by Janet Dailey
Later she came back for the tray. Since he didn’t ask for any help dressing, Sharon didn’t offer. She was in the kitchen, washing the breakfast dishes, when she heard his hesitant footsteps approaching. She turned as he reached the doorway and leaned heavily against the doorframe for support.
“Well? How do I look?” He lifted a hand in a modeling gesture to indicate his outfit.
But her first glance went to his rugged features, taking note of the haggard lines of suppressed pain. She could well imagine how very stiff and sore he was. Then she let her glance sweep over the blue robe covering the pajamas. The color seemed to intensify the brilliance of his blue eyes and the darkness of his coloring.
“You look terrific.” She tossed out the compliment lightly, but it was true.
“I feel like some damned actor,” he declared in a tone of self-disgust. “But at least if someone comes, I don’t have to dive under the covers.” He sighed heavily and looked at her. “I’ll be happier when I can put on a pair of boots and jeans again.”
“I know.” She turned back to the sink, aware that when that day came, there would no longer be a need for her to take care of him.
There was a long pause, then Ridge asked, “What are you going to do this morning?”
“I thought I’d do some baking. Why?” She had all the ingredients to make a butterscotch pie, which had always been a favorite of Ridge’s when he’d eaten at their house.
“No reason.” He hesitated, then very grudgingly asked, “Would you help me into the other room? I’m not as mobile as I thought.”
She quickly dried her hands on a towel and went over to his side. Grimly he put an arm around her shoulders and used her body for extra support. Every step seemed to jar him as she helped him into the living room. Her side glance caught the twinges of pain that managed to break through his severely controlled expression.
“Do you want to lie down and rest for awhile?” Sharon could tell that even this small amount of exertion had tired him.
“No.” He rejected the idea out of hand. “Take me to the desk. I seem to have only enough strength to sit, so I might as well do all that paperwork that’s been piling up.” There was anger and self-disgust in his voice.
“Maybe it would help if you took a pill?” she suggested as she led him to the large desk.
“No. I want to make it through the day without any . . . if I can,” he added the reluctant admission that maybe he couldn’t endure as much as he thought.
Before the morning was over, Sharon discovered that just because Ridge was out of bed, it didn’t lessen the number of his demands on her. His short temper quickly made it clear that he resented needing her help as much as he resented his own inability to take care of himself.
When she looked back on the morning, she could remember Ridge saying only one nice thing and that had been at lunchtime after he’d eaten his second slice of pie. “That’s better than your mother’s,” he’d said.
After an hour of paperwork in the afternoon, Ridge finally admitted to being tired and lay down on the sofa to rest. He refused to go into the bedroom. Sharon put a casserole in the oven for supper and moved quietly into the living room to find him sleeping soundly, a frown creasing his face.
The house was quiet and very still. She could feel the tension in her shoulders and neck. Between suppressing her natural feelings for Ridge and the incessant demands he’d made on her in the last four days, it had been hectic. Not once had there been any break.
Her gaze strayed to the window, where the sunshine of a Colorado afternoon blazed in. There was no better opportunity to take a walk than now, while Ridge was sleeping. Stealthily, she slipped out the front door.
Outside, Sharon wandered away from the house and its ranch buildings. A wind swept over the rugged tableland and lifted her toffee-colored hair to rush its fingers through it. She turned a far-seeing gaze to the land around. It was a wild stretch of country, caught between the rugged canyon-lands to the north where Butch Cassidy and his gang had once roamed and the raw, spectacular mountains of the Colorado Rockies to the south and east.
It was a land of cattle and sheep ranches and not much else except perhaps its untold fortune in oil shale. The Piceance Basin and the Book Cliff Mountains were her home. She pulled her gaze in, studying the Latigo range. The ranch showed the care and pride of its owner. Its fences were strong and well built; its buildings were painted and in good repair; and its livestock were sleek and well fed.
Wildflowers were sprinkled along the fenceline, as many-colored as a painter’s palette. The minute she saw them, Sharon knew they were just what the house needed to give it some life. She picked a big bunch so that she could make several bouquets.
She was humming to herself when she entered the house by the back door with her armload of flowers. She nudged the door shut with her hip and started for the sink.
“Where the hell have you been?” Ridge demanded, lurching into the doorway. “I’ve been through this whole damn house looking for you, calling until I’m damned near hoarse!”
“You were sleeping, so I went for a short walk. I haven’t been gone that long,” Sharon replied with a confirming glance at the wall clock.
She wasn’t about to apologize for taking a walk. She felt she had earned that much. She began opening cupboard doors until she found the shelf where she’d seen the flower vases.
“Why didn’t you tell me where you were going?” Ridge demanded as he crossed to the sink.
“I would have had to wake you up to do that, and I didn’t think that would make you very happy,” Sharon explained with a calmly unmoved glance at him.
“You’re supposed to be taking care of me—not out somewhere walking,” he muttered in a disgruntled tone. “When I woke up and realized you weren’t here, I didn’t know what to think.” He ran a hand through his hair, rumpling it more than it already was.
“Don’t tell me that you actually missed me?” She ran a wondering eye over him as she filled the vases with water.
His gaze at her became steady. A hint of a smile began to break through his angry expression. “Yes, I missed you.”
A little thrill of gladness went through her, despite her attempts not to let his admission mean too much. She busied her hands with the wildflowers, arranging a bunch of them in a vase.
“The next time you decide to go for a walk while I’m sleeping,” Ridge said as he hooked a hand around her waist, pulling her sideways so that she stood closer to him, “I want you to either wake me up and tell me where you’re going or leave a note pinned to my chest.”
His gaze was lightly mocking as he made his request. Sharon pushed at his hand, trying to shove it off her hipbone. She was all too conscious of her shoulder resting against his chest and the nearness of his mouth.
“Ridge, will you behave yourself?” she demanded patiently while she tried to check the rush of her pulse.
“Not until you promise me.” His finger caught the point of her chin and turned it so that she faced him.
The smoky blue of his eyes held her gaze, absorbing her completely. “I promise.” She could hear the huskiness in her voice.
Bending his head, he rubbed his mouth over the outline of her lips, tantalizing her until she could barely breathe. The man smell of him filled her senses as her faint breath mingled with the warm force of his.
“Damn, but you have the softest lips,” he said against them.
“Damn, but you swear a lot,” she murmured, wishing he would stop talking and kiss her.
Instead, he pulled his head back at her reply. “Does it bother you?” There was a concerned look on his face.
She found his question curious and tested it. “Why? Would you stop it if I did?”
His mouth quirked wryly. “Probably not, but I’d watch my language a little more closely around you.”
“Well, it doesn’t bother me,” Sharon assured him and turned back to her bouquet, but his willingness to make the attempt indicated
a respect for her. She liked that. But she held that knowledge close inside her, not letting him see how much a little thing like that meant to her.
The back door opened and Ridge released her, shifting his position to create a space between them as Scott walked into the kitchen.
“You’re finally up and about,” her brother observed. “How are you feeling?”
“Better,” Ridge nodded affirmatively and levered himself away from the sink counter.
Out of the corner of her eye, Sharon noticed the way he disguised the difficulty he had walking as he moved toward the table and chairs in the kitchen. He didn’t want Scott to see just how much trouble it was for him.
“Sit down.” He motioned her brother to a chair. “We’ll have some coffee. Sharon, pour us a cup.”
It was on the tip of her tongue to point out that he’d been standing beside the coffee pot and could just as easily have poured himself a cup and carried it to the table, but she held back the words. Instead, she took two cups from the shelf, filled them with coffee, and carried them to the table for Ridge and her brother. Scott glanced at her as if he expected her to join them, but Sharon went back to the sink and began arranging the wildftowers in the vases.
As she listened to the hum of their voices, the moment seemed part of a familiar pattern. She’d lost count of the number of times she’d been a party to their conversations over the years. If there had been any change, it was simply that she had stopped blindly adoring Ridge. She loved him, but not blindly—futilely, probably, but not blindly.
Satisfied with the riot of blossom and color in the three vases, Sharon carried two of them into the living room, setting them in strategic places to liven the room. The third, a small vase, she set at the back of the kitchen table where it would be out of the way when they sat down to a meal. Then she stepped back to study the effect critically.
“How does it look?” she asked absently of the two men at the table. Her brother had an eye for such things as background color and proportionate sizes of objects in their settings.
“That’s fine,” replied Scott, never one to elaborate when something was right.
“Look what happens when you let a woman into your house for a few days,” Ridge mocked, sliding Sharon a dryly amused glance. “All of a sudden, she starts setting flowers all over the place. I’m surprised she hasn’t rearranged the furniture.”
“I’ve been thinking about it,” she retorted, vaguely irritated by his chiding comment.
“Well, don’t,” he smiled slowly. “I like things the way they are.”
It only confirmed what she already knew. He was satisfied with his home and his life the way it was, minus a woman’s touch.
“I can believe that.” Her voice was flat and cool as Sharon broke the pattern and didn’t stay in the kitchen to listen to them talk. She went into another part of the house and searched for something to do.
Before Scott left, he went to look for her to see if there was anything she needed. Ridge stood in the background, watching her with a keenly assessing eye. It was slightly unnerving to have him taking her apart and examining each piece.
“Why don’t you stay for supper, Scott?” Sharon invited, suddenly wanting her brother’s presence to shield her from Ridge. It was one thing knowing that he didn’t need her in his life, but it was another to hear him say it.
“I can’t tonight,” her brother refused. “I promised Soames I’d be over to his place tonight and take a look at that round baler he wants to sell.”
“It’s just as well.” Ridge tried to hide his hobbling gait as he moved closer to include himself in the conversation. “You wouldn’t like the food. You should see what your sister’s been feeding me.”
“Come over tomorrow night,” Sharon issued a second invitation to her brother, ignoring Ridge’s mocking complaint about his diet of soft foods. “Ridge should be able to handle a real meal by then. I’ll fix some roast beef and you can help him celebrate.”
“I’ll come,” Scott accepted.
While Ridge had a last word with her brother, Sharon excused herself and returned to the kitchen to check on the casserole in the oven. It was bubbling away, so she turned the oven temperature to its lowest setting and started fixing the side dishes she intended to serve with it.
After Scott left the house, Ridge hobbled into the kitchen, keeping a hand on the wall for support. Sharon barely glanced up when he entered, then swung away to remove the dirty cups from the table.
“You might as well sit down. Supper will be ready in a few minutes,” she informed him in a brisk voice.
As she carried the cups to the sink, she heard the scrape of a chair leg on the tile floor. She picked up the damp dishcloth and walked back to the table to wipe its top. Ridge was standing behind the chair he’d pulled out, leaning both hands on it to rest before exerting his sore stomach muscles to sit down.
The small vase of wildflowers on the table seemed to taunt her with their presence—as unwanted as she was. As soon as she had finished wiping the table, Sharon picked up the vase. When she swung away from the table to carry the vase to the counter, Ridge’s hand snared the crook of her arm.
“You can leave the vase on the table. It won’t be in the way,” he said.
She raised a cool glance to his face. “I thought you didn’t like flowers sitting around,” Sharon challenged.
“After being cooped up in the house all this time, it’s nice to see a bit of the outdoors,” Ridge replied with a vague shrug and released her arm to touch one of the red blossoms with his finger. “They won’t last long. In a few days, they’ll be dead.”
“I know.” Abruptly, Sharon set the vase on the table and turned away, smoothing her hands down the front of her jeans as she walked to the stove, fighting a sick, clammy feeling.
The flowers wouldn’t be in the house for long and neither would she. When she was gone, Ridge wouldn’t miss her any more than he would miss the flowers. Quickly she began dishing the food into serving bowls before realizing she hadn’t set the table.
All through the meal, Sharon was conscious of the hooded study of his gaze. When they had finished eating, she poured them each a cup of freshly brewed coffee and began clearing the dirty dishes from the table while hers cooled.
“I wasn’t completely honest with you the other day when we had that heated discussion,” Ridge said, breaking the silence that followed the meal.
“Which one?” Sharon asked smoothly, because there had been several discussions that might be described as heated, and continued covering the bowls of leftovers and stowing them in the refrigerator.
“That day at the creek, before I got stomped on by that bull,” he replied.
For an instant, his answer made her pause in midmotion, then she went back to her task more vigorously than before. She remembered the conversation much too vividly—and the bitter hurt and wounded pride that had ensued.
“I think just about everything was said that day,” she said curtly and walked to the sink, conscious of his watchful eyes.
“Not quite everything,” Ridge paused. “Would you come over and sit down? It’s difficult to talk to somebody when they keep darting all over the room.”
“I can hear you just fine. I don’t have to sit down to listen,” Sharon countered and began running water in the sink so she could put the dirty dishes in to soak.
“Your coffee is getting cold.”
“I’ll warm it up when I’m through here,” she stated.
A heavy sigh came from him. Then his chair was pushed back from the table and she tensed at his unsteady approach. She squirted detergent into the water filling the sink and began setting the supper dishes into it. She felt the touch of his hands on her shoulders, stilling her movements.
“You accused me of giving you encouragement when you had that schoolgirl crush on me, and I admitted that I did.” His voice was low, the vibration of it seeming to come through his hands to go inside her. “What I didn’t tell you w
as that I found you to be a very tempting morsel. The problem came when I realized I wanted to do a lot more than just kiss you—and I knew you were so crazy about me that you’d let me.”
Her cheeks grew hot. His hands started to move down her arms, their action too close to a caress. Sharon grabbed the dishcloth and began scrubbing at the dishes in the sink, forcing his hands off her arms, but they settled on her waist.
“I’m not even sure about that,” she said tensely, denying she had been so besotted with him back then that she would have gone all the way. “If that’s what you believed, what stopped you?” she challenged bitterly, not wanting this conversation to continue any more than she’d wanted the last. “Don’t tell me your conscience wouldn’t let you?”
“It wasn’t my conscience as much as it was your brother,” he stated.
“My brother?” Sharon frowned in confusion, her body poised motionless at his response.
“Scott was my best friend, practically a brother. You don’t mess around with a guy’s kid sister and expect him to stay your friend,” Ridge explained. “That’s why I kept ‘hands off.’”
“What’s the point in telling me this now?” Her lips came together in a grim line as she began washing the same plate over. “Is it supposed to make a difference?”
“The situation has changed.” His hands began to move to the front of her waist, sliding across her stomach and causing her muscles to contract automatically at his touch.
“How?” She tried to breathe normally as she sliced a look backward out of the corner of her eye, feeling his breath stirring her hair.
“Because you’ve grown up.” His crossing hands had drawn her against the full length of his body—her shoulders touching the solidness of his chest, her hips feeling the rub of his thighs. “Big brother is no longer under any obligation to protect you. You haven’t done a bad job of taking care of me, so you must be able to take care of yourself.”
“So?” Sharon didn’t trust herself to say more than one word, afraid the thick disturbance within her would creep into her voice.
