Hawk's Way Grooms: Hawk's Way: The Virgin Groom. Joan Johnston
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it, Mac. Please. Help me.”
“We’ll have to say something to explain that cut on your lip,” he said tersely. “And the grass stains on your dress.”
“My beautiful dress.” The tears welled in her eyes as she pulled the skirt around to look at the grass stains on the back of it.
He realized it wasn’t the dress she was crying for, but the other beautiful thing she had lost. Her innocence.
“We’ll tell your father Harvey attacked you—”
“No. Please!”
He reached out to take her shoulders, and she shrank from him. His hands dropped to his sides. He realized they were trembling and curled them into tight fists. “We’ll tell them Harvey attacked you, but you fought him off,” he said in an urgent voice. “Unless you tell that much of the tale, they’re liable to believe the worst.”
He had never seen—never hoped to see again—a look as desolate as the one she gave him.
“All right,” she said. “But tell them you came in time. Tell them…nothing happened.”
“What if…what if you’re pregnant?” he asked.
“I don’t think…I don’t think…”
He realized she was in too much shock to even contemplate the possibility.
She shook her head, looking dazed and confused. “I don’t think…”
He thought concealing the truth was a bad idea. She needed medical attention. She needed the comfort her mother and father could give her. “Jewel, let me tell your parents,” he pleaded quietly.
She shook her head and began to shiver.
“Give me your hand, Jewel,” he said, afraid to put his arms around her, afraid she might scream or faint or something equally terrifying.
She kept her arms wrapped around herself and started walking in the opposite direction from the revelers at the picnic. “Take me home, Mac,” she said. “Please, just take me home.”
He snatched up her underpants, stuffed them in his Levi’s pocket and followed her to his truck. But it was too much to hope they would escape unnoticed. Not with Jewel’s seven brothers and sisters at the picnic.
It was Rolleen who caught them before they could escape. She insisted Mac find her parents, and he’d had no choice except to go hunting for Zach and Rebecca. He had found Zach first.
The older man’s eyes had turned flinty as he listened to Mac’s abbreviated—and edited—version of what had happened.
The dangerous, animal sound that erupted from Zach’s throat when he saw Jewel’s torn dress and her bruised face and swollen lip made Mac’s neck hairs stand upright. He realized suddenly that Jewel had known her father better than he had. Zach became a lethal predator. Only the lack of a quarry contained his killing rage.
Jewel’s family surrounded her protectively, unconsciously shutting him out. He was forced to stand aside as they led her away. It wasn’t until he got back to his private room in the cottage he shared with a half-dozen boys aged eight to twelve and stripped off his jeans, that he realized he still had Jewel’s underwear in his pocket.
The garment was white cotton, with a delicate lace trim. It was stained with blood.
A painful lump rose in his throat, and his eyes burned with tears he was too grown up to shed. He fought the sobs that bunched like a fist in his chest, afraid one of the campers would return and hear him through the wall that separated his room from theirs. He pressed his mouth against a pillow in the bedroom and held it there until the ache eased, and he thought the danger was over.
In the shower later, where no one could see or hear, he shed tears of frustration and rage and despair. He had known, even then, that Harvey Barnes had stolen something precious from him that day, as well.
Mac learned later that Zach had found Harvey Barnes and horsewhipped him within an inch of his life. And Zach hadn’t even known the full extent of Harvey’s crime against his daughter. It seemed Jewel had been right not to tell her father the truth. Zach would have killed the boy for sure. Harvey’s parents had sent him away, and he hadn’t been seen since.
Things weren’t the same between him and Jewel after that. She smiled and pretended everything was all right in front of him and her family. But the smile on her lips never reached her eyes.
The end of the summer came too soon, before they had reconciled their friendship. He went to her the night before he left, seeking somehow to mend the breach between them, to say goodbye for the summer and to ask if she was all right.
“Harvey Barnes is gone,” she said. “And tomorrow you will be, too. Then I can forget about what happened.”
“I’ll be back next year,” he reminded her.
She had been looking at her knotted hands when she said, “I hope you won’t come, Mac.”
Something bunched up tight inside of him. “Not come? I come every summer, Jewel.”
“Don’t come back. As a favor to me, Mac. Please don’t come back.”
“But why? You’re my best friend, Jewel. I—”
“You know,” she said in a brittle voice. She raised her eyes and looked at him and let him see her pain. “You know the truth. It’s in your eyes every time you look at me.”
He felt like crying again and forced himself to swallow back the tickle in his throat. “Jewel—”
“I want to forget, Mac,” she said. “I need to forget. Please, please don’t come back.”
A lump of grief caught in his throat and made it impossible to say more. When he left that summer, a part of himself—the lighthearted, teasing friend—had stayed behind.
Mac had honored Jewel’s wishes and stayed away for six long years. The really sad thing was, it had all been for nothing. She wasn’t over what had happened. The past had not been forgotten.
He had often wondered if he’d done the wrong thing. Should he have told her parents the truth, anyway? Should he have come back the following summer? Should he have tried harder to get in touch with her over the years, to talk to her about what had happened?
A soft knock on the door forced Mac from his reverie. Before he could reply, the door opened, and Jewel stood silhouetted in the light from the hall. She was wearing a sleeveless white nightgown with a square-cut neck. The gown only covered her to mid-thigh. He could see the shape of her through the thin garment, the slender legs and slim waist and bountiful bosom.
He sat up, dragging the sheets around him to cover his nakedness and to conceal the sudden arousal caused by the enticing sight of her in his bedroom doorway. “Jewel? Is something wrong?”
She slipped inside and closed the door, so that momentarily he lost sight of her as his eyes adjusted to the dark. He heard the rustle of sheets and suddenly felt her body next to his beneath the covers.
“Jewel? What’s going on?” He hoped his voice didn’t sound as shocked as he felt. He didn’t know what she thought she was doing, but he intended to find out before things went much farther.
He had expected an answer. He hadn’t counted on her laying her palm on his bare chest. She followed that with a scattering of kisses across his chest that led her to the sensitive flesh beneath his ear. His body was trembling with desire when she finally paused to speak.
“Nothing’s wrong, Mac,” she murmured in his ear. “I came because…” She nibbled on his earlobe, and he groaned at the exquisite pleasure of it. “I need your help,” she finished.
He put an arm around her shoulder, realized suddenly he was naked and clutched at the sheet again. “Anything, Jewel. You know I’d do anything for you. But—”
“I