by Rachel Lee
Echoes of the mental conversation he’d had with Chet a little while ago reverberated in his head. But then he’d known Chet almost as well as he’d known himself. When you faced death at a man’s side over and over again, you got to know him in ways that really mattered.
“Maybe so,” he finally said. Although it was what he would have expected of Chet, she was right. Knowing he’d actually said it to her meant a whole lot to him.
“It was different over there,” he said, although he wasn’t quite sure why. “We lived faster. Didn’t look back too much, didn’t look forward any further than we had to. Except every now and then on a quiet night, we’d talk about home.”
She listened intently. Then when he fell silent she asked, “I know what Chet’s dreams were, mostly, but what were yours?”
“I don’t know. Honest to God, if I had any, I don’t remember them now.”
“That’s okay. It wasn’t exactly a plan-making situation most of the time.”
“Not those kinds of plans, anyway.” He thought it over, straining to recall something, anything, because it seemed somehow weird to him that he hadn’t had any plans. But a big blank answered him. “I don’t know. I just don’t know.”
“That’s kind of where you are now, isn’t it?”
The reminder didn’t exactly please him, but he couldn’t deny the truth of it. “I’ll figure something out.”
“I know you will. Take your time. I’m happy having you here and you’re an incredible help.”
That made him feel good enough to crack a small smile. “I’m glad.” He liked feeling useful, and it had been a while. A long while. “So I shouldn’t feel guilty about wanting you?”
It was a stupid thing to say, but he couldn’t help enjoying the way color rose from her collar to flood her face with pink. Or the way she pressed her palms to her cheek.
“You’re so blunt,” she said.
“I warned you.”
Embarrassed as she clearly felt, she still laughed. “Yes, you did.”
“If you hate it...”
“Did I say I did? It just takes some getting used to. Most people are more...circuitous. But that’s not necessarily a good thing.”
“As long as I don’t upset you.”
“You might have noticed that when you do I let you know.” She dropped her hands as her blush faded. “Do you want to work on your reading tonight?”
Her change of direction caught him by surprise, and it took him a moment to follow. He was still getting used to the way things could suddenly shift, but it seemed he was getting a bit better at it. And actually, maybe it was a good thing, because it had been a stressful conversation, the kind of thing that not so very long ago could have sent him on a long walk to avoid the anger or frustration.
“You know what I can’t stand?” he asked suddenly.
“What?”
“The way I react to stress and tension now. I used to handle a lot of it.”
“I imagine you did. And now?”
“Now I get angry or frustrated, or just walk away.”
She hesitated so visibly that he could see it. She had questions she wanted to ask.
“Go ahead,” he said. “You have to deal with me. What do you want to know?”
She chewed her lip, then asked, “How much of that is from the injury, and how much from the emotional difficulty of dealing with it?”
“I don’t know, Sharon. They weren’t clear on that. Or if they were, I sure didn’t get it. Maybe they didn’t know, either. There’s all this stuff that gives me fits right now. Painting the barn is easy. Fixing that door I broke was a sweat. It was like staring right in the face of the things I can’t do anymore.”
“That would be stressful, all right.”
“It’s maddening sometimes. But it’s reality and I have to learn to deal with all these new limits.”
“And maybe discover ways you’re not limited. Like painting the barn.”
“But I shouldn’t be kissing you.” Funny, he could lose almost any thought in midtrack without warning, but he seemed to be fixated on that. “It wasn’t just guilt about Chet. Yeah, that was a big piece of it. But there was another part, too. I’m broken. I’m too broken to be kissing a woman.”
She erupted. “Don’t you say that, Liam O’Connor. Don’t you even think that. Ever again. Do you understand me?”
He stared into her angry, sparking eyes. “Loud and clear.” For some stupid reason, a smile stretched his face. That didn’t make any sense to him, but there it was, and there was no mistaking the feeling on his face. He guessed he liked it when she got mad. It left no question about where he stood with her. “But that doesn’t change the facts.”
“What facts? All of us have things we can’t do.”
“I have more than most.”
“Well, that depends, doesn’t it? On what you want to do, and the ways you can come up with to work around a problem. You worked your way around those directions for fixing the door. Stop thinking about limitations and start thinking about exploring possibilities.”
“I’ll bet you say things like that to your students.”
“Well, yes. Of course I do. Everybody has different abilities and different limitations. Some of my students struggle with basic math. Others struggle with reading, or writing a composition. Some can draw and others can’t. That doesn’t make any of them less valuable.”
Then she utterly astonished him. She rose and came around the table. “Shove back,” she said.
So he pushed back from the table. Before he had any idea what she was about, she sat on his lap, wrapped her arms around his neck and looked straight into his eyes. “I want you, too,” she said bluntly.
He barely caught his breath before she pressed her mouth to his.
“So take that,” she said, the words a warm whisper against his lips before her tongue found his and engaged in a duel he certainly hadn’t forgotten.
He was sure this must be wrong for her, but how could something so wrong feel so right? And why was he worrying when she was the one who had initiated this?
But whatever questions he might want to raise swiftly washed away in a rising tide of overpowering desire. His groin ached, his staff stiffened so fast it was almost painful, and her warm rump pressed against it both answered a need and made it stronger.
There was no uncertainty in her kiss. More warmth washed through him as he realized she had meant it: she wanted him, too. This time, no questions about Chet or his own inadequacies speared through the hot fog of desire. Elemental need took over.
He wrapped his arms around her, holding her tight and reveling in being this close to her as much as in the pounding passion she evoked in him. God, it had been forever, and Sharon just made it more special.
But all too quickly, she pulled back. With effort, he opened his eyes, stifling the urge to groan with each little movement she made in his lap.
Her lips looked swollen, her eyes hazy and smiling. “Have we got that straight now?”
Then she slipped off his lap and returned to the far side of the table. He sat stunned and aching, feeling as if he’d just been sideswiped by something huge that he hadn’t seen coming. Feeling as if he were a thirsty man who’d just had a glass of water pulled away from him.
Yet it seemed, as the hunger began to subside, that it hadn’t been pulled away. Not really. She’d offered something and left it to him to decide. Now? Later? Never?
He might be messed up, but he wasn’t so messed up that he didn’t sense the dangers here. Don’t toy with her. Whether the warning was his own or Chet’s didn’t matter. It was an important warning. This was not a woman he wanted to fool with. Or hurt by taking advantage of her.
He was staring at a minefield, and as the ache eased, he tried to figure out its dimensions. No flings here. No way. But the rest? Was he even remotely ready for something more enduring and deeper?
Hell if he knew. He was still finding his way through the minefield in his
head. All he knew was that passion wouldn’t be enough here.
Did they have this straight now? The question echoed in his head. Far from it. In fact, he had the feeling matters had tangled up in knots worse than ever.
He had tumbled in over his head.
Chapter Eight
Painting the barn came to a halt. The paint Sharon had chosen was on back order. Everything, Sharon thought, seemed to be on hold. Liam seemed to have withdrawn in some way, probably because she had kissed him, and she couldn’t exactly blame him. She wanted him, yes, but this was getting a bit heavy for both of them.
It wasn’t just Chet. No. Liam was still struggling to deal with his changed circumstances, and she was just emerging into a world that needed a whole lot of rebuilding in the wake of Chet’s loss. Rebuilding she had seriously neglected.
They were a couple of walking wounded, she thought without humor. Liam’s withdrawal exhibited more sense than her own behavior. Except, how was she measuring his withdrawal? Just because he hadn’t tried to kiss her again?
A little space and a little time on that score would serve them both. She’d been alone too long, and maybe she couldn’t trust her judgment. Although she certainly hadn’t felt even the least spark of interest in any man before Liam’s arrival. No, it was specifically Liam who attracted her, but what did attraction amount to? It was a fleeting thing, an unreliable guide.
She tried to follow his lead. He liked to be busy with his hands, so she made him a list of repairs around the place. He worked his way through it religiously, and when he needed help, he didn’t hesitate to ask.
She saw in him, however, a growing confidence. With each task that stymied him, they’d go to her computer, find directions, talk them over, and then she would watch as he steadily organized the steps so he could follow through.
He really wasn’t as bad as he thought, except with the reading. He had a command of simpler words, and little by little he began to write again, a word here and there as a reminder. He liked that he could tuck scraps of paper in his pocket and pull them out when he needed to.
Diagrams were easiest for him still, but he definitely was beginning to leave that in the past, relying instead on short written steps, carefully numbered. In short, he was learning, and a man who could learn could do a lot.
His bursts of frustration came less often, although they could still erupt. It remained, however, that she was seeing what she considered to be remarkable improvement.
Part of her wished she had known him before the injury, but another part of her wisely realized that it was probably better for both of them. He did enough of his own self-comparisons, and when he did she could see the frustration build. She felt a pang every single time she heard him mutter, “I ought to know this!”
Anger still simmered beneath his surface, too. That concerned her, but she didn’t know how to bring it up, nor was she sure she should. God knew, he had enough to be angry about. As long as he wasn’t directing it at her, it wasn’t her business. Well, except that it bothered her to see him feeling that way so often.
But she couldn’t imagine a cure, or how even talking about it might be useful. Like all his other problems, this was something he had to find a way to deal with himself.
Regardless, he’d done numerous things around the house, things she could have done herself if she hadn’t become so disinterested before: a dripping faucet, a running toilet, some splintered baseboard, squeaky doors and one that had needed to be planed. He’d even started working on the porch railing, where some rotting posts needed replacement. That one would take some time as he figured out the steps.
At that moment, he was busy on the interior of the barn. She didn’t even want to look at that. There’d been stuff in there when she and Chet had bought the place that they’d never touched, some of which she couldn’t even identify, and neither of them had been in any hurry to get rid of things that might eventually turn out to be important.
Her world was full of questions, she supposed. Questions about herself and Liam. But that was an improvement over the months when she had felt either dead inside or so torn by sorrow, she wanted to be dead.
She was getting restless, too. She wanted to do things, and this holding pattern they seemed to have settled into didn’t suit her now.
Making up her mind, she went out to the barn where she found Liam sitting on the fender of an old, rusty tractor, looking around. She was amazed by how much space there seemed to be in here now.
“Wow, you’ve been busy!”
He cocked his head to one side. “A barn isn’t much use if there’s no room left to use.”
“I’m still amazed. We just left it alone. The task overwhelmed me, and I didn’t have a real use for it yet.”
“Well, you’ll be able to use it now. All it needed was some rearranging.”
“And organizing. Do you recognize all this stuff? I sure don’t.”
He half smiled. “Nope. It’d probably be good to get one of your rancher friends out here to look around. You might not even need half of it, or you might find out it’s all important if you get goats and stuff.”
“That’s why it’s all still here.” A laugh bubbled out of her. “We were complete tyros at this, Liam. Chet and I would have had quite a learning curve.”
“But you still want to get started.”
“I do. Listen, I need to get away for a while. I need a change of scenery. Do you want to come to town with me?”
His hesitation was palpable, but then he slid off the fender. “If you don’t mind waiting while I clean up. I’m grubby.”
She was relieved that he wanted to go. They’d both been locked up inside themselves for too long, and since he’d withdrawn, it had seemed even worse. As she walked back to the house, she wondered how she had survived all the months when she had chosen utter solitude. Yes, she continued her card games with her friends, and teaching had filled a lot of time, but there had been the other times, the holidays, the summer vacation, when she spent days and days talking to no one.
That was definitely not healthy, and maybe it had been the worst possible way to deal with her grief. How many invitations had she turned down at Thanksgiving and Christmas, afraid of the pain she’d feel being among happy families, rather than considering it might have taken her out of herself?
Time for some serious change, she told herself. Heading up the stairs, she changed into fresh jeans and a cotton polo, then listened to the thud of Liam’s feet following her, and the sound of him showering.
Downstairs again, she waited patiently and drank a glass of milk to tide her over. Time for a change, indeed, but what kind of change? She needed to talk to Ransom about those goats, for one thing. Find out exactly what she’d be getting into. Maybe she ought to call the vet, Mike Windwalker, and find out what kind of animals he knew of that needed a good home. Maybe goats would be too much to start with.
Seldom had she felt as ignorant as she did right then. A dream, and she hadn’t even bothered to study up on it. And she was a teacher? She laughed at herself.
But once there had seemed like all the time in the world to get to things. Life had taught her in the harshest of all possible ways that time wasn’t endless, that postponement might well mean never doing something.
Liam joined her and they headed out to her truck. As soon as they were bouncing down the drive to the county road, he asked, “You thinking any more about those goats?”
“I’m thinking it’s time I did some research. I’ll talk to Ransom, maybe to the local vet about it. Who knows, they might tell me to start with something else. I don’t want to get in over my head, or take on something that might be more than I can handle when school starts in the fall.”
“I can help you.”
Her heart stopped. Was he offering to stay indefinitely? If so, why?
He must have realized how that might sound, because he abruptly added, “If you want me hanging around. If you don’t want me to leave, I mean.”
“Why would you want to stay?” Then she wished she could call the words back. “That didn’t come out right. I mean...” What exactly did she mean?
“It’s okay. I stumble into it all the time. I like it here. I like the work. It’s peaceful. I’m managing to deal with most of it, I think.”
“You are. Splendidly.”
“You’re easy to be with, too. I met plenty of people after I got out of rehab who weren’t easy. Didn’t meet anybody I liked, except this one guy.”
“What happened with him?” Her heart was tripping fast, although she wasn’t sure exactly why.
“Ah, hell, some guys were giving me crap at a gas station when I stopped to get some food. They know when you’re not right, you know?”
She hated to hear him say that, hated to hear he felt that way, but bit her tongue to hold the words back and let him talk.
“It was nothing unusual. Three of them started making fun of me, calling me names. I just wanted to get out of there because I was getting mad.”
“I imagine so!” And he called that nothing unusual? God, she hated to think what he might have endured on his way to her.
“No, you can’t imagine what would have happened if I’d lost my temper.” From the corner of her eye, she saw his fists clench on his lap. “There’s muscle memory, you know? Stuff you don’t need your brain to sort out before you act. Plenty of mine is still intact. That’s how I painted the barn. Well, I can still fight. The army taught me good, and lots of experience taught me better. If I’d blown my lid with those guys, I’d probably be on my way to prison.”
“Oh, Liam.”
“It is what it is. I was getting so mad, and I knew I had to just walk away, but they kept following me. I was that close to decking all of them. Hell, I don’t know. I might have killed them. So up walks this guy, a trucker, not real big or beefy, maybe in his fifties. He must have seen the patch on my jacket. Anyways, he tells these guys to cut it out, making sport of a wounded vet is a disgrace, and if they weren’t ashamed enough to stop maybe the cops could help them.”
