THE DEAFENING ROAR lasted only a couple of minutes. But it was followed by a deathly silence that was almost as frightening. Andrea lay at her end of the hall feeling the heartbeats of the children plastered beneath her, listening for the breathing of those she couldn’t reach.
Was it safe to get up? The children were going to need attention. Many of them were crying quietly. Some were probably in shock. From somewhere off in the distance Andrea heard a louder cry. It sounded like someone in another hallway was hurt. No one moved, too afraid of what might yet lie ahead.
Andrea heard sirens in the distance. Help was on its way. Which probably meant that the immediate danger was past. It was now just a matter of assessing the damage and getting the kids safely out of the building. She thanked God that their little hallway had remained intact. They had all come through safely.
“Stay put for a few more minutes,” she told the kids at her end of the line. “I’m going to see how bad it is and then I’ll be back to get you out of here.”
She got up, releasing the children beneath her, and reached out to brush Sara’s hair off her tear-stained cheeks.
“Try and relax, guys. I think the worst is over.”
She walked down the line, repeating her instructions to the children as she went, all the while looking ahead for Doug. She couldn’t see him anywhere. Had he already gone on ahead to assess the situation?
“Officer Parker?” The words were muffled by a pair of skinny arms.
“Yes, Jimmy?”
The boy looked up at her with worried eyes.
“Do you see Officer Avery, ma’am? I don’t think he ever came back.”
Andrea felt light-headed as the boy’s words sank in.
“Came back?” she asked, forcing herself to remain calm. The children were watching her.
“Yes, ma’am. Kyle freaked. He ran off. Officer Avery went after him.”
“I’ll find him, Jimmy. You kids stay put.” Andrea’s words were said on the run. If anything had happened to Doug, or to Kyle, either, for that matter...
She rounded the corner into what used to be a main thoroughfare of the school and stopped dead in her tracks. The entire hallway was a mass of plaster and dust. The ceiling was nonexistent. Only the brick walls and roof were still intact.
Her throat was dry, her heart pounding so heavily it was practically choking her. She didn’t see how anyone could be alive in that mess. She hoped Doug had made it far enough to get past it. There were no north walls here, so hopefully there hadn’t been anyone in the area when it had been hit.
She was debating the advisability of picking her way through the rubbish when she heard a moan. It was very faint at first, but as she moved toward the biggest pile of drywall scraps, it grew stronger.
“Help!” She heard the word again, coming from the middle of the thoroughfare. She continued to pick her way toward the pile.
“Please, someone, help me!” The words were growing stronger by the second as Andrea neared the pile of plaster. She fought down panic. It was Kyle’s voice. But where was Doug?
“Kyle?” she called.
“Over here!” The boy didn’t sound as if he were too badly hurt.
“Keep talking, Kyle, until I find you. Have you seen Officer Avery?”
“He’s here, ma’am, but I think he’s hurt bad. I can’t get him to move. He’s crushing my right leg.”
Andrea had pinpointed Kyle’s position in the pile, and as she drew closer, she saw a patch of dark blue—the exact color of the standard-issue police uniform she was wearing.
“Are you hurt at all, Kyle?” she asked, the officer in her taking over as she realized the woman in her could no longer face what she might find.
“I don’t think so. Except I can’t feel my right leg anymore. I think it went to sleep.”
Andrea kept Kyle talking while she pulled pieces of drywall from the pile covering them. She wanted so badly to ask if Kyle could tell whether or not Doug was breathing, if he could feel his heartbeat, but she didn’t want to alarm the boy.
Andrea couldn’t even contemplate the possibility that Doug might be dead. As she pulled and lifted, slowly uncovering his limp body, she could no longer deny that she cared for him—deeply, personally, as a woman cares for a man. At that moment, with Doug’s life resting in the balance, the fact that she couldn’t get involved didn’t occur to her at all.
Sweat was trickling down her back and between her breasts. Her arms ached from lugging the heavy plaster, her throat was clogged with dust and unshed tears, but still she kept plowing through the rubbish.
After she’d lifted a particularly large piece of ceiling panel, Doug’s back came into full view. He was frighteningly still. Not moving herself, she stared at him, waiting for any sign of life, willing it to be there. After what seemed an eternity, she was rewarded. There was an ever-so-slight movement. Doug was breathing.
“Officer Parker? Could you hurry? It’s getting really stuffy down here.”
“I’m almost there, Kyle. Just hold on a couple of seconds longer. Try to put your nose in Officer Avery’s shirt. That should help block some of the dust.”
She pulled away part of a two-by-four, and then a piece of what looked to be a heating duct. The duct had been resting against Doug’s upper body, and by the looks of it, might have protected his head from being crushed by the board.
Andrea found herself noting every little detail with a detachment she would never have believed. She wondered if she was in shock, but kept on working as if she were someone else looking down on the scene, registering every sensation.
“Is everyone else okay?” Kyle’s voice was starting to wobble.
“We’re all fine, Kyle. The hallway’s still completely intact. I can’t tell about the rest of the school. We seem to be cut off from everyone else by this cave-in. Hopefully it’s the only one.”
Gathering her strength, Andrea removed the last piece of constricting rubbish. Doug still didn’t move. He didn’t even groan. She reached for his pulse, and was reassured to feel it beating strongly against her fingers.
“I have to check him over a little bit before I move him, Kyle. If he’s broken anything we could make it much worse if we don’t move him properly.” She was running her hands up and down Doug’s body as she spoke, neglecting to tell the boy that she was looking for signs of a broken neck or back. To move Doug under those conditions could be fatal.
“Please hurry.”
“His legs seem to be all right,” she said, trying to keep Kyle’s mind off his own discomfort. She’d seen something she didn’t want the boy to know.
And as soon as Doug was moved, Kyle wouldn’t be able to miss the fact that his own leg was twisted grotesquely beneath him. His right leg had not gone to sleep. It was severely broken. She thanked God that Kyle was too numb to feel the pain.
“Officer Parker? Are you there?” The voice came from along the corridor, where she’d left the rest of the class.
“I’m here, Jimmy. I think the danger’s over, but we need a paramedic here. Do you think you can get out that side entrance and try to go around the front to get help?”
“Sure thing, ma’am.”
“Jimmy?”
“Yeah?” His voice already sounded farther away.
“Take someone with you and be careful,” she yelled.
“Is...is something wrong?” Kyle was starting to cry. Andrea wondered if he was feeling more of his leg than he’d led her to believe.
“Nothing that can’t be fixed,” she said, hoping she was right. She didn’t think Doug’s back or neck were broken, but his stillness was frightening. She didn’t even want to consider the internal injuries he might have suffered. She just knew that with Kyle’s leg the way it was, she couldn’t do anything more on her own.
It was only a matter of minutes before she heard someone coming in the side entrance of the building, but they were the longest minutes Andrea had ever lived through. Kyle was sobbing, and Doug remained as still as ever.
“Okay, what’ve we got here?”
Tears flooded Andrea’s eyes when she turned and saw a paramedic crawling across the rubbish toward her.
“Officer Avery’s unconscious. The boy beneath him is not.”
She saw the paramedic take a quick scan of Kyle’s leg. He lifted a handset from his belt and called for a splint.
“Has he moved? Moaned? Anything?” he asked, motioning to Doug.
“No.”
“How long has he been here?”
“I don’t know for sure. Twenty minutes, maybe.”
The paramedic had taken Doug’s pulse and blood pressure within seconds. And then his hands flew over his body, probably to determine whether it was advisable to move him.
“I don’t think anything’s broken, and his blood pressure’s good.” He reached for his handset again and called for another stretcher and someone to take care of the rest of Doug’s students.
Ten minutes later Doug was on his way to the hospital. Andrea rode in the ambulance beside him. She wasn’t about to be separated from him until she knew he was going to be all right.
She watched nervously as the driver turned off the highway. The hospital was just around the corner.
“So you finally decided to take me to bed, huh?”
Andrea’s head jerked toward the stretcher beside her. Doug’s eyes were wide open, gazing up at her with just a touch of the sardonic humor she’d missed these past weeks. Thank God.
“H-how do you feel?” she asked. She felt for his pulse, encouraged by its steady strength.
“Like my head got hit by a steamroller.”
“Do you hurt anywhere else?” She continued to hold his wrist.
“Everywhere else, I think. But most especially here.” He lifted his other hand slowly and dropped it against the fly of his trousers.
She smiled down at him through a haze of relieved tears as she read the message in his eyes. He was going to be all right.
“You can talk to the doctor about that in just a minute.”
“I don’t think he can help me with this.”
The look in his eyes made the past weeks of missing him melt away. She was only sorry it had taken a tornado to bring that look back.
* * *
“SO HOW’S KYLE?” Doug asked early that evening. He was half lying across the passenger seat in Andrea’s cruiser. He felt like hell, but other than a few stitches, many bruises and a concussion, he was fine. He’d refused to stay in the hospital, and Andrea had refused to take him home to stay by himself. They’d compromised by his agreeing to stay at her place for the night.
“He’s going to be all right. They had to do surgery on his leg, but they think it’ll heal fine. He’ll be playing baseball again by spring.”
“Poor little tyke.”
“Yeah. He’s feeling pretty bad about running off. He says he’ll never forgive himself if you don’t get better.”
“I’ll try to call him tomorrow.”
“I’m glad. He made a mistake, but don’t we all.”
Her statement reminded Doug of a thought he’d had right before the world had come crashing down on him. He’d been a fool to think that Andrea wouldn’t be able to see him for the man he was rather than the boy he’d been. A woman with as much capacity for caring as she had would surely be able to forgive him for his past mistakes.
“So how’d everybody else do? The doctor said that hallway was the only one with any damage.”
“Pretty much so. There were a few broken bones, a few kids needing stitches, but other than Kyle, everyone was treated and released.”
“Will they be closing school for a while?” Doug was getting sleepier by the second, but he loved the sound of Andrea’s voice. He’d keep her talking as long as he could.
“It’s too early to tell, but they think they can use mobile units until the hallway’s rebuilt.”
“We were lucky,” Doug said, hoping his words didn’t sound as slurred to her as they did to him.
“Yeah. We were lucky...” He didn’t think he’d ever heard that particular tone in her voice before. She sounded so...so personal.
* * *
“I’M NOT GOING to throw you out of your bed.” Doug insisted. He was swaying on his feet.
“You’re not sleeping on the couch. The doctor said you needed to rest.”
“He said I have a concussion. He said you have to wake me up every hour all night. What kind of rest is that going to be?”
“You’re not sleeping on the couch.”
“I’m not taking your bed.”
“Doug, please lie down before you fall down.”
“Only if you lie down with me.”
“I’m not sleeping with you!”
“That’s a relief. I’m not sure how good I’d be with a freight train running through my head.”
“You know what I meant.”
“I know that I’m not getting in that bed until I have your word that you aren’t going to go sleep on the couch.”
Andrea eyed the armchair in her room. “Okay, I promise. Now will you please lie down?”
“Do you mind if I shuck these first? They’re a little dusty.” He tugged on the waistband of his uniform trousers.
Andrea blushed, feeling foolish all of a sudden. “Of course.”
She turned quickly toward her closet, telling herself to get a grip. She’d been married, for heaven’s sake. This wasn’t the first time she’d had a man in her bedroom. She thought of the look he’d shot her in the ambulance. Of the fact that he still wanted her.
She heard the rustle of his clothes, the rasp of his zipper, and almost dropped the sweat suit she was reaching for. She remembered that night in the spa, how he’d looked with the water splashing around his thighs. She remembered how affected she’d been by his heavy strength, and thought of that strength touching her, surrounding her, entering—
“You can turn around now. I’m safely tucked in.”
She swung around, the sweat suit clutched against her breast. He was tucked in, but not safely. Her bright yellow comforter was pushed down to the end of the double bed. The matching sheet was barely covering his hips. His stomach was naked and darkly sensual, tempting her to forget why she couldn’t want a man—any man—like she wanted Doug Avery.
Her gaze traveled slowly upward, until it met the heavy bandage taped to his chest just beneath his collarbone. And the sight of that stark white bandage against his dark chest hair made her remember the reason he was lying in her bed. The man had been battered by half of a school building. She had no business lusting after him. She looked at the scar on his shoulder, the one she’d noticed all those weeks ago in his hotel room. Had that been a result of heroism, too?
* * *
THE NIGHT WAS TOO LONG, and yet in some ways not long enough. Andrea hated having to wake Doug every hour just so he could be reminded of how badly his head hurt. She hated to interrupt the sleep he so desperately needed. But she loved having him in her home, in her room, in her bed. Just for this one night, she told herself, though without much conviction.
Gloria called after the ten-o’clock news. She’d heard about Andrea’s part in the rescue mission and took turns praising her daughter’s courage and asking for reassurances that she was indeed uninjured. Andrea did her best to answer her mother’s thousands of questions, watching the clock all the while. She finally had to resort to a white lie about needing to use the rest room so she could get off the phone in time to wake Doug again.
She spent the first half of the night in the armchair, like she’d promised herself she would, but by the early hours of the morning, she was just too exhausted to make herself move from Doug’s side. With a weary shrug she put her alarm back on her nightstand and crawled in beside him.
* * *
SHE WAS UP by the time Doug awoke the next morning, but he knew she’d been there. The last few times she’d had to wake him she’d fallen back to sleep before he had, and he didn’t think he’d ever forget the feel of her womanly thighs nudging against him, or her soft breath on the back of his neck. For the first time in his life, the thought of sharing his bed with a woman all night long enticed him.
He looked around her room, seeing in the eclectic decor both sides of the woman he was coming to know. Everything was in place, neat and controlled, but her passion was obvious, too. The room was done completely in yellows—bright, bold, vibrant yellows—from the curtains at the window to the cover on the big, overstuffed armchair. He wondered if there was any possibility of him ever finding out if that armchair was big enough for making love....
But enough was enough. It was time for him to go home. He wanted to make love to Andrea, but there was a lot more between them, and inside him, that was going to have to be settled first. Because he knew that, for the first time since he’d lost his virginity to Cindy Lou, he wasn’t going to be able to settle for an hour or two of great sex. If he was going to make love with Andrea, he wanted more than just physical satisfaction. He just didn’t know what that “more” was, or whether or not he could ever have it. And he didn’t know what the cost would be to him if he couldn’t.
* * *
ANDREA BATTLED with herself all day Thursday after she dropped Doug off in the sterile studio apartment he called home. There he was, all alone with only a generic tweed couch and a portable TV for company. The doctor had ordered another two days of rest. So who was going to take care of him? Who was going to feed him? Should she take him dinner? Did she dare? Shouldn’t she walk away now while she knew she still could? Was she so weak that she couldn’t take an injured man a plate of food?
She showed up at his door at four forty-five, carrying two bags of groceries with her including the makings of Gloria’s manicotti.
Doug was watching TV when he heard the knock at his door. He jumped up, eager to have someone to talk to even if it was the paperboy, and then had to stop a minute to let the stars clear from before his eyes.
“I thought you might like some dinner,” Andrea said, as soon as she opened the door.
Doug smiled at her. He couldn’t help it. She looked so damned cute standing there like she’d been caught looting the principal’s office. She was still wearing the uniform she’d had on when she’d dropped him off that morning, he realized as he led her to his small kitchen.
“I’d planned on eating,” he told her.
“Then maybe you can show me where your pans are.”
That stopped him. “You’re cooking?”
“Unless you want to eat raw pasta.”
He didn’t know which was better, the novelty of having someone cooking for him or the aromas that were soon drifting around his one-room apartment. He turned off the television and sat at his old formica table while she worked, content just to watch her.
“Where’d you learn to do that?” he asked as she whipped up a batch of sausage meatballs.
Andrea grinned at him over her shoulder. “My mom. I learned how to be a wife before I learned how to read.”
Her words slammed into him. Had she been anyone else but Andrea, Doug would have read her comment as a hint, and she’d have been out of there so quickly her head would have been spinning. But with Andrea he knew better. With her, he almost wished it had been a hint. The concussion must still be screwing up my head, he thought wryly.
“You didn’t have to do this. But thanks,” he said as she sat down across from him, passing him a plate of pasta. No one had ever eaten with him in his apartment before.
She looked up from the salad she’d been dressing, meeting his gaze, smiling that smile that lodged someplace deep inside of him. “I wanted to.”
Dropping his eyes from hers, he picked up his fork. “So how was school today?”
“Fine. The kids were full of questions. They’d heard about the tornado on the news.”
“You didn’t tell them I passed out on one of my students, did you?”
“No. And you didn’t pass out. You were knocked out.”
“Yeah, well. Same thing.” Doug applied himself to his pasta.
“We did your role-playing exercise,” she said a couple of minutes later.
“Yeah?” He was kind of surprised that she’d followed his lesson plan. After all, he was just a rookie—she was the pro. “How’d it go?”
“Did you know that drinking alcohol could make you pregnant?”
Doug choked on his ice water. “What?”
Andrea laughed. “Just think how I felt when I heard that one, sitting there with twenty-six intent faces gazing up at me.”
“Did you, uh, correct the assumption?” he asked.
“I started to.”
“You started to?” Doug was smiling now, too. He could just picture it, Andrea all prim and in control in front of a classroom full of blooming adolescents. He sure as hell was glad it hadn’t been him.
“Well, it seems that if you drink, you’re more apt to let a boy, you know, and you’re also less likely to be thinking about what time of the month it might be, or whether or not there would be any consequences....”
Doug laughed outright. “So, would you like some wine?” he asked, sending her a suggestive smile.
“I’m not allowed to drink on school nights....”
Andrea stayed until almost nine o’clock. They had the dessert she’d brought, and then did the dishes together. Doug was almost falling asleep on his feet by the time she said good-night, but he felt better than he could ever remember feeling.
He’d been tempted to kiss her good-night, to see if he could convince her to stay. But he still wasn’t feeling so hot, and he didn’t want to start something he couldn’t finish. At least, that’s what he told himself as he locked his door behind her. It was easier to believe that than to wonder if he might have just been too chicken to risk rejection.
* * *
ANDREA WAS TEMPTED to use the tornado as an excuse to miss the mystery-weekend adventure with Mark, but it was precisely because she was so tempted that she didn’t. She was afraid that if she wasn’t safely tucked away with Mark in Cincinnati, she might be tempted to take dinner to Doug on Friday night, and that he’d be feeling good enough to...
She arranged to meet Mark at her mother’s house. He’d be bringing the boys over anyway, so it seemed like a logical choice. It had nothing to do with the fact that she didn’t want another man in her apartment so soon after Doug had been there.
“Did you pack a nice dress?” Gloria asked as soon as Andrea walked in the door Friday afternoon.
“The black one I wore to the Christmas party. Will that do?”
“Yeah. You looked good in it,” Gloria said, leading the way back to the kitchen. She was baking chocolate-chip cookies for her little houseguests-to-be.
“How’s Scotty doing?” Andrea asked. She leaned over to snitch a fingerful of cookie dough.
“He got an A on his science project.”
“Yeah? What’d he make?”
“I’m not sure what it was, but the teacher was impressed. It had lights and wires and did things.”
Andrea laughed. “Not like the moldy bread I used for my project, huh?”
“Thank God,” Gloria said with a chuckle.
The backdoor rattled, and footsteps sounded from the laundry room. Andrea looked up, expecting to finally get a glimpse of the man she was going away with for the weekend.
But the body that filled the kitchen doorway was not that of a man.
“Oh. Sorry. I’ll be out in the garage.”
Andrea told herself she wouldn’t cry. She swallowed. She blinked. She took a deep breath. A tear fell anyway, trickling slowly down her cheek.
Gloria watched as her teenaged son turned abruptly and left, then she hurried around the counter to take her daughter in her arms.
“He doesn’t mean to hurt you, Andi. He’s just so ashamed.”
“He hates me, Ma. But it’s okay. I don’t blame him. Sometimes I hate me too.” She gave her mother a squeeze and then pulled away, reaching for a tissue from the box on the counter.
His sandy blond hair was longer, he’d gotten new glasses and he’d grown a couple of inches—he looked great. Until he’d seen Andrea, that was. Until the sullen look she’d become accustomed to over the past four years had tightened his features again.
Still, she was glad she’d been there. She hadn’t seen her baby brother in almost a year. She was desperate enough to take what she could get.