Sarah's Sin

Sarah found a million things to do the instant they reached Thome-wood. She had to see to the unhitching and care of her horse, unloading and putting away the groceries, double-checking the guest rooms and reservations, preparing the snack of cheeses and grapes and French bread that would be offered to the guests upon their arrival.

Matt suspected she was avoiding him again, having been shaken a little by the kiss they had shared, but he didn't press the issue. Hell, he had been shaken by it as well. Shaken right down to his lifelong bachelor toes. He hadn't come here looking to get knocked for a romantic loop by an innocent young maid like Sarah. He wouldn't have even believed it was possible. He was a mature, experienced man, a man who knew the score, a man who had his life neatly categorized. Now he felt as if the stuffing had been pulled out of all his spiffy little pigeonholes. The sturdy ladder of his priorities had collapsed, and the only sure thing rising out of the dust was his desire for Sarah Troyer.

Pleading a genuine case of fatigue, he left Sarah to her fussing and went upstairs to crash. He was asleep the instant he hit the bed, not even noticing when Blossom nosed her way into the room and made off with one of his shoes.

He dreamed about the ER at County General, seeing again the face of the young man whose knife wound he had patched up not two months before. A Vice Lord. Matt knew by the black-and-gold colors and the tattoo of a five-pointed star on the young man's left bicep. He had learned to read gang signs and fashions like a cavalryman must have learned the traits of the various warring tribes of Plains Indians in the last century. The young Vice Lord had been brought in holding his ribs and spitting up blood. Two gurneys down, a junkie was rambling incoherently, her mind invaded by demons conjured by crack. Across the room a member of a rival gang pulled a gun and started shouting obscenities. A Disciple by his blue-and-black uniform and the fact that everything about his attire emphasized the right—-his beret was tilted to the right, his belt buckle hung loose to the right, his right side pants pocket was turned inside out. There was an eruption of violence, an explosion; images tumbled and swirled, all colored in blood and accompanied by shouts and screams.

And then he was sitting in a buggy, holding Sarah and listening to the wind, the silence so abrupt, so absolute it hurt his ears.

Matt blinked himself awake and lay staring up at the ceiling. It didn't take Sigmund Freud to figure that one out, he thought. Sarah was a metaphor representing innocence and purity, a tangible symbol he could hold and protect and control in a way he couldn't begin to do with the raw ideals. They were like smoke, slipping through his frantic grasp, swept away by the fetid winds of urban decay. But Sarah was real, living, shining, sweet.

Well, that was all a nice, neat analytical explanation, wasn't it? Why then did clinical understanding do nothing to dilute his deep need to see her and touch her and hold her? Wanting a woman was nothing new to him, but this was something different, something that went beyond symbolism. He wanted Sarah Troyer with something inside him he had never before encountered. Trying to figure it all out left him dizzier than his concussion had.

From somewhere below came the muffled sound of voices. The guests had arrived, en masse by the sound of it. Matt eased himself out of bed and padded barefoot in his underwear to the bathroom where he splashed cold water on his face and ran a comb through his hair. He pulled on a pair of jeans and a soft loose sweater in shades of black and sapphire, wondering wryly if anyone would mistake him for a member of the Disciples. After giving up the search for his errant Loafer, he settled for beat-up sneakers and headed for the foyer and the source of the cacophony.

The group looked like the assembled cast of a farce, Matt thought as he descended the stairs slowly, having left his cane behind. There was Sarah in her plain uniform and bright wide eyes, eager to serve and to please; a chubby couple in their fifties, outfitted in color-coordinated tourist garb, complete with cameras hanging from their necks like giant pendants; and a woman who looked to be some kind of aging beauty queen with unnatural-looking russet hair piled on her head like cotton candy, enormous sunglasses perched on her nose, enormous breasts, and a pile of dead foxes draped around the shoulders of her trim ivory wool suit.

Blossom sat on Sarahs feet with her ears perked and her head tilted, staring with quizzical amazement at the limp hides hanging over the woman's mountainous chest. The basset hound's rubbery lips quivered and she issued a whispered woof, as if she were trying to unobtrusively gain the attention of the pelts.

“Oh, isn't this just the cutest little ol& place!” the beauty queen drawled, beaming a smile all around the front hall, though how she could see anything through her dark glasses was beyond Matt. She twirled around and gave Sarah a pat on the cheek. “And aren't you just the cutest thing! A real Amish person. Isn't that clever! Wait'll Tim sees you! He's out in the car right now, tryin' to get the price on pork bellies, but he'll be in directly. Just wait'll he sees how cute you are!”

Sarah gave the woman her Mona Lisa look and said nothing.

Matt felt a fist of tension tighten in his chest.

“Marvin, get a picture,” the plump wife ordered, elbowing her husband's belly.

Marvin chewed on the stub of an unlit cigar, grumbling as he lifted his camera and fiddled with the knobs. “Cripes, Peg, all I've been doing all day is taking pictures of Amish.” He pronounced Amish with a long A. His voice was as gritty as gravel, and he spoke in staccato bursts of words, as if his weight and his smoking had constricted his lungs. “They all look alike. We're going to get home and have two hundred and eighty pictures of the same person.”

Peg squeezed her bulldog face into a horrific pinched look, glaring into the end of her husband's zoom lens. “Just do it, Marvin. Just humor me. We're on vacation. We're having fun.”

Whether you like it or not, Matt added mentally. He watched in amazement as Marvin backed down the hall so he could focus his oversize lens. Mrs. Marvin sidled up next to Sarah as she might have to a cigar store wooden Indian and creased a smile into her pudgy face. The beauty queen moved into the picture as well, sweeping her fur from her shoulders with the drama of a runway model.

Blossom snarled, grabbed a mouthful of fluffy fox tails, and bolted for the kitchen. The beauty queen squealed and ran after her. Marvin, looking at the whole thing through the distorted view of a two-hundred-twenty-millimeter telephoto lens, didn't have a chance. The dog hit him in the ankles, knocking him off balance, and the beauty queen gave him a shoulder in the midsection as she ran bent over trying to grab the flying ends of her fur. Marvin flew backward into the kitchen door, which obligingly swung back on its hinges.

They ended up in a heap on the polished linoleum, Marvin with the fox stole draped across his face and Miss Alabama 1967 sprawled unceremoniously over his belly. Blossom took one look at the scene and made a hasty escape through the doggy hatch in the back door.

“Oh, Mrs. Parker, Mr. Morton, I'm so sorry!” Sarah held out a hand to help Mrs. Parker up. The woman teetered upright on her spike heels, her tight ivory wool skirt hiked up above her knees, her nest of russet hair tilting drunk-enly, her sunglasses askew. She clutched her patchwork of fox hides to her chest like a security blanket.

“I&d best go up to my room and repair myself,” she said dazedly. “Tim just hates to see me disheveled.”

As she staggered out into the hall, Marvin Morton struggled to sit up, cradling his precious camera in his big sausage fingers. “I oughta sue,” he said around the crumpled remains of his cigar stub. “I think I've got a whiplash.”

“Lucky I'm here then, isn't it?” Matt said coming to stand behind Sarah.

“Why?” he asked, struggling to rise. “Are you a lawyer?”

“No, I'm a doctor. I can examine you and give you a diagnosis and treatment. You're not afraid of big needles, are you? The best thing for whiplash is major doses of cortisone,” he said with a perfectly straight face. “Of course, that's excruciating painful in itself.”

Marvin paled. His wife grunted at him. “Stop your complaining, Marvin. It wasn't the little Amish girl's fault. You had to stand there right in the way of Miss Silicone USA and play with your phallic symbol—”

“Why don't you both help yourself to wine and a snack in the parlor,” Sarah suggested with a brittle smile, trying desperately to resurrect her hostess image.

The Mortons went off in the direction of the front parlor, grumbling at each other. Sarah heaved a sigh, wiping the back of her hand across her brow. She slumped against the kitchen counter and looked up at Matt with a woebegone look to rival the basset hound's.

“Well,” he said with a grin. “That was exciting.”

“It was terrible.”

“Yeah,” Matt agreed. “But it was funny.”

Sarah's lips twitched and she gave in to the laughter. It had been a disaster. The first time Ingrid had left her in charge of the inn and within five minutes of the guests' arrival they were getting knocked senseless and threatening to sue. Still she couldn't help but see the funny side of it, and it felt good to laugh with Matt. It probably felt too good, but she didn't want to think about that now; she just wanted to share this moment with him. She watched the humor wipe away the lines of weariness in his handsome face and light up his dark eyes, and her heart gave a great big thump in her chest.

Matt watched her laugh, her clean, pretty face taking on a rosy glow, and his heart gave an answering thump. He reached out for her hand, just needing to touch her, and when her fingers curled around his, warmth spread through him like sunshine.

“Want to go share some wine and cheese with Marv and Peg?” he asked softly.

“Not really, but I suppose we'd better.”

They walked out of the kitchen together like pals, Matt with an arm draped across Sarahs slim, square shoulders, smiles lingering on their mouths.

“Can I ask you a question?” Sarah said.

“Anything.”

“What's a phallic symbol?”

“Ah … um …” He cleared his throat and dodged her questioning gaze. “I'll tell you later.”

“Maybe you can show me?” she asked innocently.

Matt groaned, rolling his eyes heavenward. “I sincerely hope so.”

Things just got curiouser and curiouser as the evening went on. It was the practice at Thornewood for guests and hosts to gather in the parlor to chat after dinner. Breakfast was the only meal served at the inn, so guests trekked into Jesse for their evening meal. Upon returning they were offered coffee or cocoa or brandy and fresh baked cookies as well as conversation.

This was something Ingrid and John pulled off with great success, both of them having excellent educations and a wide range of travel experiences. Sarah, however, had been outside the county only once, to visit relatives in Ohio, and her formal education had ended, as it did for all Amish children, at fourteen. Confronted with the role of hostess, she seemed to forget that she was quite well-read and had some understanding of current affairs gained through the pages of Ingrids Newsweek.

Of course, it didn't help matters that the current guests were … well, strange.

Sarah sat in her chair unable to think of anything much to say while the Mortons and Lisbeth Parker stared at her as if she were an oddity in a museum.

Matt cleared his throat in an attempt to break the silence. “Mrs. Parker, it's too bad your husband wasn't feeling up to joining us.”

She gave Matt a vacant look, then flinched as if she'd been pinched, and batted her long false lashes at him. “Oh, well, travel doesn't agree with Tim,” she said, pouring a little brandy into her coffee. “He has a delicate constitution.”

“I&d be happy to take a look at him—”

“No! No,” she repeated, calming herself. She resurrected her beauty queen smile and bestowed it upon everyone in the room. “It's nothing serious, I assure you. He simply needs his rest.”

Matt's brows rose and fell as he looked across the room at Sarah. She gave a small shrug. As yet no one had seen the mysterious Tim Parker.

“I can imagine he needs lots of rest,” Marvin Morton growled, his eyes fixed on Mrs. Parkers fantastic bosom. His wife gave him a sharp jab in the ribs.

Mrs. Parker changed the subject abruptly, going into a long, bizarre account of her recent trip to her optometrist, who had prescribed a single contact lens that she could wear in either eye. No one seemed to know any appropriate comment to make about that—except Mr. Morton, who told her the guy was probably a shyster, as were most doctors. Matt ground his teeth for a minute, then launched onto a detailed explanation of the pro bono work he did at a free clinic in North Minneapolis. The point was lost on Marvin, who turned the discussion into a racist commentary on the abuses of the welfare system.

Sarah watched it all unfolding with a sense of dread and helplessness. She tried to imagine how Ingrid would have handled the situation, but could only think that Ingrid and John would never have gotten into this kind of conversational snake pit in the first place. Heavens, her whole adventure of running the inn was turning into a nightmare. She should have known better than to believe she could handle this. She was after all, despite her longings to the contrary, just a simple Amish woman. Dreaming about being a part of that other world and pulling it off were two very different things.

She looked around the room and bit back a moan of despair. Matt was plainly furious with Mr. Morton, who had expanded his monologue into anti-Semitism. Mrs. Parker was pouring another dollop of brandy into her coffee cup. Blossom was sneaking off with one of the beauty queen's heels. Some grand evening this was turning out to be. The evening from hell.

“So, you're Amish, Sarah,” Mrs. Morton said, dragging the topic back to the one thing Sarah wanted most to avoid talking about. She was quite certain the imperfections in her hostess skills were already glaringly apparent to the one person she wanted most to impress—Matt. Now she would have the spotlight thrown on her background and way of life, which couldn't have been more separate from his if she had been from Mars. And he would be able to see how truly unsuitable for him she was.

And what was the difference? she asked herself. The sooner he came to his senses, the better for both of them.

“Yes, Mrs. Morton, I'm Amish,” she answered politely.

“So what's that like?”

What an enormous question. Sarah sat with her hands folded in her lap, struggling to formulate a reasonable answer, but Mr. Morton beat her to it.

“You've seen what its like, Peg. It's like living in a hippie cult commune.”

“Mr. Morton!” Matt protested, all his newfound protective instincts rearing up inside him. He'd sat through the man's diatribe on every other minority group, but this was the end. This ingrate had insulted Sarah, Sarah the sweet and innocent, and Matt wasn't going to have her subjected to abuse of any kind.

“Well, it is,” Morton pressed on, waving his cigar. “I read all about it. They mate up their young folks like sheep and most of them have two or three wives.”

“Mr. Morton, that's enough!” Matt bolted out of his chair, ignoring the pain it caused him. He was too angry to notice something as trivial as cracked ribs. He leaned toward the older man with a menacing expression. “If you want to be a bigot at least have the decency to do it in the privacy of your own home.”

“Bigot!” Morton exploded. He rocked himself up off the couch. “You can't call me that!”

“I just did.”

“Matt, stop it!” Sarah jumped up out of her chair and tried to pull Matt back to his. He paid no attention to her efforts. He and the guest were nearly toe-to-toe, Matt towering over Morton like an angry avenging angel.

“You're a rude, ignorant bigot. And if you think for one minute that I'm going to sit here and let you insult Sarah and treat her like some sideshow tourist attraction, you had better think again. Furthermore, I think you owe Miss Troyer an apology.”

Morton's whole fat head turned the color of a radish.

“Matt, stop it!” Sarah hissed behind him. She hooked a finger through a belt loop on his jeans and tried to tug him backward. He wouldn't budge.

“I'm not apologizing to anybody,” Morton said with a snort.

“Then I think you'd better leave.”

“Matt!” Sarah wailed. This was all she needed. As if her reign as manager of Thome-wood hadn't gotten off to a bad enough start, Matt was going to go and throw out the guests!

“W-el-1,” Mrs, Parker said, drawing the word into three syllables. Her gaze had turned glassy. She seemed to be able to focus only the eye with the contact lens in it, and that one she fixed on Morton. Tm with Dr. Thorne. I think you're insuffer-ufferably rude,” she said with a hiccup.

Morton snorted, “That doesn't mean much coming from a woman whose bra size is bigger than her IQ.”

“I don't have to put up with that!” Mrs. Parker said with a gasp. She reached into her purse and pulled out a pearl-handled derringer and waved it around. She rose to her feet, wobbling on one heel, trying to aim the gun. “You big lump o' Yankee lard!”

Mrs. Morton screamed. Mr. Morton's cigar fell out of his mouth and set the couch on fire. Matt dove for Mrs. Parker and knocked the gun out of her hands. It went off with a loud pop, shattering a decanter of red wine, which spewed all over Mrs. Morton, causing her to believe she'd been shot and making her scream louder. Just to put the icing on the cake, Blossom rushed in howling at the top of her lungs.

The farce had reached its climax.

“I can't believe this,” Sarah muttered. She stood, dazed, on the porch watching the tail-lights of the Mortons' car bob off into the dark distance.

“Good riddance,” Matt grumbled.

Sarah turned on him. “I can't believe you did this!”

“Me!” he exclaimed, splaying a hand across his chest as if she'd just stabbed him. He was the picture of confused, thickheaded male innocence. “What did J do?”

“What did you do?” Sarah rolled her eyes and clamped her hands to the top of her head as if she were afraid her temper would force her hair to stand straight on end. “You had to start a fight with a guest!”

“Sarah, the man was insulting you!”

“Ridicule is nothing new to me. I would have handled it.”

“Well, I handled it for you.”

“I wouldn't have fought with him. It's not our way.”

“Yeah, well, it's my way,” Matt said in a huff of injured male pride. He jammed his hands on his hips and scowled. “If the Silicone Queen hadn't pulled that gun, I probably would have punched him in the nose.”

“Wonderful. Violence to defend the nonviolent.” Sarah shook her head at the irony. “I don't need a protector, Matt Thorne. I can take care of myself. I know you come from a violent world, but I am not a part of that world.”

There it was, plainly spoken, the line between them drawn as clearly as if she had taken a stick and pulled it across wet sand. Matt leaned against the porch railing and knocked his head against a post. She was right. In his attempt to defend her innocence he had sullied it with violence. He had dragged her down to a low level by starting a fight over her. He sighed and closed his eyes. Had the world he lived and worked in so tainted him that he had become a part of the problem? He had only wanted to help, both in going to work at County General and in coming to Sarah's defense.

“I only wanted to help,” he mumbled miserably.

Sarah was too caught up in her own worries to notice Matt s pain. A part of her thrilled to the idea of Matt rushing to her rescue like a knight on a white horse, but having that particular fantasy come true was undoubtedly going to cost her dearly. She could see it now. Ingrid would fire her and she would have no choice but to go back to the farm. Her father would try to take control of her life again, and she would end up miserable and married to Micah Hochstetler, doomed to a life of drudgery, never to have an adventure again.

“I'm going to lose my job,” she said with a morose sigh.

Matt turned toward her, leaning his hips against the porch railing. “You won't lose your job. This was all my fault. I'll explain it to Ingrid.” It was his turn to sigh as he thought of how his sister would receive the news, 'Til explain it to Ingrid and then shell kill me with her bare hands. Will you come to my funeral?”

Sarah s mouth twisted into her crooked little wry smile. “Sure. I wouldn't miss it.”

“Will you dance on my grave?”

“I don't know how to dance.”

Reaching out, he pulled her into a loose embrace and swayed a liltle from side to side as he hummed a few bars of a tune. In the dim yellow light of the porch, his gaze caught Sarah's and held it, and the atmosphere of teasing and camaraderie altered into something thicker and softer and much more serious.

“I'll teach you to dance, Sarah,” he said.

She looked up at him, her heart in her throat. She was leaning against his chest, her hands pressed to the warm cushion of his sweater and the solid muscle beneath it. She could feel his heart beating. He was no dream, no figment of her overactive imagination. He was a man who had defended her honor. He had held her while she cried and then kissed away her tears. He was the embodiment of every romantic fantasy she'd ever allowed herself.

She was falling in love with him. No. She wasn't just falling, she was in love with him. It seemed completely impossible; they'd only just met. But she realized in her heart that she had known him for a long time, for forever. She'd just never really believed she'd meet him or touch him or be tempted by him outside the safety of her dreams.

He leaned down and brushed his lips across hers, and longing pierced her heart like a needle.

“We'd best go back inside,” a voice whispered. It sounded like her own, but she felt strangely detached from it.

“Yeah,” Matt agreed, though he made no move to let her go. “I need to make sure the couch isn't still smoldering.”

“I should check on Mrs. Parker.”

Sarah started to move out of his arms. Matt straightened away from the railing. Their gaze never broke.

I love her, he thought with a jolt. The revelation came as an epiphany, glowing with a wondrous light. It stunned him. That was the “something different” he'd felt along with wanting her. Matt Thorne, Romeo of County General, man of the world, avowed bachelor and slave to his career, was in love for the very first time. He'd taken one look at little Sarah Troyer and fallen like a rock. He looked down at her now with a feeling of awe that couldn't have been exceeded had she suddenly turned to gold.

I love her.

He felt a rush inside him as if a fresh wind were blowing all the dirt out of the corners of his soul. Then he crushed her to him, his arms banding her to his body, his mouth taking possession of hers. He kissed her with a rapacious hunger, eager to taste her sweetness and claim it as his.

Sarah arched against him, responding to his kiss out of pure instinct and need. Her body sought the heat of his, softness pressing into masculine strength. Everything about the kiss overwhelmed her and saturated her, and she wondered dimly if this was what it was like to be drunk. Drunk on passion. Drunk on desire. She gulped it in with a spirit that had been thirsty all its life. She welcomed the thrust of his tongue, the feel of his tender, sensitive hands pressing down her back and over her hips, lifting her into the curve of his arousal.

“Sarah, I want you,” he whispered, peppering her face with quick, ardent kisses. “I want you so much.”

Want. What she knew of the word could have filled a book. She had wanted so much for so long, wanted so many things she wasn't supposed to have, wasn't supposed to need. She wanted Matt Thorne, in her bed, in her life, in her heart. He said he wanted her, but his life wasn't here. It was a world away, a world that would run roughshod over a naive Amish woman. Not that he would take her to it. Matt was by nature a charmer, a womanizer. He might want her now, but in a week or a month he would leave and she would be the one left wanting.

“I have to go inside,” she whispered, and like the coward she was, she turned and Bed to the relative safety of a house where the only other person was a drunken aging beauty queen who wore only one contact lens, carried a gun in her purse, and was married to an invisible man.

Matt watched her go, too undone by the explosion of emotion he'd experienced to go after her. He'd just discovered he was in love for the first time, and the object of that grand emotion was running away from him. Another first: He had no idea what to do about her. He had wooed and won nurses and neurosurgeons and even a CPA who had an MBA from Harvard—no mean feat—but he had no idea how to go about winning a sweet, gentle Amish girl. She wasn't impressed by his possessions or his clothes or his profession. None of the usual props would do. And maybe that was only right. Real love, the kind he was feeling, wouldn't go in disguise.

Blossom clambered up the porch steps, her long body wiggling like a centipede's. She plopped herself down on Matt's feet, looked up at him, and let out a long, mournful howl.

“Yeah,” he muttered, wincing against the noise. “Sing one for me while you're at it.”