Faith Hope and Love (A Homespun Romance) (3 page)

Her whole life was strewn with reminders, if she still needed them.  Her mother hadn't wanted her.  She had left when Rachel was ten.  Her father had had no use for her.  At first she'd tried to make him like her.  Later she'd known that was impossible and accepted it.  There was no doubting it.  She'd always gotten a failing grade in personal relations. 

Best stick to what she could do well.  Impersonal aid was her forte.  Rachel let her mind trace over the last few years.  In her last year in high school, a volunteer with MRA had come to Wilson High.  The slides he'd shown had been mind boggling, the talk that followed powerful.  There was a desperate need for medical aid abroad.

Rachel had been hooked by the lecture.  Medical Relief Abroad had been started in the early seventies, by a group of doctors in America who had dedicated themselves to suffering humanity.  From the original nucleus of ten the organization
had grown to five thousand and consisted entirely of volunteers. 

While they were working, volunteers were provided with living expenses.  When they returned after their tenure they were given a thousand dollars for each year spent abroad, and every assistance in job placement.  Colleges offered special scholarships and grants to volunteers who wished to continue their education.

There had been no hint of glamour about the work.  Dr. Steve Hanks, the speaker, had emphasized the rigors of living in undeveloped villages, the health hazards, the backbreaking work.  It called, he'd said, for a special kind of personal commitment.

Rachel had contacted him the following week.  At the first interview it had been suggested she was too young, but Rachel had stood her ground.  Convincing the selection committee that her slight build and frail looks were misleading, had taken a while.  The medical assistant's course she had completed through the high school ROP program had helped.  So had her counselor Mrs. O'Brien, who had convinced Dr. Hanks Rachel was mature enough for relief work.

A thorough medical examination had been followed by an intensive course in basic medical procedures.  Her father hadn't objected to her going.  If anything he had seemed relieved.  The day after she'd graduated from high school, Rachel was on her way to Bangladesh, the stiff, awkward, unemotional parting with her father a frozen island of memory.

Work filled the void in her life, assuaging the physical loneliness.  The gratitude shining out of dark eyes too poor to offer any other
payment convinced her she had found her niche.  Immersing herself in the people, the work, and the new way of life, Rachel told herself it was all she ever wanted.  Very rarely did the thought that there was more to life than caring for others surface.

Over the years she and Dr. Tim Atwell had been the only constant members of the team.  A twelve month stint was the norm for volunteers.  Whenever the others had talked of home and plans for the future, Rachel had kept very quiet.  Every year she had applied for, and been granted an extension.  Her accumulated vacation time she'd spent travelling in neighboring Nepal, and the north of India on cheap railway tickets, and in buses. 

The telegram informing her of Chris and Rob's death had taken fifteen days to reach her.  The team had been up to their eyeballs in disaster relief.  The floods had worked havoc in a country that had barely learned to toddle.  There was so much to do.  But for Rachel it had been time to come home.

Tim had contacted two doctors with private practices in Los Angeles, both of whom had agreed to help her
with jobs in their clinics.  Now it was no longer necessary to get in touch with them.  The money she had left would last till she got on the next plane back to Bangladesh.  Back to the only life she knew.

She was drunk from exhaustion.  Lack of sleep, lack of food, lack of spirit.  That's what made losing Gordie, seem like the end.  After she got some sleep she would be fine.  The judge had been right.  She was definitely not the best thing for the baby.

The uncle was that.  She tried to remember what he had looked like.  Solid.  Large.  Rich.  And very, very sure of himself.  The whiplash of his gaze had cut right through her charade of respectability.  A shiver crept down her spine.  In that instant she had felt wrapped in strength and power.  The urge to reach out for some of each had been very strong. 

What was even more bizarre was the powerful surge of response deep inside her wanting to believe her first impression was true.  That if she had leaned into his strength she would have found the shelter she had searched for all her life.

CHAPTER 2

"Ma'am?"

Rachel sat up with a jerk.  The cabbie was looking at her curiously.  They were outside the motel.  Dyan had reserved her a room here, earlier.  As she took in the peeling paint, the cracked sign, Rachel knew it fit all her prerequisites.  Cheap, cheap and cheap.  Her lawyer had scored a bull’s-eye on this task at least.  Tomorrow she would go to MRA headquarters in Los Angeles, and transfer into their hostel.  For tonight this would do.

Reluctance accompanied her as she stepped out of the cab's dark comforting interior.  She still had to go through the ordeal of checking i
n.  The world tilted to a forty-five degree angle.  Rachel stumbled, clung to the door.  She ought to have grabbed a bite to eat somewhere. 

"Are you alright?"  The cabbie looked worried.

"I'm fine." 

Rachel paid him, added a generous tip.  He looked amazed, then overwhelmed.  She was glad.  Money had never meant much to her.  Where she was going, she wouldn't need it anyway.

"Merry Christmas, ma'am."

Christmas.  That was right.  Four weeks to Christmas.

"And to you." 

Empty, meaningless words.  Empty meaningless life.

The clerk at the desk found her key right away.  Yes, her room was in a quiet area.  Yes, they would hold all calls.

Rachel walked to her room in a daze.  The corridor seemed never ending, the smells nauseating.  The key turned smoothly.  The first thing that's gone right today she thought hysterically.  Someone ought to make a note of it.  Tears trembled on her lower lids, waiting for an excuse to fall.  She wouldn't let them.  She was past crying.  Into agony.

A shower would be nice.  It had been so long since her last one. 

Incongruous thoughts pierced her fatigue like mismatched pieces of different puzzles.  She had no other clothes with her.  The travel weary pant and shirt she had worn since Hong Kong were left behind in the changing rooms of some department store.  The wallpaper in here was ugly.  She hated that shade of mud brown, bilious green and jaundiced yellow.  Chris' baby would be fine.  That man looked like Auld Lang Syne and the National Anthem rolled into one.  Imagine using those colors for cabbage roses...if she wasn't so tired she would have insomnia just looking at them.  All she had now was the handbag she had transferred her traveller's checks and passport to, and an empty rucksack.  Nothing else.  It was a good thing she had a return ticket. 

The need for sleep edged out the need to feel clean.  Rachel's footsteps changed direction.  She could sleep for a week.

The knock on the door seemed a joke.  Cruel, worthless, unnecessary.  She wouldn't answer.

"Ms. Carstairs.  Open up.  I have to talk to you."

It was her name that did it.  Only Dyan Jenks knew where she was.  He wouldn't contact her if it wasn't important. 

"Yes?"  Her head was a wedge in the door.  Even Emily Post wouldn't insist on courtesy after thirty six hours without sleep.  No one was going to get in here without a good reason.  Not even the President of the United States.

"I'm Luke Summers.  I have to talk to you." 

Open sesame. 

He walked past her, turned, waited.  Swaying on her feet, Rachel put a hand behind her for the couch, sank weightlessly into it.  No, sitting would have her asleep quicker than one could say Jack and Jill.  She struggled to her feet. 

She had to think straight.  She wasn't new to fatigue.  They had never adhered to working hours in the places she had been in.  Lines of people formed magically at first light.  Patient, suffering, hopeful.  The team worked till the light faded or the last patient was attended to.  Whichever came first.  Rachel tapped into that same reserve of sheer will power now.  This might be her last chance to win Gordie.  Maybe this man would listen.  Maybe she ought to tell him what the child represented. 

Rachel looked at him.  Strange.  He had no face at all.  Just shimmering waves.  Someone had stolen his face.  She had to let him know so he could do something about it.  Only her tongue was stuck to the roof of her mouth.  She looked again.  Now his face was just one big blank of silver.  Like the floods in Bangladesh.  Angry water reflecting cruel sunshine.    Hypnotizing.  Will sapping.  Dominating.

Her eyelids fell.  Rachel crumpled.

"Damn!"

He'd caught her just in time.  What was wrong?  Had his earlier suspicion been correct?  Leaning forward, Luke smelled her breath.  There was absolutely no trace of liquor.

She weighed less than a day old foal.  Luke strode into the bedroom, placed her on the covers.  The little fool.  She should have told someone how she felt.  What if he hadn't decided to come and talk to her right away?  She could have lain here forever.

A half hour later Luke had the emergency ward of the nearest hospital on their toes.  If he had said jump, they would all have executed perfect leaps.  He had threatened them with everything from libel to unwanted publicity.  He wanted attention and he wanted it now.  No, he wouldn't leave the patient and wait outside.  For once in their lives they could damn well live up to their category. 

A lion with a sore tooth would have been more amenable.

A Dr. Andrews finally armed with the results of some tests approached him warily.  Rachel Carstairs was suffering from only one thing.  Exhaustion. 

It made all the other little pieces fall into place.  The whitewashed look, the stumbling. 

"She isn't unconscious, just asleep.  Probably the best medicine.  Seems to have been running on nervous energy for too long.  Hasn't eaten for the last twenty four hours as well.  We could start an intravenous drip, keep her overnight."

The doctor checked the large man's face for a reaction, wondering about his relationship to the patient.  Ms. Carstairs was one lucky woman.  Luke Summers had watched the tests they had run on her like a mother hawk.  One wrong move, his expression had warned, and I'll pull this place down around your ears.  Everybody knew he didn’t care about medical insurance and forms to fill.  He was paying for what he wanted and he wanted the best.  Right now.

It was late.  Luke wanted to get back to the ranch.  Share his news.  Hold his soon-to-be son.  Rid
himself of the tensions of the day.

He looked at the sheet draped figure on the bed.  The decision was already made.  There wasn't much of her to poke and prod.  He hated hospitals himself.  He couldn't abandon her in one.

"Does she need hospitalization?" 

"Not really.  A nurse just sponged her down and gave her some juice.  She had no trouble drinking it.  As long as she keeps up her fluid intake she'll be al
l right.  She has no fever and there are no signs of any other infection.  This medical card you found with her passport shows her shots are up to date.  Unofficially I'd say all she needs is rest.  If she has a place to go, someone to take care of her, we could release her.  Otherwise I have to keep her here."

Luke swallowed, "I'll take full responsibility.  I'm a relative." 

So, help him God, he was.  Of a kind.

Coming awake wasn't frightening.  She was used to waking in strange places.  A hut, a tent, the floor of a school.  It was usually the attack on her senses that wakened her.  Children screaming, a rooster crowing, the gabble of human voices that believed in operating at full lung capacity. 

What alarmed Rachel now was she wasn't in a foreign, dirty, smelly, loud place, with the barest of amenities.  Or in a foreign, clean, fragrant, quiet place, with the finest of comforts.  She had been in both over the last few years.

She was in a
four poster bed.  Large, luxurious, frightening.  White Priscilla drapes framed a piece of orange sky.  Sunset?  Sunrise? 

Lilies of the valley on a green background covered the walls.  The sculptured carpet matched the background color of the elegant wallpaper perfectly.  A cherry dresser gleamed against one wall.  Outside someone was talking.  Spanish.  A woman laughed.  The sound jogged Rachel's memory.  This definitely wasn't the motel room she had checked into.  She turned her head.

A figure shot out of a chair in the corner, "She's awake.  Come quick.  She's awake."  A well-built girl ran out of the room.

Rachel froze.  Never had her waking up been a cause for rejoicing before.  Was she hallucinating?

Boots rang on the wooden floor outside.  The door was thrust wider.  A man, backlit, stood there.  Big.  Wide.  Blocking out the world.  Fear receded as strength flowed out of him and wrapped her like velvet.  The absurd sensations swamping her confirmed this had to be a dream.

"How are you feeling?"

Rachel thought about it for the first time since she had woken up.  She wiggled her toes, pinching herself surreptitiously under the bedclothes.  Everything seemed to be in working condition.  This was no dream.  "Fine."

He came closer.  It hit Rachel all at once.  The telegram.  The flight back.  The courtroom scene.  This wasn't the middle of someone else's nightmare.  It was the middle of her own.

She had lost Gordie.  She had never had him.  Rachel closed her eyes.  On top of the sheet one hand curled into a fist, highlighting white knuckles.

"Where does it hurt?"  A hand was placed on hers.  Warm,
comforting, protecting.

Winner takes all.  The last time she'd seen him he'd been swathed in victorious woman.  His lawyer was obviously a woman of many talents. 

"Where am I?" 

She remembered the surge of current that had passed between them outside the courtroom.  From him to her.  At the time she hadn't paid much attention to it.  She couldn't ignore it now.  The big hand on hers ignited every nerve ending.

"At the Diamond Bar."

Rachel shot up in bed.  Her head repaid her for the movement by swimming.  Eyes closed she willed herself better.  Weakness was unaffordable.

"Your ranch.  How did I get here?"

"I brought you here."

What was she?  A brown paper parcel?  The worst part was she had no recollection of any of it.

"How?" the squeak in her voice was denigrating, "I mean one minute I'm in my motel room, the next minute I wake up here......"  She frowned. 

Blanks weren't easy to fill.  Besides the tiny quivers of awareness that kept running through her, interfered with concentration.  Rachel hoped it was only malaria.  It couldn't be this man. 
It shouldn't.

"I had to talk to you," Luke began slowly.  She reminded him of a
Chihuahua facing a grizzly.  He had an idea she wasn't going to like what he had done.  "I followed you to the motel from the courthouse.  You fainted.  At the hospital the doctor said it was either staying there or going to a place someone could take care of you.  I brought you here."

He didn't miss the flicker of naked pain in her eyes.  It tugged at his heartstrings.  No one should be so alone.

It had been a fact so long, Rachel told herself, and it shouldn't hurt.  But she couldn't deny the aching mass of heaviness in her heart his words had raked over.  The scar tissue wasn't as strong as she'd thought.

"How long have I been asleep?"

"A little over twenty four hours.  It's five in the evening now.  The doctor at the hospital said you were suffering from exhaustion."

"You should have left me there," she said stubbornly, "Why didn't you?"

Navy blue eyes assessed her.  Luke realized he couldn't tell her the truth.  Not right now.  She wouldn't tolerate any hint of compassion.  The other feeling he was experiencing, he hadn't labeled yet. 

He opted for diplomacy.  "I thought you might like to spend some time with Gordie, get to know him."

The name ripped her self-control.  No.  She didn't want to get to know the baby.  Not now.  Getting to know Gordie, then having to let go, would break her.  She couldn't risk it.  There was only so much pain a heart could bear in one lifetime.  So much aloneness. 

Better a long distance relationship, like the kind she'd had with Chris.  Checks, letters, gifts from foreign locations.  Impersonal, painless, easy.

The kind Rachel Carstairs could handle like a pro. 

The sound of the door opening dragged her back to the immediate present.  An elderly woman bustled in.  This had to be the housekeeper Luke had mentioned in court yesterday.

"There you are, awake at last!"  A face beamed at her above a tray.  Golden, love warmed, it was framed in brown hair liberally sprinkled with white.  Hazel eyes reflecting humor and happiness looked at her.  Cheer and comfort exuded from every pore.  Under her ample blue and white apron she wore a checked housedress.  The accent reminded Rachel of the volunteer she'd met from Europe last year.  "Welcome to the Diamond Bar.  Slept twenty hours straight you have.  Did Luke tell you its Saturday evening now?  That was Angela my niece by marriage, who was sitting with you.  She helps out here.  She's a good girl, just going through that emotional teenage stage when screaming is an accepted method of communication.  Hope she didn't frighten you."  Unspoken reassurance came across clearly with the information Hannah was giving her.  You're safe.  We'll take good care of you.  "Luke brought you home because the doctor said all you needed was rest.  No one can get that in a hospital...not the way they keep waking you up to check you are getting better.  We were told to make sure you kept taking plenty of fluids and you did that all right.  I guess it's time you ate something.  Just got you a light meal for now.  We'll have dinner in a couple of hours."