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  All too soon he rinsed her hair for the second time, wrapped a towel about her head, making her feel like a movie star, and stood her upright.

  “I’m going to fill the tub while you undress and put on your robe.”

  With that, he turned his back to her and turned on the tub taps. After only seconds of hesitation, Jackie stripped off her filthy, stiff clothes, took her robe from the hook on the back of the door, and put it on. When William looked back at her, he had the tub full of steamy hot water with a five-inch-thick layer of foamy bubbles on top. If she plunged under that thick, opaque layer, she’d be completely hidden from sight.

  “I’m going to get some more towels; you climb into the tub. And be careful you don’t get your bandage wet.” Before he left, he turned out the light so the only illumination in the room was through the glass transom into the bedroom.

  After he left the room, she removed her robe and stepped into the hot, hot water. There was nothing more luxurious than a tub full to the brim of steamy water, topped by soft, fragrant bubbles. Rarely in her life had she allowed herself the pleasure of a long soak in a tub. Rarely did she have the time, but, more important, she seldom did things of such a decadent, purely sensual nature for herself. One could get clean in a shower, so why bother with all the time and waste of water and soap?

  Closing her eyes, she let the water soak through her skin, all the way into her bones. The bubble bath had been a gift from Terri two Christmases ago. Terri had the idea that a single woman did such delicious things as lounge about in a tub of hot water, but Jackie had never opened the jar. It smelled like a basket of freshly picked apricots warming in the sun, sweet and rich and luscious.

  She was two-thirds asleep when William quietly opened the door to check on her. Turning her head as it rested on the back of the tub, she smiled at him. He smiled back and closed the door.

  She must have been asleep when he reentered the room half an hour later and began to wash her face. When she opened her mouth to object, he said, “Don’t even think of protesting,” so she leaned back and closed her eyes. She was too sleepy, too relaxed, to think of anything. He washed her blood-encrusted face and neck, then her unbandaged left arm and hand. When he moved to the end of the tub, seated himself on the rim, pulled one of her feet out of the water and began a soapy massage of her foot, the feeling was too heavenly to consider resisting.

  It was nearly dark in the bathroom and the gentle foot massage along with the hot water, the smell of the bubble bath, combined with the pill, made Jackie feel quite wonderful. It sometimes seemed that she had been working all her life and she’d never taken time to enjoy anything. There had always been goals to achieve and, if nothing else, the responsibility of putting bread on the table.

  When William stopped massaging, she smiled at him, so handsome in the golden light that floated in from the bedroom.

  “Thank you,” she whispered as he moved toward the towel rack to take a fluffy white towel and hold it out for her.

  “Get out and I’ll dry you off.”

  As he said this, he turned his head to one side and closed his eyes. Reluctantly leaving the tub, Jackie stepped out, soap still clinging to her skin, and allowed him to wrap her in the towel. Her arms were pinned to her sides inside the towel and it was perfectly natural that his arms should go around her as he rubbed the ends of the towel up and down her back. In spite of her relaxed state, she shivered.

  “Cold?”

  “No,” she whispered and found herself putting her head on his shoulder.

  Pulling away from her, he lifted her chin with his fingertips. “You are exhausted.” At that he swept her into his arms and carried her into the bedroom where he stood her beside the bed and handed her a pair of pink pajamas. “Put them on. I’d help you, but you’d remember it in the morning and hate me.”

  That made her laugh, and while he busied himself with putting all her cosmetics on top of the mirrored bureau in precise military order, she slipped into the pajamas, then gratefully got into the bed.

  “Better,” he said as he tucked the covers about her chin.

  “Did you learn how to bathe people and tuck them in from your baby-sitter?” she teased.

  William stopped tucking and gave her a very stern look. “My baby-sitter’s idea of bathing children was to yell ‘Fire’ and have the fire department hose them down.”

  Jackie giggled. “That’s not true.”

  “Word of honor. And she never tucked us into bed. All she did was say ‘Bed!’ and by golly, we went. If one of us dared to disobey her, she’d tie our feet together and dangle us over the balcony until we reconsidered our stand on going to bed.”

  “That’s not true either.”

  “It is! I swear it.”

  “There must have been something good about your baby-sitter. She couldn’t have been a complete monster.”

  “Mmmm, yes. She was unique. She had no idea what a schedule was, so when we were with her we could eat cereal for dinner and steak for breakfast. And she never tried to force us to be what we weren’t.”

  “Oh?” Jackie said encouragingly.

  “Sometimes parents have very odd ideas about their children. They think they should all be alike. They seem to think there is an ideal child, and they try to make them all like that ideal. If a child doesn’t like sports, parents say, ‘You should get out and play football.’ If the kid likes to play games outside, parents say, ‘Why don’t you ever sit down and read a book?’ It seems that whatever kind of a child you are, someone wants you to be different.”

  “But your baby-sitter wasn’t like that?”

  “No, she wasn’t. She liked or disliked people for what they were. She didn’t try to change them.”

  Jackie found this conversation extraordinarily interesting and very much wanted to continue it, but she was falling asleep. “She didn’t try to change you?” she whispered, her eyes closed.

  “No. She didn’t complain that I was too…whatever. She didn’t complain that I wasn’t like the other kids, because she was like no one else, either, and she understood what it was like to be different.”

  “A misfit. You were both misfits.” Her voice was barely audible.

  “No, we were both unique.” Leaning forward, he kissed her forehead. “Now go to sleep and maybe the Good Fairy will bring you what you most want during the night.”

  She smiled at that and was still smiling when he turned out the light and left the room.

  Chapter Seven

  When Jackie awoke the next morning she was immediately aware of a throbbing in her right hand and a spectacularly empty stomach. Too weak and too lethargic at first to get out of bed, she slowly became aware of a dull thudding noise coming from the direction of the kitchen. Curiosity won over her lethargy, and, too, there was a smell she couldn’t identify coming from the kitchen: chicken? herbs? freshly baked bread? and something tangy, like hot apple cider. She got up and followed where her nose led.

  William was just outside the kitchen, standing on the little flagstone pavement, straddling her unhinged screen door, which he was shaving with a small hand plane. The sun came in through the bright white lace curtains of the kitchen, and the round pine table was loaded with bowls of food covered with weighted cloths.

  For a while she watched him, his strong back straining against a pale blue cotton shirt that was frayed at the cuffs. His strong, lean hands moved the plane along the edge of the door in what was almost a caressing motion.

  Smoothing her hair with her hands, Jackie resisted the temptation to go back to the bathroom and spend an hour or so on her face and hair, maybe do her nails too. She forced herself to stay where she was. She wasn’t going to give in to silly female ploys. “What are you doing?” she asked.

  Turning, he smiled at her, a smile as bright as the sunshine. “Fixing a few things.” He leaned the door against the side of the house and came toward her. “Let me look at my patient.” Tenderly he put both his hands on her head and turned her