Hawk's Way Grooms (3 page)

“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.