Standing Bear's Surrender Page 3

  Chapter Two

  Thirty minutes earlier when he’d shoved aside his monthly bills and headed to the rooftop, Jim had told himself that if the woman was in the garden next door, he would leave. He was not a voyeur.

  She was there reading to an elderly man who was probably her father. And Jim couldn’t make himself leave. Wearing a pink dress with a matching pink sweater covering her arms, just as he’d suspected, she looked like a rose blooming among the ruins, a bright spot of hope in the midst of desolation.

  And so he’d stayed, watching her in secret, telling himself that if she looked up and noticed him, then he would leave. Her hair slid forward as she bent over her book, revealing a neck as graceful as a swan’s. Jim couldn’t resist a closer look. The view through the telescope confirmed his earlier opinion. The back of her neck was fair and soft looking. Jim’s heart pounded harder and his mouth went dry.

  Disgusted with himself he shoved back from the telescope, but he didn’t leave. He couldn’t. The sun was shining in the woman’s hair and he’d never seen a more mesmerizing sight. The hair that had looked merely dark at night came alive in the glare of the sun. Strands of red glinted there, and gold in every shade from the deep glow of a full harvest moon to the rich patina of an ancient wedding band.

  Need sliced him. The need to touch her hair.

  Jim gripped the arms of his wheelchair so hard his knuckles turned white. He would turn away. He had to.

  And then she smiled. Straight at him. There was no mistaking it. The woman in the garden deliberately looked his way and smiled.

  All the breath left Jim’s body. Suddenly he was no longer on his rooftop: he was in his Hornet roaring through the skies. He was diving straight down toward the earth, then at the last minute pulling back up so that his heart got misplaced to his throat.

  Still, he couldn’t leave. Spellbound, he watched as the woman in the garden knelt and began to pull weeds from her flower beds. While her father dozed, she worked. The beds emerged little by little, and when she pulled away a patch of brambles and uncovered an azalea with a few pitiful blooms clinging to its spindly branches, she danced and twirled with her arms spread out like wings.

  There was celebration in every line of her body, uninhibited joy over the discovery of one small blooming bush.

  The day Bethany had accepted his ring he’d gone to the florist and picked out five dozen long-stemmed yellow roses, each one as perfect as he’d thought she was. She’d acknowledged them with a small smile and an inclination of her head, like a queen bestowing favors on her adoring public.

  The woman danced in her garden until her father woke up. She went to him and tenderly touched his cheek, then wrapped her arms around his waist and guided him back inside.

  Jim stayed on the rooftop a long time staring down at the secret garden.

  He didn’t even know the woman’s name, and he wasn’t going to ask. As long as she remained anonymous, he could tell himself he was coming to the rooftop for therapeutic purposes, to soak up the sunshine in the daytime and to view the stars at night.

  Sarah’s new house had five bedrooms, and she didn’t settle on the one on the second floor in the west wing until she’d discovered that she could see the Bear’s rooftop from her bedroom window. Tonight the Bear was there as still as a mountain, silhouetted by the full moon.

  She didn’t stop to think what she was doing and why, she merely grabbed her robe and headed out the door. First she checked her father’s room to see if he was sleeping, then she raced down the stairs and into the garden.

  It was one of those clear evenings when the stars looked close enough to touch, one of those magical nights when fairies danced and moonbeams glowed and dreams sprouted full-blown. In her garden with the lone azalea glowing pink against the brick walls, Sarah dreamed of a time when the garden would be heavy with fragrance and lush with bloom. Walking along its broken brick pathways with her arms folded around herself against the chill, she dreamed of a time when other arms would warm her, another voice would comfort her, another heart would enfold her.

  “I’m being a silly romantic,” she whispered, glancing upward.

  And there he was, the Bear, watching her from afar. Whether it was a trick of the moon or her own imagination, Sarah couldn’t say, but light surrounded Jim Standing Bear. He looked like a god that had come down from Mount Olympus.

  Her heart stood still. Her legs wouldn’t move. Rather than stand in the middle of the pathway gawking, Sarah slid into the shadow of a large crape myrtle tree so that she could watch the Bear, unobserved.

  What brought him to the rooftop night after night? Did he notice her? Did the same awareness that made her skin hot ever warm him? Did he know how much she wanted to see his face? To touch him? To hear his voice?

  Why had she ducked into the shadow of the trees?

  Jim reached for his telescope so he could find her in the darkness, then flung back from it. What was the matter with him? The woman was turning into an obsession.

  Instead of sitting on his rooftop like a fool, he should be working on his physical therapy.

  He wheeled off the roof and into the elevator, his thoughts murderous. Damn that eighteen-wheeler rig. Damn his legs for not working. Damn Bethany Lawrence for being right.

  He was a cripple.

  The elevator doors swung open, but Jim sat in his wheelchair thinking of a woman in white dancing in her garden.

  He couldn’t dance.

  There was the soft swoosh of doors closing. Jim sat in the dark box of the elevator, thinking about his useless legs.

  The doors opened and closed, opened and closed.

  He smote his wheelchair with his palms. He was Sioux. The blood of warriors flowed through his veins, the blood of men who had never accepted defeat. Never.

  When the doors opened again, Jim went through, bypassing his bedroom and going directly to his exercise room. The parallel bars gleamed in the darkness.

  He positioned the wheelchair in front of the bars, then heaved himself upward. Six months of working the weights had made his upper body even more powerful than before the accident.

  Getting upright was easy. It was staying there that presented the challenge. His legs quivered.

  “Move, damn you. Move.”

  But they refused. Instead they buckled, and Jim hit the floor like a felled redwood tree.

  For a while he lay there panting, and then slowly, ever so slowly, he pulled himself upright once more.

  Sarah told herself she was not going to be nosy. She was not going to pry. She was not going to make a complete fool of herself in front of her new housekeeper.

  And then she did all three.

  “I haven’t seen my new neighbor up on his rooftop in a week now,” she said. “Is anything wrong?”

  Delta put her hands on her hips. “What’s wrong with that man would fill a book. He’s done hid himself away in that exercise room like some hermit, and if something don’t happen soon to bring him out of that shell I don’t know what’s going to become of him. Lord, I surely don’t.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Sarah said, and she meant it.

  “Is there anything I can do to help?” she added, meaning that, too. When she’d become a teacher, she sought the jobs nobody else wanted, teaching the kids nobody else would teach, the misfits and rejects, the impoverished, the unwanted, the unloved.

  Sarah loved them all.

  She missed the children she’d taught and nurtured and loved in La Joya.

  “You might try praying, honey. Or you might try taking him a chocolate cake. I ain’t never seen Jim Standing Bear resist anything chocolate.”

  “You think it would be okay?”

  Sarah didn’t miss the gleam in Delta’s eye. She had the look of a meddling woman.

  Not that Sarah’s motives were all that altruistic. The thought of actually seeing the Bear made her cheeks warm.

  “Good neighbors always visit the sick, I say.”

  “That’s what
I think, Delta.” Her conscience salved, Sarah began to take mixing bowls and cake pans out of the cabinets.

  After her cake was finished Sarah went upstairs to dress. Should she wear pink to give her some color or green to match her eyes? Standing in front of her closet she rifled through her dresses. They were all sturdy and sensible. The wardrobe of a schoolteacher. The kind of dresses she could wear and never stand out in a crowd, never be noticed. They were demure, unobtrusive and most of all, wash-and-wear.

  Sarah hung the green shirtwaist back in her closet. Who did she think she was trying to fool? She was the proverbial onion in the petunia patch.

  Laughing at herself, she ran a hairbrush through her hair without even looking in the mirror, then checked on her father, said goodbye to Delta, got her chocolate cake and headed next door.

  There was no sign of life about the house except a small brown car parked in the driveway. Somehow it was not the kind of car she’d expected the Bear to have. A man who did precision flying that thrilled thousands should have a car that cried daredevil. A man who had served his country in Strike Fighter Squadron 147 should drive a car that screamed hero.

  His house was impressive, glass and stucco with perfect landscaping that could only have been done by a professional. Sarah thought it could use a personal touch, though. She preferred a more informal look, a yard that said somebody loves me.

  If it were up to her she would take out that straight row of boxwoods and put in something that would bear blossoms she could clip off and put in vases around the house. Camellias in all colors and a good tea olive that would perfume the whole yard.

  She’d be willing to bet the house could use a homey touch, as well. Say a hand-knit afghan thrown over the back of the sofa and some handwoven baskets to hold magazines and a good cozy mystery or two.

  Why, if it were up to her…

  A deep blush spread over Sarah’s face. What in the world was she doing standing in the Bear’s yard fantasizing? Just because she had claimed him as her own rooftop angel didn’t mean he was going to invite her in to redecorate, or even to have tea, for that matter.

  Why, she’d been out there so long it was a wonder somebody hadn’t reported her to the police. Her face still aflame, Sarah hurried to the front stoop and punched his doorbell.

  Jim had been at the window when the woman from the garden first appeared in his front yard. Still sweaty from his session with Wayne, his physical therapist, he watched her while Wayne gave an assessment of the day’s workout.

  Jim was close enough to see that the woman’s eyes were as green as the grasses of a spring meadow. Somehow that pleased him.

  “With massage we’ve managed to keep muscle tone in your legs. That’s excellent,” Wayne said.

  The woman was standing in the sunshine looking at his yard as if she planned to redo the whole thing. A little frown creased her forehead and she worried her full bottom lip. Jim smiled.

  “Hey, I’m happy about that, too,” Wayne said.

  Jim didn’t bother to correct him. He didn’t bother to explain he was smiling because a woman whose name he didn’t even know had the most kissable lips he’d ever seen. They were full, lush, and a beautiful shade of rose that had nothing to do with lipstick.

  In fact, unless he missed his guess, the woman standing in his yard wasn’t wearing a smidge of makeup. The sprinkling of freckles across her nose was all the evidence he needed.

  She was fresh and wholesome, the exact opposite of Bethany, who wouldn’t have been caught dead without her makeup.

  Jim was acutely aware of her. Not merely aware, but vividly interested.

  “There’s no reason in the world for you not to walk.”

  The woman’s color was suddenly as high as if she’d been caught spying. Fascinated, Jim continued to study her while Wayne’s last statement sank in.

  Hope can move mountains, but false hope can be a very dangerous thing. Jim knew that firsthand. He’d learned it the hard way this past week, alone in his exercise room with his face kissing the floor.

  The woman in the garden was moving toward Jim’s front door. He turned away from the window.

  “What are you saying, Wayne? That I need a shrink?”

  “No, I didn’t say that.”

  The doorbell sliced through Wayne’s words, cutting them short. He looked relieved. And in fact, so was Jim. He didn’t want to rehash something he’d gone over in his own mind a million times.

  “Somebody’s at your door.”

  The woman from the secret garden. The woman who had become an obsession. The woman he couldn’t banish from his dreams even after he’d stopped going to the rooftop.

  Jim was both elated and terrified. He longed with every fiber of his being to see her face. Just once to look into her eyes. Just for a moment to glimpse the glow of her skin, the sheen of her hair, the graceful column of her neck.

  And yet…

  He glanced down at his wheelchair, at the legs that used to run for miles without tiring, the feet that used to carry him anywhere he wanted to go.

  The doorbell rang again. He couldn’t face her.

  “Would you get it for me, Wayne?”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yes. I’m not up to company.”

  Wayne, who knew his history of reclusivness, started to protest, but one look at the Bear’s face sent him to the front door.

  Jim heard the door open, heard Wayne’s voice. “Yes?”

  “Hello, my name is Sarah…Sarah Sloan.”

  It was a beautiful name, a name Jim hadn’t wanted to know. And it was matched by an irresistible, musical voice that drew Jim across the room. He positioned his motorized wheelchair so that he was hidden behind the door but could still have a bird’s-eye view of the woman.

  “Hello, Sarah. I’m Wayne Wilson.”

  “Oh…I was hoping…I came to see Jim Standing Bear.” Her disappointment was so genuine that Jim felt like a thief. By hiding he’d robbed her of a small pleasure.

  “I’m not the Bear. I’m his physical therapist.”

  “Then that’s your car in the driveway?” Sarah’s smile transformed her, and Jim wondered why she was so pleased.

  He wasn’t long finding out.

  “No, that’s not my car.”

  “Well, thank goodness…I mean…I just knew the Bear would drive something, oh, I don’t know, something wild and romantic.”

  Wayne was stunned into silence and Jim almost burst out laughing. He couldn’t remember when he’d been so entertained. And all because of a woman named Sarah whose honest and simple charm made him forget that her features didn’t add up to classic beauty.

  In fact, if anybody had asked him to describe her, at that moment he would have said she was the most desirable creature on earth. And she was. With her shining eyes and her high color and her full bottom lip caught between her teeth she was the most delectable woman Jim had ever seen.

  A year ago he’d have been doing his damnedest to maneuver her into his bed. He’d have been courting her with every weapon in his arsenal, including a bit of Sioux poetry.

  But now all he could do was hide behind a door and watch. He’d always despised cowardly behavior. And now look at him.

  “Goodness. Just listen to me. Prattling on like a schoolgirl.” Sarah’s color deepened. “Perhaps I should start over.”

  “No, you’re doing just fine,” Wayne said. “As a matter of fact, I’ve always found schoolgirl innocence quite charming.”

  Wayne was actually flirting with Sarah Sloan. Jim wanted to throttle him. He wanted to grab him by the collar and toss him out of the house. He wanted to dare him to ever look at Sarah again, let alone flirt with her.

  The intensity of his feelings propelled him from his hiding place. Cursing the slowness of his wheelchair he closed in on Wayne and Sarah. Sarah’s eyes widened and Wayne had the grace to look chagrinned.

  Good. Jim was in a take-scalps mood.

  “Thanks for getting the door for m
e, Wayne. I’ll see you next week.”

  It was clearly a dismissal and Wayne didn’t wait around to say goodbye. With turmoil still roaring through him like a wild river, Jim watched his therapist race down the sidewalk as if rattlesnakes were on his trail.

  That’s what Jim felt like. A snake. And an ungrateful one, at that. Over the last few months Wayne had withstood Jim’s surly moods, his black attitude, and even his rage without ever blinking an eye. Wayne was dedicated, even-tempered and a damned good therapist.

  Still, that didn’t give him any right to flirt with Jim’s woman from the garden. That’s how he had come to view her. His personal talisman. When Sarah was in her garden, Jim’s own world somehow tilted toward normal. When he saw her digging in the earth, ever hopeful, a tiny glimmer of hope flickered in Jim’s heart. However briefly.

  And when he saw her dance, he touched the stars once more. Almost.

  Sarah was his. And nobody was going to take that from him.

  She was watching him with equal parts fascination and fear. Why was she afraid?

  “Are you…” She bit her lower lip, then started over. “You must be the Bear.”

  She knew him. It was because of the damned wheelchair, of course.

  Sarah Sloan had not come to his house to give him hope: she’d come to offer him pity. Jim’s scowl deepened.

  What had he been thinking of, leaving his hiding place, exposing himself to the raw emotions of a woman?

  “Yes.”

  His curt reply coupled with his thunderous expression would have sent most women scurrying for cover. It had the opposite effect on Sarah. Her blush and her charming naivete vanished. Nobody would ever have mistaken the strong, self-possessed woman who faced him for a schoolgirl.

  “I’m your new neighbor. I apologize for coming over uninvited, but you haven’t been coming to your rooftop and I was worried that something might have happened to you.”

  She looked straight into his eyes, and he felt as if he’d been caught up in the beams of a powerful searchlight. He searched her face and saw not one shred of pity.