Sam shook his head. "They didn't get to finish. I left. I couldn't take it anymore, being looked at through a microscope. Besides, they were getting all their questions answered, but n.o.body was answering mine."

"What questions were those?"

"Well, dammit, Katie, what do you think?" He erupted suddenly, all pretense of indifference wiped from his features. "I hadn't asked for this thing! I wanted to know when it was going to go away! And all those brilliant doctors and scientists would tell me was that my body's energy field had been altered, apparently as a result of the near-death experience. Well, h.e.l.l, I already knew that. I even knew why."

Kate's brow creased. "You did?"

"Sure," he declared. "If you think about it, it makes a crazy kind of sense. To come back from being dead, it was like I made my body stop bleeding and sort of turned it back on. And whatever the h.e.l.l I did over there to get back here stayed with me. All they did at the center was put a label on it. In their lingo, I' m what's known as a bona fide healer. I finally figured out that meant I'm stuck with this thing." Gruffly, with that odd, half-embarra.s.sed catch in his voice, he conceded, "So, okay. I can handle that. As long as I' ve got it, maybe I can do some good with it. But does that mean every time I see a sick person, or somebody who's hurt, I'm supposed to try to cure them?"

"Of course not," she replied instantly. "Even if you could heal all different kinds of things, you can't possibly cure all the sick and injured of the world. And n.o.body could expect you to."

He shot her a cynical look. "Oh, yeah? Tell that to the hundred or so people who knocked on my door between the time I got back to California and the time I left, four weeks later."

She stared at him, stunned. "Good Lord, Sam. Where did they come from?"

"Everywhere." His arm swept the air in front of him. "Just . . . everywhere."

They'd reached a place where the track bent to the left. Straight ahead, a few yards into the woods, lay a casualty of Tuesday's storm-an old red maple, uprooted and stretched across the forest floor, its new leaves withered. When Sam left the track, headed for a look at the damage, Kate followed him, picking her way through the low-lying brush.

He stopped beside the fallen giant to lay a hand on the thick trunk. She came up beside him, tilting her head to look at the cloudy sky through the break in the green canopy the tree's demise had caused. A minute pa.s.sed in silence before he continued.

"Word got around about me," he said. "Before I knew it, I had parents bringing children with leukemia, blind people who hadn't seen the light of day in forty years, Vietnam vets paralyzed from the waist down . . . you name it, I saw it. Some of them were rich, some not so rich. Most wanted to pay me. They all wanted me to take away their pain and make their lives bearable. G.o.d, Katie, it was"-his control slipped, and he shuddered visibly-"it was awful. Some of them I helped, but a lot of them, I couldn't help. And they had a hard time understanding that. . . . h.e.l.l, so did I."

He turned his head away as he murmured, "It's not so easy, watching somebody hurt and not being able to help them."

"Yes, I know," Kate said quietly. Like it's not so easy watching you hurt, when I don't know if there's anything I can say or do that will help even a little.

As her gaze searched his profile, she had to fight to keep from reaching out to touch him. She wanted to let him know she understood at least some small part of his torment, but something told her that he wouldn't accept such a gesture. Sam was an incredibly strong-willed man. He'd had the guts and persistence to overcome pain and disability that would have crushed a lesser man's spirit. Granted, the circ.u.mstances he'd described were fantastic beyond her wildest imaginings; but that made it even more ridiculous to think about patting his shoulder and telling him that she sympathized with his predicament.

But what could she do for him? Was there anything?

Turning to lean a hip against the broad maple trunk, he crossed his arms over his chest as he spoke. "Still, I helped enough of the people who came to me that more kept coming. And Marty Anderson had me at the hospital two days a week, working on patients. Then he started calling me, sometimes in the middle of the night, for emergencies. I didn't mind doing it for him-he'd done a lot for me. And I had the time, since I couldn't . . . Well, I had the time, but. . . ."

He trailed off, shifting his weight uncomfortably as he ran a hand through his hair, rumpling it. "The thing is, this business can be pretty exhausting. It can wipe me out for days afterwards to work on somebody who's in really bad shape-like that guy last night. And even when they're not that bad off, I can't handle more than a couple of people in the same day. I guess that seems crazy, since all it looks like I 'm doing is putting my hands on somebody, but-"

"No, it doesn't seem crazy." Kate boosted herself up to sit on the tree trunk. "Energy is measurable. When it's gone, it's gone."

"I'm only a man. I'm not G.o.d."

"Of course not."

"That was the worst-when people would come not to get me to cure them but to ask for my advice. Like I was some kind of preacher or guru or something." He uttered a short laugh. "The last straw was the guy from the local TV talk show who started badgering me to be on his show. h.e.l.l, if it wasn't so pathetic, it would almost be funny."

He was silent for an instant, then bit out a violent curse. "But it isn't funny. There's nothing funny about any of this. It's terrible to see people suffering and to suffer for them- and never be able to turn it off." Shaking his head, he finished, "Everybody else who knows calls this thing a gift. But from where I stand, most of the time it looks like a curse."

"Oh, Sam," she whispered. "You don't really mean that, do you?"

He gave her a scowling glance, then looked away. Several seconds went by in silence until, gradually, the set of his jaw relaxed. When he returned his gaze to hers, the scowl was gone.

"No," he said. "I don't mean it. I'm not sorry I could help those people. And if I couldn't do this thing, the doctors who said I'd never walk again would've had the last word. I got back on my feet under my own steam-but just. I doubt I'd have made it five years before I ended up where they said I'd be-in a wheelchair, living on drugs. I can't pretend I wasn't d.a.m.ned glad when I figured out I could cure myself, too. It was harder working on myself-it didn't happen on the first try, all at once-but bit by bit, everything got to be right again. All I've got left to show for the crash are the scars and some missing parts I don't need.

And a wonderful gift that he looked upon as a curse. The thought ran through Kate's mind as she asked, "Doesn't the good you've done for others-and for yourself-make the trouble you've put up with worth it?"

Sam shook his head. "Katie, since I found out about this thing, I haven't had time to figure out what is and isn't worth it. The last week in California, I was living with the blinds pulled down, the lights out, and the phone off the hook. I'd lived in that house for ten years, and I had some pretty good friends in Mojave. I was trying to . . . well, to get back to work. But I couldn't stay there. I had to find a place where people would leave me alone. A place I could work things out in my own head."

"So, you came up here to get away from sick people," she noted, "and, instead, you found one bleeding to death."

He snorted. "How about that." Hooking his heel in the bark of the tree trunk, he levered himself up to sit beside her. "Except I wasn't really trying to get away from sick people. I just wanted to go somewhere they wouldn't know it was me helping them. I'm not trying to hold out on anybody, Katie. I just need some peace." Quietly, he added, "And the first place I went looking for it was worse, in some ways, than what I' d left."

"You didn't come straight here from California?"

"No, I went to Detroit to stay with Dad and Susan." He heaved a sigh. "There are a h.e.l.lova lot of sick people in a big city. More than I could ever cure. Just walking down the street was like running an obstacle course. I'd planned to stay in Detroit, but I wasn't there a week when I started reading the cla.s.sifieds, looking for a place up here."

He paused, staring sightlessly into the woods, with a look of something that might have been sadness tightening his features. "It wouldn't have worked, anyway, staying with Dad. He was glad to see me healthy. He came to the hospital right after the crash, and I think it about killed him to see me so messed up. But he's . . . narrow in his outlook, I guess you'd say. I couldn't have told him about this healing business. It wouldn't fit into anything he'd be able to accept."

Or anything you can accept.

Slowly, the pieces were coming together. In trying to envision Sam and his father having this same talk . . . well, she couldn't imagine it, given what Sam had said about the older man. And Kate thought that might account for at least part of his discomfort with his awesome gift. The man who'd raised him was steeped in traditional notions about the things that made a man a man, and Carl Reese had pa.s.sed those notions on to his son. Men didn't cry. Men didn't admit to pain. And a real man was never afraid-or, if he was, he didn't show it. What experience, in that motherless household, had Sam had with being nurtured, or with gentleness? Very little, she imagined. Yet the gift he'd been given was inherently a nurturing one.

Sam was struggling to reconcile his healing gift with his macho image of manhood, trying to remain tough despite the torrent of intense emotion that poured from him every time he was compelled to touch and heal another human being. Emotions such as tenderness and compa.s.sion-those things she'd seen carved into his face the previous night. Emotions she was certain had always been there, inside him, but that he'd learned to deny. Well, he'd denied them so successfully that he didn't know how to cope with them when they refused to go away. They made him angry, embarra.s.sed; they caused him pain. And he didn't like it. So he was handling the battle inside him- the one between the "real man" and the healer-by trying to relegate the latter to nuisance status. But it wasn't working.

"Anyway," he went on, "I'm planning to stay here until I've got some control over this thing. Which basically means learning how to make choices about who, when, where, and how often I help people. I know that must sound cold to you, but-"

"It doesn't sound cold at all."

When his head turned and his startled gaze met hers, Kate added, "I can't begin to imagine how I'd feel in your position, but I know any medical professional-or anybody in the business of helping people- makes choices all the time. If they don't, they get burned out pretty fast. You couldn't have kept going the way things were in California."

She paused, then added, "You made a choice last night, you know. You waited until I'd done everything I could do. Then you asked me if Ray c.o.o.ney was going to die." Yes, he'd realized it, but the quick flash of wariness that touched his features said he wasn't sure of her reaction. "Actually," she continued, "if I'd had enough Ringer's, you might not have had to do anything." "But you didn't," he muttered. "No, and if you hadn't been there, he'd be dead." Holding his gaze, she added softly, "I'm glad you were there, Sam." He didn't look away. And he didn't shrug off her grat.i.tude. "So am I," he said. "And I was glad you were there. Knowing you were doing all the right medical things helped me not to feel like it was all on me whether he lived or died."

"Is that how it feels?"

"Sometimes." He studied her closely. "It felt that way standing in your living room the other night." "Last night, you mean, when you decided to go with me." "No. Tuesday night, when I brought you home after the storm, with your ankle busted."

Nine.

"It was you," Kate breathed, her mind flooding with the memory of Sam standing at the foot of her bed, removing the ice pack from her ankle to replace it with his hand. The image was blurry-she couldn't remember much of what either of them had said-yet she remembered his tenderness. She also remembered the incredible lightness, the sense of well-being, that had filled her. Until that moment, though, even after seeing him heal Ray c.o.o.ney and listening to his story, she hadn't made the connection between Sam and her injured ankle's recovery.

"I was on my way out the door," he admitted. "But then I thought about all the people who depend on you, and I couldn't handle wondering what might happen if you couldn't do your job."

"You looked so . . . I thought you were mad at me. I see now. But, Sam"-she shook her head a little -"it might only have been a sprain. I'd hate to think you felt you had to-"

"It was broken."

She stopped short, her lips parted. "You could tell?"

He nodded, his gaze holding hers. "But it wouldn't have mattered. I'd have done the same thing if it had only been sprained. You do a lot for other people, Katie, and I wanted to do something for you. Mostly, though, I think I did it for me. I didn't want you laid up with a broken ankle." His gaze made a slow trip over her features. "I wanted you here, like you are right now, with me."

When his gaze fastened on hers once more, Kate felt a slow flush of heat coloring her cheeks. She wished she'd been fully awake and aware of what was happening that night, for, although his hands had touched only her ankle, the look in his gray-crystal eyes said he'd known her, in those few moments, very well indeed. And she felt as if they'd shared something very special and very intimate-more intimate than any other experience she'd ever shared with a man.

Lowering her gaze, she twisted her fingers together in her lap as she tried to imagine saying thank you for something that . . . Well, somehow it didn't seem like the thing to say.

A second later, though, another thought occurred to her, and her gaze flew back to his. "Francis," she whispered. "Sam, did you . . . ?"

He arched an eyebrow. "What do you think?"

"Dear Lord," she breathed, the chill of shock racing over her skin. "And you were able to heal him because his deafness was the result of a virus. If it'd been congenital-"

"It's a sure bet he'd still be deaf." Sam glanced away, grumbling a little as he added, "But I'd have tried anyway. I mean, how could you turn your back on a kid with a smile like that?"

Kate blinked at the tears stinging her eyes.

"I hope you won't think you've got to tell your sister."

She shook her head. "No, of course I won't tell Cressie or Steve. I won't tell anybody anything you've told me. I promise I won't. Oh, Sam, I could-"

She hesitated all of two seconds. Then, with the tears br.i.m.m.i.n.g in her eyes, she threw her arms around his neck and kissed his cheek, saying, "This is for Francis . . . and this is for Cressie and Steve . . . and this is for me."

But when she pulled back from the third kiss, Sam's arm clamped around her waist, his gaze holding hers fast.

"And this is for me," he said. "For listening." Then his head angled and dipped, and his lips caught hers in a kiss that spoke of things far more potent than grat.i.tude.

She trembled as his mouth moved across hers, his lips shaping hers with a firm, persuasive pressure. Her hand resting on his forearm tightened its hold, fingers digging in as her senses filled with the sound of his breathing, the soapy scent of his skin, the warmth of his breath on her cheek. The first easy touch of his tongue skimming the seam of her lips made the b.u.t.terflies go wild inside her. But it also sent warning signals shooting through every nerve in her body.

She tried to pull back. "Sam . . ."

"Hush, now." He shifted forward on the fallen tree far enough to plant his feet on the ground. Then, tugging her off her perch, he drew her around in front of him, nestling her thighs between his. Their faces were level, and he reached up to thread his fingers through her hair, gathering a handful of the long waves. "No more talking," he said as he pulled her close, his lips grazing her temple, her cheek, the line of her jaw. "We've both been wanting this. You know that."

Yes, she knew it. But she also knew she'd been afraid of it, and the instant his mouth slid, open and seeking, onto hers, she knew why. In less than a heartbeat she was quivering with excitement, and her safe world, her pa.s.sionless world, was in danger of being set to flames. Not even if she had pushed him away in that instant would she be able to settle for pa.s.sionless again. Which was reason enough, since it was too late, anyway, simply to give in.

On a moan of yearning, her hands rode up his arms to cling to his shoulders, her lips parted to match the shape of his, and her body leaned into his with a lush, giving softness that made him suck in a sharp breath, then swear, then fold her into a kiss that quickly taught her she'd never really been kissed before.

Kisses as she'd known them were perfunctory things, a preliminary that led to something else. Sometimes they were pleasant, sometimes merely okay. But they were rarely genuinely exciting. And they were never anything at all like this.

His mouth took hers in deep, wet, voluptuous strokes that grew more so with each pounding heartbeat. The low, throaty sounds he made told her that he was as staggered and as aroused by the erotic intensity of the kiss as she was. He left no doubt about his arousal when his arm moved low around her hips and he pulled her tight against the front of his jeans. He was hard, rubbing against her, and so close to the aching place between her thighs he was made to fill. Their clothing kept them from consummating the act, but his mouth said open up to me, give yourself to me, come with me. And she felt no other joining could have been more intimate than that hot, l.u.s.ting mating of their lips and teeth and tongues.

Oh, but hadn't she known it would be this way? Yes, just as she'd known she wasn't ready for it. Yet now that she knew what she'd been missing, she didn't want to stop. Not yet.

He clearly wasn't thinking of stopping. With one arm still holding her to him, his other hand began to sweep over her thighs and hips, up over her waist and ribs, then down again. Each pa.s.s he made grew more thorough in its exploration, until finally his fingers slipped under the bottom edge of her oversize shirt to splay against her back. She arched into him, her b.r.e.a.s.t.s crushing softly against his bare chest. When he slanted his mouth to take even deeper possession of hers, she honestly wondered if she might faint-but she gave him what he wanted because it was what she wanted, too.

His hand roamed over her, fingers trailing down the curve of her spine to dip below the waistband of her jeans. But as his hand rode up again to her shoulders, unhindered, and he finally realized that the only fabric between them was her shirt, he went utterly still. An instant later, with a hoa.r.s.e "Oh, Katie . . ." he slid his palm around to cover the side of her bare breast.

His action stole her breath away. She knew she should stop him, but her heart raced at the thought of him touching her breast, and she couldn't resist letting him push them a little closer to the limit. He did it in slow degrees, his fingers sinking into the pillowy softness of her, tracing the upper curve, dipping into the warmth and satiny smoothness beneath. Then, shifting his chest away from hers slightly, he took the full weight of her breast into his palm, cradling it, stroking it, groaning at the discovery that the firm mound spilled beyond the boundaries of his large, long-fingered hand.

Lifting his mouth so their lips barely touched, he muttered something that made a rush of liquid heat spill into that empty, aching channel inside her. She knew she had to stop before she couldn't anymore, before he couldn't anymore, before they wound up making love in the middle of the woods with the earth beneath them. But as she tried to draw a gasping breath to speak, his mouth claimed hers again-at the same instant, his fingers captured the swollen tip of her breast.

Shards of electrifying pleasure raced through her, controlled with exquisite finesse by the tugging, rolling movement of his fingertips. Slicing downward from her taut nipple, the current of pleasure centered in the hot, wet, quivering place between her thighs, setting her hips into unconscious motion against the hard bulge of his erection. When he shifted his denim-clad thigh between hers and pressed upward, she tore her mouth away from his and let out a moan.

Her head fell back, her eyes drifting closed to block out the sky above her. His mouth trailed to the base of her throat, and for a moment she was lost, panting and shaking, in a cloud of sensual pleasure. But when the cloud began to split apart and she felt the first tiny tremors of fulfillment ripple through her, her eyes flew open in shocked awareness.

"Sam . . . stop." Kate's fingers fluttered against his jaw, sifted through his hair as she tried to lift his head. But he didn't seem to have heard her hoa.r.s.e utterance. His mouth slid downward, and she realized with alarm that his goal was her breast. She hadn't even been aware that he'd raised her shirt to bare it.

"Oh, no . . . Wait." Her hands moved frantically to nudge at his shoulders, and this time he got the message.

It was clear he didn't like it. Pausing, his lips brushing the upper curve of her breast, his breath caught on a ragged note.

"Sam, please . . . don't," she breathed, knowing what she was asking of him-what she was asking of herself.

He hesitated an instant longer; then his arms went around her, crushing her to him, flattening her bare b.r.e.a.s.t.s to his bare chest, as his mouth came back to hers for a quick, hard kiss. With his lips still on hers, he spoke in a rasping whisper.

"Katie, honey, what's wrong?"

"Nothing," she panted. "Nothing's . . . wrong. It feels wonderful."

"But . . . ?"

Her breath came out in a quick rush. "But I'm not ready for this. It's . . . Sam, you're going too fast for me. Please."

A couple of seconds pa.s.sed without either of them breathing. Then his eyelids lifted halfway, and at a distance of mere inches, he met her hazy brown gaze. When he realized she meant it, he let out a long, resigned sigh, and, catching her lower lip between his for a last sensual tug, he ended the kiss.

Still, when she drew her shirt down to separate their bare skin and started to pull away, he said, "No," and levered himself away from the tree trunk to stand. Keeping his arms around her, one hand rose to hold her head against his chest. "Stay here for a minute," he urged, his voice raw. "Just be still and let me hold you."

She wasn't ready to let go, either. With a small sigh, she rested her head against his scarred chest, listening to the racing of his heart as she tried to will her body to calm down.

Minutes pa.s.sed. Gradually, his heartbeat slowed. Eventually, her body ceased to tremble. One by one, tiny distractions began to seep into Kate's awareness-the wind stirring the withered leaves of the fallen maple, the lyrical call of a thrush some distance off in the woods.

She squeezed her eyes shut even tighter, wishing the sounds would go away, wishing she could stay where she was forever. But wishing wouldn't make it so. In all likelihood, the amount of time she might have with Sam could be counted in days. She shouldn't let herself feel too good, or too cared for, as she stood wrapped in his embrace. Still, when she opened her eyes to face the real world, it was with a pang of regret that she didn't have the kind of nerve it took to live for the moment, for she was very sure she'd just pa.s.sed up the best chance she might ever have to experience the pleasures of being a woman.

The words she spoke were a reflection of her ambivalence. "I'm sorry."

There was a split second's hesitation before his gruff reply.

"Sorry? What in G.o.d's name do you have to be sorry for?"

"I'm just not, well, used to . . . to . . ." She closed her eyes, unable to tolerate hearing herself stammer.

Sam finished for her, and to his credit, not a trace of amus.e.m.e.nt was evident in his tone. "You aren't used to being kissed like that?"

She nodded, her head moving against his chest.

"Katie, are you a virgin?"

Her eyes blinked open. "What?"