Meant for Each Other
Page 22
“What!” She could feel his tension coiling. “How bad?”
“Bad.”
“I’m on my way.”
“Hurry, Mike.”
“You keep her alive, Leah. You hear me? You keep her alive!”
“I’ll do my best,” she whispered.
Heart pounding with fear like nothing he’d ever known, Mike drove from his parents’ home on Houston’s northwest side to the medical center like a bat out of hell, pedal to the floor and horn blaring. Behind him in their minivan, his family and Quinton stayed on his bumper the whole way. The drive usually took close to an hour. Exactly thirty-two minutes after receiving Leah’s call, Mike and the others burst through the double doors of the emergency room at a dead run.
The first person Mike saw was Leah. She was pacing in front of the entrance, waiting for them. The look on her face made his heart contract.
“Where is she?” he demanded.
Before she could answer, everyone started talking at once.
“I want to see my daughter,” his father barked.
“Is she going to be all right?” Tess asked tearfully.
“Is she awake? Can we talk to her?”
“I wanna see my sister,” Katy wailed.
“Sis, you have to save her,” Quinton urged. “You have to.”
Momentarily, Leah appeared surprised to see Quinton, but she wasted no time with questions. “Please, calm down, all of you. Please. Now, one at a time, and I’ll do my best to answer your questions.”
“Where is she?” Mike repeated.
“She’s being prepped for surgery. Dr. Ballard is looking at her X rays now.”
That brought a cry of distress from Tess, and immediately Ryan pulled her against his chest. The children turned pale and huddled around their parents. His eyes filling with tears, Quinton turned away sharply.
“What are her injuries?”
“You’ll have to ask Dr. Ballard, Mike. He’s making the evaluation.”
Mike started to argue, when he spotted the surgeon, still dressed in a tuxedo, striding down the hall toward them.
Before Mike could say a word the older man held up his hand and stopped him. “There’s not a minute to spare, so just listen, all of you. Molly is critical. I won’t know until I go in the extent of her injuries or her chances. What I do know at this point is, without surgery she won’t last out the hour, so I need for the parents to sign a consent form at once.” He looked at Leah. “There’s been another bad accident and all the other doctors are busy, so you’ll have to assist me, Dr. Albright.”
“I’ll assist,” Mike declared aggressively.
“No, I’m afraid I can’t allow that.” Dr. Ballard was known equally for his skill and his brusque manner, but his eyes softened as he met Mike’s frantic gaze.
“I have a right to be there, dammit. She’s my sister.”
“Which is precisely why it would be a mistake. Anyway, you’re a pediatrician, my boy, not a surgeon. Dr. Albright is a better choice.”
“Dr. Ballard, I’m not a surgeon, either. I’m an obstetrician,” Leah protested, darting an uncomfortable glance at Mike and the other McCalls. She knew that she was the last person they wanted operating on Molly.
“I know that,” he snapped. “You do C-sections, don’t you?”
“Yes. Of course.”
“Then you’re a surgeon. Go scrub.”
The surgery took almost four hours. By the time they had finished, Leah was so weary she could barely stand. All she wanted was to fall into bed and sleep the clock around, but she had one more duty to perform. Though an excellent surgeon, Dr. Ballard was notoriously bad at dealing with worried family members in crisis situations, so he had left it to her to handle the post-op briefing of the McCall family.
Though it was almost dawn, everyone but Katy was awake. When Leah walked into the waiting room they all sprang to their feet. Their faces haggard and anxious, they stared at her in silence, their eyes full of questions they were too fearful to voice.
Leah pulled off her surgical cap and shook out her hair. “Molly’s still in serious condition, but she’s stable,” she announced with a tired smile.
“Oh, thank God,” Tess exclaimed, and burst into tears. Instantly, Ryan pulled her and Ethan tight against his chest. Over the tops of their heads, his intense blue eyes fixed on Leah. “When can we see her?”
“Not for a while yet. They’re taking her to recovery now. After that, she’ll go to the ICU. I suggest you all go home and get some rest, and come back this afternoon.”
“What were the damages?” Mike asked.
“We had to remove her spleen and repair a ruptured kidney, and her pelvis and right leg are broken, so she’ll be in a cast for a few months. Also, she suffered a concussion. Actually, she was lucky there. We were worried about her head injury, but there doesn’t appear to be any permanent brain damage.”
“So what are you saying, Doctor?” Ryan demanded.
“I’m saying that barring any unforeseen complications, she’s going to recover.”
With cries of relief and joy, Mike and his family—Quinton included—surged together and hugged one another tight. Tearful and happy, they kissed and hugged and kissed again, everyone talking at once.
Leah watched them with a lump in her throat and her vision blurring with tears. They were so caught up in their elation no one noticed when she turned and walked away.
Mike felt as though a ton of wet cement had been lifted off his heart. Gratitude swelled his chest to bursting as he released his family and swung around. “Leah, I can’t thank you enough for—” He stopped, frowning. “Where’s Leah?”
“She must have left.” Tess pulled away from her husband’s embrace and placed her hand on Mike’s arm. “Go after her, Mike.”
Dawn was breaking when Leah unlocked the back door and tiptoed into the kitchen. She looked around and smiled. Cleo might be angry with her, but as always when Leah worked late, she had left lights burning.
Leah turned off the dim light over the stove and stepped into the central hallway. She was heading for the stairs just as the front doorbell rang.
“Who in the world?” she muttered, and hurried to the door before whoever it was woke up Cleo. A look through the peephole made her lean her forehead against the door and groan. How could she have forgotten to bring Quinton home with her?
“Sorry, Sis. I forgot my key,” he said sheepishly when she opened the door.
“That’s all right. I hadn’t gone to bed yet.” Mike stood beside Quinton on the front porch, and she sent him a hesitant smile. “Thank you for driving him home.”
“No problem.”
“Man, am I pooped. I’m going to bed,” Quinton announced. “’Night Mike.”
“Good-night, tiger. See you tomorrow.”
Quinton loped up the stairs, and an awkward silence descended. Leah shifted from one foot to the other, and waited for Mike to say goodbye and leave. Instead, he watched her, his gaze strangely intense.
“May I come in?”
“What?” Surprise shot through her, followed closely by dread. She wanted to refuse. She hadn’t the energy or the desire to go another round with Mike right now. “I... Yes, of course.”
She supposed it was inevitable that he’d want to rehash what had happened, once he’d calmed down. She led the way into the living room, determined to quietly hear him out, but when she reached the center of the room she turned abruptly. “Mike, why are you here? I’m really very tired and I would prefer not to go through all this again right now.”
He stopped a few feet away and stood with his hands in his trouser pockets, watching her. “I came to thank you.”
Was that all? “Oh, Mike, please. You don’t have to—”
“And to tell you that I love you.”
She stared, certain she had heard him wrong. “Wh-what?”
“I love you, Leah.”
Hope swelled inside her, but she refused to set it free. She gaz
ed at him sadly and shook her head. “Mike, don’t do this. Your... your emotions are strung out right now and you’re feeling gratitude because of Molly.”
“There is that. I’ll always be grateful to you for everything you did tonight. But it’s more than that. Actually, I’ve been thinking about this—about us—for several days, ever since Tess told me she’d paid you a visit. What happened tonight with Molly just helped to open my eyes.
“When I thought we might lose her I realized that, given the chance, I would do anything to save her, no matter who it hurt, no matter what I had to do. How could I blame you for feeling the same about Quinton?”
“Oh, Mike.” Leah didn’t trust herself to say more, and when her chin began to wobble she pressed her lips tightly together and gazed back at him through tear-filled eyes.
“Did you mean what you told Tess? Do you love me, Leah?”
Too choked to speak, she nodded as first one tear, then another, spilled over onto her cheeks.
It was all the answer Mike needed. In two long strides he crossed the distance between them and snatched her into his arms.
She clung to him, pressing her face against his chest. It felt so wonderful to be back in his arms. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry for tricking you. I wanted to tell you the truth from the start, but...”
“It’s okay, sweetheart. I understand. Now.”
“But what I did was terrible.”
“Hey, don’t be so hard on yourself,” he murmured, rubbing a soothing hand over her back. He held her snug against him, his cheek resting against her crown, and she felt him smile.
“Knock, knock.”
Leah made a sound somewhere between a laugh and a sob. Nothing he could have said or done would have convinced her more thoroughly that he was sincere. “Who’s there?” she mumbled against his chest.
“Hollis.”
She sniffed. “Hollis who?”
“Hollis forgiven,” he said in a deep, emotion-filled voice. He tightened his arms around her. “Come back to me, sweetheart. I love you.”
She leaned back in his arms and looked into his beloved face. It was dark and intense, his blue eyes glittering with love. For her. “Oh, Mike, I love you, too. So much it hurts.”
He kissed her then, a long, slow kiss from the heart. With lips and tongues and seeking hands they sought to assuage the hurt they had endured, to make up for the long, lonely weeks apart and to block from their memories how frightfully close they had come to losing each other.
The kiss was both carnal and heart-wrenchingly emotional. It was passion and need and raging desire. It was a pledge of love and trust restored, made stronger by trial of fire. It was a storm of hot, raw emotions. It was a solemn commitment for eternity and beyond.
Most of all, it was an exquisite blending of souls.
They were oblivious to the distant sounds of the outside world beginning to stir, to the early-morning light seeping through the windows, to the whisper and slap of house slippers on the hall floor or the discreet cough a moment later.
“Oh, for goodness’ sake. Are you two going to come up for air and tell an old woman what’s going on, or do I have to get out the garden hose?”
Leah jumped at the querulous comment and would have broken off the kiss, but Mike wouldn’t let her. He continued to kiss her with leisurely thoroughness for several more seconds. When their lips finally parted he raised his head and grinned at Cleo over Leah’s head.
“Hi, gorgeous. You miss me?”
“Have you been gone?” the old woman sassed back, and Mike’s grin grew wider.
“Yeah. But I’m back now.”
“Humph. It’s about time.” She eyed Leah’s radiant face and nodded, then tightened the belt on her chenille robe. “I guess I’d better go start breakfast. All that making up is bound to have made you hungry. Lord knows, everything else does. The man’s a walking appetite,” she grumbled, heading toward the kitchen, slippers slapping against her heels.
Mike laughed and hugged Leah close. “I’m so happy I’m about to burst. Damn, it’s good to have everything settled.”
Leah snuggled her cheek against his chest. “Actually, we don’t have everything completely settled yet.”
Mike tensed. “What do you mean?”
“Knock, knock.”
She felt his surprise and saw it in his eyes when he grasped her shoulders and held her away from him, but his expression remained guarded. “Who’s there?” he asked warily.
“Willa Murray.”
“Willa Murray who?”
“Willa Murray me, of course!” she replied, feigning indignation. “Who’d you think I meant?”
Stunned, Mike gaped at her. Then he threw his head back and laughed, a deep, rich sound of masculine delight that filled the room and sent a tingle down Leah’s spine. He swooped her up in his arms and whirled her around.
“That’s my girl!”
The titles in The Blaines and the McCalls of Crockett, Texas series form a poem:
FOOLS RUSH IN (SE #416)
WHERE ANGELS FEAR (SE #468)
but
ONCE IN A LIFETIME (SE #661)
A GOOD MAN WALKS IN (SE #722)
BUILDING DREAMS (SE #792)
to last
FOREVER (SE #854)
and
ALWAYS (SE #891)
when two people are
MEANT FOR EACH OTHER (SE #1221)
ISBN : 978-1-4592-5992-8
MEANT FOR EACH OTHER
Copyright © 1999 by Virginia Gray
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