He leaped from the car, sprinting after her. Just as she stopped to open the door, he caught her arm and spun her to face him. “Did you really think I didn’t know?”
Jenny’s eyes burned with tears she refused to shed. “You know nothing. Nothing!” she yelled at him.
“Like hell!” he shouted right back. “Your father, your own father, let me in. I saw you lying there with them. Half my teammates! Your dad just thought I’d come to join the party. More fool me.”
Jenny shoved at him. “It’s a lie. You’re lying.”
“No,” Evan snarled. “You were the one lying. Lying with your legs spread and your clothes scattered all over the room. The night after you promised yourself to me.” He stopped and raked a hand through his hair. “There I was with an engagement ring burning a hole in my pocket. The night after you told me about our baby. Whose was it, Jenny? Did you even know?”
She felt whatever blood remained drain from her face. Her eyes and nose ached with frustration about a night she couldn’t remember. But she’d seen it. Oh yes, she’d seen it. “The baby was yours,” she whispered. Her jaw tightened so she could barely continue. “They raped me. My daddy drugged me and let them in. They raped me, and I miscarried our baby because of it.”
Her words hung in the air like ice crystals of pain. A split second of silence followed in which neither of them moved or even breathed. The past had reared up, pulling them back in with suffocating hands. She had buried it and simply couldn’t relive the awful pain again.
“Jenny!” Evan’s voice was choked.
She blinked feeling as if she’d come out of a trance. What did it matter now? “Leave me alone, Evan.”
She was drained, her anger gone, leaving only the horrifying emptiness of the past twelve years. Jenny walked through the doorway and shut it in his face. He pounded on the wood.
“Jenny! Open the door, damn it. Open the door!”
She twisted the dead bolt instead. Stay away from Evan. Stay away from the pain. There was a long pause in which all she heard was her own breathing before he spoke again.
“Please, Jenny,” he whispered. “Please let me in.”
She closed her eyes as she leaned back against the door. Her breath came in short, sobbing gasps. Jenny hadn’t meant to tell him. She hadn’t told anyone, not in all those years…
Both men she had ever loved betrayed her that night. Her father had drugged her, desperate to keep her from marrying and settling down, and the boy she had loved since she was old enough to even think of boys believed his eyes rather than his heart. But even that wasn’t enough. When her father lay dying her final year in medical school, he had confessed. The drugs he’d used came from Stoner Richardson. Even the money for her college education and medical school had also come from Evan’s father. Hush money.
It would be so easy to drop that bombshell on Evan, but Jenny still couldn’t do it. Too many lives and too many relationships had already been destroyed.
She heard his car start, then the crunch of tires as it pulled away. She slid along the door until she sat with her knees drawn up. Resting her forehead against them, her hands clenched into fists at her sides, Jenny cried.
Chapter 6
They were pinned down. Along with the rat-a-tat of the insurgents’ machine guns were the deeper punctuations of explosive charges. But that wasn’t what drummed in his ears and hammered on his brain. Help me, Jake! The same cry of pain repeated again and again. His best friend lay wounded across an open expanse of unprotected ground. Leave no man behind.
Their mission had gone south before they’d even known anything was wrong. On paper it had been simple. Drop into the camp, complete their objective—in this case rescuing a businessman taken hostage by extremists—and signal the helo for a pickup.
In his dream version, Will continued to call Jake between groans of pain, the screams and cries getting louder, and Jake unable to do anything to end it. Helpless, frustrated rage filled him until he thought he would explode.
He sat upright with a gasp. For just a moment his groggy mind couldn’t assimilate his surroundings. His house in Mountain Meadow. Not Afghanistan, but the nightmare never changed. At least he no longer awoke screaming. As he sat in his bed waiting for his breathing and his heart rate to return to normal, he heard another noise. This time someone else cried, but it didn’t sound like Noelle. He pulled on a pair of sweatpants, snatched the bedroom door open, and the source of the noise became clear.
“I’m sorry, baby,” Holly sobbed. “I don’t know what’s going on.”
Noelle was fussy and irritable, but Holly’s sniffs tore his insides. Something was wrong with the baby? With Holly? Jake hurried across the master bedroom to the door of the nursery, his nightmare fading in the face of a new worry.
“Holly?”
She raised a tear-streaked face to him. “I can’t nurse. She can’t latch on, Jake. Something’s wrong.”
He swallowed as he realized Holly’s nightgown was unbuttoned, exposing her breasts. He forced his gaze away. “Do you want me to call Jenny?”
In his peripheral vision, he saw her shake her head. A beat later, she whispered, “No. Just grab the book. It’s next to my bed. See if you can figure out what’s going on. If that doesn’t work, then I guess we’ll have to call.”
The book, as thick as a dictionary, had everything about taking care of babies. Relief coursed through him. Reading a book he could handle. “Tell me some of your symptoms,” Jake called as he crossed the room to her bed, feeling much more confident now. He turned on the reading lamp.
“My breasts feel hard, and Jake…they’re huge. I—I have milk leaking, but Noelle can’t get her mouth latched onto me.”
Jake’s mouth was dry as dirt. Her breasts were huge and hard and leaking milk? He gulped and sent a prayer God would somehow make it so he didn’t have to torture himself by seeing Holly’s bare breasts again.
“Have you found anything yet?” she asked, her breath hitching yet again while Noelle continued fussing. Jake frantically flipped through the table of contents until he came to the chapter on breast-feeding. He scanned the subtitles until he landed on one labeled “What happens when your milk comes in.”
“I’ve found something. Hang on.” He scanned it “…around the second or third day…breasts may double in size…may have difficulty nursing…” Okay, this was sounding like what was going on and the timing was right. Now what were they supposed to do? Please God, don’t make me have to touch them! She’ll know then what a fraud I am. How much more than just friends I’d like to be. “You or your partner should express some of your milk so your baby can latch on.” The book slipped out of his nerveless fingers and dropped onto a very sensitive part of his anatomy already throbbing for very different reasons.
Jake groaned, leaning over with his face screwed in pain while he clutched himself.
“Jake? Did you find anything?” Holly called.
He blew a breath out. “Yeah. Hang on. I’ll be right there.” At least his voice hadn’t gone all soprano on him. He hobbled toward the door.
“Why are you walking funny?” Holly inquired.
“I…uh…stubbed my toe.”
“Is that all? So what’s wrong?”
Jake stared at her then her breasts, and for the life of him, for just a moment, his brain went blank. They were huge. Big beautiful breasts, the most beautiful breasts he’d ever seen. Mine. Oh, his body didn’t need thoughts like that thrumming through it right at this moment.
“Jake?”
“Um…yeah. It says your milk has come in. You were producing colostrum, but now the real stuff has arrived. It says you might overproduce until your body and the baby get in sync.”
“Okay.” Holly gestured to her chest. “What do we do about it?”
We? We? Jake closed his eyes. He could think of a couple things but doubted if Holly would go for either suggestion. He licked his lips. “The book says yo
u need to express some of the milk. Once the pressure is reduced, Noelle will be able to latch on.”
“Well how do I do that?”
“Shit.” He angled one hand across his front hoping to hide his arousal. “Didn’t you take some class to show you this stuff?”
“Busy avoiding the stalking ex…remember? Look, if you don’t want to help, it’s okay.” Irritation crept into her tone.
“Sorry.” Oh man. He was so fucked.
Holly sighed. “Here, take Noelle. Are there pictures in the book?”
Oh there were pictures all right, but nothing like the real thing. Jake nodded as he took the fussing baby. Holly snatched the book off the floor and disappeared into the master bath. An angry cry brought his attention back to the baby in his arms, and he smiled at Noelle as he rocked her. “Mama will help you in a bit, honey. Seems both the women in my life are mad at me right now.”
Holly stopped what she was doing, looked into the mirror, and swallowed. She’d left the bathroom door open, and even as quiet as Jake’s words were, they carried enough for her to hear him. Women in his life? Did she want to be the woman in his life? Other than Noelle, she wanted to be the only woman in his life. The admission left her gaping until the pressure in her breasts reminded her why she was in there.
Holly went back to work, studying the pictures, and trying to release enough milk to ease the painful throbbing. The pictures made it look much easier than the reality, but she was able to express enough to ease the pressure. At least she wouldn’t have to wake Jenny in the middle of the night. But Holly was going to face up to one reality right now. Bring Jake Allred’s friend was no longer possible.
* * * *
Jenny rolled over, checking her bedside clock. Two AM. Someone pounded on the door. From years of rising at all hours, she was awake instantly, but then her sleep had been disturbed anyway. Who could it be at this hour? She jumped out of bed, pulled on the thick satin robe lying across the foot of her bed, and belted it. Then she picked up the baseball bat she kept next to her bed. She wasn’t paranoid, just cautious. After all, she was a woman alone out in the middle of nowhere.
When she reached the first floor, she crept forward. The pounding continued, slower and more irregular than before. Jenny peered through the peephole, but all she saw were feet. Large feet, encased in boots like Evan had been wearing.
“Go away, Evan!” she yelled through the door.
“Jenny! Thank God.” His voice was muffled. “Please, let me in…”
“Go away,” she yelled again. He must have gone off and got drunk. She couldn’t take it, couldn’t face him again. She had tried so hard to put the past behind her where it could never hurt her again…
“Bleeding. So cold.” His voice sounded slurred.
Jenny’s fingers trembled against the wood of the door. Bleeding? She’d wanted him gone, not hurt. Never hurt. She twisted the dead bolt and yanked the door open.
“Evan! What happened?”
The doctor in her kicked into gear. She squatted next to him where he lay slumped in her doorway. Blood trickled from a laceration along his hairline. He gazed at her with dull and somewhat unfocused eyes.
“Wrecked. When I left. Hit a tree on the curve of your drive.”
“When you left? But that means you’ve been out in the cold for hours. The cut might just be a minor part of your injuries. I can’t carry you. If I help, can you get up so I can bring you in?”
“Yes.”
He was huge compared to her. Evan had always been tall. He’d played forward on the high school basketball team and been talented enough to warm the bench at UVA, but Jenny realized the man had added muscle and mass since his teens. His shoulders were heavier, and his arms and legs more muscular. Jenny grunted as she helped him to his feet, realized her robe had come partway open, and belted it back again. He leaned on her and stumbled as she led him into her den. They staggered before Jenny regained her balance and guided him to the couch near the fireplace.
“Sit. I’ll get my bag and we’ll take a look at you before I call the EMT.”
“No ambulance. Court case in the morning.”
All doctor now, she frowned at him with her hands braced on her hips. “Just from what I’ve already seen, Counselor, I can assure you there will be no court case for you. Now sit still until I get back.” Jenny grabbed the blanket off the back of the couch, wrapping it around his shoulders. She snatched another one from a nearby chair and covered his legs.
From habit, she kept a medical bag sitting next to the front door, a little old-fashioned, but necessary in Mountain Meadow because there were times she had to go to her patients. When she returned, his head rested against the back of the couch.
“I’m turning on the lights,” Jenny warned before she switched on the recessed lighting overhead and a lamp on the table near where he sat. Evan blinked. Jenny stood behind him as she cleaned the cut near his hairline.
“This needs stitches. What did you hit?”
“Don’t know for sure. Car’s pretty beat-up.”
“Well, you’ll need an X-ray at the very least, maybe a CT scan to make sure there’s no skull fracture and so we can see the extent of any concussion.” She moved in front of him and pulled out her penlight. As she tested his pupils to see if they were reacting the same, she asked, “Any headache or nausea?”
“No.”
“Dizziness? Or ringing in your ears?”
“No.”
As he warmed, his speech grew stronger, more normal. Jenny sat back on the coffee table. “Follow my finger with your eyes. Don’t move your head. Okay. Now tell me what happened.”
“I missed the curve in the drive, went off the road into the woods, and hit a tree.”
She leaned away from him in surprise. “How did you miss the turn? It’s marked for heaven’s sake.”
His eyes dropped. “I didn’t see it,” he mumbled.
“How could you not?”
His cheeks flushed with anger or embarrassment, which she wasn’t sure. “Just leave it alone. I wrecked, okay?”
Jenny drew a deep breath and pressed her lips together. “Sorry. Were you unconscious?”
“Yes. I don’t know how long. I came here as soon as I could.”
She sighed. So he had been unconscious for more than just a few seconds. Jenny grabbed her cell phone and punched 911.
“What are you doing?”
“Calling the ambulance to have you transported.”
“I don’t want to go to the hospital.”
Jenny glared. “You don’t have a choice. You have a head wound needing stitching, and a concussion. While there’ve been plenty of times I would have liked to see your sorry ass dead, I’m not letting it happen because I didn’t do my job.”
“That’s what it always comes back to isn’t it? The mighty Dr. Owens.”
“Shut up, Evan,” Jenny snapped as the dispatcher answered.
“911, What’s your emergency?”
“Joyce? It’s Doc Owens. I have a thirty-year-old white male with a head laceration and concussion from a motor vehicle accident. I need him transported to the ER.”
“Sorry, Doc. The guys are working an accident on the parkway. Some kids out joyriding. They’re going to be tied up for some time. We’ve already had to call for mutual aid. Can you bring him in?”
“Hmm. I suppose. But if you have accident victims coming, this one will get shoved down the list by the triage nurse. I’ll keep him at my place. Just make sure a deputy gets out here to look at the accident scene tomorrow. If you need me in on the parkway accident, call. He’ll have no choice but to come with me then.” Jenny put her phone down. Evan appeared as uncomfortable as her, and she didn’t like how pale he was. “You’re stuck with me for now. I’ll go ahead and stitch your head. I’ve got sutures and local anesthetic in here.” She opened her bag.
Evan glared at her. “No. Way. I’m not letting you near me with a
needle and thread. You’ll make me look like Frankenstein’s monster.”
That would be a cold day in hell. Jenny arched a brow at him. “When did you become such a narcissist?”
“Since you started talking about practicing your sewing on my skin,” he retorted.
Jenny frowned. She studied her hands for a minute, then lifted her eyes to his suspicious gaze. “Evan, no matter how much I detest you, I would never let my personal feelings affect my work. That cut needs to be stitched. The longer you wait, the greater the chances you will be left with a nasty scar. Let me stitch it. I’m good at it.”
“Fine. Do it,” he conceded.
He complained about the anesthetic. He complained about the stitches. Heavens, he was a whiny patient, Jenny thought as she worked. She tuned him out as she continued making a series of minute sutures to draw the skin together. The laceration was close enough to his hairline it wouldn’t be very obvious even if it did leave a scar, but she was doing her best to make sure it didn’t. Evan was handsome. No matter how Jenny felt about him, it would be a shame to mar that.
* * * *
Evan closed his eyes because when he opened them, her breasts were at eye level. Her robe gaped as she worked, so if his eyes were open his gaze feasted on one smooth, creamy globe. He remembered how good she’d always tasted. From the very first time he kissed her when they were both freshmen in high school, it had always been Jenny. She was still the most beautiful woman he knew. He shut his eyes to block her image, but he could still smell her unique, spicy scent. He didn’t want to tell her he’d missed the turn because tears in his eyes had blurred his vision.
“Jenny?”
“Hmm?” she murmured as she tied off the last suture and set her materials on the table.
“Did your dad really drug you?”
Her hand trembled in her lap before she clenched it into a fist. “Now’s not the time for this.”
“Then when?”
“Not now.” She began packing everything and wouldn’t look at him. “Let me help you off with your jacket and your boots. You can stretch out on the couch. I’ll give you a ride to the hospital when I go in for rounds.”
Special Delivery (Mountain Meadow Homecoming 1) Page 10