by Tami Hoag
“You think so?” Matt let the Parkers slip from his mind as he snuggled closer to Sarah, flanking her legs with his. He settled his hands on her waist, rubbing his thumbs lightly in a circular motion against her. “I don't know. You were a mystery to me, but getting to know you has been a hell of a lot more enjoyable than just wondering.”
Sarah blushed prettily. They had spent a second night together in Matt's bed, but she still felt shy with him. “Such language,' she teased. “My father would wash your mouth out with soap.”
“Would he?” He slid his hands upward, just brushing the heavy underswell of her breasts. She closed her eyes and sucked in a breath. “What would he do to me for taking liberties with his daughter?”
She didn't answer. With her eyes still squeezed shut, she threw her arms around his neck, raised herself up on tiptoe and kissed him with a hunger that bordered on desperation. Matt didn't argue. He couldn't get enough of the taste of her or the feel of her against him. He wrapped his arms around her and returned her kiss, making love to her with his mouth.
“Let's go back to bed,” he whispered, licking her earlobe.
“It's the middle of the afternoon,” Sarah said, but it was more an observation than a protest. Her knees had gone weak at his suggestion.
“It's night somewhere,” Matt muttered, planting kisses along her jaw, working his way back to her mouth. 'I think it's night in England. Well pretend we're in England.”
'I've always wanted to go there,” Sarah whispered, letting her mind clutch at dreams and desires, pushing reality aside.
There was a sudden bang in the front hall and a voice called out cheerily, “I'm ba-ack!”
Matt and Sarah bolted apart, Sarah ducking into the parlor to check her appearance in a mirror. Matt brushed the back of a hand across his mouth then stuffed his hands in the pockets of his trousers in an effort to hide the fact that he was half-turned-on. Another minute and he might have taken Sarah where they stood. Wouldn't that have been a nifty way to welcome his sister back.
Ingrid dropped her enormous suitcase at the foot of the stairs and gave him a shrewd look. “I see you're up and around.”
Heat crept into his cheeks, but he managed to maintain a poker face. “Yes, I'm feeling much better. Good to see you home, sis.” He bent and dutifully kissed the cheek she presented him. “Is everything all right up in Stillwater now? We weren't expecting you back for another day or two.”
“Dorothy's husband was doing much better than they had first thought he would,” she said, pushing up the sleeves of her oversize red sweater. She stuck a hand into the pocket of her snug black stirrup pants, dug out a note, checked it, nodded, folded it, and put it back all without breaking stride in the conversation. “They sent him home today. We didn't have any guests booked until Thursday, and Dorothy figured by then she would be more than ready to get back to work. So, here I am.”
Ingrid heaved a sigh up into her fashionable tumble of black bangs and planted her hands on her slim hips. Three years older than Matt, she still thought of herself as Big Sister, despite the differences in their size. She was a tiny woman with a pixie's face and big dark eyes, but what she lacked in stature she made up for in energy and determination. Matt had long thought she had enough electricity in her to light up half of St. Paul.
She looked at him now with the critical eye of an art expert, her dark eyes taking in every aspect of his face, then moving down over his blue shirt and tan chinos, all the way to the tips of his sneakers and back up again. When she got back to his face she wore an expression of mingled anxiety and relief.
'It is so good to see you on your feet,” she said, her voice suspiciously thick. “You don't know how afraid I was of losing you.”
“Hey,” he said, wrapping his arms around her and giving her a brotherly hug. “You can't get rid of me that easily.”
“Hello, Ingrid. Welcome back,' Sarah said, emerging from the parlor, cheeks still rosy with a blush, hands fussing with the folds of her black apron. She cast a quick, shy glance at Matt.
“Sarah” Ingrid disengaged from Matt's embrace and immediately hugged her friend and employee. “How did everything go? Lets go into the kitchen and have some tea and you two can tell me all about your adventures. Did anything exciting happen?”
She was already moving toward the kitchen with her brisk efficient stride, snatching up a stack of mail from the desk along the way.
“Just the usual,” Matt said. “A little gunplay, a small fire. Nothing to brag about.”
“Yeah, right,” Ingrid said on a laugh as she shuffled through her mail and pushed the kitchen door open with her hip.
Sarah gave Matt a look. He just shrugged.
Over cookies and tea they told the tale of the Mortons and Lisbeth Parker. Matt offered to pay for the sofa as well as what Ingrid had lost when the Mortons had checked out, but she wouldn't hear of it. She said her insurance would cover the damage to the sofa and as for the Mortons, she could do without the money of people who insulted her friends.
Matt went on to relate all of Blossom s sins. Ingrid listened, smiling benignly, like a mother who was too blind to realize her much-adored child was a monster.
“And to top it off,” Matt said, lifting an accusatory finger, “one of my favorite Loafers is missing. In fact, a number of shoes have disappeared.”
“Really?” Ingrid said, the light of excitement in her eyes. “I wonder if she's making a nest somewhere. She's due to have puppies in a week or so.”
Thunderstruck, Matt stared at his sister. “You mean you're going to have more of them?”
“Of course!” Ingrid leaned down and hefted the unwieldly dog onto her lap. Blossom settled herself, breaking into a big doggy grin Matt thought looked suspiciously smug. Ingrid rubbed the dog's ears and spoke to her in the childish way some adults used with babies. “We just love our Blossom, don't we?”
Blossom let out a little woof.
Matt rolled his eyes. “Jeez, Ingrid, get a life.”
Ingrid ignored him, turning her attention to Sarah. “Sarah, I know it's not a church Sunday, but if you want to go visit your family, please feel free. I can handle the big guy here.”
Matt scowled. Sarah sent him a little smile. She knew she should take Ingrid's suggestion and go to see her parents and siblings, but the truth was she didn't want to spend any time away from Matt. He was staying only for a short while; her family would always be there. “Actually, I thought I would just stick around here today, but I should go out and see to my chores,'
She started for the back door and Matt rose as well. “Ill go out with you.”
“No, Matt,” Ingrid said, her voice pleasant enough, but there was a glint of steel in her gaze that made him frown. “Stay with me. We have a lot of catching up to do.”
He settied back into his chair and watched as Ingrid put Blossom down and casually went to the window to look out at Sarah crossing the yard.
“I had a chat with your local doctor—I use the term loosely,” he said. “I can't believe people actually line up to put their lives in his hands.”
“They don't have a choice,” Ingrid said, returning to her chair. “The next nearest doctor is thirty miles away.”
“That's frightening.”
“You don't know the half of it. Matt, good doctors don't want to locate in rural areas like this and you can well imagine why. The money isn't great, the hours stink, there's no prestige, no fancy country club to join, nothing to aspire to.”
“Who wants to be a general practitioner when he can specialize and pull down twice the bucks.”
“You said it, not me. Consequently, towns like Jesse end up with doctors like Coswell.”
“I wouldn't send Blossom to that guy.”
“Neither would I. Thankfully, since this is prime farm country, our veterinarians are excellent.”
Matt shook his head at the shame of it—a town where the people would have been better off being treated by the horse doctor. He nibble
d thoughtfully on a chocolate chip cookie.
“I think you know what I want to talk to you about,” Ingrid said quietly, her manner instantly changing the tone of the conversation. Her fingers toyed with a small envelope, turning it around and around in her hands, but her attention was solely on her brother.
Matt could feel her gaze on him, but he didn't look up. He loved his sister, but he didn't much care for being made to feel like he was twelve all over again. He put his cookie down and crossed his arms over his chest defensively. “What?”
“Sarah.”
“What about her?”
“I'm not blind, Matt. She looks at you like you can walk on water.”
He turned toward her then, his gaze calm and clear. “This is none of your business, Ingrid.” His tone was soft and level, but the warning was unmistakable.
“Isn't it?” Ingrid put the envelope down and leaned forward over the table. “Sarah is my friend as well as my employee. I care about what happens to her. I don't want to see her get hurt, Matt.”
“What makes you think I intend to hurt her?”
“I don't think you intend to hurt her, but that's what's going to happen. I know you, Matt. Your head is easily turned. You've been cooped up in this house with only Sarah for company. She's a bright, sweet, pretty girl—”
“She's a woman, Ingrid, not some kid in pigtails,” he interrupted, resenting the implication that he would take advantage of an innocent child, even though innocent was a word he had used himself to describe Sarah.
“Be that as it may,” Ingrid said, not backing down in the least. “She's not the kind of woman you're used to. She's not someone you can just play with, Matt.”
Matt gave a harsh, humorless laugh. “Boy, you certainly have a high opinion of me all of a sudden!”
Ingrid closed her eyes briefly, sighed, then tried again. “I'm not being critical. I know your career comes first with you and that's fine. The women you've been involved with know it too. I just don't think Sarah will understand those kinds of rules.”
“Well maybe I'm not just playing with her. Has that thought occurred to you, Ingrid?” he said in a voice low and rough with emotion. He stared his sister in the eye and made what was probably the biggest confession of his life. “Maybe I'm in love with her.”
Ingrid looked at him long and hard, trying to judge just how serious his “maybe” was. Her look softened, and she reached for his hand. He snatched it away from her and pushed himself out of his chair, going to stare out the back window.
“You've known each other only a matter of days,” she said gently.
“Excuse me. Did I say this made sense?” he asked sardonically, his brows lifting in exaggerated question. “I don't recall saying that, but as long as we're on the subject, how long did you know John before you were certain you wanted to marry him?”
Ingrid sighed, planting her elbows on the table and rubbing two fingers to each temple. Everyone who knew her knew the story of how she and John had met on a casual double date while paired up with other people. She swore up and down she had known by the time they left the restaurant John Wood was the man she wanted to marry. “Point taken,” she said wearily.
“Maybe you don't think I'm capable of that kind of depth of feeling,” Matt said, continuing on the defensive, his tone particularly cutting because the doubts he was expressing on his sisters behalf were doubts he'd had about himself. “Maybe you think I was just going to go through my whole life married to my career, fooling around on the side with women who didn't expect any kind of commitment from me.”
Ingrid gave him a furious look and slapped her hand down on the table. “Stop it!” she snapped. “Will you just listen to me for two minutes?”
He checked his watch just to needle her and gazed off into the middle distance, waiting.
“Matt, she's Amish. Do you have any idea what that means?”
“She dresses funny and drives a horse.”
“Don't be smart. Do you know anything about the Amish way of Hfe?”
He gave a belligerent shrug. “Its Sarah's religion. That's fine. It doesn't matter. I don't care. We can work around that.”
“It does matter,” Ingrid insisted. “The Amish here are from the Old Order. They're veiy strict in their beliefs, particularly as separatists. Sarah is walking a fine line just by working here. Do you know what would happen to her if they found out she was involved with a Yankee?”
“I'm sure you're going to teU me,” he said, making clear that he didn't want to hear it.
Ingrid went on just the same, bound by a duty to her friend and her brother. “It's called the Meidung. Unless she repented publicly, she would be ostracized, shunned by her people. They wouldn't be allowed to acknowledge her in any way. They wouldn't be able to speak to her or take something from her hand or sit at a dinner table with her. She would lose everything—her faith, her family.”
“You're making this up,” Matt said angrily, knowing he sounded utterly childish.
“I'm not,” Ingrid replied calmly.
“That's barbaric.”
“It's their way, and they have their reasons for it.”
Matt leaned against the window frame and stared out at the farmyard cast in bronze by the late afternoon sun. Sarah was bent over by the barn door, pouring out milk for an assortment of cats. He thought of the way she had spoken of her family, the love that had lit her eyes. He thought of her relationship with little Jacob. Would she be willing to give all that up? Did he have the right to ask her? Was he insane to even consider it?
They'd only known each other a matter of days. But now he'd fallen in love with her in those few days. He'd never felt anything like it. It was powerful and consuming and he couldn't imagine it ever burning out. And it wasn't just lust. He knew lust. Lust didn't have anything to do with the way he felt when he watched Sarah open a book and become in stantly absorbed in the process of learning. Lust didn't make him want to protect her and defend her. It wasn't lust that ached when he saw her tears. This was love, the real McCoy. Just because it had struck like a bolt of lightning out of the blue didn't make it any less real.
He was in love with Sarah Troyer. And now Ingrid was telling him it was against the rules, rules he hadn't even known existed. The sudden knowledge of the stakes and the penalties sent him reeling.
Why hadn't Sarah warned him? Why hadn't she told him this?
“I don't want to see you hurt, either, Matt.” Ingrid had come to stand opposite him, mirroring his stance, her shoulder against the white-painted frame of the window. The look he gave her was bleak, and her heart nearly broke. “Oh, Matt,” she whispered, hugging herself against an inner chill. “You really are in love with her, aren't you? Of all the women who've fallen in love with you, you have to want the one you can't have.”
He was thinking something along the same lines himself. Anger swelled inside him like a balloon, crowding his chest, making it difficult to breathe. Anger at the injustice of it and anger at Sarah. She had let him get in too deep to save himself, and now he was being thrown an anvil. Why would she do that unless her feelings for him didn't run as deeply as she'd professed?
She'd been playing with him. It seemed impossible, yet, at the same time, it seemed the only answer. And he'd thought she was the one who needed protecting! He'd thought she was the naive one. He suddenly felt as if he'd been played for a colossal fool.
In one lithe, violent motion he turned and slammed his fist against the window frame, rattling the glass panes. Without a word to his sister, he stormed out of the house, limping heavily as he crossed the yard going in search of Sarah.
He found her behind the barn dumping a bale of hay into the ring of an old tractor tire that lay on the ground. Her horse looked up from his dinner and pricked his eare, snorting at the sight of Matt as if he could sense the anger that rolled off the man like steam. Sarah glanced up, her eyes widening. She barely had time to straighten before Matt had her by the shoulders.
H
e gave her a shake and hauled her up against him, making her bend backward as he leaned over her. His face was a mask of fury. “Why didn't you tell me?” he demanded.
“T-tell you what?” she asked, every warning system in her body going on red alert. He was frightening her. Her sweet, gentle Matt was frightening her. The idea itself was enough to make her tremble.
“Dammit, Sarah,” he shouted. “Why didn't you warn me?”
“Matt!” she cried, twisting in his grasp. “Stop it! You're hurting me!”
“Oh yeah? Well, how do you think I feel right now? I've just been informed that if you're caught consorting with me, you'll be considered a pariah and cast out of your society. Why the hell didn't you warn me, Sarah?”
She looked up at him with bleak eyes, the fear instantly gone and sadness filling up the space inside her. “Would it have mattered?”
“Yes!” He released her abrupdy and stepped back, squeezing his eyes shut and raking his hands through his hair as pain and confusion twisted inside him. “No … I don't know.”
His last words came out on a strained, tired whisper. What would he have done differently? Would he have stayed away from her from the start? Could he really have prevented himself from falling in love with her?
“What difference will it make to you?” she asked quietly. “You're from a different world. You will go back to that world because it's where you belong.”
“Oh, I see,” Matt said sarcastically, letting his pain goad him. “You just wanted a little fling. I looked like a nice, safe guy to have a lit tie adventure with, right? You took one look at me and figured I'd never stick around—”
“No!”
“What? Have I got the word 'fickle' tattooed on my body somewhere or something?” he asked, forcing a dry laugh.
“No!” Sarah said, miserable. She could barely look him in the eye. A little adventure was exactly what she had wanted. She hadn't bargained on getting so much more. She had certainly never considered that Matt would end up getting hurt. All along she'd thought only her own heart had been at risk. “I never counted on falling in love with you.”
