The Street Where She Lives (8 page)

Well, duh. That was the problem.
“My dad is here now though, so he can check on her.”

Adam searched her features, then slowly nodded. “I see.”

“You do?”

“Yes.” A small smile touched his lips. “You'd like me to vanish.”

She flushed. “Well, I didn't want to hurt your feelings or anything.”

With a grim smile, he pushed up his glasses. “You want them back together. Of course you want them back together.”

Okay, that took her back. She'd been very sly about this, so… “How did you know?”

“My parents were divorced. Let's just say I recognize the desperation.”

“Oh.” She winced, thinking he was awfully nice for her to be wishing him so dead. Maybe he could just go far, far away.

“Emily, you know your parents have been apart a very long time now, and—”

“It could happen! They could get back together.”

He closed his mouth. Looked at her with that same gentle smile that speared her with guilt and nodded. “It could.”

“So, you'll stop kissing her?”

Adam let out a laugh. “I'll tell you what…if your mom wants me to stop kissing her, I will. Okay?”

She looked into his kind eyes and felt a little bit of what her mom must like about him. Which made him a bigger threat than she'd imagined. And what could she say? It would have to be good enough.

Besides, surely after another day or so, her mother would want her dad to be kissing her and no one else. After all, her dad was irresistible.

As she was walking back inside, the house phone rang. She grabbed it up, for a minute hoping it was Alicia, her new e-mail pal. They'd “met” a few weeks ago in her school's homework chat room, even though Alicia didn't go to her school. Sometimes kids from other schools hacked in, which she was glad for because she didn't like the kids in her school. Anyway, they'd decided to be best friends and Alicia, who lived in Los Angeles, had been promising to call so they could talk for real.

“Hey, baby, how's your mom?”

Aunt Mel. Jeez, Emily must not have been that convincing earlier this morning when she'd called Mel to keep her away. Looked like she'd have to try harder. “Hi! Like I said, Mom's great. In fact, she was just saying again how she didn't want you to take any more time off work because she's doing so great.”

“Really?”

Emily could hear the skepticism in Mel's voice. “Really,” she gushed. “She got out of bed all by herself.” Her father came into the room with the puppy under his arm and gave her a long look as he took Patches outside. Emily winced, but kept up the flow of Mom's-doing-great chatter.

“So, how's school?” Mel asked when Emily had finally wound down.

She winced again. School was a deep, dark pit of hell. She had no friends there, no one who cared. “Sucky.”

Mel laughed. “If your mother hears you use that word, it'll be suckier.”

“Yeah.” Her dad came back in, gave her a thumb's-up sign over Patches's head, which meant the puppy had done her duty. But then Patches saw Emily and barked with excitement before her dad could stop her. “Aunt Mel, I gotta go or I'll be late for school,” she said quickly. “But honest, things are—”

“Great?” Mel said with a smile in her voice.

“Yeah! So stay there and…”
What was it Mom would say?
She needed to sound grown-up. “You know. Live your life.”

Aunt Melanie laughed. “Sounds good.”

The puppy barked for the second time, looking quite pleased with herself.

“What was that?” Mel asked.

“Nothing. The school bus. Gotta go!”

Oh man, she'd just lied to her aunt.
Again.
It was accumulating on her. This morning alone, she'd lied to her father, Adam and her mother, too. That must be a record of some kind.

Ben covered the puppy's mouth and with another long look at Emily, took her back upstairs.

Hanging up the phone, Emily put her forehead to the wall. Being twelve was harder than she thought.

R
ACHEL NEVER DID
manage to get herself dressed that day. When the party finally left her bedroom, she crawled back into bed, both defeated and depressed at her exhaustion level. She fell asleep and was haunted by dreams of strong, loving arms, by whiskey-colored eyes that saw her, really saw her, and by some miracle loved her anyway, and her own feeble, weak fear of letting herself return that love.

Awake now, she lay there staring at the ceiling. Her stomach growled and she could have sworn she'd just heard a dog bark, but that had to just be a lingering dream. She told herself it hadn't been weakness or fear that destroyed her and Ben so long ago, but cold, hard facts.

He'd had to go.

She'd had to stay.

Simple. Besides, that had been long ago. They'd moved on. Maybe they had to deal with each other again now, but the feelings they'd once shared were long gone.

Her door opened. Ben came in, carrying a tray with hot oatmeal and buttered toast. He set it on her lap, grabbed the chair in the corner of the room, spun it around and straddled it. Steepling his fingers, he peered at her over the top of them. “Eat up. We have a physical therapist appointment later, you'll need your strength.”

As if she could eat with him watching her like that. “I'm not really that hungry—”

Her stomach growled loudly into the room.

“Yeah, not hungry,” he said dryly. “Eat, Rachel. I'm not budging until you do.”

With that incentive, she ate the entire bowl.

“You feeling any better?”

“If I say yes, will you get on a plane?”

He smiled. “Probably not.”

She had to smile back. “It was worth a shot.”

“Yeah. Eat.”

And good as his word, when she'd finished, he left her alone.

 

A
T DUSK
Emily came in with another tray that held some heavenly scented soup and more toast. Behind her stood Ben, his face solemn, and if she didn't know better, tentative.

Was that from earlier, when she'd fallen asleep on the way back from her particularly brutal physical therapy appointment? He'd carried her inside, set her on her bed, then kissed her softly.

She'd let their lips cling for one moment, and then shocked at herself, had turned away, cowardly feigning sleep.

They hadn't talked since.

“Mom, guess what. Dad taught me how to cook soup.” She positively glowed as she sniffed proudly at the steaming bowl. “Yum, right? It smells better than all that canned stuff you always make us use. Hey, maybe when you're better, he can teach you to cook, too.”

Rachel eyed Ben, who was either wise enough not to smile or didn't find the humor in the fact Rachel had
never taken the time to learn to cook much past the very basics.

“Want some company?” Without waiting for an answer, Emily set the tray on Rachel's lap and sat on the bed. It was the first time that Rachel could remember seeing her without the laptop attached like an appendage to her arm.

“Come on, Dad.” Emily patted the bed. “Sit.”

Ben straightened from where he'd been holding up the doorjamb and shook his head. “No, I—”

“Dad! Mom hates to eat alone. Come on over. Right here, next to me. She'll share. Won't you, Mom?”

Ben looked at her as he moved closer, and indeed sat on her bed, carefully, slowly, clearly being considerate to not jar her.

And all Rachel could think, inanely, was that they were on the same bed.

“Now I know how to make mac and cheese
and
soup,” Emily announced, then frowned. “Dad, what else can you teach me to cook? Pizza?”

Ben lifted a brow. “Well, we could talk about that, soon as you tell your mother about Patches—”

“Oh, wait!” Emily interrupted and cocked her head. “Yep, that's my computer beeping. Sorry, gotta go.”

“I didn't hear it,” Rachel said, but Emily was gone, having raced out of the room like a tornado was on her heels, leaving just the two of them.

Rachel stared at her soup.

“Thank you.” With him this close, she had to fight the ridiculous urge to burrow under the covers and hide.

“Don't thank me until you eat up.” Picking up the spoon from the tray, he scooped a small bit of the hot liquid, then held it up to her mouth.

“I can feed myself.”

He merely nudged her lips with the spoon, and the warm, heavenly-tasting broth slid into her mouth.

He waited until she swallowed. “Well?”

“Amazing,” she admitted, and he smiled and scooped another bite.

“Really, I can do it.”

“Rach…you're still exhausted.”

She looked away, but he gently reached out and touched her chin, until she turned back to him. “Is it that bad having my help?” he asked quietly. “Really?”

God, his eyes were deep. His meaning even deeper. “No,” she whispered, then closed her eyes. “Not compared to say…I don't know…getting a root canal?”

Now he laughed, as she'd intended, and yep, the sound was still low and sexy, still made her stomach tingle. Then he brought her another sip of soup. And another…

“You're still good at the kitchen thing, I see,” she said after a few minutes, her belly getting nice and full.

“Yeah, well, when you grow up having to put it together yourself or go hungry, you learn quick.”

The broth suddenly stuck in her throat, the picture his simple words created breaking her heart—a young boy, terminally hungry. How many times had she suspected his foster home was not a good place? But no matter how many times she'd asked, he'd never opened up about it.

She wouldn't ask now, she couldn't afford the intimacy that would require. She waited for the awkward silence to drift over them. Oddly enough, the silence didn't seem awkward at all.

“Rach?”

She jerked upright, realizing she'd actually started to fall asleep right in front of him. “I'm sorry—”

“Hey, you're tired, no big deal. You had a pretty brutal physical therapy session today.” Setting aside the tray, he helped her into the bathroom, where she brushed her teeth and got ready for bed.

Afterward, she fell asleep with the image of Ben on her mind. In the middle of the night, she came awake again, her heart heavy, her body aching. She flipped on her light with the clapper Emily had insisted on, a gadget she'd thought so stupid until now, when she didn't have the energy to do anything but very weakly, very quietly, clap once.

She stared at the pad of paper by her bed, a pad she usually filled with new ideas for
Gracie
when she couldn't sleep.

But the comic strip that had been so important to her before the accident now seemed…frivolous. Just a bunch of stupid drawings, whereas other people were actually doing things to help people in the world. Taking action to make a difference.

Like Ben.

“Rach?”

Speaking of. He was a tall, dark shadow standing in her doorway. He took one step into her bedroom and the glow from her lamp bathed him in yellow light.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

He wore only sweat bottoms, low slung and untied, as if hastily put on. Closing her eyes, she tried to lose the image of him nearly nude and so magnificent that she wanted to gobble him up. “Define
all right,
” she said.

“Do you need help into the bathroom?”

So intense, so serious. Did she look that bad? Yes, she decided, she probably did. “I'm fine.”

“Do you need water? Have you been drinking enough—”

“Truly. I'm fine. I just…can't sleep,” she admitted. “And I can't draw to save my life.” She managed to sound calm about that.

“Oh.” He scratched his chest, looking around, clearly unsure how to help her with such an intangible problem.

“Don't worry,” she said dryly. “I won't ask you to sing and dance to get me back to sleep.”

“I could read you a bedtime story,” he offered, losing some of his intensity and actually smiling.

Good God, that smile was lethal, and could disarm her unhappiness at having him here. She didn't want to disarm anything. “I'll just read to myself.”

“You sure?”

What she was sure about was that he needed to leave the room. Now. “Positive. You can go.”

Wistfulness crossed his features. “Rach, you know I can't yet—”

“I meant for right now.” But how nice to know that he was even more eager than she to get out of here.

With a slight nod, he turned away.

“Ben?”

His shoulders tensed, making her realize she wasn't the only uptight one tonight. “Thanks,” she whispered, then waited until she was alone again before reaching for the historical romance lying by her drawing pad.

One of the nurses in the hospital had given it to her, and she hadn't known how to say she didn't typically read romances. Now, in the middle of the night, she opened the only book she could reach and lost herself in a story about a lusty pirate and his wild and sexy prisoner…

 

W
HEN SHE WOKE NEXT
, it was morning and her biggest heartbreak was standing at the foot of her bed staring at her grimly, looking as alive and virile as ever.

He was leaning against one of the bedposts, his hands in the pockets of soft, worn jeans. He wore a dark-blue T-shirt that made him look both tough and sexy, an image complemented by the silver earring shining in his ear.

Her pirate, she thought with an inane urge to giggle, and shot the historical romance on her chest a dark look.

Ben stepped close and picked up the book, which happened to be opened to a scene that had steamed her reading glasses last night. He read a few lines silently and his brow shot up his forehead, disappearing into the hair falling over his eyes.
“Throbbing manhood?”

“Romance novels are empowering,” she said primly.

“I'll bet they are.” His voice sounded a little strained as he read a bit more. “Wow.”

“Are you here for a reason?”

“Yeah.” He set the book aside and let out a careful breath. “You need any help getting up?”

She pictured his hands on her, the way his breathing always shallowed when he helped her get dressed, and how her body reacted. “No, I'll be fine.”

“Let me at least get you into the bathroom.”

“I said I'll be fine.” Her voice came out far sharper than she intended, but he was messing with her head. “Please. Just…go.”

His jaw was granite. “We've already established I won't.”

But he had once. Damn him, she had the insane, juvenile urge to punish him for that still, to make him want to walk away now, again. But one thing she knew about Ben Asher was that he was quite possibly the most stub
born man on the planet. He'd promised to stay, for now at least, and because of it, he wasn't budging.

Instead of leaving, he hauled off her covers, exposing her in the silky bathrobe she'd managed to get herself into the night before. Before she could so much as draw another breath, he'd slipped his arms around her and scooped her from the bed. “Bathroom first?” he asked calmly, as if he held her every day. “Sponge bath? Or just clothes?”

He had one arm around her back, his fingers curled just beneath her breast. The other arm beneath her thighs.

Did he know she wore nothing beneath it, nothing at all?

“Sponge bath,” she managed. “But—”

“Let me guess. You can do it yourself.” Striding into her bathroom, he set her on the closed commode, then turned on the tub. “Stay.”

Did she have a choice? She wondered why on earth she'd thought a nurse such a bad idea. A nice female nurse would have been good right now. She could have stripped off her robe in front of a female nurse, sat gingerly on the edge of the tub with a female nurse, maybe even could have gotten in—

“Here.” He was back, once again hunkering in front of her. He had plastic trash bags and duct tape, and before she knew what he meant to do, he'd jerked open her robe to the tops of her thighs.

“Hey—”

“You're going to be thanking me soon enough when the warm water hits your body, trust me.” Without looking away from his task, he slid one of the bags over the cast on her left leg, smoothed it around her thigh with
his big hands, then secured it with duct tape. Leaning forward, he used his teeth to rip off the duct tape.

She stared down at his head between her legs, feeling his hair brush over her flesh, and didn't know whether to splay her thighs open farther or kick him.

Kick him,
she decided, because she was quivering and not just from the pain.

With a surprised yelp, he fell to his butt on the tile. Watching her with a wary eye, he came back up on his knees and put his hands on his hips. “You feel better now?”

“Um, yes,” she admitted. “Sorry.”

“No, you're not.” He gently pushed back the flowing sleeve of the robe and gave her left arm the same treatment as he'd given her leg. “There.”

Around them, with hot water running into the tub, the bathroom became steamy. Closed in.

Standing, Ben let out a tight smile. “So. How are we going to do this? The easy way or the hard way?”

She clutched the robe to her chest. “I can manage from here.”

“The hard way, then,” he muttered. “Great.” He tossed her the pretty pink loofah hanging from the shower head and turned his back to her—his broad shoulders, wavy, wild hair and attitude all mocking her. “Manage away.”

She glanced at the full bubbling bath and the loofah in her hand. She could just dip it in and wash her body, and it sounded like heaven. But… “Not with you standing right there.”

With a long-suffering sigh, he dropped his head between his shoulders, defining an irritated male. “My eyes are closed.”

“Yes, but—”

“But nothing, Rachel. You want to wash or not?”