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“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?”
