Straight from the Heart (4 page)

“Get in the car. Get in the car!” she said in a tight voice.

Propping his crutches against the side of Rebecca’s Honda, Jace shrugged off his duffel bag and tossed it into the backseat. Gingerly, he eased himself into the car, bad leg first, so he wouldn’t have to bend the knee that had begun to swell and ache. He buckled his seat belt as soon as he closed the door, and he glanced across to make certain Rebecca had hers in place as well.

Rebecca didn’t say a word until she signaled and pulled away from the curb. “You’re some kind of crazy person. You always were a little off the mark, but you’re in the deep end of the pool now. Don’t try to tell me you didn’t plan this well in advance, Jace Cooper. Don’t try to tell me you didn’t.”

“Gee, Becca,” he said mildly, rubbing at the ache in the muscle above his sore knee, “are you upset? You’re repeating yourself. I remember you used to do that when you were upset.”

She halted the car at a red light and took advantage of the opportunity to glare at him, her eyes narrowed to mere slits. She didn’t speak again until the light changed. “How did you get Mrs. Marquardt’s name? She hasn’t been advertising for a boarder.”

“Ummm…a friend gave her name to me,” he said evasively, fixing his gaze on the bus they were passing.

Rebecca was too steamed to notice his strange tone of voice. So he had friends in Mishawaka, did he? He hadn’t bothered to do so much as send her a Christmas card in seven years, but he had friends here who could line up accommodations for him at a moment’s notice. Wasn’t that just peachy?

Well, she thought, half chuckling to herself, maybe they weren’t such good friends after all. A room at Muriel Marquardt’s house wasn’t going to be quite what Jace was used to.

“Renting a room from an elderly lady is hardly your style,” she commented as she negotiated a right turn that took them into an older residential area where the houses were big and sturdy and full-grown maple and oak trees lined the boulevard. “I would ask why you didn’t have this famous friend of yours find you a posh condo overlooking the river, but I’ve realized this is part of your demented scheme.”

She was right. It was part of his master plan, but that wasn’t the only reason he’d taken a room in a less-than-fashionable part of town. Jace wondered what Rebecca would have to say if he told her he couldn’t afford much better at the moment. He could well imagine the tongue-lashing he’d get if he told her he’d gambled away a good deal of his money.

He glanced at her. She was muttering to herself under her breath as she hit the turn signal with a ruthless motion that threatened to break the slender wand. Obviously she was in no mood to hear the story of the last seven years of his life. She looked more ready to put an end to his life.

That fact would have discouraged him if not for her reaction to him that afternoon. No woman got that skittish around a man she cared nothing about. If he meant nothing to her, she would long since have let go of the hurt and anger his leaving had caused.

“I’ll admit it,” he said. “You have an IQ of two hundred plus. It’s not likely that I could come up with a plan so subtle you couldn’t figure it out, so why not be obvious about it? I mean to set the past to rights with you, Becca. It’ll just save me a lot of time and trouble if we’re in the same neighborhood.”

“Oh, yes, by all means!” she said. “Why go to a lot of extra trouble? I might as well be handy!”

“Becca, that’s not how I meant it.” His thinning patience was evident in his tone of voice. Just enough steel came through the flannel softness to warn her she wasn’t the only one who’d had a long day. She’d pushed him about as far as he was going to allow. Yes, he deserved her sarcasm. Yes, he’d expected a show of temper. But he wasn’t going to be a martyr about it.

Rebecca took her gaze off the road just long enough to glimpse the stern look on his face—a look that quickly turned to a grimace of pain as one of her front tires dropped into a pothole. With a cry of pain, he squeezed his eyes shut and grabbed his injured knee.

“Oh, Jace! I’m sorry!” She swerved the car to the curb and slammed it into park. Leaning across his crutches, she reached for his leg, gently pushing his hand away and replacing it with her own. “Lean back and try to relax. Tensing up the muscles will only prolong the pain.”

Jace gasped for air as he forced himself to sit back. The pain that had driven into his knee like red-hot pokers gradually receded as Rebecca gently massaged his thigh. It felt like heaven, even through the heavy elasticized brace he wore. A feeling of weakness shivered through him as he relaxed.

“Better?” she questioned softly, her hand steadily kneading the cramped muscle.

He nodded, his head falling back against the plush gray seat.

“You’ve been on it too much today, haven’t you?”

“I guess.” The bus ride from Chicago hadn’t done it any good either, but he didn’t feel much like talking about that at the moment.

“Does it feel as if it’s swelling?”

“Like a balloon.”

Rebecca clucked her disapproval. “You always were a horrible patient. As soon as we get you to Muriel’s, I want you to elevate this knee and get some ice on it to take the swelling down, then go to a warm compress to stimulate blood flow. Did Dr. Cornish give you a prescription for pain pills?”

“I don’t want any drugs.”

“Jace, you’re in pain—”

The look he gave her ended the argument as surely as his words did. “No drugs.”

Rebecca raised her free hand in surrender. “Fine. No prescription drugs. But please, take some aspirin. That will help take the inflammation down as well as making you more comfortable. I doubt you’ll be able to sleep tonight without it.”

He nodded again as his body relaxed another degree. Pain in his knee wasn’t the only thing that was going to keep him awake, he thought, biting back a moan. Rebecca continued to rub his thigh absently as she quizzed him about his injury. As if they had minds of their own, her fingers crept up under the frayed edge of the cutoff leg of his jeans. Flesh massaged flesh with no barrier to dull the pleasure. Jace let his imagination draw her hand upward an inch at a time.

He wanted her. He hadn’t wanted a woman since the accident, nearly two months before, but he wanted Rebecca Bradshaw. Memories rushed back of the way she’d felt beneath him, around him. All the tastes and sounds and scents of her filled his mind until he had to fight them off as a matter of self-preservation. He had to remind himself that Rebecca was a long way from welcoming his advances, even if her fingers were doing a little reminiscing of their own.

Jace knew the instant she realized what she was doing. Her brilliant green eyes seemed to double in size. She jerked her hand from his leg and stared at it in a most accusatory way, as if it had betrayed her.

“Don’t stop on my account,” he said in a warm lazy voice.

His head lolled to one side as he watched her skitter across the seat until she was practically jammed up against the door on the driver’s side. A blush rouged her cheeks. Jace chuckled. “Do you think aspirin will take care of the swelling in other parts of my anatomy?”

Conceited man! He undoubtedly thought she had been touching him on purpose. “I doubt it will do anything for a swelled head,” Rebecca said primly.

“It’s not my head that’s swelling at the moment.”

It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him that maybe he shouldn’t wear such tight pants, but she bit back the words. Remembrance shuddered through her and settled in a warm pool in the pit of her belly. She fixed her gaze on the odometer as she leaned forward to start the car. The Honda buzzed a noisy protest.

“You never turned it off,” Jace pointed out unnecessarily.

Rebecca blushed a deep apple red. “Must you make everything into a sexual innuendo?”

“What did I say?” he asked with a shrug, amusement sparkling in his dark blue eyes. “Oh, you mean, turned off as opposed to turned on—the way I am right now?”

The Honda lurched backward. Rebecca muttered steadily under her breath as she rammed the gearshift and pressed down on the accelerator. The motor raced.

“That’s neutral.”

She shot him a withering glare. “Would you like to drive?”

Jace sobered and glanced away. “No.”

Rebecca shifted on the seat uneasily as she managed to get the car into drive and eased it away from the curb. She felt as if she’d slapped a puppy. Jace’s teasing was abruptly finished, and it was somehow her fault. Not that she had wanted him to tease her. It was just that this brooding silence wasn’t like him.

“Was it a bad accident?” she asked cautiously, stealing a glance at him. He was staring out the side window, his shoulders tensed as if ready for a blow.

“Yes.”

“Were you with—”

“I don’t want to talk about it right now, Becca.”

There was a certain urgency in his voice that caught her interest and, at the same time, kept her from probing deeper. She focused on the quiet, tree-lined street and piloted the car toward home. That was where she wanted to be—home, in the house she’d grown up in. Home, away from Jace Cooper. She was glad he had ended the subject because she didn’t want to know anything about his life since she had ceased to be part of it. It was none of her business.

She glanced at the digital clock nestled in among the dashboard instruments and bit her lip. “I have to make a quick stop at home before I take you to Muriel’s.”

“I can walk from your place. You said yourself it’s just across the alley.”

She shot him her sternest health-care-professional look. “No. You’ve walked enough for one day.”

“I have to admit, it does feel good to sit here.” He grinned, his old good humor returning. “It felt even better when you had your hand on my thigh.”

Heat blossomed again under the surface of her fair skin. “That won’t happen any more,” she said stiffly as she signaled and pulled into the driveway of a sturdy two-story house painted white with colonial blue shutters and trim.

“We’ll see.”

“I mean it, Jace,” she said soberly. “I’m not getting involved with you again.”

“You’re already involved.”

“Professionally.”

“That’s a hard line to draw when you’ve already been to bed with someone.”

The shot was right on target. She should have congratulated him on his marksmanship. Instead she turned the car off and yanked the keys from the ignition. The look she gave him walked a thin line between hurt and hatred. Her voice trembled with emotion. “Consider it drawn.”

She swung her long legs out of the Honda and started up the sidewalk at a brisk pace. Jace hauled himself out on the passenger side and leaned against the roof. As he started to call out to her, the front door of the house opened and a miniature human cannonball launched himself off the front porch with an exuberant shout.

“Mom! Mom, guess what!”

Jace’s jaw dropped. He felt as if he’d just been hit in the stomach with a medicine ball.
Mom?
Becca was a
mom
?

Justin’s freckle-dusted face and gap-toothed grin was all Rebecca needed to see at the end of the day to revive her flagging spirits. Forgetting Jace Cooper, she dropped down to the sidewalk on her knees and held her arms out. Immediately they were filled with wriggling boy.

“Guess what what?” she asked, giggling as she hugged and was hugged in return.

“Peter Cleary brought a dead rat to school, and Jessica Jorgenson threw up at lunch.”

Rebecca made a face and tousled the boy’s dark hair. “Sounds as though you had quite a day.”

“Uh-huh,” he said, rocking back on the heels of his miniature high-top sneakers. He propped one hand on his hip and shoved the other into the deep pocket of his favorite camouflage pants. “Mrs. Petrie let us have extra time at recess, and I got a star on my spelling paper.”

“That’s super!” she said, giving him an extra hug. “I’m so proud of you! How did the arithmetic go today?” she asked carefully, knowing Justin was less than enthusiastic about first-grade math.

He made a face and glanced over her shoulder, his blue eyes widening as his gaze landed on Jace. Addition and subtraction were instantly forgotten. In an exaggerated stage whisper he said, “Who’s that man by our car?”

Speech evaded Rebecca as she suddenly remembered Jace’s presence. The joy she’d felt at seeing Justin suddenly jelled into a knot of tension in the middle of her chest.

Justin turned a very adult look of reprimand on her. “Don’t ever give rides to strangers, Mom.”

“Ah—um—Mr. Cooper isn’t a stranger, honey.” She pushed herself to a standing position and reluctantly led Justin by the hand to make what was bound to be an awkward introduction. Stopping a few feet from the car she said, “Mr. Cooper is an old—” The word “friend” stuck in her throat. Friends didn’t simply abandon friends the way Jace had. “—person.”

Justin tipped his head in speculation as he looked up at Jace. “You’re not
so
old,” he said candidly. “Grandpa’s old. You’re just kind of old—like Mom.”

“Thanks,” Rebecca said sardonically.

“Thanks,” Jace mumbled, still dumbfounded by this living proof that Becca was a mom. He held his hand out. “Jace Cooper.”

Pleased at being treated like an adult, Justin grinned and accepted the offer. “I’m Justin. I’m six.”

The boy had Rebecca’s black hair and rectangular face. His grin was filled with mischief. A smattering of rusty freckles dotted his cheeks and impudent button nose. And his eyes were a deep, bottomless blue.

Rebecca could practically hear the wheels turning in Jace’s brain. It didn’t take a mind reader to know he was making comparisons and doing some basic math. His still-startled gaze darted from Justin to her.

“Justin,” she said, drawing her son back and steering him toward the house, “will you please go tell Grandpa I’ll be a little late for supper? I have to drive Mr. Cooper around the block to Mrs. Marquardt’s house.”

“Can I come along?” Justin asked automatically. He was always ready for an adventure.

“No, sweetheart. Go on now. I’ll be back in a little while.” Her gaze lingered on him as he scampered up the steps and dashed into the house, yelling at the top of his lungs.