with the butt of a shotgun. This is where I connected with the edge of a cabinet,” he said, indicating the stitches on his chin. “I've got three cracked ribs, and the bandage on my leg is hiding a nice big bullet hole.”
His account was a much-tidied version of the explosion of violence and hatred that had rocked the ER that night. He deleted the blood and gore and the fact that a sixteen-year-old Vice Lord had ended the evening as a corpse. He didn't tell Sarah that an innocent child had been wounded by flying glass from a broken cabinet door or that he himself had sustained a concussion and a bruised kidney in addition to his other injuries. He could see that the G-rated version had upset her enough.
Sarah felt herself go pale as Matt calmly tallied his injuries. He was so matter-of-fact about it. The idea of that kind of violence shook her to her very core. That one human being could do such terrible things to another was beyond her understanding. She had lived such a sheltered life, a life narrowly structured around faith and family. And she had wanted for so long to escape that rigid structure and explore the world beyond. It frightened her something fierce to know such awful things happened in that world she was so eager to discover. She tended to think of it in wonderful terms, that it was full of amazing things to learn and experience, when it undoubtedly held equal amounts of suffering and evil. Whenever that realization struck her, she felt naive and foolish, and now she felt fear for Matt as well.
“You could have been killed,” she murmured, shivering at the thought.
Matt looked at her with sympathy for her now-sullied naivet6. “Yeah,” he said softly, reaching out to cover her small hand with his.
Funny, he thought, that he was the one who had been attacked, but it was Sarah who needed comforting. And it was odd how good it felt to give that little bit of comfort. He had been trying so long to make a difference in the world by patching up the wounded and sending them back out into the war. Yet just this one small gesture made him feel better. Maybe he had given up thinking the world could be saved by his meager efforts. Maybe he had seen too much of people who had lost all re spect for humanity. He had certainly seen far too much of needless suffering and senseless death. And here was this one simple, sweet Amish woman, touched by his pain. He wanted to kiss her just for caring.
Hell, he just plain wanted to kiss her.
“You know what I could use, Nurse Troyer?” he said softly, trying to coax a smile out of her.
Sarah shrugged, too shaken to trust her voice.
“Some breakfast. I'm starved.”
She nodded and managed a tiny smile. “Ya, a good big breakfast. You need your strength for healing.”
She moved to rise, but the pressure of Matt's hand on hers kept her seated beside him. Her heart did a little flip as she looked down at the sight of her small hand engulfed in his. His was wide and capable looking with blunt- tipped fingers and neatly manicured nails. It felt warm and gentle, and she suddenly couldn't remember the last time she'd been touched that way.
Seemingly with a will of its own, her hand turned over and rubbed palm against palm with Matt's. The friction generated a heat that sizzled through her, burning her breath away in her lungs and igniting fires in all her most secret womanly places. It should have felt for bidden, but it didn't. It felt good. She felt alive.
She could sense Matt's dark eyes searching her expression, and she made a little face and pulled her hand back to the relative safety of her own lap.
“You have no calluses,” she said quietly. It came out sounding like an accusation, as if it were a wicked, sexy secret he had deliberately kept from her.
“I get paid a lot of money to keep these hands as soft as a baby's,'
“It seems strange to me,” she admitted. “Most of the men I know are farmers. Even their wives have calluses.”
“I can't afford them. As a doctor my sense of touch has to be sensitive, acute. I have to be able to read people with my hands,” Matt said. “Here. Ill show you.”
Sarah sat as still and wary as a doe, watching him as he lifted his hands to cup her face. He closed his eyes, thick dark lashes sweeping down like lace fans. His fingertips stroked along the surface of her skin like a whisper, following the ripe curve of her cheek, the line of her jaw. The pads of his thumbs brushed the outer corners of her mouth, and her lips parted in unconscious invitation.
“Beautiful,” he whispered. “Delicate. Sweet.”
His fingertips slid into the soft tendrils of hair that curled down along the nape of her neck, and he drew her forward gently, inexorably, so that she felt more like she was falling than being pulled toward him. Her own eyes drifted shut, lulled by the sensuous spell he had cast over her And his lips brushed over hers with as light a touch as his fingers', sampling, tasting.
“Sweet,” he murmured again, the word itself a kiss.
For Sarah, time stood absolutely still, and she was aware of everything about the moment: Matt, the warm, minty taste of him, the feel of his hands cradling her head, the softness of his mouth, the scent of fall drifting in through the window on a warm Indian summer breeze, the rustling of the dry leaves on the big maple tree that stood beside the house, the crack of a branch, and the surprised cry—
Sarah bolted from the bed. “What on earth?”
Blossom hurled herself across the room, howling like a hunting hound in full cry. She reached the open window just before Sarah, flinging her front half onto the sill, and her speckled nose up against the screen.
“Bow-ooooo! Bow-ooooo!”
With her hands clamped to her ears, Sarah peered out, scanning the tree limbs for signs of life. At the base, a pile of brilliant orange leaves began to move. And suddenly a small blond head poked through, and she was staring down into the wide blue eyes of her baby brother.
“Jacob!”
“Hello, Sarah!” the boy called, giving her a merry grin that revealed two dark gaps where teeth were missing. One small hand emerged from the pile of leaves to wave up at her. “I come to visit with you.”
Sarah muttered a prayer in German under her breath and pressed a hand to her pounding heart. “Are you hurt?”
“Not so much as I might have been,” he conceded. “In my coat I tore a hole,” he said, his English translation of German thoughts spoken slightly out of order.
He pulled back a flap of dark cloth along his left elbow to illustrate the point for his sister. The blue cotton shirt beneath his jacket had fared no better. Jacob's brows knitted together in belated concern as he took notice of the bloody scrape on his arm.
“Stay right where you are, young man!” Sarah ordered, pulling back from the window.
Matt was already out of bed, thumping around the room with his cane, searching for something.
Sarah glared at him. “And just what do you think you're doing?”
“Someone's hurt. I'm a doctor. I'm going to help,” he said in a voice that brooked no disagreement. He yanked open the closet door and shoved aside half a dozen shirts, hangers singing along the iron rod. “Where's my medical bag? Don't tell me Ingrid didn't pack my medical bag.”
“Fine,” Sarah muttered through her teeth. “I won't tell you.”
It seemed futile to try to stop Matt now that he had already gotten out of bed. The horse was out of the barn, and she had more important things to do than chase him. She had to get to her brother. She had no idea how far Jacob had fallen. He might have broken something or injured himself inside. A hundred terrible fears sprang up in Sarah's throat. She rushed out the door of the bedroom and down the stairs with Blossom hot on her heels, the long-bodied hound negotiating the steps like a Slinky.
A shaggy chestnut pony grazed unattended in the front yard. Sarah ran past him, a handful of skirt and apron knotted in her fist to keep the garments from tangling around her legs. Jacob sat exactly where he had fallen. The boy was chest-deep in fallen leaves, but he didn't look so pleased about his predicament as he had initially. He was cradling his arm against him and trying valiantly not to cry. Big, bright tears swam in his eyes, and his mouth trembled in spite of the fact that he had pulled his lower lip between his teeth and was biting down for all he was worth.
Sarah hurled herself to her knees in the leaves in front of him. “Let me see,
