The Unsung Hero (20 page)

Samantha smiled half-heartedly. "I never
thought I'd see the day when you were trying to get rid of me."

"Not trying to get rid of you, dear, only
trying to make you see the light."

She sighed and curled her hands around her
cup. "You don't understand, mom," she began carefully. The two of
them had had a rather long talk the night she'd arrived—or rather
she had alternately talked and cried, and her mother had listened
and comforted.

"Oh, I think I do." Her mother regarded her
quietly. "You think if you wait long enough to give him an answer,
he'll go back to California and then you can blame him for
everything that went wrong."

Samantha started. "That's not true—" she
began to protest, then stopped short. Was it? Maybe she didn't want
to make a choice, end up regretting it, and then have no one to
blame but herself.

"You don't trust him, do you? You don't trust
him enough to believe in him."

Maybe she was right, Samantha acknowledged
wearily. She stared pensively past the crisply starched yellow
curtains hanging at the window to the aging Victorian house next
door. Two small boys were playing on the front porch, running down
the steps and racing their tricycles over the sidewalk and back to
the porch again. Their chatter could be heard through the open
window.

"You see that, mom?" She pointed suddenly
toward the two youngsters. "That's what I want for me, and for my
family—if and when I ever have one. I want to know my kids are
happy and secure, and that they won't wake up one morning and find
they only have one parent left."

Her mother looked at her strangely. "And you
think that will happen if you marry Jason?"

A lump formed in her throat. "I don't know,"
she whispered. "And I'm not sure I want to take the chance. He's .
. . a lot like...like dad." She swallowed painfully. "Always on
the move." She shook her head. "I don't want to live like that
again."

"And you don't want to be like me, married
one day and abandoned the next."

Samantha nodded miserably. Her mother's hands
reached out to cover hers. "I think it's time I shared something
with you that I should have told you a long time ago." Her mother's
voice was very quiet. "Your father was an adventurer, a dreamer,
just like you." She smiled gently. "But he was almost a child at
heart, Samantha. He couldn't separate his dreams from reality. He
could never be satisfied for long. But that didn't mean he stopped
loving you the day he walked out of our lives—"

"Didn't it?" Her voice was slightly bitter.
"He never came back. And that says it all."

Lillian shook her head. "He would have, if
I'd let him."

Samantha looked at her strangely. "What do
you mean?"

"I still loved your father when he left,
only I couldn't live with him any longer." The laugh her mother
gave sounded oddly strangled. "Or maybe I should say I couldn't
live like that, and neither could you. You worshiped him, and I
couldn't let him come back into your life, build your hopes up, and
then walk out on you again." She smiled, a rather sad little smile.
"He'd have taken us with him that time too, only after all those
years I was tired of chasing after the moon. I don't regret the
years I spent with your father, they were happy ones, but I've
learned we make our own happiness. The pot of gold at the end of
the rainbow is only as far as we make it, Samantha, only as far as
we make it."

Samantha looked at her mother a long time.
"I'm not sure I understand," she said slowly. "Are you saying Jason
isn't like... my father?"

Her mother shook her head quickly. "All I'm
saying is give it a chance," she said quietly. "The years I spent
with your father were among the best, and yes, the worst. But if I
had it to do over again I'd probably make the same choice."

Her mother talked of reality. Of dreams. Of
chasing the moon. But wasn't it true that if she thought anything
would come of herself and Jason she'd be living in a fool's
paradise? She clung stubbornly to the thought. He'd said she was
different. How long would it be before the novelty wore off and he
grew bored with her? For all his handsomeness, his charm, that
delightfully teasing smile she'd come to love so much, Jason had
one fatal flaw--his disbelief in love. And hers? Hers was in loving
a man like him.

"Do you love him, Samantha?"

"I... yes."

"Do you need him?"

She didn't want to think about a long lonely
winter without Jason, but she did now. The thought was like a knife
in her heart.

A lump in her throat, she nodded. When her
mother opened her mouth, she anticipated the next question and
made a sound that was a cross between a laugh and a sob. "Please
don't ask if I want him!"

Her mother smiled. "I wasn't going to," she
said calmly. "I'm simply going to ask you for the last time what
you're doing here. It seems to me you should be telling Jason
this!"

Samantha shook her head. "Maybe he thinks he
wants me now, but what about tomorrow? What about next year? If you
could only see him . . . he could have any woman in the world!"

"And you think it won't last." Her mother
held up a hand. "No, you're afraid it won't last."

She nodded, too miserable to speak, but her
thoughts delved backward. Jason had told her that her kind of love
was white knights and fairy tales, but wasn't it about time she
realized that nothing, love included, was perfect? But that didn't
mean it didn't exist, she argued with herself. Love between a man
and a woman was a need, a partnership, and involved caring and
commitment, and something she and Alan had never been able to
achieve, give-and-take.

She let the realization wash over her, and
felt a dawning sense of awareness. She didn't want a perfect man
after all, the fantasy man she had always dreamed of. She wanted a
man who was secure enough in his masculinity to love with all his
heart without being afraid to share the same joy and pain as she,
someone who was sensitive and vulnerable, a man who loved as
intensely as she did. And hadn't Jason pointed out the first day
they'd met that men were really no different than women? And wasn't
he all of those things?

But doubt was a dark cloud overhead that
wasn't as easily vanquished as she hoped.

Lillian got up and brushed a kiss against her
forehead. "You know what I think?" she asked softly. "I think the
only one you're hurting is yourself if you let yourself believe
he's not the man for you."

"But," she sputtered, "but you don't even
know him!"

"You'd be surprised, dear."
Lillian walked into the living room and returned with a copy
of
Love's Sweet Bondage
in her hand. "I found this on your bureau a few
days ago and I finally decided to see what the big attraction was."
She laid it in Samantha's lap. "And in reading it I discovered
quite a lot about Cathryn James--or rather, Jason Armstrong." She
shook her head. "If I were twenty years younger..." She stopped,
her eyes gleaming, her meaning clear. "Why don't you read it,
Samantha? Read it and think of the man who wrote it."

Those were strange words
indeed coming from her mother, who usually read no more than the
newspaper or an occasional magazine, Samantha reflected later in
her bedroom. She smiled a little ruefully as she picked up the copy
of
Love's Sweet Bondage
and eyed Sabrina's voluptuous form draped around
Marshall's chest. She didn't even know why she'd brought it along,
but maybe getting involved in Sabrina's troubles with the roguish
Marshall would get her mind off Jason, if only for a
while.

She ended up crying herself to sleep again
that night, only this time it was different. They were tears of
happiness.

Samantha's little car crunched to a grinding
halt in her own driveway early the next evening. Her sandaled feet
hit the pavement, the pale yellow skirt she wore whipping around
her bare legs as she raced across the pathway to Jason's house, her
feet scarcely touching the ground.

Jason
. The thought of his gently teasing grin, his warm brown eyes,
whether dancing with humor or aflame with passion, filled her heart
with warmth and hope and love unlike anything she had ever
known.

Last night had been such a revelation. For
the first time, she saw him clearly for the man he was, the man she
wanted, the man who was hers. There were no more doubts, no
lingering insecurities that made her fear the future.

She smiled to herself as she lifted a finger
to press the doorbell. Her heart threatened to burst with the warm
buoyant feeling inside her. She pictured the welcome she knew was
only seconds away. Jason would be surprised, since she hadn't
bothered to phone. But then he would smile, that warm,
heartrending smile that never failed to send her heart melting
with emotion and her blood sizzling through her veins.

It was then that she noticed the silence. She
shoved aside the anxious feeling that swelled inside her and rang
the doorbell again. She heard its lonely peal, heard it echo
through the house.

No one answered.

It wasn't until then that a
cold feeling of dread began to penetrate the bubble around her
heart. His car—Jason's car was gone! Scarcely daring to breathe,
she ran around to the back and onto the deck. She peered through
the woven draperies... the house was empty as a tomb. For an
instant she refused to accept it, then she felt the world come
crashing down around her ears. It was happening, she thought
wildly, a strange buzzing in her head. What she had feared all
along was actually happening. Jason was gone.
Gone
.

For a minute she thought she'd stopped
breathing. Then she heard a harsh gasping sound and realized it
came from her own throat.

"You promised," she whispered brokenly. "You
promised."

"Samantha."

She reeled at the sound behind her. Then, as
if she sought shelter from a storm, she ran straight into Jason's
arms. He caught her up against him and held her there, his arms
closing around her trembling figure.

"Jason!" Her voice broke on a sob. "I thought
you were gone! I thought you left me!" Her eyes closed and she
buried her face against his bare chest, tickling her cheek on the
rough dark hairs sprinkled beneath the base of his throat.

"Samantha." His hand smoothed the ruffled
wings of her hair. "I was on the beach. If you'd tried the door
you'd have found it open."

She smiled tremulously at him, her eyes
clinging to his. She stepped back but wouldn't let loose his hands,
keeping them linked between their bodies. She shook her head. "Your
car..."

"Is in the garage, where it's been since you
left." His eyes seemed to devour her, the warmly possessive light
she saw there making her heart pound madly.

She laughed a little breathlessly. "You're
reverting to your old habits, I see." She nodded at his
khaki-colored shorts, his only attire.

"Only because I had a feeling you'd be back
today." His grin was faintly teasing as he tugged gently on her
hands. "Come on, I'll show you where I was."

Her hand tucked firmly inside his, they
walked down to the beach, their bodies occasionally touching.
Samantha could feel something different, a new closeness, a new
feeling of kinship between them. She thrilled at the feeling.

She smiled when he finally stopped. The sand
at their feet was molded into a castle, almost an exact replica of
the one they had labored over nearly a week earlier. "Is this what
you've been doing while I've been gone?" she teased. "I thought
you'd have your manuscript finished by now."

Jason smiled. "We don't have much history,
you and I. But the day we spent here was a day I'll never forget as
long as I live." He thumped his chest with a fist. "Haven't you
learned yet that I'm a romantic at heart—" he glanced at her out of
the corner of his eye "—dreaming of lordly castles and damsels in
distress?" He added so softly she could scarcely hear, "How could
I write when my inspiration was gone" --there was a long pause—
"and she hadn't yet returned?"

A wealth of feeling welled up inside her.
She tipped her head to the side and sank down to her knees,
heedless of the damage the damp sand might do to her skirt. "This
looks exactly like the other one."

"It should, it had the same crew." One side
of his mouth turned up and he added dryly, "I think by now every
kid that's ever played on this beach knows me as 'Mr. Monroe."' He
looked at her then, the expression in his eyes growing more
intense, and she could see the silent question in his eyes.

She stilled it with a
pleading look, clasping her hands together tightly in her lap. That
could wait, this couldn't. "Jason, I finally finished
Love's Sweet Bondage
."

"And?" His voice was cautious.

"And I love it, even more than I loved all
the others. But for a very different reason."

Jason looked puzzled.

Samantha smiled a little. She didn't possess
his eloquence when it came to words. "When we first met, you said
the kind of love that was depicted in romance novels didn't
exist—"

"I didn't say that," he interrupted with a
frown. "I said it was exaggerated. And I believed it--" His hand
found hers where it lay on her lap. "at the time."

A twinge of regret flashed in the blue eyes
that met his. "And I thought it wasn't possible for you to ever
change, until last night.

"And reading
Love's Sweet Bondage
changed your mind?"

She nodded. "Suddenly I
realized something all your books have in common: fidelity, and the
concept of everlasting love. The hero and heroine never make love
with anyone else, and I like that." She paused. "I believe in that,
Jason, and I've finally learned that we make our own magic. But I
also believe in fidelity. And I believe that forever
can
happen, for the
right people. And for the first time, I read between the lines."
She leaned forward, her eyes searching his face. "Do you know what
else I found, Jason?"