A Jar of Hearts (5 page)

James jogged up the last few feet of the beach towards his house. He had tossed and turned all night, unable to sleep at all after he had seen her with Nicholas. He thought he would have been strong enough to see her with another man, but it had all been a lie. He couldn’t be with her and yet he didn’t want her to be with anyone but him. And when Nicholas had wound his arm around her, his heart had clenched. No, she suited better in no one else’s arms except his own.

“Hello?” Julia called out to him.

He stopped to turn towards him.

She was looking frantic and close to tears. “Have you seen, Anne?” she asked with a tremble in her voice.

“Anne?” His hormones kicked inside him. What was she on about?

“My friend… we live together. You met her a few days ago.” She licked her lips nervously. “I know you just came from your run and probably saw her somewhere along the beach.”

“I haven’t,” he said, frowning, his eyes immediately roaming the length of the beach.

“She’s blind and I don’t know where she has gone to,” she muttered, wringing her hands. “She doesn’t know the place…”

“Give me your number,” he said quickly, pulling out his phone. She recited it to him and he gave her a short buzz on her phone. “And now you have mine. Call me if you find her and I’ll do the same. Stay here in case she returns home and I’ll scour the beach further up.”

He left her staring after him worriedly and ran up the beach, peering closely about him. She couldn’t have gone too far. Surely, if she was in trouble someone would try and help her. The thought of her laying hurt somewhere, ignored by the world almost clamped his chest walls. People couldn’t be so cruel. They’d see she was blind and they would help her.

But when he stood in the sands almost fifteen minutes later, looking about him helplessly and panting deliriously from the panic rising up his throat, he couldn’t help imagine the worst. He noticed a corner of the beach grazed by rocks. It was on a lower elevation than the rest of the beach and he had initially dismissed the idea that she would even be able to walk there. The rocks were slippery, littered with broken coral. But now that he was desperate, he couldn’t risk not looking there also.

As he edged closer, he saw a woman huddled by a rock. Her head was lowered but he knew it just had to be Anne.  He knew every part of her body and he would never forget how she felt against him.

Her fair hair was mussed in the wind and her arms were stained with dirt. But none of that mattered. He had found her and that was all he cared about.

“Anne,” he said, startling her.

“Eric!” she exclaimed, almost hopefully.

His feet froze at the mere sound of his old name from her lips. Did she know who he was?

“It’s James,” he said rather stiffly.

She turned away and buried her head back between her knees.

He let out a breath of relief. It must have been just his voice. “Julia is worried about you. You should start heading back home.”

“Go away,” she mumbled.

“You can’t sit here like this.”

She lifted her head, her face burning with rage. “Don’t tell me what to do? Who are you anyway? I don’t know you.”

He clenched his jaw. So she had decided to get stubborn.  “This is a difficult spot to stroll into. How did you get here?”

She picked up her cane and swung it at him. “With this! Go away!”

He leapt back, dodging it in time. “Be reasonable, Anne! People will think you have lost your mind!”

“What does it matter to you if I have?! Leave me alone!”

He pulled in a deep breath to ease his frustration. “In that case, I’ll simply call Julia to come and get you.”

“No!” she said quickly. “Please don’t. I don’t want her to see me like this. She’d tell my father and he would take me away.”

It was something he didn’t want as well. He knew just how much she loved her independence, and the constant scrutiny of her father would only make her more miserable. On the other hand, he had found his card and he was going to play it.

“Leaving you here is out of the question. Either walk back with me or I call Julia.”

“No, please… I’ll go back with you.” She bit her lip nervously. “I think I may have stepped on some coral and it’s pricked me. I pulled out what I could, but-”

But he was already down on his knees, picking up her feet to inspect it. “What were you doing without your shoes?” he hissed.

“I thought I would slip off the rocks with my shoes on. And I wanted to feel the wet sand beneath my feet…”  She bobbed her head deliriously as he ran his finger over her foot, trying to feel for any jagged pieces of intrusive coral. “It hurts,” she winced, trying to restrain her tears from falling.

He glanced at her angrily. “You should know better than trying to walk without shoes. If you wanted to have a feel for wet sand, there are miles of soft sand stretching this beach. Why did it have to be these damned rocks? Of all the absurd things to do, Anne, did it have to be this?”

She tried to pull back her foot from him, her rage returning to her flaming face. “Let me go. I changed my mind. Call Julia!”

But he held onto her ankle adamantly, refusing to comply. He wouldn’t let her go
that
easily, especially after she put him in a wringer with terrible thoughts of what would and could have happened to her.

“Yeah, I suppose you would do that. You’d rather cut off your nose to spite my face. You’d take the risk with Julia calling your father than listen to the truth,” he minced out the words.

“What do you want?!”

“I want you to come to your senses and realize that what you did was stupid! Anne, these rocks are dangerous. If you had slipped off them, you could have easily been washed away into the sea and no one would have known the wiser. The rocks are in such a corner, it’s hard to access directly. Do you realize you could have killed yourself?”

“Maybe I want to die! Maybe I don’t want to live anymore…” She began to weep. “I’m tired… I’m tired of me.”

His heart ached. He wanted to hold her so bad, it hurt him inside. His fingers around her ankle turned into a soft caress. He shouldn’t have been so harsh on her.

His eyes ran hungrily over her face. He was going to have to risk it. He reached over to her and picked her up into his arms.

“What are you doing?” she asked with alarm.

“You can’t walk back. You have a gash in your foot from that large piece of coral you pulled out and I saw that there are still some tiny fragments under your skin.”

“Well then… could you drop me off at a doctor’s surgery? They’ll take care of it there.”

“It is nothing that Julia can’t handle. All you need are some tweezers and antiseptic.”

She clutched his collar, her eyes begging him to stop. “Not home. Please, don’t take me home.”

He looked down at her. She was finally in his arms. Her hair was brushing his face, his arms were woven around her body, feeling her contours and her breast was pressed into his torso. The hardness in his body told him he wasn’t ready to let her go.

“Fine, I won’t take you to your home,” he said gruffly. “I’ll take you to mine.”

He pulled out his first aid kit and strolled back to her, sitting anxiously on a kitchen bar stool.

He sat at her feet with a bowl of warm water and began washing off the dirt from her legs. “I just called Julia and told her that you were with me.” A dash of fear clouded her face and he added, “I didn’t tell her about your little misadventure.”

“Thank you,” she mumbled with slight relief.

He cupped his hand with water and poured it delicately over her foot. He ran his hand under it, loving the touch of her skin. He towel-dried her feet and then dressed her wound, taking his time with her.

“Why are you doing this?” she asked curiously.

He glanced up at her. “What?”

“Why do you bother with me? Do you pity me because I am blind?”

He put her feet aside and picked up the bowl of water. “What makes you think I feel sorry for you?”

“Wouldn’t it have been more normal for you to take me home in spite of what I asked you?”

He smiled. She had always been sharp. He would have to get around her to avoid leaking his true identity and he hoped he wouldn’t need to work so hard to do that every time she was with him. “How can you be sure what’s normal for me? As far as you know, this could be my normal.”

She screwed her lips. “Do you always have an answer for everything?”

He grinned. “You asked me a question, I gave you an answer.”

She pulled in a deep breath in an effort to reign in another sharp remark. “Well, since I am already here, is there anything I could possibly occupy myself with?”

He straightened up, thinking rapidly. He didn’t want to bore her and he certainly didn’t want to send her off too soon. “I have a piano. You are welcome to play that, if you like,” he added carefully.

She nodded. “Do you play?”

He walked over to her and picked her in his arms. “No.”

“Surely, I can hobble my way over to your piano,” she gasped.

“Perhaps.” The corners of his mouth lifted into a wide smile. He was going to use every little excuse to hold her. “But I can’t spend half the day waiting for you to crawl over to it.”

She flared, kicking her legs in an attempt to shake herself off him. “Put me down! Put me down this instant!”

“It would be in your good interest to stop that,” he muttered.

“And if I don’t?”

“I’ll slap your ass.”

“You can’t do that!” she puffed out in shock.

“If you continue behaving like a spoilt little girl, I would have to treat you like one.”

“Are you snickering at me?”She tilted her head, listening for any more flections she could pick up in his voice.

“Would I dare?” He pressed his lips together tightly, trying not to smile.

She rolled her eyes. “How big is your house? Because it is taking a pretty long time to get to your piano.”

He sat her down on a piano bench. “This is it. Let me know when you’re ready and I’ll take you home.”

She lifted her head up hesitantly. “You said you don’t play the piano, then why do you have one?”

He leaned down towards her until his face was an inch away from hers. His breath brushed against hers, his lips almost met hers. She leaned back and he followed, stopping only when she reached her farthest. In desperation, she put her hands against his chest to push him back, nervousness flooding her body.

Her hands felt warm, its heat penetrating his thin, tank top. Was she afraid of him? He caressed her soft tendrils framing her face. He wanted to kiss her. Nothing else made sense to him at this point. His mind was blurred from all good reason to step away from her.

“I always hoped you would turn up to play it,” he whispered against her.

He closed his eyes. It was the truth after all. He pulled back and straightened up. Why did he torture himself so much?

“Wow… just wow, wow.” She scowled. “You don’t spare your flirts even for a blind woman.”

“You are a woman and a beautiful one too. What’s the blind got to do with it?”

She flushed and turned towards the piano. She had finally given up on bantering with him. Disappointment filled him slightly. He had been enjoying their little battle.

“I’ll be in the next room. Just give me a shout when you need something,” he said, shuffling uneasily. He didn’t want to leave her. But he knew if he pushed too hard, he’d drive her away.

She ignored him and began playing slowly, the soft tunes of the piano filling his usually quiet house. Her presence, her touch, her smell transformed it into the home he had always wanted it to be. And until she had walked into it, he hadn’t realized she was the only person who could fill its emptiness.