“How are you feeling?”
“Like a horse sat on me. You?”
“Like I’m baby-sitting a six-year-old.”
He tried to chuckle, but that hurt. “That’ll teach you to listen to Betty.”
That was when Jake noticed that her hands were clenched, too, right in front of her, as if she were holding herself together. Her fingers were long and graceful, ringless. They looked like sculpture in the moonlight that washed her. Jake wanted to taste one of those fingers. He wanted to feel them on his skin. He wanted to find himself so immersed in her that he could forget everything, everyone, who he was and who she was.
But he knew better. He’d known better all along.
Amanda started. “What’s wrong?”
Jake hadn’t even known he’d groaned out loud. Amanda’s eyes widened, dark pools in the shadows. Deadly, deep water that looked far too inviting. Jake fought a sudden yearning that made the pain from his ribs pale in comparison.
Amanda took an instinctive step forward, unclenching one hand. Jake was afraid she was going to reach out to him. He couldn’t let her, because if she touched him, he’d lose control. Even sick, even battered like an old suitcase. He’d been alone too long, and he knew that that wasn’t going to change.
He’d never forgive Betty for doing this to him.
Ignoring the shriek of pain from his chest, he pulled himself up to a sitting position. “I needed to stretch out a little,” he lied, turning back to the window. The scene outside faded and swam a little before settling back into place. “Go on back to bed. I’m fine.”
“Are you going to take your medicine?”
“No.”
He could hear her huff of impatience. “Jake, don’t be stubborn. Dr. McPherson said that you could have the pain medicine if you hurt. And you need that antibiotic.”
“No, I don’t. He’s just trying to support the town’s economy.”
“Would you tell me something?” she demanded. “Why’d you spend all that money on the drugs if you weren’t going to take them?”
Jake turned back on her, irritated, frustrated, furious. “Because it’s easier sometimes to let people think they’re going to get their way. Now, would you go back to bed so I can get some sleep?”
Amanda glared right back at him, just as frustrated. “I’ll be back at four,” she informed him, hands on hips. “Just so you know.”
Jake knew his expression was inhospitable. “Try not to wake me.”
By four o’clock Amanda was the one seeing double. She’d really tried to catch some sleep during the hours in between the checks, but it hadn’t happened. She’d seen too much today, felt too much, leaving her raw and unsettled. Caffeine thrummed through her, and the silence propelled her. She’d written, but the words had had nothing to do with her book, with any book. She’d stretched out on Lee’s bed and closed her eyes, only to see Jake’s eyes.
As the world outside slept on past moonset, when even the birds hadn’t quite decided to rise, she crept back into his room, hoping this time that he would be asleep. The last three times she’d walked in, he’d been waiting for her, as if afraid to let her sneak up on him. Not exactly the way to get over injuries, she would have guessed from the careful way he moved. Certainly not the way to regain your good humor, she knew for certain from his attitude.
His room had been a shock. Not the furniture. It had been his parents’, she knew from Lee. Simple pine furniture, well used and loved, a big double bed with a hunter-green-and-cream comforter, a dresser and nightstand, a big, overstuffed chair by the window that overlooked the pastures. All that she had expected. It was the same kind of furniture that populated the rest of the house, functional and worn. Lived in.
What had surprised her had been the decorations. With the exception of the girls’ bedroom, every other room Amanda had seen in the Kendalls’ home had a spare, almost spartan decor. Every time she’d walked into the house, Amanda had looked for some sign that three other children had grown up amid these walls, that those children had once had parents. Usually pictures were grouped on living room walls, or atop pianos. The walls held one Navajo rug, and the piano had a fine layer of dust.
The rooms, for all their comfort, had no life.
That had been reserved for Jake’s bedroom. Every surface was crowded with frames, every wall hung in childish art and portraits. Amanda finally saw Jake’s parents, an earnest-looking young couple who shared responsibility for their children’s looks. Lee, from infancy to graduation, school pictures and candid shots on horseback or at play or in the kitchen. Genevieve, she guessed, whose last picture was with stethoscope and lab coat, her arm around a very uncomfortable-looking Jake in his city best, her rich brown hair and eyes the antithesis of her brother’s. Ezekial, who shared Genevieve’s darker looks, in various sports uniforms graduating into mortarboard and then down vest and pickax. A handsome, open young man with an impish smile.
It was as if Jake fortified himself with his family every morning and night, as if they were something so private and special to him that he couldn’t share them with everyone who tracked through his house on the way to a horse sale.
It was, Amanda knew, a reflection of how private a man Jake Kendall was. Lee might be able to wax eloquent about her family, collecting them into stories much as Amanda had always sought to do, but Jake would measure his bond alone and in silence.
Amanda looked again at the shadowy geometries atop Jake’s dresser, saw in her mind the forest of pictures, and ached to ask him about each one, knowing full well that he would never think of sharing them with her. Knowing just how bad he’d been feeling if he’d let her breach this stronghold at all.
“Jake?”
He was asleep this time. The light from the bathroom washed across him, betraying a jumble of bedclothes from his attempts to get comfortable. He lay on his back, his head to the side, one hand across his belly. The comforter reached his chest. Amanda stood at the bottom of his bed for a moment longer, watching him, thinking of how powerful those shoulders were, how the sun had glided across that chest. Wishing suddenly that she could explore the same terrain the sun had, could warm it as thoroughly. She pressed her fingers against her lips, as if she could contain the hunger she’d never allowed before.
