READERS AND CRITICS ALIKE LOVE

JOAN JOHNSTON

“A guaranteed good read.”

—New York Times bestselling author Heather Graham

“Joan Johnston does short contemporary Westerns to perfection.”

—Publishers Weekly

“Johnston warms your heart and tickles your fancy.”

—New York Daily News

“Joan Johnston continually gives us everything we want…fabulous details and atmosphere, memorable characters, a story that you wish would never end, and lots of tension and sensuality.”

—Romantic Times BOOKreviews

“Absolutely captivating…a delightful storyteller…Joan Johnston [creates] unforgettable subplots and characters who make every fine thread weave into a touching tapestry.”

—Affaire de Coeur

Joan Johnston
Hawk's Way Grooms

CONTENTS

HAWK’S WAY: THE VIRGIN GROOM

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

EPILOGUE

HAWK’S WAY: THE SUBSTITUTE GROOM

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

EPILOGUE

HAWK’S WAY: THE VIRGIN GROOM

CHAPTER ONE

SWEAT STREAMING FROM HIS TEMPLES, strong hands clenched tight on the parallel bars that supported him, Mac Macready put his full weight on his left leg. He felt a sharp pain, but the leg held. He gritted his teeth to keep from groaning. So far, so good.

Mac kept his eyes focused on the area between the bars in front of him, willing his leg to work. He took an easy step with his right leg, then called on the left again. The pain was less sharp the second time he put his weight on the restructured limb. He could handle the pain. More important, the leg had stayed under him. He glanced across the room at his friend and agent, Andy Dennison, and grinned.

Mac Macready could walk again.

“You did it, Mac,” Andy said, crossing the room to slap him on the back. “It’s great to see you back on your feet.”

“About time,” Mac said. “I’ve spent the better part of two years trying to get this damned leg of mine back into shape.” A sharp pain seared up his leg, but he refused to sit down, not now, when he had just made it back onto his feet. He took more of his weight on his arms and kept walking. A bead of sweat trickled between his shoulder blades before it caught on his sleeveless T-shirt. He summoned another smile. “Give me a couple of months, and I’ll be ready to start catching passes again for the Tornadoes.”

Mac caught the skeptical look on Andy’s face before his agent said, “Sure, Mac. Whatever you say.”

He understood Andy’s skepticism. Mac had said the same thing after every operation. Who would have suspected a broken leg—all right, so maybe it had been shattered—would be so difficult to mend? But his body had rejected the pins they had used to put things back together again at ankle and hip. They had finally had to invent something especially for him.

Then the long bones in his leg hadn’t grown straight and had needed to be broken and set again. He had fought complications caused by infection. Finally, when he had pushed too hard to get well, he had ended up back in a cast.

The football injury had been devastating, coming as it had at the end of Mac’s first phenomenal season with the Texas Tornadoes. His future couldn’t have been brighter. He was a star receiver, with more touchdown catches than any other rookie in the league. His team was headed for the Super Bowl. With one crushing tackle, everything had fallen apart. The sportscasters had called it a career-ending injury. Mac wasn’t willing to concede the issue.

“Good work, Mac,” the physical therapist said, reaching out to help him into the wheelchair waiting for him at the end of the parallel bars. “Put your arm around me.”

He flashed the young woman a killer grin, inwardly cursing the fact that after six measly steps he was on the verge of collapse. “Better watch out, Hartwell. Now that I’m back on my feet, I’m going to give your fiancé some serious competition.”

Diane Hartwell blushed. Most women did when Mac turned on the charm. He had the kind of blond-haired, blue-eyed good looks that made female heads swivel to take a second look. Mac wondered what she would think if she knew the truth about him.

Diane answered wryly, “I’m sure George would gladly trade me to you for an autographed football.”

“Done,” Mac said brightly, biting back a grimace as Diane bent his injured leg and placed his foot on the wheelchair footrest.

“I was only kidding,” Diane said.

“I wasn’t,” Mac said, smiling up at her. “Tell your fiancé I’ll be glad to autograph that football for him anytime.”

“Thanks, Mac,” Diane said. “I appreciate it.”

“Think nothing of it, Hartwell. And tell George to hang on to that ball. Someday it’ll be worth something.”

Once Mac resumed his career, he would break every record in the book. He had that kind of determination. And he had been that good. Of course, that was before the accident. Everybody—except himself—questioned whether he would ever be that good again.

It had been touch and go for a while whether he would even walk. But Mac had known he would walk again, and without the aid of a brace. He had done it today. It seemed he was the only one who wasn’t surprised.

He had known he would succeed, because he had beaten the odds before. When he was eight, he had suffered from acute myelocytic leukemia. It should have killed him. He had recovered from the childhood disease and gone on to win the Heisman Trophy and be drafted in the first round by the Texas Tornadoes. Mac had no intention of giving up his dreams of a future in football.

Andy wheeled him down the hospital corridor to his room. “When do you get out of here?” his agent asked.

“The doctor said once I could stand on my leg, he would release me. I guess that means I can get out of here anytime now.”

“The press will want a statement,” Andy said as he stopped the wheelchair beside Mac’s hospital bed. “Do you want to talk to them? Or do you want me to do it?”

Mac thought of facing a dozen TV cameras from a wheelchair. Or standing with crutches. Or wavering on his own two feet. “Tell them I’ll be back next season.”

“Maybe that’s not such a good—”

“Tell them I’ll be back,” Mac said, staring Andy in the eye.

Andy had once been a defensive lineman and wore a coveted Super Bowl ring on his right hand. He understood what it meant to play football. And what it meant to stop. He straightened the tie at his bull neck, shrugged his broad shoulders and smoothed the tie over his burgeoning belly, before he said, “You got it, Mac.”

“Thanks, Andy. I am coming back, you know.”

“Sure, Mac,” Andy said.

Mac could see his agent didn’t believe him any more than the doctors and nurses who had treated him over the past two years. Even Hartwell, though she encouraged him, didn’t believe he would achieve the kind of mobility he needed to play in the pros. Mac needed to get away somewhere and heal himself. He knew he could do it. After all, he had done it once before.

“Where can I get in touch with you?” Andy asked.

“I’m headed to a ranch in northwest Texas owned by some friends of mine. I have an open invitation to visit, and I’m going to take them up on it. I’ll call you when I get there and give you a number where I can be reached.”

“Good enough. Take care, Mac. Don’t—”

“Don’t finish that sentence, Andy. Not if you’re going to warn me not to get my hopes up.”

Andy shook his head. “I was going to say don’t be a fool and kill yourself trying to get well too fast.”

“I’m going to get my job back from the kid who took over for me,” Mac said in a steely voice. “And I’m going to do it this year.”

Andy didn’t argue further, just shook Mac’s hand and left him alone in the hospital room.

Mac looked around at the sterile walls, the white sheets, the chrome rails on the bed, listened to the muffled sounds that weren’t quite silence and inhaled the overwhelming antiseptic smell that made him want to gag. He had spent too much of his life in hospital beds—more than any human being ought to have to. He wanted out of here, the sooner the better.

He could hardly wait to get to the wide open spaces of Zach and Rebecca Whitelaw’s ranch, Hawk’s Pride. More than Zach or Rebecca or the land, he had a yearning to see their daughter Jewel again. Jewel was the first of eight kids who had been adopted by the Whitelaws, and she had returned to Hawk’s Pride after college to manage Camp LittleHawk, the camp for kids with cancer that Rebecca had started years ago.

Mac remembered his first impressions of Jewel—huge Mississippi-mud-brown eyes, shoulder-length dirt-brown hair and an even dirtier looking white T-shirt and jeans. She had been five years old to his eight, and she had been leaning against the corral at Camp LittleHawk watching him venture onto horseback for the first time.

“Don’t be scared,” Jewel had said.

“I’m not,” he’d retorted, glancing around at the other five kids in the corral with him. The horses were stopped in a circle, and the wrangler was working with a little boy who was even more scared than he was.

“Buttercup wouldn’t hurt a fly,” Jewel reassured him.

He remembered feeling mortified at the thought of riding a horse named Buttercup. And terrified that Buttercup would throw him off her broad back and trample him underfoot. Even though he’d been dying of cancer, he’d been afraid of getting killed. Life, he had learned, was precious.

“I’m not scared,” he lied. He wished he could reach up and tug his baseball cap down tighter over his bald head, but he was afraid to let go of his two-handed grip on the saddle horn.

Jewel scooted under the bottom rail of the corral on her hands and knees, which explained how she had gotten so dirty, and walked right up to the horse—all right, it was only a pony, but it was still big—without fear. He sat frozen as she patted Buttercup’s graying jaw and crooned to her.

“What are you saying?” he demanded.

“I’m telling Buttercup to be good. I’m telling her you’re sick and—”

“I’m dying,” he blurted out. “I’ll be dead by Christmas.” It was June. He was currently in remission, but the last time he’d been sick, he’d heard the doctors figuring he had about six months to live. He knew it was only a matter of time before the disease came back. It always did.

“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?”

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.

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.

“Same time tomorrow?”

She started to refuse. It would be easier if she kept her distance from him. But it was foolish to deny herself his friendship because she felt more than that for him.

She gave him a cheery smile and said, “Sure. Same time tomorrow.” She breathed a sigh of relief that she wouldn’t have to face him again for twenty-four hours.

“As soon as I shower, we can go to work planning all those activities for the kids,” he said.

Jewel gave him a startled look.

“Changed your mind about wanting my help?”

She had forgotten all about it. “No. I…uh…”

He tousled her hair. “You can make up your mind while I shower. I’ll be here if you need me.”

A moment later he had disappeared into the house. It was only then she realized he was going to use up all the hot water.

“Hey!” she yelled, yanking the screen door open to follow after him. “I get the shower first!”

He leaned his head out of the bathroom door. She saw a length of naked flank and stopped in her tracks.

“You can have it first tomorrow,” he said. His eyes twinkled as he added, “Unless you’d like to share?”

She put her hand flat on his bare chest, feeling the crisp, sweat-dampened curls under her palm, and shoved him back inside. “Go get cleaned up, stinky,” she said, wrinkling her nose.” We’ve got work to do.”

He saluted her and stepped back inside.

It was the right response. Just enough teasing and playful camaraderie to disguise her shiver of delight—and the sudden quiver of fear—at being invited to share Mac’s shower.

CHAPTER THREE

“WOW! MAC MACREADY IN THE FLESH!”

Mac felt embarrassed and humbled at the look of admiration—almost adulation—in Colt Whitelaw’s eyes. Mac had just shoved open the kitchen screen door to admire the sunrise on his third day at Hawk’s Pride when he encountered Jewel’s fourteen-year-old brother on the back steps. He had known the boy since Colt came to the Whitelaw household as an infant, the only one of the eight Whitelaw kids who had known no other parents than Zach and Rebecca. “Hi there, kid.”

Colt was wearing a white T-shirt cut off at the waist to expose his concave belly and ribs and with the arms ripped out to reveal sinewy biceps. Levi’s covered his long, lanky legs. He was tossing a football from hand to hand as he shifted from foot to booted foot. With the soft black down of adolescence growing on his upper lip, he looked every bit the eager and excited teenager he was.

“Mom said you were coming, but I didn’t really believe her. I mean, now that you’re famous and all, I didn’t think you’d ever come back here. I wanted to come over as soon as you got here, but Mom said you needed time to settle in without all of us bothering you, so I stayed away a whole extra day. I’m not bothering you, am I?”

Mac resisted the urge to ruffle Colt’s shaggy, shoulder-length black hair. The kid wouldn’t appreciate it. Mac knew from his own experience that a boy of fourteen considered himself pretty much grown up. Colt was six feet tall, but his shoulders were still almost as narrow as his hips. His blue eyes were filled with wonder and hope, without the cynicism and disappointment that appeared as you grew older and learned that life threw a lot of uncatchable balls your way.

“Sit down and tell me what you’ve been doing with yourself,” Mac invited. He eased himself into one of the two slatted white wooden chairs situated on the flagstone patio at the back of the cottage. Colt perched on the wide arm of the other chair.

The patio was arbored, and purple bougainvillea woven within a white lattice framework provided shade to keep the early morning sun off their heads and a pleasant floral fragrance.

Mac was aware of Colt’s scrutiny as he gently picked up his wounded leg and set the ankle on the opposite knee. When he was done, he laid his cane down on the flagstone and leaned back comfortably in the chair.

“I was watching the game on TV when your leg got busted,” Colt said. “It looked pretty bad.”

“It was,” Mac agreed.

“I heard them say you’d never walk again,” Colt blurted.

Mac managed a smile. “Looks like they were wrong.”

“When you didn’t come back after a whole year, they said you’d never play football again.”

“It’s taken me a while to get back on my feet, but I expect to be back on the football field in the fall as good as new and better than ever.”

“Really?” Colt asked.

Mac was fresh out of the shower after his second morning of walking with Jewel, and wished now he had put on jeans and boots instead of shorts and Nikes. The kid was gawking at his scarred leg like he was a mutant from the latest horror movie.

Mac figured it was time to change the subject, or he’d end up crying his woes to the teenager. He gestured to the football in Colt’s hands and said, “Are you on the football team at school?”

Colt made a disparaging face and mumbled, “Yeah. I’m the quarterback.”

Most boys, especially in Texas, would have been ecstatic at the thought of being quarterback. “It sounds as if you don’t care much for football.”

“It’s all right. It’s just…” Colt slid off the arm backward into the slatted wooden chair, with his legs dangling over the arm, the football cradled in the notch of his elbow. “Did you always know what you wanted to do with your life?”

Mac nodded. He had always known he wanted to play football. He just hadn’t been sure his body would give him the chance. “How about you?”

“I know exactly what I want to do,” Colt said. “I just don’t think I’m going to get the chance to do it.”

“Why not?”

“Dad expects me to stay here and be a rancher.”

“Is that so bad?”

“It is when I’d rather be doing something else.”

Mac stared at Colt’s troubled face. “Anything you’d like to talk about?”

Colt shrugged. “Naw. I guess not.” He settled his feet on the ground and rose with an ease that Mac envied. “Guess I’d better get going. Now that school’s out for the summer, I’ve got a lot of chores to do.”

Mac turned his eyes in the direction of the squealing windmill.

Colt laughed. “I’ll get to it right away. Hope it hasn’t been keeping you awake.”

“I’ve slept fine.” Like the dead. He had slept straight through the afternoon and evening of his first day here, and yesterday he had been exhausted after a day spent mostly sitting down, working out a crafts program for the camp with Jewel. He knew his body needed rest to heal, but he was tired of being tired. He wanted to be well again.

Colt began loping away, then suddenly turned and threw the football in Mac’s direction. Instinctively, Mac reached out to catch it. His fingertips settled on the well-thrown ball with remembered ease, and he drew it in.

Colt came loping back, a wide grin splitting his face. “Guess you haven’t lost your touch.” He held out his hand for the ball.

Mac looked up at the kid, an idea forming in his head. “How would you like to throw a few to me over the next couple of weeks, after I get a little more mobile?”

Colt’s eyes went wide with wonder. “You mean it? Really? Hot damn, that would be great! I mean, golly, that would be great!” he quickly corrected himself, looking over his shoulder to see if any of his family had heard him. “Just say when and where.”

“Let’s say two weeks from today,” Mac said. “I’ll come and find you.”

Colt eyed Mac’s injured leg. “Are you sure—”

“Two weeks,” Mac said certainly.

Colt grinned. “You got it.” He took the ball and sauntered off toward the barn.

Mac let out a deep sigh. He had given himself two weeks to get back enough mobility to be able to run for a pass, when it was taking him thirty minutes to walk a mile.

He turned as he heard the screen door slam and saw Jewel. She was just out of the shower, having been second again this morning, since she had gotten a phone call the instant they came back in the door from their walk. She must have blown her hair dry, because it looked shiny and soft enough for him to want to put his hands in it.

The only time he had ever touched her hair in the past was to tousle it like an older brother or tug on her ponytail. He couldn’t help wondering what it would feel like to have all that long, silky hair draped over his body.

Mac turned away. This is Jewel. Your best friend. You’d better get laid soon, old buddy. You’re starting to have really weird fantasies.

She was wearing jeans and boots and a long-sleeved man’s button-down, oxford-cloth shirt turned up at the cuffs with the tails hanging out. He wondered if the shirt had belonged to her fiancé and felt jealous of the man. Which was stupid, because Mac and Jewel had never been lovers.

Would you like to be?

He forced his mind away from that insidious thought. It would mess up everything if he made a move on his best friend. He needed Jewel’s friendship too much to spoil things that way.

The shirt was big and blousy on her, and she wore her hair pulled over her shoulders in front to hide whatever there might have been left to see of her figure, which wasn’t much.

He started to say “You look great!” and bit his tongue. It sounded too much like something a man might say to a woman he wanted to impress. “Hi,” he said instead. “Hope you had enough hot water.”

“Barely. I made it a quick shower. I’m definitely first tomorrow.” She took the seat next to him, leaned back and inhaled a breath of flower-scented air that made her breasts rise under the shirt. The sight took his breath away.

Whenever he had thought about Jewel in the years they had been apart, it was her laughter he had remembered. The way her eyes crinkled at the corners and her lips curved, revealing even white teeth, and how the sound would kind of bubble up out of her, as effervescent as sparkling water.

He couldn’t imagine why he hadn’t remembered her breasts. He could see why a man might stare. Had they been that large six years ago? They must have been, or close to it, because he had joked with her about them a lot, he remembered. And she had laughed in response, that effervescent, sparkling laugh.

He realized he hadn’t heard her laugh once since he had arrived. She had smiled, but her eyes had never joined her mouth. A sadness lingered, memories of more than uncatchable balls. More like forfeited games.

“Who was that on the phone?” he asked.

“Mrs. Templeton. Her eight-year-old son, Brad, is supposed to be a camper during the first two-week session, but he was having second thoughts about coming.”

“Why?”

“She’s not really sure. He was excited at first when his parents suggested the camp. She wanted me to talk to him.”

“Were you able to change his mind?”

Her lips curved. “Brad’s an avid football fan. I mentioned you were here—”

“You shouldn’t have done that,” Mac said brusquely.

She looked as if he’d kicked her in the stomach. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t think you’d mind. You always seemed to like spending time with the kids.”

He made a face. “It isn’t that I mind spending time with them. It’s just—” He didn’t want them to see him hobbling around with a cane. He didn’t want them feeling sorry for him. He didn’t want to be asked a lot of questions for which he had no answers.

He would know in the next few weeks whether his leg was going to stand up to the rigors of running. He wanted time by himself to deal with his disappointment—if that was what it turned out to be. He wanted to be able to rage against fate without worrying about some sick kid’s feelings.

“I’m sorry, Mac,” Jewel said, reaching out to lay her hand on his forearm.

The hairs on his arms prickled at her touch, and his body responded in a way that both surprised and disturbed him. He resisted the urge to jerk his hand away. That would only hurt her again.

This is Jewel. My friend. There’s nothing sexual intended by her touch.

Jewel might be his friend, but his body also recognized her as female. This sort of thing—unwanted arousal—had happened once or twice when they were teenagers, and she had touched him at an odd moment when he wasn’t expecting it, but he had always attributed those incidents to randy teenage hormones. That excuse wouldn’t work now.

All right, so she was an attractive woman.

That excuse wouldn’t work either. Jewel wasn’t pretty. Never had been. Her nose was straight and small, her chin was square, her mouth was a bit too big and her eyes were Mississippi-mud brown. Ordinary features all. She did have an extraordinary body. Her long legs, small waist and ample breasts were the stuff of male dreams. But Mac was offended on Jewel’s behalf to think that any man could want her because of her body and not because of who she was inside.

So, it’s her mind you find attractive?

As a teenager, he had liked her sense of humor, her enthusiasm for life and her willingness to reach out to others. He hadn’t seen much of the first two traits this time around, and he wasn’t sure whether it was a continued willingness to reach out to others that had made her return to Camp LittleHawk or, as he suspected, a desire to retreat from the world.

Mac had no explanation for his response to Jewel except that he had been celibate for too long. What had happened when Jewel touched him was merely the healthy response of a male animal to a female of the species. The problem would be solved when he found himself a woman and satisfied the simple physiological need that had been too long denied. Which meant he had better make a trip into town sometime soon and find a willing woman.

“Do you want me to call the Templetons back and tell them your plans have changed and you won’t be here, after all?” Jewel asked.

He shook his head. “I guess it won’t hurt me to be nice to one little boy.”

“If you’d rather not—”

“I said I would.” He slid his leg off his knee and reached for his cane. “It’s not that big a deal, Jewel.”

She rose and reached for his arm to help him up.

He jerked away. “I’m not an invalid. I wish you’d stop trying to help me.”

He saw the hurt look on her face, but that was better than having her know the sharp sexual response her touch had provoked. That would ruin everything. Better to have her think he was in a lousy mood than find out that he wanted to suck on her breasts or put his hand between her legs and seek the damp heat there.

“I’m going in to town today,” he said, realizing he’d better get away for a while and cool down.

“Perfect! I need some things from the hardware store. Could you give me a lift?”

Thank God she wasn’t looking at him, or she would have known something was wrong. He opened his mouth to refuse and said, “Sure. Why not? Give me a chance to change into a shirt and jeans and some boots first.”

She gave him a blazing smile that made his groin pull up tight. Hell. He’d better find himself a woman. And soon.

NO DOUBT ABOUT IT, JEWEL THOUGHT. Mac had been acting strange all day. Every errand he had run had taken him to the opposite end of town from her. Although they had made plans to meet for lunch at the Stanton Hotel Café, he hadn’t arrived until she was nearly finished eating. She was sitting on one of the 1950’s chrome seats at the lunch counter when he finally showed up, grabbed a cup of coffee, said he wasn’t hungry, remembered something else he had to do in town and took off again.

If Jewel hadn’t known better, she would have said he didn’t want to be anywhere near her. But that was silly. They were best friends.

They had agreed to meet in the parking lot near the bank at four o’clock where Mac had parked his extended cab Chevy pickup and head back to Hawk’s Pride. Jewel was sitting on the fender of the truck when Mac finally returned.

“You could have sat inside,” he said. “It wasn’t locked.”

“It was too hot with the windows rolled up, and I needed a key to get them down,” she said, lifting the hair at her nape to catch the late afternoon breeze. She heard him suck in a breath and had turned in his direction when a female voice distracted them both.

“Peter? Is that you?”

Jewel rose and turned at the same time as Mac to find a red-headed, green-eyed woman standing beside the bed of the pickup.

“Eve?” Mac replied in tones of astonishment that rivaled the woman’s.

She ran toward him, and Jewel watched in awe as Mac dropped his cane to surround the woman with his arms. Jewel hurried to pick it up, certain Mac would lose his balance and need it at any moment.

Only he didn’t.

Either he was stronger on his feet than he had been two days ago, or the petite redhead was stronger than she looked.

“Peter. Peter,” the woman said, her gaze searching his face.

“Eve. I can’t believe it’s you!” he replied, his eyes searching her face with equal delight.

He suddenly looked around for Jewel and reached out a hand to draw her closer. “Jewel, this is Evelyn Latham. Eve and I dated for a while in college. She’s the only person I ever let get away with calling me Peter.”

Eve simpered. “It’s because you have such a big—”

“Yeah,” Mac cut her off. “Eve, this is my friend, Jewel Whitelaw. I’m spending some time at her parents’ ranch.”

Jewel saw Eve take one look at her plain face and her unshapely clothes and dismiss her as no competition.

Eve then gave Mac a quick, but thorough, once-over. “You look purrrfectly fit to me.”

Jewel cringed at the way the woman drew out the word with her Texas accent. Eve obviously appreciated Mac’s assets—one of which she had apparently seen up close and personal—and the sexual invitation she extended was clear, at least to Jewel.

Mac must have heard it, too. “What are you doing with yourself these days, Eve? I haven’t seen you since…when was it?”

“Graduation day from UT, two years ago.”

He looked for a ring on her left hand, but didn’t find one. “I thought you were going to marry Joe Bob Struthers.”

“I only told you that because I was mad at you for dumping me after only three dates…just when we were getting to know each other so well.”

He’s probably slept with her, Jewel thought. She couldn’t fault Mac’s taste. The woman was gorgeous. She wore a clingy green St. John knit dress, with a fashionable gold chain draped across her flat stomach.

Mac gave Eve a look that suggested he would be happy to pick up where they had left off. “So you’re not a married woman?”

“I’m free as a bird,” Eve confirmed.

“I thought you were a Dallas girl, born and bred. What are you doing out here in the far reaches of northwest Texas?” Mac asked.

“My dad bought the bank here in town. I’ve been the assistant manager for the past year.”

“I never expected any less of you,” Mac said, “graduating the way you did at the top of the class.”

Pretty and smart. That was a lethal combination, Jewel thought. Not that Jewel was competing in any way with Evelyn Latham for Mac’s affection. She and Mac were just friends. But she couldn’t help thinking that if Mac got involved with Eve, she would see a whole lot less of him, and she did enjoy his company.

“What are you doing here?” Eve asked Mac in return. “Aren’t you supposed to be off playing football, or something like that?”

Jewel couldn’t believe the woman had dated Mac but had no idea when the football season began and ended.

“It’s the off-season,” Mac said with an indulgent smile. For the first time it must have occurred to him that he didn’t have his cane. He looked around for it, and Jewel handed it to him. He took it and leaned on it. “I’m here visiting friends and recuperating from a football injury.”

“You were hurt?” Eve asked.

Jewel rolled her eyes. Mac gave her a nudge with his hip, and she straightened up.

“You could say that,” Mac said. “I guess you didn’t hear about it.”

Eve turned her mouth down in a delightful moue. “As you very well know I never cared much for football, only for the way you looked in those tight pants.”

The sexual innuendo was even more blatant this time, and Jewel felt uncomfortable standing there listening to it. “Sorry we can’t stay,” she said. “Mac was just giving me ride home.”

The pout that appeared on Eve’s face would have looked right at home on a three-year-old. “Oh, Mac. I was hoping you’d have dinner with me.”

“I still can,” Mac said. “I’ll take Jewel home and come back. What time and where?”

“How about eight o’clock? My house.” She gave Mac an address in the newest condominium complex in town.

Mac grinned. “I’ll be there.”

“Don’t dress up,” Eve purred. “I want you to be comfortable.”

“You got it,” Mac said.

With Jewel standing right there, Eve went up on tiptoe and gave Mac a kiss right on the mouth. Jewel noticed Mac’s arm went around her waist quick enough to draw her close, so the kiss wasn’t unwelcome. It went on a long time, and from the way their mouths shifted, their tongues were involved.

Jewel stood frozen, unable to move. At last the kiss broke, and Mac shot her a quick, embarrassed look. It was too little, too late. He should have thought of her feelings before he practically made love to another woman right in front of her.

Only it shouldn’t have mattered if he kissed somebody else. They were only friends.

“See you at eight,” Mac said as he backed away from Eve.

“I’ll be waiting,” Eve said in a sultry voice.

Mac went around to his side of the truck without stopping to open Jewel’s door. Not that she needed her door opened for her. She got in and sat near the edge of the seat, opening the window as soon as Mac started the truck and sticking her elbow out.

“Sorry about that,” he said after a few minutes. “I shouldn’t have embarrassed you like that.”

“I wasn’t embarrassed,” Jewel said. “Kiss all the girls you want. It doesn’t make any difference to me.”

“All right. If that’s the way you feel. Just so you don’t worry, I may not be back tonight.”

“Thanks for telling me,” Jewel said. “I won’t wait up for you.”

She really didn’t care. He was just a friend. He’d had another girlfriend most of the time she had known him. This was no different. Except, the whole time she had watched Mac kissing Eve the most stunning thought had been running through her head.

I wish it were me.

CHAPTER FOUR

MAC WENT TO EVELYN LATHAM’S HOUSE with one purpose in mind: to get laid. Eve opened the door wearing a clingy red velour jumpsuit that sent a wake-up call to his body. He was sure all it would take was one kiss to get the old machinery back into action. So he pulled her into his arms and kissed her and…nothing. Not a damned thing happened.

He worried about the situation all through supper and all through the glass of merlot they enjoyed by the fire he started for her in the stone fireplace. When they ended up entwined on the couch, he willed his body to react to the feel of her lips against his, to the feel of her body beneath his hands. He felt the sweat pop out on his forehead. But…nothing.

This wasn’t supposed to happen. Just because he hadn’t made love with a woman didn’t mean that he didn’t want to. He wanted to, all right. His damned body just wasn’t cooperating! He made up some excuse for why he couldn’t stay—his aching leg had come in handy for once—and bolted.

He drove around for two hours wondering if he was going to spend the rest of his life a virgin. What the hell had gone wrong? He hadn’t been able to figure it out but had finally conceded that driving around all night wasn’t going to give him any answers.

Then he remembered he had told Jewel he would probably be out all night. What was she going to think if he came back early?

That you don’t take your time.

Yeah. Probably she’d just think he’d gotten his fill of Eve already. He couldn’t imagine getting his fill of Jewel in bed. The thought of touching her skin, the feel of her hair against his body, the smell of her.

His body stirred in response.

It’s too late, buddy. You already missed the party. You have to do that when there’s a flesh-and-blood woman around.

And when it was some other woman besides Jewel. It wasn’t going to do him any good getting aroused by thoughts of her, because she was the last person he could have sex with.

Hell, his leg was killing him. He had some exercises he was supposed to do at night that he hadn’t done to relax the muscles. He needed to lay his leg flat in bed. He needed…he needed to know he could function as a man. The situation with Eve had been disturbing because it had never happened to him before. What if something was wrong with him? What if all those operations had done something to his libido?

You don’t have any problem responding to Jewel.

He recalled his feelings for Jewel, the ones that had sent him off in search of another woman. They weren’t as comforting as they should have been. He had felt the same sort of semi-arousal with Eve before he kissed her, but when it came time for action, his body had opted out.

Mac cut the pickup engine at the back door to the cottage. No lights. At least he’d be spared the ignominy of Jewel seeing him sneaking in at two in the morning. He didn’t want to have to make some explanation about why he was home early. He wasn’t about to tell her the truth, and he hated like hell to lie.

He eased the kitchen door open—Western doors were rarely locked, even in this day and age—and slipped inside.

“Hi.”

Mac nearly lost his balance and fell. “What the hell are you doing sitting here in the dark?”

He reached for the light switch, but Jewel said, “Don’t.”

The rough, raw sound of her voice, as though she had been crying, stayed his hand. He remained where he was, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the dark. He finally located her in the shadows. She was sitting with her elbows perched on the kitchen table, her face buried in her hands.

He limped over, scraped a chair closer and sat beside her. He felt her stiffen as he laid an arm across her shoulder. “Are you all right?

“I’m fine.”

“You don’t sound fine. You sound like you’ve been crying.”

“I didn’t think you’d be back tonight.”

Which meant she had expected to have the privacy to cry without being disturbed. It didn’t explain why she had been crying. She tried to rise, but he kept his arm around her and pressed her back down. “I’m here, Jewel.”

“Why is that, Mac? I can’t imagine any woman throwing you out. Which means you left on your own. What happened?”

This was exactly the scene Mac had been hoping to avoid. “She…uh…we…uh…”

“Don’t tell me Eve didn’t make a pass.”

“She did,” Mac conceded reluctantly.

“Then why aren’t you spending the night with her?”

“I…uh…that sort of thing can give a woman ideas.”

“I see.”

“You do?”

“Sure. Spend the whole night in a woman’s bed, and she tends to think you might be serious about her. Everyone knows you’re a love’em and leave’em kind of guy.”

“I am? I mean, I suppose I am. I haven’t found a woman I’d want to settle down with who’d have me.” That was certainly no lie.

Eve had wanted him, all right. It should have been the easiest thing in the world to take her in his arms and make love to her. The situation had been perfect: willing woman, intelligent, not a total stranger, attractive—hell, absolutely beautiful. And it had been absolutely impossible.

Mac bit back the sound of frustration that sought voice.

“You should go to bed if you’re going to get up early and walk tomorrow,” Jewel said.

“I’d rather sit here with you,” Mac replied.

“I’d rather be alone.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’ll be fine.”

Mac leaned over to kiss her softly on the temple. Her hair smelled of lilacs. It reminded him of warm, lazy summer days they had spent lying on the banks of the pond that bordered the Stonecreek Ranch. He resisted the urge to thread his fingers through her hair. It might comfort her, but it would drive him damn near crazy.

“Just know I’m here if you need me,” he said. “You’d better get to bed, too, because I’m expecting you to walk with me tomorrow.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea. It would be better if you go alone.”

He stared at her, wishing he could see the expression on her face. Moonlight filtered in through the kitchen window but left her mostly in shadow. “What’s going on, Jewel? Why are you shutting me out?”

“I got along fine without you for six years, Mac. What makes you think I need you now?”

Mac was stunned as much by the virulence in her voice as by what she had said. “If you want me out of here, I’m gone.”

She clutched his forearm as he rose, rubbing at her eyes with the knuckles of her other hand. “Don’t leave. Don’t leave.”

He pulled her up and into his arms, and she grabbed him tight around his neck and sobbed against his shoulder. He rubbed her back with his open palms, aware suddenly that she was wearing a thin, sleeveless cotton nightgown and nothing else.

His body turned hard as a rock in two seconds flat.

His equipment worked all right. At the wrong time. With the wrong woman.

“Damn it all to hell,” he muttered.

Jewel needed his comfort, not some male animal lusting after her. He kept their hips apart, not wanting his physical response to frighten or distress her. “Tell me what’s wrong, Jewel. Let me help,” he crooned in her ear.

“It’s too embarrassing,” she said, her face pressed tight against the curve of his shoulder.

“Nothing’s too embarrassing for us to talk about, my little carbuncle.”

She hiccuped a laugh. “Carbuncle? Isn’t that an ugly inflammation—”

“It’s a red precious stone. I swear.”

She relaxed, chuckling, and it took all the willpower he had to keep from pulling her tight against him.

“You always could make me laugh,” she said. “Oh, Mac, I wish you’d come back a long time ago. I missed you.”

“And I missed you. Now tell me what’s so embarrassing that you don’t want to talk about it?”

She sighed, and her breasts swelled against his chest, soft and warm. His heartbeat picked up. Lord, she was dangerous. Why couldn’t this have happened with Eve? Why did it have to be Jewel?

Her fingers began to play in the hair at his nape. He wondered if she knew what she was doing to him and decided she couldn’t possibly. She wouldn’t purposely turn him on. What she wanted was comfort from a friend. And he intended to give it to her.

But he wasn’t any more able to stop his body from responding than he had been capable of making it respond. All he could do was try to ignore the part of him that was insisting he do something. He focused his attention on Jewel. She needed his help.

“Tell me what’s wrong,” he urged.

“I wish things were different, that’s all.”

“Don’t we all?” he said, thinking of his own situation. “But frankly, that doesn’t sound embarrassing enough to keep to yourself. What is it? Got bucked off your horse? Happens to the best of us. Broke a dish? Do it all the time. If you broke a heart I might worry, but you can always buy another dish.”

She laughed. The bubbly, effervescent sound he hadn’t heard for six years. He pulled her close and rocked her in his arms in the old, familiar, brotherly way.

She stiffened, and he realized what he had done. His hips, with the hard bulge in front, were pressed tight against hers. There was no way she could mistake his condition.

“Damn, Jewel,” he said, backing away from her, putting her at arm’s length and gripping her hands tightly in his.

He smiled, but she didn’t smile back.

When she pulled free, he let her go. “We can still talk,” he said, wanting her to stay, wanting to confess the truth to her. She was still his best friend. But somehow things had changed. He couldn’t tell her everything, not the most private things. Not anymore.

Maybe he had been wrong to expect her to confide in him. Maybe she felt the same awkwardness he did, the distance that had never been there before. A distance he had put there, because he saw her not just as a friend, but as a woman he wanted to kiss and touch.

“I’m going to bed, Mac.”

“Will you walk with me tomorrow?”

“I don’t think—”

“Please, Jewel. You’re my best friend. I’d really like the company.”

She hesitated so long, he thought she was going to refuse. “All right, Mac. I suppose I owe you that much.” She turned and left without another word.

He waited until her bedroom door closed before he moved, afraid that if he did, he would go after her.

He wondered what had been troubling her. He wondered what she would have done if he had lowered his head and sucked on her breasts through the thin cotton. Blood pulsed through his rock-hard body, and he swore under his breath.

Mac went to bed, but he didn’t sleep. He tossed and turned, troubled by vivid erotic fantasies of himself and Jewel Whitelaw. Their legs entangled, their bodies entwined, his tongue deep in her mouth, his shaft deep inside her. She was calling to him, calling his name.

Mac awoke tangled in the sheets, his body hot, hard and ready, his heart racing. And all alone.

He heard Jewel calling from outside the door. “Mac. Are you awake?” She knocked twice quietly. “It’s time to walk.”

Mac groaned. “I’ll be with you in a minute.” As soon as he was decent.

From the look of Jewel at the breakfast table, she hadn’t slept any better than he had. She was wearing something even less attractive than the sweatshirt and cutoffs she had worn previously. It didn’t matter. He saw her naked.

Mac shook his head to clear it. The vision of her breasts, large and luscious as peaches, and her long, slim legs wrapped around his waist, remained as vivid as ever.

“Are you all right?” Jewel asked.

“Fine. Let’s go.”

She chattered the whole way to the canyon, but he would have been hard-pressed to remember a word of what she had said or his own responses.

Everything was different. Something was missing. And something had been added.

He wanted their old relationship back. He was determined to quench any desire he might feel for her, so things could get back to an even footing. He figured the best way to start was to bring the subject out into the open and deal with it. On the walk back to the house, he did.

“About what happened last night…It shouldn’t have happened.” His comment was vague, but he knew she understood exactly what he meant when pink roses blossomed on her cheekbones.

She shrugged. “I was just a woman in a skimpy nightgown.”

“Jewel, I—”

She stopped and turned to him, looking into his eyes, her gaze earnest. “Please, Mac. Can we pretend it never happened?”

He gave a relieved sigh. “That’s exactly what I’d like to do. It was an accident. I never intended for it to happen. I wish I could promise it won’t happen again, but—” He shot her a chagrined look. “I’ll be sure you’re never embarrassed again. Am I forgiven?”

“There’s no need—”

“Just say yes,” he said.

“Yes.”

She turned abruptly and started walking again, and he followed after her.

“I’m glad that’s over with,” he said. “I can’t afford to lose a friend as good as you, Jewel.”

“And I can’t afford to lose a friend like you, Mac.”

Jewel’s eyes were as brown and sad as a motherless calf. Mac wished she had told him why she was crying last night. He wished she had let him comfort her. If she ever gave him another chance, he was going to do it right. He wasn’t going to let his hormones get in the way of their friendship.

When they got back to the house, she hurried up the back steps ahead of him. “I get the shower first!”

“We could always share,” he teased. He could have bitten his tongue out. That sort of sexual innuendo had to cease.

To his relief, Jewel gave him a wide smile and said, “In your dreams, Mac! I’ll try to save you a little hot water.”

Then she was gone.

Mac settled on the back stoop and rubbed the calf muscles of his injured leg. It was getting easier to walk. Practice was helping. And it would get easier to treat Jewel as merely a friend. All he had needed was a little more practice at that, too.

AFTER HE HAD SHOWERED, MAC MADE a point of seeking Jewel out, determined to work on reestablishing their friendship. He found her in the barn, cleaning stalls and shoveling in new hay for the dozen or so ponies Camp LittleHawk kept available for horseback rides. “Can I help?” he said.

“There’s another pitchfork over by the door. Be my guest.”

Mac noticed she didn’t even look up from her work. Not a very promising sign. He grabbed the pitchfork and went to work in the stall next to the one she was working in. “I thought your mom usually hired someone to do this kind of heavy labor.”

“I don’t have anything better to do with my time,” Jewel said.

“Why not?” Mac asked. “Pretty girl like you ought to be out enjoying herself.”

Jewel stuck her pitchfork into the hay and turned to stare at him. “I enjoy my work.”

“I’m sure you do,” he said, throwing a pitchfork of manure into the nearby wheelbarrow. “But there’s a time for work and a time for play. I don’t see you doing enough playing.”

“I’m a grown-up woman, Mac. Playing is for kids.”

“You’re never too old to play, Jewel.” Mac filled his pitchfork with clean straw and threw it up over the stall so it landed on Jewel’s head.

She came out of her stall sputtering and picking straw out of her mouth, mad as a peeled rattler. She confronted him, hands on hips and said, “That wasn’t funny!”

He set his pitchfork against the stall and laughed. “I think you look darned cute with straw sticking out of your hair every whichaway.” He headed toward her to help pull out some of the straw.

When he got close enough, she gave him a shove that sent him onto his behind. Only the straw Mac landed in wasn’t clean. He gave a howl of outrage and struggled up out of the muck, glaring at the stain on the back of his jeans. “What’d you do that for?”

She grinned. “I think you look darned cute, all covered with muck.”

“You know this means war.”

“No, Mac. We’re even now. Don’t—”

He lunged toward her, caught her by the waist and threw her up over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry.

“Watch out for your leg!” Jewel cried. “You’re going to hurt yourself carrying me like this.”

“My leg is fine,” Mac growled. “Good enough to get you where I want you.”

Mac headed for the short stack of hay at one end of the barn and when he got there, dropped Jewel into it. When she tried to jump free, he came down on top of her and pinned her hands on either side of her.

“Mac,” she said breathlessly, laughing. “Get up.”

“I want to play some more, Emerald, my dear,” he said sprinkling her hair with hay.

“You’re more green than I am,” she taunted.

Mac took a look at the back of his jeans. “Yes, and I think you should pay a forfeit for that.”

“You can have the shower first,” she said with a bubbly laugh. “You need it!”

His laugh was cut off when he realized that what he really wanted was a kiss. He stared at her curving mouth, at the way her nose wrinkled when she laughed, at the teasing sparkle in her brown eyes. “I think I’ll take something now.”

He watched her face sober when she realized what he intended. He knew she must be able to feel his arousal, cradled as he was between her jean-clad thighs. He waited for her to tell him to let go, that the game was over. She stared up at him with luminous eyes and slicked her tongue quickly, nervously over her lips. But she didn’t say get up or get off. And she didn’t say no.

Friends, Mac. Not lovers. Friends.

Mac made himself kiss her eyelids closed before he kissed each cheek and then her nose and then…her forehead.

He rose abruptly and pulled her to her feet. She was dizzy, because her eyes had been closed, so he was forced to hold her in his arms until she was steady. She felt so good there, so very right. And so very wrong.

“I’m sorry, Jewel,” he said. “That was totally out of line.”

She took a deep breath and let it out. “Yes, I suppose it was. I think it’s your turn to pay a forfeit, Mac.”

He tensed. “What did you have in mind?”

She reached out, and for a moment he thought she was going to lay her hand on his chest and give him another shove. Instead, she grasped a nearby pitchfork and held it out to him. “You get to finish what I started. I’m going to get another shower and wash off all this itchy straw.”

“Hey! That’s not fair,” he protested.

But she had already turned and stalked away.

“You and your bright ideas,” Mac muttered to himself as he pitched manure into the wheelbarrow. “What were you thinking? Maybe you could throw straw around when you were kids and it was funny, but there was nothing funny about what almost happened in that haystack. What if you’d kissed her lips? How would you have felt when she got upset?

How do you know she’d have been upset?

Mac mused over that question for the next hour as he finished cleaning stalls. Actually, Jewel had seemed more upset that he hadn’t kissed her lips. Could she have feelings for him that weren’t merely friendly?

Don’t even think about it, Macready. The woman’s off-limits. She’s your friend, and she needs your friendship. Concentrate on somebody else’s needs for a change and forget what you want.

Mac knew why he was having all these lurid thoughts about Jewel. He probably would be having such thoughts about any woman he came in close contact with at this stage in his life. It didn’t help that Jewel turned him on so hard and fast.

Get over it, Mac.

“I intend to,” Mac muttered as he set the pitchfork back where it belonged and headed for the house. “Jewel is my friend. And that’s the way it’s going to stay.”

AT THE END OF TWO WEEKS MAC was walking the mile to the canyon without the aid of a cane and doing it in seven minutes flat. Jewel had difficulty keeping up with him when he broke into a jog. His leg was getting better; hers never would. She could picture him moving away from her, going on with his life, leaving her behind. She was going to miss him. She was going to miss playing with him.

The scene in the barn hadn’t been repeated. Nor had Mac teased her or taunted her or done any of the playful things he might have done when they were teenagers. He had become a serious grown-up over the past two weeks. She hadn’t realized how much she had needed him to play with her. To her surprise, she hadn’t been intimidated or frightened by him in the barn. Not even when she had thought he might kiss her.

She had wanted that kiss, she realized, and been sorely disappointed when he kissed her forehead instead. Then she’d realized he had been carried away by their physical closeness, and when he’d realized it was her—his old friend, Jewel—he had backed off. He liked her, but not that way. They were just friends.

It should have been enough. But lately, Jewel was realizing she wanted more. She was going to have to control those feelings, or she would ruin everything. Mac would be leaving soon enough. She didn’t want to drive him away by asking for things from him he wasn’t willing to give.

“Hey,” she called ahead to him. “How about taking a break at the bottom of the canyon.”

“You got it.” He dropped onto the warm, sandy ground with his back against the stone wall that bore the primitive Native American drawings and sifted the soil through his fingers. She sank down across from him, leaning back on her palms, her legs in front of her.

“You’ll be running full out by this time next week,” she said.

“I expect so.”

“I won’t be coming with you then.”

“Why not?”

She sat up and rubbed at the sore muscles in her thigh. “I can’t keep up with you, Mac.” In more ways than one. He would be going places, while she stayed behind.

Mac dusted off his hands on his shorts, scooted around to her side and, as though it were the most natural thing in the world, began to massage her thigh. She hadn’t let a man touch her like that since she had broken her engagement. Chill bumps rose on her skin at the feel of Mac’s callused fingers on her flesh. It felt amazingly good. It dawned on her that she didn’t feel the least bit afraid. But then, this was Mac. He would never hurt her.

The past two weeks of waiting for Mac to repeat his behavior in the barn had been wonderful and horrible. She loved being with Mac. And she dreaded it. Since the night he had come home early from Evelyn Latham’s house, he had remained an avuncular friend. He had been a tremendous help planning activities for the children. He had made her laugh often. But with the exception of that brief, unfulfilled promise in the barn, there was nothing the least bit sexual in his behavior toward her.

She was unsure of what her feelings were for Mac, but there was no doubting her profound physical reaction to his touch. It was difficult not to look at him as a virile, attractive man, rather than merely as a friend. Even now, she couldn’t keep her eyes off of him.

The Texas sun had turned him a warm bronze, but a white strip of flesh showed around the waist of his running shorts, confirming the hidden skin was lighter. She caught herself wondering what he would look like without the shorts.

“How does that feel?” he asked as he massaged her thigh. “Better?”

She nodded because she couldn’t speak. It feels wonderful. She wanted his hands to move higher, between her legs. As though she had willed it, his fingertips moved upward on her thigh. She let him keep up the massage, because it felt good. Then stopped him because it felt too good.

“Wait.” She gripped his wrist with her hand, afraid that he would read her mind and realize that the last thing she wanted him to do was stop.

“If you exercised more, maybe your limp wouldn’t be so bad,” he said.

She brushed his hand away from where it lingered on her flesh. “One leg is slightly shorter than the other, Mac. That isn’t going to change with exercise.”

“It might with surgery. They can do remarkable things these days. Have you thought about—”

“What’s going on here, Mac?” she interrupted. “You never said a word to me in the past about my limp. You always told me to ignore it, to pretend it didn’t exist, that it didn’t keep me from being who I am. What’s changed?”

Mac backed up against the wall again. His gaze was concentrated on the sand he began once more sifting through his fingers.

“Mac?” she persisted. “Answer me.”

He looked up at her, his eyes searching her face. “How can you stand it—not being able to run?”

She shrugged. “I manage.”

“I’d hate it if something like that happened to me.”

“Something like that has happened to you.”

He shook his head. “Uh-uh. I’m temporarily out of commission. I’m going to be as good as new.”

Did he really believe that? Jewel wondered. Yes, he had made astonishing progress in two weeks, but even she could see the effort it had taken. One look at his leg—at the scar tissue on his leg—suggested there was never going to be as much muscle to work with as there had been in the past. “What if you can never run again like you used to, Mac? What if you can’t get back to where you were?”

“I will.”

“What if you can’t?”

“I’ll be playing again in the fall. Count on it.”

“You’re purposely avoiding my question. What if you can’t?”

He rose, but it took obvious effort to do so without the cane. She said nothing while he accomplished the feat—a minor miracle considering the condition he’d been in two weeks ago.

“Let’s go,” he said gruffly, reaching down to help her to her feet.

She shoved his hand out of the way. “I’m not a cripple, either, Mac,” she said. “I can manage on my own.”

“Damn it, Jewel! What do you want from me?”

“Honesty,” she said, rising and standing toe to toe with him, her eyes focused on his. “You never used to lie to me, Mac. Or to yourself.”

“What is it you want to hear me say? I won’t quit playing football! It’s all I ever wanted to do.”

“You wanted to be a paleontologist.”

“That’s what I said. But inside—” he thumped his bare chest with his fist “—all I ever dreamed about, all I ever wanted to do was run like the wind and catch footballs. It was just so impossible for so long, I never let myself hope for it too much. But I made it happen. And I’m not going to give it up!”

Jewel felt her heart skip a beat. She hadn’t known. She hadn’t realized. If what Mac said was true, then he was facing a much greater crisis than she had imagined.

“Avoiding reality isn’t going to make it go away, Mac,” she said gently. “You have to face your demons.”

“Like you have?” Mac retorted.

Jewel’s face blanched. She turned her back on him and headed up the trail toward the mouth of the canyon.

“Jewel, wait,” Mac said as he hurried after her. He grabbed her arm to stop her. “If you’re going to insist on honesty from me, how about a little from you?”

“What is it you want to know? You know everything,” she said bitterly. “You’re the only one who does!”

He gave her an incredulous look. “You never told anyone else? What about your fiancé?”

She shook her head violently.

“Why the hell not?”

“I couldn’t tell Jerry. I just couldn’t!”

In days gone by he would have put an arm around her to offer her comfort. But things had changed somehow in the two weeks since they had met again. His eyes offered emotional support, instead. “God, Jewel. That’s a heavy burden to be carrying around all by yourself.”

“I’m managing all right.”

“What happened to Jerry What’s-his-name? Why did you call off the wedding?”

“I couldn’t…I wasn’t able…I could never…”

She saw the dawning comprehension in his eyes. “I don’t want or need your pity!” She tried to run from him in awkward, hobbling strides, but he quickly caught up to her and pulled her into his arms.

“Don’t run away,” he said, his arms closing tightly around her. “It doesn’t matter, Jewel. It’ll get better with time.”

She made a keening sound in her throat. “It’s been six years. I can’t forget what happened, Mac. I can’t get it out of my head. Jerry was so patient, but when he tried to make love to me, I couldn’t let him do it. I couldn’t!” Her throat ached. A hot tear spilled onto her cheek and a sob broke free.

She grasped Mac tight around the waist and pressed her face against his bare chest, sobbing as she never had on the day she had been attacked or at any time since then. She had been too numb with shock to cry six years ago. And she had been too full of guilt when she broke up with Jerry to allow herself the release of tears.

“Shh. Shh,” Mac crooned as he rocked her in his arms. “It’s all right. It doesn’t matter. Everything will be all right.”

She felt his lips against her hair, soothing, comforting, and then his hands on either side of her face as he raised it to kiss her tear-wet eyelids. He kissed her nose and her cheeks and finally her mouth. His lips were firm, yet gentle, against her own. She yielded to the insistent pressure of his mouth, her lips soft and damp beneath his. He kissed her again, his lips brushing across hers and sending a surprising frisson of desire skittering down her spine. Oh, Mac…

She pressed her lips back against his and heard a sharp intake of breath. She froze, then stepped back and stared up at him in confusion.

He opened his mouth to speak and shut it again, obviously upset and looking for a way to explain what had happened between them. She wondered if he had felt it, too, the wondrous stirring inside, the need to merge into one another. What if he did? Oh, God. It would ruin everything. She couldn’t…and he would never…She took another step back from him.

“Wait, Jewel. Don’t go,” he said, reaching out a hand to her. “We have to talk about this.”

“What is there to say?”

He took a step closer, and it took all her willpower not to run from him. She felt an equally driving need to press herself against him, which she resisted just as fiercely.

“I don’t want what just happened to spoil things between us,” he said, his voice anguished. “I could see you needed comfort, and I…I got a little carried away.”

“All right, Mac. If that’s the way you want it.” She would ruin everything if she pressed for more. He obviously wanted things to stay the same between them. He wanted them to be friends. That was probably for the best. What if she tried loving him and failed, as she had with Jerry? She would lose everything. She couldn’t bear that.

“What’s wrong, Jewel?”

She mentally and physically squared her shoulders. “I shouldn’t have fallen apart like that. I’ve spent a lot of time in counseling putting what happened six years ago behind me.”

“Have you?”

“I’m as over it as I’m ever going to get,” she conceded with a rueful twist of her mouth. “It doesn’t matter, Mac, really. I have the kids at camp. I have friends. I have a full life.”

“Without a man in it,” he said flatly. “Or children.”

She arched a brow. “Who says a woman needs a man in her life? And there are lots of children at Camp LittleHawk who need me.”

He held up his hands in surrender. “You win. I’m not going to argue the point.”

Jewel released a breath that became a sigh, glad the subject was closed. “We’d better get back to the house.”

He looked as though he wanted to continue the discussion, but she knew that wouldn’t help the situation. She decided levity was what was needed. “I hope you saved some energy, because I know for a fact Colt will be waiting for you when you get back to the house.”

Mac groaned. “I forgot. He’s going to throw me some passes.”

“I can always send him away.”

“I suppose I can catch a few passes and keep him happy.”

“And keep who happy?”

Mac grinned. “So I’m looking forward to it. Think what that’ll mean to you.”

She gave him a quizzical look. If Mac was up to catching passes, it meant he was getting well. If he was getting well, it meant he would be leaving soon. She wanted to hear him say it. Maybe then she could stop fantasizing about him. “What will it mean to me?” she asked.

Twin dimples appeared in his cheeks. “You get the shower first.”

Jewel laughed. It beat the heck out of crying.

CHAPTER FIVE

IF THERE WAS ONE THING COLT WHITELAW wanted more than he wanted to fly jets someday, it was to have Jennifer Wright look at him the way she looked at his best friend, Huckleberry Duncan. Jenny didn’t even care that Huck had a stupid name. When Huck was around, Jenny wouldn’t have noticed if Colt dropped dead at her feet. She only had eyes for Huck.

Which meant Colt got to spend a lot of time watching her when she wasn’t looking. Jenny wasn’t what most guys would have called pretty. She was short and skinny, her nose was too long and her teeth were slightly crooked. But she had the prettiest eyes he’d ever seen. Jenny’s eyes were about the bluest blue eyes could get.

It wasn’t just the color of them that he found attractive. When he looked into Jenny’s eyes he saw the pledge of warmth, the promise of humor and depths of wisdom far beyond what a fourteen-year-old girl ought to possess.

Jenny might be the same age as him and Huck, but it seemed she had grown up faster—in more ways than one. For a couple of years she’d been taller than Huck. This past year Huck had caught up and passed her. Colt had always been taller than Jenny. Not that she’d noticed.

This past year something else had happened to Jenny. She had started becoming a woman. Colt felt like walloping Huck when Huck kidded her about the bumps she was sprouting up front, but when she bent over laughing and her shirt fell away, he had sneaked a peek at them. They were pure white and pink-tipped. He had turned away pretty quick because the whole time he was looking, he couldn’t seem to breathe.

His body did strange things these days whenever she was around. His stomach turned upside down and his heart started to race and his body embarrassed him by doing other things that were still pretty new and felt amazingly good and grown-up. He had it bad for Jenny Wright. Not that he’d ever let her or Huck know about it. Because Huck felt about Jenny the way Jenny felt about Huck. It was true love both ways. When they got old enough, Colt figured they’d marry for sure.

He kept his feelings to himself. He liked Huck too much to give him up as a friend. And it would have killed him to stop seeing Jenny. Even if she was always going to be Huck’s girl.

“Hey, Colt. I thought you were going to throw me some passes,” Huck said, giving him a friendly chuck on the shoulder.

Colt watched as Jenny climbed up onto the top rail of the corral near the new counselors’ cottages and shoved her long blond ponytail back over her shoulder. “You gonna be all right up there?” he asked.

She laughed. “I’m not one of your mom’s campers, Colt. I’m healthy as a horse. I’ll be fine.”

Colt couldn’t help it if he worried about her. He didn’t want her to fall and get hurt. Not that she appreciated his concern. He turned the football in his hands, finding the laces and placing his hands where he knew they needed to be.

“Go long!” he shouted to Huck, who had already started to run over the uneven terrain, which was dotted with clumps of buffalo grass and an occasional prickly pear cactus.

Colt threw the ball with ease and watched it fall perfectly, gently into Huck’s outstretched hands. Huck did a victory dance and spiked the ball.

“We are the greatest!” Huck shouted, holding his pointed fingers upward on either side of him in the referee’s signal for a touchdown.

They made a pretty good team, Colt conceded. About the best in the state. Both of them would likely be offered athletic scholarships to college. Huck was so rich—his father was a U.S. senator from Texas—he didn’t need a scholarship to pay for college. Colt’s family could easily afford to send him to college, too, but he kept playing football because he had heard it might help him get into the Air Force Academy.

If Huck had wanted to go to the Academy, his dad, the senator, could write a letter and get him appointed. Colt didn’t have that advantage. He would never presume on his friendship with Huck to ask for that kind of favor from Senator Duncan. So he had to find another way to make sure he got in.

Huck retrieved the ball and started walking back toward Colt and Jenny. Colt took advantage of the opportunity to have Jenny’s full attention. “He’s pretty good,” he said, knowing Huck was the one thing Jenny was always willing to discuss.

“He is, isn’t he,” she said, a worried frown forming between her brows.

“Something wrong with that?” Colt asked, leaning his elbow casually on the top rail next to Jenny’s thigh where her cutoffs ended and her flesh began. Casual. Right. His mouth was bone-dry.

“I don’t want him to go away,” she said.

He watched her face as she watched Huck. “You think football will take him away?”

“No. Huck loves football, but I think he’d be willing to attend a college somewhere close just so we could be together. Only…” Her head swiveled suddenly, and she looked him right in the eye. “You’re going to take him away.”

He swallowed hard, his hormones going into overdrive as she continued staring at him. He managed to say, “I am?”

She nodded solemnly. “He’s going to want to follow wherever you go, Colt, and I know your plans don’t include staying here in Texas. I don’t want to get left behind.”

Jenny was dirt-poor, and even if she could have gotten a scholarship to a college somewhere else—which, with her brains, she probably could—she had to stay at the Double D Ranch to help take care of her sick mother and four younger brothers.

“Huck would never leave you behind,” Colt said seriously.

“He might not have any choice. Not if he went off to fly jets somewhere with you.”

Colt felt angry, vulnerable and exposed. “How did you know about that? About me wanting to fly jets?”

She shrugged and slipped down off the top rail of the corral. “Huck and I don’t have any secrets.”

“He shouldn’t have told you,” Colt said, feeling his heart begin to thud at the closeness of her. He wanted her to step back so he could breathe, so he could think straight. Didn’t she see what she was doing to him? “That was private information,” he snapped. “It doesn’t concern you.”

Her fisted hands found her hips. “It does when Huck is thinking about going with you.”

“I never asked him to come along,” he retorted.

“Hey, you two! What’re my two favorite people arguing about?” Huck said, grinning as he stepped between them and slipped an arm around each of their shoulders. Colt stood rigid beneath his arm. Huck still had the football in one hand, and Colt knocked it to the ground.

“Ask your girlfriend,” he said, bending to retrieve the ball and pulling free of Huck’s arm. “I’ve got to go find Mac Macready. I’m supposed to throw some passes to him this morning.”

Huck left Jenny standing where she was and headed after Colt. “Macready’s really here? I mean, I heard rumors in town he was, but I wasn’t sure. You’re really going to throw some balls to him?”

“I said I was, didn’t I?” Colt stopped where he was and looked back over Huck’s shoulder to where Jenny stood abandoned. Her expression said it all.

See what I mean? You lead. Huck follows.

It wasn’t his fault. It had always been that way. If Jenny didn’t like it, she didn’t have to hang around. Colt turned back to Huck.

Huck’s sandy hair had fallen over his brow and into his eyes. His rarely combed hair, combined with his ski-slope nose and freckled cheeks and broad smile, gave him an affable appearance he deserved. Huck didn’t make enemies. He wouldn’t have hurt a fly. Colt was sure he hadn’t meant to hurt Jenny’s feelings. Huck just forgot to be thoughtful sometimes.

“What about Jenny?” Colt asked.

“Hey, Jenny,” Huck called. “You want to hang around and meet Mac Macready?”

Jenny shook her head.

“See? She’s not interested,” Huck said. “But I am.”

Colt sighed. “You want to stay?” he asked Huck.

“Does a cowboy wear spurs?” Huck replied with a lopsided grin.

They headed for the counselor’s cottage where Mac was staying, leaving Jenny behind at the corral. Colt glanced over his shoulder at her. It looked for a moment like she might follow them. Then she turned to where her horse was tied to the corral next to Huck’s, mounted up and loped the gelding in the direction of her family’s ranch.

“You shouldn’t ignore Jenny like that,” Colt said, turning back to Huck.

Huck seemed to notice suddenly that she had left. “What did I do?” He shook his head. “Women. They’re mysterious creatures, old buddy. Don’t ever try to understand them. It’s a waste of time.”

“Why did you tell her about me wanting to fly?” Colt asked.

Huck looked chagrined. “We were talking about the future and…it just came up.”

“Make sure it doesn’t come up again,” Colt said. “That’s my business, and I don’t want the whole world knowing about it.” Especially when he was afraid he wasn’t going to be able to make his dream come true.

“Jenny isn’t the whole world,” Huck argued. “She’s my girlfriend. I have to tell her things.”

“Just don’t tell her things about me,” Colt insisted.

“That’s hard to avoid when you’re my best friend,” Huck said. “Besides, if we’re going to be jet pilots—”

“When did my plans become yours?” Colt asked.

Huck grinned and pulled an arm tight around Colt’s neck in a wrestler’s hold. “We’re friends forever, pal. Where you go, I go. If you fly, I fly. Enough said?”

Colt wished it were that simple. He wished he could express his desire to be a jet fighter pilot and expect his parents to be happy about it. He had never said a word to them, because he knew they would hate the idea.

He might be one of eight adopted kids, but his mom and dad had made it pretty clear over the past couple of years that he was the one they expected to inherit Hawk’s Pride. They already had his life planned for him. They expected him to come back home after college to manage the ranch.

He was grateful to have Zach and Rebecca Whitelaw for parents. He loved them enough to want to make them happy by fulfilling their expectations. It just wasn’t what he wanted for himself. He wanted to fly.

So he made his plans surreptitiously, meanwhile letting his father teach him everything he would need to know to run the cattle and quarter horse end of the business. His father had told him his sister Jewel was taking over Camp LittleHawk, and that was fine with him. Although he kind of liked the ranching business, he wanted absolutely nothing to do with a camp for kids with cancer.

Not that he didn’t have sympathy for the plight of all those sick kids. But he had learned his lesson early. He had befriended a couple of them when he was old enough to make friends. It was only later, when he asked why they hadn’t returned the following summer, that he learned the awful truth. Sometimes sick people died.

It was a sobering lesson: Illness could rob you of people you loved. He had found a child’s solution to the problem that had stood him in good stead. He stayed away from sick people. Which was why he hadn’t been to Jenny’s house much, even though Huck went there a lot. Her mom was dying slowly but surely of breast cancer.

Colt might have argued further with Huck, except he caught sight of Mac Macready coming around the corner of the house with his sister, Jewel.

“Hey!” Colt called. “Ready to catch a few passes?”

“You bet,” Mac called back.

Colt looked for signs of reluctance or resignation on Mac’s face. After all, Colt was just a kid. He didn’t see anything but delight.

“Just give me a minute,” Mac said with a smile and a wave. “Be right with you.” He turned and said something in Jewel’s ear, then headed in Colt’s direction.

JEWEL HEARD THE KITCHEN SCREEN DOOR open and called, “Is that you, Mac?” “Jewel?”

“Colt?” At the sound of her brother’s frightened voice, Jewel hurried from her bedroom wearing an oversized plaid Western shirt, jeans and boots, her hair still wet from her shower. She met Colt halfway to the kitchen. “What’s wrong?”

Her brother stood white-faced before her. “It’s Mac. He fell.”

Oh, dear God. “Should I call an ambulance?”

“I don’t know,” Colt said, his hands visibly trembling. “I thought maybe you ought to come and see for yourself first. It was awful, Jewel. One minute Mac was fine, and then Huck tackled him and…he didn’t get up.”

“Huck tackled him? What on earth were you boys thinking, Colt? You know Mac’s recovering from surgery!”

“We thought it would be more fun—”

“Did he hit his head when he fell?”

“I don’t think so. I think—”

Before Jewel could make the decision whether to call 911, Mac appeared at the kitchen door, one arm around Huck’s shoulder, the other pressed against the thigh of his scarred leg.

Colt had been pale, but Mac’s face was completely drained of blood. His teeth were gritted against the pain, and he was leaning heavily on Huck Duncan’s shoulder and favoring his leg. It took her a second to realize it wasn’t his poor, wounded and scarred left leg he was favoring, it was the other one. Now both legs were injured!

“What happened?” she asked as she crossed quickly to hold the screen door open for him. As soon as she moved, Colt seemed to wake from his shocked trance and took a place on Mac’s other side. The two boys helped him keep his weight off both legs as they eased him through the kitchen and onto the sofa in the living room.

While the boys stood awkwardly at her side, Jewel dropped to her knees and eased Mac’s foot up onto a rawhide stool that Grandpa Garth had given her one Christmas, a relic of bygone days at his ranch, Hawk’s Way. Then she started untying the laces of Mac’s athletic shoe.

“I can do that,” he said, trying to brush her hands away.

“Sure you can, but let me,” she insisted. She eased off the shoe and the sock beneath it and immediately saw the problem. His ankle was swelling. “Can you move it?” she asked.

Slowly, hissing in a breath, he rotated the ankle. “Doesn’t feel broken,” he said. “I’ve had enough sprains to recognize one when I see it. Damn. This is all I needed.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Macready,” Huck said in an anguished voice. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

Mac looked up at the boy and said, “Call me Mac. And it wasn’t your fault, Huck. Your tackle wasn’t what caused the problem. I just didn’t see that gopher hole soon enough.”

Jewel watched him smile at the boy, pretending it was no big deal, when she knew very well it was. This was a setback, no doubt about it.

“But your leg—” Huck protested, his eyes skipping from the awful scars on Mac’s left leg to the swelling on his right ankle. “How’re you gonna walk now?”

“One step at a time,” Mac quipped with an easy grin. “Fortunately, I brought a cane with me. That should help matters some.”

Jewel turned to Colt and said, “Wrap some ice in a towel and bring it here. You go help him, Huck.”

When they were both gone, she gently moved the ankle. “Are you sure it isn’t broken?”

He sighed. It was a sound of disgust. “It’s a sprain, Jewel. Not even a bad one.”

“I should have warned you about gopher holes,” she said.

“I didn’t step in a gopher hole,” he said quietly, looking at the hands he held fisted against his thighs.

“Then what—” She saw the truth in the wary look he gave her. His leg—his right leg—must not have supported him. She reached out a hand, and he clutched it with one of his.

She didn’t offer him words of comfort. She could see from the grim look on his face that words wouldn’t change what had happened. She didn’t point out the obvious—that his football career was over. He had to see that for himself.

But if she had thought this accident would make Mac quit, he quickly disabused her of the notion.

“This’ll slow down my rehabilitation some,” he said. “Will you mind if I hang around a little longer? I know camp’s starting in a day or so—”

She rose to her feet, her hand coming free of his. “Of course you can stay!” she said, her voice unnaturally sharp. She didn’t want him to go away. She liked having him here. But she couldn’t believe he was ignoring the implications of this injury. How long was he going to go on batting his head against the wall? Couldn’t he see the truth? Didn’t he understand what this accident meant?

“Mac—”

He cut her off with a shake of his head. “Don’t say it. Don’t even suggest it.”

“Suggest what?”

“This doesn’t change my plans.”

“But—”

His face turned hard, jaw jutting, shoulders braced in determination. She had seen that look before, but she had been too young and naive to recognize it for what it was.

“Be my friend, Jewel,” he said. “Don’t tell me why I can’t do what I want to do. Just help me to do it.”

She stared at him as though she had never seen him before. She knew now why Peter Macready had survived a form of cancer that killed most kids. Why he had become the best rookie receiver in the NFL, despite the fact he had never been the fastest athlete on the field. Mac didn’t give up. Mac didn’t see obstacles. He saw his goal and headed for it without worrying about whether it could be reached. And so he invariably reached it.

Jewel wished she had half his confidence. She might be a married woman now with a baby in her arms.

Maybe it wasn’t too late for her. Maybe she could learn from him how it was done. Maybe she could take advantage of Mac’s presence to give her the impetus to change her life. If Mac could recover from a shattered leg, why couldn’t she recover from a shattered life?

The boys returned with two dish towels loaded with ice and fell all over each other arranging the cold compresses around Mac’s ankle. Jewel saw Mac wince when their overenthusiasm rocked his ankle, but instead of snapping at them, he launched into a story about how he had played a whole football game with a taped-up sprained ankle, thanks to an injection of painkiller.

The teenage boys dropped to his feet in awe and admiration. Jewel started to leave, but Mac reached up and caught her hand. “Join us,” he said.

“I have work—”

“Just for a few minutes.”

She figured maybe he didn’t want to be stuck alone with the boys. She would stay with him long enough to let them hear a story or two before shooing them away. She settled beside Mac on the worn leather couch—another donation from her grandfather’s house at Hawk’s Way. Mac’s arm slid around her as naturally as if he did it every day.

She resisted the urge to lay her head on his shoulder. Putting his arm around her had been a friendly gesture, nothing more. But she was aware of the way his hand cupped her shoulder, massaging it as he regaled the three of them with stories of life in the pro football arena.

As she sat listening to him, an insidious idea took root.

What if she came to Mac tonight and explained her problem and asked him to help her out?

She trusted Mac not to hurt her. She trusted him to go slow, to be patient. He didn’t love her, and she didn’t love him, so there wouldn’t be that particular pitfall complicating matters. It would be just one friend helping out another.

She could even explain to him how she had gotten the idea. That she had seen his determination to play football again and been inspired to try to solve a problem that she had thought would never be resolved.

All she wanted him to do was teach her how to arouse a man and satisfy him…and be satisfied by him.

She tried to imagine how Mac might react to such a suggestion. He was obviously an experienced man of the world. Only…What if he wasn’t attracted to her that way?

Her mind flashed back to the scene in the canyon earlier that afternoon, when she had felt Mac’s arousal. But he had apologized for that. Maybe when push came to shove, he wouldn’t want to get involved with her.

Jewel didn’t hear much of what Mac said to Colt and Huck. She wasn’t even aware when he sent them away. She was lost deep in her own thoughts. And fears.

She wished the idea hadn’t come to her so early in the day. Now she would be stuck thinking about it until dark, worrying it like a dog worried a bone.

All she had to do was cross the hall tonight and knock on Mac’s door and…She didn’t let her imagination take her any farther than that. Oh, how she wished night were here already! It was so much easier to act on impulse than to do something like this with cold calculation.

Of course, she was far from cold when she thought about Mac. Her whole body felt warm at the thought of having him touch her, having him kiss and caress her. She just wanted to get through the entire sexual act once without cringing or falling apart. That’s all she wanted Mac to do for her. Just get her through the moments of panic before he did it. Get in and get out, like a quick lube job on the truck.

The absurdity of that comparison made her chuckle.

“Are you going to let me in on the joke?” Mac said.

“Maybe.” If she didn’t lose her nerve before nightfall.

CHAPTER SIX

MAC WAS LYING IN BED WONDERING what Jewel would do if he crossed the hall, knocked on her door and told her he wanted to make love to her. She would probably think he had lost his mind. He had to resist the urge to pursue her. Jewel didn’t need a fumbling, first-time lover. He, of all people, knew how much she needed a kind, considerate, knowledgeable bed partner. Which, of course, he wasn’t.

She needed a slow hand, an easy touch—wasn’t that what the song said? He had a lot of pent-up passion, a lot of celibate years to make up for. He was afraid the first time for him was going to be fast and hard. Which might be fine for him. But not for her.

Mac wished he didn’t have such vivid memories of what had happened to Jewel that day in July six years ago. Any man who had seen her after Harvey Barnes had attacked her…He made himself think the word. After Harvey Barnes had raped her…

He had never wanted to kill a man before or since. He had been there to come to her rescue because he had seen Harvey drinking too much and worried about her, like a brother might worry about his sister. Jewel would have pounded him flat if she’d known he had followed her and Harvey when they slipped off into the trees down by the river.

He had kept his distance, even considered turning around and heading back to the noise of the carnival rides at the picnic, which seemed a world away from the soothing rustle of leaves down by the river. He had heard her laugh and then…silence.

He figured Harvey must be kissing her. He was standing at the edge of the river skipping stones, thinking he’d been an idiot to follow her, when he heard her cry out. Even then, he hadn’t been sure at first whether it was a cry of passion.

The second cry had chilled his blood and started him running toward the sound. He could remember the feeling of terror as he searched frantically for her amid the thick laurel bushes and the tangle of wild ivy at the river’s edge, calling her name and getting no answer.

There were no more cries. He saw why when he finally found them. Harvey had his hand pressed tight over Jewel’s mouth, and she was struggling vainly beneath him. He saw something white on the ground nearby and realized it was her underpants.

He might have killed Harvey, if Jewel hadn’t stopped him. He hadn’t even been aware of his hands clenched in the flesh at Harvey’s throat. It was only Jewel’s anguished voice in his ear, pleading with him, that made him stop before he strangled the life out of the boy.

Harvey was nearly unconscious by the time Mac finally let go and turned to Jewel. Seeing her torn, grass-stained dress and the trickle of blood coming from her lip enraged him all over again. Jewel whimpered with fear—of him, he realized suddenly—and the fight went out of him.

He started toward her to hold her, to comfort her, but she clutched her arms tight around herself, turned her back to him and cried, “Don’t touch me! Don’t look at me!”

His heart was thudding loudly in his chest. “Jewel,” he said. “You need to go to the hospital. Let me find your parents—”

She whirled on him and rasped, “No! Please don’t tell anybody.”

“But you’re hurt!”

“My father will kill him,” she whispered.

He could understand that. He had almost killed Harvey Barnes himself. Then she gave the reason that persuaded him to keep his silence.

“Everyone will know,” she said, her brown eyes stark. “I couldn’t bear it, Mac. Please. Help me.”

“We’ll have to say something to explain that cut on your lip,” he said tersely. “And the grass stains on your dress.”

“My beautiful dress.” The tears welled in her eyes as she pulled the skirt around to look at the grass stains on the back of it.

He realized it wasn’t the dress she was crying for, but the other beautiful thing she had lost. Her innocence.

“We’ll tell your father Harvey attacked you—”

“No. Please!”

He reached out to take her shoulders, and she shrank from him. His hands dropped to his sides. He realized they were trembling and curled them into tight fists. “We’ll tell them Harvey attacked you, but you fought him off,” he said in an urgent voice. “Unless you tell that much of the tale, they’re liable to believe the worst.”

He had never seen—never hoped to see again—a look as desolate as the one she gave him.

“All right,” she said. “But tell them you came in time. Tell them…nothing happened.”

“What if…what if you’re pregnant?” he asked.

“I don’t think…I don’t think…”

He realized she was in too much shock to even contemplate the possibility.

She shook her head, looking dazed and confused. “I don’t think…”

He thought concealing the truth was a bad idea. She needed medical attention. She needed the comfort her mother and father could give her. “Jewel, let me tell your parents,” he pleaded quietly.

She shook her head and began to shiver.

“Give me your hand, Jewel,” he said, afraid to put his arms around her, afraid she might scream or faint or something equally terrifying.

She kept her arms wrapped around herself and started walking in the opposite direction from the revelers at the picnic. “Take me home, Mac,” she said. “Please, just take me home.”

He snatched up her underpants, stuffed them in his Levi’s pocket and followed her to his truck. But it was too much to hope they would escape unnoticed. Not with Jewel’s seven brothers and sisters at the picnic.

It was Rolleen who caught them before they could escape. She insisted Mac find her parents, and he’d had no choice except to go hunting for Zach and Rebecca. He had found Zach first.

The older man’s eyes had turned flinty as he listened to Mac’s abbreviated—and edited—version of what had happened.

The dangerous, animal sound that erupted from Zach’s throat when he saw Jewel’s torn dress and her bruised face and swollen lip made Mac’s neck hairs stand upright. He realized suddenly that Jewel had known her father better than he had. Zach became a lethal predator. Only the lack of a quarry contained his killing rage.

Jewel’s family surrounded her protectively, unconsciously shutting him out. He was forced to stand aside as they led her away. It wasn’t until he got back to his private room in the cottage he shared with a half-dozen boys aged eight to twelve and stripped off his jeans, that he realized he still had Jewel’s underwear in his pocket.

The garment was white cotton, with a delicate lace trim. It was stained with blood.

A painful lump rose in his throat, and his eyes burned with tears he was too grown up to shed. He fought the sobs that bunched like a fist in his chest, afraid one of the campers would return and hear him through the wall that separated his room from theirs. He pressed his mouth against a pillow in the bedroom and held it there until the ache eased, and he thought the danger was over.

In the shower later, where no one could see or hear, he shed tears of frustration and rage and despair. He had known, even then, that Harvey Barnes had stolen something precious from him that day, as well.

Mac learned later that Zach had found Harvey Barnes and horsewhipped him within an inch of his life. And Zach hadn’t even known the full extent of Harvey’s crime against his daughter. It seemed Jewel had been right not to tell her father the truth. Zach would have killed the boy for sure. Harvey’s parents had sent him away, and he hadn’t been seen since.

Things weren’t the same between him and Jewel after that. She smiled and pretended everything was all right in front of him and her family. But the smile on her lips never reached her eyes.

The end of the summer came too soon, before they had reconciled their friendship. He went to her the night before he left, seeking somehow to mend the breach between them, to say goodbye for the summer and to ask if she was all right.

“Harvey Barnes is gone,” she said. “And tomorrow you will be, too. Then I can forget about what happened.”

“I’ll be back next year,” he reminded her.

She had been looking at her knotted hands when she said, “I hope you won’t come, Mac.”

Something bunched up tight inside of him. “Not come? I come every summer, Jewel.”

“Don’t come back. As a favor to me, Mac. Please don’t come back.”

“But why? You’re my best friend, Jewel. I—”

“You know,” she said in a brittle voice. She raised her eyes and looked at him and let him see her pain. “You know the truth. It’s in your eyes every time you look at me.”

He felt like crying again and forced himself to swallow back the tickle in his throat. “Jewel—”

“I want to forget, Mac,” she said. “I need to forget. Please, please don’t come back.”

A lump of grief caught in his throat and made it impossible to say more. When he left that summer, a part of himself—the lighthearted, teasing friend—had stayed behind.

Mac had honored Jewel’s wishes and stayed away for six long years. The really sad thing was, it had all been for nothing. She wasn’t over what had happened. The past had not been forgotten.

He had often wondered if he’d done the wrong thing. Should he have told her parents the truth, anyway? Should he have come back the following summer? Should he have tried harder to get in touch with her over the years, to talk to her about what had happened?

A soft knock on the door forced Mac from his reverie. Before he could reply, the door opened, and Jewel stood silhouetted in the light from the hall. She was wearing a sleeveless white nightgown with a square-cut neck. The gown only covered her to mid-thigh. He could see the shape of her through the thin garment, the slender legs and slim waist and bountiful bosom.

He sat up, dragging the sheets around him to cover his nakedness and to conceal the sudden arousal caused by the enticing sight of her in his bedroom doorway. “Jewel? Is something wrong?”

She slipped inside and closed the door, so that momentarily he lost sight of her as his eyes adjusted to the dark. He heard the rustle of sheets and suddenly felt her body next to his beneath the covers.

“Jewel? What’s going on?” He hoped his voice didn’t sound as shocked as he felt. He didn’t know what she thought she was doing, but he intended to find out before things went much farther.

He had expected an answer. He hadn’t counted on her laying her palm on his bare chest. She followed that with a scattering of kisses across his chest that led her to the sensitive flesh beneath his ear. His body was trembling with desire when she finally paused to speak.

“Nothing’s wrong, Mac,” she murmured in his ear. “I came because…” She nibbled on his earlobe, and he groaned at the exquisite pleasure of it. “I need your help,” she finished.

He put an arm around her shoulder, realized suddenly he was naked and clutched at the sheet again. “Anything, Jewel. You know I’d do anything for you. But—”

“I was hoping you’d say that. Because what I need you to do…It won’t be easy.”

He waited, his breath caught in his chest, for what she had to say. “Anything, Jewel,” he repeated, his heart thundering so loud he figured she could probably hear it.

She pressed her breasts against his chest and said, “I want you to make love to me.”

His heart pounded, and his shaft pulsed. In another moment, things would be out of hand. His eyes had adapted to the dark, and with the moonlight from the window he at last could see the feelings etched on her face. Not desire, but fear and vulnerability.

“I want to feel like a woman,” she said in a halting voice. “I want to stop being afraid.”

He couldn’t keep the dismay from his voice. “Aw, Jewel.”

A cry of despair issued from her throat, and she made a frantic lurch toward the edge of the bed and escape.

He grabbed for her, knowing she had misinterpreted his words. It wasn’t that he didn’t want her. He wanted her something fierce. He just wasn’t the experienced bed partner she thought he was. He caught her by the wrist and pulled her back into his arms and held her tight, biting back a groan at the exquisite feel of her breasts crushed against his chest with only the sheer cloth between them.

“It’s all right, Mac,” she said in a brittle voice. “I made a mistake. Let me go, and we’ll forget this ever happened.”

She held herself stiff and unyielding in his arms. “Jewel—”

“Don’t try to make me feel better. I deserve to feel like an idiot, throwing myself at you like this. I just thought…with all your experience…”

This time he did groan.

She tried to pull away, and he said, “You don’t understand.”

“I understand you don’t find me attractive. I’m sorry for forcing myself on you like this.”

“No!” Tell her the truth, Macready. She’s your friend. She’ll understand.

But the words stuck in his throat. If he hadn’t cared for her, if he didn’t want her so badly, if things hadn’t changed between them like they had, maybe he could have confessed the truth.

“It’s not that I’m not attracted to you,” he said.

He saw the look on her face and realized she didn’t believe him. How could she not see the truth when it was throbbing like mad beneath the thin sheet that separated them?

“Then why won’t you make love to me?” she challenged.

“Because…”

He couldn’t tell her the truth, and he saw she believed the worst—that she had imposed herself where she wasn’t wanted, and he was rejecting her as kindly as he could.

“Aw, Jewel,” he said again. His voice was tender, as gentle as he wished he could be with her.

She made a keening sound in her throat, a mournful sound that made him ache somewhere deep inside.

He realized he had no choice. He had to try to make love to her. He couldn’t botch things much worse than he already had. He leaned over and pressed his mouth against hers, restraining the rush of passion he felt at the touch of her soft, damp lips.

She moaned and arched her body against his. Her mouth clung to his, and he felt her need and her desire.

Maybe it’s going to be all right. Maybe I can get us both through this.

He tried to hold back, so he wouldn’t scare her. Yet when his tongue slipped into her mouth it found an eager welcome. He thrust deep, mimicking the sex act, and she riposted with her tongue in his mouth.

He thought the top of his head was going to come off. He had never felt so out of control. His hands slid down her arms, feeling the goose bumps and her shiver of anticipation. She was as excited as he was. She wanted him, too.

His lips started down her slender throat, across the silky flesh that led to her breastbone and downward, giving her plenty of warning where he was headed. She could have stopped him anytime she wanted. He wasn’t an animal. He had his desire on a firm leash.

She cried out when his mouth latched onto her nipple, and he sucked hard through the cotton. Mac knew it wasn’t a cry of fear, because her hands grasped his hair and held him there.

Her moan of pleasure urged him on. He released her breast momentarily and kissed her mouth again, an accolade for her trust in him. “I won’t hurt you, Jewel. I would never hurt you,” he murmured against her lips.

“I know, Mac. I know,” she replied in gasping breaths.

Their tongues dueled dangerously, inciting them both to greater passion. He clasped her shoulders, making himself go slow, telling himself Go Slow. He slid his hand across the damp cotton that covered her breasts all the way down to her belly, wishing the damned nightgown wasn’t between his palm and her flesh, but feeling the heat of her even through the thin shift.

He grabbed the bottom edge of it, anxious to get it out of his way, and brushed her thigh with his fingertips. Just her thigh. She tensed slightly but didn’t pull away. He managed not to heave a sigh of relief.

It’s going to be all right. I’ll be able to do this for her.

But he was overeager and excited, worried about whether he would be able to satisfy her, and a moment later his hand accidentally brushed against the soft mound between her legs.

She jerked away from him with a cry of alarm. But he still had hold of the nightgown, and the fragile material tore. He let go, but it was too late. She was already rolled up in a tight, fetal ball with her back to him.

“Jewel—”

“I can’t!” she cried. “I can’t.”

He laid a hand on her shoulder, and she cringed away.

“Please don’t touch me,” she whispered.

He lay staring at her in shock. He should have known better than to try this. He should have known he didn’t have the experience to do it right. “What can I do?”

She turned to him, her eyes awash in despair. “I’m sorry, Mac.”

“Aw, Jewel.”

“I thought it would be all right. Because it was you,” she sobbed. “Because you’re my friend.”

He would have to confess the truth. He owed her that much. “It isn’t you, Jewel, it’s me,” he said flatly.

“You’re just saying that to make me feel better,” she said.

“No. I’m not.” He forced himself to continue as she stared up at him. “You mustn’t be discouraged by what happened here tonight. I’m sure another man, a more experienced man, could have managed things better. I lost control and frightened you.”

“But I trust you,” she protested.

“All the more reason I should have kept my hands off of you.” He huffed out a breath of air and shoved a hand through his hair in agitation.

“When you find a man you love,” he said earnestly, “a man who loves you enough to take his time and do things right, I’m sure you’ll be able to get past what happened to you.”

She sat up slowly, her chin sunk to her chest, her hands knotted in front of her knees, which were clutched to her chest. She swallowed hard. “What you’re saying is that you’re not that man.”

“No. I’m not.”

“I see.”

Evidently not. Evidently he hadn’t hinted broadly enough at his inexperience for her to realize the truth.

Now it was too late. In the heat of the moment he might have confessed his virginity. But as his passion cooled, he felt appalled at how close he had come to exposing himself to her laughter.

And she would laugh. It would be gentle laughter, kind laughter, an effervescent bubble of disbelief. But he couldn’t bear to hear it.

“If you won’t do this for me, I don’t know where to turn,” she said at last.

“There are lots of men out there who’d be attracted to you, if you’d let them see your charms.”

She shot him a twisted smile. “You mean my Enormous Endowments?”

“I wouldn’t call them that,” he protested with a startled laugh.

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