Catherine Anderson by Only By Your Touch

Author:Only By Your Touch [Touch, Only By Your]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Published: 2011-01-16T23:41:22.751000+00:00

Chapter Fifteen

Ben seldom drank, but he made an exception that night. After pouring himself a precise measure of whiskey from a bottle left over from Hap Longtree's stores, he adjourned to the living room to sit by the fire. He thought of Hap as he took the first sip of liquor.

The smell of the stuff almost turned his stomach. Disgusted by the memories that swamped him with each whiff, Ben tossed the remaining contents of the tumbler onto the fire. A whoosh of flame momentarily brightened the room, the fiery flashes of red reminding him of Chloe's hair.

Ben conjured a picture of her face, mentally tracing the delicate curve of her cheek and the stubborn tilt of her small chin. He particularly loved her eyes, all big and wary much of the time. And therein was half his problem, he decided. It was difficult to run scared when she obviously feared the feelings erupting between them even more than he did.

He remembered how sweet and tremulous her mouth had felt when he kissed her. Her lower lip had been slightly swollen, undoubtedly from the grind of the other man's teeth. The thought had Ben knotting his fists and wishing for five minutes alone with the bastard. Chloe had been right to withhold the man's name. He was in a murderous mood, all his pacifist convictions overshadowed by fierce feelings of protec-tiveness.

He sighed and let his head fall back to stare sightlessly at the ceiling. When his mother entered the room moments later, he pretended to be asleep. He was in no mood to talk with her any more tonight.

Nan came over to lightly touch his hair. He nearly smiled when she checked his forehead for fever. No matter how confusing his life became, some things never changed, and her love was one of them. It humbled him to admit it, but he often felt like a lost child when she grew disoriented and didn't know him. It filled him with a terrible sense of loss and dread, because deep down he knew that someday soon she would slip away and never come back.

If his life had been a normal one, the thought of losing his mother to the disease might not have made him feel quite so bereft. Ah, but there was the hitch. He wasn't normal, and he'd long since accepted that he never would be. Other men fell in love and built lives apart from their parents, but Ben no longer had that hope. Forty years from now, he would be a palsied, frail old man, isolated on a mountain ridge with only the animals for company. There would be no woman with snow in her hair to sit beside him on the porch at night and reminisce about days gone by, no kids to flock home for the holidays, and no grandchildren to comfort him in his old age.

In short, when he lost his mother, he would lose his last link to family. His sister Karen had her own life now—one that she'd worked hard to build.

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