Chapter Eleven

Two things went right in the next five days, but they had so little impact on what was happening to Lori’s heart that she was able to take only minimal comfort from them. Three days after seeing Shade in the greenhouse, Ruth informed her that the doctor’s statement to the effect that she needed housekeeping services had been accepted by the powers that be. Vicky would get paid for the work she was doing. Not only that; Ruth was finding that she fully enjoyed having the younger woman around. “Shade was right,” Ruth admitted. “Vicky has a lot to learn. But she’s eager, and I love having someone to boss around and talk to.”

Thursday after work Lori stopped off at the repair shop to ask about the work that had been done on her Mustang. To her surprise, she found that the car had been repainted after the dents were pounded out. “I used the original color, because that’s what helps those old classics retain their value,” the mechanic explained. “The left side needed a lot of work. It wouldn’t have looked good if I’d only had part of it painted.”

“It’s going to cost an awful lot,” Lori started before the mechanic interrupted to tell her that she was only going to be charged for materials, not labor.

“If you don’t mind, I’m going to display before-and-after pictures. I’ll get enough publicity off those pictures that I should be paying you. The brake work will be completed tomorrow. You can have your car back then.”

Lori nodded, a little apprehensive, because that would mean having to use her left leg to work the clutch. She hadn’t given her knee near the attention she knew it needed, but with her heart in the state it was, her knee had to come second.

She hadn’t seen or heard from Shade since Monday. Ruth had told her he’d been out to the farm every evening, which made her wonder if he was trying to avoid her. She told herself he was checking up on his ex-wife, waiting for the time when he could tell Lori that her decision to throw Vicky and Ruth together was the work of a misfit who didn’t know anything about successful relationships.

It wasn’t fair! Shade should have told her she was going to fall in love with him. He was the one who knew how to deal with old women and ex-wives and board members and volunteers and the hundreds of people who turned to the historical society. He was the one who dealt with humans day after day. He knew what made them tick, what went on inside them, not her.

Hadn’t he offered her his friendship, his house, his body? He must have known how she was going to react. He must know that even now she was crying into the pillow he’d bought in the house he loved because that pillow and that house were filled with his presence.

I’ve got to get out of here. Lori sobbed as she searched for a cool spot in the hot bed. I have to go on working for Shade, but that doesn’t mean I have to live surrounded by him.

What had he said? That commitment meant different things to different people? Yes, he’d been striking out at her when he said those words. But, she now believed, his words had even more application to him than her. He was committed enough to Ruth and Vicky to see them every night. She—she didn’t even rate a phone call.

I’m not going to call you, she told the memory that lingered in the bedroom. I’m not going to expose my heart to you and let you see how deeply it has been touched by you. She didn’t have much left; all she had was her pride. And an upbringing that didn’t tell her enough about how men and women interacted.

After work Friday Lori exchanged her loaner car for her Mustang and drove up the mountain. She let herself into the house. Heat from the summer day was still trapped inside the house. Lori walked slowly to the sliding-glass door and opened it to welcome in pristine air scented with pine. She cocked her head, listening to the silence. She hadn’t thought much about that silence in the past week; too much had been going on inside her head. But now silence wasn’t what she wanted to surround herself with.

Lori turned on the stereo, choosing the records Shade had shared with her. She didn’t really want to spend the weekend looking for another place to live; this place was where she wanted to come home to. But that wasn’t her decision, not in the long run at least. Vicky was content where she was staying now. In fact, with Ruth’s encouragement, she’d started looking at the possibility of going back into nursing. Vicky might soon have the self-confidence to come back here to live. Or maybe by now Shade had decided that there was enough distance between him and his marriage that he could bring himself to move back.

There were things that had to be decided. Lori couldn’t go on living in limbo. She turned the stereo up enough for the sounds to reach the bedroom and went in to change out of her work clothes. Finally, dressed in a robe that floated to the ground and covered her purple knee, she sat on the bed and dialed Shade’s number.

When he said, “Hello,” she had to take three deep breaths before finding the courage to speak. “I think we need to talk about the house,” she managed. “I don’t feel right staying here anymore.”

“Do you want to tell me why?” he asked, giving her no easy way out.

“Can’t you figure it out?” He didn’t have to make this so hard for her. “Things—things have changed between us. I’m not sure you want me to stay here anymore.”

“Wait a minute. You’re getting ahead of me. I’m not going to discuss this on the phone.” Before she could stop him, he’d informed her that he was on his way up and had hung up.

Lori dropped her hands to her lap, nervously crumpling the loose fabric of her robe. She tried to tell herself that this wasn’t at all the way she wanted the conversation to turn out, but halfway through her pronouncement she stopped herself. That wasn’t the truth. She’d had five lonely nights with no one but herself to talk to since saying good-bye to her father. No matter what was said between her and Shade tonight, she had to see what was in his eyes.

She’d slipped into sandals, done a little dusting and made sure there was something cool in the refrigerator when the doorbell rang. Lori walked to the door, feeling the strain of the day in her knee. To her surprise Shade was not wearing a suit and tie or slacks and knit shirt but a sweatshirt and a pair of jeans that had been softened by age and hugged the contours of his muscles with easy familiarity. The sleeves of his sweatshirt had been cut off just below the shoulder, making it acceptable for warm weather. He glanced at her comfortable attire and then touched his sweatshirt. “We feel the same way about Friday night,” he pointed out noncommittally.

Lori stood aside to let him in. Her body felt rigid, her thoughts constricted. If only she hadn’t been thinking about other evenings they’d spent in this house, evenings when having him with her felt as comfortable as wearing this old robe.

“What did you want to see me about?” In the background the stereo was playing, but she was conscious only of the way her heart was pounding, how powerful the desire to touch him had become.

Instead of answering, Shade walked into the living room and stood at the deck door looking out at the mountain. It had very nearly killed him to stay away from her, but he’d felt he needed space in order to think. Now, he realized, he hadn’t thought enough. He wanted to have back what they’d experienced before. But maybe it was too late for that. He didn’t look at her as he spoke. He didn’t trust himself to. “You’re playing the stereo. I wouldn’t think you’d be interested in touching the memories that go with that music. Or maybe memories don’t mean as much to you as—” He turned around. Damn! He didn’t want to get into that! “Do you really want to move?”

No! “It isn’t an easy decision to make,” she said instead.

“Isn’t it?” he challenged, because he was raw inside and afraid of letting her see that rawness. “If I remember, you make decisions easily.”

“What are you talking about?” Lori knew she was gripping her loose robe so tightly that she was wrinkling it, but she couldn’t help herself.

“You threw Vicky and Ruth together without bothering to consult me about it.”

“Please, Shade, don’t. If you came up here to discuss that—”

“No, I didn’t,” he interrupted. This wasn’t going right. He tried again. “But for your information, I have to hand it to you. I didn’t think it was going to work out as well as it seems to have. Of course, Vicky is still acting like she’s launched on some new adventure. She isn’t taking things very seriously.”

Lori thought about Vicky’s renewed interest in nursing and wondered if Shade simply wasn’t able to see the changes in his ex-wife. Still, she was the one who didn’t want Vicky to come between them any more than Vicky had already. “You don’t like it when women make decisions independent of you, do you?”

“I’m not used to the women in my life making independent decisions. But you’re an independent woman.” He had to give her that much. He’d be lying if he didn’t. “You don’t really need a man.”

Lori cringed but refused to let Shade see the pain he’d inflicted on her. “Do you want me to apologize? I wouldn’t before, and I’m not going to now.”

“I know that.” Shade was still staring out at the deepening shadows. He’d wanted her to deny his statement, but she hadn’t. Now he hurt too much to drop things. “I’m not going to apologize for what I said about you not needing a man. You made that very clear last weekend. I didn’t mean enough to you to rate a phone call.”

“I did call you,” Lori pointed out, hating the hard, unrelenting line of his neck, hurting because the desire to kiss away that hard line was so strong.

Shade turned on her. His eyes flashed daggers of light capable of searing her soul. “A message on a recording machine! A wrecked car with no explanation. You didn’t even care enough to tell me whether you’d been hurt or not. Didn’t you think I deserved that?”

“Shade?” Lori dug her nails into her palms to keep from putting her hand between herself and his flashing eyes. “Everything happened so fast. My father—”

“I know. There’s really been only one man in your life, hasn’t there, Lori?” Damn! This wasn’t how he wanted things to be between them. If only he could think without his heart getting in the way. “The only real need you’ve had for another human being was when you were a child needing a parent. Why should you think I might be worried about you? After all, all we shared were a few laughs, a few nights together.”

“Please don’t do this to me, Shade,” Lori begged, collapsing onto a couch before her knee could give out on her. “Do you have to be this angry? All I wanted to do was talk about the house.”

“Of course, the house.” Shade dropped his own body in a nearby chair. He took a deep breath and spoke through lips that barely moved. “You said you don’t feel right about living here anymore. I’m trying to understand why.”

Was he, Lori asked herself. He was so used to being consulted on Vicky’s every move that maybe he couldn’t fathom a woman who made her own decisions.

Only she wasn’t as strong as he thought she was. If she moved, she would be walking away from everything good that had happened between herself and Shade Ryan, and that might kill her. “I was only supposed to stay here a short while,” she started, trying to work her way through her feelings as she formed the words. “It isn’t as if this was a permanent arrangement.”

“And what does. Black Bob’s daughter need with a permanent arrangement?” Shade asked with the same bitterness that had possessed him since he got her phone call. “You know, maybe having your father drop back into your life was best in the long run. It let you get back in touch with your true feelings. After all, a woman who spends weekends traipsing around the wilderness doesn’t have much need for a permanent home. I’m just surprised you agreed to take the job at the farm. You’re not the kind of woman to tie herself down very long.” No. The last thing he wanted to hear was her agreeing with what he was saying.

This time Lori did raise her hand in a futile attempt to protect herself from the pain of Shade’s words. “You really hate me, don’t you?” she asked, terrified of the answer. “As far as you’re concerned, nothing I do is right.”

“What do you care what I think?” Shade pushed himself heavily to his feet. He’d done it. Said fatal words that couldn’t be taken back. “I was wrong, Lori. I thought I sensed something in you that obviously isn’t there.” He wanted to run out the door and hide from his words. But it was too late. The only thing left to do was to hurt her as much as he hurt. “You tried to tell me that you needed to be free, unencumbered. I’m not going to try to change you. I’m sorry if you feel you’ve been saddled with this house.” He started toward the door, speaking over his shoulder. “Leave whenever you want to.”

Lori didn’t try to stop him as he stalked to the door and let himself out. She wasn’t even aware of the effort it took for her to stand. Indeed, she was standing where Shade had stood a few minutes ago when he was staring out at the mountain, without asking herself how she’d gotten there. What she felt at this moment, with the stereo sounds assaulting her, went beyond tears. Lori pushed open the sliding-glass door and stepped out onto the high deck. She looked down into the valley. How little effort it would take to climb onto the railing and hurtle herself into space. It wasn’t a suicidal thought. Rather, given the other emotions she was being forced to weather, the question of whether it was possible for her to fly was much easier to concentrate on.

Her fingers clutched the wooden railing; she leaned forward, cocking her head in an attempt to hear comforting woodland sounds. All she heard was the sound of Shade’s car starting toward the valley.

In her mind and heart, she followed him down the mountain.

 

 

“You look like hell,” Vicky proclaimed the next day. “What’d you do, spend the night watching the old black-and-white movies and drinking your way through a bottle?”

Lori tore her eyes away from a map of the farm she’d been staring at for a good ten minutes and faced the younger woman, who had somehow managed to join her by the fish pond without Lori’s being aware of it. “I don’t drink, at least not like that” was the best Lori could offer.

“Then you should. At least that way you’d have an excuse for the way you look.” Vicky thrust a mug of coffee in Lori’s hand. “I tried to talk to Shade a few minutes ago. The man sounds like a throwback to Cro-Magnon man. I wish the two of you would resolve your differences so I don’t have to look at and listen to two miserable people.”

Throughout the sleepless night that accounted for the deep hollows her eyes had turned into, Lori kept telling herself she wanted to be alone, drive into the mountains and lose herself in wilderness. But this morning, with Vicky offering what might be a sympathetic ear, Lori changed her mind. “There’s nothing left to resolve,” she moaned. “Shade doesn’t want anything to do with me.”

“Like fun he doesn’t.” Vicky snorted, her voice sounding older, more settled, than it had when Lori first met her. “The man acted like he was crawling out of his skin while you were gone for those three days. He went over and over what might have happened when you had your accident, until I wanted to tell him to shut up. You know what he said? He said he was afraid he’d lost you to your past. I didn’t know what he was talking about, but since he wasn’t in any mood to explain, I didn’t ask.”

Lori shook her head, regretting the movement, since it sent stabbing pain through a head already filled to bursting. “You didn’t hear him last night. He—he wouldn’t have said what he did if he cared.”

“Boy, you don’t know Shade, do you? Listen to me.” Vicky laughed. “I’m hardly what anyone would expect to be an expert on Shade Ryan, but I do know that he cared for me a great deal. Not the way he cares about you, but protective feelings just the same. He has this thing about getting close to people. It comes naturally to him. You know what I think? You don’t fit any mold he’s ever seen before.”

Lori faced Shade’s first wife. “What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about the difference between you and me,” Vicky pointed out. “I needed a father figure, a big brother, something. I’m not crazy about admitting that. I’m hoping it’s a sign of maturity that I can see it now. Anyway, you’re so different from me that it’s a wonder we have as much to talk about as we do. Look at yourself,” Vicky went on when Lori started to speak. “You’re a professional. You have a career, confidence in yourself. You practically raised yourself. You don’t need to cling to anyone’s shirttail. Can you blame Shade for being confused? He married a clinging vine, and now he’s in love with a totally independent woman.”

“Shade doesn’t love me.”

“Like fun he doesn’t! I don’t know about you two.” Vicky shook her head in mock exasperation. “I wish you would get married so you could go to a marriage counselor and get things straightened out.”

Because she’d promised to take Ruth to the beauty parlor, Vicky wasn’t able to stay and talk to Lori. As Lori watched the younger woman skip back toward the farm, she bit her lip, thinking about how much Vicky had changed already and how much potential for maturity was in her. She wondered if Shade would now admit that maybe Lori had known what she was doing when she suggested Vicky as Ruth’s housekeeper.

Not that she was going to ask Shade that. Last night’s attack on her emotions was all she could deal with for now and maybe for the rest of her life.

Lori had had arguments before in her life. There’d been too many of them in the months before she and Brett separated. But although those disagreements had left her frustrated and sad, they hadn’t torn her to shreds the way Shade’s words had.

Vicky was wrong. There was no way Shade could love her. He wouldn’t have cast her aside, told her she could get along without him, if he had.

Lori made no effort to return her thoughts to the map she held in her hands. Instead, she stepped slowly away from the low-hanging willow tree hovering over the fish pond and walked to where she could stare out at the veil of trees and brush that obscured her view of the barn. There were tree roses climbing their way up a pair of oaks, a bank of rhododendron so thickly bunched that they had become a barrier, but Lori wasn’t thinking about the work that lay ahead of her. Instead, she thought of a man who loved to sit in a darkened room listening to the stereo with the door open to let in the scent of pine.

There were so many good things about Shade. If he’d insisted on surrounding the two of them with other people, on being the social creature Brett had been, maybe Lori wouldn’t have fallen in love with him. But Shade had a side to him she’d never seen in a man outside her father. Shade could be content without the phone ringing, the TV on, somewhere to go for dinner. He took pleasure in the simple things that added together to make the sum of life.

Damn you, Shade Ryan! Why didn’t you tell me I wasn’t what you wanted before I fell in love with you?

Lori reached out and drew one of the climbing roses to her, grateful for the thorn in her forefinger that provided relief from her thoughts. She had no idea how she was going to go on working here feeling the way she did about her boss. If she took self-preservation seriously, she would throw her belongings in her Mustang and head for the nearest road out of the county.

That’s what she’d done when she left Brett.

But Lori had changed. Shade had changed her. She loved her job, and Ruth and Vicky, and what she was learning about friendships between women. She’d committed herself to a project, a living monument to the past. She couldn’t walk away from the commitment and have much pride in herself.

Somehow, someway, she was going to have to make a wary peace with Shade, forge a working relationship they could both live with. Somehow she had to make her heart understand that.

Lori waved Ruth and Vicky off, feeling a little sad that she wasn’t part of the expedition to a beauty parlor. But, she reminded herself, it was just as well. If she looked like hell the way Vicky said she did, the beauty-parlor staff probably wouldn’t let her in the front door.

Resolutely, Lori forced herself back to the map clutched in her hand. She wanted to have the trenching for the underground sprinkler system done and covered up before she did much with the vines that carpeted the ground. She’d tentatively mapped out the location for the sprinkler heads. The workmen were due out tomorrow, and Lori had to make sure she was satisfied with the map she’d be turning over to them.

She was stepping off the route the system would take and watching the antics of a pair of courting peacocks, her mind resolutely off thoughts of Shade Ryan and last night, when a misstep took her beyond the firm path and into the vine growth. Lori took another half step. It was too late. The uneven surface, hidden by foliage, threw her off balance. She might have been able to catch herself if it hadn’t been for her weak left knee. One moment Lori was reaching out for support. The next she was landing unceremoniously in the middle of the heavy ground cover. Lori had made a half movement designed to push away the vines tickling her throat when the first wave of pain struck her.

Lori gasped, taken by surprise at the intensity of the agony slicing up her knee until it seemed as if her thigh, her belly even, was injured as well.

“No!” she gasped, forgetting that only a pair of self-absorbed peacocks had seen her fall. “It can’t be!”

But it was. The injury that had begun with an automobile accident had taken a new, more serious turn. Lori didn’t dare move. Laced together with the pain was the undeniable sensation of muscles and tendons stretched beyond their limits. Lori had pulled a muscle or two in her life. She had a pretty good idea what had happened. What frightened her was the knowledge that everything that existed below the skin on her knee was no longer where it was supposed to be. How much damage had she done?

Lori had two hours to worry about that, to fight off pain and insects and thirst that grew as the day warmed. Her sporadic, tentative attempts to stand were rewarded by fresh stabs of pain that forced her to close her eyes and breathe heavily to keep from crying. The barn was so far away that none of the workmen could possibly hear her. Her knee beneath the layer of faded denim was swelling to the point where she was sure her jeans would have to be cut off. The pressure of fabric against sensitive flesh gave her more than the pain of torn ligaments to think about.

Her knee would have to be looked at. She raged at herself for thinking she knew enough about joint injuries to act as her own doctor. Growing up a hundred miles from a hospital definitely had its drawbacks, she finally admitted. It made people think they had to handle all injuries on their own instead of relying on medical science.

It was too late to worry about that. She would face the tongue-lashing of doctors and nurses when and if she could get up off the ground and into a hospital.

It was all Lori could do to keep from screaming when she finally saw Vicky’s car pull into the driveway. But Lori was determined not to appear as a helpless, terrified woman. She might not have much left, but she did have her dignity.

She waited until Vicky had gotten out of the car and was holding the door open for a neatly coiffed Ruth. Then she called out in what she hoped was a controlled, self-possessed voice. “Vicky? Can you come here a minute?”

An hour later Lori was being wheeled into the county hospital emergency room with a thin-lipped Vicky holding her hand. Vicky had assessed the situation, run to the barn to summon a couple of workmen and then directed the action as the men lifted a white-faced Lori into the car seat Ruth had vacated. Ruth’s look of concern as Lori was trying to get her leg into the confines of the car had kept her from crying out when pain reached the top of her head.

“I’m going to call Shade,” Vicky said once Lori was settled on the examining table.

“Don’t!” Lori turned anguished eyes toward her young friend. “Not yet, please. Let’s see what the doctor has to say. I don’t want to disturb Shade if it isn’t serious.”

“It’s serious,” Vicky pointed out. “Look at that knee. It’s more than twice normal size.”

While Lori dug into the sides of the examining table with taut fingers, the doctor slowly, carefully, examined her knee and the surrounding area. She relaxed a little as X-rays were taken but froze again when she saw the look on the tall, slender doctor’s face. “Why didn’t you keep this wrapped when you first injured it?” he asked sternly. “Didn’t you realize how weak it was?”

Lori swallowed, feeling too much like a child being chastised for some misbehavior. “I’ve never taken injuries very seriously,” she tried to explain. “I grew up where there was no medical treatment available. My dad always said that if you leave the body alone, it takes care of itself.”

“That’s a pretty blanket statement.” The doctor snorted. “Tell me something. If you got something embedded in your eye, would you leave it there?”

“Of course not,” Lori countered, reacting negatively to the man’s superior attitude. “I’m talking about day-to-day injuries. This isn’t the first time I’ve had bruises.”

“What you have is a complete tear of your knee ligaments. They were probably simply strained when you had your first accident. If you’d kept the knee wrapped, you wouldn’t be in the mess you’re in now.”

“What—what are you going to have to do?” Lori hated the sound of the diagnosis. A ligament tear had to be more serious than a bruise.

The doctor ran his forefinger gently over Lori’s misshapen knee. “Go in and repair it.”

“Surgery?”

“Surgery,” the doctor said with a note of finality that struck Lori like a bucket of ice water. “You don’t want to be a cripple, do you? The ligaments need to be properly replaced. Following that, you’re going to need extensive physical therapy. Mrs. Black, you’re now in the position of a lot of professional athletes. Not enough knees heal themselves. The sooner we get to work, the sooner you’ll be back on your feet.”

When the doctor left to make arrangements to have her admitted, Lori shut her eyes tightly, fighting back anger, helplessness and a strange, overwhelming fear she didn’t know how to handle. She’d never been to a hospital before in her life, let alone faced surgery. There wouldn’t be anyone to hold her hand, to pat her on the head and tell her she was going to be okay. Lori had no experience in being helpless and vulnerable. As a result, she had no defense against the emotion.

She dropped her head as far forward as possible without moving her knee. It wasn’t fair! Except for a few square inches of her body, she was a healthy young woman. How dare everything come to a stop simply because a joint in her leg wouldn’t function the way it was supposed to? She reached out a tentative finger and brushed the purple flesh. Her Mustang had lost all reliability because the brakes wouldn’t function. Now she was a helpless hospital patient because of her damn knee!

She didn’t know how to deal with this. Lori, who had never so much as had the flu in her life, didn’t know the first thing about being a patient, about being dependent on any person or institution.

The plain, undeniable truth was that Lori was frightened, terrified. She hated and feared this strange sense of vulnerability, of being trapped where she was in this helpless body. If only she could swing her legs over the side of the bed, slip into her shoes and—

Where would she go? Shade hadn’t said anything last night, but surely he didn’t want her at his place anymore. She could go to the Kadin farm, but that was only wishful thinking. Lori Black couldn’t move a step under her own steam.

Again she dropped her head forward and stopped fighting the tears that had built to overflowing. She was scared, plain and simple.

Lori felt a powerful hand on her shoulder. “I’ve never seen you cry.”