The Wedding Assignment

by Cathryn Clare

  The blind feeling of protest started low down in her body, tightening her stomach into a knot and making it hard to breathe. No, she wanted to shout, making the hospital halls ring with it. Everything has to be all right. I can’t have come this far and then lost—

  “Tell me,” she said, struggling to lift her head off the pillow. “You have to tell me.”

  “The doctor will be around soon—”

  “I don’t want to wait for the doctor. Tell me what happened, damn it!”

  She didn’t know if the nurse’s hands were pushing her against the bed or helping her get her balance as she sat up. She didn’t care how much her head throbbed. What did that matter—what did anything matter, if something had happened to her baby?

  It seemed to take forever for the nurse to put it into words. When she did, she sounded apologetic.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said. “They said you took a bad fall. The baby miscarried. You’re not pregnant anymore.”

  It was like being trapped inside a bad dream.

  Outside her window the sky was dark, but the light from the hospital corridor made it hard to sleep. She managed to doze off and on, mercifully escaping from the aching loss that seemed to have settled permanently inside her. But every time she lapsed into sleep, someone would come and wake her up again, shining lights into her eyes, taking her pulse and her temperature.

  What was worse was that they kept telling her it was for her own good.

  Leave me alone, Rae-Anne wanted to say. If you really want to help me, just leave me alone.

  It was after daylight before they finally did. She had an impression from a stray comment that one of the doctors was giving her something to help her relax. She swallowed it gratefully, wanting nothing more than to sleep and blot out everything that had happened in the past twenty-four hours.

  Her headache was better, but it was still hard to open her eyes.

  Rae-Anne half turned in the hospital bed, wrapping her arms around the place in her body where the baby should have been and wasn’t. She kept expecting to feel some kind of physical pain, but there wasn’t any. The miscarriage had happened so easily, so absurdly. It was almost as though she’d never been pregnant at all.

  The only pain was in her heart, where she couldn’t bring herself to let go of her treasured dreams of carrying a small, sleeping bundle into a gently lit bedroom, settling it into bed with infinite care, laughing in response to a wide, delighted baby smile.

  Her sense of loss was so strong that she moaned out loud.

  And heard an answering rustle somewhere in the room.

  No more bright lights, she wanted to say. No more people in white coats.

  He wasn’t wearing a white coat. He seemed to be wearing the same dark plaid shirt she’d glimpsed when he’d come around the corner of the old stone barn in the rain yesterday—or had it been two days ago already? She saw dried mud on the knees of his trousers as he eased himself onto the bed beside her.

  And then she closed her eyes again, not caring what day it was or how Wiley had gotten here or what he was wearing.

  “Wiley…”

  She heard her voice shaking, and moved gratefully into the strong circle of his arms, settling her cheek against his thigh. He ran one big hand over her hair, smoothing it. RaeAnne felt something inside her loosen as his deep voice rumbled into the quiet room.

  “Shh, honey… You’re all right now.”

  “I’m not all right.” Something caught at her throat. “Wiley-the baby-”

  “I know. Damn it, I know, Rae-Anne. They told me about the baby.”

  It was as though a dam had burst inside her. She hadn’t realized how tightly she was holding everything in until she felt it all start to spill over into Wiley’s embrace.

  It wasn’t just tears, although those were spilling over, too, feeling even more urgent because she’d been holding them back for so long. But there were words mixed in with her sobs, the kind of words she never let herself give in to, raw and childish words, full of hurt and need.

  “Wiley—it isn’t fair—”

  “I know.”

  “It hurts so much—I can’t believe how much it hurts.”

  She didn’t realize she was crying until she saw damp patches appearing on the dark blue fabric her cheek was pressing against. And then, suddenly, her tears overwhelmed her.

  “Wiley, I just want to go home….”

  What was left of her adult pride vanished with the phrase. She sobbed out all her loss and frustration in Wiley’s strong embrace, suddenly needing his silent, stubborn strength more than she needed breath itself.

  I just want to go home…. Even in the midst of her tears she knew it was ridiculous. But the words had been dredged up from somewhere deep inside her, some remnant of the child she’d once been, the child who’d never had a home to call her own.

  The words had always been there, in her heart. She didn’t know where home was, didn’t have any idea how to go about finding it.

  But it was what she wanted.

  And the longing for it was so powerful that she felt as though it might break her in two as she cried in Wiley’s arms. She felt him stroking her hair, murmuring her name, settling himself higher on the bed so that she was halfcradled in his lap, surrounding her with his strength.

  By the time she’d wept all the tears that had been gathering in her for so long, every bone in her body ached with weariness.

  She tried to lift her head again, and couldn’t.

  She tried to tell Wiley how glad she was that he was here, but she couldn’t manage that, either. It was all she could do to burrow her face a little closer into the angle of his hip. A moment later she was drifting into sleep in Wiley’s sheltering arms, feeling drained but strangely peaceful.

  When she woke up again, he was gone.

  “You have a visitor.”

  The nurse who bobbed her head through the door sounded bright and optimistic. And Rae-Anne’s mood brightened, too, as she caught a glimpse of broad shoulders, dark hair, long legs standing awkwardly in the doorway.

  But it was the wrong Cotter.

  It was Jack, looking tentative, with a bouquet of red carnations held uneasily in his hands. He came slowly into the room, setting the flowers on the windowsill before lowering himself into the chair next to her bed.

  “I heard about the baby.” He didn’t bother with small talk, which Rae-Anne was grateful for. “I’m sorry. I— Well, shoot, I don’t know if it would have changed things if I’d known you were pregnant. But I’m sorry as hell.”

  “It’s all right, Jack. I’m—starting to come to terms with it.”

  It was true. The dull sense of loss was still there inside her, but the way she’d let loose all her emotions in Wiley’s arms earlier—yesterday? Today? She still wasn’t certain—had softened the sharp edges of the pain she’d felt.

  Which didn’t answer the question of where Wiley was now.

  Before she got a chance to ask, Jack had reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a folded edition of the San Antonio paper.

  “Thought you might want to know how things turned out,” he said. “It’s been in the papers, but I didn’t know—”

  “I haven’t read it,” Rae-Anne said.

  “Well, you should. It makes a hell of a good story.” He unfolded the paper so she could see the front-page headline. Dietrich Tied To Statewide Gambling Bust.

  “We picked up Armand Grant, the new mob courier, on his way into Mexico the night before last,” Jack went on. “Turns out he’d been told to pay close attention to how Rodney behaved whenever the cash was exchanged, the way it was that night at the ranch house. Rodney’s mob colleagues were starting to get uneasy about him, especially after he announced he was going to get married.”

  “Why should that make them uneasy?”

  “Because any wife with her wits about her was bound to feel some interest in her husband’s business. And you worked in the hotel chain, which would make you ev
en more likely to start asking the wrong kinds of questions.”

  “Which I did.”

  “Right. Rodney kept insisting that he could handle you, but his backers weren’t so confident. So when Armand reported that Rodney had seemed edgy and upset, a couple of the boys were sent out to remind him just how serious this all was.”

  “And Wiley caught it on film.”

  “Yeah. And I think Rodney’s willing to talk, to save his own skin.”

  “He’s alive, then?” Rae-Anne realized suddenly that she felt almost nothing for Rodney Dietrich. But for some reason it was a relief to know he hadn’t been killed.

  Jack’s nod confirmed it. “Shooting him in the leg was a way of incapacitating him—and scaring him—while they went after you.”

  “Then it really is—all over.”

  “It really is. Rodney’s testimony will be enough to wrap the case up. It went as well as we’d hoped it would. Biggest operation I’ve ever been a part of. And if we’d been able to get you out of it in one piece, Rae-Anne, I’d be sitting on top of the world right now.”

  “I’m in one piece. A bit banged up, maybe, but still in one piece.”

  Jack grinned, and Rae-Anne felt her heart beat a little faster at the way the quick flash of his smile reminded her of Wiley’s. Had all the Cotter brothers been issued those devastatingly sexy dimples at birth?

  “Wiley said you were made of sterner stuff than most full-grown FBI agents,” Jack said, “and now I believe him.”

  “Where is Wiley?”

  She knew her voice sounded breathless as she asked the question, but she couldn’t help it. She was beginning to wonder whether she’d just dreamed that moment of sweet solace in Wiley’s arms, and she needed to know—now— what was really going on around her.

  “The doctor chased him out of here a couple of hours ago. Said if Wiley got any tireder he was going to need to be admitted to the hospital.”

  So he had been here. And the sky outside seemed to be getting dark again—she’d been here for at least twenty-four hours, then. Rae-Anne frowned, and tried to put it all together.

  “Wiley sat up all last night waiting to get in and see you,” Jack was saying. “They kept telling him you couldn’t have visitors until morning, but—well, you know Wiley.”

  In some ways, she knew him better than she knew herself. And in others—

  She shook her head. Wiley had refused to promise her anything, refused to offer any hope that they might have a future together. Yet he’d been here, refusing to leave her. Jack’s visit might have cleared up the details about the mystery surrounding Rodney Dietrich, but at the same time the puzzle of Wiley Cotter was only growing more tangled.

  “Do you know when I’m going to be able to check out of here?” she asked.

  “Tomorrow morning, they said. If you feel up to it.”

  “I feel up to it.” She didn’t stop to consult the various parts of her body that had taken a beating in that fall from the stone barn. She needed to be on her feet, trying to pull together the scattered pieces of her life.

  “I’ll come by and pick you up, if you want,” Jack said. “And deliver you wherever you want to go.”

  She didn’t know where she wanted to go. She didn’t really have anywhere she could go.

  Where was Wiley? What was he thinking and doing? Why had he been so patient, so loving, only to disappear as though he’d never been here at all? Was this a pattern that was destined to keep repeating itself over and over, no matter how close she and Wiley seemed to become in other ways? Some of the bleakness she’d felt after learning about the loss of her baby crept into her now, chilling her.

  She accepted Jack’s offer, grateful for the watchdog mentality that all the Cotter brothers seemed to share. But it was Wiley she was thinking of as Jack took his leave.

  Was she crazy to keep thinking of the silent strength he’d offered her a few hours earlier?

  Had he stayed silent because he still refused to take a chance on promising her anything at all?

  She knew there were a hundred other more urgent things she should be sorting out. She needed to think about where she was going to go when she got out of the hospital tomorrow, and how she was going to support herself. She needed to come to terms with the fact that she wasn’t Rodney Dietrich’s fiancée anymore. Or the FBI’s informant. Or anyone’s employee.

  Or anyone’s mother.

  But even the thought of the baby she’d lost wasn’t quite enough to force her thoughts away from the vision of Wiley Cotter’s laughing, dark-eyed face. That vision was still with her—dazzling, puzzling, too much a part of her to be banished to the past this time—when she finally drifted into an uneasy sleep much later that night.

  Wiley crossed his arms for about the sixth time. His blue sedan was as clean as it ever got—he’d run it through a car wash on the way over here—but it still wasn’t any glass coach, and no amount of soap and wax was going to turn it into one.

  And Wiley was no Prince Charming. He couldn’t guarantee Rae-Anne the happy ending she deserved. Damn it, he hadn’t even been able to keep her safe at Rodney Dietrich’s ranch two days ago. She’d lost at least one of her shining dreams, and it was partly Wiley’s fault.

  He should be miles away from her, shouldn’t have argued when Jack had mentioned that he was going to pick Rae-Anne up at the hospital this morning.

  But he had argued. And he was here, in spite of his restlessness, his doubts, in spite of the fact that it had taken all the willpower he had just to get his eyes open this morning.

  He was here because he simply hadn’t been able to stay away.

  And getting himself here had been the easy part. Wiley crossed his arms in the other direction and wished the hospital would hustle itself and let Rae-Anne go.

  As though he’d conjured her out of his thoughts, she appeared at last. A nurse in a white uniform was pushing her in a wheelchair, but once they were clear of the automatic doors, Rae-Anne got to her feet steadily enough and turned to thank the other woman with a quick, gracious smile.

  When she turned to look at the parking lot, shielding her eyes with one hand against the bright morning sunlight, Wiley’s heart turned over.

  It wasn’t just that she looked so beautiful, with her freshly washed hair glinting red-gold in the sun and her skin so seductively fair and smooth against the simple floral-print dress Jack had brought from her closet at Rodney’s ranch house.

  It was the way she was holding herself, and the look on her face.

  Wiley knew that look. He’d seen it only last week when he’d driven up to her front door in a much more elegant vehicle than the one he was driving today.

  Then, Rae-Anne had been gowned and coiffed and madeup until she was as glossy as any bride off the pages of a magazine. But it had been the look in her eyes that had riveted Wiley, that quietly mutinous look that meant she was scared to death, and making herself move ahead in spite of it.

  It was what he loved most about Rae-Anne Blackburn. And it gave him the courage now to lift one arm and catch her attention.

  “Wiley?”

  She said it as if he was the last person on earth she’d expected to see. The slow sound of his name on her lips plunged him into thoughts of the morning Rae-Anne had walked out of his house, announcing that they were through with each other.

  Did you figure anybody you got close to would eventually disappear from your life? he’d asked her then. Had he been right? Was it even remotely possible that a woman as wary as Rae-Anne Blackburn could ever hook up with a man like him?

  If it wasn’t—

  He shook his head and pushed the thought away. “Your coach turned back into a pumpkin,” he told her, opening the passenger door. “I hope you don’t mind.”

  She looked at him for what felt like a long time, her blue eyes alive with too many different emotions for Wiley to be sure of any of them. She was frowning as she accepted his invitation to get into the car. But she did accept it, and Wiley
felt his heart lighten a little.

  This was only the first hurdle, though. Wiley knew he should be explaining himself to her, telling her everything that had been going through his mind and tearing his heart in two since he’d left her yesterday morning.

  But he was too damn tired for speeches.

  And too uneasy for pronouncements.

  And Rae-Anne was too beautiful, anyway. How was he supposed to keep his thoughts straight when he could feel her cornflower blue gaze resting on him this way? He watched her slender fingers doing up the clasp of her seat belt and wished he could kiss the tips of them, one after the other, until he heard her sighing softly with pleasure.

  He growled a little, and started the car.

  “Wiley.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Where are we going?”

  “You’ll see.”

  She reached over and put one hand on his forearm. He could feel the soft pressure of her touch through the light weight brown jacket he’d slung on this morning, and it was enough to make him pause before turning out into the traffic.

  “We’ve done this scene, Wiley, remember?” Her voice sounded tired and doubtful—damn it, Wiley wished he could just rock her in his arms without speaking, the way he’d done yesterday. “You’ve already picked me up and run off with me once this week. If you’re thinking—”

  He couldn’t tell her what he was thinking. Not yet. It had taken him most of the night to come to terms with his real feelings for Rae-Anne, and most of today to figure out what to do about it. He couldn’t just blurt it out in ten words or less.

  “I have something I want to show you,” he said. “And something I want to say to you. And after that—well, you can tell me where you want to go, and I’ll take you there.”

  They were silent as he piloted the car across Austin. Ra© Anne glanced at him only once during the drive, at the mo ment when he turned onto the side street that led to his office.

  He had a pretty good idea what she was thinking. Rae Anne had always hated the gritty side of Wiley’s career, and this past week had given her reason to dislike it even more.

  “Don’t worry,” he said out loud. “This has nothing to do with my work—at least, not with Cotter Investigations.”