by CP Smith
Anna’s eyes rounded at his tone, then softened with awareness. He could feel her question across the cab, felt the tension rise inside his SUV, so he turned his head to avoid her gaze. He knew she’d see the guilt written across his face, just like he did daily in the mirror, and he didn’t want her pity.
“I think those children are the most special of all,” she whispered.
His head whipped around, and he scowled at her, then bit out each word as if it tasted foul. “You think a child being ripped from his family makes him special?”
She swallowed hard at his outburst, then nodded, not backing down from her belief. “I think,” she began nervously, “that God loves those children so much that He can’t be without them. I think He gives them to parents who need that kind of blessing in their life, but then calls them home because their precious light is too good for this world.”
Four years he’d looked for an explanation that proved God wasn’t cruel and unfeeling. Or worse, didn’t exist at all. And with a few short sentences, this half-pint of a woman had given him hope again.
The knot that had formed in Luke’s chest the day his nephew died eased a bit, and he took a full breath. One he hadn’t taken since that excruciating day. He wanted to believe Anna; he was so fucking tired of hating God.
When he didn’t reply, she reached across the cab and touched his arm. “He wanted to protect him from evil, Luke, not hurt you.”
Luke’s hand shot out and grabbed Anna by the neck, pulling her across the seat until she was right in front of him. He didn’t crush his mouth to hers like he had earlier; instead, he searched her eyes, looking deeply for the truth of her statement. Wanting more than anything to trust her explanation.
She wasn’t lying, that much was certain. He could see in their cornflower-blue depths that she believed what she was saying. The knot in his chest loosened further, and he closed his eyes, leaning his forehead against hers. Four years of anger eased slowly as her words sank into that dark pit of despair that was his constant companion.
“Was he your son?” she whispered, raising her hand to stroke his cheek.
“Nephew,” he choked out. “My sister’s son.”
“What was his name?”
It stuck in his throat for a moment, then he answered. “Matthew Lucas Knight.”
“Well, that tells me all I need to know about you, then,” she answered with conviction.
He pulled back at her reply, his brows creasing across his forehead. “How so?”
“A child that special would have to have an amazing mother. One who would want to name her son after someone she respected. She wanted Matthew to be like you.”
Luke sucked air into his lungs to rein in his control, but it was no use. His emotions were running hard and fast. Swirling like the storm around them. Years of self-inflicted punishment had left him bitter and cold, but thanks to Anna, warmth surrounded him for the first time since that awful day.
Without caring who could see them, he took her mouth roughly, overcome with emotions and gratitude that Anna had waltzed into his life. She moaned low in her throat as he dominated her mouth, and his body reacted instantly to the husky sound. He crushed her further into his chest, ignoring everyone who walked past his vehicle as they headed inside to pay for their gas, but the sound of her cell phone ringing brought an abrupt halt to the kiss and both of them back to reality. Luke grabbed it from the floor where it had landed and answered instead of handing it to Anna. If it was bad news, he wanted to be the one to break it to her.
“This is Luke,” he muttered into the phone. “Anna is with me.”
There was a pause before a man answered, “He’s out of surgery. They said it went as well as could be expected. They removed his spleen and set his leg. He’s also got a chest tube for his collapsed lung. Doctor said the next twenty-four hours would be crucial.”
Luke exhaled in relief and looked at Anna. “He’s alive and out of surgery. If he makes it through the next twenty-four hours, he’ll survive.”
Hope burned brightly in her blue eyes, then the tears began again.
“We’ll be there in an hour and a half,” Luke advised, then hung up and pulled Anna back into his arms, listening quietly as she cried softly into his chest.
We arrived at Mercy Hospital as the snow began to fall again. The quiet surrounding us as Luke reached out his hand for mine didn’t match my beating heart. The mixture of emotions I was feeling left my head spinning. I was worried about my brother, terrified he wouldn’t survive. Yet, at the same time, I was hopeful that what was happening between Luke and I was the beginning of something real. I also felt guilt about my brother’s condition, and ashamed that a part of me was excited about Luke, while his life hung in the balance.
My breath caught as I slid my hand into Luke’s and his fingers curled around mine. There was so much strength in his touch; it was addictive and comforting. A woman could easily relinquish control to a man as strong as Luke if she wasn’t careful.
The halls were quiet as we made our way to the bank of elevators; the sound of my boots echoing down the deserted hall reminded me of a prisoner being led to their execution. When the elevator opened, I sucked in a breath and then let it out slowly, trying to ease my worries before I came apart at the seams.
Gregg will be all right, I kept repeating in a mantra. He is too full of life to die.
The moment the doors closed, shielding us from the world, Luke turned me into his body and locked his arms around me. “Shhh.” He mumbled, “It’ll be okay.”
My brows pulled together and I looked up at him. His face was blurry, so I blinked. Wetness coated my face with slow droplets of tears. I’d been crying and hadn’t realized it.
“What if he dies?” I asked in a small voice, feeling like a child lost to an uncertain world. The very notion that Gregg might die left me paralyzed with fear.
“Don’t go there,” he soothed calmly. “Worrying never changes the outcome, and you’ll make yourself sick.”
The elevator doors opened to the ICU, but I didn’t move. “Are you leaving now?” I prayed desperately he’d say no. I knew it was selfish to ask him to stay, but I needed his strength to get through the next twenty-four hours.
Luke’s face registered shock at my question. “I’m not going anywhere,” he vowed. “I called in a favor, so my friend’s business is covered. I’m here as long as you need me.” I buried my face into his chest to keep from crying with relief.
Someone cleared their throat as we stood there, so I turned my head. Darryl was holding the doors open. He was a big man with sandy brown hair and olive-green eyes. He played keyboards for The Wranglers when he wasn’t playing bouncer, which was almost nightly, since their music attracted rough and tough cowboys looking to unwind.
He barely had a scratch on him, which amazed me. Then I remembered how many times I’d read accounts of accidents where one person died and the other walked away without a single injury.
His eyes narrowed on Luke as I broke from his embrace. I straightened my shoulders as I exited the elevator, and carefully gave him what I hoped was a sisterly hug. I was always careful not to act in a way that would lead him on. Of course, that didn’t stop him from burying his face into my hair as he whispered, “How’s my favorite girl?”
“Worried sick,” I returned, then stepped back unexpectedly into a solid wall of chest. “How soon can I see him?” I asked, then leaned into Luke’s warmth.
“Not for another hour.” His eyes shot to Luke then, whose hands had come up and rested on my shoulders. “Who the hell are you?”
I opened my mouth to answer Darryl, but Luke beat me to it. “Luke Knight. Who you are?”
“The man on the phone?” Darryl asked for confirmation, ignoring Luke’s question.
Luke jerked his chin up in a nonverbal reply.
“You a new friend of Anna’s?” Darryl questioned suspiciously, with just a hint of aggression.
“More than a friend,” Luke
corrected.
I should have moved away, but I stayed glued to my spot, rolling my eyes at the testosterone filling the room.
Men were a mystery to me. For some reason they thought who ever thumped his chest and growled the loudest won the woman.
It was no match in my opinion. Even though Darryl was a bruiser and probably outweighed Luke by thirty pounds, my money would still be on Luke. He looked like he used his body daily for a living. There wasn’t an ounce of fat on him that I could see, so he’d be quick in a fight and wouldn’t tire easily. Not that I thought they would come to blows, but it gave me something to think about rather than worrying about my brother for the next hour.
“How much more?” Darryl continued his interrogation.
I answered then. Because it was none of his business. “The kind of friend who doesn’t make it any of your concern, Darryl. Just drop it.”
Luke’s arm circled my shoulders, and he pulled me further into his body.
Darryl watched the move with narrowed eyes. He caught himself when he realized he was staring, and chuckled softly, shrugging as if it was no big deal. “Just doing Gregg’s job while he’s incapacitated.”
He was lying. I could feel it. But I let him have that. He knew there would never be anything between us, but clearly it didn’t stop him from playing my protector.
“I’ve got her,” Luke mumbled low. “You don’t need to worry on Gregg’s account.”
Translation: Back off. She’s mine.
My heart skipped a beat, reacting to Luke’s possessiveness, and I leaned my weight further against his body. It had been a long time since I had anyone to lean on other than my brother.
I realized as I relaxed against Luke’s chest that in the time they’d been having their showdown, the knot that had been slowly choking me eased slightly for a few blessed seconds.
“Thank you,” I said to both of them when I realized what they’d done.
“For what?” Darryl questioned.
“For taking my mind off Gregg, if only for a moment or two.”
“How’d we do that?”
I raised my hand and motioned between them. “The whole ‘lifting your leg to mark your territory’ routine.”
Luke chuckled behind me, the rumble in his chest vibrating through my body. But the calm I’d found in his arms was short-lived, because right then an urgent voice came across the intercom, stating, “Code blue. ICU room 12.”
When Darryl shouted, “Fuck, that’s Gregg!” I bolted toward the ICU and past the nurses’ station, ignoring them as they called out after me. When I reached room 12, I came to a screeching halt, watching in horror as a doctor placed a defibrillator on Gregg’s chest.
Nine
The whispered sound of Anna’s voice broke through the silence of the hospital chapel. Luke sat quietly in a pew, keeping his eyes trained on Anna as she lit a candle for her brother. She was praying with everything she had that God would spare his life after his heart had stopped briefly a few hours before.
A day ago, he might have scoffed at the idea that God was listening, but then Anna walked into his life, and now he wasn’t sure. The way she reached inside and touched his hardened heart, making him come alive for the first time in years, felt more like divine intervention than fate.
As he watched Anna, he realized he was in a chapel much like the one he’d sat in more than four years ago when he himself begged for Matthew’s life. Had he come full circle? Was God finally answering him? And if so, what was the message?
Anna turned her tear-soaked eyes in his direction, and he couldn’t help but notice the dark circles underneath. It was closing in on ten, and she needed sleep.
His growing need to protect her in every way had him standing and holding out his hand to her. “Let’s get you to a hotel so you can rest.”
“I can’t leave. What if something happens while I’m gone?” Her eyes looked panicked as she tugged on her coat.
“Anna, they only let you in for ten minutes every two hours, and visiting hours don’t start again until ten a.m. There’s a Marriot within walking distance of the front of the hospital. We can leave your cell number with the nurses, and they’ll call you if his condition changes.”
She bit her bottom lip, uncertain, looking younger and more fragile than he’d seen her.
Christ, she’s killing me.
“Baby, look at me.” She raised her head but looked at his shoulder. “Hey,” he said a little louder until her eyes met his. “You won’t be any good to him if you’re exhausted, and right now, you’re running on fumes. Take my hand and let me care of you.” She hesitated for a moment, then nodded and reached out to take his hand.
He led her back to the ICU so she could check on her brother one last time before leaving. The nurses took pity on her, since it was after visiting hours, and allowed her to visit Gregg. Luke had a bad feeling it was because they didn’t think he’d last through the night after his heart had stopped.
He stood outside the room and listened as she held her brother’s hand.
“I need you to wake up, Gregg,” she said very sternly as tears fell. “You’re not a quitter. You didn’t quit fighting when you were born addicted to drugs. You didn’t quit fighting when you had trouble learning to read. And you certainly didn’t quit fighting when Jenny Stevens refused to go out with you our junior year.”
Luke’s eyes turned to the heart monitor as it began to beep a little faster. If he didn’t know better, he’d swear Gregg could hear Anna talking.
“You owe me for leaving town during my first Christmas back home. So suck it up and open your eyes.”
The monitor beeped faster yet again, and Anna looked at it, then back at Luke. He could see the hope in her eyes, so he nodded, smiling at her. She continued in that vein, browbeating him to wake up, until a nurse told them it was time to leave.
While she spoke with the nurses’ station, letting them know where she would be, he put in a call to the Marriot. Thankfully, they had a room available. He didn’t ask if they had two. He had no intention of being more than a few feet away from her until Gregg’s survival was guaranteed. She could argue with him if she wanted, but it would do no good. He was her shadow for the duration.
Her brother’s friend Darryl was waiting for her to finish. The man didn’t hide his feelings for Anna—or his aggressive nature toward Luke, for that matter. It was written in every line of his body when she was in the room, so he kept a close eye on him. When the big man approached her after she was through speaking with the nurse, pulling her to an alcove, away from prying eyes, Luke pushed off the wall he’d been leaning against and headed in their direction.
“You can send him home, Anna. I’ll take you back to Tulsa,” Darryl mumbled, raising a hand to touch her hair.
Anna’s head jerked to the side to avoid being touched, and Luke quickened his pace.
“I appreciate all you’ve done for Gregg,” Anna said in a stilted voice, “but I’ll be fine. Maybe you should head back to St. Louis.”
“I’m not leaving you alone with this guy,” Darryl bit out, his voice carrying across the room. “I knew his name sounded familiar. It’s the guy Gregg hit a few days ago. Jesus Christ, Anna, you don’t know this asshole from Adam. What the fuck are you doing with him? And why the hell are his hands all over you?”
Anna’s face blanched at his tone just as Luke arrived. “You need to calm yourself,” Luke growled.
“And you need to get in your vehicle and leave her the hell alone, or I’ll make you.”
Anna gasped. “Leave,” she bit out. “Leave and don’t come back.”
Luke stepped in front her, putting himself between Anna and Darryl. “You heard the lady.”
He could feel Anna’s hands clutching the back of his shirt, and they were trembling.
“You think you can come between her and me?” Darryl asked in a voice full of rage.
It was neither the time nor the place for a confrontation, so Luke raised his ha
nds in a cease-fire, ready to step back to keep the peace in the ICU. But Darryl saw the move as a potential assault, and lunged at Luke, grabbing his collar. He could tell by the man’s eyes that he was on the edge. Someone would get hurt if Luke didn’t calm the situation, but he needed Anna safe first.
“Anna, get to the nurses’ station,” Luke ordered before Darryl lost it completely. She didn’t hesitate to listen, darting past them in a wide arc to keep out of the crazed man’s reach.
Darryl kept hold of Luke’s collar, ignoring the hushed voices of the other visitors in the waiting room.
“You need to leave!” Darryl thundered, his control slipping further.
“I’m here as long as Anna wants me.”
The color in Darryl’s face rose to a pale shade of lethal, and Luke braced. He’d take the man down if he had to, but he’d rather no shots were fired, not with Gregg twenty feet away fighting for his life.
Then, just as quickly as the man erupted, his demeanor changed, swinging from hostile to clam, like a man on drugs. He shoved Luke back, mumbling, “You’re not worth it.” But it wasn’t in time to avoid hospital security from observing the aggression. They had Darryl strong-armed within moments, asking Luke, “Do you want to press charges?”
Luke shook his head. “Just make sure he leaves and doesn’t come back.”
Anna watched from a distance as they slapped cuffs on Darryl, then she moved to Luke’s side as hospital security took him to the service elevators and disappeared. Once they were gone, she looked over at Luke with an expression of pure indignation. “And he wonders why I won’t go out with him?”
Luke couldn’t help himself. He threw his head back and laughed.
The stillness of the night wrapped around them as they made their way across the hospital parking lot. The air was crisp, the hint of snow threatening. Luke kept an eye out for Darryl as they passed a pine tree, its limbs heavy with snow. Anna paused at the tree and touched the branches.