His Healing Touch

Backlit by the interior light, he was little more than a shadow on the other side of the screen door. And it was definitely a “he.” A tall, very broad-shouldered man who said nothing, nothing at all.

“Um, my, uh, my car got stuck in the mud back there?” She used her thumb to point behind her. “I was gathering flowers?” She held up the basket, in case he needed proof. “My, um, assistant gave me the wrong directions, so I’m lost?”

He continued to stand there, one hand on the frame, the other holding the brass knob of the inside door. He didn’t nod, didn’t smile, didn’t speak.

What’s with you? she wanted to ask him. Cat got your tongue? “I, uh, well, then it started to rain.” She giggled again, and this giggle sounded even sillier to her own ears than the last one. “There was thunder and lightning and the whole nine yards, y’know? And I thought, ‘Uh-oh, what’re you gonna do now?’ And then I saw your light? And—”

Kasey clamped her teeth together, wondering what on earth was making her spew out information in the form of questions. She’d never done anything like it before.

Maybe she was dreaming. Sure. Why not? That made sense, because this whole situation was beginning to feel like a nightmare. The darkness, the weather, this house and its owner—if this huge, silent man hadn’t killed the owner—all had the makings of a Hitchcock flick. She’d always wondered why heroines seemed to deliberately put themselves in danger in those movies. Now, feeling enormous empathy for the poor, delicate things, Kasey believed they’d probably only been desperate to get in out of the cold rain.

And speaking of rain, how long did this guy intend to let her stand here, dripping and shaking? Didn’t he have any manners at all?

“Oh, sorry,” he said, opening the screen door. “Where are my manners?”

Had he read her mind? Or had she, in her high-strung state, been thinking out loud? She decided she could just as easily do the rest of her thinking inside.

She slipped past him, taking care not to touch him—no easy feat, big as he was—and made a beeline straight for the heat of the fire. She’d prayed for a cozy cabin and a nice hot fire, something to eat and drink. Two outta four ain’t bad, she thought, thanking Him. Now what were the chances her host was a normal, decent guy? She’d settle for anything less than a criminal at this point.

He closed the door just then—a little louder than necessary, Kasey thought. When he bolted it, she swallowed, hard.

“I don’t get much company way up here.” He laughed softly. “Especially not during a thunderstorm.”

Well, she told herself, at least he has a nice laugh. Then her smile faded as she remembered that lady reporter’s interview with Ted Bundy. He’d had a nice laugh, too.

Frowning darkly, the stranger said, “You’re soaked to the skin.”

Which should have been the least of his worries. Between the mud that had clumped in the treads of her boots and the rain that dripped from her pants cuffs, she’d tracked in quite a mess. And now it was puddling on what appeared to be a polar bear rug. “Oh, wow. I’m so sorry,” she said. “When I get back to town, I’ll—”

“Easy. I know how to use a scrub brush.”

With no explanation whatever, he disappeared through a nearby doorway, leaving her alone near the fire. Had he gone to fetch his hatchet? A handgun? Maybe a rope and a roll of duct tape, so he could tie her up and torture her before—

He clomped back into the room on brown suede boots. Who is this guy? she asked herself, staring at the big shoes. Paul Bunyan? Then she noticed that he carried something white, and something red, neatly folded and stacked on his hand. On his unbelievably large hand. Larry from Of Mice and Men popped into her mind.

They stood for a moment, blinking and clearing their throats, as if trying to come to grips with the fact that she was stuck here, at least for the time being.

“You can change,” he said, nodding toward the room he’d just vacated, “in there.”

She nodded, too, as he handed the clothes to her. “Wow. Neat. A sweatsuit. And a towel, too,” she said. “This is great. This is good.” What inane thing would pop out of her mouth next? she wondered. “Let us thank Him for our food”?

Smiling, both dark brows rose high on his forehead. “Lemme guess,” he began, “your name is Red.”

“No, it’s—” She followed his gaze to the basket of cuttings still clutched in her free hand. Getting his Red Riding Hood joke, she laughed. Way too long and way too loud, but what did he expect after the chilly greeting he’d given her?

“I—I own a… These are for…” She put the basket on the nearest end table. Maybe she’d explain later. And maybe you won’t. “I’ll just go and change now.” And backing through the door, she said, “Thanks. Really. I appreciate it.”

The instant she closed the door, Kasey checked for a lock. “Rats!” she whispered through clenched teeth. “Whoever heard of a door without a lock?”

You have, was her silent answer. Her own bedroom door didn’t have a lock on it. Neither did her mom’s, or Aleesha’s. And while her bathroom door had one, it had been broken for as long as she could remember. Besides, if the guy on the other side of this door aimed to harm her, a lock wouldn’t stop him. And if that was his aim, wouldn’t he have done it by now?

Possibly.

And he might just be one of those killers who got his jollies by watching his victims suffer….

Trembling, Kasey leaned her back against the door. Get hold of yourself, ’cause if he is a murderer, you’ll need your wits about you! Then, trading her wet clothes for his gigantic, fleecy sweatsuit, she vowed to get her overactive imagination under control.

Adam had just placed two mugs of hot chocolate on the coffee table, when she came out of the bedroom. He hadn’t known what to expect, considering the shape she’d been in when she arrived, but surely not this….

No way she could’ve been taller than five foot five. He knew, because when she’d slunk past him to get inside earlier, the top of her head had barely reached his shoulder. Somehow, she looked even tinier in his bulky sweatsuit.

Her hair had looked darker, straighter, when it had been all plastered to her head by the rain. Now, thick waves that fell almost to her waist gleamed like a new penny in the firelight.

“I suppose it’s too much to hope that you have a phone way out here….”

“Cell phone,” he said, “but the battery is dead.”

“Seems to be a lot of that going around lately.” Then she noticed the mugs. “Oh, wow,” she said, smiling. “Hot chocolate, my favorite.”

The smile put a deep dimple in her right cheek at exactly the same moment as a loud, gurgling growl erupted from her stomach. She placed a hand over it. A very tiny, dainty hand, he noticed.

“Hungry?”

Her cheeks turned a rosy red. “Well, I hate to put you out. I can make myself a sandwich, make one for you, too…if you have the fixin’s.”

“You just sit there by the fire and get warm. I’ll whip us both up a bite to eat.” He headed for the kitchen. “Do you like grilled cheese?” Standing at the counter that separated the kitchen from the living room, Adam picked up a can of tomato soup, opened his mouth to offer that, too, when she spoke up.

“Do I!” She sat on the hearth, hugged her knees to her chest. “Only way I like it better is with a bowl of tomato soup.”

“Well, then. We have two things in common.”

Well-arched brows disappeared behind wispy, coppery bangs.

“An aversion to being cold and wet, and grilled cheese with a side of tomato soup.”

Either she hadn’t heard his response to her unasked question, or chose not to respond, for his surprise houseguest was leafing through a copy of Architecture Today. He wondered which house had her wrinkling her nose that way. Hopefully, the ridiculous-looking one the magazine had decided to feature on the cover. Adam didn’t know why, especially when his own house was a glass-and-wood contemporary in Ellicott City, Maryland, but he’d never been overly fond of modern-looking houses. Give him an old Victorian, like his grandma used to live in, and—

“I could never live in one of these.”

“One of what?”

“These houses that have more windows than walls.” She met his eyes. “Where’s a person supposed to hang pictures?”

He’d been trying to butter the bread when she said it, and buttered his hand, instead. After wiping it clean on a kitchen towel, he stirred the soup and shrugged. He didn’t have anything on the walls at his place, so the question had never occurred to him.

She stood, returned the magazine to its pile, then bent to make a tidy fan shape of the stack. “So,” she said, walking toward him, “mind if I ask you a question?”

“Fire away.”

“Actually,” she added, sliding onto a stool, “it’s more like a couple of questions.”

What was it with women? Did they all need name, rank, and serial number before they could carry on an ordinary conversation? “Name’s Adam Thorne,” he began dryly, adjusting the flame under the frying pan. “I’m thirty-two, unattached, and practice medicine for a living.”

“Whoa.” She held up a hand, traffic-cop style. “A doctor without a phone? How will your patients get hold of you in case of an emergency?”

“My partner takes over when I’m away, and when he’s gone, I do the same for him.”

“I didn’t see a car out front—”

“Friend dropped me off.” As if it’s any of your business, he added mentally. “He needed to borrow my pickup and—”

She stopped his explanation with a weary sigh.

“Sorry,” Adam said, “but it’s too late to hike out of here tonight, especially with this weird weather—”

“When will your friend be back?”

He grinned at her interruption. “First thing tomorrow morning.”

She straightened her back, tucked her hair behind her ears and bobbed her head. “Oh, well…” she said, shrugging.

He liked her grit. For all she knew, he was a madman. Yet there she sat, pretending not to mind that the wind had blown her into a stranger’s house.

“…lemons and puckers and all that.”

He would have asked what that meant…if he hadn’t looked into her eyes. Adam couldn’t help noticing how big they were, how long-lashed, how green. And then she smiled, and he had to add beautiful to the list.

There was something about her, though, something vaguely familiar….

He set the thoughts aside when she made a thin line of her mouth, slid the pucker left, then right. “What I really wanted to know was, what are you doing way out here in the middle of nowhere, all by yourself?”

Man, but she was cute! Adam cleared his throat. “I come up here every other weekend or so. You know, the old ‘get away from it all’ routine.”

She nodded. “How in the world did you ever find this place? I mean, it’s so…” Fingers drawing little arcs in the air, she hummed the tune to an old Beatles’ song. “It’s so nowhere, man!”

Chuckling, he said, “Inheritance. The property belonged to my grandparents.”

“They lived here?”

Adam shook his head, biting back the sadness the thought aroused. “Not exactly. Theirs was a traditional farmhouse, swing on the porch, potbellied stove in the dining room…. Unfortunately, it burned to the ground a decade or so ago.” He swallowed as the flash of memory prickled his mind. “I had this one built a couple of years back.”

Another nod, another glance around. “I like it. I like it a lot.”

So now I can go to my grave a satisfied man, he thought, grinning. Adam sliced each sandwich in half, poured the soup into two deep bowls.

“I feel like a lazy oaf, just sitting here while you do all the work. Let me set the table, at least.” She hopped off the stool. “Where do you keep the silverware? And the napkins?”

Adam opened a drawer, saw her eyes widen and her mouth drop open. “What?” he asked.

Blinking innocently, she said, “O-o-oh, nothing.”

“Seriously, what?”

“Well, if you hadn’t already told me you were single, I’d have figured it out after poking my nose in there, that’s for sure!”

What was she rambling about?

“How do you ever find anything?”

“I just dig ’til I come up with what I went hunting for.”

She bobbed her head from side to side. “Makes sense, I guess.” She pointed at the contents of the drawer. “You need a license to hunt in there, ’cause it looks dangerous.”

If she hadn’t punctuated the comment with a wink, he might have taken offense. But then, it seemed he took offense at just about everything these days. Adam put the food on the counter, topped off her hot chocolate with more. “Now then—”

She held up a hand to forestall the question. “I know, I know. Turnabout is fair play and all that.” Laughing softly, she said, “My name is Kasey Delaney. I’m twenty-six years old—well, I’ll be twenty-seven in a couple of weeks—and I, too, am single. I’m a floral designer by trade and—”

“Floral designer? What’s that?”

“You know those big bouquets you see in department stores and hotel lobbies and what-not?”

He hadn’t. But he nodded, anyway.

“Well, that’s what I do.”

“You make them?”

“I make them.”

He came around to her side of the counter, sat on the stool beside hers. “So, you’re artistic, then.”

“Maybe.” She held her thumb and forefinger half an inch apart. “Just a little.”

But wait just a minute here…. What had she said her last name was? Something French. No, Irish. De-something. Devaney.

Delaney.

His pulse raced and his mouth went dry. She couldn’t be that Kasey Delaney, could she? But then, how many Kasey Delaneys could there be in the Baltimore area? “’Scuse me a sec, will you?”

She blew a stream of air across the soup in her spoon. “Sure, but don’t be gone too long. Might not be anything left when you get back.”

He hadn’t prepared the meal to satisfy his own hunger, anyway. The main reason he’d made a sandwich for himself was so she wouldn’t feel uncomfortable eating alone. But now Adam was the uncomfortable one. Because what if…what if she was—

Only one way to find out.

He’d carried the photograph in his wallet for fifteen years, to the day, almost. He’d cut it out of The Baltimore Sun the morning after Halloween that wretched year. For a few years after that, he’d carried it as is, but as it yellowed and turned up at the edges, Adam began to worry it might disintegrate. And he couldn’t have that. He needed the article to remind him who and what he’d been, who and what he could become if he didn’t force himself to remember what he’d done that night. It had been encased in plastic since his eighteenth birthday.

In the bright overhead light of the bathroom, he slid his wallet out of his back pocket. It required no hunting to find the article; he’d read it numerous times since…since the night that stupid, stupid prank went so wrong.

He looked at it now, reminding himself that the girl in the black-and-white photo had been twelve when the picture was taken. She wore braces, a ponytail, one of those dark-plaid, private-school–type uniforms. One look at those big, smiling eyes cinched it. The Kasey pictured here and the one in his kitchen, who’d made him laugh and smile—and mean it for the first time in years—were one and the same.

Why did life have to be so full of bitter irony? he wondered.

How much should he tell her, if indeed he told her anything at all? Was her visit here truly an accident? Or had she shown up for a reason?

He doubted that. He’d always been very careful to keep his identity a secret from the Delaneys, hand-delivering cash payments in the middle of the night, never at the same time of the month, so he wouldn’t risk having Kasey or her mother catch him making “deposits” in their mailbox.

It had started small, just ten dollars that first month, earned from his part-time job changing oil filters at the local lube center. Remorse-ridden that his cowardly silence had been partly responsible for a man’s death, for a woman’s widowhood, for a child losing her father, Adam had taken a second part-time job, upping the amount to twenty dollars the next month. And although the amount in the last envelope had increased to nearly a thousand dollars, the guilt hadn’t decreased.

“Hey,” she called, “you okay in there? Should I send up a 9-1-1 smoke signal?”

Adam slid the article back into his wallet and tucked the wallet into his jeans pocket. Heart beating against his rib cage, Adam did the breathing exercise that always calmed him before surgery. Smiling, he headed back to the counter.

“So,” he said, forcing a brightness into his voice that he didn’t feel, “did you save me any soup?”

She insisted he let her do the dishes, and he insisted right back. “Okay. All right,” she conceded. “But I’ll wash, you dry, since you know where everything goes…more or less….” And that’s how they ended up side by side in his tiny L-shaped kitchen.

Sharing this everyday chore with a virtual stranger felt good, felt natural, making Kasey wonder if she’d lost her mind somewhere between that field of flowers and this isolated cabin. In an attempt at rational balance, she tried to rouse some of the fear she’d felt earlier, when thoughts of murderers and robbers had her heart beating double time.

But it was no use. Rational or not, she felt safe with Dr. Adam Thorne. It didn’t seem to bother him, either, that as the minutes passed, neither of them had said a word. Kasey added “comfortable” to the things he made her feel.

“So tell me, what kind of medicine do you practice?”

“Cardiology.”

“In Baltimore?”

“I’m affiliated with several area hospitals—GBMC, St. Joseph’s, Sinai, Ellicott General—but my office is in Ellicott City.”

She looked up at him. “You sound like a TV commercial.”

He laughed at that.

“I live in Ellicott City, too. Small world, huh?”

Adam looked away suddenly. “Yeah. Real small.”

Kasey didn’t know what to make of the dark expression that accompanied what should have been an innocuous agreement. “So why cardiology instead of—”

The plate he’d been drying shattered on the floor.

“Careful,” she said, squatting beside him, “you don’t want to cut yourself.”

But he didn’t seem to have heard her. And his hands shook slightly as he reached for the fragmented ceramic.

She grabbed his wrists. “I’ll do that. You probably have surgery scheduled bright and early Monday morning. I’d feel terrible if you had to cancel, get your partner to do the operation, because you cut your finger on my sandwich plate.”

One side of his mouth lifted in a wry grin. “How do you know it was your plate? Could have been mine.”

“True, but it’d still be in the cupboard now if I hadn’t shown up. Now really, let me clean this up,” she repeated. “It’ll make me feel better about all the trouble I’ve put you to.”

When he hesitated, she put on her best “do as I say” look, hoping it would have more effect on Adam than it did on Aleesha.

Amazingly, it did.

“Do you have a dustpan?” she asked as he stood.

He pointed to a narrow door.

She pulled out a hand broom, too, then proceeded to sweep up the remnants of the plate. “What would you be doing if I wasn’t here?” she asked, eye-level with his worn hiking shoes.

“Watching something on TV, I guess.”

It was just a broken plate; the miserable way he sounded, a person would think he’d killed someone! “Then go watch something on TV. Pretend I’m not even here.”

The shoes—and their owner—hiked into the living room, and seconds later, the theme from the Channel 13 news filled the air.

When she joined him after cleaning up, he was in his recliner, TV listings in one hand, clicker in the other. Kasey sat on the end of the couch nearest his chair and hugged a quilted toss pillow to her chest. “Anything positive happening tonight?”

“Nah. Typical news day.” He brightened slightly to add, “The Dow Jones is up a couple of points, though.”

Yippee, she thought. Kasey knew as much about the stock market as she knew about cardiology. “Have they said anything about the weather yet?”

“Only that we’re in for a doozie of a storm.”

Yippee, she echoed silently. It’d be just her luck for the tail end of that hurricane that had been wreaking havoc in the Atlantic to choose tonight to head up Chesapeake Bay. If that happened, they could be stranded here for…for who knew how long! Several years earlier, when the weather had taken a turn like that, downed trees and power lines had Baltimoreans fighting in store aisles over the dwindling supply of ice and batteries. Kasey sighed inwardly.

A huge clap of thunder, followed immediately by crackling lightning, shook the cabin.

Wonderful, Kasey thought. What else could go wrong?

As if in answer to her question, the lights went out. She watched as the TV’s picture shrunk to a bright white pinpoint, then disappeared altogether. She’d never seen such total darkness, not even in the basement furnace room at home.

“Stay right where you are,” Adam said. “I’ll get a flashlight.”

“Don’t you worry, I’m not gonna move a muscle. I can’t even see my hand in front of my face.”

She could hear him, rummaging somewhere off to her left. Hopefully, he hadn’t stored the flashlight in that kitchen drawer, because he was likely to pull out the proverbial bloody stump instead of a flashlight.

Much to her surprise, he was back in no time, illuminated by the pyramid-shaped beam of a foot-long flashlight.

“Here,” he instructed, handing her a battery-powered lantern, “turn that on.”

And before she could agree or object, he was gone again, leaving nothing but a bobbing, weaving trail of light in his wake. Kasey fumbled with the lantern until she found a switch on its side. Minutes later, Adam placed a glass-globed lantern beside it, and once lit, the oil-soaked wick brightened the entire room. He placed a matching lamp on the kitchen counter.

“Well,” she said, laughing, “what in the world will we do without the TV to entertain us?”

Adam leaned back in his recliner. “Oh, I have a feeling you’ll think of something.”

For a reason she couldn’t explain, the way he sounded just now matched the expression he’d worn earlier. Suspicious was the only word she could think of to describe it. And she couldn’t for the life of her come up with a reason he’d have to feel that way. “We could play a game, I suppose. Do you have a game cupboard up here?”

“Actually, it’s a game chest.” He nodded at the coffee table. “What’s your preference? Scrabble? Monopoly? Life?”

Last thing Kasey wanted to do right now was think. She wrinkled her nose. “How ’bout War?”

“That baby game?” he said, grinning.

“Truthfully, if it’s all the same to you, I’m not really in much of a game-playing mood right now.”

Adam sighed. He’d never liked games. Not even as a kid. “Good, ’cause I’m never in much of a game-playing mood.”

“Really?”

He watched her tuck one leg under her, hug the other to her chest. In the lantern light, her hair gleamed like a coppery halo, her eyes glittered like emeralds. “Why’s that? Are you a sore loser?”

She had a lovely, lyrical voice, too, he thought, smiling when she laughed. “Sore loser? Hardly. For some reason, I rarely lose.”

“I see. So you turn other people into sore losers, then.”

And that smile! Did she realize it made him want to kiss her?

“Something like that, I guess.”

She started to get up. “So, how ’bout I snoop around in your kitchen, whip us up a cup of hot chocolate. Or tea.”

Somewhere under that thick, oversize sweatsuit, was a curvy, womanly figure. He knew, because earlier, her soaking-wet blouse and trousers had acted like a second skin, making it impossible not to notice. He was surprised at the caustic tone of his “Mi casa, su casa.”

She padded into the kitchen on the thick-soled athletic socks he’d loaned her and turned on the gas under the teakettle. And as she opened and closed cabinet doors in search of tea bags and sugar, he said, “So tell me how you got into this flower business of yours.”