Sarah's Sin

Sarah had been working at Thornewood Inn for about two months. She had her own small room on the second floor—adjacent to Matt's, in fact, just on the other side of the bathroom—and she lived at the inn full-time with the exception of every other weekend when Amish church services were held. Then she spent Saturday night and Sunday with her family, who lived just a mile down the road.

John and Ingrid Wood had purchased the big farmhouse outside Jesse nearly a year before and had been slowly, lovingly renovating it, sanding and polishing the old hardwood floors, stripping paint from cupboards, tearing out dropped ceilings and restoring the plaster-work hidden beneath. The end result was a house Sarah thought of as luxurious if perhaps a little overdone for her plain tastes.

Billowing lace curtains hung like froth at the windows. Armchairs and sofas were plump and plentiful, covered in patterned fabrics in shades of rose and ruby and rich hunter green. Framed works of art Ingrid lovingly referred to as “primitives” adorned the fancy papered walls. Thornewood now boasted four guest rooms and three baths with fancy claw-footed tubs.

In Sarah s opinion the best room by far was the library, outfitted with comfortable stuffed chairs and shelves and shelves of books. The painted white shelves were built into the walls and stretched from floor to ceiling on two sides of the room. There were all kinds of books—the travel books John Wood had written, encyclopedias, novels, history books, current magazines on world events, cooking, and fashion. Easily her favorite part of her job was spending her spare moments in the library soaking up the printed words like a human sponge.

For as long as she could remember she had loved books. Even before she could read them she had carried them around and looked at the pictures and stared at the words, loving the look of them. Learning to read had seemed the most wonderful, magical thing in the world to her, and she had never understood other children who found it a tedious chore. Reading had opened up the world to her. It was the one thing that could transport her away from the dullness of farm life. There weren't so many books to be had at the little Amish country school she had attended, and they were scarce around the Maust house hold, but at the age of eight Sarah had wandered away from her mother, who had been shopping for canning supplies, and into the Jesse public library. The librarian had granted her permission to check out books, and her life had not been the same since.

Her father had disapproved of her excessive reading, and she had spent much of her youth sneaking away when she could to read in her grandmothers attic. Isaac said it was books that had put so many foolish ideas in her head. He blamed books for Sarahs overactive imagination and for her yearnings. Sarah knew that the yearnings had always been there inside her. Books had made it possible for her to satisfy some of those longings vicariously. Books had probably saved her from committing more rash, reckless acts than she actually had done, but there was no use telling her father that.

At any rate, it was books not people she turned to when she was feeling lonely or restless or troubled. And so it was to the library she went when the last of her work was done on the fourth day of Matt Thome's stay at Thornewood Inn. She took off her shoes and her kapp and curled up in her favorite chair, surrounded by books, seeking some solace for the disquiet in her soul.

None came. And it wasn't the fault of the books or her job. Again and again her thoughts turned to the man sleeping upstairs. She had done her best to avoid him during the past two days, rushing into his room when he rang his bell and rushing back out as soon as she'd seen to whatever his need had been, but it hadn't put an end to the desires stirring inside her—the desire to be near him, to touch him, to listen to him speak, even if it was just to complain about the boredom of being confined to bed.

She closed her eyes and bit her lip, a low, helpless sound forming in her throat. She clutched the big encyclopedia to her chest and wished with all her heart that some answer would seep out of it and soak into her, but that didn't happen. The only thing that filled her head was the image of Matt Thorne, looking at her, studying her as if she were an intricate puzzle to solve, smiling at her with his crooked boyish grin, kissing her.

Oh, Lord, it had been so long since she'd been kissed, not since Samuel had died. Guilt nipped at her as she admitted her husband had never generated the kind of sparks Matt had. Samuel had been a good man, a good friend, but what had passed between them as husband and wife had never been passionate.

For a long time Sarah had blamed herself for wanting passion. She had been raised to believe in a woman's duty to her husband and to God, that the act of joining with a man was for but one purpose—to create life. And still her heart had ached for something more.

Maybe her father had been right in that respect. If not for her reading she would never have known that people outside her sect expected something grander of love than duty. In her community marriage was most often based on friendship and compatibility and the desire, the need, for children. But in her heart she ached for something more.

Now she found herself caught in the no-man's-land between two cultures. An Amish woman doing an English job. The English thought of her as purely plainly Amish. Her own people saw her as a rebel and shook their heads and muttered prayers under their breath. She was an Amish woman in dress and speech and manner. But in her heart she ached for something more.

And what she ached for most just now was the touch of Matt Thorne. Sin that it was, she couldn't stop wanting it.

Heaven above, what had she started by giving in to her need to have a little adventure?

Matt stopped outside the door to the library and stood quietly in the darkened hall for a long moment. He'd awakened from his latest “little nap” at eleven-thirty, disgusted with himself for losing yet another chance to charm Sarah. He had figured she would certainly be sound asleep by now, while he, with a com pletely goofed-up internal clock, was wide awake and starving for food and companionship. Thinking he could at least find the former downstairs in the kitchen, he had pulled on a pair of sweatpants and made his way down the stairs as quietly as a man with a cane could. The puddle of light spilling out of the library had drawn his attention and he'd gone down the hall without managing to alert either Sarah or Blossom the Wonder Hound.

He stood now watching her, studying her like he might study a work of art, watching the play of light on her features, looking for the secret meaning to her expression and pose. She sat curled on the dark green sofa, embracing a book as a child might embrace a teddy bear, her eyes squeezed tight in concentration on a thought that would doubtless remain a mystery to him.

Lord, she was lovely. So simple, so pretty. He'd been watching her now for four days and he couldn't get over her mixture of innocence and hidden fire, the sweetness of her smile and the bright curiosity in her eyes. He didn't feel worthy of touching her, but at the same time it was what he most wanted to do. He wanted to hold her as she was holding her book and have some of that simple purity wash away the dark edges of his soul. Hell, he just plain wanted her. He was at one of life's great crossroads, and at the moment the only path he wanted to follow was the one that led across his sister's library to Sarah Tftyer. He didn't question the urge; he merely gave in to it, being a man used to having his own way.

“Doing a little light reading, I see”' he said diyly.

Sarah jolted out of her meditation, her eyes widening, her heart racing from something more than just the start he'd given her. He stood before her looking rumpled and irresistible in soft-looking baggy gray trousers and wool socks that fell around his ankles. He was eyeing the stacks of books she'd placed around her with amusement. There had to be thirty of them, all sizes and types, piled in groups of four and five on the arm and seat of the sofa and on the floor in front of her. If she'd sat in that chair for a week, she wouldn't have been able to read them all.

“You shouldn't be out of bed.” It was the first thing that came to her mind and she cringed inwardly, wondering if she was thinking of his welfare or her own.

Matt decided it was a rhetorical comment and made no reply as he eased himself down on the middle cushion of the sofa. He plucked the encyclopedia out of Sarah's hands and glanced over the page she'd had it opened to.

“I guess a person can never know too much about the manufacture of ball bearings. I haven't kept up with it myself. My ideas are probably horribly out of date.”

Sarah pulled the book out of his hands and closed it, her mouth twisting into a wry little smile.

“Ah, a smile. Does that mean you're not still mad at me?”

“I wasn't angry with you. Why would you think I was?”

Matt lifted his arms in an exaggerated shrug. “Oh, I don't know. I guess the last time a woman shot daggers at me with her eyes, largely refused to speak with me for two days, and ran out of my room at the first opportunity, she was angry with me. Something about my lack of charm.”

“I can't imagine that,” Sarah muttered dryly.

“Really?” He grinned engagingly. “You find me charming? Even in my current state of dishabille?”

Sarah fidgeted, picking at the wrinkles she'd pressed into her dress with books, uncomfortable with his line of questioning. “I don't find you … anything. You're Ingrid's brother. A guest here.”

“Mmmm … I see,” he murmured, nodding doctor-style. “I take it you enjoy reading,” he said, fingering through the pile nearest him. A collection of Mark Twain, a book on restoring Victorian homes, a hefty tome on the Civil War.

Sarah stroked her hand over the big book in her lap the way she might stroke a cat, absently, lovingly. “I love to read and to learn,' she admitted quietly. “I read all I can about everything,”

She loved to learn even though she had been given only a minimal education. Matt thought of the inner-city kids he had dealt with, the opportunities for education that were handed them courtesy of the taxpayers, and which they casually, disdainfully tossed aside in favor of making money selling dope and stealing cars. He imagined what Sarah could have done, given their opportunities.

“Did you ever think of going to college?” he asked.

Think of it? She had dreamed of it constantly as a teenager, but the dream had been well beyond her reach. “I couldn't,” was all she said.

“Your people don't believe in encouraging bright young minds?”

The remark hurt, regardless of her own private opinions. She shot Matt an angry look. “My place was on the farm. We are farmers and carpenters and wives of farmers and carpenters. What sense would there be in spending money on fancy schools?”

“None, I guess,” Matt replied softly. Her answer sounded like a line she had memorized out of a book of Amish philosophy. He had the distinct feeling it was not her own. No one with such a desire to learn could have subscribed to such an idea. But he didn't push the issue.

He picked up her kapp and examined its sheer fine mesh, the carehil workmanship, the delicate ties. She stared at it, too, with a look that was akin to horror, as if she'd just realized she'd been sitting there half-naked. Her hand went self-consciously to her hair. Impulsively, Matt reached up and covered her nervous hand with his own, overlapping it so that his fingertips stroked the crown of her head. He got the impression that she would have sunk down into the netherworld of the sofa with the lint and cracker crumbs and loose change if she could have.

“You have very pretty hair,” he said soffly. It had the texture and sheen of sable, and there were masses of it wound and pinned and knotted at the back of her head. It nearly took his breath away to imagine what it must look like down. “Why do you hide it?”

“It is the way of my people. A woman's hair is her glory and only for her husband to see, else it would be Hochmut, pride. Pride is a sin.”

“I think the sin is in hiding away something so lovely.”

Sarah herself had long wanted to go with her hair loose and flowing for the wind to tease and tangle. She associated the sensation with freedom of spirit. But it irked her that she wanted to agree with this outsider who was already so dangerous to her, so she answered with one of her father's most famous infuriating lines. “It's the way of our people, not for you to agree or disagree. Its just our way.”

“Well, it's not mine,” Matt said pleasantly, smiling when she scowled and batted his hand away from the pins that were holding her bun in place. He slouched against the cushions, letting his arm fall along the curve of the back of the couch. “And I have a feeling it wouldn't be the way of an expert tree climber either.”

Sarah shuddered at the thought of him reading her mind so easily. “I was a little girl then. Now I'm a woman.”

“I noticed, believe me,” Matt said dryly. “In spite of the lengths you go to, to hide the fact, I noticed.”

“Again you make fun,” Sarah snapped, deliberately taking offense. It seemed safer to keep him at an arm's length with bad temper, so she dredged up all she had. She vaulted out of her seat to pace the floor, knocking over a stack of books in the process. “Always with your teasing and cracking wise, making fun.”

“No!” Matt protested, pushing himself to his feet. Dizziness swam through his head but he couldn't decide whether it was from his condi tion or from the sucker punch Sarah had just delivered.

“A kiss and a pinch and make sport of the little Amish maid—”

“Wait a minute!” He grabbed her shoulders, effectively halting her pacing if not her tirade.

“Just because I wear simple clothes and live a simple life doesn't mean I'm simpleminded, Matt Thorne,” she declared, glaring into his face.

“I never said you were. I never implied you were. Jeez, Sarah, this isn't the Victorian Age. I'm not the kind of man who goes around tumbling housemaids for a cheap thrill.”

“What do you want from me then?” It wasn't a safe question to ask. No matter what his answer was, she would be caught. If he said he wanted something, she couldn't give it and face her family. If he said he wanted nothing … She didn't want to think of what that would mean to her even though it was what was best.

Matt gave her a tender look. “How about a little friendship, for starters?”

Now what was she supposed to do? Her plan had been to scare him away with her bad temper and righteous indignation. And he was asking her to be his friend. The idea was much too appealing, much too tempting.

“I'm sorry if you took my remarks the wrong way, Sarah. I was only teasing. I didn't mean to hurt your feelings. I'd never do that.”

The gentleness in his voice was her undoing. She couldn't stand the idea that she'd hurt him. So much for her impromptu strategy.

“No,” she murmured, looking down at the nubby toes of his wool socks, “I'm sorry. I shouldn't have snapped at you. What kind of hostess I make, taking my temper out on the guests?”

“You make a fine hostess,” Matt said, just barely resisting the urge to draw her up against him and hold her. Instead, he crooked a finger under her chin and tilted her head back so he could lose himself in the endless depths of her lake-blue eyes.

Sarah stared up at him, afraid that he would see every feeling she was struggling with, and equally afraid that he wouldn't. She thought for one heart-stopping instant that he was going to kiss her again, but he gave her a tender smile instead.

“You've had a rough day, you're tense. I know just the thing to fix that.”

“You do?” A number of half-formed notions tried to weave their way through the sensual fog in her mind, notions that involved lips and skin and strength and softness and whispered words. None of them quite got a hold, though, and Matt backed away from her, leaving her feeling abandoned.

He went to the bookshelves, to John Wood's fancy radio-stereo machine, which she had always been afraid to touch. With a flick of a switch and a twist of a knob, soft music filled the room. Sarah shivered a little at the magic of it and at the unfamiliar beauty of it. She was used to music; she had grown up in a house filled with singing. But always the Amish songs were about love to God and duty and suffering gladly and going to heaven at the end of a long, painful life. English music was about the world and the relationships between people. It seemed to her, in the litde bit she'd heard, that most of it was about love. Falling in love, falling out of love, the glory of love, the pain of love. The one playing now was sung by a man with a strong, smoky voice crooning that he'd be in trouble if she left him now.

“Paul Young,” Matt murmured appreciatively, returning to stand in front of her again. A relaxed smile curved his wide, handsome mouth as he took a deep cleansing breath and sighed. “Music to get mellow by. Take a deep breath and let it out slowly.”

Sarah did as instructed, letting the air hiss out of her lungs slowly only to suck in a sharp breath when Matt settled his hands on her shoulders. He clucked his tongue in reproof, but his eyes were twinkling and Sarah couldn't decide whether he was being serious or not. He made her feel so emotionally off balance, a part of her—the coward in her—wanted to run out of the room and upstairs to the safe haven of her quarters, but another part of her was too drawn to him, too intrigued, by-him, too tempted. She took another deep breath and expelled it.

“I'm afraid I'm not up to playing Patrick Swayze,” Matt said. “So dancing is out.”

“Who is this Patrick? A friend of yours?”

“Not exacdy,” Matt said with a chuckle. Half the women in the free world would have given their fingernails to dance with Patrick Swayze; Sarah didn't even know who he was. Of course she wouldn't. She had probably never been to see a movie. He thought for a minute what it would be like to take her to her first. It would be like experiencing it for the first time himself all over again. Everything would be that way with Sarah. Her innocence would make the world seem new. Lord, how tempting that was to a man who'd seen too much of the worst of it.

“Never mind,” he said at last. “Anyway, the point here is to get you to relax.”

“I am relaxed.”

“Fibber.” His fingers massaged her shoulders in a slow, sensuous rhythm. “Close your eyes and just listen to the music, let yourself sway with it.”

Sarah did as she was told and was filled by a strange feeling. It was a little like being un derwater, she thought. She was drifting in a sea of sound, weightless, boneless, sightless. The only thing anchoring her to reality were Matt's hands, hands she began fantasizing about working magic on other parts of her.

“Mmm … that's it,” Matt whispered.

His voice washed over her in the same kind of sensual wave as the music, warm and soft. The Paul Young song ended and another began with no interruption between the two. This song was even slower, softer, more heart wrenching. The words seemed to reach right into her to touch her soul. It was another song about needing love, about hungering for love, a prayer for God to speed the love of a special someone to the singer.

Matt listened to the stirring strains of “Unchained Melody” and watched the look of sweet yearning that came over Sarah's face, and felt something melt inside him. The city, the ER, the noise, the violence were a million miles away in that instant, and he was glad. It was just the two of them and the beginning of something special. He didn't know where this growing feeling would take them, but he wanted to find out.

It seemed the most natural thing in the world for him to step closer to her, to take her in his arms. He couldn't think why he had resisted the urge this long. He was a man accustomed to getting what he wanted and what he wanted was to feel Sarah next to him. It didn't matter that he'd only just met her. He felt like he'd been waiting half his life to find her. Sarah with her funny moods and Mona Lisa smile, her sweetness there to take all the bitterness from him.

He pulled her gently against him as the song built to its soulful crescendo, and felt the most incredible sense of lightness and peace. It felt so good, it ached inside him. He brushed his lips against her temple, kissing the fragile skin, his breath stirring the baby-fine tendrils of hair that curled there like wisps of silk.

As the last strains of the melody drifted away Sarah stepped back and looked up at him, her eyes so dark a blue, they looked the color of pansies. She stared up at him a long moment, saying nothing, her expression carefully blank.

“Sarah.” He didn't know what he meant to say. All that came out was her name, as soft as a secret.

“I … I'd best say good night,” she whispered, backing slowly away from him, the way she would from a dangerous animal encountered in the wild.

He stayed where he was, watching her go, saying nothing. Then she was in the comforting dark of the hall. She curbed the urge to run. By the time she got to the stairs, she stopped altogether, her hands clutching the polished oak newel post as if it were the only thing keeping her from sinking into bedlam.

“Oh, dear heaven,' she whispered, her voice trembling with emotion. “Please don't let this happen. Please don't let me fall in love with him.”

But as she climbed the stairs to her room, she had the terrible feeling it was already too late for prayers.