Sarah's Sin

Want. What she knew of the word could have filled a book. She had wanted so much for so long, wanted so many things she wasn't supposed to have, wasn't supposed to need. She wanted Matt Thorne, in her bed, in her life, in her heart. He said he wanted her, but his life wasn't here. It was a world away, a world that would run roughshod over a naive Amish woman. Not that he would take her to it. Matt was by nature a charmer, a womanizer. He might want her now, but in a week or a month he would leave and she would be the one left wanting.

“I have to go inside,” she whispered, and like the coward she was, she turned and Bed to the relative safety of a house where the only other person was a drunken aging beauty queen who wore only one contact lens, carried a gun in her purse, and was married to an invisible man.

Matt watched her go, too undone by the explosion of emotion he'd experienced to go after her. He'd just discovered he was in love for the first time, and the object of that grand emotion was running away from him. Another first: He had no idea what to do about her. He had wooed and won nurses and neurosurgeons and even a CPA who had an MBA from Harvard—no mean feat—but he had no idea how to go about winning a sweet, gentle Amish girl. She wasn't impressed by his possessions or his clothes or his profession. None of the usual props would do. And maybe that was only right. Real love, the kind he was feeling, wouldn't go in disguise.

Blossom clambered up the porch steps, her long body wiggling like a centipede's. She plopped herself down on Matt's feet, looked up at him, and let out a long, mournful howl.

“Yeah,” he muttered, wincing against the noise. “Sing one for me while you're at it.”

The inn was silent. Mrs. Parker had surrendered her pistol for safekeeping in a locked cabinet and had retired, presumably to relate the evening's events to the enigmatic Tim, who hadn't been roused from their room even by the sound of gunfire. Ingrid's lovely hunter-green camelback sofa sat under a thick layer of fire extinguisher foam like a small volcano that had been rendered dormant. The parlor windows had been opened to fumigate the room with fresh night air.

Sarah moved around her small room with no energy, but no desire to go to bed either. She wasn't going to sleep. She would only lie there, tossing and turning, yearning for a man she couldn't have.

For a while she just sat on the bed looking at the room around her. The walls were a buttery shade of gold, decorated with a hand-painted ivy vine that trailed along the baseboard and around the lace-draped window. Aside from that, there were no adornments of any kind. In keeping with Amish ways there were no pic tures or wall hangings. The curtain was fancier than anything in her mother's house.

Ordinarily, Sarah thought of this austerity as a simple rule to be followed. Tonight the plainness left an aching emptiness in her. It seemed symbolic of her life, devoid of tangible, touchable happiness. She knew she was supposed to find her happiness in her faith, and she had tried and prayed, but there was simply something missing, and no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't make that feeling go away.

She wondered as she undressed if she would have felt this way had Samuel lived, had their son lived. There was no way of knowing. In all honesty, Samuel had never been able to extinguish the longing in her. Maybe children would have filled that void, but there had been only one, and that child, Peter, had died of pneumonia before he had seen his first birthday.

She hung her plain blue dress in the closet beside her two other plain blue dresses, pulled on a simple white cotton nightgown, and went to the dresser to brush her hair. Sitting on the oak bureau was the little vial of Evening in Paris perfume and her Glamour magazine. Feeling defiant, she took the top off the perfume bottle and dabbed some of the oily liquid at the base of her throat. The smell was strangely sweet and foreign to her, but she de cided she liked it, simply because it was something she wasn't supposed to have.

She flipped through a few pages of the magazine, her sense of rebellion building in her like a ball of compressed energy. Her eyes wandered over ads and articles, and she felt somehow less of a woman for never having worn panty hose or makeup. What possible sin could there be in wearing panty hose? How could a pair of aerobic shoes—whatever they were—corrupt her soul? Of course, she knew the standard answers to those questions—Be ye not of the world and worldly things—but it all seemed so petty to her. The way she saw it, the real issues of life had nothing to do with wearing lipstick or driving a car.

Frustrated, she heaved a sigh and left the magazine open on the dresser. She grabbed her robe and a towel and headed for the bathroom.

Matt lay on his bed, staring up at the ceiling. He was still dressed. The mind-numbing weariness that had plagued him since the attack was nowhere to be found tonight. All he could think about as he looked up at the dancing shadows of branches on the ceiling was Sarah. She hadn't spoken a response when he'd told her he wanted her, but there had been a mixed message in her wide eyes. Desire and fear. She wanted him too. He knew that in the way a man in tune with women always knew, by her kiss, by the change in her breathing, by the subtle scent of her skin. But she was afraid of that wanting.

Well, surprise, Sarah Troyer, because I'm afraid of it too. This new love was an unknown thing to him. He didn't know what to expect of it. Certainly, he had always cared for the women he made love with, and he had always been a considerate partner in bed, but the rules had changed now. The game was different. The stakes were higher. He wanted to give something he'd never given before—his heart. That was scary.

But he was getting ahead of himself, he thought, pushing himself carefully upright. Before he could give Sarah his heart, he had to make sure she would stick around long enough to take it. He had come up with a couple of ideas on the subject of courtship. Tomorrow he would begin the campaign.

He shed his sweater and undid the button on his jeans, then limped barefoot toward the bathroom door, intending to get a glass of fresh water to wash down his nightly dose of pills. His hand stilled on the knob, and he listened intently for a moment. He had heard the tub running earlier and had tortured himself for awhile with the mental image of Sarah bathing, but that had been an hour ago. He heard nothing now and he tried to squelch his disappointment as he turned the knob and swung open the door.

Sarah stood beside the tub, her hair up in a haphazard topknot with streamers of chestnut silk floating loose around the edges. She wore noting but a soft blue bath towel and a look of wide-eyed surprise.

Matt held his breath lest this vision disappear. He knew he should have done the gentlemanly thing and backed out, closing the door and leaving Sarah to her privacy. He knew that was what he should have done, but there was no way in hell he was going to do it unless she told him to.

Desire sprang to life inside him, a sleeping beast awakened, coiling fire in his gut. The air in the bathroom was warm and steamy, pungent with the scent of heated perfume and woman. And Sarah stood there clutching her towel above her breasts, beads of water still clinging to her smooth bare shoulders. She looked up at him, her eyes midnight blue, her lips damp and slightly parted.

The tension built and tightened around them like an invisible web. Matt let go of the door and took a step closer. Sarah watched him without moving, without speaking, without breathing. He looked completely male and predatory. His black hair was mussed, strands falling across his broad forehead. His dark, glittering gaze was narrow and intense. His face was taut, all the planes and angles emphasized. His jaw had already begun to darken with a beard. The strong, clean lines of his chest had taken on a sheen from the steam or from perspiration, she didn't know which. Her gaze trailed down past the white tape around his ribs to the undone button at the waist of the jeans that were clinging to his lean hips, and lower, to the evidence of a strong and immediate desire.

Everything basically female in her stirred and throbbed. She was suddenly conscious of the weight of her breasts and the sensitive flesh knotting at their tips. And low in her belly a tight fist of need tormented her.

“I want you, Sarah,” he whispered.

Want. That word had haunted her all of her life. She wanted something to fill the gap in her heart. She wanted Matt Thorne. She wanted him now and she would want him still when he had gone. Why couldn't she, just this once, give in to the wanting? She wanted so badly to know what it was to have a man touch her with the same longing that was in her soul. She knew it wouldn't last. She knew that he would go and she would be left to her quiet life of duty. Couldn't she at least be allowed a beautiful memory to sustain her through a lifetime of longing and lonely nights? Who would that hurt? Where was the sin in wanting to be loved?

Her fist tightened briefly, then relaxed, and the towel fell away.