knows their daughter hadn’t gotten her sense of adventure and spirit from Rachel. Before Ben, she’d had nothing like that until he’d come along and had shared his. He’d done more than share: he’d somehow gotten so close, he’d breathed his very being into her, bringing her to life during the time they’d had together.
But Emily…she’d been full of life from day one.
“She’s beautiful,” Ben said quietly. “Like you.”
“Ben—”
“Let’s get you into bed.”
For a moment she thought he’d said “let’s get into bed,” and her heart jerked. Yes.
No.
But when he came to stand in front of her, his face was grim, so obviously her brain was messing with her again. “Don’t try to move,” he said. “I’ll lift you.”
She stopped breathing, realizing just that very second what his being here really meant. He was going to have to help her, look at her.
Touch her.
Before the panic fully gripped her, he moved, not toward her, but to her dresser, where he randomly opened one of her drawers. Shaking his head at the rows of socks, he closed it and opened another.
“What are you looking for?”
He lifted a loose, flowing silky camisole and matching bottoms, and his eyebrows at the same time. “Wow.”
The two pieces were the palest of blue, softer than baby’s breath, and her favorite thing to sleep in. And yet dangling from his long fingers, the innocent pj’s suddenly seemed like the sexiest things she’d ever seen.
She was not putting them on.
“You used to wear buttoned-up-to-the-chin flannel to bed, remember?”
“I was a kid.”
Something flickered in his eyes. “Not so much.”
Before she could come up with something to say to that, he’d tossed the pj’s on his shoulder and started toward her.
In spite of the exhaustion, the pain, she managed to shake her head. “I am not putting that on for you.”
He turned down her bed and laughed, a low, husky sound that grated at every hormone in her entire body. “You’re right about that. You’re putting it on for you.”
“Ben.”
“Rachel,” he mimicked, then in opposition to his easygoing toughness, he slid his arms around her, making her breath back up in her throat, making every single thought dance right out of her head.
“Easy now,” he murmured. “It’s loose and stretchy, so it should go on easily.” And gently, so gently she felt like she was being lifted by air, he rose with her in his arms. “Okay?” His eyes roamed her features, his mouth tight in concern.
A concern she didn’t want. “Put me down.”
He did, on the bed, and a myriad of things hit her at once. Pain from the jarring, no matter how careful he’d been. Comfort from the feel of her own bed after so many weeks. And sheer overwhelming devastation from the feel of his hands on her.
Then he reached for the buttons on her short-sleeved blouse. She let out a sound that make his gaze jerk up to hers.
“You can’t undress yourself,” he said reasonably.
“I’ll— I’ll sleep in my clothes.”
“Oh, that’ll be comfortable.” He looked into her stubborn face and sighed, stroking a light finger over her cheekbone. “You’re wearing your exhaustion like a coat. Just let me help you.”
She opened her mouth and he put his finger to it. “There was a time you let me help you with anything. Remember?”
She didn’t want to remember, but somehow his touch, like his kiss, insinuated itself past her bone deep weariness and pain, and struck her like a bolt of awareness lightning. “Get Emily. She’ll help me.”
Slowly Ben shook his head and removed the bunny slippers Emily had put on her feet at the hospital. “She’s making you dinner. Mac and cheese. She’s under the impression you’re going to bounce right back now that you’re home. Bringing her up here now, when you look half a breath away from death, would only scare her.”
She closed her eyes when his fingers brushed over her buttons again, squeezed them tighter as he pulled the blouse open and gently off her shoulders, past the cast on her arm, taking such slow, aching, tender care with her broken body she felt her eyes burn.
No. No falling apart until you’re alone.
He unhooked her bra and slid it off before pulling the stretchy, laced pj’s top over her head, very tenderly guiding her casted arm through the wide armhole. The material tugged at her nipples, and a shocking bolt of desire streaked through her.
Her eyes flew open, met his. Once upon a time he’d caused that reaction, in quite different circumstances. Did he remember? Judging from the strain in his face, the slight tremble to his hands as he dragged her loose pants down her legs, hardly shifting her casted leg at all, he did remember.
Determined to feel nothing as he pulled on her pj’s bottoms, then covered her up with the comforter on her bed, she concentrated on breathing, concentrated on not going down memory lane every single time she so much as glanced at him.
He moved off the bed and opened her bedroom window, letting in some of the early evening breeze. And unbidden, another memory hit her. Him crossing her bedroom just like he was now, his tall, lanky form turning to shoot her a crooked grin as he eased open her window and swung a leg over the sill at the crack of dawn, preparing to leave after a long, forbidden night of touching, kissing, talking, loving.
Now, Ben’s mouth curved wryly with the same memory. “I guess this time I can use the door instead of nearly killing myself climbing down the trellis. Remember?”
Her body shuddered. It was damn hard to feel nothing, to refuse to go down memory lane with him saying “Remember?” in that sexy voice every two minutes. “Tell me again why you have to do this, Ben. Why you have to stay.”
He turned away. “Do you really think that little of me, that you believe I wouldn’t?”
“I think you’re crazy if you expect me to fall for the reasoning that you want to be here, in South Village, tied to one house, one spot, when everything within you yearns to be on the move.”
He moved to the door. “Well, then, call me crazy.”
“But why? You can’t want to be here.”
“This has nothing to do with what I want.” He glanced at her over his shoulder. “Just get better. Get better and it’ll be over before you know it. Then you can go back to your safe, sterile life and forget I bothered you for one moment of it.”
The door shut behind him, and before she could obsess, sleep took over her battered body, releasing her from thinking, aching, wondering.
But not from dreaming.
TWO MONTHS BEFORE high school graduation, National Geographic contacted Ben. They wanted him to intern with one of their photographers for the summer in Venezuela. If that worked out, he’d have an assignment waiting for him in the fall in South Africa.
“Come with me,” he said to Rachel.
They sat in their hidden-away spot in the botanical gardens behind city hall, their common meeting place, halfway between their respective houses.
Rachel lifted her gaze off the letter in his hands and stared at him. He was more animated than she’d ever seen him, even in the throes of passion, and she knew why. He’d been waiting his entire life to leave this town, and now he had a chance.
But