Joan Johnston - Hawk's Way Grooms - Hawk's Way - The Virgin Groom

Her brother stood white-faced before her. “It’s Mac. He fell.”

Oh, dear God. “Should I call an ambulance?”

“I don’t know,” Colt said, his hands visibly trembling. “I thought maybe you ought to come and see for yourself first. It was awful, Jewel. One minute Mac was fine, and then Huck tackled him and…he didn’t get up.”

“Huck tackled him? What on earth were you boys thinking, Colt? You know Mac’s recovering from surgery!”

“We thought it would be more fun—”

“Did he hit his head when he fell?”

“I don’t think so. I think—”

Before Jewel could make the decision whether to call 911, Mac appeared at the kitchen door, one arm around Huck’s shoulder, the other pressed against the thigh of his scarred leg.

Colt had been pale, but Mac’s face was completely drained of blood. His teeth were gritted against the pain, and he was leaning heavily on Huck Duncan’s shoulder and favoring his leg. It took her a second to realize it wasn’t his poor, wounded and scarred left leg he was favoring, it was the other one. Now both legs were injured!

“What happened?” she asked as she crossed quickly to hold the screen door open for him. As soon as she moved, Colt seemed to wake from his shocked trance and took a place on Mac’s other side. The two boys helped him keep his weight off both legs as they eased him through the kitchen and onto the sofa in the living room.

While the boys stood awkwardly at her side, Jewel dropped to her knees and eased Mac’s foot up onto a rawhide stool that Grandpa Garth had given her one Christmas, a relic of bygone days at his ranch, Hawk’s Way. Then she started untying the laces of Mac’s athletic shoe.

“I can do that,” he said, trying to brush her hands away.

“Sure you can, but let me,” she insisted. She eased off the shoe and the sock beneath it and immediately saw the problem. His ankle was swelling. “Can you move it?” she asked.

Slowly, hissing in a breath, he rotated the ankle. “Doesn’t feel broken,” he said. “I’ve had enough sprains to recognize one when I see it. Damn. This is all I needed.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Macready,” Huck said in an anguished voice. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

Mac looked up at the boy and said, “Call me Mac. And it wasn’t your fault, Huck. Your tackle wasn’t what caused the problem. I just didn’t see that gopher hole soon enough.”

Jewel watched him smile at the boy, pretending it was no big deal, when she knew very well it was. This was a setback, no doubt about it.

“But your leg—” Huck protested, his eyes skipping from the awful scars on Mac’s left leg to the swelling on his right ankle. “How’re you gonna walk now?”

“One step at a time,” Mac quipped with an easy grin. “Fortunately, I brought a cane with me. That should help matters some.”

Jewel turned to Colt and said, “Wrap some ice in a towel and bring it here. You go help him, Huck.”

When they were both gone, she gently moved the ankle. “Are you sure it isn’t broken?”

He sighed. It was a sound of disgust. “It’s a sprain, Jewel. Not even a bad one.”

“I should have warned you about gopher holes,” she said.

“I didn’t step in a gopher hole,” he said quietly, looking at the hands he held fisted against his thighs.

“Then what—” She saw the truth in the wary look he gave her. His leg—his right leg—must not have supported him. She reached out a hand, and he clutched it with one of his.

She didn’t offer him words of comfort. She could see from the grim look on his face that words wouldn’t change what had happened. She didn’t point out the obvious—that his football career was over. He had to see that for himself.

But if she had thought this accident would make Mac quit, he quickly disabused her of the notion.

“This’ll slow down my rehabilitation some,” he said. “Will you mind if I hang around a little longer? I know camp’s starting in a day or so—”

She rose to her feet, her hand coming free of his. “Of course you can stay!” she said, her voice unnaturally sharp. She didn’t want him to go away. She liked having him here. But she couldn’t believe he was ignoring the implications of this injury. How long was he going to go on batting his head against the wall? Couldn’t he see the truth? Didn’t he understand what this accident meant?

“Mac—”

He cut her off with a shake of his head. “Don’t say it. Don’t even suggest it.”

“Suggest what?”

“This doesn’t change my plans.”

“But—”

His face turned hard, jaw jutting, shoulders braced in determination. She had seen that look before, but she had been too young and naive to recognize it for what it was.

“Be my friend, Jewel,” he said. “Don’t tell me why I can’t do what I want to do. Just help me to do it.”

She stared at him as though she had never seen him before. She knew now why Peter Macready had survived a form of cancer that killed most kids. Why he had become the best rookie receiver in the NFL, despite the fact he had never been the fastest athlete on the field. Mac didn’t give up. Mac didn’t see obstacles. He saw his goal and headed for it without worrying about whether it could be reached. And so he invariably reached it.

Jewel wished she had half his confidence. She might be a married woman now with a baby in her arms.

Maybe it wasn’t too late for her. Maybe she could learn from him how it was done. Maybe she could take advantage of Mac’s presence to give her the impetus to change her life. If Mac could recover from a shattered leg, why couldn’t she recover from a shattered life?

The boys returned with two dish towels loaded with ice and fell all over each other arranging the cold compresses around Mac’s ankle. Jewel saw Mac wince when their overenthusiasm rocked his ankle, but instead of snapping at them, he launched into a story about how he had played a whole football game with a taped-up sprained ankle, thanks to an injection of painkiller.

The teenage boys dropped to his feet in awe and admiration. Jewel started to leave, but Mac reached up and caught her hand. “Join us,” he said.

“I have work—”

“Just for a few minutes.”

She figured maybe he didn’t want to be stuck alone with the boys. She would stay with him long enough to let them hear a story or two before shooing them away. She settled beside Mac on the worn leather couch—another donation from her grandfather’s house at Hawk’s Way. Mac’s arm slid around her as naturally as if he did it every day.

She resisted the urge to lay her head on his shoulder. Putting his arm around her had been a friendly gesture, nothing more. But she was aware of the way his hand cupped her shoulder, massaging it as he regaled the three of them with stories of life in the pro football arena.

As she sat listening to him, an insidious idea took root.

What if she came to Mac tonight and explained her problem and asked him to help her out?

She trusted Mac not to hurt her. She trusted him to go slow, to be patient. He didn’t love her, and she didn’t love him, so there wouldn’t be that particular pitfall complicating matters. It would be just one friend helping out another.

She could even explain to him how she had gotten the idea. That she had seen his determination to play football again and been inspired to try to solve a problem that she had thought would never be resolved.

All she wanted him to do was teach her how to arouse a man and satisfy him…and be satisfied by him.

She tried to imagine how Mac might react to such a suggestion. He was obviously an experienced man of the world. Only…What if he wasn’t attracted to her that way?