The Invitation (Montgomery/Taggert 19)

“I…Uh…Couldn’t someone else come? Whatever happened to dear, sweet Mrs. Patterson?”

“Some of the mothers in town figured out that that cough syrup she was giving the kids was straight whiskey. We suggested she might be happier in a town other than Chandler. You can put up with me, I can call Miss Norton, or you can find your own nurse. But one thing I won’t do is leave you here alone to take care of yourself. Not that you deserve my assistance after what you did to me today, but I cannot leave you here alone.”

He cocked his head to one side. “What is your problem with me anyway, Jackie? Have I made an improper gesture toward you? Have I said anything to make you think that I have depraved intentions toward you?”

“Nooooo,” she said, using what willpower she had to keep from blushing. Considering how much blood she had lost today, it was a wonder she could blush.

“Then what is wrong? Do you think that I might make advances toward you? After all, as you constantly remind me, I am just a boy. How could a mere child like me do any of the things you seem to think me capable of? Besides, you’re an old woman, remember?”

“Yes,” she said hesitantly. “I guess so. I mean, yes, of course.”

“All right, Jackie, I’ll be honest with you. I’m a Montgomery, remember? Have you been away from town so long that you’ve forgotten the pride of my family? Do you think I’d try anything with a woman who has made it crystal clear that she can hardly bear the sight of me? Today you went to a great deal of trouble to show me that you wanted nothing to do with me. You showed me that you’d rather end a lifelong friendship than be around me. Do you know how you made me feel this afternoon?”

“You were rather explicit on that point,” she said, trying hard not to remember all the things he had said to her. She had never felt so small as he had made her feel today.

“Okay, so you made me feel bad, and I gave you some of your own back. You’ve made it clear that you don’t want me, that you never have, that I am and always will be a boy to you. So be it.”

She was trying to read the expression on his face but couldn’t. Even as a boy, Billy had been unreadable. He’d followed her around, but she’d never understood whether he liked her or just thought of her as an oddity.

“Right now you need help and it’s easy for me to give it. Young Blair said you could move your hand in about a week. I’ll do whatever you want. I’ll stay, or I’ll leave and hire someone else to take care of you, whatever you want. If I stay, it will be on terms of…”

He smiled. “Remember all the times you baby-sat me? Maybe now I can return the favor. I’ll baby-sit you. Doesn’t that seem like a fair trade?”

“I…I don’t know,” she managed to say. The entire right side of her body hurt, her hair itched, and she was extraordinarily tired. She didn’t want to make decisions now. She just wanted to be clean and to sleep.

“Come on,” he said, reaching out for her uninjured hand and pulling her out of bed. “You can’t think now. You’re going to take a bath, I’m going to wash your hair, and then you’re going to sleep.”

“I don’t think—”

“You rarely do. You act first and think later.” When she was standing in front of him, he looked into her eyes. “Jackie, do you really think I’m the kind of boy who’d take advantage of a woman when she’s hurt and in pain?”

Something about what he said made her frown. Maybe it was the use of “boy” and “woman” together. But no matter what bothered her, she knew that he would not take advantage of her. He wasn’t the type of man a woman had to be afraid of. It was more likely that William should fear women.

“You can’t wash my hair,” she said at last. “I can do it.”

“Not with one hand you can’t.”

What he was saying and what he was doing confused her. Maybe she shouldn’t have compared him to Charley, but Charley was the only man she’d ever really known. Charley had been a great father figure, he’d given orders and made decrees, said no more often than yes, but as a mother he was the worst. Thank heaven Jackie had almost always been as healthy as a pilot after the first solo, because during the few times she was ill, Charley had been annoyed and had stayed out of the house until she was well. She remembered running a fever, being horribly weak and in the kitchen trying to open a can of soup.

Maybe the men you knew well in your life shaped your ideas of what men should and should not be, because now she wondered if it was really a masculine thing for a man to wash a woman’s hair. Which of course was absurd. If a man did “women’s things,” did his male body parts fall off? Or shrivel up until they were useless? Of course not. It was just that the two men in her life, her father and her husband, had spent their lives sitting on chairs asking her to bring them things. And maybe that was what she’d come to expect of men, that the woman was to give and the man to receive and when a man gave, it was somehow…not right, or not wholly masculine.

William had his arm around her shoulders in a companionable way, a nonsexual way, and she found his touch very confusing. This morning he had been yelling that he loved her, had loved her, but now he didn’t even like her very much. Yet he was leading her into the bathroom to…what?

“Stop thinking so much,” William said as he opened the bathroom door. He left her for a moment as he got a glass of water then took a pill from a little jar on the side of the sink. “Here, take this.”

“What is it?”

“It could be a drug made from an ancient herb found in a tomb in South America, guaranteed to make a woman do anything a man wants her to do. Or it could be a painkiller that will make you feel the pain in your hand less. What do you think?”

She didn’t even smile as she took the pill from his hand and swallowed it with the water.

“Okay, now off with that bloody shirt.”

Jackie opened her mouth to say something, but what could she say? She had on a brassiere, and that certainly covered what little she had on top. And hadn’t she often appeared in halter tops in public in the summer? What was the difference?

Abruptly, William grabbed her shoulders and turned her to face him, his nose to her nose. “Jackie, I am not a rapist. I am not a man who would take advantage of a woman who has lost a lot of blood. I am not so…so needy of female companionship that I have to resort to trickery to get a woman’s clothes off. All I want to do is to wash a couple of quarts of blood off of you. You are a disgusting sight and you stink. Now will you be sensible

and take your shirt off? You can wrap a towel around yourself so I won’t see anything, but whatever you do, let’s get you clean.”