But at least they were here at the rehearsal.
Jack was not.
No best man at the rehearsal?
Celina craned her neck to see past Anna and half a dozen interested princesses and hangers-on, sure she must be mistaken. But there was Jonas, standing tall and looking more solemn than ever in a pair of rumpled khakis and an open-necked shirt. But next to him stood a still-damp Nico, not Jack.
Where the hell was Jack?
Surely he wasn’t skipping out now, leaving Jonas and Hope in the lurch. Celina’s mind was spinning with possibilities. None of them good.
All she could think was that he’d come back, stirred up her life again, made her hope and dream and trust and believe ... and then Dex had appeared with a new more enticing agenda – and, poof! – Jack had gone off with the band.
She stared at the vicar giving instructions to Hope and Jonas. She couldn’t hear. It didn’t matter. Her fingernails bit into her palms. Her breathing came quick and sharp.
Yes, Jack was selfish. But even for Jack, skipping out on his best man duties seemed the height of irresponsibility. He’d agreed to do it. It had been his idea! And he’d come all this way.
It wasn’t like Jack to turn his back on his friends.
Only on her.
She stood abruptly and almost ran down the aisle toward the door to the church, head down, not watching where she was going. Until she ran straight into the man standing in the doorway – a man with a scruffy red beard in ratty jeans and a band T-shirt who caught her against his chest.
“Dex?” She stared, baffled at the sight of him.
“Celie,” Dex said. “You okay?”
“I’m fine,” she snapped. Then: “What are you doing here?”
“Waiting for you.”
She stared at him. “What? Why?”
Dex rubbed a hand over his shaggy hair. “Figured you’d want to know about Jack.”
Behind them in the church, the vicar droned on. Celina looked at Dex warily. “What about Jack?”
“It was Jack who found the kids.”
She gave a quick shake of her head. “What? No. You left,” she said. “Nico told me you and Jack left.”
Dex bobbed his head. “’Cause he thought he knew where they went. Made me drive him there. Near there,” Dex corrected himself. “Then we had to run through about a hundred miles of woods.”
Celina felt suddenly cold. “Where?”
“Some crumbling fake castle.” Dex’s lips twisted. “Built by a guy named Mad Harry. They got that right,” he added with a snort.
Celina wobbled. She needed to sit down. Dex must have figured as much because suddenly he had her arm and was steering her into the last pew.
“Tell me,” she said urgently, looking up at him.
“The security guy passed out maps. Jack went white. Everybody else took off looking for the kids, but Jack ran upstairs. He came down a few minutes later looking even whiter and he hustled me into the car. Made me drive him up the road about a mile, then we got on some crazy turning little lane about as wide as a toothbrush. He said you’d hiked near there, but you guys hadn’t got all the way to the castle. He knew the boys wanted to see it. Yeah, well, they did,” Dex said, finishing flatly.
There was a lot he wasn’t saying. Celina knew that.
“But you got them. They’re here.” She turned her head and looked back across the nave and could see both boys standing there. “Thank God. Thank Jack,” she added, because it was only the truth. “So, where’s Jack?”
Dex grimaced. “At the hospital.”
Chapter Eleven
All’s well that ends well.
Isn’t that what they said? Shakespeare had. Jack was fairly certain of that.
And in this case at least part of it had. Ended well, that is. The most important part.
Mads and Casper were home safe and relatively sound. A few scrapes and bruises was all. And the tooth Casper lost was a baby tooth and “loose anyway,” Casper had assured Jack cheerfully. “The tooth mouse will be happy.”
Jack reckoned that whoever the tooth mouse was, he might be the only one who profited from what had gone down.
God knew his own life was in a shambles.
He sat carefully slumped in the waiting room of the nearest hospital where Dex had taken him after running the boys back to get them cleaned up and to the church on time.
He’d intended to be there as well. There was the rehearsal to get to, of course. He was supposed to be there right now.
But more importantly, there was Celie. Celie, who was probably not talking to him, and he didn’t blame her a bit.
Jack knew he’d blown everything with Celie.
It wasn’t just not showing up last night and then missing her when he’d finally got back this morning. That he could have explained. That he probably could have talked his way out of. Celie would have cut him slack on that.
It was what had happened to the boys she wouldn’t forgive. Hell, he couldn’t forgive himself.
She wanted a family. She wanted kids. With him! She’d been so sure he’d be a good father.
God. The truth was he was so damned clever he’d nearly managed to get Jonas’s nephews killed this morning.
Jack swallowed hard and shut his eyes, tipping his head back against the wall, seeing in his mind’s eye the awful sight of Mads and Casper climbing up the side of Mad Harry’s Folly. Casper had been the furthest up, standing on a ledge about fifteen feet above the ground, white-faced and gripping the edges of crumbling stone as the rain came down. Below him, Mads was halfway up, calling, “I’ll get you. Stay there. Don’t move!”
There was no way Mads could have got him down safely. No way he’d have got himself back down safely alone. They’d have both fallen onto the rocky ground below.
Thank God they hadn’t. Jack opened his eyes again. Bad enough seeing that much in his head. He didn’t want to see the rest of it.
A nurse came to the door leading from the crowded waiting room into a hall of examination rooms. She called a name. Not his.
Jack didn’t care.
He wasn’t bleeding. Much. He wasn’t at death’s door. He looked as healthy as an ox – apart from the mud and the scraped jaw and the scratches – if you didn’t look too closely at his left arm and hand.
He wouldn’t be playing guitar for a long time to come. There would be no ‘unplugged’ album.
The other reason he had no future with Celie.
Jack’s jaw tightened. His throat ached. He cradled his arm and hand against his torso and didn’t move.
At least no one seemed aware of who he was. The last thing he wanted to deal with right now were nosy paps looking for stories and photo ops. Being covered in mud helped. The torrential rain had played havoc with the traffic, sending plenty of people to casualty, most decidedly more obviously in need of attention than him, so he’d been sitting here for over an hour completely unnoticed.
Fine with him. He was in no hurry. What did he have to get patched up for?
He tipped his head back against the wall and closed his eyes. But as if emblazoned on his eyelids, he could still see Mads and Casper, at his insistence desperately flinging themselves down into his waiting arms, and Celie, shaking her head in disappointment.
“Where is he? Which room?”
Celina was hurrying down the hallway of the hospital, peering right and left, trying – and failing – to find Jack.
She’d told Dex, when he’d driven her to the door, that he didn’t need to wait. “It could be hours,” she’d said. “Go back to the manor. Go to the pub. Go wherever you want. I’ll text you if I need you.”
“You sure?” Dex had been surprisingly supportive since he’d sat her in the pew at the church.
He’d told her about what happened from when Jack had commandeered him and his rental car to get as close to Mad Harry’s Folly as possible. Using the map Fredrik had given them, Jack had led the way through the woods to a stream where h
is fears were confirmed.
“There were a couple of bikes in the mud by the stream. There were stepping stones across it, almost covered by the torrents from the rain.”
Celina’s heart had been in her throat.
“He just ran then,” Dex had said wonderingly. “I’ve seen Jack move, but I’ve never seen him move that fast. I don’t know how the hell far it was, but I’ve got to stop smoking. I nearly died.”
When they reached the folly, they’d found the boys scaling the folly wall.
“They said they did it on account of the stories Jack told them about his granddad climbing some cliffs during the war and about when we climbed Shoshone Spire. Only when we got up there was a place to be,” Dex said. “Not on the folly. It was a hollow shell. One of the boys was most of the way up and got stuck. The other was trying to get him down.”
He couldn’t, of course. It was Jack who did, Dex had told her. He’d calmed them down, then got them to jump into his arms. But it was slippery and there were rocks.
“Nasty business,” Dex had said.
The boys were all right, though. It was Jack he’d taken to the hospital.
“He didn’t want to go. Said he had to get to the wedding rehearsal. But he damn near fainted when he got out of the car at the manor. So I got him to the hospital. They didn’t need more drama. Jack agreed with that.”
But Jack was apparently having some drama of his own right now. After Dex had left her there, Celina had burst into the casualty waiting area looking around frantically.
There were plenty of people in various degrees of misery. But no Jack.
Queries at the desk got her nowhere until she remembered that his name was legally John Stephen Masterson, Jr., not Jack.
Then they wanted to know who she was.
“I’m his wife.” It felt like the absolute truth, even though he had every right to turn his back on her. “Please, I need to see him.”
At last someone pointed down the hallway. “That way. They’re putting a temporary cast on him.”
Temporary. That was good, wasn’t it?
Dex said Jack had done something to his arm. He’d been vague, probably deliberately, so as not to worry her.
She kept hurrying down the hallway, until suddenly she caught a glimpse of a familiar profile sitting slumped on an examining table watching as a man in scrubs wrapped his left hand and arm in plaster. Celina skidded to a halt.
Jack wasn’t looking her way. And she hesitated outside the room, feeling suddenly apprehensive. She had so much to say. So much to apologize for. She wouldn’t blame him if he said he never wanted to see her again.
The man working on Jack’s arm glanced up and saw her standing there. “Are you looking for someone?”
“I –” She couldn’t get any more out.
It didn’t matter. At the sound of her voice, Jack’s head snapped around and whatever color he’d had in his face seemed to drain completely away. His Adam’s apple worked. “Celie.” His voice was ragged. His eyes looked like burnt coals in his face.
“Are you –? I need to –! Oh my God, Jack!”
The full import of Jack Masterson with his left arm encased in plaster from the tips of his fingers to his shoulder hit her.
Jack didn’t say anything, just sat there wordless, drinking in the sight of her.
“You saved them.” Her voice broke as she realized at what cost.
She started to go to him, then stopped. The doctor was still working on his arm, smoothing something up over his elbow, then taping it off, and stepping back. He looked up at Celina. “I’m Dr. Crenshaw. I’ll be finished with your man in a minute or two. Then you can take him out to set up a time for surgery. I believe you want to see a specialist in London?”
“Surgery?” Celina blanched.
Jack’s color didn’t change. He was already as white as a ghost. He swallowed and nodded. “Yes, thank you.”
“No problem. Better to wait anyway,” the doctor said. “Let the swelling go down a bit. Get you to the wedding on time.” He smiled and lifted a hand as if to clap Jack on the shoulder, then tucked his hand in his pocket instead. “Take good care of him,” he said to Celina as Jack rose unsteadily to his feet and looked around.
“My shirt?” he mumbled.
“This?” Celina grabbed the muddy damp garment off the hook by the door and helped him shrug one arm into it. The other sleeve hung limply from his shoulder as he stood unmoving bare inches in front of her. She could see the rise and fall of his chest. If she lifted her gaze at all she’d be looking at his mouth. Dear God, she wanted to kiss that mouth.
His fingers went to the buttons, then – as if realizing the task was impossible – his hand dropped again.
“I’ll do them up,” Celina said. Her voice was shaking. So were her fingers when she touched him.
Jack flinched.
“I’m sorry! I –”
“Don’t.” His tone was fierce. “Don’t apologize. Let’s just get out of here.”
Obediently Celina followed him as he limped to the desk and talked to the woman there about referrals to a hand specialist in London.
Celina stood next to him, growing more and more appalled as she listened to the full extent of his injuries. Not just the left hand on which there were three broken fingers, but his wrist and elbow as well.
Jack got papers with the information about the doctor in London and had nowhere to put it.
“Give it to me.” Celina took it from him and stuffed it in her tote bag. “Dex said he’ll come and pick us up.”
“I don’t want him picking me up.”
“Then I’ll call Jonas.”
Jack grimaced. “So he can jump down my throat about nearly killing his nephews and missing his wedding rehearsal. No, thanks.” He shoved past her and went outside. The rain had stopped but the trees still dripped with moisture and the sun was barely peeking out from behind heavy clouds.
Celina grabbed the door before he could close it on her and caught his other hand, hauling him to a stop. “You didn’t nearly kill his nephews. You saved them!”
Jack’s mouth twisted. “Yeah, tell him that. Tell yourself that,” he added gruffly.
Celina frowned. “What does that mean?”
He wrenched his hand away from her. “It means you should be getting the hell away from me!” He spun away as he spoke. “It means I have the judgment of a block of wood. I gave them the maps they took out there. I told them about the damn place!”
“And you went after them when you realized what they might have done,” Celina said quietly to his back.
His shoulders were rigid. His jaw was tight. He stared straight ahead. Took a breath and then another before he turned so he could look at her. “I blew it, Celina. You want a family with a father who is responsible, who doesn’t hand his kid the adventure equivalent of a loaded gun!”
“What?” Celina stared at him, shocked. “You’re not to blame for what they did!”
“Yeah? How else would they have known about it?”
“Well, they wouldn’t. But that’s not the point. If you’d given them a map of Mount Everest yesterday, you wouldn’t think they’d go climb it.”
“I would if I were in Nepal,” Jack said grimly.
“Oh, Jack. Don’t. Don’t beat yourself up over this. Boys do dangerous stuff. They don’t consider all the consequences.”
“Like I didn’t.”
“They’re all right. They learned something from this. And so did you.”
“Yeah, and I’m thirty-one years old. Not a boy. And what I learned is that I’d make a lousy father. You need to find the right man to have a family with Celie.” His voice changed, got heavier. “Celina.”
There was a moment’s silence in which Celina could see the yawning possibility of a future without Jack because sometimes they were their own – and each other’s – worst enemies. But she was also Jack’s best friend and strongest advocate, and he was hers. She hoped.
Slowly Celina shook her head. “No.”
“What do you mean, no? I’m bad at this, Celina. I’m not what you need.”
“Yes, you are. You are exactly what I need. Who I need. Who I love.” She looked up into his eyes and gave him her heart. She wanted to put her arms around him, but even the slightest touch was likely to hurt. “I love you, Jack! But I failed you. I didn’t trust you. I thought you’d gone off with Dex and gone back to the band –”
“What? I never!”
“When you didn’t come back last night,” she said. “You didn’t even call.”
“I don’t have your number! I never got it, remember?”
See? Their own worst enemies.
“So I thought you realized you didn’t really want me after all,” she forced herself to go on. “Then, when the boys went missing, Nico said everyone went looking for them, but you. And I – I very definitely thought the worst of you.”
She didn’t want to admit how badly she had misjudged him. But she owed him the truth. If they stood even the smallest chance of making this work, she had to be completely honest now.
“You’re the one who should be turning your back on me.”
He shook his head fiercely. “You didn’t think anything any worse than I did, damn it! I didn’t think things through. I gave them the means and the inspiration to get badly hurt.”
“But you’re not God, Jack. You weren’t the one who gave them free will. And you realized what they might have done – and you sacrificed your arm for them.”
It was pure Jack. She understood that now. He wasn’t selfish. Never had been. He was a man of the moment. He did what needed to be done.
“I didn’t know I was going to break it,” he said roughly. “I caught Mads just fine. But Casper was a lot further up, and he slipped before I was ready to catch him.” He looked at her, anguished. “I broke his fall, but when I did, I went over on my lower arm and hand on the rocks.”
Celina shuddered at the thought. Then she reached out and put a tentative hand on his right sleeve. “Can you forgive me?”
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