‘You need to believe it, though. In here...’ Ari laid his hand on Kelly’s breast. Over her heart. ‘And you need to keep believing it, even when I’m not here to remind you.’
Oh...the trailing ends of that internal knot had just been given a sharp tug so that it tightened enough to cause real pain. She might be safe within the circle of Ari’s arms right now but her time with him wasn’t going to last as long as Kelly would want it to.
Which was, she realised with absolute certainty, for ever.
It wasn’t just Peggy who was so easy to love. She’d recognised the trust that Ari had won from her as a form of love but somehow she’d delegated it to the kind of love you could have with a good friend. She’d seen it as a signpost pointing to a future where it might be possible to find the all-consuming “falling in love” kind of love that was so far above the level of even your best friends. The kind of love that made you so sure that you’d found your soul-mate. The person that you didn’t want to live without. The lover that you wanted to wake up next to, every day, for the rest of your life.
It had been a signpost all right. But how could she not have seen that it was pointing straight towards Ari Lawson?
That he was that person?
That knot wasn’t about to unravel but Kelly could feel the tightness loosen a little as Ari’s hand shaped her breast and then he bent his head to let his lips take the place of his fingers and the tip of his tongue to taste her nipple. She caught her breath in a gasp—arching her back, even, at the searing intensity of that pleasure.
‘That traffic...’ Ari’s voice was so low it was no more than a whispered growl. ‘It’s particularly bad today...’
CHAPTER NINE
THE TRAFFIC WAS so much lighter by the time Ari finally headed home it was a pleasure to get up enough speed to lean into the corners and feel the pressure of wind against his body. After the last couple of hours in Kelly’s bed, he was still a little drunk on the delights of physical pleasure that had raised the bar of what he’d believed possible. Even a gust of wind could rekindle the buzz. He knew it wasn’t going to last that long—his sexual relationships never did—but, right now, Ari couldn’t imagine not having Kelly in his life. He could never have had enough of her—in bed or out of it.
Daylight was beginning to fade so it was easy to spot the flashing lights of a police car coming up behind him as he got closer to home. A second police car wasn’t far behind, its lights flashing and the siren also wailing. When an ambulance rushed past him only a minute later, Ari knew that something major must be happening in his neighbourhood. A serious car crash perhaps? A stabbing or shooting?
It wasn’t just in his neighbourhood either. The emergency vehicles were congregating in his own street. Right in front of his own house...? It was only then that any remnants of the delights of being with Kelly evaporated completely and fear kicked in to take their place. Ari was off his bike in a flash, running down the street as he yanked his helmet off.
‘Sorry, sir, but you can’t go in.’ A policeman was blocking the path to the front door of the house. ‘There’s been an incident.’
‘I live here.’ Ari’s words were clipped. ‘My mother’s in there. You can’t stop me.’
He pushed past the officer, only to find another guarding the front door. Behind him, in the hallway, he could see an ambulance stretcher. Waiting for Peggy? Or was Stacey having her baby and something had gone wrong? But why were the police here as well as an ambulance?
‘What the hell is going on here?’
The question was fired at the second officer but Ari didn’t wait for an answer because he was too desperate to see for himself. Maybe this officer had heard him tell the one at the gate that he lived here. Or perhaps it was just the expression on his face that made the policeman step aside to let him in. Ari burst into the kitchen to find Stacey sitting at the table, flanked by two police officers. She was white-faced and sitting as still as a stone and it didn’t look as if she was about to willingly communicate with anyone.
What was far more alarming, however, was the crumpled figure on the floor in front of the couch where he’d left Peggy resting comfortably some time ago. Two paramedics were crouched beside a body so still that, for a horrible moment, Ari thought that his mum was dead. He dropped to his knees close to her head but couldn’t speak for a moment. He had to focus on taking a breath.
‘Ari...’ Peggy’s voice was weaker than he’d ever heard it to be, even straight after her major surgery. ‘Is that you? Oh...thank goodness you’re here...’
Peggy’s skin was even paler than Stacey’s, except for where it was stained by a livid bruise appearing all around an eye that was already almost closed by swelling. Her lip was badly cut as well.
‘Blood pressure’s still too low,’ one of the paramedics said. ‘Let’s get an IV in and get moving. How’s that ECG looking?’
‘Sinus rhythm,’ his colleague responded. ‘But tachycardic.’ He looked up at Ari. ‘And you are...?’
‘He’s my boy,’ Peggy whispered. Her breath caught in a gasp that could have been either pain or fear. ‘I need him...’
Ari had to swallow a huge lump in his throat. ‘What’s going on?’ He had his hand on Peggy’s forehead, smoothing back her hair. ‘Did she fall? She’s just come out of hospital after major abdominal surgery.’
‘She didn’t fall.’ The senior paramedic shook his head. ‘Some lowlife assaulted her. He was after drugs that he knew she had in the house, presumably because of the surgery.’ His glance slid sideways and his tone hardened. ‘Seems like he was a “friend” of the young lady living here.’
Peggy’s unswollen eye was fluttering shut. ‘Not her fault...’ she whispered. ‘Ari...you’ll take care of Stacey, won’t you?’
‘Yeah...’ But Ari had to push down a rising anger as he remembered the feverish text conversation he’d seen Stacey having before he’d left to take Kelly home. Had she been setting up the visit that had turned vicious? Had she deliberately put Peggy in danger by allowing a drug addict into the house? The abusive boyfriend that Kelly had told him about maybe? ‘I’m going to take care of you first, though.’
But he needed to move back to give the paramedics room to work and he could feel the glare coming from the direction of the kitchen table. Anger bubbled and began to colour his words.
‘What the hell were you thinking, Stace? Did you even think what the repercussions might be if you let your drug-addict mates know what was in the house? The medications that Peggy needs?’
Stacey said nothing. Her arms were wrapped tightly around her body above the bump of her pregnancy. She looked terrified beneath her resentment, Ari realised. And so, so young... He had to swallow hard.
‘Are you okay?’ he asked. ‘Did he hit you as well?’
His anger might not have penetrated Stacey’s stony silence but the concern in his voice did now. Not that Stacey seemed to appreciate his concern.
‘As if you care,’ she spat. ‘You said you’d come back to look after Peggy. You promised you’d help look after me, too, but you’re not that interested any more, are you?’ Her lips curled as she glared at Ari. ‘This wouldn’t have happened if you’d been here but you weren’t, were you? You were too busy, off shagging your girlfriend.’
Oh... God...the truth in those words was inescapable. This was his fault as much as Stacey’s. What had he been thinking to let Kelly take over so much of the free time he had away from work when he should have been spending it caring for the closest thing to family he would ever have? The guilt that slammed into Ari on top of his fear for Peggy was too much. Ari could feel the pressure suddenly build to a point where he had to lash out.
‘Who told that scumbag there were drugs in the house, Stace? What were you doing—trying to make a bit of pocket money?’ He lowered his voice so that Peggy couldn’t possibly hear if she was still conscious. ‘If Peggy
dies because of this, I’ll never forgive you...’
He could see Stacey shrinking. Holding herself even more tightly, her lips now pressed together so hard they had all but vanished.
‘What do you know about the person who might have carried out this attack?’ the police officer asked Ari.
He shook his head. ‘I only know that she’s got a so-called boyfriend who’s been abusive to her in public. And she had a friend over here for dinner not long ago.’
The night he’d first made love to Kelly, in fact. If he’d gone home that night, would he have met that “friend”? Could he have made it clear he wasn’t welcome?
‘Was it the same person, Stacey?’ the policeman asked.
Stacey shrugged one shoulder but then nodded.
‘Did you give him drugs then, too?’
Stacey ignored him.
‘I can give you the name of a friend who saw him with her a while back,’ Ari told the police officer. ‘She’ll be able to give you a description.’
‘That could be helpful, although we’ve got a fair idea of who it is. Stacey’s been doing her best to give us the information we need and we’re confident he’s someone who’s already on our radar. You might want to know that he broke into the house because he was refused entry. And it was Stacey who called us to report the incident.’
And he’d just laid the blame on Stacey. Because he didn’t want to face up to his own share? He’d known all along that he didn’t have the room for any more complications in his life but he’d let Kelly in and devoted more and more of the precious time to being with her. But there was no point in trying to apportion blame right now. There was something far more important to worry about. Ari’s head swerved back to where the paramedics were still working to stabilise Peggy for transport to hospital. A police officer was being used to hold up a bag of IV fluid. He could see a slightly erratic green line on the screen that was recording Peggy’s heart rate and rhythm and equipment was being hastily collected and packed as if it was urgent to get her to hospital as quickly as possible.
Stacey’s chair tipped backwards and toppled to the floor as she pushed herself to her feet.
‘Don’t go anywhere,’ the police officer told her. ‘We’ve still got a few more questions.’
‘I need to go to the toilet.’ Stacey’s voice was wooden. ‘If that’s all right with you?’
‘Of course.’
She didn’t look in Ari’s direction as she left the kitchen but he barely noticed. The stretcher had been brought into the room and the paramedics were being as gentle as they could as they lifted Peggy from the floor and arranged blankets and pillows around the wires of the ECG monitor and the tubing for the IV fluid. Ari could see the trace that told him Peggy was still alive but, looking at that pale, still face and the limp hand on top of the blankets, Ari felt the hollow space in his gut growing into an abyss. He was going to lose the person who’d been the most important to him for so much of his life—maybe a lot sooner than he’d expected.
‘I’m coming with you,’ he told the paramedics. ‘I don’t want her to be alone for a minute.’
‘No worries. But let’s get going, yeah?’
It took a minute to manoeuvre the stretcher through the kitchen door and into the hall, where they were blocked by two police officers.
‘She’s gone,’ one of them was saying.
‘What? How did that happen?’
‘I couldn’t go into the bathroom with her, could I? How was I to know that she was going to climb out the window...?’
They stepped aside to let the stretcher pass. Ari slowed as he followed it. ‘Stacey’s gone?’
‘Done a runner.’ The officer nodded. ‘But don’t worry, she can’t have gone far, especially in her condition. We’ll find her. Dunno why she’s taken off when it’s not her that’s in trouble.’
Ari simply mirrored the nod. Stacey had stormed off because of what he’d said but right now he couldn’t worry about the fact that he’d upset her so much—he had to focus on Peggy because, as awful as the thought was, it was quite possible these were the last minutes he would ever have with her. He lengthened his stride to catch up with the stretcher.
‘I’m going to the hospital with my mother,’ he threw back over his shoulder. ‘You can find me there if you need to.’
He held her hand all the way to Kensington Hospital’s emergency department. He was still holding it, more than an hour later, when she’d been admitted to a ward.
She was conscious again and he’d been told that her being admitted was more of a precaution than anything else but he’d never seen Peggy looking like this. So old and shaky. As if life was finally just too hard. It was so typical of his mum that it wasn’t herself that she was worried about, however.
‘Please, Ari...go and find her. She’s probably frightened. It wasn’t her fault, you know. Not really...’
‘I’d rather stay here. With you.’
Peggy shook her head but the movement made her wince. Her black eye was still swelling and changing colour and it looked horrific. She could see him staring.
‘This looks far worse than it is. And after what they’ve given me, nothing hurts if I don’t move. I’m going to sleep, Ari. There’s no point in sitting by my bed, love. I’d much rather you went to find Stacey.’ A tear escaped the eye that had been closed by the swelling and the whispered words might not have been intended to be heard. ‘I don’t want to die before I know she’s all right... And that poor wee baby—what if it gets born on the streets...?’
So Ari went home. Because he’d decided he could collect Stacey and bring her back. The least she could do was to come into the hospital, no matter how much she disliked the place, to give Peggy the reassurance that would allow her to rest and try to heal from injuries that had to have set her back considerably in her recovery from the surgery.
But Stacey hadn’t been found and taken home. The police officer that had been left to secure the house just shook his head at Ari’s questions.
‘There’s too many places street kids can hide out in and that boyfriend of hers probably knows them all. If she doesn’t want to be found, it’s going to be very difficult.’
Ari paced the kitchen minutes later, the reminders of what had happened all too obvious, from some discarded packaging of IV supplies to blood spots on the polished floorboards and the odd angle of the chair Stacey had knocked over that had been picked up but not straightened.
“Difficult” didn’t mean you couldn’t try, but he didn’t know where to start and...and Ari had never felt so alone in his life. Or maybe that wasn’t quite true. He’d felt rather like this as an abandoned six-year-old, hadn’t he? When what he’d needed most of all had been someone to love him. Someone who would put their arms around him and tell him everything was going to be okay. There was only one person he could think of who might be able to make him feel less alone.
He pulled his phone from his pocket without giving himself time to think it through and the warmth that flooded his body the instant he heard Kelly’s voice told him that he’d been right. She was the person he needed most right now. He had to fight back tears as he told her what had happened and his need to try and do something to fix everything but the frustration of not knowing where to start.
‘I know a few places street kids hang out in,’ she told him. ‘I’ve gone there on ambulance jobs. There’s an under-bridge homeless community not far from Kensington Hospital that I’ve been to. And an old house not far from you. I went there for a drug overdose once.’
‘What street is it in?’
‘I can’t remember the name. I’d know it if I saw it, though, and roughly where the street is. Come and get me, Ari. I’ll help you look...’
* * *
It felt good to be on the back of this bike because it gave her an excuse to wrap her arms around Ari and hold him tig
htly. It couldn’t have felt more different than the last time she’d been on the back of his bike only hours ago, however, when she’d been aware of every tiny movement of his muscles. Even through the protective layer of that leather jacket over his clothing now she could feel how tense he was—a solid mass of focused human who was probably barely aware of the touch of her arms.
Kelly would have been beyond appalled to learn about a cowardly attack involving physical violence on any frail, old woman but this was Peggy and that made it utterly unthinkable. While she was inclined to agree with Ari’s first reaction and blame Stacey for what had happened, she could understand how torn he was and how important it was for Peggy to know that the teenager was all right. Stacey had listened to Kelly once when she’d told her how lucky she was to have Peggy and Ari in her life and it had apparently made a difference so maybe she could help again. She desperately wanted to help. For Peggy, of course, and for Stacey herself but mostly for Ari. The haunted look on his face when he’d arrived to collect her on his bike had been heart-breaking.
As far as they could tell, Stacey wasn’t amongst the group of homeless young people who had claimed the area under the bridge that Kelly knew about.
‘Have you seen her?’ Ari asked someone who had dreadlocks reminiscent of the hairstyle he’d had when he was seventeen. ‘She’s got really bright red hair, short on one side. And she’s pregnant.’
‘Nah, man...she’s not here. No one’s seen her.’
People were turning their backs on them.
‘If you do see her, tell her Ari’s looking for her. Tell her to come home.’
They got an even more hostile reception at the abandoned house that was inhabited by squatters—many of whom were no older than Stacey.
‘You’re not in trouble,’ Kelly told whoever had been swearing at her on the other side of the closed door. ‘We need to find someone, that’s all. Stacey. Red hair. She’s pregnant and the baby could come anytime.’
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