She had to be all right. He couldn’t bear to think of any other possibility.
Jake moved the chair to the other side of the bed, drew it close. She would have a bruise on her hand when the needle came out. He knew how easily she bruised. Once, she had stumbled outside his studio. He had caught roughly at her arm with his hand, afraid she would tumble down the long stairs. For a second she’d been close to him. He’d breathed in the tantalizing scent of her, his arm moving to draw her closer as she’d stepped away.
The next day, she had come to work wearing a blouse that concealed the purple bruise until she lifted her arm and the fabric fell away.
When he tried to apologize, she had shaken her head and thanked him from saving her from a bad fall. Her long hair had fallen across her face, concealing her eyes from him.
Now, the hair was short, curling softly around her head, leaving her face vulnerable and exposed. Her lips parted and she made a soft noise deep in her throat as her head moved restlessly on the white pillow.
When he covered her small white hand with his, her fingers curled loosely around his thumb. He stared at her pale fingers, wondering if she would ever put her hand in his willingly, freely.
If only she would open her eyes, see him!
He sat quietly, watching her, sometimes staring through the window near her bed. He watched the cloudy sky turn from blue to red, remembering all the words they had said to each other over the last five years, all the times when he’d almost come close to her.
Last week, on the beach near Tow Hill, she’d lain in his arms while he pretended to sleep. He’d felt her body so soft and trusting against his. He’d ached to draw her even closer, to cover her lips with his and draw a response from her. To love her, to touch and caress and take the loneliness away from her.
He’d been wrong to hire Hans. At the time, he’d thought it would help, putting a barrier between them.
He’d created a barrier all right, but it hadn’t helped. Seeing less of Jennifer hadn’t made him want her less. If he’d been honest with himself back then, faced the fact that he loved her, he might have been able to do something to win her.
When Donna returned, she found Jake still sitting, his hand entangled with Jennifer’s.
“I brought you coffee. I didn’t know what you take – cream and sugar?”
“Thanks, Donna.” He remembered her now, a small girl from the village. She’d lived in the house below his grandfather’s. He asked, “How’s Daniel?”
“He’s still fishing. Fishing’s not so good any more. A few years ago, the herring was big, but now it’s down to almost nothing. We’ve got three sons now, you know.”
Jake nodded, though he hadn’t known.
“Come and see us. We’re in the village. Bring her, too.” Donna nodded towards Jenny. “What’s her name?”
“Jenny. She likes to be called Jenny.”
He sipped the coffee awkwardly, not wanting to let her hand go. He had to practice that in his mind. Jenny – not Jennifer. Why had she never told him before?
Visiting hours must have come. Outside the curtain, he heard voices, someone talking to the woman in the bed on the other side of the room. The doctor came, pushing a thin hand through his thinning hair, then taking Jenny’s hand from Jake’s grasp and staring at her face as he took her pulse, bending to lift her eyelid.
“Is she all right?” Jake asked nervously.
“She’s lucky,” he growled. “The other one – Mrs. Dobson – is having a rough haul. I think she’s going to make it.”
“Thank God,” murmured Jake. George seemed a nice woman and he wouldn’t have wanted her to die of the poison, but he couldn’t help being thankful that it hadn’t been Jenny who made a big feed of the clams.
“You may as well go home,” the doctor announced. “She won’t wake up for hours yet.”
“I’d rather stay.” Jake took possession of her hand again, looked up at the doctor with a determined glint in his eye. The doctor shrugged.
“Suit yourself,” he said as if he were too tired to oppose Jake.
Jake half expected someone to come and try to evict him at the end of visiting hours. No one did.
After a time, he dozed in the chair, waking with a sudden jolt of alarm, sitting up and staring intently at Jenny. He’d been dreaming, the fantasy tangled with reality. In his dream, Jennifer had stopped breathing, not responding to his futile, desperate attempts to revive her. In reality, she was breathing softly, her mouth slightly open.
He looked up and found his aunt standing at the end of the bed, her beautiful black hair glistening down her back, her sharp black eyes taking in everything. She was only ten years older than him, but he remembered how she had always been the one to know when he was misbehaving as a youngster.
“Hello, Violet.” He spoke softly. “How did you know I was here?”
“Laurie phoned me.”
“Laurie Mather? The radio announcer?” He grinned ruefully. “Am I a news item?”
Violet shook her head, smiling and sending the black hair flowing. “She’s married to the pilot that flew you today.”
“Luke?” He looked down at Jenny, tried to concentrate on the people his aunt was talking about. “Luke Lucas? Didn’t I hear a radio piece last year with his name on it a couple of years ago?”
“Laurie did that – on a rescue operation she and Luke were involved in. Search for a downed seaplane. That’s when she met Luke.”
Violet had the secret smile of someone who could tell a story, but wasn’t going to. Jake frowned, trying to tie together threads of his knowledge of island people. “I thought Laurie was engaged to Ken McDonald?”
“You’ve been too long away from home, Jake. For a local, you’re out of touch with us.”
“Yes,” he admitted, his eyes going back to Jennifer.
Violet’s eyes noted his hand tangled with Jenny’s. She said, “I saw a film you did last week – the tourism one.”
“The sights of Vancouver? Yes?”
He watched his aunt shake her head slowly, the glorious, glistening black hair rippling over her shoulders. “It made me sad, Jake. There was no art in that piece. Not like before. You used to do films, drawings – whatever you did had meaning.”
He looked down at Jennifer, sleeping on the hospital bed. “She said the same thing,” he murmured. “She accused me of being too ambitious, too commercial.”
“You’re Haida,” his aunt said with a stern, soft voice. “Haida have always been artists.”
He said, “I’m only half Haida,” and Violet laughed.
“I’m sure none of us are pure blood any more, Jake, but don’t ever forget that the Haida is the best half.”
Her dark eyes traveled from his face, down to where his brown hand enfolded Jennifer’s white one on the blanket. She was smiling now.
“She’s your woman? It’s about time.”
About time. His hand tightened on Jennifer’s. She was breathing a little more rapidly now. In a few hours he thought she would wake. Then he had to start trying to make her see that they belonged together. Violet was right. It was about time, for both of them.
His love was afraid of loving, afraid of being hurt. He’d have to teach her, somehow, that she could trust herself to him.
The women couldn’t have helped. He’d been dating one woman after another in an attempt to get his mind off Jennifer – no, that wasn’t all. He’d kept hoping to see some sign of jealousy.
Stupid, especially considering her distrust of love and men. Telling her that he intended to marry Monica couldn’t have helped either. She must be thoroughly convinced that he was a philanderer, intending to marry Monica, yet chasing after Jennifer – surely she must realize by now that he wanted more than to get her back to work?
He looked down at Jennifer’s sleeping form. It had been close. A few more clams, and if he’d arrived a few minutes later…
His world without Jennifer.
“It’s not so simp
le as that,” he said wryly, answering his aunt at last. She laughed softly.
“It never is, Jake.”
The sleeping girl shifted. He felt her hand tighten in his. Soon she would awaken and pull her hand away.
Had it mattered to her, when he said he was going to marry Monica? Yes, I probably will, he’d told her, succumbing to a sudden need to know if she would care.
He knew her well enough now to know that if she did care, she would have retreated, stepped back, run away from anything she might feel for him.
And she had left, quickly and abruptly, leaving Jake bewildered and shocked at the extent to which he missed her.
He’d wanted her for a long time. Once he had thought it was her aloofness that kept him attracted, but now he knew it was more than that. Perhaps, subconsciously, he had always known.
There would be no other women now, only Jennifer – Jenny. It would take time, but he could be patient when he needed to be. If only he could find a way to keep her near, to give him the time he needed.
He settled down in the chair, shifting to grip her hand more firmly.
“You’re not coming to the house for supper?” his aunt asked.
“No,” he said softly, knowing she would understand. “I’ll stay here. Thanks, Violet.”
He stayed, holding her hand, until the night nurse came on duty and insisted on his leaving.
Jenny drifted in and out of a fog, dreaming dizziness, hearing voices she couldn’t focus her ears on. She dreamed that she was held in Jake’s arms, curling against him until the world receded and there was only his arms and, once, his lips brushing against her temple.
Shouting. She dreamed of shouts, the roar of an engine, and finally the wail of a siren. The dentist gave her another needle, but why in her hand? Then, once, she opened her eyes and focused on her own hand, held tightly in another – large, brown, with Jake’s lean fingers. His baby finger was crooked from some ancient accident that she had never learned the story of. Were there scars on the rest of his body?
Her eyes followed up, along his arm, to his face, which was strangely smooth in sleep. Jake, holding her hand, sleeping in a chair beside her. She smiled, recognizing her own dream as wishful thinking.
When she finally woke, she realized she was in a hospital room, but alone. The sun was angling through the window, the early morning summer sun of northern latitudes.
Jake was nowhere around. Of course she had dreamed his hand-holding attention to her. Hospitals didn’t allow visitors in the middle of the night.
What had happened to George? Red Tide, Jake had shouted. That was the last clear memory she had – Jake questioning her about the clams as she lost track of her answers in the dizziness.
She slept again, waking to the shock of a thermometer being inserted under her tongue, the sight of a nurse bustling away before Jenny could ask questions. Then she dropped off to sleep again, but woke as the thermometer was withdrawn from her mouth.
“My cousin – George – is she all right?“
“You’ll have to ask the doctor when he comes in.”
But Jake came first, throwing the curtain back, bringing the smell of the outdoors with him.
“Are you all right?” he demanded.
“I’m fine, but what about George? Have you heard—”
“She’s going to make it.” He pulled a chair close to her bed and sat, his eyes searching her face intently. “It was close. She stopped breathing – damn it, Jennifer! Surely you had the sense to know you shouldn’t just shovel in clams without—”
“I do know about Red Tide – that’s what it was, wasn’t it? But we didn’t hear any warnings on the marine radio.”
He shifted impatiently. “Read the fisheries regulations! This is the north coast! There aren’t hundreds of fisheries offices up here to test the clams from every beach. The whole north coast is closed for taking of bivalves – every year! Always! You take clams and mussels at your own risk!”
“Stop yelling at me, Jake! Glenda and David gave us clam chowder!”
“You can be sure they had reason to know those clams weren’t contaminated. You could have killed yourselves! George damned near did kill herself!”
“She is all right? She really is all right?”
“She’s fine. I checked on her this morning. She’s weak, and they don’t want her to have visitors yet, but I have a sort of a cousin who’s a nurse here, and she checked George’s chart for me. She’s breathing on her own, and the doctor says she’s out of danger. The doctor, by the way, was up all night with George. He’s gone home for a much-needed couple of hours’ sleep. Jennifer, so help me, if you ever—”
She caught his hand with hers, said softly, “We were stupid – I admit it! Thank goodness you came when you did – I don’t know what would have happened, because we didn’t know— of course I know about Red Tide. Every so often, we hear about someone falling victim to it, not heeding the warnings when an area is found to be contaminated, but I never even thought of it.”
Jake covered her hand with both his. “I should have thought of it when we had that chowder. I should have warned you. Next time, if you’re determined to eat clams, take precautions. If you’re careful, you can be reasonably sure you’re safe— all right! I’ll drop it for now, but remind me to give you my lecture on testing clams.”
“I will, I promise. You’re sure George is all right? Can I see her?”
“I doubt it.”
She knew she should pull her hand away, but she left it in his warm grip. “And you?” she asked. “Shouldn’t you be getting back to work?”
He shook his head. “Not until I know you’re both well.”
Jenny frowned at him, and said repressively, “Isn’t it time you got back to Monica?”
He shifted, gripped her hand tightly. “Jenny, I need to tell you—“
“Do you know what time we eat?” she asked nervously, covering his words with the first thing that came to mind. God, she couldn’t stand it of he started talking about Monica, if his eyes grew warm with wanting another woman! “I’m starving.”
“I’ll check,” he said abruptly, getting up and walking away. She watched him going, feeling a sick knowledge that she was getting herself into a mess, loving him more and more every day, setting herself up for a big dose of pain and loneliness.
It was time she stopped fooling herself. She had loved Jake for years – perhaps from that first day she walked into his studio, finding him buried in paper, trying to get a series of drawings ready, his hair wild from running his fingers through it.
She had to move, get herself busy, stop thinking about Jake. Her legs were weak and shaky, but nobody tried to stop her from walking around, getting her strength back and exploring, even visiting George to confirm that she really was all right.
When visiting hours started, Jake was there again, striding down the hallway, stopping abruptly when he saw her standing near a window, saying softly to her, “You’re looking much better.”
She managed a casual smile. “George is better, too. Sleeping, but she’s all right now. I love this little hospital. All the windows look out on the harbor.”
Jake didn’t say anything, just stared at her, his brown eyes almost black.
The silence was making Jenny nervous. “I’ve got to thank you for getting us in here so quickly. If George hadn’t gotten to a hospital…”
“Forget it,” he said gruffly.
Jenny said nervously, “About Lady Harriet – George is worried—”
“The boat’s all right. One of the fishermen is checking on her. He’s going to tie up alongside her tonight, so no one will disturb anything. Then, tomorrow I’ll fly out and bring her back through the narrows.”
“Oh, good!” She’d been trying to work out a way to get George’s boat back to safety, but she should have known Jake would look after it.
Jake smiled a slow smile. “You did say you didn’t want me trying to run your life, didn’t you?”
/> She couldn’t help smiling back. “Touché! Just this once, if you would be so kind as to be your usual domineering self – I’d appreciate it!”
“At your service!”
She decided impulsively, “I’ll come with you tomorrow. The doctor said I could check out in the morning. I’ve nowhere to go, except to the boat, so…”
Her voice dropped off slowly. Together on the boat, they’d be alone. She opened her lips to change her mind, but he said quickly, “It’s probably a good idea. I’ll need help. You’ll know all the details, like where George keeps the ignition key.”
“And I’ll pay for the seaplane charter,” she added, hoping to strike an impersonal note.
He shook his head. “You’re rolling in money, of course.”
“I’ve got a little saved.”
“Keep it,” he said firmly, adding, “Although I should let you pay for the charter – then you’d be short of money sooner. I might get you back to work that way.“
Chapter 8
The Beaver’s pilot smiled at Jenny as he stepped onto the pontoon. He opened the rear door with large, capable hands.
“You’re looking better than when I saw you last!” Luke called over the engine.
She found herself smiling back at him. “I’m feeling better. Thanks for getting us to help so quickly the other day!”
“It was a fast trip.” He glanced at Jake. Something passed silently between the two men and Luke added, “This trip will be slow and easy. I hear your cousin’s going to be all right.”
“Yes, she’s fine,” Jenny agreed, startled.
Jake gave her a hand up into the seat behind the pilot, then swung himself into position beside her.
“You’ll get used to it,” he murmured. “It’s a very small community out here. News travels like wildfire, and Luke has an inside track. He’s married to Laurie – she works at the radio station.”
“The radio station?” she asked, surprised. “Were we on the radio?”
Startled, Jake said, “I hadn’t thought of that.” He leaned forward to Luke and asked a swift question, leaning back with a smile.
Island Hearts (Jenny's Turn and Stray Lady) Page 12