In His Arms: A Nature of Desire Series Novel Page 6

  The glances in his direction, quickly cutting away to avoid direct eye contact. The bright wattage smiles of someone making a conscious effort to acknowledge him more directly than they would a “normal” stranger, perversely so he wouldn’t feel like he was being treated differently.

  He wasn’t sure which reaction he preferred, or where the happy medium was, but it didn’t matter. This wasn’t about him. It was about Daralyn.

  They crossed the open courtyard, the hub for students coming and going to their various destinations. He saw plenty of outdoor tables where he could set himself up. He pointed them out to her, so she’d know where to find him. “Take me to your first class,” he told her. “So I’ll know where to find you.”

  That won him another small smile. They moved toward the building in question. A bearded thirty-something in flannel shirt and work shoes held the door open. Probably here for a continuing education class in his chosen blue-collar field, like Peterson had been. Or maybe for a computer class to head in a different direction.

  The man’s brown eyes were on Rory’s chair, not on Daralyn, so as Rory gestured to Daralyn to precede him and she complied, the guy gave her the stink eye. He thought she’d stepped in front of a handicapped guy. Thankfully, she missed it, her mind gripped by what was ahead. But Rory wasn’t going to let anyone think Daralyn would do something like that. He nodded to the guy as he passed through the open door. “Thanks for holding the door for my girl.”

  The man’s face cleared, then he grinned at Rory’s casual remark.

  Rory caught up to Daralyn, who was waiting for him. It was louder in the hallway, more people in a contained space. The chair helped, people making a conscious effort to give them a path. She stuck close, her hand on his shoulder. He gripped it briefly, letting her know it could stay there before he pushed forward. Then they reached the open door to her classroom.

  He’d made sure they’d arrived early enough she wouldn’t have the same experience with crowded seating she’d had last time. Nobody better at advanced logistical planning than a member of the disabled tribe. Pi, one of the guys in his adaptive sports challenge group, called them that.

  Glancing up, Rory’s smile disappeared as he saw Daralyn had become noticeably paler. He pinched her arm lightly, drawing her gaze. “Don’t forget to breathe,” he advised. “Else you’ll look like a blueberry and a crow will swoop down and try to swallow you.”

  She punched him in the arm, little more than a brush of her knuckles. He’d have Les work with her on that. When it came to punching her big brothers, Les could give Rocky knockout lessons. During his sister’s last visit, Rory had claimed to have permanent bruising from the punches she’d landed when they were much younger. “Maybe when you get to be a big-time doctor, you can fix those,” he’d told her.

  “Maybe I’ll become a brain surgeon and remove yours, replace it with a rock,” Les rebounded. “It will be more functional.”

  “You can donate the brain to science,” Thomas had put in. “As a medical anomaly—a brain with the intelligence of a rotting turnip.”

  As he captured Daralyn’s hand, Rory shared that memory with her, earning another weak smile. “I’ll be in the courtyard if you need me,” he reminded her. “You can text me as much as you want.”

  Her gaze skittered around the room. Her hand was also getting colder. “Hey.” He drew her attention back to him. “Just think of them as customers at the store. You don't have a bit of trouble talking to them."

  "Now.” She grimaced. “And that's because I always have you or one of your family as backup."

  "Well, that's what I'll be. Right there in the courtyard. But I can sit in here instead if you want."

  She set her chin, gripping her books tighter. "No, I can do it."

  "I know you can, but if you change your mind, just text me. Hey. Daralyn, look at me. I mean it.”

  Her eyes came to him. He saw the struggle there, to stay calm, to make this work, to be more than she thought she could be, to try, when all she really wanted to do was run back to the safety of a much smaller world. It was really enough, it really was, and…

  He tugged on her hand, reeling her in until she came down to him, and he could lay his hand alongside her face, thread his fingers into her hair. He put his mouth on hers. Held her like that, with heat and firmness, then let his fingertips move just enough to stroke her behind the ear, find the delicate flesh below, register the skip of her heartbeat through her pulse.

  As he eased her back, the focus in her hazel eyes was now fully on him, just as he’d intended. “You’ve got this,” he repeated. Not as a persuasion or wishful thinking, but as an absolute certainty. “Keep your head up. Make eye contact. Don’t hide. You don’t have to hide. Not ever.”

  She moistened her lips, her gaze on his mouth. He’d given her something else to think about, and it made his own heart thump harder to see it.

  Slowly, she straightened, and looked toward the classroom. A few more people had moved past them, come in to take a seat, but there were still plenty of chairs available close to the door. He watched her lift her chin, tighten her hand on the backpack strap on her shoulder. She sent him one last quick look. “On your first day of school, were you nervous?”

  “Everyone is.”

  “Did your parents say anything to help?”

  “Yeah. Dad said, ‘Behave yourself, boy. Or I’ll strap your ass when you get home.’ Kind of makes me hope you don’t behave.”

  Giving her startled expression a wicked grin, he nodded. “Go on in and sit down.”

  There was that minute hesitation, but hand to God, he felt like a proud parent himself when he saw her make the decision. She took one step forward, then another. She walked straight to the corner desk at the very front of the room. The one closest to the door. As she slid into it, her gaze went to the white board, and latched onto it. This was some kind of civics class, so a slide of the Bill of Rights was projected onto the board. She started reading it, slowly, her lips moving.

  The teacher slid past Rory. He was a skinny thirty-something guy in khakis and a crisp shirt with thin blue stripes. The wire-rimmed glasses completed the educator look. Rory knew he was the teacher because he went to the desk up front and set his briefcase upon it.

  Daralyn looked toward Rory once more, enough time for him to give her a nod, and then the teacher moved to close the door. Class was beginning.

  He headed to the courtyard. The halls were emptying out, but the doors had a push bar on the inside, so he brought his chair close enough, pushed it open, and gripped the frame to bring his chair up against the door, lever it open with his caster, and maneuver through. It wasn’t the smoothest looking operation, but he was way better at it now than he’d been at the beginning, when he’d banged his elbows and knees. Not that he felt the knee impact, but an injury there was of greater concern than anything above the waist. He had to stay hyperaware of whatever came in contact with his legs, for cuts or injuries he couldn’t feel.

  The pull side took only a little backward momentum, a good yank. He liked that side because it made it easier for him to open the door for a woman. That is, if he did a quick brake lock so the resistance from the door didn’t roll his chair forward and mash her against it.

  Challenges like that had enabled his earliest physical therapist, Lucille, aka The She-Bitch-From-Hell, to successfully introduce him to his first adaptive sport, wheelchair basketball. After a particular grueling session, where he’d considered his greatest accomplishment to be not breaking down and bawling like a baby at how freaking weak he was, she’d taken him out in the back of the center. They had a track and several basketball courts, one of which was in use for an informal scrimmage. Every guy playing was on wheels.

  “There’s more than basketball happening,” she’d pointed out. “See how smoothly they handle their chairs? One handed, two handed…they become one with them. You can hate and resist the equipment that gives you options, Rory, like your chair. Or it can become your best friend.”

  “Stupid. That’s just stupid.” But his attention had reluctantly remained on the basketball players, the way they did wheelies in the chair, taking the casters off the ground as they spun, their center of balance flawless.

  Or not so much. When one player toppled, something that, at that point, had terrified Rory, the guy swore, but it was a good-natured oath. No different from a guy going up toe-to-toe with another guy at the hoop and getting knocked on his ass. One guy nudged his chair back over to him, and the player pulled himself back in it on his own. In less than a minute, they were back to playing, no muss, no fuss.

  A couple days later he was asking her what kinds of exercises would get him out on the court with them.

  He knew why those early days were coming up in his head right now. A lot of the things going through Daralyn’s head he could see so clearly because he’d been there.

  A comfort zone was bliss. It was also stagnation. The death of hope.

  He stopped at a table where a kid who looked like he hadn’t been long out of high school was reading. He had a shock of red hair, a silver cuff earring and wore mostly black. “Hey, where’d you get the Funyuns?” Rory asked.

  “Over there.” The kid waved to his left without looking up. “Vending machine next to the restroom. But stay away from the protein bars. They’ve been in there since the fall of the Roman Empire, and they taste like it.”

  “Who are you kidding? That’s the way all protein bars taste.”

  The kid grinned and looked up with bright blue eyes. He did a double take. “Oh. Yeah.”

  Rory ignored the full stop and eyed him critically, the well-developed biceps and shoulders. “Where do you work out?”

  “Wherever I can. Right now at a buddy’s garage.” The guy was now looking past the chair, studying Rory right back. “How about you?”

  “Home gym, but I’ve got a personal trainer, Red, down at—”

  “Martin’s Gym.” The kid whistled. “Yeah, I did a couple sessions with him. He’s tough.”

  “Don’t I know it. I was walking before I started going to him.”

  The young man blanched. At Rory’s grin, he chuckled and held out a fist for a bump. “Good one. I’m Brandt. Hey, I’ll split the Funyuns with you. Half the fat…”

  After Brandt headed off for his class, Rory settled in with his paperwork, spreading it out on the table. But before he started on that, he texted Daralyn a dozen emojis that looked like red roses.

  A few minutes later, she returned a smiley face, a heart, and a knight on horseback, with a lance. He had to admit that made him feel pretty damn good, and not just because it showed him the most important thing, that she was doing okay.

  When the doors started opening about ninety minutes later, signaling the end of the first class, he had her lunch box out and waiting. He saw her emerge, find him, and her already encouragingly happy expression brightened. She started talking to him about ten feet away.

  “Did you know that the Constitution came from a document signed almost a thousand years ago? The Magna Carta…”

  Since she’d never obtained a high school diploma, getting her general credits to qualify for that was her first step in community college. He’d graduated middle of his class, an indifferent student. Even his friends who were much better students had seen school as a social outlet and the means to get into a good college. The adult students here, working their classes in between work and kids, were climbing a ladder to better opportunities.

  How many of them had ever set all that aside long enough to be as delighted as Daralyn was, simply for the chance to sit in a classroom and learn?

  Was it the sadism of fate that had put a woman with her intelligence in such a terrible position for most of her childhood? Or had it been a gift of mercy that helped her survive? Who better understood just how amazing flying was, than a bird who’d always been caged?

  Didn’t matter if it had been in the cage since hatching out of the egg. Thousands of years of flying couldn’t be bred out of a creature born with wings. It would call to something in their very blood and bone, if they had the chance to embrace it again.

  Seeing the world through her eyes, her excitement, was like being able to fly himself.

  “Daralyn.” An unfamiliar voice broke her off mid-sentence.

  As Rory turned toward it, he saw the teacher of her civics class approaching their table. He carried a slim, dog-eared paperback. “Turns out, I did have it in my file cabinet. This is an old text, but it’s one of the best I’ve found. It examines the historic motivations and environment that existed during the time each constitutional article and amendment was formulated.”

  When he offered the book, she hesitated. “That’s so kind. I don’t read very fast, Mr. Reid. Maybe I could look through it when I’m between periods here, so I can give it back to you before I leave for the day.”

  “It’s all right. Take it, and take your time with it. I haven’t had someone so interested in constitutional history since I had my own first class on it.” He smiled at her.

  Yeah, he was her teacher. Yeah, Rory was glad she was excited about civics. But the teacher had eyes—four of them—and they were all noticing just how pretty she was. A pretty, eager, adult student.

  Rory told himself it wasn’t because he was in a wheelchair that the guy hadn’t given him the quick assessing glance any other guy would, if he saw a man sitting with a woman who’d caught his interest. Even so, the ugly thing sitting in his gut said it was. A man with only half a body wasn’t really a man anyway, right? Probably in the “friend zone” at best. Not serious competition.

  “Thank you,” she said, taking the book like she’d been offered treasure. Who the hell wouldn’t be fascinated by her? No artifice, just pure sincerity. With deep hazel eyes, shiny long hair and a shy smile that made any guy with balls want to keep that smile turned his way.

  “Mr. Reid—” she began.

  “Joe is fine,” he assured her.

  Not even remotely fine, asshole.

  But Rory couldn’t miss the possibilities here. Smart guy, lots of things to teach, with an unassuming, relaxed personality that would work really well with Daralyn.

  Plus a whole body. One whose operator wouldn’t have to think twice about how to open a door for her.

  Shut the fuck up, he told that pathetic inner voice. Once, it had been his constant companion. Now, not so much, but it liked to surface at annoying times.

  “Joe,” she said. “This is Rory Wilder. He’s my friend, and my boss.”

  Joe turned to Rory. As Rory offered a hand, their eyes met, a whole lot of messages going back and forth.

  Rory tried not to be petty, but he couldn’t help but notice Joe had a limp-wristed handshake. He couldn’t call it a true read, though, since Joe had that typical brief hesitation, as if worried Rory might break if he shook his hand wrong.

  “Nice to meet you, Joe,” he said, trying to sound pleasant. “Sounds like you’re a good teacher.”

  “Some students remind you that you start this gig wanting to be a good teacher.” Joe shrugged, offered an easy smile. “Thanks for that reminder, Daralyn. See you in a couple days.”

  It helped Rory more than he wanted to admit that the second Joe turned away, Daralyn’s attention went a hundred percent to the book she cradled in her hands. “That was so nice of him,” she said. “I’m going to try and read this before my next class with him, so I can return it.”

  “It sounds like you can take a little longer if you need to.”

  She looked up, glanced at Joe’s retreating form. Then she returned her gaze to Rory and gave him an absent smile, her mind full of all sorts of new ideas.

  Rory nudged her lunchbox at her, trying to keep his amiable expression fixed in place. “Go ahead and eat something, since your six-o’clock class won’t let out until seven-thirty.”

  “Oh, right.” She set the book carefully out of range of the food, and unpacked her thermos and sandwich. She unwrapped the sandwich and broke off a nibble. “Want half? I won’t eat all this.”

  She wouldn’t, much as he wished she would, so he took the other half. Six to six-thirty was apparently dinner time. Some of the students had brought their own, like Daralyn. Others lined up in front of the food court options.

  “Is this a lot like high school?” she asked.

  He hadn’t looked away from her profile as she took it all in. Now she looked at him, realized he was gazing at her, and smiled uncertainly, making him wonder what she saw in his expression. He made a conscious effort to add warmth to it.

  “Yeah. And no. In high school, the people you’re hanging with are your close friends. You have stuff in common, like me and the football team. Or Les and her fellow science geeks. Thomas…he always seemed to be everyone’s friend, but not, if that makes sense. Though I didn’t get why then, I do now.”

  “Why?” She chewed a bite of her sandwich slowly, her attention fixed on him.

  “He couldn’t be who he was. A guy who liked guys. So it was sort of a mask. He was a nice guy; that part wasn’t a mask. He was good-looking enough to be popular, so those things kept him from being treated like an outcast.”

  “Yes. I can see that.” She put down the sandwich, studied it. “My uncle and father didn’t take me into town much, but I knew the rules when we were together. ‘Don’t talk to anyone. Don’t wander off.’ If I broke the rules, they wouldn’t take me back except for church, not for a long, long time, not that we went that often anyway. So when I met people in town I knew, like Thomas or Les, or you, I had to act the right way.”

  He swallowed back the anger her earlier life always incited. She didn’t need that. He responded in a steady voice. “How did you feel like acting?”

  “Like I wasn’t there,” she said honestly. Her gaze moved to where his hand rested on the table, traveled up to his shoulder, touched his face and moved away. “I didn’t feel real, so pretending I was felt…uncomfortable. Being in town was different from being at home, which was good, but I was afraid, too, which made me think being invisible would be better. If that makes sense.”