the crutches. The exercises that hurt like hell yet were necessary if I ever wanted to walk again. And I hated knowing that for the rest of my life people will look at me with pity for the poor, crippled woman!”
Derek did shake her then, though gently. “Look at me, Summer,” he commanded her, holding her only inches away from him. “Look at my face. Do you see pity there? I said look at me!”
Tear-washed blue eyes tentatively searched his face. She saw the remains of anger there, and a pain that she wasn’t sure she understood. She ran her eyes slowly across his dark face, her gaze lingering on his emotion-darkened gray eyes. Anger, pain, desire, frustration—but not pity. Even after all she’d just told him. “No,” she whispered, remembering that he’d asked her a question. “I don’t see pity.”
“Summer, there is so much more to you than a quick wit and a fast mouth and a lame leg. Do you really think any of your true friends care whether you walk with a limp or would think any less of you if you carried on a serious conversation without cracking jokes? I know you love to laugh, and you’ve probably always been a tease and a cutup, but don’t hide your other nice qualities. Give people a chance to get to know the real you—fears and disappointments and insecurities and all. Nobody expects you to be perfect.”
Summer looked wonderingly at him for a long moment before dropping her head to stare at her lap. “When I was little, I learned that people love to be entertained,” she said quietly, almost surprising herself at what she was saying. Derek shifted on the sofa beside her but remained quiet, encouraging her to continue as if he knew that the explanation she was about to make was important to both of them.
“My older sister, Spring, was smart and serious and everyone admired her, and Autumn was the baby—beautiful and spunky and tough, which earned her respect at an early age. I could make people laugh. I could sing and dance and do imitations, and people enjoyed my performances. I thrived on the applause and the approval.”
She cleared her throat. “I found out that people are uncomfortable with the pain and fears of others, but everyone loves to share a good joke. So I hid my fears and insecurities and I always had friends. Sometimes I wished that I had someone I could cry with or tell my problems to, but I was afraid my friends wouldn’t have liked me as well if I stopped making them laugh.”
“It wouldn’t have mattered to your real friends,” he told her softly.
“Perhaps.” She didn’t sound convinced. She glanced up at him, then as quickly looked away. “I was quite popular in college. The other kids admired me because I didn’t seem to care whether I passed or failed while they sweated through classes in fear. I did care, of course, but I didn’t want anyone to know—just in case I failed. If they thought it was because I didn’t care, they wouldn’t think of it as failure, I thought.
“I had such big dreams. Few people knew the number of hours I spent practicing my dancing and my singing and my acting. I pictured myself as a star with constant applause and thousands of friends and fans. Then I met Lonnie.”
“The boyfriend? ‘Enry ‘Iggins?”
She didn’t smile. “Yes. He was gorgeous. And he had talent. I thought the two of us together would be a team to take the country by storm. He thought so, too. I don’t know if we were in love with each other or with our mutual dreams of stardom. And then I had the accident.” She swallowed. “He was so angry with me.”
Derek looked startled. “Angry?”
She nodded. “For ruining everything. He never did like me taking the motorcycle out on the streets—said it was too dangerous for a dancer. When I proved him right, he wouldn’t forgive me for taking the risk. He told me that a crippled girlfriend would hold him back, that he needed someone who could share his life in every way.”
“Bastard.”
“Yeah, well, anyway, those first few days after the accident were pretty grim. The pain and the knowledge that my dancing days were over made it hard for me to be brave. All I could do was cry. My friends didn’t quite know what to do with me. They visited me, of course, but it was easy to see that they were uncomfortable and they felt sorry for me. I hated that. So I forced myself to smile and built up a repertoire of gimp jokes. Pretty soon my friends were flocking back around me, telling me how brave and wonderful I was.”
“What about your family?”
Her face softened. “Bless their hearts, they were wonderful. They might not have understood me all the time. Maybe they didn’t know quite how much my dancing meant to me, but they knew I was in pain and bitterly disappointed and they rallied round me. My sisters were there to let me cry into their shoulders, and my mother bullied me into doing the exercises even when they hurt, then kissed me when I cried. My father put me straight to work to give me something to concentrate on besides my problems. I had to be careful not to become too dependent on them all.”
“Which is the reason you moved to San Francisco?”
“Yes. I had to prove to myself and to them that I was capable of functioning on my own. And I have. Even though they, like you, aren’t all that thrilled with the way I’ve chosen to live.”
“Perhaps they don’t approve, but do they pity you?” Derek asked perceptively.
“Why, no,” Summer answered, surprised that he would ask, “of course they don’t pity me. They love me.”
“Even though they’ve seen you at your lowest point, and they’ve heard you cry and curse and feel sorry for yourself?” he asked quietly.
She grimaced at him. “Another object lesson, Derek?”
“Merely an observation.”
She squirmed uncomfortably on the couch. “I don’t know why I always end up telling you my life story,” she told him accusingly.
“I know you think I’m interfering and nosy, but I can’t help it,” Derek confessed. “I’m not usually like this outside of business.”
“How did Connie and I get so lucky?” Summer asked dryly.
A touch of red darkened his high cheekbones, startling Summer. “Connie’s my sister,” he muttered. “I love her, and I want what’s best for her. And you, well, I… I like you,” he said with an uncharacteristic stammer. “It bothers me to see you hiding your pain and your feelings from the people who care for you.”
Summer’s own cheeks were suspiciously warm. “I’ve never even talked to Connie the way I just talked to you,” she admitted in a very low voice, almost a whisper. “I don’t know why I’ve been able to tell you things that I couldn’t tell anyone else.”