And Mac would, too. Even if he weren’t already leaving town.
She had to protect her heart from him. First, there wasn’t a part of her that believed for one instant he would stay in Kansas, and there was no way she’d ever move away. Second, at the mud race, he’d told her he wasn’t looking for anything serious. Which led her to believe he only wanted to test out the waters, since he hadn’t dated since his wife died.
She couldn’t blame him. He deserved to date. To have fun and enjoy the single life after the solitude he’d sentenced himself to the last few years. She studied him for a moment, really studied him. And saw that he did look less haunted. He was smiling now, laughing. He needed time to reacquaint himself with that happier man, become comfortable with him again. Have a few good experiences to offset the bad. And then maybe he could find the right woman and be able to love again.
Mac was capable of endless love. He’d already proven that. When he loved, he loved with his all.
As he worked the antibiotic ointment into her palms, then carefully wrapped them with gauze, she ran her fingers over his hair. He deserved a woman who would fill the huge void Ally had left behind when she died.
Gayle wanted that for him with all her heart.
But she wasn’t the one to do it. She just couldn’t see them working long-term. There were too many obstacles.
But that wasn’t going to stop her from enjoying the man while he was here.
“There,” he said as he taped the end of the gauze down and sat back on his haunches.
She grinned at her wrapped hands. “Should I bring my fists up to protect my chin?”
“That’d be pretty fucking hot, actually.”
“Huh. I’ll have to remember that when I can bend my fingers without cringing in pain.”
He sat beside her on the bed. “I wanted to ask you about the teddy bears. That was so nice of you. It meant a lot to those kids.”
“I started carrying them after seeing my first destructive tornado.” How would he react when he found this out? At the time it hadn’t felt appropriate to blurt out she’d chased the very tornado that had destroyed his life while he’d been reliving it in his head. “I started chasing six years ago, but it wasn’t until about four years ago that I actually saw an EF-5 rip through a town.” She looked away.
He stiffened beside her. Yeah, he got her implication.
“You were in Emerald Springs.”
She nodded. “I followed it straight into town and jumped out immediately to help. I’ll never forget, as the people emerged, how stunned they were. Especially the ones who’d ridden it out inside a house. Like they couldn’t believe they had survived and were questioning how that had happened.”
“I know the feeling,” he murmured with a sigh.
She touched the bandage he’d so tenderly wrapped around her hand. “The children were all panicked and crying, and I remember seeing a little boy who was completely distraught over a stuffed puppy. His mother explained to me he’d had the puppy since he was eight months old, slept with it every night. It hit me then that while this was difficult for the adults, it was even worse on the kids. They don’t have the ability to make sense of what happened. How can they, when even as adults, we can’t?”
“I take it he didn’t find the puppy.”
She smiled. “No, he actually did. Dirty and missing an eye, but he found him. Ever since, though, I’ve carried around the box of stuffed animals in the SUV. These kids have lost everything, especially their sense of security. I figure I can give them back a little of that feeling with the teddy bears. Something to start over with.”
“You really do a lot of good, Gayle. I see that now.”
The praise made her uncomfortable, and she gave a slight shrug. She didn’t do it for glory. She did it because it was the right thing to do. Lots of chasers did what she did. “I can’t imagine what they’ve been through. I have never gone through what these people—what you—have experienced. I have no idea what it’s like to crawl out of the rubble, or open the door to a storm shed and see everything familiar to me gone.”
“But you lost your family in a tornado.”
“Yeah, but I wasn’t with them. I was away at college. It was—” Closing her eyes, she inhaled deeply, controlling the pain that immediately surfaced. Seven years later, and it still hurt to talk about it. “It was my birthday, and they were driving down to surprise me. They got caught on the interstate. Had nowhere to go, nowhere to hide. They were stuck. The damn tornado ripped right through my family and my high school sweetheart.”
His face was wreathed in empathy. “Hell. I’m sorry.”