Kitabı oku: «Hawk's Way Grooms»

READERS AND CRITICS ALIKE LOVE

JOAN JOHNSTON

“A guaranteed good read.”

—New York Times bestselling author Heather Graham

“Joan Johnston does short contemporary Westerns to perfection.”

—Publishers Weekly

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—New York Daily News

“Joan Johnston continually gives us everything we want…fabulous details and atmosphere, memorable characters, a story that you wish would never end, and lots of tension and sensuality.”

—Romantic Times BOOKreviews

“Absolutely captivating…a delightful storyteller…Joan Johnston [creates] unforgettable subplots and characters who make every fine thread weave into a touching tapestry.”

—Affaire de Coeur

Joan Johnston
Hawk's Way Grooms

MILLS & BOON

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CONTENTS

HAWK’S WAY: THE VIRGIN GROOM

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

EPILOGUE

HAWK’S WAY: THE SUBSTITUTE GROOM

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

EPILOGUE

HAWK’S WAY: THE VIRGIN GROOM

CHAPTER ONE

SWEAT STREAMING FROM HIS TEMPLES, strong hands clenched tight on the parallel bars that supported him, Mac Macready put his full weight on his left leg. He felt a sharp pain, but the leg held. He gritted his teeth to keep from groaning. So far, so good.

Mac kept his eyes focused on the area between the bars in front of him, willing his leg to work. He took an easy step with his right leg, then called on the left again. The pain was less sharp the second time he put his weight on the restructured limb. He could handle the pain. More important, the leg had stayed under him. He glanced across the room at his friend and agent, Andy Dennison, and grinned.

Mac Macready could walk again.

“You did it, Mac,” Andy said, crossing the room to slap him on the back. “It’s great to see you back on your feet.”

“About time,” Mac said. “I’ve spent the better part of two years trying to get this damned leg of mine back into shape.” A sharp pain seared up his leg, but he refused to sit down, not now, when he had just made it back onto his feet. He took more of his weight on his arms and kept walking. A bead of sweat trickled between his shoulder blades before it caught on his sleeveless T-shirt. He summoned another smile. “Give me a couple of months, and I’ll be ready to start catching passes again for the Tornadoes.”

Mac caught the skeptical look on Andy’s face before his agent said, “Sure, Mac. Whatever you say.”

He understood Andy’s skepticism. Mac had said the same thing after every operation. Who would have suspected a broken leg—all right, so maybe it had been shattered—would be so difficult to mend? But his body had rejected the pins they had used to put things back together again at ankle and hip. They had finally had to invent something especially for him.

Then the long bones in his leg hadn’t grown straight and had needed to be broken and set again. He had fought complications caused by infection. Finally, when he had pushed too hard to get well, he had ended up back in a cast.

The football injury had been devastating, coming as it had at the end of Mac’s first phenomenal season with the Texas Tornadoes. His future couldn’t have been brighter. He was a star receiver, with more touchdown catches than any other rookie in the league. His team was headed for the Super Bowl. With one crushing tackle, everything had fallen apart. The sportscasters had called it a career-ending injury. Mac wasn’t willing to concede the issue.

“Good work, Mac,” the physical therapist said, reaching out to help him into the wheelchair waiting for him at the end of the parallel bars. “Put your arm around me.”

He flashed the young woman a killer grin, inwardly cursing the fact that after six measly steps he was on the verge of collapse. “Better watch out, Hartwell. Now that I’m back on my feet, I’m going to give your fiancé some serious competition.”

Diane Hartwell blushed. Most women did when Mac turned on the charm. He had the kind of blond-haired, blue-eyed good looks that made female heads swivel to take a second look. Mac wondered what she would think if she knew the truth about him.

Diane answered wryly, “I’m sure George would gladly trade me to you for an autographed football.”

“Done,” Mac said brightly, biting back a grimace as Diane bent his injured leg and placed his foot on the wheelchair footrest.

“I was only kidding,” Diane said.

“I wasn’t,” Mac said, smiling up at her. “Tell your fiancé I’ll be glad to autograph that football for him anytime.”

“Thanks, Mac,” Diane said. “I appreciate it.”

“Think nothing of it, Hartwell. And tell George to hang on to that ball. Someday it’ll be worth something.”

Once Mac resumed his career, he would break every record in the book. He had that kind of determination. And he had been that good. Of course, that was before the accident. Everybody—except himself—questioned whether he would ever be that good again.

It had been touch and go for a while whether he would even walk. But Mac had known he would walk again, and without the aid of a brace. He had done it today. It seemed he was the only one who wasn’t surprised.

He had known he would succeed, because he had beaten the odds before. When he was eight, he had suffered from acute myelocytic leukemia. It should have killed him. He had recovered from the childhood disease and gone on to win the Heisman Trophy and be drafted in the first round by the Texas Tornadoes. Mac had no intention of giving up his dreams of a future in football.

Andy wheeled him down the hospital corridor to his room. “When do you get out of here?” his agent asked.

“The doctor said once I could stand on my leg, he would release me. I guess that means I can get out of here anytime now.”

“The press will want a statement,” Andy said as he stopped the wheelchair beside Mac’s hospital bed. “Do you want to talk to them? Or do you want me to do it?”

Mac thought of facing a dozen TV cameras from a wheelchair. Or standing with crutches. Or wavering on his own two feet. “Tell them I’ll be back next season.”

“Maybe that’s not such a good—”

“Tell them I’ll be back,” Mac said, staring Andy in the eye.

Andy had once been a defensive lineman and wore a coveted Super Bowl ring on his right hand. He understood what it meant to play football. And what it meant to stop. He straightened the tie at his bull neck, shrugged his broad shoulders and smoothed the tie over his burgeoning belly, before he said, “You got it, Mac.”

“Thanks, Andy. I am coming back, you know.”

“Sure, Mac,” Andy said.

Mac could see his agent didn’t believe him any more than the doctors and nurses who had treated him over the past two years. Even Hartwell, though she encouraged him, didn’t believe he would achieve the kind of mobility he needed to play in the pros. Mac needed to get away somewhere and heal himself. He knew he could do it. After all, he had done it once before.

“Where can I get in touch with you?” Andy asked.

“I’m headed to a ranch in northwest Texas owned by some friends of mine. I have an open invitation to visit, and I’m going to take them up on it. I’ll call you when I get there and give you a number where I can be reached.”

“Good enough. Take care, Mac. Don’t—”

“Don’t finish that sentence, Andy. Not if you’re going to warn me not to get my hopes up.”

Andy shook his head. “I was going to say don’t be a fool and kill yourself trying to get well too fast.”

“I’m going to get my job back from the kid who took over for me,” Mac said in a steely voice. “And I’m going to do it this year.”

Andy didn’t argue further, just shook Mac’s hand and left him alone in the hospital room.

Mac looked around at the sterile walls, the white sheets, the chrome rails on the bed, listened to the muffled sounds that weren’t quite silence and inhaled the overwhelming antiseptic smell that made him want to gag. He had spent too much of his life in hospital beds—more than any human being ought to have to. He wanted out of here, the sooner the better.

He could hardly wait to get to the wide open spaces of Zach and Rebecca Whitelaw’s ranch, Hawk’s Pride. More than Zach or Rebecca or the land, he had a yearning to see their daughter Jewel again. Jewel was the first of eight kids who had been adopted by the Whitelaws, and she had returned to Hawk’s Pride after college to manage Camp LittleHawk, the camp for kids with cancer that Rebecca had started years ago.

Mac remembered his first impressions of Jewel—huge Mississippi-mud-brown eyes, shoulder-length dirt-brown hair and an even dirtier looking white T-shirt and jeans. She had been five years old to his eight, and she had been leaning against the corral at Camp LittleHawk watching him venture onto horseback for the first time.

“Don’t be scared,” Jewel had said.

“I’m not,” he’d retorted, glancing around at the other five kids in the corral with him. The horses were stopped in a circle, and the wrangler was working with a little boy who was even more scared than he was.

“Buttercup wouldn’t hurt a fly,” Jewel reassured him.

He remembered feeling mortified at the thought of riding a horse named Buttercup. And terrified that Buttercup would throw him off her broad back and trample him underfoot. Even though he’d been dying of cancer, he’d been afraid of getting killed. Life, he had learned, was precious.

“I’m not scared,” he lied. He wished he could reach up and tug his baseball cap down tighter over his bald head, but he was afraid to let go of his two-handed grip on the saddle horn.

Jewel scooted under the bottom rail of the corral on her hands and knees, which explained how she had gotten so dirty, and walked right up to the horse—all right, it was only a pony, but it was still big—without fear. He sat frozen as she patted Buttercup’s graying jaw and crooned to her.

“What are you saying?” he demanded.

“I’m telling Buttercup to be good. I’m telling her you’re sick and—”

“I’m dying,” he blurted out. “I’ll be dead by Christmas.” It was June. He was currently in remission, but the last time he’d been sick, he’d heard the doctors figuring he had about six months to live. He knew it was only a matter of time before the disease came back. It always did.

“My momma died and my daddy and my brother,” Jewel said. “I thought I was gonna die, too, but I didn’t.” She reached up and touched the crisscrossing pink scars on her face. “I had to stay in the hospital till I got well.”

“Then you know it’s a rotten place to be,” he said.

She nodded. “Zach and ‘Becca came and took me away. I never want to go back.”

“Yeah, well I don’t have much choice.”

“Why not?” she asked.

“Because that’s where you go when you’re sick.”

“But you’re well now,” she said, looking up at him with serious brown eyes. “Except you don’t have any hair yet. But don’t worry. ‘Becca says it’ll grow back.”

He flushed and risked letting go of the horn to tug the cap down. It was one of the many humiliations he had endured—losing his hair…along with his privacy…and his childhood. He had always wanted to go to camp like his sister, Sadie, but he had been too sick. Then some lady had opened this place. He had jumped at the chance to get away from home. Away from the hospital.

“Your hair doesn’t grow back till you stop getting sick,” he pointed out to the fearless kid standing with her cheek next to the pony’s.

“So, don’t get sick again,” she said.

He snickered. “Yeah. Right. It doesn’t work like that.”

“Just believe you can stay well, and you will,” she said.

The circle of horses began to move again, and she headed back toward the fence. It was then he noticed her limp. “Hey!” he shouted after her. “What happened to your leg?”

“It got broken,” she said matter-of-factly.

Mac hadn’t thought much about it then, but now he knew the pain she must have endured to walk again. Jewel would know what he was feeling as he got out of the hospital for what he hoped would be the last time. Jewel would understand.

After that first meeting, he and Jewel had encountered each other often over the next several years. He had beaten the leukemia and returned as a teenager to become a counselor at Camp LittleHawk. That was when Jewel had become his best friend. Not his girlfriend. His best friend.

He already had a girlfriend back home in Dallas. Her name was Louise and he called her Lou and was violently in love with her. He had met Lou when she came to the junior-senior prom with another guy. She had only been in the eighth grade. By the time he was a senior and Lou was a freshman, they were going steady.

He told Jewel all about the agonies of being in love, and though she hadn’t yet taken the plunge, she was all sympathetic ears. Jewel was the best buddy a guy could have, a confidante, a pal. A soul mate. He could tell her anything and, in fact, had told her some amazingly private things.

Like how he had cried the first time he had endured a procedure called a back-stick, where they stuck a needle in your back to figure out your blood count. How he had wet the bed once in the hospital rather than ask for a bedpan. And how humiliating it had been when the nurse treated him like a baby and put the thermometer into an orifice other than his mouth.

It was astonishing to think he could have been so frank with Jewel. But Jewel didn’t only listen to his woes, she shared her own. So he knew how jealous and angry she had been when Zach and Rebecca adopted another little girl two years older than her named Rolleen. And how she had learned to accept each new child a little more willingly, until the youngest, Colt, had come along, and he had felt like her own flesh-and-blood baby brother.

Mac had also been there at the worst moment of her life. He had lost a good friend that fateful Fourth of July. And Jewel…Jewel had lost much more. After that hot, horrible summer day, she had refused to see him again. So far, he had respected her wish to be left alone. But there was an empty place inside him she had once helped to fill.

He had received an invitation to her wedding the previous spring. It was hard to say what his feelings had been. Joy for her, because he knew how hard it must have been for her to move past what had happened to her. And sadness, too, because he knew the closeness they had enjoyed in the past would be transferred to her husband.

Then had come the announcement, a few weeks before the wedding, that it had been canceled. He had wondered what had gone wrong, wondered which of them had called it off and worried about what she must be feeling. He would never pry, but he was curious. After all, he and Jewel had once known everything there was to know about each other. He had picked up the phone to call her, but put it down. Too many years had passed.

Mac had never had another woman friend like Jewel. Sex always got in the way. Or rather, the woman’s expectations. And his inability to fulfill them.

What kind of man is still a virgin at twenty-five? Mac mused.

An angry man. A onetime romantic fool who waited through college for his high school sweetheart to grow up, only to be left for another guy.

It hadn’t seemed like such a terrible sacrifice remaining faithful to Louise all those years, turning down girls who showed up at his dorm room in T-shirts and not much else, girls who wanted to make it with a college football hero, girls who were attracted by his calendar-stud good looks. He had loved Lou and had his whole life with her ahead of him.

Until she had jilted him her senior year for Harry Warnecke, who had a bright future running his father’s bowling alley.

Lou had been gentle but firm in her rejection of him. “I don’t love you anymore, Mac. I love Harry. I’m pregnant, and we’re going to be married.”

Mac had been livid with fury. He had never touched her, had respected her wish to remain a virgin until she graduated from high school and they could marry, and she was pregnant with some guy named Harry’s kid and wanted to marry him.

It had taken every ounce of self-control he had not to reach out and throttle her. “Have a nice life,” he had managed to say.

His anger had prodded him to hunt up the first available woman and get laid. But his pain had sent him back to his dorm room to nurse his broken heart. How could he make love to another woman when he still loved Lou? If all he had wanted was to get screwed, he could have been doing that all along. His dad had always told him that sex felt good, but making love felt better. He had wanted it to be making love the first time.

His final year of college, after he broke up with Lou, he went through a lot of women. Dating them, that is. Kissing them and touching them and learning what made them respond to a man. But he never put himself inside one of them. He was looking for something more than sex in the relationship. What he found were women who admired his body, or his talent with a football, or his financial prospects. Not one of them wanted him.

It wasn’t until he had been drafted by the pros and began traveling with the Tornadoes that he met Elizabeth Kale. She was a female TV sports commentator, a woman who felt comfortable with jocks and could banter with the best of them. She had taken his breath away. She had shiny brown hair and warm brown eyes and a smile that wouldn’t quit. He had fallen faster than a wrestled steer in a rodeo.

She hadn’t been impressed by his statistics—personal or football or financial. It had not been easy to get her to go out with him. She didn’t want to get involved. She had her career, and marriage wasn’t in the picture.

Mac didn’t give up when he wanted something—and he’d wanted to marry Elizabeth. As the season progressed, they began to see each other when they were both in town. Elizabeth was a city girl, so they did city things—when they could both fit it into their busy schedules. Mac wooed her with every romantic gesture he could think of, and she responded. And when he proposed marriage, she accepted. Elizabeth made what time she could for him, and they exchanged a lot of passionate kisses at airports where their paths crossed.

He had carefully planned her seduction. He knew when and where it was going to happen. He was nervous and eager and restless. By a certain age—and Mac had already reached it—a woman expected a man to know all the right moves. Mac had been to the goal line plenty of times, but he had never scored a touchdown. He was ready and willing to take the plunge—figuratively speaking—but now that he had waited so long, the idea of making it with a woman for the first time was a little unnerving. Especially with Elizabeth, who meant so much to him.

What if he did it wrong? What if he couldn’t please her? What if he left her unsatisfied? He read books. And planned. And postponed the moment.

Then he broke his leg. Shattered his leg.

Mac tasted bile in his throat, remembering what had happened next. Elizabeth had come to the hospital to see him, flashbulbs popping around her, as much in the news as his girlfriend as she was as a famous newscaster. She listened at his bedside to the prognosis.

His football career was over. He would be lucky if he ever walked again. He would always need a brace on his leg. Maybe he could manage with a cane.

He had seen it in her eyes before she spoke a word. The fear. And the determination. She said nothing until the doctors had left them alone.

“I can’t—I won’t—I can’t do it, Mac.”

“Do what, Elizabeth?” he asked in a bitter voice that revealed he knew exactly what she meant, though he pretended ignorance.

“I won’t marry a man who can’t walk.” She slipped her widespread fingers slowly through the hair that fell forward on her face, carefully settling it back in place. He had always thought it a charming gesture, but now it only made her seem vain.

“I can’t go through this with you,” she said. “I mean, I…I hate hospitals and sick people and I can’t…I can’t be there for you, Mac.”

He had known it was coming, but it hurt just the same. “Get out, Elizabeth.”

She stood there waiting for…what?…for him to tell her it was all right? It wasn’t, by God, all right! It was a hell of a thing to tell a man you couldn’t stand by him in times of trouble. For better or for worse. It told him plenty about just how deep her feelings for him ran. Thin as sheet ice on a Texas pond.

“I said get out!” He was shouting by then, and she flinched and backed away. “Get out!”

She turned and ran.

His throat hurt from shouting and his leg throbbed and his eyes and nose burned with unshed tears. He shouted at the nurse when she tried to come in, but he couldn’t even turn over and bury his head in a pillow because they had his leg so strapped up.

Mac forced his mind away from the painful memories. There had been no seductions during the past two years, though he had spent a great deal of time in bed. He had been too busy trying to get well. Now he was well. And he was going to have to face that zero on the scoreboard and do something about it.

He could find a woman who knew the ropes—there were certainly enough volunteers even now—and get it over with. But he found that a little cold and calculating. The first time ought to be with a special woman. Not that he would ever be stupid enough to fall in love again. After all, twice burned, thrice chary. But he wanted to like and respect and admire the woman he chose as his first sexual partner.

Lately his dreams had been unbelievably erotic. Hot, sweat-slick bodies entwined in twisted sheets. Long female legs wrapped around his waist. A woman’s hair draped across his chest. His mouth on her— He shook off the vision. Now that he was finally healthy—meaning he could get out of bed as easily as he could fall into it—it was time he took care of unfinished business.

Jewel’s face appeared in his mind’s eye. He saw the faint, crisscrossing scars from the car accident that had left her an orphan which had never quite faded away. Her smile, winsome and mischievous. Heard the distressed sound of her voice when she admitted her breasts kept growing and growing like two balloons. And her laughter when he had offered to pop them for her.

With Jewel he wouldn’t have to be afraid of making a fool of himself in bed. Jewel would understand his predicament. But she was the last person he could ever have sex with. Not after what had happened to her.

He was sure she would see the humor in the current situation. Jewel had a great sense of humor. At least, once upon a time she had. He could hardly believe six years had passed since they had last seen each other. They had both been through a great deal since then.

Mac hoped Jewel wouldn’t mind him intruding on her this way. But he was coming, like it or not.

CHAPTER TWO

PETER “MAC” MACREADY WAS THE last person Jewel Whitelaw wanted to see back at Hawk’s Pride, because he was the one person besides her counselor who knew her deepest, darkest secret. She should have told someone else long ago—her parents, one of her three sisters or four brothers, her fiancé—but she had never been able to admit the truth to anyone. Only Mac knew. And now he was coming back.

If she could have left home while he was visiting, she would have done so. But Camp LittleHawk was scheduled to open in two weeks, and she had too much to do to get ready for the summer season to be able to pick up and leave. All she could do was avoid Mac as much as possible.

As she emerged from a steamy shower, draped herself in a floor-length white terry cloth robe and wrapped her long brown hair in a towel, she learned just how impossible that was going to be.

“Hi.”

He was standing at the open bathroom door dressed in worn Levi’s, a Tornadoes T-shirt and Nikes, leaning on a cane. He didn’t even have the grace to look embarrassed. A grin split his face from ear to ear, creating two masculine dimples in his cheeks, while his vivid blue eyes gazed at her with the warmth of an August day in Texas.

“Hi,” she said back. In spite of not wanting him here, she felt her lips curve in an answering smile. Her gaze skipped to the knotty-looking hickory cane he leaned on and back to his face. “I see you’re standing on your own.”

“Almost,” he said. “Sorry about intruding. Your mom said to make myself comfortable.” He gestured to the bedroom behind him, on the other side of the bathroom, where his suitcase sat on the double bed. “Looks like we’ll be sharing a bath.”

Jewel groaned inwardly. The new camp counselors’ cottages had been built to match the single-story Spanish style of the main ranch house, with whitewashed adobe walls and a red barrel-tile roof. Each had two bedrooms, but shared a bath, living room and kitchen. As the camp manager, she should have had this cottage all to herself. “I thought you’d be staying at the house,” she said.

“Your mom gave me a choice.” He shrugged. “This seemed more private.”

“I see.” Her mother had asked her if she minded, since Jewel and Mac were such old friends, if she gave Mac a choice of staying at the cottage or in the house. Jewel hadn’t objected, because she hadn’t been able to think up a good reason to say no that wouldn’t sound suspicious. As far as her parents knew, she and Mac still were good friends. And they were.

Only, Jewel had expected Mac to keep his distance, as he had for the past six years. And he had not.

Mac’s brow furrowed in a way that was achingly familiar. “I can tell Rebecca I’ve changed my mind, if you don’t want me here.”

Jewel struggled between the desire to escape Mac’s scrutiny and the yearning to have back the camaraderie they had once enjoyed. Maybe it would be all right. Maybe the subject wouldn’t come up. Yeah, and maybe horses come in green and pink. “I…”

He started to turn away. “I’ll get my bag.”

“Wait.”

He turned back. “I don’t want to make you uncomfortable, Jewel. I won’t talk about it. I won’t even bring up the subject.” His lips curled wryly. “Of course, I just brought up the subject to say I won’t bring it up, but I promise it’ll be off-limits. I need a place to rest and get better, and I thought you might not mind if I stayed here.”

His eyes looked wounded, and her heart went out to him. She crossed to him, because that seemed easier than making him walk to her with the cane. His arms opened to her and she walked right into them and they hugged tightly.

“God, I’ve missed you,” he said, his deep voice rumbling in her ear.

“This feels good,” she admitted. “It’s been too long, Mac.”

There was nothing sexual in the embrace, just two old friends, two very good friends, reconnecting after a long separation. Except Jewel was aware of the strength in his arms, the way her breasts felt crushed against his muscular chest and the feel of his thighs pressed against her own. She stiffened, then forced herself to relax.

“You’re taller than I remember,” he said, tucking her towel-covered head under his chin.

“I’ve grown three inches since…I’ve grown,” she said, realizing how difficult it was going to be avoiding the subject she wanted to avoid. “It’s a good thing, or I’d get a crick in my neck looking up at you.”

He had to be four inches over six feet. She remembered him being tall at nineteen, but he must have grown an inch or two since then, and of course his shoulders were broader, his angular features more mature. He was a man now, not a boy.

He was big. He was strong. He could physically overwhelm her. But she had known Mac forever. He would never hurt her. She reminded herself to relax.

The towel slipped off, and her hair cascaded to her waist.

“Good Lord,” Mac said, his fingers tangling in the length of it. “Your hair was never this long, either.”

“I like it long.” She could drape it forward over her shoulders to help cover her Enormous Endowments.

“I think I’m going to like it, too,” he said, smiling down at her with a teasing glint in his eyes.

She gave him an arch look. “Are you flirting with me, Mr. Macready?”

“Who, me? Naw. Wouldn’t think of it, Ruby.”

Jewel grinned. In the old days, he had often called her by the names of different precious gems—“Because you’re a Jewel, get it?”—and the return to such familiarity made her feel even more comfortable with him. “Get out of here so I can get dressed,” she said, stepping back from his embrace.

The robe gaped momentarily, and his glance slipped downward appreciatively. She self-consciously pulled the cloth over her breasts to cover them completely.

“Looks like they’ve grown, too,” he quipped, leering at her comically.

She should have laughed. It was what she would have done six years ago, before disaster had struck. But she couldn’t joke with him anymore about her overgenerous breasts. She blamed the size of them for what had happened to her. “Don’t, Mac,” she said quietly.

He sobered instantly. “I’m sorry, Jewel.”

She managed a smile. “It’s no big deal. Just get out of here and let me get dressed.”

He backed up, and for the first time she saw how much he needed the cane. His face turned white around the mouth with pain, and he swore under his breath.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

“No problem,” he said. “Leg’s almost as good as new. Figure I’ll start jogging tomorrow.”

“Jogging?”

He gave her a sheepish look. “So maybe I’ll start out walking. Want to go with me?”

She daintily pointed the toe of her once-injured leg in his direction. “Walking isn’t my forte. How about a horseback ride?”

He shook his head. “Gotta walk. Need the exercise to get back into shape. Come with me. My limp is worse than yours, so you won’t have any trouble keeping up. Besides, it would give us a chance to catch up on what we’ve both been doing the past six years. Please come.”

She wrinkled her nose.

“Pretty please with sugar on it?”

It was something she had taught him to say if he really wanted a woman to do something. She gave in to the smile and let her lips curve with the delight she felt. “All right, you hopeless romantic. I’ll walk with you, but it’ll have to be early because I’ve got a lot of work to do tomorrow.”

“Figured I’d go early to beat the heat,” he said. “Six-thirty?”

“Make it six, and you’ve got a deal.” She reached out a hand, and Mac shook it.

The electric shock that raced up her arm was disturbing. It took an effort to keep the frown from her face. This wasn’t supposed to happen. She wasn’t supposed to be physically attracted to Mac Macready. They were just good friends. Yeah, and horses come in purple and orange.

She closed the bathroom door and sank onto the edge of the tub. She had always thought Mac was cute, but he had matured into a genuine hunk. No problem. She would handle the attraction the way she had from the beginning, by thinking of him as a brother.

But he wasn’t her brother. He was a very attractive, very available man. Who once had been—still was?—her best friend.

She clung to that thought, which made it easier to keep their relationship in perspective. It was much more important to have a friend like Mac than a boyfriend.

JEWEL REPEATED THAT SENTENCE like a litany the next morning at 5:55 when Mac showed up in the kitchen dressed in Nikes and black running shorts and nothing else. The kitchen door was open and through the screen she was aware of flies buzzing and the lowing of cattle. A steady, squeaking sound meant that her youngest brother, Colt, hadn’t gotten around to oiling the windmill beside the stock pond. But those distractions weren’t enough to keep her from ogling Mac’s body.

A wedge of golden hair on his chest became a line of soft down as it reached his navel and disappeared beneath his shorts. She consciously forced her gaze upward.

Mac’s tousled, collar-length hair was a sun-kissed blond, and his eyes were as bright as the morning sky. He hadn’t shaved, and the overnight beard made him look both dangerous and sexy.

Without the concealing T-shirt and jeans, she could see the sinewy muscles in his shoulders and arms, the washboard belly and the horrible mishmash of scars on his left leg. He leaned heavily on the cane.

She poured him a bowl of cornflakes and doused them with milk. “Eat. You’re running late.”

“Oh, that I were running,” he said. “I’m afraid walking is the best I can do.” He hobbled across the redbrick tile floor to the small wooden table, settled himself in the ladder-back chair opposite her and began consuming cereal at an alarming rate.

“What’s that you’re wearing?” he asked.

She tugged at her bulky, short-sleeved sweatshirt, dusted off her cutoff jeans and readjusted her hair over her shoulders. “Some old things.”

“Gonna be hot in that,” he said between bites.

But the sweatshirt disguised her Bountiful Bosom, which was more important than comfort. “Hungry?” she inquired, her chin resting on her hand as she watched him eat ravenously.

“I missed supper last night.”

She had checked his bedroom and found him asleep at suppertime and hadn’t disturbed him. He had slept all through the afternoon and evening. “You must have been tired.”

“I was. Completely exhausted. Not that I’d admit that to anyone but you.” He poured himself another bowl of cereal, doused it with the milk she had left on the table and began eating again.

“Nothing wrong with your appetite,” she observed.

He made a sound, but his mouth was too full to answer.

She watched him eat four bowls of cereal. That was about right—two for dinner and two for breakfast. “Ready to go walking now?” she asked.

“Sure.” He took his dish to the sink and reached back for hers, which she handed to him.

Seeing the difficulty he was having trying to do everything one-handed, so he could hang on to his cane, she said, “I can do that for you.”

“I’m not a cripple!” When he turned to snap at her, he lost his one-handed grip on the dishes. His cane fell as he lurched to catch the bowls with both hands. Without the cane, his left leg crumpled under him.

“Look out!” Jewel cried.

The dishes crashed into the sink as Mac grabbed hold of the counter to keep from falling backward.

“Damn it all to hell!” he raged.

Jewel reached out to comfort him, but he snarled, “Don’t touch me. Leave me alone.”

Jewel had whirled to leave, when he bit out, “Don’t go.”

She stopped where she was, but she wanted to run. She didn’t want to see his pain. It reminded her too much of her own.

He stared out the window over the sink at the endless reaches of Hawk’s Pride, with its vast, grassy plains and the jagged outcroppings of rock that marked the entrance to the canyons in the distance.

“It must be awful,” she whispered, “to lose so much.”

His eyes slid closed, and she watched his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed hard. He slowly opened his eyes and turned to look at her over his shoulder. “This…the way I am…It’s just temporary. I’ll be back as good as new next season.”

“Will you?”

He met her gaze steadily. “Bet on it.”

She knew him too well. Well enough to hear the sheer bravado in his answer and to see the unspoken fear in his eyes that his football career was over. They had always been deeply attuned to one another. He was vulnerable again, in a way he once had been as a youth—this time not to death itself, but to the death of his dreams.

“What can I do, Mac?”

He managed a smile. “Hand me my cane, will you?”

It was easier to do as he asked than to probe the painful issues that he was refusing to address. She crossed to pick up his cane and watched as he eased his weight off his hands and onto his leg with the cane’s support.

“Are you sure it isn’t too soon to be doing so much?” she asked as he hissed in a breath.

He headed determinedly for the screen door. “The only way my leg can get stronger is if I walk on it.”

She followed after him, as she had for nearly a dozen years in their youth. “All right, cowboy. Head ’em up, and move ’em out.”

He flashed her his killer grin, and she smiled back, letting the screen door slam behind her.

It was easier to pretend nothing was wrong. But she could already see that things were different between them. They had both been through a great deal in the years since they had last seen each other. She knew as well as he did what it felt like to live with fear, and with disappointment.

She had worked hard to put behind her what had happened the summer she was sixteen and Harvey Barnes had attacked her at the Fourth of July picnic. But even now the memory of that day haunted her.

She had been excited when Harvey, a senior who ran with the in crowd, asked her to the annual county-wide Fourth of July celebration. She’d had a crush on him for a long time, but he hadn’t given her a second glance. During the previous year, her breasts had blossomed and given her a figure most movie stars would have paid good dollars to have. A lot of boys stared, including Harvey.

She had suspected why Harvey had asked her out, but she hadn’t cared. She had just been so glad to be asked, she had accepted his invitation on the spot.

“Why would you want to go out with a guy who’s so full of himself?” Mac asked after she introduced him to Harvey. “I’d be glad to take you.” As he had previously, every year he’d been at Hawk’s Pride.

“I might as well go with one of my brothers as go with you,” she replied. “Harvey’s cool. He’s a hunk. He’s—”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. I get the message,” he said, then teased in a singsong voice, “Pearl’s got a boyfriend, Pearl’s got a boyfriend.”

She aimed a playful fist at his stomach to shut him up, but the truth was, she was hoping the picnic date with Harvey, their first, would lead to a steady relationship.

Mac caught her wrist to protect his belly and said, “All right, go with Harvey Barnes and have a good time. Forget all about me—”

Jewel laughed and said, “That mournful face isn’t going to make any difference. I’m still going with Harvey. I’ll see you at the picnic. We just won’t spend as much time together.”

Mac looked down at her, his brow furrowed. He opened his mouth to say something and shut it again.

“What is it?” she asked, seeing how troubled he looked.

“Just don’t let him…If he does anything…If you think he’s going to…”

“What?” she asked in exasperation.

He let go of her hands to shove both of his through his hair. “If you need help, just yell, and I’ll be there.”

He had already turned to walk away when she grabbed his arm and turned him back around. “What is it you think Harvey’s going to do to me that’s so terrible?”

“He’s going to want to kiss you,” Mac said.

“I want to kiss him back. So what’s the problem?”

“Kissing’s not the problem,” Mac pointed out. “It’s what comes after that. The touching and…and the rest. Sometimes it’s not easy for a guy to stop. Not that I’m saying he’d try anything on a first date, but some guys…And with a body like yours…”

Her face felt heated from all the blood rushing to it. Over the years they had managed not to talk seriously about such intimate subjects. Mac never brought them up except in fun, and until recently she hadn’t been that interested in boys. She searched his face and found he looked as confused and awkward discussing the subject as she felt.

“How would you know?” she asked. “I mean, about it being hard to stop. Have you done it with Lou?”

His flush deepened. “You know I wouldn’t tell you that, even if I had.”

“Have you?” she persisted.

He tousled her hair like a brother and said, “Wouldn’t you like to know!”

In the days before the picnic, Mac teased her mercilessly about her plan to wear a dress, since she only wore jeans and a T-shirt around the ranch.

Her eldest sister, Rolleen, had agreed to make a pink gingham dress for her, copying a spaghetti-strapped dress pattern that Jewel loved, but which she couldn’t wear because her large breasts needed the support of a heavy-duty bra. Rolleen created essentially the same fitted-bodice, bare-shouldered, full-skirted dress, but made the shoulder straps an inch wide so they would hide her bra straps.

On the day of the picnic, Jewel donned the dress and tied up her shoulder-length hair in a ponytail with a pink gingham bow. Her newest Whitelaw sibling, fifteen-year-old Cherry, insisted that she needed pink lipstick on her lips, which Cherry applied for her with the expertise of one who had been wearing lipstick since she was twelve.

Then Jewel headed out the kitchen door to find Mac, who was driving her to the picnic grounds to meet Harvey.

“Wow!” Mac said when he saw her. “Wow!”

Jewel found it hard to believe the admiration she saw in Mac’s eyes. She had long ago accepted the fact she wasn’t pretty. She had sun-streaked brown hair and plain brown eyes and extraordinarily ordinary features. Her body was fit and healthy, but faint, crisscrossing scars laced her face, and she had a distinctive permanent limp.

The look in Mac’s eyes made her feel radiantly beautiful.

She held out the gingham dress and twirled around for him. “Do you think Harvey will like it?”

“Harvey’s gonna love it!” he assured her. “You look good enough to eat. I hope this Harvey character knows how lucky he is.” The furrow reappeared on his brow. “He better not—”

She put a finger on the wrinkles in his forehead to smooth them out. “You worry too much, Mac. Nothing bad is going to happen.”

Looking back now, Jewel wished she had listened to Mac. She wished she hadn’t tried to look so pretty for Harvey Barnes. She wished…

Jewel had gotten counseling in college to help her deal with what had happened that day. The counselor had urged her to tell her parents, and when she had met Jerry Cain and fallen in love with him her junior year at Baylor, the counselor had urged her to tell Jerry, too.

She just couldn’t.

Jerry had been a graduate student, years older than she was, and more mature than the other college boys she had met. He had figured out right away that she was self-conscious about the size of her breasts, and it was his consideration for her feelings that had first attracted her to him. It had been easy to fall in love with him. It had been more difficult—impossible—to trust him with her secret.

Jerry had been more patient with her than she had any right to expect. She had loved kissing him. Been more anxious—but finally accepting—of his caresses. They were engaged before he pressed her to sleep with him. They had already sent out the wedding invitations by the time she did.

It had been a disaster.

They had called off the wedding.

That was a year ago. Jewel had decided that if she couldn’t marry and have kids of her own, she could at least work with children who needed her.

So she had come back to Camp LittleHawk.

“Hey. You look like you’re a million miles away.”

Jewel glanced around and realized she could hardly see the white adobe ranch buildings, they had walked so far. “Oh. I was thinking.”

“To tell you the truth, I enjoyed the quiet company.” Sweat beaded Mac’s forehead and his upper lip. He winced every time he took a step.

“Haven’t we gone far enough?” she asked.

“The doctor said I can do as much as I can stand.”

“You look like you’re there already,” she said.

“Just a little bit farther.”

That attitude explained why Mac had become the best at what he did, but Jewel worried about him all the same. “Just don’t expect me to carry you back,” she joked.

Mac shot her one of his dimpled smiles and said, “Tell me what you’ve been doing with yourself lately.”

“I’ve been figuring out the daily schedule for Camp LittleHawk.”

“Need any help?”

She gave him a surprised look. “I’d love some. Do you have the time?”

He shrugged. “Don’t have anything else planned. What kinds of things are you having the kids do these days?”

She told him, unable to keep the excitement from her voice. “Horseback riding, picnics and hayrides, of course. And handicrafts, naturally.

“But I’ve come up with something really exciting this year. We’re going to have art sessions at the site of those primitive drawings on the canyon wall here at Hawk’s Pride. Once the kids have copied down all the various symbols, we’re going to send them off to an archaeologist at the state university for interpretation.

“When her findings are available, I’ll forward a copy of them to the kids, wherever they are. It’ll remind them what fun they had at camp even after they’ve gone.”

“And maybe take their minds off their illness, if they’re back in the hospital,” Mac noted quietly.

Jewel sat silently watching Mac stare into the distance and knew he was remembering how it had been in the beginning, how they had provided solace to each other, a needed word of encouragement and a shoulder to lean on. She knew he had come back because she was here, a friend when he needed one.

“I can remember being fascinated by those drawings myself as a kid,” Mac mused.

“Didn’t you want to be an archaeologist once upon a time?”

“Paleontologist,” he corrected.

“What’s the difference?”

“An archaeologist studies the past by looking at what people have left behind. A paleontologist studies fossils to recreate a picture of life in the past.”

“What happened to those plans?” she asked.

“It got harder and harder to focus on the past when I realized I was going to have a future.”

“What college degree did you finally end up getting?”

He laughed self-consciously. “Business. I figured I’d need to know how to handle all the money I’d make playing football.”

But his career had been cut short.

He turned abruptly and headed back toward the ranch without another word to her.

Jewel figured the distance they had come at about a mile. She looked at her watch. Six-thirty. Not very far or very fast for a man who depended on his speed for a living.

About a quarter of a mile from the house, Mac was using his hand to help move his left leg. Jewel stepped to his side and slipped her arm around his waist to help support his weight.

“Don’t argue,” she said, when he opened his mouth to protest. “If you want my company, you have to take the concern that comes along with it.”

“Thanks, Opal,” he said.

“Think nothing of it, Pete.”

She hadn’t called him Pete since he had started high school and acquired the nickname “Mac” from his football teammates. It brought back memories of better times for both of them. They were content to walk in silence the rest of the way back to the house.

Jewel had forgotten how good it felt to have a friend with whom you could communicate without saying a word. She knew what Mac was feeling right now as though he had spoken the words aloud. She understood his frustration. And his fear. She empathized with his drive to succeed, despite the obstacles he had to overcome. She understood his reluctance to accept her help and his willingness to do so.

It was as though the intervening years had never been.

Except, something else had been added to the mix between them. Something unexpected. Something as unwelcome as it was undeniable.

No friend should have felt the frisson of excitement Jewel had felt with her body snuggled up next to Mac’s. No friend should have gotten the chill she got down her spine when Mac’s warm breath feathered over her temple. No friend’s heart would have started beating faster, as hers had, when Mac’s arm circled her waist in return, his fingers closing on her flesh beneath the sweatshirt.

She would have to hide what she felt from him. Otherwise it would spoil everything. Friendship had always been enough in the past. Because of what had happened, because she was in no position to ask for—or accept—more, friendship was all they could ever have between them now.

As they reached the kitchen door, she smiled up at Mac, and he smiled back.

“Home again, home again, jiggety jog,” she said.

“Same time tomorrow?”

She started to refuse. It would be easier if she kept her distance from him. But it was foolish to deny herself his friendship because she felt more than that for him.

She gave him a cheery smile and said, “Sure. Same time tomorrow.” She breathed a sigh of relief that she wouldn’t have to face him again for twenty-four hours.

“As soon as I shower, we can go to work planning all those activities for the kids,” he said.

Jewel gave him a startled look.

“Changed your mind about wanting my help?”

She had forgotten all about it. “No. I…uh…”

He tousled her hair. “You can make up your mind while I shower. I’ll be here if you need me.”

A moment later he had disappeared into the house. It was only then she realized he was going to use up all the hot water.

“Hey!” she yelled, yanking the screen door open to follow after him. “I get the shower first!”

He leaned his head out of the bathroom door. She saw a length of naked flank and stopped in her tracks.

“You can have it first tomorrow,” he said. His eyes twinkled as he added, “Unless you’d like to share?”

She put her hand flat on his bare chest, feeling the crisp, sweat-dampened curls under her palm, and shoved him back inside. “Go get cleaned up, stinky,” she said, wrinkling her nose.” We’ve got work to do.”

He saluted her and stepped back inside.

It was the right response. Just enough teasing and playful camaraderie to disguise her shiver of delight—and the sudden quiver of fear—at being invited to share Mac’s shower.