by Lori Wilde
Why did it feel so awkward now?
Once upon a time, you were teenagers. Young, dumb, knowing nothing about how life really worked.
For one brief, sweet second, she wished she could turn back time, be seventeen again and so madly in love with Gideon that everything she ate tasted like candy, every time she looked at the sky she saw rainbows, and every song she heard was a love ballad. How she wished they could be transported back to the time when the future held promise, before it had been set in stone.
This is your chance to make a clean start, begin again.
Caitlyn wished it was that simple. She was a single mom now and her life wasn’t her own, and Gideon . . . well, he had more issues than the New York Times. He needed to unpack some of that baggage before they could even dream of anything more.
Gideon was bent over, his butt in the air, muscles taut beneath the denim of his jeans. Sudden lust had her by the throat, squeezing tight with a powerful response. She ached to trace her fingers over those jeans straining across his very fine ass.
Now, that doesn’t sound the least bit motherly. For shame, Caitlyn, what are you thinking?
She was thinking she’d love to know if his butt still felt the same. If she dug her fingers into his flesh, would she feel the same hard lines and honed angles she’d once caressed?
Her mind wandered to thoughts of their past lovemaking and she forgot to pay attention to what she was doing. The smell of earthy loam was in her nose as she dug, aerating the soil. She spied the rusted chain peeking from the dirt. Hmm, what was this? She set her hoe aside, got down on her knees, saw a jagged edge of metal.
“That’s odd,” she said.
“What?” Gideon turned his head her way.
“There looks to be something underneath the dirt.” She reached down. “Like some kind of metal—”
“No!” Gideon yelled. “Don’t touch it.”
But it was too late. From her peripheral vision she saw him come racing toward her just as the metal thing sprang from the dirt and clamped around her left lower arm.
She heard the horrific snap, stared down at her arm, saw blood bloom around what appeared to be an antique bear trap biting solidly into her flesh. She didn’t immediately feel the pain. For one ignorant second she just stared, wondering how she’d gotten caught in a bear trap of all things.
That’s when the surge of blinding pain hit.
“Oh, oh,” she gasped.
Blood poured over her hand, and the excruciating pain knocked her back onto her butt. Numbly, she reached out and tried to pry the trap off her, but Gideon was there.
He didn’t even ask what had happened. He just took action. Somehow, she didn’t know how he did it with only one hand; he managed to pry the bear trap off her. She thought once it was off the pain would at least become bearable, but the release of pressure made it hurt even worse as bright red blood came spurting from the wound.
Uh-oh, this was very serious. Her life flashed before her eyes. She was going to die.
Gideon yanked a red bandana from his back pocket, twisted it thin, and wrapped it tightly around her arm just above the jagged, gaping flesh. She screamed against this fresh pain.
“I’m so sorry, baby,” he cooed. “But I’ve got to stop the bleeding. Hang on, hang on.”
The next thing she knew, he was cradling her against him, half pulling, half carrying her toward the Twilight Bakery.
The smell of doughnuts was nauseating now. Dear God, please don’t let me throw up.
He pushed open the door to the bakery with his butt. “We need your help!” he shouted to Christine.
“Oh my, oh goodness!” Christine cried.
Caitlyn felt faint, blood dripping hot and sticky down her arm, her head spinning wildly. Dammit, I’m going to die before I ever get the chance to get Gideon naked one more time.
Fate was surely a bitch. Bringing them together only to tear them apart all over again. Done in by a bear trap. Who knew it would end like this? She could see the headlines in the Twilight Caller: Judge Blackthorne’s Daughter Dies in Freak Gardening Accident. And here she’d always figured an aneurysm would do her in.
“Stay with me, Tulip,” Gideon whispered softly.
“What should I do?” Christine asked.
“Drive us to the hospital,” Gideon commanded.
“Yes, right, sure, just let me get my keys and turn off the ovens.”
Christine turned off the ovens, grabbed her keys, and came rushing toward them with a stack of clean hand towels.
“Thank you.” Gideon accepted them from her and wrapped a towel around the wound.
Caitlyn had to bite down hard on the inside of her cheek to keep from screaming. If it hadn’t been for Gideon holding on to her, she would have passed out.
Christine ushered them to her Honda Civic parked at the back of the bakery and opened the backseat.
Gideon slid inside, taking Caitlyn with him. She felt so exhausted, wrung out, and rested her head against his shoulder on the short ride to Twilight General. She breathed in short, panting gasps. By the time they reached the hospital, she was light-headed, feeling oddly sleepy, and blessedly her arm had gone numb.
Gideon carried her into the ER, she didn’t know how he managed it, but he did.
“We’re twins.” She giggled goofily, not even really sure what she was saying.
Gideon grunted as the nurses ran toward them. “How do you mean?”
“Messed-up lefties.”
“You’re going to be fine,” he said. “Few stitches. Good as new.”
He guided her into the wheelchair, held on to her bleeding wrist as one of the nurses wheeled her into an examination room. They helped her transfer from the wheelchair onto a gurney and they took over from Gideon. It was only then that Caitlyn saw he was covered in her blood and his eyes were dark with concern.
“Get Dr. Longoria in here stat,” one of the nurses yelled to the front desk. “We’ve got an artery involved.”
Things were getting really blurry now and she felt dreamy in a cloudy way. Like cotton candy, fluffy and sweet and empty.
“Good thing you made a tourniquet of that bandana,” the nurse told Gideon, “otherwise she would have bled out.”
People crowded into the examination room, running around doing stuff. She thought someone started an IV in her right hand, but she couldn’t be sure.
“Caitlyn,” the nurse said, “how we doing?”
“It doesn’t hurt anymore. In fact,” she whispered, “it feels like I’m floating.”
“Caitlyn?” She heard Gideon’s voice. He might have been standing in front of her, but she couldn’t really see. “Hang on, don’t leave me.”
But leave him she did.
Gideon’s heart leaped into his throat as Caitlyn’s eyes rolled back in her head. He knew she’d lost a lot of blood. Fear slammed into his heart. This wasn’t good, not good at all. The medical staff gathered around and kicked the brakes of the gurney and pushed her down the hall.
“Sir,” one of the nurses said. “You have to stay here.”
He looked up to see they were just outside the operating room.
“Have a seat in the waiting room. Someone will be with you shortly.”
He’d been in many skirmishes. Had seen a lot of blood. Had bled a lot himself. He’d almost died when he’d lost his arm. He knew what she was going through. The initial numbness and denial, quickly followed by the fear and pain, and then finally as death hovered, the easy acceptance, the slipping away.
His chest tightened and he couldn’t speak. He just nodded and stepped to the waiting area. Other visitors were in there and they stared at him in horror.
He looked down, saw he was covered in Caitlyn’s blood. Stunned, he stood frozen, and it wasn’t until a nurse put a hand to his back and handed him a pair of green scrubs that he moved into action.
“You can use the staff lounge to clean up and change,” she said kindly, and showed him where to go. “Then w
e’ll need you to fill out some forms for us, answer some questions.”
“Yeah, sure, okay.”
He stood under the hot water for a long time, reliving the moment when he’d heard Caitlyn exclaim “oh” and he’d looked up to see blood spurting from her hand in what he knew was arterial spray. The sight had chilled him to the bone and he’d run as fast as he could, staying calm, staying in control for her. But now that the moment was over and she was in the hands of the medical professionals, all the strength and courage abandoned him.
To keep from coming completely unraveled, he turned his thoughts to the bear trap. The thing was rusted, ancient. Probably a hundred years old. How had it gotten into the victory garden, set and loaded? It couldn’t have been there all this time. The land had just been tilled. The trap would have been discovered at that point. He knew a booby trap when he saw one.
No, someone had planted it there.
Intentionally. And very recently at that, sometime between last night and this morning.
But who?
And why?
Gideon was determined to find out and hold the culprit fully accountable.
Chapter Twelve
Traditional meaning of purple hyacinth—I’m sorry, please forgive me.
Richard Blackthorne was sitting near the front row of the Twilight First Presbyterian Church when his cell phone rang.
“Caitlyn’s in surgery at Twilight General,” Hondo Crouch said. “I just thought you should know.”
Richard’s old heart staggered, stumbled. “An aneurysm?”
“No—”
“What’s wrong?” he interrupted, rising up out of his seat, catching the disapproving eye of Pastor Dupree, who had a thing against cell phones in church.
“She got her hand snapped in a bear trap.”
“What?” Richard frowned and leaned more heavily on his cane than he normally did. “I can’t hear you. I thought you said she got caught in a bear trap.”
“I did.”
Several people were glaring at him now, heads turning as he walked past. Usually attracting that kind of negative attention would embarrass him, but he was too worried about Caitlyn to care. “How in the world did she get her hand caught in a bear trap?”
“That’s what I’m trying to find out,” Hondo said. “Someone set it in the garden.”
“Intentionally?”
“It looks like it.”
“To hurt my Caitlyn?”
“I don’t know who it was directed toward. Probably some ill-conceived prank gone bad. Just wanted you to know she was in surgery. The damn thing severed an artery and if Gideon hadn’t been there to stop the bleeding, she would have died.”
“My Lord.” Richard’s knees started to buckle and he might have fallen down right there in the foyer of the First Presbyterian Church if Greta hadn’t appeared at his side and slipped her arm around him.
“Judge?” Her face pinched with worry.
“Drive me to the hospital.”
“Are you sick?”
“Not me. It’s Caitlyn.” He pulled back from her grasp. He didn’t want anyone to think he was weak, that he couldn’t get around on his own steam. Hell, he wasn’t even that old. Yes, he’d been almost forty when Caitlyn was born. But he was only sixty-five. Not that old at all these days. He easily had another good ten years left on the bench. It was just the damn arthritis that had his knees playing out from time to time.
“Give me your keys,” Greta said.
Richard fished in his pocket, found his keys, and handed them to her. The heavy wooden doors of the church closed behind them.
“Wait by the curb,” Greta said. “I’ll bring the car around.”
He stood there feeling like a fool, wishing he hadn’t asked her to drive him. He wasn’t crippled. He was just well . . . shaken. To hear that Caitlyn could have died. Had almost died except for Garza. The man had saved her life.
Richard had wondered what was going on with them. They seemed to be circling around each other, not sure what to make of their new relationship. He’d been watching the flower shop and the progress in the victory garden from his office, and he’d listened to the local gossip in the coffee shops. People were taking bets on whether Caitlyn and Garza were going to get back together or not.
While he stood there wondering why it was taking Greta so damn long, the sweet, honeyed scent of spring teased his nose and he glanced down at the base of the mimosa tree. A profusion of densely packed, bell-shaped purple flowers enlivened the air with their perfume. Impulsively, he bent down and plucked a handful.
Greta pulled up in the Lincoln and leaned over to open the passenger side door so Richard could get in. He slid into the seat and pulled the door closed behind him. She had the air-conditioning on, even though it was only March. Probably one of those hot flash things. He shivered and directed the vent away from him and onto her.
She didn’t ask him any more questions. Which was one of the things he liked about her and why he didn’t say anything about the annoyance of the cold air. The woman knew how to keep her mouth shut. A rare trait among women, in Richard’s estimation.
Within a few minutes, they’d arrived at Twilight General. Greta marched in ahead of him, went straight to the front desk. “What room is Judge Blackthorne’s daughter in?”
The clerk typed on a computer keyboard. “We don’t have anyone listed under the name Blackthorne.”
“Caitlyn Marsh,” Richard said, his hand still clamped around the overly sweet-smelling flowers. He was starting to regret having picked them. “Her name is Caitlyn Marsh.”
“She’s in recovery, sir. You can wait for her in the PACU waiting area at the end of the second floor hallway. A nurse will come get you when it’s okay to visit.” The woman leaned over the desk to point down the hallway. “If you go down this corridor—”
“I know where it is,” Richard said impatiently. “I’ve spent my entire life in this town. I was here before this hospital was built.”
The clerk looked affronted. “Well, excuse me for breathing.”
Being in this hospital made him irritable. It wasn’t just the cloying smell of antiseptic and disease that clung to the walls. It wasn’t just the fact that generally, if you were coming to this place, things weren’t going so well for you. Rather, the recovery room waiting area was where he’d gotten the news that his beloved Angelica hadn’t survived brain surgery. Being here jettisoned him back twenty years and he did not want to go there.
Dear God, if anything happened to Caitlyn, he wouldn’t be able to live with himself. His stubbornness had cut her out of his life. They’d been estranged from each other for far too long. He’d missed getting to know his grandson, missed holidays and celebrations, all because he couldn’t bend, couldn’t keep up with modern times and mores.
Couldn’t forgive.
He reached the recovery waiting area, Greta at his side, the purple flowers getting sweaty in his clenched fist, but when he started to step into the room, he spied Gideon Garza looking as big as a redwood tree. He didn’t remember Garza being so big.
Along with Garza were a few of the local old busybodies who couldn’t keep their noses out of other people’s business. Dotty Mae Densmore, Patsy Cross, Raylene Pringle. And there was that young woman with the crippled leg who ran the Twilight Bakery. Richard frequented Mindy Lou’s Pie Shop, so he couldn’t remember the bakery woman’s name.
Richard’s gaze met Garza’s. He didn’t flinch or back down. He was accustomed to being in control.
Garza’s eyes blazed fire. He had tree-trunk upper arms folded over his chest, his artificial left hand tucked under his right armpit. Richard remembered when he’d been in his courtroom and he’d told him he had two options. Prison or the military.
Richard had been so full of shit. A good lawyer could have gotten him off on the arson charges. Garza had no priors. But he’d been a dumb kid who couldn’t afford a good lawyer and Richard had wanted to get him as far away from his impre
ssionable young daughter as possible. He hadn’t realized he’d been too late. If he’d known Caitlyn was pregnant, most likely he wouldn’t have run Garza off. In spite of J. Foster strong-arming him.
Garza stalked over to him.
Richard stood his ground, cane in one hand, flowers in the other.
“I’m not going to throw you out on your ass, Judge,” Garza said. “Even though you deserve it for the shit you pulled on us. But because I’m a father now too, I’m going to let you stay. So sit down over there and keep your mouth shut.”
Anger blasted through Richard. “You have no right to talk to me like that, young man.”
Garza’s face was stone. “I have every right. You robbed me of eight years with Caitlyn and Danny. Because of you, I lost my hand. We figured out that you paid Malone to lie. That you sent back the letters I wrote her.”
Richard’s chest tightened. He was very aware that everyone in the room was staring at them. “I did what I thought was best.”
“Yeah? Well, you don’t get to manipulate other people’s lives. It’s not your place to play God. I know being a judge has gone to your head, given you a power trip, but I’m not that dumb kid you had over a barrel.”
Richard was impressed. Maybe he’d misjudged Garza. After all, J. Foster had changed his mind about the boy in the end.
“But to prove I’m not like you, I’m not going to stop you from seeing your child. Assuming, that is, that she even wants to speak with you.”
“I just . . .” Richard straightened his shoulders, cleared his throat. “I just wanted to say thank you for saving her life. Hondo told me she would have died if you hadn’t been there.”
The women in the room all looked stunned, including Greta. What? He could be nice when he wanted to. Was that such an alien thing?
Garza seemed taken aback as well. “I didn’t save her because I was doing you a favor.”
“I know that.”
Silence fell. The only noise came from the coffeemaker in the corner.
At that moment the door to the recovery room opened and the nurse stuck her head in the waiting room. “Who’s with Caitlyn Marsh?”