Home To Family

“Well, I do,” she said stubbornly. “And you don’t get a vote.”

“C’mon, Les. Look at the arrogance in his stance, the superior way he tilts his head, as though Addy’s requested an audience with a king. You can just tell that he thinks he’s someone special. God’s gift to the world.”

She made an annoyed sound, though he could tell she wasn’t really angry. “Oh, now I get it. You’re afraid he’ll take that title away from you.”

“If I was, I promise you, I’m not anymore.”

His response stunned him. He didn’t like the way those words came out, slightly bitter and angry-sounding. He felt every muscle in his body tense. When Les’s smile faded and her posture went rigid, he knew she’d heard it as well.

“Matt—”

“Sorry,” he said, hoping to keep her from saying anything he didn’t want to hear. “I didn’t intend to kill the mood.”

Before he could stop her, she lifted his left hand and tilted it toward the light.

Sometimes that hand seemed like a foreign object to him now. A part of him, and yet not. It wasn’t misshapen or repulsive, really. Some unattractive scars where the bullet had entered and exited. A network of stitch marks from the last surgery that had excised scar tissue bogging down the tendons. Most of the damage couldn’t be seen.

Leslie turned his hand over a couple of times, looking at it closely, like a mother inspecting a messy kid before he sat down at the dinner table. “How bad is it?” she asked in a soft voice. “Really?”

He considered lying. He didn’t want to discuss it, not even with Les. But she knew him too well, and because she was a nurse, she’d probably know if he tried to down play it.

Still, he shrugged, trying to sound as if he didn’t spend nearly every night wondering how the hell he was going to reinvent a medical career that depended on the most subtle dexterity of both his hands.

“The flexor tendons are still totally screwed,” he told her on a ragged breath, in a voice he hardly recognized. “There’s triggering in both the middle and forefinger so that there’s a sixty percent loss of flexibility.”

She looked up at him. “Cortisone injections?”

“Back in the beginning.”

“Therapy?”

He gave her a grim smile. “I’ve had some progress since the immobilization cast came off. The ring finger used to be completely locked so I had to straighten it by force, but that’s getting better.” He shook his head. “It could have been much worse, I suppose, but you know as well as I do what the ramifications will be if I can’t get significant mobility back.”

Les shook her head at him. “I wish you’d have let me come to Chicago to help you. Doc would have given me the extra time off, and I know I could have made a difference.”

That was the last thing he had wanted—Les or his family seeing him at his worst. “I had the whole hospital helping me,” he told her. “There’s nothing you could have done for me that wasn’t already being done.”

“I’m not talking about just the physical help,” she said. “I know how to make you do what’s best for you. How to keep you on the straight and narrow when all you want to do is slack off.”

He knew that was true. Les had always been the practical one, the one who never let him get away with anything. But the thought of her witnessing his weakness, his struggle…. In their relationship, he was the one who had always been strong.

“It wasn’t a good time,” he admitted. “I wasn’t someone anyone liked to be around, and I would never subject you to the person I was during all those months of recuperation.”

It wasn’t just the poor lighting. She looked stunned. He realized that, before this moment, she hadn’t had a clue how serious this injury was for a man who’d been touted in a medical magazine last winter as one of country’s rising stars of microsurgery. No reason why she should have known, he supposed. God knows, he hadn’t shared much of this with his parents, who already had enough to worry about with running the lodge.

Lost in the private misery of his own thoughts, he wasn’t prepared for Les’s reaction.

Cradling his hand in hers, she bent her head, touching her lips to the center of his palm. Spellbound, he could do nothing more than watch her, every nerve in his body tingling. In all the years of their unique history together, they’d never shared this kind of deliberately intimate moment before. Not once. Not even on that cold January night so long ago.

He felt a sweet sense of expansion in his chest, and a piercing alarm, all at once. He might even have reached out with his good hand to stroke her hair.

But in that moment, she lifted her head and looked at him. “I’m so sorry, Matt,” she said in a whisper filled with sadness. “This should never have happened to you. Not this.”

Pity was in her eyes. The one thing he did not want to see. From anyone. Especially not from Les.

He felt his pulse strong in his throat, as though he had swallowed a clock and it had lodged there. He pulled his hand out of her grasp, and somehow managed to shrug. “It shouldn’t happen to anyone, but I’m sure I’ll adjust,” he said. “Pity doesn’t make it any more palatable.”

She looked confused. “Matt, I wasn’t—”

“I should go in,” he said, stepping away from her. “There’s no point in standing out here in the cold. You should go in, too. It’s been good to see you again, Les.”

Inside the house were friends and family, full of questions and curiosity. They would touch those locked places in his mind. There would be whispers in quiet corners and surreptitious looks. They would stumble through well-meaning, but completely unrealistic predictions about his career. But how bad could it be compared to what he’d just witnessed in Les’s eyes?

Leslie made a move toward him. “Matt…” she began in an aggrieved voice, but by then he had already swung away from her and was headed for the front door.

CHAPTER THREE

THE NEXT MORNING Leslie stopped by the darkened clinic to pick up another tube of cream for Kari D’Angelo. Delivering the medicated ointment to her friend offered the best excuse to see Matt again.

The day was cold, with a faint dusting of new snow on all the buildings, so that even the oldest of them gleamed fresh and sparkling. The air was filled with the scent of wood smoke and pine. A brilliant blue sky made Broken Yoke look postcard pretty this morning, Leslie decided.

But she knew the town was barely holding its own. Last year they’d lost one of the motels down by the interstate. This year, the doors had closed on two restaurants, a flower shop and Myerson Cleaners, which had been in business for nearly sixty years. The week-long festival Broken Yoke had held this past summer— Mayor Wickham’s brainchild to bring tourists into town—had been an embarrassment and a costly flop. Merchants were still stopping the mayor on the street to complain about the money they’d lost.

The recent economic difficulties hadn’t extended to the clinic. With Doc Hayward one of only two full-time physicians in the immediate area, the waiting room stayed busy. During certain times of the year—flu season, for example—Leslie put in so many hours that sometimes her own cat didn’t recognize her when she came home.

Leslie realized that her attention had wandered, and she jerked it back to the road. She had always been a terrible driver. It was common knowledge in town that she couldn’t parallel park, that her turns were too sharp and her stops too abrupt. Even Matt, patient and filled with the masculine certainty that he could teach any one to drive, had almost given up on her when she’d flunked her test a second time.

It wasn’t until she turned off the car’s engine in the parking lot of Lightning River Lodge that she finally took the time to sit and gather her thoughts.

The lodge was one of her favorite places, grand without being pretentious, warm and welcoming to anyone who crossed its threshold. Compared to the yellowed linoleum floor and fake wood-paneled walls of the trailer she’d called home as a child, it was like stepping into a dreamscape. Massive log beams. Huge windows. Cozy corners where you could sink into furniture that folded around your body like a glove.

She supposed there were fancier resorts along the craggy, majestic mountaintops that made up Colorado’s Front Range, but Leslie couldn’t think of any that offered what Lightning River Lodge was famous for—the hospitality of its hosts, the D’Angelo clan.

A gracious reception wasn’t just reserved for paying guests, either. Leslie had been visiting here for years, and the family had always welcomed her into their midst. A thought slid into her mind with frightening clarity. The D’Angelos had come to mean more to her than her own family.

Why then, this hesitancy?

She remembered that fleeting vision of Matt’s face last night in the porch light, the abrupt end to their conversation. It had started out so well—just like the old days—with laughter and sarcasm and the warm camaraderie that came from being with a person you knew as well as yourself.

But when talk had turned to Matt’s damaged hand, he had done something he’d never done before. Not with her.

He had shut down. Pushed her away.

That reaction had been a completely new experience. Over the years they’d naturally had a few disagreements, but there had always been open and honest warfare between them, never that wary, distancing chill.

She knew the cause of it, of course. She should have chosen her words more carefully, should have schooled her features before responding to the sight of his injury. Matt, who had always been so gifted, so confident and bold, had never been pitied in his life. But in just a moment, with a few words she had instantly regretted, pity was exactly what she had offered him.

He had left the party before she could make it right between them, but this morning she would explain somehow. He’d understand. He had to. A real rift between them didn’t bear thinking about.