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When he turned, the towel was still covering his chin and jaws. He stopped dead, staring at her from above the towel. The pause was electric. Two droplets slid off his elbows, then he went on briskly toweling his arms and stomach. "Oh, I didn't know you were still standing there." His eyes followed his hands, and so did hers. She noted the thick brown hair that covered his chest, the hard tough muscles, upper arms that had hourglass dips halfway to the elbow. "I said you could go wait in the living room. I got a new print of a 1920 Essex, but I ran out of room to hang it on the wall. It's leaning beside the davenport. Tell me what you think."

  What she thought was that any woman who'd prefer looking at a 1920 Essex to Jo-Jo Duggan washing up would be an utter fool! The scent of Ivory soap was everywhere in the kitchen, and that other curiously lye-like aroma she'd detected about him the first night-she took it to be the solvent with which he washed his mechanic's hands.

  It suddenly struck her that she'd run to Jo-Jo Duggan for more than one reason. He had been on her mind ever since she'd met him, and to deny it would be worse folly than marrying a man to whom she was not well suited.

  She was studying the Essex when he clattered up the wooden steps that led off the end of the room just beside the kitchen archway. As he took the stairs two at a time, he called back, "Where'd you have in mind to play racket ball?"

  "Either my club or yours," she called back, casting her eyes about his living room, noting a tablet with some numbers scrawled on it, two old limp sofa pillows, two empty cans of Schlitz beer, a discarded white T-shirt-bits and pieces of Jo-Jo Duggan's life, the life of a simple workingman.

  "Then let's go out to Daytona. I feel in the mood for the ride."

  He clattered back down the steps and appeared in the doorway with a navy blue duffel, his racket slipped into a sleeve upon its side. He wore a red jogging suit with a white stripe down each leg and each sleeve, white socks, and had his Adidas in his hand.

  Her heart went off like a rocket.

  "Let's go." He dazzled her with that high-voltage smile. "I'm all yours."

  She had the crazy exhilarating feeling that he was. Or that he could be whenever she said the word.

  Chapter 7

  D aytona was a modest golf, tennis and racket-ball club nestled in the hills near a tiny village named Dayton, a scant half-hour ride west of Osseo. Old Highway 52 that led to it was once a major westbound thoroughfare, but since the interstate had been built, it lazed in somnolence, its signs disappearing, its shoulders clothed in woods and grassland, dotted with cows and corncribs.

  The afternoon sun lighted the hills to fresh spring green and reflected from the shimmering road surface. The air was fragrant. It was lilac time. Apple trees and wild plums were at their peak of blossom. The fragrant warmth of the spring day rejuvenated Win's spirit. Bouncing along beside Joseph on the ancient cracked seat of an old pickup truck, she was loath to bring up the subject that had so disturbed her earlier in the day. It was too pleasant, too peaceful riding with Joseph, listening to some old Jim Reeves song-it seemed he was always surrounded by vintage of one sort or another-with the wind blowing in the lowered window, gently lifting the hair on her arm.

  Winn sunk low, wedged a knee against the glove-compartment door and let her eyes sink closed. Joseph glanced at her lazy pose but said nothing. She had not brought up whatever it was she wanted to talk about, and that was fine with him. She looked sensational in the mint green jogging suit she'd produced when they detoured to her house. She was slumped low with her nape catching the top of the seat, hair loose and messed, and the breeze from the open window occasionally billowing it. As he studied her, a spirited gust caught a strand and whipped it across her lips. Without opening her eyes she hooked it with the crook of a little finger and pulled it aside. Immediately it blew back and she spit it out, then threaded it behind her ear.

  Her eyes opened, and she indolently turned her head to find he'd been watching her. He smiled. She smiled back. Neither spoke as he drove on as before, with a wrist hooked languidly over the wheel, softly whistling "Four Walls" between his teeth.

  At that moment Winn discovered something very wonderful: she could comfortably share silence with Joseph Duggan. There were at least a dozen men she knew, including Paul, who'd be chattering away a mile a minute. How pleasing it was to be with one today who was content to smile and whistle softly between his teeth, and let the true mellow voice of Jim Reeves do all the speaking.

  Jo-Jo wondered what it was that was bothering her but decided not to probe. She'd get around to it whenever she was good and ready. In the meantime he was doing what he'd wondered if he'd ever have the chance to do again, what had kept him from readily falling asleep many nights since the wedding: he was simply being with her.

  They passed Diamond Lake and soon turned the clattery old Chevrolet between two giant boulders, then rolled up the long gravel approach to the clubhouse that sat at the top of a hill. The golf links were verdant. Into the window came the smell of newly cut grass and fresh-turned loam from adjacent farms. On the club land itself were the ancient barn and farmhouse of those who'd owned the land previously.

  When Jo-Jo and Winn stepped from the truck and slammed their doors, something fell off underneath it.

  "Oops," he said with a slanting grin. "This old heap isn't in quite as good a shape as the Haynes."

  "I wasn't going to ask where the Haynes was." Winn came around the truck to find him on one knee, bracing his palms on the gravel and peering underneath the truck's belly.

  "This is my everydayer. New cars really don't do it for me. I like the old ones." He reached beneath the truck and withdrew a piece of tail pipe. "They've got character."

  As he straightened, he was still grinning. She smiled down at the rusted hunk of metal in his hand. "This one's character is a little loose, wouldn't you say?"

  He tossed the piece onto the bed of the truck, clapped a rounded rear fender as if it were the flank of a horse, brushed off his palms and took her elbow. "I love her just the same."

  But he was looking into Win's eyes as he made the comment, and because his crinkle-eyed smile made her so very, very happy, and because his intentional double meaning made her far too giddy, she turned her eyes to the clubhouse as they approached.

  Inside they passed a dining room with a field-rock fireplace in its center, and the bar where he'd brought Sandy when the groomsmen had stolen her. After Joseph signed them in at the desk, they parted to go to the locker rooms and check their tote bags.

  He was waiting in the hall outside court number two, leaning back with one rubber sole against the wall, repeatedly flipping and catching a can of balls. As she walked toward him, he turned, and the can stopped doing cartwheels. He seemed to have forgotten he held it. His eyes made a quick scan of her length, and he slowly drew his hips away from the wall and smiled.

  When she stood close before him, he grinned and said, "Wow" in a soft way that made her blush.

  She had a healthy curiosity about his bared limbs, too, but felt it prudent to refrain from ogling. Once inside the racket-ball court, however, with the door closed behind them, there was ample opportunity for more than surreptitious glances without being detected. Assessing each other was almost unavoidable.

  The court was a brightly lighted cell with a twenty-foot ceiling, poured-concrete walls, and a twenty-by-forty-foot hardwood floor. It was stark, bare and echoing. Every sound within it became amplified. As Joseph idly bounced the ball, it gave off an audible ping while expanding to its original shape. When he spoke, his voice seemed to reverberate from the walls.

  "A little warm-up first?" He tugged on a short white leather glove.

  "Yes. I haven't played for a good four weeks. I'll need it."

  They looped cord handles around their wrists, spun them to take up the slack and gripped their rackets.

  "Why four weeks?" he asked, bouncing a royal blue ball with his racket.

  "Nobody to play with lately."

  "How about Silicon Chip?"<
br />
  "He's done it occasionally to please me. But I told you, he doesn't much care for sweat."

  Joseph snatched the ball from the air, studied her expressionlessly for a moment, then turned away to face the front wall. Across the center of the court ran two parallel red lines five feet apart: the serving area. They stood just behind it as Joseph sent the ball bouncing off the front wall, giving her a direct easy return. Between them they made a total of eleven good returns before Winn missed.

  She retrieved the ball and bounced it to him. As he nonchalantly juggled it above his head, bouncing it off the racket, he said, "You're pretty good, huh?"

  "Good enough," she replied honestly. "But I haven't played against many men. You guys usually have the edge on power."

  He turned away to the front again. "We'll see."

  This time he gave her a more difficult serve, angling it so she had to cross behind him to return it from near the back wall. He didn't have time to turn around and watch her form before the ball sailed over his head and against the right sidewall. Then they concentrated on a volley of shots that lasted longer than the first. This time he missed.

  She flicked the rolling ball up with the tip of her racket and gave him an impertinent grin. "You're pretty good, huh?"

  "Damn right. And I don't give no quarter to no woman." His brown eyes danced mischievously.

  "That's the way I like it."

  "Volley?" he suggested.

  "You're on."

  She won the right to first serve, and as she walked to the red lines, his eyes skimmed down her lanky legs. With each step the muscles hardened and squared, but when she stood at ease, her limbs were shapely and feminine. She wore mint green athletic-style shorts trimmed with white cord around the notched legs. Her tank top was white and showed him the true spareness of the flesh across her ribs, for he'd never seen her in anything conforming before. Her tennis shoes were white with sturdy wedged soles, and as his eyes traveled down to them, he admired the shadows where her ankle tendons dove down into the shoes behind tiny white tassels.

  Her first serve came whizzing off to his left, and he missed it completely. As a matter of fact, he moved a full second too late: he'd been engrossed with her shapely ankles.

  She turned with a hand on her hip. "Hey, you awake back there?"

  "Yeah. Yeah… give me another one."

  She took three points before he executed a faultless roll-out shot, where the ball hit both floor and front wall at once, then rolled toward them as docilely as if a baby had pushed it with his chubby hands.

  Winn swiveled to face Jo-Jo, raised one eyebrow and cooed, "Whooo-eee. The man gets serious."

  "And the woman loses the serve."

  He now stood where she had, and Winn was the curious one. He wore white tennis-style shorts and a disreputable looking T-shirt of navy blue that said Dick's Bar on the back and looked as if it had been relieved of its sleeves and bottom half by somebody's dull hedge trimmer. The crudely slashed fabric curled back on his shoulders, and the armholes sagged halfway down his ribs. Six inches of bare stomach showed between navy shirt and white shorts, and it was remarkably tan for May, as were his sinewy legs above the calf-high socks. She was staring at the socks, one with a gold stripe around its top, the other with a purple, when his serve careered past her head. She completely ignored it and burst out laughing.

  "Now who's asleep?"

  "No fair, your socks broke me up!" Her laughter resounded from the walls.

  He rolled onto his heels, bringing his toes off the floor, and perused his hairy legs. "What's the matter with them?"

  "They don't match!" She was still laughing.

  "Naw, they never do. Not in a house where three men do their own laundry. Clean will do-matched we don't need." He grinned up at her. "You ready to get serious now and stop laughing at my laundry?"

  "Hit it," she returned.

  They threw their total effort into racket ball then, and before the serve had changed twice, they'd quite forgotten to ogle each other. They were immersed in competition, concentrating on the reaching, running, reflexive joy of rivalry. They were well matched, and if physically Joseph had the edge, she was perhaps the more accurate shot.

  When he gained a point by charging up on a dying pigeon and slamming it off the back wall, she came back with a placement shot so deadly he missed it even after a belly dive. His legs were four inches longer, but hers were quicker. He'd perfected the difficult ceiling shot, and she missed it every time after it caromed from ceiling to front wall to floor, then always beyond her reach. But she had a keen feel for successfully sprinting to meet the ball a mere five feet before the front wall and softly finessing it so it dropped softly, two feet from the wall and fell dead, leaving Joseph no chance to charge forward and save the point.

  They reveled in the exhilaration of pushing their bodies to great physical limits. The acoustical room was filled with the high magnified squeaks of their rubber soles on the hardwood floors, the slap of the ball, their grunts-and sometimes groans-and occasionally the clatter of a racket against concrete. They stretched their tensile limbs to their limits. They strained their bodies for the simple reward of beating the ball. They smashed and drove and sometimes watched a shot arcing over their heads, not knowing till the final second whether it would reach the back wall or fall that agonizing three inches from it. Their shirts became soaked and their limbs sheeny. His hair became curlier, and hers stringier. They smiled, teased, cried "I told you so" and sometimes, "Damn you!"

  And he took the game 21-20.

  They fell to their backs in the middle of the backcourt, panting, heaving, closing their eyes against the white fluorescent glare of caged lights overhead. Star bursts danced before their lids. Their hearts pounded against the cool boards beneath their shoulders. Their legs stuck to the floor. Their weary arms flopped straight out to the side, lifeless. They were in heaven.

  He rolled his head to look at her. She was five feet away, but her lax fingers almost touched his.

  "Hey, Gardner." She opened one eye and peeked at him. "You're good."

  "So're you. But next time I'm gonna whip you, boy."

  His laughter bounced off the walls like a well-executed Z-serve.

  "My pleasure," he offered, then closed his eyes and rested again. A minute of pure silence passed. Their breathing was less labored. She pulled her shirt up, exposing her stomach, and rested a hand on it. He flexed a knee.

  "Oh, God, I needed this." Her quiet admission whispered three times as it came back to them.

  He rolled his head to look at her again. "Why?"

  Meredith Emery came into her mind's eye. "Oh, Joseph, I've done the worst thing it's possible for a physical therapist to do. I've become empathetically involved with one of my patients."

  "Who?" He studied her profile as she stared up at the overhead lights.

  "Her name is Meredith Emery, and she's ten years old." He saw her swallow. "And she's the victim of an explosion."

  Joseph hadn't guessed physical therapists worked with burn patients, and though he wanted to question her about it, he wisely kept silent.

  "She has these enormous brown eyes that… that have no eyelashes anymore and no eyebrows, either. And her face has been scarred, and she's bald now. But she showed me her school picture when she had beautiful black hair down past her shoulders." She paused, took a deep gulp of air and went on. "She studied ballet and was a gymnast, too, and now she can't even touch her ear to her shoulder because her skin has lost so much elasticity she has to wear a splint to hold her chin up." A tear formed in Winn's eye and ran from its corner down her temple, disappearing within the droplets of perspiration already there.

  Joseph inched nearer and took her outflung hand. She grasped his fingers so tightly his ring cut in almost painfully. Her ragged voice went on. "And next summer her family is all going to Disneyland… and… and…" Suddenly Winn flung a forearm across her eyes and released one gulping sob that echoed from the high bright ceilin
g.

  Joseph rolled to one hip and braced beside her on an elbow. "And?"

  "And sh-she won't be g-going along b-because she's going to die." Winn began sobbing unrestrainedly then and attempted to roll away from Joseph, but he clasped her shoulder to keep her on her back.

  "Winn… oh, Winn." He lifted her to a sitting position-they were hip to hip, facing each other-and wrapped his arms around her, cradling her against his chest, cupping the back of her damp hair while she clung to him and cried.

  "Oh, J-Joseph, sometimes I d-don't understand why."

  "I wish I could tell you, but I can't find any reason for the waste, either." He pressed her hair hard, contouring the back of her head. "God… only ten years old." He, too, sounded choked up.

  "And she's b-been through such hell already. Pain and scars, and… and sh-she still fights with me when I tell her to-sh-she doesn't know that all the physical therapy is f-for nothing because she'll never l-live to see her limbs m-move as they did on the p-parallel bars." He kissed the side of her skull, then patted her back, feeling the pitiful heaving of her chest against his.

  "Do her mother and father know?"

  "I don't know. Her kidneys just failed today."

  "What are they like? Do they love her a lot?"

  "Oh, yes. She adores her mother and… and beams all over wh-when she talks about her father. At least her eyes look like they're beaming, but it's an… an awful sight when they don't have any lashes."

  Joseph leaned back, grasped her temples in both hands and repeatedly pushed the hair back from her face, searching her eyes. "Maybe that's what it's all about… love. She had love, and she gave it, so her life wasn't for nothing, was it?"

  Winn's eyes swam with tears. The skin beneath them was wet and shiny as he rested his thumbs there. Oh, God, she thought, why couldn't Paul have been this way when I needed him?

  "Do you think so, Joseph?" She sat as still as the walls around them. He gazed into her sad wet eyes with their lashes stuck together, then lifted his gaze to her tawny hair and gently brought her forehead to his lips.