Bold and Brave-Hearted Read online

  “Glad to meet you.” Kim included Maddie in her greeting.

  “What happened to your face?” the little girl asked.

  “Hush, Maddie. It’s not polite—”

  “It’s all right.” Kim quickly intervened, though it took all of her courage to hold her ground and not turn away. Or run away. “I was in an accident,” she told the child.

  Janice appeared horrified her daughter had brought attention to Kim’s injuries. “I’m sorry….”

  Kim waved off her apology. So much for her scarf as an effective cover for her scars.

  Recognition dawned in Janice’s eyes. “Say, aren’t you the woman on TV—”

  “Whom I heroically rescued after the earthquake,” Jay inserted. “She’s researching a story on me. All the brave deeds I’ve done.”

  “Uh-huh.” Janice didn’t look convinced. “Say, maybe you can bring Kim to the softball game tomorrow afternoon. You always get the most hits—” She gasped, color tingeing her cheeks. “Gosh, I’m sorry, Jay. Between my daughter and me, we certainly know how to put our feet in it today. I forgot you can’t see. I guess that means you won’t—”

  “Won’t play?” he interrupted. “Of course I will. Kim’s going to be my coach.”

  Her head snapped around. “I am?”

  “Sure. When I’m standing up at the plate you tell me when to swing.” With an exaggerated frown, he puzzled over that proposition for a moment. “Or maybe you can be the hitter and I’ll run for you. We’ll see which works out best.”

  “You wouldn’t get much exercise, I’m afraid, if I’m the one who has to hit the ball. Softball was never my forte, along with anything else remotely athletic. The ball usually hits me instead of the other way around.”

  “We’ll work something out,” Jay assured them, then turned to Janice. “Say, where was Ray this morning? Didn’t he come to the breakfast?”

  Looking uncomfortable, Janice didn’t immediately respond, instead she glanced away. “He had something else he needed to do this morning. You know how there’s never enough time to get everything done with the crazy hours you firefighters work.”

  Jay seemed to accept that answer, but Kim suspected there was more going on between Janice and her husband than simply a lack of time to get his chores done.

  “Mom, are you coming?” Kevin shouted, apparently losing interest in the metal gate he’d been using as a swing. “I’ve got Little League.”

  “I’m coming, dear.” Janice waved to her impatient son, then said to Kim, “I hope you’ll come to the game. We have a picnic, too, sort of a potluck. Everything starts about noon. We wives have a good time visiting while the guys pretend they’re still nineteen years old. Then we take ’em home and give ’em rubdowns for all their aching muscles.”

  “Hey, I like the sound of that,” Jay said with a wicked grin. “Why don’t we just skip the game part and get right on with the rubdown? Whaddaya say, Kim? We can take turns.”

  Janice laughed, and Kim felt like blushing again. The man was determined to permanently stain her cheeks red.

  Gathering her children, Janice said goodbye and hustled the youngsters out the back gate normally used by the paramedic truck.

  Jay waited until their footsteps faded. He’d been shaken by the idea of hundreds of guys proposing to Kim, kooks or not. And then her quick kiss had rocked him back on his heels again.

  He folded his hands into fists. He didn’t want anyone kissing her except him! He didn’t want them even thinking about it. But what the hell position was he in to stop every Tom, Dick and Harry from doing what they damn well pleased? Blind as a bat, he wouldn’t even be able to protect Kim from a crazed stalker if he walked right up and snatched her away. Some kind of a hero he made!

  She cleared her throat. “I think I’d better be going too.”

  Raw panic gripped him. She’d walk away and who knew what kind of man would hit on her—propose to her, for God’s sake. It didn’t matter that she thought she was ugly. Jay didn’t believe it, not in a million years, and no man in his right mind would either. Her scars, no matter how bad, were only skin deep. On the inside Kimberly Lydell was beautiful. Unfair to Kim or not, he desperately wanted to build a wall around her and keep her all to himself.

  “I’m going to need a really good coach,” he said nonchalantly, “if I’m going to avoid getting beaned at the game tomorrow.”

  “You could not play. That way you wouldn’t get hit.” Her suggestion was all too helpful.

  “No, that’s not an option. See, I have this reputation to maintain. Sort of the Sammy Sosa of C shift. I mean, guys bet money on me. I wouldn’t want to fail them this year just because of a little problem with my eyes.”

  “A little problem.”

  “Right. But with you coaching—”

  “If I didn’t think you were crazy enough to get up there on your own, I wouldn’t even consider participating in this charade.”

  He grinned and wanted to push his fist in the air as a sign of victory. She’d fallen for his gambit. “You’re all heart.”

  “What I am is resourceful. The Braille Institute has baseballs that make a noise so their blind clients—mostly kids, allow me to point out—can hear them coming and they don’t get their skulls cracked open. Not that your hard head would be seriously affected, but I’ll see if I can borrow a couple of those for the game tomorrow.”

  He frowned. “I don’t want to have any advantage over the other guys.” He wanted her to think of him as normal, not handicapped.

  “Fine by me. All you have to do is convince everyone on the field to play the game blindfolded. I’ll pick you up about eleven-thirty.”

  He sensed her turning away, then heard the soft slap-slap of her sandals on the concrete as she departed. A moment later, only her scent lingered—and the curse he’d left hanging in the air.

  He’d never wanted a woman more—a woman he’d never be allowed to have. Even when he got his sight back—and damn it, he would!—she’d still be out of his class.

  Hell, he’d never even met a Ph.D. until he’d met Kim’s mother. Kim’s family was full of ’em and probably none of them knew the difference between a clamp and a piton.

  And a beautiful woman like Kim? Shoot, whatever scarring she was worried about wouldn’t count with any man worth his salt. She’d have her choice of men who were a helluva lot smarter and richer than Jay ever expected to be. Men who’d read a decent book recently.

  MOST OF THE PANCAKE breakfast crowd had left, and Jay made his way upstairs in the station house to the oversize locker in his room, digging out his workout shorts, shirt and running shoes. From the smell, he suspected he hadn’t washed them since his last shift—the day of his accident.

  He decided to worry about that later and changed clothes. There was a lot of pent-up energy in him that needed to be worked off. Frustration. Anger—at himself and the tiny shards of glass that had impaled themselves in his corneas.

  The primal need that was driving him to do stupid things when it came to Kim.

  And the irritating fact she didn’t seem to give a damn.

  Hell! A musical softball. What was she thinking? That he was a sap who needed pity, no doubt. Someone who was less than a man.

  The workout room was in the basement in what used to be a boiler room. He heard someone on the stair-stepper moving at a quick pace, but he didn’t acknowledge their presence. One thing about being blind, it was easy to pretend you were alone.

  He climbed on the treadmill, set the speed and angle at something he hoped wouldn’t kill him, and started running. But he guessed he could run all the way to Timbuktu and still not feel he was good enough for Kim. He wondered if his mother had inadvertently taught him that, or if it had been the bureaucrats who periodically had threatened to remove him to a foster home. Either way, he’d been trying to prove himself for about as long as he could remember.

  Proving himself to an absent father.

  The thought came out of nowhere
. As if some man whose face Jay had never known would be all that important to him. A man he’d spent a great deal of time loathing because he’d deserted him and his mom. Had left Jay the head of the family.

  Sweat dripped down his temples and he increased the speed, pounding along on the treadmill as if he could outrun his blindness. The poverty in which he’d been raised. Some deep-seated inadequacy he’d felt all of his life. Only here, in the brotherhood of the fire service, had he felt whole. And a rotten accident had taken that brotherhood from him.

  But brought Kim back to him, he realized with a start that made him lose his balance.

  Staggering, half falling off the machine, he grabbed frantically for the controls and shut off the damn treadmill. Breathing hard, he tried to slow the pounding in his chest.

  “Good-lookin’ woman you were with today,” the man on the stair-stepper commented, hardly breathing hard at all given the pace he was going.

  “Diaz, that you?”

  “Yep.” The stairs kept clicking along without missing a beat. Diaz, on A shift, was not a large man, but he made up for his height and weight by dint of sheer muscle power and determination.

  “How many hours do you do that stuff?” Jay asked peevishly.

  “As many as it takes.”

  Leaning over, Jay folded his arms across the treadmill console and rested his head on his arms. “She’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever known,” he said so softly he wasn’t sure Diaz would hear him.

  “She’s a lucky lady to have caught your interest, compadre. Very lucky.”

  Jay wanted to believe that but it wasn’t easy. Not after so many years of feeling inadequate. Not when he was blind.

  KIM DROVE UP the canyon road, paused to get her mail at the roadside box, and turned her car into the tree-shaded driveway to her house. Her sudden arrival startled a white-tailed deer who’d been grazing on a patch of new spring grass. The doe dashed for the cover of mesquite shrubs and California live oaks, probably in the hope of drawing Kim away from her fawn who was lying so still in the shadows he was almost impossible to spot.

  When Kim had bought the house, the isolation and rural atmosphere had appealed to her need for quiet and space, with the added bonus that she’d still be only twenty minutes from the TV studio. She had plenty of excitement on the job, and with her public appearances to promote the station, as much social interaction as she cared to handle. Here, in the solitude of her own home, she could recharge her batteries, indulge in her solitary hobbies. Unlike most of her canyon neighbors, she’d even planted bushes and ground cover that would attract deer to browse, and she cherished their regular visits.

  She parked the car at the side of the house and got out. Only the buzz of a flying insect and the ticking of her car as it cooled broke the gentle blanket of silence.

  Inside the house the quiet was just as deep.

  The potted plants she religiously fed and watered, their leaves glistening in a dozen different shades and textures of green, silently greeted her. She automatically plucked a couple of dying blossoms from a thriving African violet plant and checked the moisture of the soil. In a sunny part of her yard she had a small greenhouse where she grew a few orchids and forced hyacinths into early blooms for a splash of winter color.

  Dropping the mail on an end table next to an exquisite sculpture of a wild mustang, she stood in the middle of the living room, her purse still slung over her shoulder, gazing out at the landscape through a wide plate-glass window. Rolling, tree-studded hills gave way to a fertile valley at the bottom of the canyon where farmers labored over string beans and artichokes. In the distance, the Pacific Ocean lay hidden in a bright haze.

  Suddenly, she shivered and wished Jay’s big orange cat were here to curl up with on the couch.

  Better yet, she wished she could curl up with Jay.

  Since the earthquake, her home had been her refuge, the isolation a balm to soothe her shattered dreams as well as her facial injuries. Somehow she’d turned the seclusion of these five acres into a prison of her own making.

  She tugged the scarf from her head and let it trail from her fingers as she walked down the hallway into her bedroom.

  Being seen in public had not caused the earth to shift on its axis. No one except a small child had even commented on Kim’s scars—out of politeness, no doubt, because she had caught more than one curious look. But unlike a vampire who risked death away from his crypt, Kim had survived her sojourn in sunlight.

  Perhaps it was time she rejoined the human race.

  Slipping out of her silk blouse, she hung it in the closet, oddly aware that no men’s clothing had ever hung beside hers, shoulder to shoulder, waistband to waistband, her perfume mixing with the muskier scent of a male. She pictured Jay’s sharply pressed uniforms lined up in a row next to her pastel-colored suits and smiled.

  A picnic she could handle, she decided, but no way was she going to let some lunatic firefighter force her to play baseball—blindfolded or any other way.

  She finished changing into jeans and a lightweight sweater, then went back into the living room to open the mail—a handful of ads, an electric bill and a letter from KPRX. She opened that one first.

  The initial paragraph took two tries before the impact of all the legalese sank in—pursuant to the personal services contract between the party of the first part—Kimberly Lydell—and the contracting organization—KPRX-TV, a California Corporation—the leave of absence of the party of the first part has been terminated, effective this date.

  Kim sat down heavily on the arm of the couch to finish the rest of the letter. They’d fired her. Not one word from her boss or the station owner. No opportunity for another chance or to apply for an off-air job. Just an impersonal letter announcing there’d be no more paychecks coming. And furthermore, given her general good health, they would appeal any adverse rulings regarding disability payments—she wasn’t, after all, an employee but a contract person. Ineligible for workmen’s compensation. Reimbursement for medical expenses would be considered on a case-by-case basis.

  Anger and fear churned a bitter soup in her stomach.

  Dammit, they owed her more than a brush-off! Sure the broadcasting business was fickle. But it was their building that had collapsed. She hadn’t done anything wrong.

  Crushing the letter in her fist, she marched into the spare room she used as her home office, snatched up the phone and dialed the TV station. It took three rings before Harriet Bigelow answered with a cheery, “KPRX-TV, your independent television station serving the central coast since 1972. How may I help you?”

  “Harriet, this is Kim. I’d like to speak to Mr. Woodward.”

  The pause on the other end of the line seemed inordinately long. “I’m sorry Kim, he’s not here today. He rarely is on Saturday.”

  That took some of the steam out of her fury, at least for the moment. “Of course. I forgot. I’ll catch him at home then.”

  “Oh, he won’t be there,” Harriet offered brightly. “He left for New York yesterday.”

  The day Kim’s letter had been postmarked. “New York? What’s happening there?”

  “Well, don’t say I said so, but there’s a rumor going around that we may become a network affiliate. Wouldn’t that be great?”

  Harriet’s cheerfulness cut right through to Kim’s despair. There’d be no chance now to work her way up through the ranks of network anchorwomen to bigger TV markets where she’d be able to cover national news stories. No chance at all now that she’d been fired.

  Her throat filled with the acid tears of disappointment. All along she had hoped—

  “When do you expect him back?”

  “Oh, not till the end of the week. Lots of wining and dining to do back there with the big boys, huh?”

  Kim tried to thank Harriet, but she couldn’t get out a single sound.

  As she silently cradled the phone, she realized she’d not only lost her chance at a network job, but the absence of a paycheck mean
t her mortgage payments would soon be at risk.

  Closing her eyes, she mentally calculated the bottom line of her savings account. A few months without a job and she’d fall into arrears on her payments.

  A few months after that she’d either be homeless or dependent upon her parents.

  The mere thought of either possibility had her stomach churning again.

  Chapter Seven

  Jay waved in Kim’s general direction from home plate. “Come on, Kim. We’re up.”

  “What we?” she complained. “I told you I couldn’t hit a basketball with a baseball bat, even on a good day.”

  “Well, I certainly can’t do it alone.” With exaggerated effort, he took a swing at the air and stumbled across the plate, finally righting himself on the opposite side. “You don’t want C shift to lose because of you, do you?”

  Janice Gainer, with whom she’d been sitting at the picnic table, laughed. “Now he’s put the outcome of the game on your shoulders, I think you’re going to have to give in.”

  “Right,” she groaned. The entire firefighter brotherhood—wives and children included—appeared to be on Jay’s side. After a sleepless night worrying about her own future, it was a relief not to have to consider anything more important than a softball rivalry among friends.

  She’d picked Jay up this morning and driven him to the regional park for the picnic and annual challenge game between A and C shifts. His buddies had welcomed him with open arms while she’d slipped over to a picnic table already covered with a variety of dishes and added her bowl of spicy red bean salad she’d hastily put together. Immediately the wives had made her feel at home.

  Despite their curious stares and unspoken questions—both about her scars and her relationship with Jay—she’d been having a good time taking a back seat, listening to them talk about their husbands and children.

  Had they been discussing Russia’s problems with its provinces or the wildly fluctuating stock market, Kim would have been able to contribute to the conversation, but expertise about husbands and children had eluded her. The giant hole in her experience was all too obvious among this group of women. And at her core, a twinge of regret reminded Kim she might have missed something important.