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