her.
Under the guise of adding cookies to the tray, she turned her back to Delta.
“Is everything all right with Dad?”
“He’s right as rain today. Cracking jokes about discovering a cure for Alzheimer’s now that he has time on his hands.”
Sarah’s heart squeezed. Here is where she belonged. At home with the father who needed her. Not running through a hedge to take chocolate cakes to a perfect stranger.
Perfect. The word whispered through her mind, but she didn’t let herself dwell on it.
“Thank you for watching him while I was gone.”
“It wasn’t no problem. He’s sweet as a lamb.”
“I’m going upstairs to take him some lemonade and cookies.”
“Why don’t you take him out to the garden? The sunshine will do you both good.”
Why, indeed? There would be no garden walks for Sarah and her father today. Just in case. In case Jim Standing Bear appeared on his rooftop. In case he glanced her way. In case she glanced his.
In case he could see the small fracture in her heart.
Sitting just inside the doorway, Jim called himself every kind of bastard. Cruelty was new to Jim. He’d always despised it.
And yet today he’d used it against a sweet woman simply to cover his own inadequacies. He jerked open the door to call her back, to run after her and apologize.
Then he remembered that he couldn’t run.
Loss swept through him like winds off the Arctic. He bowed his head, and that’s when he noticed the chocolate cake, sitting forlornly on his doorstep.
She’d baked him a cake. His favorite. How had she known? As if he had to wonder. Delta, of course.
He leaned down and scooped the cake up, then carried it into the kitchen. It looked delicious, but Jim had lost his appetite.
The only way he knew to get it back was to apologize to Sarah Sloan. There was no sound in the house except the motor of his wheelchair. No music, no laughter, no sound of friends’ voices.
At his desk Jim pulled out a sheet of letterhead stationery. Lt. Cmdr. Jim Standing Bear, U.S. Navy.
He wadded the paper and threw it into the garbage can, then rifled through his desk for something else to write on. A scrap of white paper. Even lined paper would do. Anything except stationery that screamed of the past.
Finally he found a notebook with clean white sheets. Tearing one off, he began to write.
Dear Ms. Sloan…
That wouldn’t do. It was too formal, too cold. He ripped it up, tore out another sheet and started all over.
Dear Sarah…
Jim’s hand went still. Even writing her name gave him a perverse thrill.
Taking a deep breath, he started again.
Thank you for the cake.
No, that wouldn’t do. It sounded as if he were writing a thank-you note. He jerked out another sheet.
Sarah.
That was better. Not cold but not so personal, either. No terms of endearment.
I was unjustifiably cruel to you today, and for that I am sincerely sorry.
There. That was better.
But how was he going to deliver it? Stamp it and stick it in the mail? Have her sitting in her house for two days thinking him all kinds of monster, thinking herself wrong and foolish for coming to his house?
Jim wadded the note and tossed it into the waste-basket.
There was only one honorable thing to do: apologize to Sarah in person.
It wasn’t Fred Astaire who greeted her, but her father, sitting beside the window in a pensive mood.
“I’ve been thinking, Sarah. It’s time for you to go back to work.”
“Soon, Dad. I still have a lot of things to do here. Settling in things,” she added, but she didn’t fool him for a minute.
“I want you and Julie to hire a sitter.” His smile was wry. “For my Fred Astaire days.”
“Dad, we don’t have to talk about this now. I brought cookies and lemonade.”
“We have to talk now, Sarah, before Fred comes back.” Laughing, he grabbed a cookie. “Better Fred than King Kong. These are good, Sarah. Have one. You’re too skinny.”
While she nibbled a cookie, her father pressed his case.
“You know the progression of Alzheimer’s. It could take years.” He squeezed her hands. “God gave you a talent, Sarah, a beautiful talent for the underdog. Promise me you’ll get out of this house and use it.”
He tightened his grip on her hands and his voice became urgent.
“Promise me, Sarah.”
Here was the man who had been both mother and father to her. The man who had taught her how to skate and how to ride a bicycle and how to look life in the face and dare it to defeat her.
She would do anything for him. Crawl through hell and back if he asked her.
“I promise,” she said.
Jim was filled with excitement. And dread. The task ahead loomed large in his mind.
“You don’t have to do it. You can pick up the phone and call her.”
He was talking to himself. A first. Maybe everybody was right. Maybe his mind was playing dreadful tricks.
Jim couldn’t accept that. Day after day he toiled away at the parallel bars. Alone. And day after day he toppled to the floor. Every time.
Apologizing to Sarah in person was a test. If he could do this, then he was not the one blocking his progress.
A resolve took hold of Jim. Before he could change his mind, he wheeled through his house and out the front door. The darkness hid him as his wheelchair whirred down the sidewalk.
A sliver of moon rode high in the sky, slipping in and out of the rain clouds that gathered, and only a few stars illuminated the deep black night. What time was it? Too late to call on a neighbor, surely.
Jim was turning back when Sarah’s house loomed. His jaw clenched, he steered his chair up her sidewalk. Her house had a porch.
That cinched it. There was no way he could get onto her porch. What was he going to do? Throw rocks at her window?
Jim saw himself as ridiculous. His entire mission was ridiculous.
He was just turning to go when he saw the wheelchair ramp on the side of her porch. Any fool would have guessed that a woman as practical as Sarah Sloan would buy a house with a ramp.
Bumping along the sidewalk, Jim headed for the ramp. He despised the slowness of the chair. He was a man in love with speed, a man accustomed to breaking the sound barrier.
“Don’t think about that,” he muttered, then struggled up the ramp. He’d made a vow to apologize to Sarah Sloan, and by Custer he was going to do it.
He was sweating by the time he’d reached her front door. He turned his face to the garden to cool off, and that’s when he caught a glimpse of white.
Sarah was not in her house; she was in the garden.
Looking at the cumbersome ramp and the long length of lawn that separated him from the garden gate, Jim gave a wry smile.
Apologizing to Miss Sarah Sloan was not going to be easy. He hoped she appreciated his effort. But more than that, he hoped she didn’t toss him out on his rump.
“Hellow, Sarah.”
The voice sent shivers down her spine. The Bear. She looked up from her weeding and found herself staring into the black eyes of the man who had told her to leave him the hell alone.
“I’m sorry if I startled you.”
“I don’t startle easily. I didn’t hear you, that’s all.”
The moonlight softened his face, made him seem more approachable. But his eyes… They were gleaming obsidian, and they held her with such fierce and tender regard that Sarah
couldn’t have looked away if her life had depended on it.
She shivered. She felt cold and hot at the same time.
“I came to apologize for my rudeness this afternoon,” he said.
“It’s quite all right.”
“No, it isn’t all right.”
“I should have called first. I caught you unaware. I’m sorry.”
A ghost of a smile played around his lips.
“Do you always do this, Sarah?”
She loved the way he said her name. Like music. Like poetry. Like the soft and insistent beating of native drums.
She licked lips suddenly gone dry.
“Do what?”
“Take the blame. Twist every situation so that you’re the one at fault.”
“I’m not taking the blame. I’m just stating the obvious. I was out of line coming to your house without calling.”
“In that case, I should leave. I didn’t call before I came over.”
He worked the controls on his chair. In a moment he would be gone and for the rest of her life she would wonder what it would have been like if he’d stayed.
“No, wait. Don’t you dare leave, Jim Standing Bear.”
He faced her once again, gilded with starlight and laughter. Sarah’s heart did a giant flip-flop, and suddenly she saw all kinds of possibilities, such beautiful possibilities she wanted to dance.
“You are the damnedest woman.”
“Is that good or bad?”
“It’s scary as hell. You scare the hell out of me, Sarah Sloan.”
She was as pleased as if he’d given her a dozen roses. She wasn’t accustomed to having that effect on men. For that matter, she wasn’t accustomed to having any effect at all on members of the opposite sex.
The knowledge that this gorgeous Sioux, this fallen warrior, this dark hero with torture in his soul found her a woman to reckon with made Sarah feel almost beautiful.
Almost.
“I don’t usually scare men.” She laughed at herself. “Except to scare them away.”
There was such poignancy in her voice that Jim caught a glimpse of what Sarah’s life must have been like. She was a tall woman. She had probably been a tall child, the kind who would mature slowly, bloom late. She’d probably been gawky as a teenager, her legs too long and skinny, her generous lips too big for her small face. Boys her age would have been too young to see the possibilities, too naive to see beyond the obvious.
