Hawk's Way Grooms: Hawk's Way: The Virgin Groom

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.