Daredevil’s Run

me.”

Sam said quickly, “I didn’t mean it like that,” but Alex held up a hand as if to stop a flood of accusing words.

She said in a choking voice, “You don’t know what it was like, okay? I was there. I saw him fall. I thought he’d died, I really did.” She paced a few steps, then back, arms wrapped around the pain inside her, pain she’d thought she’d put behind her. Hoped I had.

“But he didn’t.”

“No. No-but in a way, he did. Or…something did.”

“Your feelings for him?”

“No. No.” She stared at the other woman as shock lanced through her, then sank back onto a boulder and brushed a furious hand across her nose. “No, but…the life I’d always thought we’d have together,” she said thickly. “I never thought that would end.”

Sam leaned against the rock beside her and looked at her along one shoulder. “Did it have to?”

Because her eyes were filling with tears, Alex did the only thing she could: looked away, looked at the sky, the mountains, the river. “I don’t know.” Her voice ripped raggedly through her throat. “I know I was so mad at him I could have killed him myself.” She gave a sharp, bitter laugh. “Does that make sense? I mean, it’s not like he wanted to get hurt, right? So then, I was mad at myself for thinking that. Oh hell, I was just…so angry. I wanted to scream at someone. Hit somebody.” She shook her head and her voice betrayed her by becoming an airless squeak. “I missed him so much I thought I’d die. And when he told me he wasn’t coming back, that he’d decided to stay down there in L.A. and it would be better if we-” She clamped a hand over her mouth and drew a shuddering breath.

Bluntly, without the gentleness and sympathy Alex was sure would have been her undoing, Sam said, “Did you tell him how you felt?”

Alex shook her head, not yet willing to risk actual speech.

“Why not?”

Alex shot her a hot, angry look. “I don’t know-pride, maybe?”

“How about fear?”

“Fear!” Alex opened her mouth to deny it, then hesitated. “I don’t know. I know I really hate needing anyone. It makes me feel…”

“Vulnerable?” Sam was smiling.

“Weak,” Alex countered firmly.

“How about…human?”

Alex gave a bark of laughter-pure self-defense. After a moment she cut her eyes at the other woman over one shoulder. “Okay, don’t think I don’t know what you guys are up to.”

Unrepentant, Sam grinned. “Is it working?”

For a moment longer Alex tried to keep up the banter, smile back. Keep it light. But her emotions were too close to the surface. Before she could stop it a wave of frightening longing swept over her. Horrified, she felt her face crumple, its expressions no longer hers to control. Appalled at her own vulnerability, she looked down at her shoes and whispered, “Do you really think it could?”

“Why not? If the feelings are still there…”

“Yeah, well, I guess that’s the big question, isn’t it?”

“Is it?” Sam seemed surprised. “For you, or for him?”

Alex couldn’t answer. Safety doors came clanging down inside her head, shutting out the question, cutting off the voice she could still hear echoing faintly in her memory. Do you love me, Alex?

But Sam was waiting, and so after a moment she shrugged and said testily, “How would I know how he feels?”

Unperturbed, Sam said in pushy Southern, “Well, sweetie pie, don’t you think you should find out?”

“Yeah, how?” Alex demanded, pushing back. “Seduce him?”

“Well, why not?”

Alex glared at her for a long moment while the self-sufficient loner inside her arm-wrestled with the pathetic weakling that secretly longed to confide in this woman. Giving up the battle, she drew a shaky breath. “Yeah, and what happens then? I mean, how do I know…” She halted and glared at the distant trees.

“Ah,” said Sam, nodding. “You mean…”

“Yeah. I mean, how embarrassing would it be if…” She stopped again. Coughed. Made some sort of vague gesture. Then laughed and put a hand up to cover her eyes. “I looked it up-would you believe it? On the Internet. At first.” She jerked her hand away and threw Sam a defiant look. “Well, hell, neither one of us seemed to be able to bring up the subject during rehab, and I was curious. Wouldn’t you be?”

“Oh, yeah,” said Sam. “And?”

Alex hitched a shoulder and watched the toe of her shoe dig at the hard-packed dirt. “It seems to pretty much depend on the person-the location of the injury, stuff like that,” she said with studied diffidence. “Basically, it’s mostly doable, with patience and-and I quote-‘an understanding partner.’”

“So…?”

“That’s just it,” Alex said carefully, hoping the anguish she felt inside wouldn’t come through in her voice. Confiding was one thing; stripping naked was another. “I don’t know if I’m the understanding type.”

And Sam said-gently, this time, “Oh, hon’. If you care enough, you will be.”

“I just wanted to hug her,” Sam told her husband. “I wanted to, so bad.”

“I’m surprised you didn’t.”

“Yeah, well, in case you haven’t noticed, Alex Penny isn’t exactly the hugging type.”

It was evening, past sundown but not yet dusk, and Sam was feeling a wee bit grumpy. Dinner had been another amazing feast-she didn’t know how they managed it under such primitive conditions, she really didn’t. At the moment, she felt entirely too full and too tired out from the day’s adventures to move, much less go rambling through the rocks in yet another ploy designed by Cory to leave his brother alone with Alex. A ploy she was beginning to think might be a lost cause.

She’d said as much to Cory, who’d then asked why she felt that way. So she’d related most of her conversation with Alex, which, she admitted, had left her feeling sad.

“I think she loves him, I truly do, Pearse. But she’s got some serious abandonment issues. I don’t know if-”

“‘Abandonment issues’?” Cory smiled and slipped his arm around her waist and pulled her snug against him. “That’s something we know a thing or two about. And we managed to get together in spite of them.”

For a moment Sam allowed her head to nestle in the comfortable hollow of her husband’s shoulder. Just for a moment. Straightening, she said, “Yeah, but we didn’t have the disability thing to deal with, either. I mean, think about it. They have to figure everything out all over again. Like, back to square one, really.”

“Figure ‘everything’ out? You mean, the sex thing, don’t you?” She heard the smile in his voice even before she felt the warmth of his lips against her hair. “I wouldn’t worry too much about that. Those things have a way of working themselves out. Where there’s a will…”

“Assuming there is a will.”

“Hmm,” Cory murmured. And after a moment, “I guess you didn’t notice the way she was looking at him.”

She craned to look at him. “Yeah? How?”

He grinned. “Like a hungry wolf.”

“When? Today?”

“This afternoon. When we were going through the rapids.”

“Oh, well. I might have been a little busy right then. You know…trying to keep from getting pitched into the river? Again…”

He laughed and pulled her back against him. “Well, let’s just say she couldn’t take her eyes off him. Watching him wield that paddle…”

“Hmm…well, I have to admit, Pearse, your brother does have an amazin’ body. Those shoulders…” Her voice dwindled to nothing as her husband’s fingers worked their magic over her shoulders. She chuckled low in her throat and slipped her arms around his waist. “Darn it, I really do wish we hadn’t had to leave those tents behind.”