by Lilian Darcy
“Neither of us knows how to dance. Neither of us is—” She stopped and shook her head, not really sure what she wanted to say, or why she felt like this. She was the emotional one. Why did she suddenly want to rein it in?
Maybe because feeding Maggie today hadn’t exactly been a success, despite the nurses’ encouragement. Maybe because she’d felt relaxed enough to take more notice of what was going on elsewhere in the unit, and had remembered babies who’d crashed at various times over the past few months.
Most of those babies had climbed back up to greater health and strength, but some of them hadn’t. And when the nurses talked about those babies, they most often talked about feelings in their gut, not figures on a chart.
What was her gut saying to her about Maggie?
“Hey,” Lucas said, still holding her, swinging her slowly back and forth in his arms, not quite dancing, but almost. He felt so strong and upright and just right against her body. Familiar. Complex, but she was starting to understand his complexities, now. “I’m not going to let you get some irrational fear thing going here, and ruin our evening.”
“Talk me out of it, then, Lucas. Please?”
“There’s no reason to get superstitious. We love her, and she knows it, and if I never would have believed a couple of months ago that our love has the power to help her, I believe it now. So let’s dance.”
“No…” But her body kept moving in time to his, even while she made the half-hearted protest.
“Then let’s make love,” he whispered. “It’s almost the same thing…”
He held her as if ready for a waltz, dipped her in his arms until she was off-balance, swooped her up close again. He ran his hands down her back and kissed her neck, heating her skin with warm breath, still moving and swaying. “Let me make you forget everything, because you’re seeing stars.”
“Yes…”
The words sung by the live band drifted up to them and rang so true that the music seemed to be playing just for them.
Yes.
She hungered for his touch.
She needed his love.
He slid his hands down her body, pausing at her hips to pull her closer against him, rocking to the slow beat. His mouth travelled lower, touching, claiming, reminding her of their power over each other and their need for each other with every imprint on her skin. Slowly, erotically, like a private tandem strip routine, he shed her clothing and his until they were both naked, every pore and every nerve-ending sensitized, every touch unraveling them a little further.
“So are we dancing, or making love?” he whispered. ‘Tell me, Reba.”
“Both,” she whispered back. “I’ve lost track. You said it—is there really a difference?”
“No. Not with you. All the boundaries disappear when I’m with you.”
Through the window, the song changed, and changed again, but the rhythm and the emotion stayed the same—slow and heartfelt and sensual. He touched her intimately while they danced, kissed her breasts and knelt to wrap her swaying hips with his arms before moving his mouth lower. She gasped and the strength melted from her legs. They both fell to the floor, locked together, throbbing with need.
When he thrust into her, with her body arched high on top of his and her legs straddling his hard male bulk, she was so ready that she cried out at once, over and over, and her pleasure made his own urgency surge in response, bringing them both to a climax within a few short minutes. When they came back to earth and held each other, breathing together, Reba felt shaken to the core and deeply aware of how vulnerable she was, in so many ways.
So many ways.
Maggie’s temperature spiked upward four days later.
“Where’s Lucas? Is he here?” Reba said, not caring how urgent she sounded.
“No, he’s not, honey,” Angela answered, frowning, against the usual background of morning NICU noise and activity. Sinks ran with water. Monitor alarms went off. Ventilators pulled and pushed whooshes of air. “He left around the same time as usual. Eight o’clock, an hour after I came on. He didn’t come back to the hotel to have breakfast with you?”
The nurses were thoroughly on top of Reba’s and Lucas’s private routine, by this time. Angela looked at her watch and frowned again. It was ten-thirty, now—a good hour later than Reba usually came in.
Lucas hadn’t showed up at their suite after his nightly vigil. Reba had waited, starting to sweat as the clock ticked over toward eight-thirty. He’d usually arrived by this time. She had phoned the unit and spoken to one of the doctor’s, who’d told her that Maggie’s condition hadn’t changed during the night.
She wasn’t getting worse, after thirty-six hours under this latest threat to her health, but she wasn’t getting better, either.
Another major infection had taken hold, Dr. Charleson had concluded. They’d taken blood and urine samples for testing. They’d begun to zap her with antibiotics. They’d put her back onto levels of treatment that Reba and Lucas had stupidly—dangerously—unforgivably—assumed were done and gone.
Those treatments were for other babies, now, not theirs. They were for other parents to suffer over. Reba and Lucas and Maggie had been through it already. They’d been through so much. More than enough. Hadn’t they had their full share?
So where was he?
If he wasn’t at the hotel, why wasn’t he here?
“How is she?” Reba asked, turning to bend close to Maggie.
She couldn’t really see her. Her eyes were too blurred with panicky tears. Five and a half days ago, she and Lucas had celebrated Maggie’s first real feed with that crazy dancing in each other’s arms, and lovemaking that had swept her to the heights, cradled her in bliss and floated her back to earth. Now they were plunged into fear and torment again.
If Reba herself had managed to grab a couple of hours of fractured sleep over the past two nights during the quiet of the early hours, she didn’t think Lucas had even tried during his daytime breaks. On top of everything else, he must be on the point of collapse.
“She’s about the same,” Angela reported reluctantly. “I couldn’t say she’s turned a corner, yet.”
“But she’s not getting worse?”
“She goes up and down. The medication isn’t bringing her temperature down quite as far as we want.” She took a careful breath. “Dr. Charleson is considering a lumbar puncture.”
And Reba had been around the NICU for over two months now. She knew this was bad, and she knew why. “Meningitis?” She’d seen another family going through it—two anguished parents and their very ill baby—and they’d gotten a positive result on the test. That little girl was still struggling for life.
Her throat squeezed tight shut. “Does Lucas know about this?”
“Yes, Dr. Charleson discussed it with him first thing this morning.”
“Wh-when will Dr. Charleson make the decision? When will he do it?”
“He’s going to give her another few hours to start responding to the medication.”
“Why doesn’t he do it now? What if he leaves it too late?”
Angela’s reply was so unlike her normal clear responses that Reba couldn’t even make sense of it at first, then she understood.
“You mean, even if it is meningitis, you’re already doing pretty much all you can?”
Again, Angela’s answer was just a meaningless jumble of sounds, with a couple of words standing out. Something about “heroic measures,” but Reba knew that Maggie was the only heroic one here right now.
She endured an agonizing two hours, watching her feverish, struggling baby—wasn’t she looking just a little bit better, by the end of it?—but Lucas still didn’t show. Finally she managed to tear herself away. Calling their hotel suite, she got the ringing tone then the hotel’s message service inviting her to speak after the tone. The front desk told her, a minute later, that he hadn’t left a written message.
Did she know how to dial in to her suite’s voice mail to retrieve any messages t
here?
No, she didn’t.
Laboriously, she noted the desk clerk’s instructions and managed to press the right buttons to check, but there was nothing.
How could this be happening?
In desperation, she checked the cafeteria, the parents’ room and even hammered on a couple of hospital men’s room doors, but he wasn’t anywhere. She would have called his mother in Beverly Hills, only she didn’t want to scare Kate any more than the news of Maggie’s fresh infection had already scared her yesterday.
She did call the ranch, but the hands were all hard at work and no one picked up.
Crazy to call, anyhow. Why on earth would Lucas be there?
Back at Maggie’s isolette, Phil Charleson studied the baby and her chart, then looked up when he saw her coming. His eyes seemed clouded with thought. Or fatigue. His wife was right. He never seemed to go home.
“Have you—” Her voice dried up completely and she had to clear her throat and gulp the water Angela handed her before she could speak again. “Have you decided on the lumbar puncture yet, Dr. Charleson?”
“Not going to do it,” he said decisively. Then he smiled. “She’s turned the corner on this, just over the past couple of hours. Her symptoms didn’t fit with meningitis from the beginning, but then she was slow to respond to treatment and there was a point where I had some doubts. Occasionally meningitis presents in an atypical way. Not this time, I’m happy to say.”
Reba’s relief washed over her so strongly that she had to sit down or she would have simply collapsed. “That’s— Oh, I’m so—” No one needed her to complete a coherent sentence at this point, so she gave up and concentrated on simply remembering to breathe.
But Lucas still wasn’t here.
And Maggie was still sick.
“We’re not going to let her drop the ball, Reba,” Angela said. “We’re going to support her all the way. She should beat this with antibiotics. She’s stronger than she was, even a couple of weeks ago.”
Lucas didn’t have the same confidence; was that why he wasn’t here?
“I’m going to go back to the hotel,” Reba said.
She’d had to take a cab to the hospital this morning, because Lucas had the SUV. Somewhere, he had it. Where?
Now she took another cab back again, but their suite was still empty and silent. The light on the telephone blinked, however, and when she played the message, she heard his voice, distorted with emotion and almost drowned by background noise.
She could only make out one part of what he said.
“I need some space.”
That was it.
Space.
How much? Where had he gone to find it? And did he ever plan on coming back?
She left a written message for him on the desk, and an angry verbal one on their voice mail, in case he called in to check.
“Don’t do this. I couldn’t hear all of your message. I don’t know where you are. I don’t know anything. Maggie is still sick. They’re not doing a lumbar puncture. It’s not meningitis. But she’s still sick and—” And I just don’t want to go through this alone. She couldn’t say it, because she was alone, and she might have to get used to it. “No, never mind,” she finished.
On her way out, the attendant at the concierge desk spotted her and called her over. He had the keys to the SUV in his hands. “Someone just delivered these for you, Miss Grant. I was about to leave a message on your voice mail.”
“Delivered the keys?”
“And the car. Mr. Halliday wanted it driven back here from the airport.”
“From the airport,” Reba echoed. “Do you—do you have any further information than that?”
“I’m sorry, I don’t. Is there a problem?”
A problem? Just one?
How much time do you have to listen, and where shall I start?
Hiding her turmoil, she answered, “No, it’s fine. Thanks.” She took the keys, put them in her purse, and digested the meager amount of new information. He’d gone to the airport. That could only mean he’d left Denver.
When she got back to the hospital, Carla was there.
“You pick the best days!” she told her friend shakily, then seeing Carla’s alarmed expression, she added at once, “No, I’m not going to yell at you. I need you too much.”
“Where’s Lucas?”
She sketched out what she knew, and Carla didn’t know what to say. “He wouldn’t just—”
“Go back to New York? He might. He probably has. Why not? We’re both cracking up, Carla. This latest thing with Maggie, just when we thought she was—” hard to even say the word without mocking their foolish innocence “—safe. I don’t know what he’d do, any more. I don’t know what he feels, if he could disappear like this.”
“Feels about you?”
“Feels about anything.”
“And how do you feel?”
“Don’t ask me that now.”
Because I love him.
With all the differences between us, all the ways we’ve misunderstood each other, and even though he isn’t here, I love him. I’m scared for him, too scared to be angry, and I’m angry anyhow, but I’m scared about what might be happening inside him, right now, and it hurts too much to put any of the whole mess into words.
“So let’s go get some lunch,” Carla said. “You’re a mother. You have to eat. What do you want?”
“Well, some shredded cardboard might be nice.”
“Yes. Good choice. Yum.”
“That’s all anything is going to taste like.”
But in the end it wasn’t so bad. She chose pasta because it was easiest to chew, and Carla caught her up on news from Biggins, including the fact that Gordie McConnell’s ranch had been sold.
“Do you know who bought it?”
“Some outfit with a corporate name, apparently. The deal’s not finalized yet.”
“Gordie’s still living there?”
“Honey, you haven’t heard why it was on the market, have you?” Carla said, reaching across the table to lay a hand on hers.
“No.”
“It only came out once we heard that the place had sold. He racked up huge debts trading shares on the Internet, and couldn’t get out from under. It started out as legitimate trading, but it turned into a gambling problem in the end. He was throwing money into all these dubious concerns, trying to recoup his losses.” She stopped and shook her head. “Bad decisions, all the way. He’s on someone’s spread up north, now, as foreman. Might not have happened if he’d gotten on with his life properly, instead of hanging after you.”
“Oh, my fault?”
“Not your fault. His fault. For not knowing when you meant what you said.”
“Maybe that isn’t his fault.” Reba shook her head helplessly. “Maybe it’s mine.”
“Hey…”
“I always mean what I say. I say what’s in my heart. But sometimes it changes. Am I inconsistent, or something? You know, blowing hot and cold. Maybe Gordie had every right to think I’d come round, because when I said no, it was just another mood.”
“No, Reba. That’s not what you’re like. You’re pretty passionate, sometimes, but—”
“Lucas and I talk about the roller coaster. With Maggie. The heart-in-your-mouth ups and downs that are pulling us to pieces. Did I do that to Gordie?”
“No, Reba! This is his problem, not yours.”
“Do I do it to Lucas? Have I done it to him? Is that why—?”
“No. That’s not why he’s disappeared. I can’t believe that, and you mustn’t, either. You have enough you’re taking on without taking on that responsibility as well. Think about what counts. What counts for you right now, Reba?”
“Maggie and Lucas. That’s all, Carla. Really that’s all, right now. Maggie and Lucas.”
“You don’t think he’s just walked out of your life, do you, and that he’s not coming back? Would he do that? Think. Think about the people who really count—and you’r
e right, that’s Maggie and Lucas, it’s not Gordie. Maggie and Lucas, Reba. You know him pretty well now. Maybe you can work it out.”
“Maggie…” Reba put her fork down in her empty plate. “I’m going back to sit with her, again.”
“I’m going to make sure you get there in one piece.”
“I still have legs, Carla, and I know the way, by this time.”
“Legs look a little shaky today, hon.”
“Today? They’ve been shaky for two months!”
“And I’ll stay overnight here if you want. I can call Chris.”
Reba hugged her. “That’s so good of you. I’m not going to let you do it. But just the fact that you offered… You have your little guys, Carla. Go home and hug them for me, and love them, and be so happy that they’re strong.”
“You’re strong, too,” Carla answered. “You can get through this.”
Chapter Fourteen
In his first-class airplane seat on the flight to Hawaii, Lucas stretched, lay back and appreciated the comfort of the leather upholstery and the taste of the fine wine. A flight attendant offered a selection of gourmet European cheeses and when he nodded and smiled, she set the plate on a starched linen napkin on the wide tray in front of him. A pretty little arrangement of dewy purple grapes and lush red strawberries complemented the paler tones of the cheese.
Yes, this felt good.
It did.
This was his real life again, at last. Luxury and deference. Success and control. His laptop in its customized case, ready for when he wanted to work. Personal screen and headset, and a program of movies and TV shows, music and video games, so he could shut out the world and tune in to whatever electronic escape he chose.
He’d left a voice mail message for Reba from the airport, he’d arranged for the SUV to be delivered to the hotel, where she had everything else she needed on tap, and the way he felt right now, the message and the vehicle acquitted him of any further obligation and responsibility.
Because what good did it do, to be with the people you cared about? To take responsibility for them? What the hell good did it do? What good did it do to care about them in the first place? At all? What garbage had he told Reba, less than a week ago, about their love for their baby and its power to help her?