Worry, then a searing anger coursed through Molly.
Why hadn’t she told Sam that she loved him? Why hadn’t she admitted it sooner to herself? Why, why had she been so cautious, so damned determined to take things slowly, one step at a time?
Love was a risk, a prize to be snatched up and held onto for all it was worth. If... When Sam recovered, Molly vowed fiercely, she wouldn’t let another sun set before telling him that she wanted to share more than a couch with him. She wanted to share Buck Randall and sweaty, steaming workouts and bucket seats and his house or her house or any place they decided to call home.
Slowly, the dawn brightened into day.
More people arrived. The General Molly had met briefly at the banquet. Another couple who greeted Peggy and Rock as old friends and Molly as new ones. Then Davinia and ’Tonio, after a phone call from Molly dragged them from sleep. She barely noticed when the auburn-haired captain Sam had introduced her to last night showed up. Her striking lavender eyes dark with concern, Janet Green huddled with Rock to learn Sam’s condition.
He’d been in surgery for two hours when Al Kaplan arrived, red-eyed, unshaven and still wearing his ruffled white dress shirt. He’d been on his way home when he got the call from central dispatch, he told Molly in a private aside. Rubbing a hand wearily over his face, he filled her in on events subsequent to Walters’s arrest.
“The Congressman gave us a full confession. He admitted shooting Joey, but not for any of the reasons we suspected. Seems his wife has a drug problem. A serious problem. She almost OD’d last year, but the MacGiver family physician covered it up.”
“Oh, no!”
If worry for Sam hadn’t drained Molly’s store of emotions, she might have felt a tug of sympathy for the raven-haired woman who’d smiled and waved to the audience so graciously last night.
“Evidently her dependency caused a rift in their marriage that led the congressman to seek companionship elsewhere on occasion.”
“Like with Lieutenant Donovitch.”
Kaplan’s shoulders lifted under his rumpled, ruffled shirt. “And one or two others, it seems. He claims he loved his wife, though. Enough to try to cut off her supply, anyway. Joey responded by threatening to expose the Missus’s coke habit. Walters believed she couldn’t take the public humiliation, and he wouldn’t let himself be blackmailed by the man he says was killing his wife by keeping her supplied with drugs.”
After facing Joshua Walters over the barrel of a gun, Molly didn’t quite buy his story. She suspected that the man had been driven as much by his own political ambitions as concern for his wife’s addiction. That would be for a jury to decide, though. Right now, her sole focus was the surgeon who walked into the waiting room.
Tugging a green surgical cap off his head, he glanced around the assembled crowd. He nodded to the General, but it was Molly he moved toward. Evidently he didn’t have any difficulty identifying the woman wearing a green hospital bathrobe and a stark white face as the one he’d come in search of.
“Major Henderson sent me out to check on you, Ms. Duncan. He came out from under the anesthetic demanding to know how you’re doing.”
“I’m fine,” Molly gasped. “What about Sam?”
The surgeon rubbed the back of his neck. “The man’s got the hardest head I ever took a saw to.”
When he saw that didn’t exactly reassure the group, Molly in particular, he grinned.
“Major Henderson should be back in fighting form soon.”
“Thank God!”
A rumble of heartfelt relief rose from the gathered occupants of the waiting room. Never one to show her emotions, Molly nevertheless promptly burst into tears. The surgeon waited until she’d dragged up the lapel of the hospital bathrobe and swiped her nose before continuing.
“Sam sustained a fracture to his occipital...the bone that forms the floor and lower rear wall of the cranium. I had to go in and clean out some glass and bone fragments. It’s a miracle none of them cut into the spinal column.”
For a moment, nausea threatened to choke Molly. Sam had dragged himself out of the Mustang, followed her across a quarter mile of desert, and thrown himself at Walters with bone and glass grinding at the base of his skull. He could have severed his spine, paralyzed himself for life. She was still fighting down the taste of bile when she caught the tail end of the surgeon’s next comment. Her fingers fisted on the bathrobe.
“What did you say?” she demanded, her chest squeezing. “What else did you find in there?”
“A bone fragment so small I almost missed it,” he said slowly. “It was lodged right up against the edge of the foramen magnum...the opening the spinal column passes through...and didn’t show on the X rays. The calcification makes me think the fragment’s from an older injury.”
Rock appeared at Molly’s side and leveled a hard, hopeful look at the surgeon.
“What are you saying, Doc? Do you think this sliver of bone was left over from Drac Man’s collision with that canopy?”
“That’s my guess.”
“Could that splinter of bone have caused his headaches these past months?”
“It could.”
“And you got it out?”
At the surgeon’s nod, Rock let out a joyous whoop. “Hot damn!”
Wrapping his arms around Molly’s waist, he swung her in a wild arc and planted a kiss on her cheek before dropping her to attempt the same service for his pregnant wife. Laughing, Peggy settled for just a kiss. While the warriors in the room speculated joyfully about when Sam might return to full duty, Molly had more immediate concerns on her mind.
Like touching him.
And telling him she loved him.
And hustling him down to the nearest drivethrough wedding chapel on the Strip, if he’d have her.
“Wh...?” She snuffled and took another swipe with the hospital bathrobe at tear-blurred eyes. “When can I see him?”
“Right now,” the surgeon replied wryly. “Something tells me the Major won’t let us take him into recovery until he sees you with his own eyes. Come on, we’ll get you masked and gowned.”
If she hadn’t been hugging the surgeon’s assurances that Sam should fully recover to her heart, Molly might have stopped breathing when she saw him lying on the gurney. As it was, she went decidedly weak at the knees. Bandages swathed his entire head, with only small holes for his eyes, nose and mouth. Bright crimson stained the gauze in spots, and he had so many IV lines and tubes strung from various parts of his body that she was afraid to get too close to him, let alone touch him.
Sam, however, had no such scruples. When he spotted her, he gave a low growl and lifted one hand an inch or so off the gurney.
“Mol...ly. You...okay?”
“Yes.” She caught his hand in both of hers and clutched it against her breast. “All I got was a few scratches.”
“More...than...a few.”
“I’m okay, Sam, honestly. You just rest and get well quickly. We...” She sniffled behind her mask. “We still have to try out that couch you promised to share with me.”
His fingers curled around hers with surprising strength for a man who’d just cracked his skull.
“More...than...couch. I love...you.”
The tears poured down with a vengeance now. Of all the romantic settings they could have chosen for this moment, a surgical anteroom wasn’t the one Molly would have picked.
“I love you, too, Sam.”
Chapter 15
The sun blazed a bright arc across an achingly blue sky when Molly woke late in the afternoon. She rolled over in bed, wincing at the ache in her shoulder left over from the crash and let the sunshine pouring in through the windows bathe her in a healing balm.
She hadn’t bothered to close the shades when Davinia and Antonio had brought her home just past noon. All she’d managed was a quick sponge bath, made awkward by the bandages on her scraped palms, and a mindless tumble into bed. The few hours of sleep she snatched had taken at le
ast the top layer off her physical and emotional exhaustion.
She stretched languorously, ignoring the sharp stab in her shoulder from the pulled muscle. Despite her various aches, she felt wonderful. Terrific. Filled with the most incredible, delicious joy.
Smiling, she rolled over, dragging the puffy green duvet with her, and reached for the phone sitting atop its upturned cardboard box. Through eyes still sticky with sleep, she squinted at the number she’d scribbled down before leaving the hospital.
A man answered on the second ring.
“Hello.”
Brimming with relief at the strong, sure tenor of Sam’s sexy drawl, she smiled into the phone.
“Hello yourself.”
She cradled the phone against her ear, tingling all over at the sound of his voice.
“I’ve been lying here thinking about you and what we’ll do when you get home. As Buck would say, I’ve got a bad case of the wants for you, big guy.”
A short silence answered her, then the drawl got even deeper.
“That’s nice to know, sweetheart.”
Molly frowned, catching a hint of an unfamiliar cadence in the reply. She pushed herself up on one elbow, her relief plummeting into worry. Sam must be in pain and trying to disguise it from her. Maybe his headaches had returned. Or the doc...
“Much as I’d like to work on that case of the wants,” the speaker said laconically, breaking into her anxious thoughts, “I think you may want to speak to Sam. Hang on, he’s right here.”
Molly flopped back onto the bed, torn between laughter and mortification. Evidently, she’d just propositioned a complete stranger. She heard a short, pithy conversation, and what sounded like a roomful of males ribbing the helpless patient.
“Molly?”
“Who was that?” she choked out.
“My brother Jake.”
“Oh, no!”
Sam’s chuckle drifted over the phone. “Don’t worry. Jake’s too hog-tied by the sixty inches of pure energy he married to take you up on your offer, whatever the heck it was.”
“I’ll tell you what it was in person,” Molly sputtered. “I’m never calling you again, by the way. Every time I do, I get the wrong man.”
His reply was a slow, soft caress. “No, sweetheart, you’ve got the right man.”
Her embarrassment melted, swept away by a rush of love. Sam was right. She had the right man, and she planned to keep him. Sam Henderson didn’t know it yet, but she was going to hog-tie him every bit as tight as his brother reportedly was.
“Jake wants to meet you,” he told her with another chuckle. “Marsh and Hoss, too. Reece says he doesn’t need to. Any woman who can take down a killer like you did has his approval, sight unseen.”
“Are all your brothers there?”
“Unfortunately. They’re just getting ready to head up to my place, though. The doc says I need sleep more than I need four ugly faces hovering over me right now.”
Gulping, Molly realized that she’d soon be facing the four Henderson brothers. She had some serious repair work to do to her face and hair before that traumatic event.
“Get that sleep,” she told Sam softly. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Facing the Henderson brothers turned out to be even more traumatic than Molly had anticipated.
Her doorbell rang less than an hour later. Smoothing her bandaged palms down the sides of the cherry red chenille top she wore with her jeans, she pulled in a deep breath and opened the door.
To a man, the Hendersons were tall and rangy and cast in the same ruggedly handsome mold as Sam. The oldest, Jake, did the honors, tipping his well-worn Stetson to the back of his head as he introduced himself and the others.
Molly showed them in, too overwhelmed by so much blatant masculinity to feel flustered by their quick, appraising glances around her near-empty rooms.
“Sam told us to make ourselves useful while he’s stove up, Molly. Are you moving into his place, or do we move his stuff over here?”
She faced the semicircle, blinking. “I beg your pardon?”
“He said to move his stuff,” the second brother, Hoss, put in with a grin. “Or your stuff. He wasn’t particular which, as long as a certain couch got moved to the exact spot you want it.”
“Oh, well...”
Faced with four handsome, shrewdly assessing males, Molly made a lightning decision.
“I don’t have as much to move. We’ll take my things over to his place.”
“Sounds good to me,” one of the men said, Reece she thought. “Just tell us when you’re ready, and we’ll start hauling.”
“I guess that depends on when Sam gets out of the hospital.”
“Or when you two plan to tie the knot,” the fourth brother put in quietly.
Leaner, darker, more intent than the other three, he eyed Molly with a keen, slicing intelligence.
“Sam’s had a rough time these past six months,” he said slowly. “We knew it was bad when he stayed here to go through physical therapy instead of coming home to Arizona to recuperate. But we didn’t know about the headaches...or about the fact that he was getting ready to hang up his uniform for good.”
Jake shook his dark head, threaded with just a touch of silver at the temples. “If ever a man was born to fly, Sam was. He could take Pop’s little Cessna apart and put it back together again by the time he was six.”
“It must have cut him deep to face losing the Air Force. From what he’s told us about you, Molly, it would cut him even deeper to lose you.”
From the grim expressions on their faces, Molly got the impression that no one messed with a Henderson’s heart and lived to tell about it.
“If you’re asking whether my intentions toward your brother are honorable,” she replied, duplicating exactly their rich, rolling accents, “they are. As a matter of fact, Sam and I might hit the drive-by window at the Four Aces Casino and Wedding Chapel on his way home from the hospital.”
Every one of the brothers blanched.
“I hope you’ll reconsider that one,” Jake pleaded. “Mom’s the gentlest soul on earth, but I wouldn’t want to be within a thousand miles of that woman if she misses her baby’s wedding.”
It took a mental leap for Molly to envision the sixfeet-plus of solid muscle that was Sam Henderson as anyone’s baby, but she managed. Barely.
“Why don’t we all wait until Sam has a chance to vote on this?” she suggested.
For the first time, Reece’s face relaxed. A smile every bit as wicked as Sam’s tugged at his mouth.
“If we use Jake’s marriage as a yardstick, I’d say that’s the last vote Sam will have.”
As it turned out, Molly and Sam weren’t married at the Four Aces Casino and Wedding Chapel.
They were married at the Nellis chapel, with a weepy-eyed Davinia as maid of honor and four handsome Henderson men ranging beside their brother. Molly’s heart swelled with pride at the sight of her groom, standing tall and straight in his dress uniform.
The medical board had returned him to full duty. Just last night, Sam had confessed that the need to drag on his flight suit and climb into a jet pulled at his very soul. But not, he’d whispered, his hands and mouth working magic on Molly, as much as he needed to make love to his green-eyed woman.
Those green eyes misty, she glided down the aisle to the strains of Buck Randall’s ode to the slippery slide that was love.
ISBN : 978-1-4592-6577-6
IF A MAN ANSWERS
Copyright © 1998 by Merline Lovelace
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the editorial office, Silhouette Books, 300 East 42nd Street, New York, NY 10017 U.S.A.
All characters in this book have no exi
stence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.
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Table of Contents
Table of Contents
“I think you’d better back off, Henderson,”
Letter to Reader
Books by Merline Lovelace
About the Author
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Copyright
If A Man Answers Page 18