by Rachel Lee
So yeah, she’d learned to put that feminine, sexual part of herself on ice. Except now there was no reason not to thaw it out a bit. She had needs, too. Dreaming about them couldn’t be a crime.
* * *
Liam stood on the sidewalk in front of Freitag’s, watching the area. There were few people about as it was a weekday, but those few that passed him did so with a smile and nod. He was still getting used to not having to be on high alert in situations like this, but the adjustment was getting steadily more comfortable.
He held two bags containing a few shirts, shorts and jeans, as well as some changes of underwear. It hadn’t been a big trip, nor a taxing one. He wasn’t especially worried about clothes, and choosing had been simple because he didn’t care as long as it fit. The clerk had been nice, troubling him very little as he selected things.
In short, he was feeling pretty good. Other than stops on the road to grab something to eat from convenience stores, this was his first real shopping trip, and he’d managed it. Maybe Sharon was right. Maybe he could do more than he thought, and just needed a chance to find out.
He was even feeling pretty pleased with having figured out a method to simplify the decision-making.
He almost felt like grinning.
In less than a week since he’d been here, he was already feeling a whole lot better than when he’d arrived. He had work he was enjoying, he felt useful again, he was making some progress with reading, however slowly, and he was reentering the world in minor ways.
He’d even just applied one mental list to a different task: dressing to shopping.
Sharon pulled up in front, and he tossed his bags into the back and climbed in the cab with her.
“How’d it go?” she asked as she pulled away.
“Just fine.” He looked at her and answered her smile with one of his own. “Just fine,” he repeated.
“Great.” Her smile widened. “What did you get?”
For a moment he drew a blank, but then it came back. “Clothes.” Then it struck him that answer was too abbreviated. “Do you really want to know all about it?”
She glanced at him, arching a brow. “Of course I do.”
“I suppose for most people it would be pretty boring.”
“Not to me,” she said quietly. “Seems like you took a pretty big step.”
He felt surprisingly touched by how aware she was, and how encouraging. He’d been on the road long enough to have run into folks who had names for him, many of them unflattering.
“Well, I remembered what I went in there for. That doesn’t sound like a big deal but—”
She interrupted. “That’s a real big deal. I remember you telling me how much difficulty you have following through on a task.”
“Yeah. So I remembered that. When I told the lady I wanted clothes and could she show me where, she walked me over. Nice of her. I’m still not sure I can remember directions unless I write them down.”
“We’ll work on that and find out,” she said firmly. “Maybe we’ll even practice.”
“It might work,” he said. “Then I picked out clothes. But you know what was cool, Sharon?”
“Yes?”
“I remembered what I needed by walking myself mentally through getting dressed in the morning. I laid the stuff out on the sale table in that order so I wouldn’t forget anything.”
“That was brilliant,” she said warmly.
“You don’t have to patronize me,” he said, then caught himself. “Sorry. I get touchy sometimes.”
“It’s okay. We all get touchy. But I meant that sincerely. Look, you memorized a series of actions and then you used them to do something else. There are plenty of people who can’t make that leap. I ought to know. I teach.”
He saw she was smiling out the windshield and it made him feel good. “It was great to realize I’d done that. Now I’m wondering what else I can get to that way.”
“And what else you may know how to do that you just don’t know yet. I mean, did I have to tell you how to paint? Any part of it? Heck, no.”
That was true, he thought. He might not know what half the tools in the barn were for, at least not yet, and he might get overwhelmed by some things, but he had known how to get out a ladder and how to paint. He had even remembered how to clean the brushes and rollers.
They had said he would probably continue to improve, but today he was feeling more hopeful of that than anytime since he’d walked out the door of rehab.
“Thank you,” he said.
“For what? I should be thanking you.”
He shook his head. “I’ve been out of rehab for a few weeks now. Wandering around, using a map on which I’d marked out my route, but with nothing else to do. No future, no plans beyond getting Chet’s letter to you. I had to stick to eating from convenience stores where I could see the food because I couldn’t read. Well, you saw that at the diner. Menus are beyond me right now. Too many things crammed together, and sometimes funky type.”
She nodded, but remained silent, listening. He was glad she didn’t try to respond.
“Sometimes,” he said, “I even forgot why I was on the road. So I had it written on the map—get to Chet’s wife. The only thing I didn’t ever forget was Chet’s letter.”
A soft, sad sound escaped her, but she still didn’t interrupt.
“Sometimes I’d get so frustrated I exploded. At least I didn’t get into any trouble. They got that part through to me in rehab. Walk away, explode in private. But damn, when I couldn’t read a sign, or figure out how much something cost, or what it really was inside a package, sometimes I’d just want to blow. Some people noticed I wasn’t that bright, too.”
She sucked a breath. “Did they say things?”
“Of course. I guess they thought I was too stupid or too mental to understand. Or maybe they didn’t care.”
“Did you get angry?”
“At them?” He shrugged. “Hell, if anyone knows I got problems, it’s me. Sometimes I said things back, though. I told you, I think, that sometimes I just say whatever comes to mind.”
“I haven’t seen too much of that.”
“Being around you is easy. Things are simple, undemanding. I don’t know if you’re being careful of me or what, but you make it uncomplicated. And sometimes I still don’t know if I’m making sense. Things come out and then I’m not sure what I said. Were the words right? Did I say it wrong? If you ever wonder, just ask, okay? I’d like that better than you thinking I said something I didn’t mean.”
“Okay.” Then, “I’m sorry people said things. Sometimes we’re so heartless.”
“It’s just people. I’ll probably say a lot of things I shouldn’t before I’m done. Probably more than most. I remember one guy, though. I was picking up a couple of sandwiches at this gas station, and I was talking myself through it. Maybe more than usual because I was getting tired. I got two turkey sandwiches.”
Then he fell silent. What had he been saying? The last words he heard in his mind were “turkey sandwiches.” Where had he been going before that? “Damn!”
“Liam?”
“I forgot what I was saying.” Damn, a moment ago he’d been feeling so good and now the frustration was eating into him like acid. He tried to recover the feelings before his brain had slipped a stupid cog, but the frustration was too much.
“You know,” he said in a burst, “if I had to be left with strong feelings, it would have been nice if they’d been good ones!”
“What exactly are you feeling?”
“Frustration. I want to smash something.”
“Because you can’t remember what you were saying or because of something else?”
The question drew him up short, his frustration easing just a bit. “I don’t know,” he said finally. “Is it the glitch in my head or is it really that I forgot what I was saying? How the hell am I supposed to know the difference?”
“I don’t know.”
He pounded his fist on his knee, then caught hi
mself. “Sorry,” he said dully. “I’m not supposed to do that.”
He turned his head, looking out at the passing countryside without seeing it. He could no longer remember why he’d gotten so frustrated. He just was. More words burst out of him, directed at the window.
“It’s like being in a bag I can’t even see. I don’t know how the hell to get out, or even where it is.”
All of sudden, a small, warm hand covered the fist that still rested on his knee. She didn’t say anything. He wasn’t sure he would even have heard her if she had. But the touch helped. In some amazing way, it helped.
He didn’t say another word until they got home.
Chapter Six
Over the next week, Liam worked like a demon. Sharon was beginning to get concerned because he wouldn’t slow down. Maybe he was working on some private exorcism, but that barn was getting covered with primer faster than she would have believed possible for one man. He started right after breakfast, took ten minutes to eat some lunch outside, then was back at it until the light started to fail.
She started tutoring Andy in math, but that only took a small amount of time. Once again, days stretched before her endlessly as they had before Liam’s arrival. Except that she had his company after dinner, which was pleasant enough.
But something had changed, and she wished she knew what. She canceled the weekend card game with her friends, feeling that might be uncomfortable for him, so she didn’t even have that to look forward to.
Not good, she thought as she stood on her back porch and watched Liam painting the last of the barn. Not good. Before his arrival, she’d been wrestling with the fact that she needed to make some changes, then he’d shown up and everything had changed. She had a purpose again.
Now she was back to square one. Her own fault, she supposed, for filling the emptiness with trying to help one man. She needed to be looking further afield and further down the road than that. Her life had changed irrevocably with the loss of Chet, and like it or not, she had some serious rebuilding to do. Apparently, Liam was just another postponement.
Except she didn’t want to think that way, or look at him that way. That created an internal conflict for her because it was making her view herself in an uncomfortable light.
Had she pinned too much on one man? Had she somehow lost all her internal resources with Chet? Could she get them back?
Even knowing all Liam’s problems, or at least the most significant ones, she didn’t see him as diminished in any way. He was a good man, a kind man, struggling with problems she could understand technically, but never really know from the inside.
And watching him work out there in the afternoon sun reminded her that he was very much a man. The attraction she felt kept growing, and nothing that happened diminished it in the least.
But for some reason, he seemed to have pulled back within a shell. Working constantly, spending time on the reading lessons, polite in every way, but withdrawn. He had definitely pulled away for some reason, and inevitably she wondered what she might have done wrong.
She couldn’t think of anything. One minute he’d been happy about a successful shopping trip, and then the frustration had settled in like a dark storm and he’d gone away to some place within himself. It was almost as if he’d packed up and left.
Why?
As she watched those gleaming muscles ripple even at this distance, she felt undeniable twinges of longing and desire. He was a magnificent man. What’s more, out here with physical labor, his problems largely vanished.
But she had to be careful, she realized. Careful that she wasn’t suffering from some kind of rescue complex, that she really saw him as a capable adult, an equal.
Maybe that was why he’d thrown himself into that painting in this almost manic way. Maybe he was proving that to himself, too.
She sighed and started to turn to go inside and make lunch.
“Sharon?”
At the sound of Liam’s call, she turned back. He was dismounting the ladder, holding the pan and brushes.
Automatically she started walking toward him, reminding herself to remain as casual as possible despite the storm of conflict within her. She had to deal with her own feelings, not inflict them on him.
While she crossed the yard, he ascended the ladder again and brought down the rest of his supplies. She arrived just as he reached the ground once more.
He surprised her with his first smile in days. “I’ll be done with the primer today.”
“You’re doing a wonderful job,” she said warmly. “But, Liam, aren’t you working too hard?”
His gaze shifted from her to the distance, although it gave her the feeling that he was staring into himself, not at the neighboring mountains.
“I need it,” he said finally.
She wasn’t going to argue that. “I just don’t want you to get heatstroke or something.”
“This isn’t hot.”
She wondered if he was comparing it to Iraq, where he and Chet had both served for a time, but for around here this was warm, indeed. She remained silent.
“Thank you,” he said finally, “for your concern. I know my limits.”
Well, at least that was a positive statement. The first really confident one he’d given her. “Did you want to show me something?”
His gaze came back to her. “Show you something?”
“You called me,” she reminded him.
“Oh.” His brow creased. Then it smoothed just a bit. “Apologize,” he said.
“Me? For what?” Her heart skipped as she wondered what she had done.
“Not you. Me.” He sighed and ran his fingers through hair that had grown noticeably since his arrival. “I was going to apologize.”
“No need. All you’ve done is a fantastic painting job.”
“Not that.” He closed his eyes a few seconds and she could almost feel his internal struggle to grip some thought. “I’ve been ignoring you.”
She started to say that he’d been working awfully hard but decided to just remain quiet and let him follow his thought train.
“It’s not right,” he said in a burst, “to want your best friend’s wife.”
Shock held her frozen. Blunt? Incredibly. But honest. And hadn’t she struggled with the same thing? She should speak. Or maybe not. God, she didn’t know the right thing to do, so she waited for whatever else he might say, her heart sinking then rising like a bouncing ball, up and down. Desire drizzled through her at his blunt declaration, awakening all the things she’d been trying to keep sleeping.
“You should send me on my way. As soon as I finish painting.”
At that, she could no longer remain silent. “Why? And to what?”
“What do you mean what?”
“What do you do next, Liam? What’s the plan when you walk away from here?”
“Damn it, I don’t want to be an adopted stray!”
The words exploded out of him, the fury unmistakable. The dimensions of his problem were becoming clear. But she had a bit of a temper, too, and while it might have been the wrong way to respond, she erupted right back.
“I’m not rescuing a stray! You’ve been helping me. What I want from you is a plan!”
“I can’t make plans.” He glared at her.
“So I gather. But you were Chet’s best friend. Do you think he’d let you walk away from here without a plan? A job? A place to go? Would you let him if he were in your shoes?” It occurred to her that question might be beyond him still, but she was relieved to find it wasn’t.
“Of course not.”
“Then shut up. You’re doing an incredible amount of stuff for me that wouldn’t be getting done except for you. I owe you big-time. I think about it constantly.”
It was his turn to remain silent, simply looking at her.
“And let’s get one other thing clear,” she said, still feeling hot in more ways than one. “I’m not Chet’s wife anymore. I’m his widow. That’s a whole different thing. I
got used to it, now you get used to it.”
Turning, she nearly ran toward the house. Tears burned in her eyes, though whether from sorrow or anger she didn’t know. Sorrow for Chet, certainly, but sorrow for Liam now, too. And anger because she was doing an incredibly poor job of getting her feelings across to him.
To occupy herself and work out her own frustration, she made a tuna salad and started piling it onto rye bread. The man must be starved, and maybe she’d calm down enough to eat something herself.
Just as she was placing the plates on the table, the back door opened, and he stepped in. His clothes were paint covered, and she cleared the way to the sink so he could wash his hands.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“Quit apologizing. There’s not one damn thing you need to apologize for.”
“Okay.”
She sat at the table, out of the way, waiting for him to scrub his hands and forearms. At last he joined her, facing her across the tile and two lunch plates, his brimming with three sandwiches and some chips.
He didn’t say anything as he started to eat. Of course not. He wasn’t much of a conversation starter. When he did speak first, it often seemed to come out of nowhere. She was getting used to that, but she often wondered what roads his thoughts wandered down.
“You’re opaque sometimes,” she said finally.
That got his attention. He stopped chewing, swallowed and looked up from his plate. “Opaque?”
“Yeah. For a guy who told me he often says things he shouldn’t, and says too much, you turn into a sphinx a lot.”
“Sphinx?” It took a moment, but he made the connection. “That’s good.”
“It is? Why?”
“Because they spent a lot of time teaching me not to say the first thing that popped into my head.”
She thought of what he’d said out at the barn, then decided not to mention the obvious: he didn’t always succeed. Surprisingly, she was glad of that.
“Just talk,” she said finally. “It’d be nice to know where we both stand. We might fight sometimes, but the air will be a whole lot clearer. I’m spending entirely too much time wondering what you’re thinking, if I’ve said or done something wrong.”
