Guarding Jeannie

times she had been right on the verge of telling him she was aware of the terrible pain eating away at his soul, but he'd sealed himself off from her, and she had respected his privacy.

'Don't you know you can share anything with me and I'll understand? If you'll only let me, I can ease your suffering.'

Releasing his hold on her, he moved away, then stood, keeping his back to her. He thrust his hands into the front pockets of the cutoff jeans he wore. 'Like you did the day you saved my life?'

She shivered with the force of his anger as it spiraled inside her. Reaching for her cane that rested against the wall, she slid to the edge of the swing. 'Yes, like I did the day I found you on the beach. You felt guilty for two people's deaths. You didn't think you deserved to live.'

'Yeah.' Sam walked down the veranda, stopping several feet away from her. 'I thought I was dying, and when I came to and saw you, I thought you were an angel.' He emitted a grunting laugh. 'Ironic, isn't it? As it turned out, that's exactly what you were.'

'You can't spend the rest of your life blaming yourself, hating yourself, letting that guilt destroy your ability to live and love.' Positioning her cane, Jeannie stood and took several steps toward Sam. She laid her hand on his back. He flinched.

'Don't do this,' he said. 'I don't want you to suffer for me. I don't want you to know what it feels like.'

'Please trust me, Sam.' She slipped her arms around his waist, holding tight when he started to withdraw from her. 'You must know how much you mean to me. You're the one person in this world I most want to help.'

His unrelenting guilt hit her with shattering force. She clung to Sam, resting her head on his back. Dear God, the pain inside him was unbearable. Dark, bitter rage simmered in his soul. Damned forever. Oh, her poor Sam. A lesser man would never know such guilt.

'Stop it!' He realized what had happened, what he had allowed to happen. Dammit, he wasn't going to let her absorb any more of the tormenting grief from which he could never escape. His grief and guilt were his punishment, not hers. She was innocent, so very innocent.

'Talk to me about what happened. Let it go. Give it to me and let me share your burden. Allow me to help you.' While she held him with the fierceness of that abiding protective devotion, she gave those very feelings over to him, allowing him to experience the great depth of her emotions.

'I don't want your help!' Jerking out of her embrace, he stalked off the veranda and across the wide expanse of lush green lawn.

Jeannie stood on the veranda and watched him walk away. Tears filled her eyes, ran down her cheeks, trickled off her nose and over her lips. She couldn't force him to come to her, expose his heart's deepest emotions and bare his soul. But neither could she let him suffer alone, as he had done for the past six years. If he would not allow her to take away his guilt and grief for a few hours, she could still be at his side, supporting him while he grieved anew.

She took one step down from the veranda, then heard Manton call to her. Turning around, she saw him standing behind her.

Did you like the new composition I played for you and Sam today? he asked telepathically.

It was lovely, but—

It made Sam very sad, didn't it?

Yes. It made him think of something he would like to forget.

I wrote the song for your child, Jeannie. For your and Sam Dundee's child.

Jeannie stared directly into Manton's piercing green eyes. Several days ago, she had made the first connection with the new life growing inside her. If she had not been so overwhelmed with all the new feelings she'd experienced the first time she and Sam made love, she would have known immediately that she had conceived his child.

'I knew I couldn't keep the child a secret from you,' she said her lips moving silently.

You should not keep her a secret from her father, either.

Jeannie laid her hand tenderly over her flat stomach. Sam's child. The most precious gift God could have given her. She had been given so much. Dare she ask for Sam's salvation from guilt and grief? Dare she ask that he be freed from the past so that he could open his heart and love her? Perhaps she had been blessed with more than enough. Perhaps what she and Sam had already been given was all heaven would allow.

I can't tell Sam now. It's too soon. He has to deal with his old grief first.

Then go to him, Manton said. He will never be able to come to terms with what is destroying him without your help.

Jeannie embraced Manton, her heart filled with love for him. He was the dearest of men, his soul so pure that it was on its final journey to completion.

She walked down the steps and into the yard. She knew where Sam had gone. Back to the beach where he had washed ashore six years ago.

She found him looking out at the ocean, his body statue-hard, the wind whipping his hair into his eyes, his face etched with tense lines of agony.

When she approached him, she didn't touch him, but he sensed her presence. Turning around, he looked at her with dead eyes, eyes of pure gray steel. She took a tentative step forward; he didn't move. Another step. And another.

He watched her, his gaze fixed to hers. She stood directly in front of him, one hand holding her walking stick, the other clutching the side of her peach gauze skirt. A muscle in his neck throbbed. His lips parted. He sucked in a deep breath.

Tearstains marred her face. The hand with which she held the cane trembled, the movement barely discernible. She looked at him with eyes of love and understanding and compassion. His big shoulders slumped ever so slightly. His eyes softened from steel to blue-gray.

He was losing this battle, and he knew it. He might be twice Jeannie's size, his body far more powerful, but inside that fragile body, within that enormous heart of hers, lived a strength for which Sam was no match.

A fine glaze of moisture covered his eyes. He blinked away the evidence of emotion, but he could not turn away from Jeannie. He pulled her into his arms. She went willingly, gladly, dropping her cane onto the sandy beach. She wrapped him in the warmth of her embrace, petting his back with gentle up-and-down strokes. After six long years of running away from a truth that tormented him, Sam knew the time had come to exorcise the demon.

But, dear God, how could he endure watching her hurt for him? How could he, once again, be the recipient of her tender mercy?

'I knew better.' He spoke softly, the words a mere whisper on the wind. 'If I hadn't been so damned stupid!'

'You made a mistake, Sam. Everyone makes mistakes.' She hugged him, absorbing his feelings.

'But not everyone's mistakes cost two people their lives.' Clinging to her, he allowed her inside his mind and heart and body. He held back nothing.

Releasing her hold around his waist, she reached up and took his face in her hands. Every muscle in his body tensed. Jeannie held his face, forcing him to look directly into her eyes. 'Say it. You blame yourself for Brock Holmes's death. He was a rookie agent, and you felt responsible for him. You blame yourself for the death of Connie Bell, the woman you were having an affair with, the woman who was a nightclub singer in Louie Herriot's employ. You knew better than to become personally involved with someone while you were on an assignment. If you hadn't been sleeping with her, she wouldn't have shown up at the wrong place and the wrong time and gotten shot.

'But it isn't Brock's death, or even Connie's, that you can never forgive yourself for causing. Tell me, Sam. Say it aloud. You've never done that, have you? You keep the truth hidden so deep inside you that it's festered into a rotting sore.'

He glared at her, his big body shaking, his eyes dry, his face crumpling before her very eyes. 'Dammit, she was pregnant!'

'I know.' Jeannie slid her hands down Sam's neck and out to his shoulders, gripping them firmly. 'Say it. Just this once, and you'll never have to say it again.'

The pain inside him carried him to his knees, Jeannie with him. She could feel the guilt, the anguish, the gut-wrenching pain, as it began to leave him and make its way into her.