The Street Where She Lives

CHAPTER EIGHT

RACHEL 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.

AT 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…

WHEN 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 stubborn 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?”

She looked at the glorious steam rising from the tub. Did she want to get clean? Only more than her next breath. “Yes.”

“Then do it. You’re shaking like a damn leaf on the first day of autumn.” He craned his neck and looked at her. “And no, I’m not leaving. I want to make sure you don’t fall.”

Concern filled his eyes. She wondered if he even knew it. “Just keep your eyes closed.” She managed to pull herself up to a stand and dropped her robe, watched it pool at her feet. Black dots danced in her vision, but she blinked them away, imagining her hair soft and silky from a real washing, her skin smooth and clean from the tip of her head to her toes. Naked, anticipating, only a few breaths away from collapsing, she went to sit on the edge of the tub.

But it was terribly awkward, and put too much pressure on her healing ribs and pelvis.

“What’s the matter?” His back was to her, eyes still closed.

She knew this because she kept peeking at his reflection in the mirror to make sure he wasn’t cheating. “Nothing.” She tried again, and wanted to cry. Damn it, only a month ago she was in the finest shape of her life! “Ben…”

He whipped around so fast she got even dizzier, and as if he already knew, Ben grabbed her. Embarrassment chased anger, chased a bombardment of sensations…like did the man’s hands feel good on her body, which brought her back to anger because they were Ben’s hands, and it wasn’t sexual, it was survival. He had her naked body plastered to his fully clothed one, and was completely supporting her weight. She felt her face heat, felt her throat heat, felt everything heat.

He had one arm across her back, one lower, across her bare butt, his hand gripping a cheek. “Ben.” She lifted her face, and found her mouth an inch from his. But it wasn’t their proximity that backed her breath up in her throat. It was the look in his eyes. Dark, intensely speculative and so hot she couldn’t have drawn air into her lungs to save her life. “You…can let me go now,” she said in a funny feathery voice she hardly recognized.

“Yeah.” But she would have sworn his arms actually tightened, including the hand on her butt, before he slowly released her, sitting her back on the commode. “You okay?”

No. No, she wasn’t. “Fine,” she said through clenched teeth because her body had reacted without permission. Her nipples were two hard tight points and her legs had gone mushy, not to mention what was happening between them. A shiver trailed over her skin as his breath tickled down the side of her neck, and she let out a sound that shocked her with its neediness.

Further shocking her, Ben nibbled in the exact spot he’d breathed on, nuzzling the side of her throat and the curve of her shoulder until her bones liquefied. “Should I close my eyes again, Rachel?”

Her heart jerked, then again as he dragged his mouth over her flesh. “Yes!”

He didn’t. In fact he kept them wide-open and all over her. He slid one hand up her hip to her waist, then a little higher, gliding his thumb up and down over her skin, on the heavy underside of a breast. “I’ve seen it all before.”

“A long time ago.” She felt like a marshmallow, a melting marshmallow over a slow, perfect flame. “Close ’em.”

“You’re even more amazing now than you were then, and I remember you as pretty damn amazing.”

She crossed her casted arm over her breasts and tried to not think about the parts he could still see quite clearly. “Is…that supposed to make me feel better?”

“Well…” He let out a low, nipple-hardening laugh. “Looking at you is making me feel better.”

“Close your eyes,” she said through her teeth. “Or find out how hard a cast is over your head.”

He tilted his head and studied her while his hands took another slow pass at the flesh plumped out beneath the cast. “So you’re going to ignore the fact that every time we’re within two feet of each other we nearly spontaneously combust?”

With great effort, she lifted her bag-covered left arm warningly.

His eyes stayed right on hers instead of the breasts she’d exposed. “You’re a glutton for punishment, babe.” But he sighed and closed his eyes. “Okay.”

Babe. He hadn’t called her “babe” in…well, thirteen years.

More steam escaped from the tub, swirling around them, creating an ambiance of intimacy. Ben stood right there, a breath away, hair falling over his forehead, eyes closed, a sexy little smile curving his lips. Inviting. Beguiling.

All it would take was one word from her, even a touch, and he’d jump in without looking, jump right into a relationship with her again, or at least a sexual one.

But she never jumped without looking, and certainly not with a man with a foot already half out the door.

All she had to do was get better and he’d be gone, she reminded herself as she soaped her body. So that’s what she’d do, she’d get better, fast as she possibly could.

THE RESTLESSNESS was going to kill her. Early dawn light filtered in Rachel’s room as she struggled to get herself out of bed the next morning. She reached for her wheelchair, then hesitated.

Her various aches and pains seemed to be lessening every day, albeit slightly, and she decided today was the day she tried to go without the dreaded, hated chair. She wanted to walk, damn it, and determined to do just that, she grabbed the cane she’d gotten from the physical therapist yesterday, the one who planned to torture her today as well.

Carefully, holding her breath, she stood. Wobbled, but held her own. So far so good. She felt unsteady and weak, ready to collapse at the slightest breeze.

But upright was upright and she’d take it. The early morning was silent as she made her slow, painful progress to the bedroom door. Opening it, she saw the hall was still in shadow. The only light came from a glow from a night-light in the hall bathroom. Shuffling her way down the hall she peeked in. On the counter sat a dark blue toothbrush. Not Emily’s.

Ben’s.

Funny how just one piece of plastic could cause such conflicting emotions. Late last night when she hadn’t been able to sleep, he’d come into her room with a deck of cards and had taught her naughty card games he’d picked up in Nigeria. Or somewhere.

The man was something. He’d had her laughing. Laughing.

She made it to her studio for the first time since the accident. Just walking in here used to set her creative juices flowing. She’d yank open her shades on the wall of windows, grin with pure joy at the sight of South Village in full swing far below and go to work.

She waited for some of that joy to hit her. Even just a little.

Nothing. Nothing but a tightening in her chest that suggested panic. And exhaustion from the exertion of getting here.

Her easel was set up, with a blank sheet of paper on it. Just as she’d left it on the day of the accident. There was a note on the pad, with her own words teachers versus administration written on it. She stared down at it blankly, knowing she’d written that before being slammed by a car, before hitting the pavement at thirty miles per hour, knowing the words should signify what she intended Gracie’s next strip to be about… But for the life of her she couldn’t remember writing the words, much less what she’d intended.

It didn’t matter anyway…it was just a cartoon.

Helplessness and uselessness had become old friends since that day, and they hit her again now. Suddenly she wanted to do something new, something…important. She thought of Ben’s work, and how many people he’d helped, and closed her eyes. Frustration choked her. She wondered how long someone could live with so much frustration before just blowing up.

She weaved, her muscles violently trembling with the strain of being upright, forcing her to sit in the love seat. She gripped the cushions at her sides and refused to give in to defeat. How she was going to get back up and to her room without asking for help was beyond her-especially since that help would probably come in the form of a tall, sleepy, sexy man-but she wouldn’t ask.

She’d stay right where she was, thank you very much.

Staring around the room that used to be her favorite haven, she fought tears and wondered how her life had come to feel like a prison. Nothing was the same. Not her job, not Emily, who didn’t seem to need her anymore, not her house, not anything she’d counted on to be constant and calming and hers.

Certainly not with Ben’s undeniably demanding presence. A presence she should be grateful for, as she knew what it cost him to be caged here. But because of him, even her relationship with Emily had changed. She’d watched her daughter turn to someone else for comfort and love. The loss of their closeness, which was all Rachel seemed to have at the moment, left her on shaky ground, and she covered her face with her hands.

“Rachel.”

Jerking her head up, she faced the one man who’d always shattered any control she’d had. Too bad she had none left to shatter. “Damn it, you went away once. Why won’t you go away now?”

“You going to start with that again?” He pushed away from the doorway and came toward her. From the look of his messed-up hair, bare chest and low-slung sweats, at least one of them had been sleeping last night. Irrationally, she resented him for that, too.

“How did you get here?” he asked.

“Walked.”

“You did?” He looked shocked. “You should have called for me to help you. You working?”

“Yeah.” With a bitter laugh, she gestured to her empty easel. “Working away.”

“Rachel-” He broke off when the phone rang, and since it was right by his elbow, he grabbed it without so much as asking if she minded.

“Hello?” His face went tense. “I thought you were going to call me back on my cell- Yes…you’ve got a lead on him?” Ben glanced at Rachel, eyes grim, jaw bunching, and went quiet as he listened. Given how his eyes narrowed, the news wasn’t good.

“Who is it?” she asked, only to be completely ignored. “Ben.”

He actually put up a hand silencing her. She glared at him, furious, but somehow her gaze ended up on his chest, then his flat, ridged belly, and the way his sweats sagged nearly down far enough to see-

“I’ll be right down,” he said, disconnecting with deceptive calm while danger rolled off him in waves. “I’ve got to run,” he said, one hundred and eighty pounds of carefully controlled temper.

“Who was that?”

“Tell Em I’ll be back for breakfast.”

“Ben-”

He was already at the door, but with an oath, he came back. Cupping her head with incredibly gentle hands, he tipped her face up. “It’ll be okay,” he said making a heartbreaking promise she didn’t understand but wanted to.

“Ben-”

“Shh.” He let his lips meet hers in a sweet, clinging kiss. “I’ll be back.”

Yes, but how to tell him that’s what she was afraid of?

She brought her fingers up to her lips and watched him go, wondering why she’d let him kiss her.

Because she’d lost her mind, that’s why. He’d been trying to distract her, and damn it, it had worked.

Struck by an overwhelming curiosity, she picked up the receiver of her phone and checked caller ID.

Unavailable.

Rachel lifted her head and stared at the door where Ben had just vanished.

From downstairs she heard the front door shut.

He was gone. Gone to meet someone…unavailable.

She hit star-six-nine to dial the number back. As it started to ring, her heart began to pound.

“Agent Brewer.”

Rachel stared at the phone.

“Hello?”

With a stammered apology, Rachel hung up and wondered what the hell was going on. Who was Brewer and what was the big secret?