“I know. But I…I don’t want to make you angry or sad about my family.”
His gaze flickered, as if the comment had particular meaning for him. He lifted a shoulder. “I appreciate you caring for me like that. But I want you to tell me, Daralyn, if you can.”
She sighed. “My father and uncle said it was expensive to feed me, and I’d better not ever waste food, or eat a mouthful more than I needed to. Sometimes they’d make me so nervous while I was eating…I’d throw it up. Then they’d be really angry.”
She didn’t want to go back to that place in her head right now. She’d shifted her gaze to the mural. She could create a room that looked just like that in her head, go there…
“Daralyn.”
She looked up, and he was close again. His lips brushed over hers, making them part. That warm swirl happened in her belly as he gazed at her, so close his face was all there was. “Thank you for telling me. Don’t go away. Stay here with me. Tonight, that’s the only thing I’m going to ask you about your life before you came to live with us. I promise. And since it was tough, I’m going to give you a standing quid pro quo. You can ask me any question, no matter how uncomfortable you think it would be for me.”
“Quid pro quo.” She tried that one out on her tongue. “It means…”
“Sort of tit for tat. You gave me something, so I give you back something of equal value.”
“Oh.” She pulled her notebook out of her purse and had him spell it, so she could write it down, carefully forming the letters before she tucked it away again. “All right. Can I bank my question? I need to think about what to ask.”
Amusement had wreathed his face as he watched her, and it was still there. “It’s a standing offer. And when I ask you a question, if you don’t feel like you can answer it, that’s okay. Just say ‘pass.’”
“I’ll always answer you, Rory.” Because when he posed a question to her, she had to answer him in some acceptable way.
As a child, she hadn’t known what a choice was. Her uncle and father didn’t give her that option for anything they told her to do.
Ever.
Dr. Taylor spent a lot of time helping her learn how to think about whether she wanted to do something or not. A wall in her mind kept her from considering that in a meaningful way, but there was another quagmire to it.
While she was constantly assured there was no longer any punishment if she didn’t want to do something, she wasn’t convinced. If the caring people in her life wanted something from her she couldn’t give, the tangle of feelings about whether or not she’d let them down, disappointed them, failed them, would overcome her.
With Rory, there was something different about it. Her reasons for not wanting him to give her a choice on certain things, like answering his questions, had a different impulse. One she wasn’t quite sure she understood. She just knew it felt right to feel that way. Less paralyzing.
She didn’t want to talk to Dr. Taylor about it because she didn’t want the psychiatrist to tell her a feeling was wrong that felt so deeply right.
“Okay.” He didn’t ask her more about that. Just held her hand, playing with her fingers, caressing her palm, and encouraged her to talk about other things. Like the last time she was here. What she, Elaine and Les had talked about, eaten. Where they’d gone after the meal, the little second-hand shops where Daralyn had found a dish drainer in a cheerful bright red color and a sink stopper with a red, yellow, blue and green rooster design on the handle.
He was easy to talk to. The way he watched her as she spoke had her tucking her hair behind her ear, smiling more than usual, and wanting to laugh. He also made her feel good about herself, just with his attention, and the more she seemed to feel good, the more absorbed he seemed to be in her. Since the table they were at was a good size, Rory had directed her to sit with just the corner between them, instead of across from one another. She had her legs crossed, and the side of her foot brushed his pants leg. Though she knew he couldn’t feel it, she saw his gaze flick in that direction more than once, lingering on the contact.
When the food came, it was as if they’d been in a lavender-tinged bubble, and the waitress had stepped out of that concealing fog, bringing them back into their current surroundings.
“Here you go.” She placed Daralyn’s plate in front of her, a small portion of the chicken marsala with the equally modest-sized sides of garlic mashed potatoes and seasoned grilled vegetables. “Keep some room for that dessert, now.”
Daralyn chewed every bite carefully, savoring the taste. Before coming to the Wilders, she ate the same staples every day. Plain oatmeal. Rice, potatoes, a small amount of meat or egg. Vegetables out of a can, or packaged fruit cups. The only seasoning in her father and uncle’s house was salt and pepper, and she wasn’t allowed to touch those. So when she’d first experienced Elaine’s cooking, taken that first bite, flavor had exploded on her tongue. She’d put down her fork, too overwhelmed to do more than eat a few bites.
Elaine had quickly picked up on the issue and cooked her basics. Chicken and rice, with just a little salt added, but she’d give Daralyn a tiny portion of what everyone else was eating, so gradually her palate expanded. But taste was still something that amazed her, one of many things that was the norm for everyone else.
Rory had a different approach to food as well. Before his accident, he would have ordered a bigger, meatier steak, the kind Les would tease him about.
“As if there’s not enough cow on the cow for you.”
“That’s what the potatoes are for,” he’d retorted. “To fill in the empty spaces.”
His diet now was consistently healthy. She’d picked up that it helped with his digestive system. His mother never pushed food on him the way she might with Thomas, Marcus or Les. And she didn’t push it on Daralyn. It was odd sometimes, the similarities between her and Rory that had entirely different reasons.
Rory had good table manners, but so did she. Her father had instructed her how to act like other people in the ways that mattered. To blend enough, not stick out.
They hadn’t counted on Elaine’s sharp eyes, seeing more than the obvious.
She pulled herself out of her head. Another danger of the new was comparing it too much to the old. She focused on the present. Rory made her laugh seven times during the meal. When he chuckled, it was a masculine sound, one with a sensual undercurrent. He could make heat course through her so often from doing so very little.
They talked, the music played, and gradually everything settled into a low-level hum of contentment, with the right edge of simmering anxiety. An anxiety that connected to the look in his eyes when he gazed at her. It made her want him to touch her, kiss her again.
That could cause another problem, though—like what had happened last night. She couldn’t let her mind go that way, because things would go bad again. Yet every time he looked toward her legs, she kept thinking about—wishing—he’d put his hand on her thigh. That possessive touch he sometimes had with her, that made everything in her universe still, point directly toward him. She imagined his fingers tightening, which would make her legs want to loosen, open...
No. She slammed the door shut as her body began that throb. No, no, no.