Love in Bloom (8 page)

He had more patience with others than himself.  "Shep wants to please.  It's just when a distraction or innate instincts take over that we have a problem."  In some ways, men and dogs weren't so different.

Paige's sleek hair swung across her cheek as she leaned forward to dab at his hand with another sterile patch.  The whiff of her perfume made him lean back.

He looked over her shoulder and stared at the pattern of the wallpaper on the wall behind her.  "I took him along to Reisterstown last weekend and he behaved like a gentleman.  Of course, he got plenty of attention from my mother and Trish."

"Trish is your sister?"

Clay nodded.  The soreness of the cuts was nothing compared to the pain of another kind of need Paige stirred up by touching him.

"Don't you usually take him along?"

"No.  I only go for short visits."

Paige unclasped his hand and rummaged in her bag.  "You stayed all weekend?"

Clay grunted.  "No.  An afternoon and evening.  Trish announced her engagement, so we discussed wedding plans."

"How nice!"

"She thinks so.  I do too.  Michael's a nice guy.  But they've been living together for two years.  I didn't know if they'd want to make it permanent."

"Have you ever been married?"

The tension in his body made Clay say more sharply than he intended,  "No."  He shifted his feet under the table.  "Have you?"

Paige sat against the carved back of the chair, tube of antibiotic cream in hand.  "No."  She applied the cream on each wound, watching carefully what she was doing.

He'd had about all he could take.  "Soon finished?"

She capped the tube and took bandages from her bag.  "Soon."

She picked up his hand again to examine it, but this time his fingers curled around hers.  "You have a healing touch."

He could feel the same increase in the pulse at her wrist as he could feel at his temples.  He stroked her pulse point with his index finger.

Her eyes were as dark blue as a deep sea.  She pulled her hand away and in a husky voice said, "I have to apply the bandages."  She did, her professional mode taking over.  "Keep these on until you go to bed.  Then apply more cream.  Apply it three times a day.  If the cuts bother you tomorrow, bandage them again.  If you see any redness around them or swelling, come into the office immediately."

Clay respected the doctor in her.  Although he knew he was playing with fire, he wanted the woman back instead.  "Are you ready for that canoe ride?"

She put away the supplies and clicked the bag shut, looking indecisive.  Finally, she answered, "I'd like that.  But what about the games?"

Clay flipped the tablet toward him and skimmed down the list.  "It looks good to me.  We can worry about logistics and supplies closer to the time."

Canoeing on the lake an hour later, Paige thought about Clay's words "closer to the time."  She'd probably be leaving a few weeks after the celebration.  The thought created a melancholy she didn't understand.  She also didn't understand all the feelings that had surged through her when she was caring for Clay's hand.  She touched her patients automatically to give comfort...because she didn't know the language or because often she couldn't find the words.  But with Clay...

He'd become much more than a patient.  That's why she'd hesitated about the canoe ride.  If she was going to be leaving in July, she shouldn't get involved.  Should she?

Clay tapped her shoulder with the tip of his oar.  "You're supposed to be relaxing, not thinking."

A few sprinkles of water dribbled down her arm.  "I am."

"Don't fib to me, Dr. Conrad.  You haven't pushed with that paddle in at least five minutes."

She swung her legs around until she sat facing him.  He looked at home here.  Big and strong, his muscles rippling under his green knit shirt as he rowed.  His jeans stretched across his thighs as he braced his feet in the bottom of the canoe.  The sun cast blue highlights in his black hair and a few strands of gray glimmered.

If they'd been sitting the opposite way with him leading, she could have watched him.

"You did that like a pro," he commented.

"I've been in canoes before.  And on rubber rafts.  That's how we traveled around some of the settlements."

He grinned.  "And you're afraid to take a balloon ride?"

She smiled back.  "Something about water seems safer than air."

Clay's gaze said her logic escaped him.  He gestured at the blue lake water, the maples, evergreen and poplars rising from the shore to the brilliant turquoise sky.  The sun cast its rays, making diamonds dance on the water.  "I think this is the most beautiful country I've ever seen.  How does what you've seen compare?"

She laid her oar along side of her leg and studied her surroundings.  "This has a...civilized look.  Maybe because I know just beyond are highways and developments and hospitals.  The country I've seen is more primitive, not defined by man's hand.  Except in the well-populated areas."

"No man-made lakes?"

"Only where the people were taught how to build reservoirs and irrigate the land.  The problem is there aren't enough teachers and there's too much government red tape."  She sighed, took a deep breath of air fragrant with pine and smiled.  "But I don't want to think about that now.  This is so peaceful.  It's just what I needed."

Clay laid his oar across his knees and pointed along the shore.  "Look."

A mother duck and three ducklings swam close to the land.  Every so often, one would plunge its head into the water, then look up, shaking off the excess.  Paige laughed.  "They make you want to go swimming."

"The lake water's still cold.  Mid July it warms up."

Her humor faded.  She might be gone by then.

Clay dug into his back pocket and pulled out two small packets.  "Peanuts.  Want a pack?"

When she nodded, he tossed one to her.  She caught the packet with both hands and placed it on her thigh unopened.  "There's something I need to talk to you about."  She hated to interfere with the pleasantness of their surroundings, the lovely time she'd had today.  But she had to talk to Clay about Ben.  Maybe she was being so persistent because she sensed Clay needed to talk to the teenager as much as the teenager needed to talk to him.  As cautious as Clay was, she guessed deep pain was involved in what had happened to him--emotional and physical pain.  The best way to deal with pain was to get it out in the open.

Clay opened his peanuts and popped a few into his mouth.  "About our plans for the Fourth?"

"No.  About Ben Hockensmith."

Clay poured out a few more peanuts then transferred them to his mouth.  After he chewed and swallowed, he said, "I thought that was settled."

"I was afraid it wasn't.  And I was right.  Ben's session with the counselor didn't go well."

Clay carefully folded over the top of the packet and stuffed them back in his pocket.  "I hope you're not basing the success or failure of his therapy on one session."

Paige restlessly moved her feet and the canoe rocked.  "Ben has had therapy before.  The month he was in the rehab hospital, he saw a counselor every day.  He's sick of it.  Right now, he doesn't need talk therapy.  He needs a role model, someone to give him direction, someone to show him there's a reason to wake up tomorrow."

"That's one big responsibility you want to heap on someone's shoulders."

"I just need someone to get him started.  Clay, he's hurting."  As soon as she said it, she felt Clay withdraw.

"I'm not the only person on the planet who can help this boy."

"You're the only one I know about."

The nerve worked in his jaw.  "You don't even know what happened to me.  You have no idea--"

"Tell me."

Her gentle request seemed to bring him pain.  The lines on his face, the deep green of his eyes told her better than words.  His words tore at her heart.  "I'd like to."

She waited.

"But there's more involved than simply talking about my recovery."

"A few hours with Ben could make a difference to both of you."

Clay raked his hand through his hair in frustration and looked out over the lake.  Paige was right.  A few hours could make a difference.  Then again, they might not.  In the meantime, his life would get turned inside out.

"Can you promise me something?" Paige asked quietly.

He didn't look at her.  "What?"

"That you'll give it serious thought."

Clay picked up his paddle and pushed it into the water.

CHAPTER FOUR

Clay opened the closet in his living room Tuesday night, reaching to the shelf above his coats to pull out a stack of books he'd bought but never read.  Maybe he could concentrate on a spy thriller.  He couldn't seem to concentrate on much else.  He needed to forget the blue of Paige's eyes, her soft touch, her compassion for one of her patients.

A glint of gold far back on the shelf caught Clay's eye.  He pulled the carton around the books and lifted it down.  The trophies.  He'd forgotten they were up there.  Purposely?

His father had delivered them soon after Clay moved in,  when the floors were still unfinished, a bed, a stereo, and a chair his only furniture.  His dad had asked him not to sign the final papers on the store, to use his insurance settlement for something other than the "ramshackle" house and a "bankrupt" business.  He'd tried to convince Clay again that he should stay in Reisterstown and become his partner. 

But Clay had known deep in his soul that he needed a fresh start without someone else's expectations driving him.  From what he'd understood from his mother and Trish, the old Clay had won those trophies more for his father than for himself.

Clay cut off the thoughts, unwilling to dig up emotions that he'd put to rest.  He had no desire to bring back the nightmares that had stopped only last year.  But he couldn't stop wondering if Ben Hockensmith was having the same difficulty with his father that Clay had experienced.  Ben had been a football star.  Had his father pinned his hopes and dreams on him?  Was Ben feeling the pressure to fulfill everybody else's expectations without having the chance to decide what he wanted?

Had his friends stuck by him?  Why wouldn't they?  Ben remembered who they were.  Yet if his rehabilitation had slowed him down, taken him out of the mainstream, he might have been moving too slow for friends to want to stick around.

Clay examined a trophy carefully, as always seeking a sign of recognition, a sign that all the doctors and experts were wrong.  But reality stepped in.  The trophy in his hands had been earned by a boy, a young man Clay didn't know.  There was nothing he could do about that.