Love on the Line

by Aares, Pamela

  He actually liked Adam. He just wished the guy would take an interest in Molly or any other woman in town. Anyone but Cara.

  Ryan’s eyes adjusted to the dim light in the barn. The floor paving for the drainage was in, and it spruced the old place up more than he’d expected. His old barn was getting to look like something out of a movie. His dad would probably rib him about that too.

  “Looking good,” he said to his contractor.

  “Better than that,” Marvin said with pride. “The slope below the pavers means you won’t have any trouble hosing this place in the wet season. You can spray down these stalls in about ten minutes.” He pointed down to the last of the stalls. “My crew can come back from that city job in a couple of weeks, and we can have all this wrapped up by mid-October.”

  Ryan eyed Marvin. “I can’t wait that long. The first animals are coming in ten days.”

  Marvin crossed his arms. He didn’t know Ryan, didn’t know he’d grown up on a tough-assed ranch. Crossed arms weren’t a deterrent.

  “Just finish wiring in the heaters and get the fans in before you leave today,” Ryan said in a level voice. “Adam can finish up the stalls and the feed room. Your crew can come back and deal with any finishing work later.”

  It was always best to give a guy a way out.

  Marvin nodded. “We’ll get the heaters wired, don’t you worry. But there’s no way I can be back here in less than a week.”

  Ryan fisted his hands in his pockets. Marvin had told him he had to pull the crew off by the end of September and get to a job in the city. It was Ryan’s change orders that had put the work behind schedule.

  “I’ll send my electrician back tomorrow to wire in the fans,” Marvin conceded.

  Ryan nodded. “That’ll do.” He turned toward the back of the barn. Adam had a hell of job ahead of him.

  He poked his head into the last stall. Adam looked up from screwing a hinge to the gate.

  “Thanks for coming in on short notice,” Ryan said.

  Adam stood and shook his hand.

  “It’s a great project,” Adam said. “It’ll be finished in time.” He tilted his head toward the door. “Your contractor hasn’t seen what Albion Bay men can do.”

  If Ryan had known about Adam, he would have had him on the crew in the first place. Ryan liked providing work for locals. He’d asked around and discovered that Adam had a reputation for great work. He also had a reputation for being a ladies’ man. Ryan wished that last part was none of his business.

  Ryan left the men working and cranked up the Bugatti. It’d been a week since he’d had her out for a spin. Even during the busiest weeks he liked to get in at least an hour of solid country driving, blow out the carbon, keep the car running smoothly. He had five hours before he had to be in the city, five blissful hours to ease the tweak out of his shoulder and take in the countryside.

  In his rearview mirror he saw the school bus go by the end of his drive as he backed out of the barn. Though there was no reason for it to stop or even slow down, he was disappointed when it did neither.

  Besides, he liked a challenge. And he’d been handed a clear one when Ms. Cara West had kicked him out so baldly.

  He cruised onto Highway One. As he shifted into second gear, the ping of pain below his shoulder blade felt like a hot rubber band snapping. The week of pain-free days now seemed like a far-off oasis he’d never reach again. The plane trip last night hadn’t helped. Driving probably didn’t either, but he longed to click off some miles and settle his feuding thoughts.

  He shot around the bend and saw the school bus jutting at a strange angle about a tenth of a mile from the driveway to the middle school. A line of kids were running down the shoulder of the road toward the school, shooting backward glances to where Cara sat beside the bus, clutching someone in her arms.

  Gravel flew as he skidded to a halt behind the bus. He jumped out and ran toward her. As he neared, he saw that she was holding Sam Rivers.

  “I told one of the kids to call 9-1-1 as soon as they reached the school,” she shouted. “There’s no cell reception here.”

  Whatever was wrong with Sam, it didn’t look like waiting half an hour for the Point Reyes EMTs would do the boy any good.

  “Let me take him,” Ryan said. He lifted Sam from Cara’s arms before she could protest.

  “C’mon, let’s get him in the car. You hold him, I’ll drive. You can give me directions to the hospital and explain on the way.”

  She grabbed the blue backpack at her feet and followed him to the car.

  “Seat belt,” he ordered.

  “Right.” She snapped the seat belt over her, and he laid Sam in her lap. He’d gone limp and his lips were a little blue, but he was breathing, although shallowly.

  “He’s seizuring,” Cara said.

  “He’s not,” Ryan said in a forced calm tone. He hadn’t expected the panic he heard in her voice. “He’s having an asthma attack. My grandmother has them.”

  Ryan slid behind the wheel and had them on the road in seconds. “Look in his backpack and get his inhaler.”

  She leaned over Sam and grabbed the pack.

  “Just lunch. And a bottle of water.”

  “Punk.”

  Sam moaned as if to protest, but didn’t move in Cara’s arms. Cara shifted him so his legs could stretch alongside hers to the floor of the car.

  “He’s breathing, right?” Ryan didn’t take his eyes off the road.

  “Barely.”

  “He’ll be okay.” Ryan said. “Trust me.”

  Cara nodded.

  Though he wasn’t sure Sam would make it, he needed Cara to stay calm.

  “Call the hospital,” Ryan said when they reached the stretch where he knew there was cell reception. “Tell them we’re coming.”

  Cara fished for her phone. “I left my purse on the bus.”

  “Use mine.”

  Ryan hoped Sam didn’t register the anxiety in her voice as she spoke with the emergency room.

  “Molly already called in,” Cara reported. “She can’t be far behind us.”

  Ryan pushed the Bugatti and the roads to their limit. He heard Cara suck in her breath as he took a sinewy curve at high speed.

  “Cara, relax. I know the limits of this car. And I know my own.” He glanced quickly at Sam. “And you just hang in there, buddy—got that?”

  Sam nodded weakly.

  Ryan snapped his eyes back to the road. And gave silent thanks that driving in extreme conditions was a skill he’d mastered early on.

  It was all Cara could do to stay calm for the last few hundred yards to the hospital. Ryan ran two red lights and left drivers swearing in his wake as he pulled into the rotunda fronting the hospital emergency room.

  As she opened the car door, a nurse and two men in surgical scrubs pushing a gurney came rushing out.

  “I’m Dr. Goldfeld, the pediatric triage resident,” said a short man with glasses. He and the nurse pulled Sam from her arms. He turned to the nurse. “Respiratory distress, red alert activation.”

  “I’m the triage nurse,” the nurse said to Cara as they loaded Sam onto a gurney. “Mrs. Rivers called ahead. She’ll be here soon.”

  Cara’s heart sank as the doctor snapped an oxygen mask over Sam’s face.

  “How’d it come on?” the nurse asked as they wheeled Sam through the double glass doors.

  “I don’t know,” Cara said. “He was fine when he stepped onto the bus.”

  “Could’ve been anything,” Dr. Goldfeld said in a voice that told Cara he was worried but didn’t want anyone to panic. “We’ll get him shaped up.” He eyed the Bugatti. “Good thing you two have a fast car.”

  “Good thing he knows how to drive it,” Cara said, feeling awkward. The doctor thought they were a couple. And in that moment, they were. A couple that had just rushed her best friend’s son to the ER, that had maybe saved his life.

  She looked over to Ryan. He took her hand.

  “Let’s
get you some water, maybe some coffee?” He squeezed her fingers. “I’m not making it, so you’re safe.”

  “I want to stay with Sam.”

  “Sorry,” the nurse said, blocking her way. “The doctor’s taking him directly into triage. You can see him when he’s through giving him a workup. He may need to insert an endotracheal tube—he won’t want you around for that.”

  Cara opened her mouth to protest.

  “He’ll be fine,” the nurse said with a touch of irritation. “Just let us do our job, okay?”

  “Looks like you’re stuck with me,” Ryan said, leading her away with the firm pressure of his hand.

  While Ryan went to the counter in the café for coffee, Cara called the school, telling them she wouldn’t be able to do the afternoon bus run. Then she pressed her palms to her eyes and willed away the headache threatening to form behind them.

  “Caffeine,” Ryan said as he plunked down a paper cup of dark steaming coffee. “Probably the most underrated substance on the planet—next to water.” He grinned, but it dissolved when he looked into her eyes.

  “Hey.” He put his hand on her shoulder. “He’ll be okay. We had a guy on the Red Sox with a case of asthma worse than Sam’s. Last I checked, he’s in the running for a Cy Young.”

  She had no idea what a Cy Young was, but appreciated his attempt to calm her nerves. She took a sip of the hot, black brew, felt it melt into her and warm her. But as Ryan sat in the seat across the small table, it wasn’t just the coffee warming her. His confidence—no, his excellence—delved into the worry that gripped her and teased it apart, giving her space to breathe.

  “It’s a pitching achievement,” he added.

  She blinked, then nodded. It was uncanny how he seemed to know what she was thinking, and even odder that he knew how to say all the right things to take her mind off her worries.

  “Cy Young played in the late eighteen hundreds and early nineteen hundreds. During his twenty-one-year career, he pitched for five different teams. Some of his pitching records have stood for a century. Young compiled five hundred and eleven wins, the most in Major League history.”

  “If you’re trying to distract me, it’s working.”

  He wiggled his brows. “I have my ways,” he said in a comic voice that made her laugh. “But honestly, I don’t know how they do it. Pitchers, I mean. My shoulder would make it through about two innings and then I’d be through. For life.” He sipped his coffee. “Pitchers have reputations as prima donnas, but now that I’ve seen up close the heat and accuracy the guys in the majors have, I recognize that most deserve the accolades and special attention.”

  He leaned back in his chair and laughed. “If you repeat that to the press, I’ll be marked for life.”

  She wasn’t getting anywhere near the press.

  “Have your donkeys arrived?”

  “In ten days. I hired your guy Adam Mitchell to finish up the critical work. The rest will have to wait.”

  When she became aware that he was searching her face for a reaction, it dawned on her that he was jealous of Adam. The thought warmed her even though it shouldn’t. He had no reason to be jealous. No man could crowd Ryan out of her thoughts or dreams.

  Ryan stretched his legs out along the side of the table. She tried to ignore the fire that simply watching him move kindled in her belly.

  “The strangest thing happened last weekend.” He was still watching her face closely. “I joined Alex Tavonesi at his club, some stuffy place in Manhattan. I thought I saw you there.”

  Her coffee stuck in her throat. She hoped he didn’t see the effort she had to make just to swallow it down.

  “I have one of those familiar faces.”

  She felt the seconds crawl by, slowly, as though time had been slowed down, like the seconds were being metered out by one of those old-fashioned grandfather clocks with heavy, weighted pendulums. Only the racing of her heart told her they hadn’t really slowed.

  He reached across the table and uncurled her fingers from her cup.

  “You have a beautiful face, Cara West.” He lifted her fingers to his lips. The noises of the café dissolved into the background. All she could hear was the pounding of her pulse in her ears. “A face I could look at for a very, very long time.”

  He lowered her hand and his to the table and kept his covering hers. She felt the cool surface of the table under her palm and the almost blazing sensation of energy where his hand rested on her skin.

  “You kept your cool really well,” he added when she didn’t respond.

  Her heart stuttered. She had no ready answer to explain what she’d been doing in an exclusive club in Manhattan.

  “Not many people could give good directions while holding a gasping child.”

  Relief flooded her. She’d thought he’d been referring to spotting her in New York.

  “Thank you.”

  She slid her hand out from under his and picked up her coffee, took a sip and was grateful that she hadn’t had to tell a blatant lie. Each partial truth now felt like a weight being piled on top of her head, added to a stack of previous weights and slowly sinking her below the surface of what once had been a blissful, peaceful, serene body of water that she’d called her life. The surging waters of the past day’s events were lapping just under her nose, and soon she’d have to hold her breath or she’d drown in the mess she’d made of everything.

  But one thing she couldn’t deny was that she wanted Ryan Rea. Wanted him in a way she’d never have imagined. Wanted him in places in her heart and soul and body that had never before spoken up with their insistent desires.

  But she’d sent him away—would he even be interested in trying again?

  Maybe it was the rush of adrenaline, the aftermath of her horrible concern that they wouldn’t make the ER in time, but whatever the cause, no finer torture could’ve been invented to torment Cara into breaking her silence than Ryan Rea. He tempted her to breach the boundaries she’d erected, to give over to the power that screamed for her to leap into his arms and confess all her secrets.

  If Molly hadn’t come rushing into the hospital café, she just might have leaped.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Three hours later Cara helped Molly and Sam into Molly’s old Toyota. Ryan had had to leave for his game, but he’d waited until the last minute to get the thumbs-up from the emergency room doctor before he would go. Seeing Ryan joking around with Sam, trying to cheer him up before he’d left, shot a web of happiness around Cara’s heart. No, more than that. A feeling of... Jeez, she might as well say it. A feeling of love.

  And Ryan had wisely told Cara to drive Molly home. Molly, though she tried to appear unflappable, was in no shape to drive.

  “I thought we’d get to ride in the Bugatti,” Sam fussed as Molly buckled him into the back seat.

  “You did ride in that car,” Molly said.

  Cara heard the strain in her voice.

  “But I don’t remember it very well.”

  Sam sounded more than tired, he sounded defeated. Cara suspected the mode of transportation had little to do with his glum mood. When the doctor had asked why Sam hadn’t had his inhaler, he’d answered that he hadn’t needed it for two weeks—he’d thought he was “over it,” he’d told the doctor. The doctor had squeezed his arm and told him it might be a few years before that happened.

  On the way out, the doctor had whispered to Molly that Sam might have attacks for the rest of his life and that she and Sam had better plan accordingly.

  “Maybe Mr. Rea will take you out another day,” Molly said as she shut the door and slipped into the front seat beside Cara.

  In the rearview mirror, Cara saw Sam give a wavering smile and curl up against the window.

  Cara headed west, out of town and over the hill that separated Albion Bay from the rest of the world.

  Molly glanced into the back seat. “He’s asleep,” she said in a low voice. “Thank God you and Ryan got him there in time.”

 
; “Ryan did. He drove like a demon. I never thought I’d appreciate a man or a car so much.”

  The praise escaped her before she had a chance to edit it. Her appreciation didn’t escape Molly.

  “He’s sweet on you, Cara. Everybody sees it.”

  “I’m not ready for a man in my life.”

  Molly clucked. “Whoever broke your heart is going to have me to answer to if he ever shows his face in Albion Bay.”

  The good feeling that settled around Cara’s heart as she heard Molly’s almost sisterly support warred with the bad feeling underneath. It wasn’t a guy that forced her to be so cautious—it was her own careful, determined choices that made it impossible for her to have a relationship with Ryan. Letting him in that close, at least right now, just wasn’t an option.

  “What about you, Molly?”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  Cara shook her head and kept her eyes on the road.

  “Chemistry, honey,” Molly said in a tone normally reserved for three-year-olds. “It’s called chemistry. You two could blow a powder keg. You can’t fake that.”

  Chemistry.

  A little word for the sometimes fatal power of attraction. If her mother and father hadn’t had such a strong chemistry between them, they’d have split long ago. Without the bond of such strong chemistry, her mother might have freed herself from the never-ending, play-by-play descriptions of golf games and endless social obligations. Only recently had it occurred to Cara that maybe those interactions that appeared so irritating to an observer were like a secret language between them, a code that only they could decipher and find meaningful.

  “Besides,” Molly added, “Ryan’s too much of a city boy for me.”

  “He grew up on a ranch,” Cara pointed out. “In Texas. East Texas.”

  “You know what I’m talking about.”

  She did, but she was surprised Molly had taken such precise measure of Ryan so quickly. And that her own response had been so easy to read.

  “Sam adores him.”

  “Cara West, you are digging a deeper hole with every word you say. Now I know you like him.”