The Enchantment (28 page)

"No one can help me, Em. It's a—" his voice fell to a shamed whisper "—defect."

Emma swallowed the lump in her throat and forced a thin smile. "You should know better than to challenge the infamous 'Mad Hatter' of Wall Street."

Using her smaller body as a crutch, Emma levered Larence to his feet. Together, one step at a time, they headed for the fire. By the time they reached the small circle of light, Larence's face was a taut, gray mask of pain. His breathing was fast and shallow, and sweat beaded his forehead. He said nothing, though, and his silent strength moved Emma as words never could have.

He half stooped, half collapsed beside the fire. His breath expelled in a groaning sigh. "Thanks," he said without meeting her gaze.

Kneeling beside him, Emma stared at his profile, willing him to look up at her, to use those perceptive eyes of his to read what was in her heart.

His gaze remained transfixed on the fire.

She turned her attention to the dusty pointed tip of his boot. Do it . . . For once in your life, give some-THE ENCHANTMENT

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thing back. . . . She scooted backward until she was even with his feet. Hesitantly, she reached out.

He yanked his foot out of her grasp. "What are you doing?"

She met his gaze head-on. Fear curled cold fingers around her heart. "Don't stop me, Larence," she said in a voice so quiet, she knew he had to lean toward her to hear it. "Please ..."

They stared at each other for a long moment. Neither one of them moved or spoke.

"Please," she whispered again.

Slowly, so slowly, Larence's booted foot slid through the dirt toward her.

Relief brought a shaking smile to her lips as she gently removed his boot. Easing his foot into her lap, she carefully peeled away his red woolen sock and dropped it in the dirt beside her.

She looked down at his bare foot, so colorless and swollen against the pale blue of her skirt, and felt a tremor of pity at the pain it must cause him.

He jerked his foot out of her lap. "I don't want your pity." Anger flashed in his eyes, anger and something else. Something that made her feel about two inches tall.

Humiliation.

"Don't do that," she said quietly. Give me your foot." She took hold of his twisted ankle and gently but firmly drew it back into her lap. She stared at it for a long moment, seeing the tiny, uncontrollable tremble that shook his toes.

Please God don't let me hurt him.

Her fingertips began to glide in small, barely felt circles against his cool flesh. Down along the pale skin of his foot to his toes, then slowly back up to the crisp

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brown hair that stopped just above his ankle. She carefully avoided the swollen, discolored ball of his ankle. Her fingers kept moving, massaging, until the tremble in his toes disappeared.

As she felt him relax, she glanced up at him. His head was thrown back, his eyes were closed. The tiny network of pain lines around his mouth had disappeared, and the color had returned to his cheeks.

It was working, she realized. She let her gaze fall back to his foot. Swallowing thickly, she decided to take a chance: She touched his ankle. Her palm formed to the damaged bone, warmed it.

He stiffened. The trembling began anew. She knew instinctively what he was thinking. He thought she'd be repulsed by touching his deformity. He was embarrassed by it, ashamed. Any second now he was going to pull away.

Her hold on that most damaged part of his flesh tightened. His pulse throbbed beneath her fingertips, matched the rapid beating of her heart. With a caring and a gentleness she'd never before possessed, she began to massage his foot. By touch she told him that he was perfect and whole in her eyes.

In massaging the aches and pains from his foot, Emma found a peace she'd never expected, a sense of freedom she'd never known existed. Amazingly, it made her feel good to give him comfort, made her happy to be needed. How long had it been since someone needed Emmaline Amanda Hatter for anything except a signature on a bank draft?

"You stopped it," he said in a voice filled with quiet wonder.

Emma felt a surge of pride. Impulsively she gave his toes a squeeze, then looked up. In his eyes she saw the

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same quiet wonder she'd heard in his voice, and it filled her anew with pride. Her fingers dangled familiarly on either side of his foot.

"No one's ever done that before. I didn't even know it was possible. Thanks."

She swallowed. "Sure."

"Come here," he said quietly, reaching his hand toward her. "Sit by me and look at the stars. I'll show you the constellations."

She was powerless to resist. She scooted over to him and huddled close. Together they lay back, staring up at the stars.

Long into the night they lay there, side by side, staring up at the sky and talking like the best of friends.

They talked about the little things in life and the big; about the desert at night, about Cibola, about the world economy and the stock market crash, and about everything in between.

"Michael told me you'd made your money yourself," Larence said finally. "When I first met you, I thought you'd inherited money and then been smart enough to turn it into a fortune. But you started with nothing.

How did you do it?"

Emma squinted in the darkness, remembering. "It was an inauspicious beginning. I stole a typewriter. I practiced on it day and night, until I could type without even looking at the keys. Then one day I bundled it up under my arm and went to Wall Street.

"I went to the biggest brokerage house and tried to get an appointment with the president. No one took me seriously, of course—and why should they? A sixteen-year-old kid in a dirty, ragged dress. But I sat down in the middle of the hallway and refused to move. I sat there for six hours until finally Mr.

Lyndeman came

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out. He took one look at me and said, 'Girl, if you're half as good with the typewriter as you are at getting on people's nerves, you have a job here.' "

She smiled at the memory. "I worked there for ten years. Mr. Lyndeman taught me everything he knew and let me trade stocks. Fortunately for me, I was good at it."

"Could you live without the money?"

She didn't even hesitate. "No. But I've learned a few things on this trip. I wouldn't do it quite the same way again. This time I'd slow down a bit. Maybe make a few friends."

"You didn't have any before?"

"No. I was so busy getting what I wanted—and keeping it—that I never bothered socializing with anyone who couldn't help me in some way. I never had the time or the inclination to make friends."

His arm curled around her shoulder and drew her close. "Until now," he said.

"Yes," she whispered with a smile. "Until now."

Darkness closed in on Larence, wrapped around his face like a shroud of black velvet. Thick. Airless.

Deceptively soft. It covered his nose and mouth, pressed hard against his lungs, suffocating him. Invisible hands pushed him down. His breath came in sharp, gasping pants.

He flailed, moaning quietly in his sleep, fighting, always fighting. Once again he was a little boy curled on a hard, cold cot. Pain throbbed in his leg, radiated in razor-sharp shards into his thigh. Tears burned behind his eyes, ached.

Granny . . .

He came awake with a start and sat bolt-upright.

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Heaving for breath, he shoved the sweat-dampened hair out of his eyes and glanced wildly around, trying to see something—anything.

Cold, black nothingness surrounded him, battered his mind and fed the childhood fears. Disorientation clouded his thinking. Where was he? Where?

No answer came to his frazzled mind. He might have been in a tomb, buried alive. The world was a black pit in the middle of nowhere, without moon or fire or lantern to give it light.

Fear coiled around his throat, squeezed his lungs. Panic flooded into his brain. His heart thudded in his chest, pounded against the cage of his ribs. Each breath became a fire-hot gulp of air.

Out of the pitch blackness came a sound; quiet at first, then building. It began in his mind as the gentle lapping of water against warm sand, and then became air—whooshing softly in and out.

Breathing. It was breathing.

Emmaline!

Memory burst through his fear-clogged brain. He was in a tent on the trail to Cibola, and Emma was sleeping beside him. He wasn't alone. All he had to do was reach out and touch her.

This time he could do it. He could beat the nightmare, maybe beat it once and for all.

His hand moved across the harsh, bumpy fabric of her sleeping bag, scouting for her body.

"Emma?" The word hung expectantly in the jet black night air. His breath jammed in his throat. Hope cut like a hot knife through his thoughts. Please wake up . . .

"Larence?" Her voice sounded groggy, disoriented,

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but it was the sweetest sound he'd ever heard. "What is it?"

"Touch me." He winced as the weak, unmanly words slipped from his lips. He wished he could call them back, laugh about them, but he couldn't. Not this time and perhaps never. The need was too strong, too all-consuming, the terror too real. . . .

She rustled around for a few moments, and then, miraculously, he felt her fingertips graze his upper arm.

At her touch, fear faded, sneaked back into that black pit from which it had come. The darkness eased, became manageable. It was as he'd always thought: It was loneliness that fueled the fear and gave it life.

Simple loneliness.

And he wasn't alone anymore.

Her hand plopped onto his chest. He covered it with his own. And finally the last vestige of his childhood fear dissipated.

But as the fear subsided, embarrassment rushed in to take its place. He felt awkward and vulnerable in the aftermath of his outburst. He gave a shaky, self-conscious laugh. "I guess you think—"

"I don't think in the middle of the night, Larence," she said quietly, threading her fingers through his and squeezing. "Now, go to sleep."

Amazingly, he did.

The next morning dawned bright and clear. Larence woke to the crackling hiss of a well-made fire and the mouth-watering aroma of simmering coffee. He snapped upright in his sleeping bag.

Emmaline had wakened first—and made breakfast!

He clambered out of his bag and crawled to the front of the tent, peeking his head out. She sat hunkered down by the fire, poking a fork at the bacon popping in the frying pan. Oatmeal simmered in a pot alongside the bacon.

"Morning," he called out.

She tottered sideways and glanced back over her shoulder. "Good morning. Breakfast is almost ready."

His stomach grumbled at her words. Larence quickly rolled up his arctic bag and crawled out of the tent, buttoning his Levi's as he went.

Outside, he pushed slowly to his feet. A taut grimace of pain tightened his mouth as the familiar morning pain shot from ankle to thigh.

As always, it passed quickly. Grabbing his shirt from the tent pole's apex, he started to put it on, then decided against it. It was such a glorious, beautiful day—warm, and not yet hot—and it felt good to be unclothed. The morning breeze trailed cool, shiver-inducing fingers along the flat plane of his stomach.

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He wrapped the shirt around the low-slung waistband of his jeans and tied the sleeves in a knot. The faded, wrinkled shirt hung to his knees, flapping soundlessly as he moved toward the fire.

Emmaline looked up at him as he reached the fire. Her gaze skidded to a halt at his chest, and a blush crept up her cheeks. But she didn't look away.

Stunned, Larence watched the pinkness inch up her throat. He was suddenly painfully, exhilaratingly, aware of his nakedness.

And so was she. A slow, cocky smile spread across his face and shone in his eyes. He jammed his hands in his pockets and rocked back on his heels.

"Breakfast's almost ready," she said crisply, and turned her attention to the bacon. "And put your shirt on."

That night sparks fluttered like dancing orange fireflies above the fire. The castanet crackling of the burning mesquite roots peppered the darkness with noise. Still pungent, the scent of coffee hovered in the cool air, mingling with the jumbled aromas of resin, pine, and arid dirt to create the desert's own particular perfume.

Emma laid the coffeepot on its side and closed the stove's wooden box. She had never felt so absolutely relaxed. Leaning back on her elbows, she stretched out along the fire with almost feline pleasure. Her gaze turned to the heavens. Millions of stars twinkled against the midnight blue night sky. "Look, Larence, there's the big scooper."

His soft laughter knocked at the door of her heart, bade her welcome. Coziness curled around her, warmed her toes and made her smile with him.

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"Big Dipper," he said.

"Whatever," she responded with an airy wave of the hand. What mattered was not that she was wrong, but that she'd finally noticed the stars at all. Since last night she'd been consumed by an almost boundless energy. As if the realization that life was good, that she was good, had in some way rejuvenated her soul.

She moved like a woman walking on air, and smiled almost all the time.

She rolled onto her side and stared at Larence. He sat cross-legged and hunched over with a Hogarth drawing pad in his lap. The faint scratching noise of his pen gliding atop the paper floated to her ears.

Strangely, she found herself wishing he'd look up at her, wishing he'd come sit by her. ' 'Do you want to play poker?"

"Nope."

Then he did something odd. He frowned. The expression was so alien on his face that it piqued Emma's curiosity. Standing, she peered over at him. "What are you drawing?"

"Come see for yourself."

Clasping her hands behind her back, she sashayed around the fire. "I don't know why I'm bothering," she said, coming up behind him. "I've already seen enough cactus and bi—" She gasped.