by Lilian Darcy
Daniel laughed again.
Ruefully.
He thought about everything they’d talked about before that kiss. Hours ago. He thought about her long, spilling confession. He thought about his own very brief yet far more damning betrayal. “Guilt more than grief.” Becky didn’t deserve to have anyone know that she’d gone to her grave insufficiently mourned by her own husband.
He sensed Lauren’s hurt, but knew he wasn’t going to rethink this.
“Because, sweetheart,” he said, “when you wake up in a hospital bed tomorrow morning, you’re going to be real sorry about a lot of the things you said to me tonight.”
Jeez Louise, that sounded harsh. It was cowardly, too. Should he have admitted to his own regret as well?
To soften his words, he kissed the bit of her that his mouth could currently reach. It was her temple, where the skin was fine and where he could feel the downy edge of her hairline. He felt her move her head a little, and her answering kiss landed awkwardly on his jaw. He was so tempted…so tempted…to tilt his face down in search, once again, of something softer for his mouth.
He resisted it, and tried again. The words were better this time. Slower, more careful and considered. More honest, too. “People often do regret it, when they’ve spilled their soul to the wrong person. It can do damage. I’m sorry…about a couple of things I said to you tonight, too.”
One thing. Maybe she’d forgotten it. He hoped she had. He waited.
Don’t bring it up again. Don’t talk about it.
“I won’t be sorry,” she said. “I needed to say all that to someone. About the baby, and all. I’ve been bottling it up inside me for a long time.”
“About the baby, yes. Not the rest of it, honey.”
“Tell me who you are.”
“No, because I don’t want tonight to be any worse for you—or for me—than it has to be, okay? I mean that. And when we get out of this, don’t be surprised if I don’t stick around.”
“How could you not stick around? There will be paramedics and the rescue crew. They’re going to want to know if you’re hurt.”
“I think you’re the one who’s hurt, sweetheart.”
Ah, shoot! What was wrong with him? He hadn’t wanted to tell her that! His mouth needed a safety catch on it tonight.
But it turned out she already knew. “You mean my leg?” she said, quite calm. “How could you tell?”
“I could feel something warm soaking into my jeans and getting sticky on my calf. I knew it had to be blood, and I didn’t think it was mine. If you knew, too, why didn’t you say anything?”
“No sense in getting you concerned,” she answered. It was a quiet, matter-of-fact piece of courage that he had to admire. This woman was no lightweight socialite, living rich and easy on her father’s success. It was common knowledge that John Van Shuyler intended to hand control of the family corporation over to her within the next five years. She would handle it well.
“It went numb pretty fast,” she went on. “And there was nothing you could do. Now tell me your name.”
“No. Let’s talk about other stuff.”
“Like what?”
“What’s your favorite food?”
He felt her sigh. “Okay, we’ll do it your way. My favorite food is split pea and ham soup, with lots of celery and carrot. My mother—she died about fifteen years ago—she used to make it on winter evenings, with hot biscuits on the side.”
“I could do with something like that right now.”
“Tell me yours.”
“Favorite food? Anything that can’t be mushed up and fed to a toddler!”
“That’s perverse.”
“No, because I’ve spent the last year with baby mush all over my clothes.”
“I guess that makes sense.”
“My real, serious favorite food is probably New York pizza, with mushrooms and onion, fresh out of the box.”
Again, it seemed like hours that they lay talking like this. Favorite movie. Favorite season. Favorite moment in sport. Sometimes they agreed and sometimes they didn’t, but it was the sharing and communication that mattered. Talking about things that existed in the light and air and warmth of the rest of the world made them keep on believing that the rest of the world was still out there. For both of them, it was necessary.
They heard more grinding, muffled shouting, silence. Then, after a long time, the faintest wash of pale light filtered into their vision, as if the far end of the duct cavity had been uncovered, and someone was shining a flashlight beam along it, somewhere beyond the bend. Lock yelled again, and this time someone heard.
“We’re here, we’re coming after you, buddy!” Oh, sweet life, the relief of hearing that human voice, a thin thread of connection to the rest of the world.
“There’s two of us,” he yelled back. “Lauren’s hurt her leg.”
They got questions and reassurance. Someone must have been assigned to them to keep up their morale, because it was always the same voice, belonging to a man named Kyle. Daniel answered, “Lock,” when Kyle asked him his name. He described their position, and what he assumed had kept them safe—the bridge over this cavity, made by those sheets of platform.
“It won’t be much longer,” Kyle’s faint voice promised them. “While you’re waiting we’re going to send you some warm air, okay?” A few moments later, Daniel began to feel the thin brushstrokes of air grow tepid and then warm.
“Watch the broken platform over our legs,” he warned Kyle. “It’s angled down, I think. Don’t…uh…pull our legs out along with it.”
He was pretty sure that a piece of the splintered wood was speared into Lauren’s lower leg, but didn’t want to spell that out too graphically in case he frightened her. Dear Lord, his need to protect her was surging in him like a physical force. To protect her from fear and pain and tragedy, and not just for tonight.
Oh, jeez, I don’t need this, and she doesn’t need me.
“We’re starting the machinery again,” Kyle warned. “I’m not going to be able to hear you. We’ll take a break every few minutes to see how you’re doing.”
“Okay,” Daniel yelled back. The machinery noise started up again, and above its volume he said to Lauren urgently, as if he might not have another chance, “Don’t marry Ben. If it feels so wrong, don’t do it. You won’t be helping the baby that way. You can cancel the wedding, no matter how big and complicated it is. It doesn’t matter about that.”
He didn’t know why he felt the need to speak. It was none of his business, not something he wanted to get involved in. Arrogant and presumptuous, wasn’t it, to think he knew her heart like that? Why should he care that she was setting herself up for a miserable life? It was her choice.
None of which explained his emphatic repetition. “You have to cancel it. Don’t marry him.”
She didn’t answer at first, and he felt her tension.
“You can’t tell me something like that,” she finally said.
“Why not?”
“It’s not fair.”
“After all the things you’ve told me about you and him tonight?”
“It’s not fair,” she repeated, and her voice broke a little. “I don’t want to hear it. Not now, with the baby. I have to—I want to marry him. It’s all slotted into place.”
“Okay…okay.”
She had started to shake again. Instinctively, he began to kiss her forehead and her hair, but she angled her head back.
“Please tell me who you are.”
“No. No, Lauren.”
“I can track you down.” It was a threat, containing an odd mix of confidence and vulnerability.
Of course she could track him down, Daniel thought. With ease, since he was under contract to her father’s corporation. She’d probably know his name as soon as she heard it. He felt the knowledge like a too-familiar emotional burden and fought it off, the way he should have been fighting off her effect on him all along.
“Would you?�
�� he asked bluntly. “Why would you, if you knew I didn’t want to see you again?”
He felt her stomach muscles tense as if blocking a punch in the gut, but her voice stayed steady. “I would, because I’m not going to let you make my emotional decisions for me, Lock. I’m the one who decides whether there’s any regret about what I’ve said.”
“And you want to decide the hard way, right?” He made it as brutal as he could. For her sake, for Becky’s sake, for his boys, who didn’t need people to know that he’d never truly loved their mother, and for himself. “By looking into my face and waiting to see if it feels like I’ve slapped you?”
Her breath hissed into her lungs. “Do you think I’m a coward, or something?”
“A coward?” He laughed. “After tonight?”
“Then stop trying to protect me from something I don’t need protection from, and tell me your name!”
“No.”
She was silent for a full minute before she said, “This isn’t just about me, is it, Lock? I should have seen that before. You mentioned something earlier.”
“I have other reasons,” he admitted. Reluctance deepened his voice to a growl.
“Okay…” she said slowly. “Okay.”
The next thing he knew, she had tilted her face to his once more and was ravaging his mouth with her sweet lips.
He kissed her back. Hell, he couldn’t help it! She was so close. His arm lay against her lower stomach, and her hand rested on his shoulder. Her breasts were like two small, warm animals nestled into his chest. His fingers ached to stroke them through her blouse and bra—or maybe not through those silky fabrics; he knew her skin would feel even softer—to find out if they were as firm and full and giving as he imagined.
Instead, her mouth would have to do. Not exactly a deprivation, when it was so warm and sensitive.
Seconds later, there was a moist sound and a tiny sigh, which he felt on his upper lip, as she took her mouth away. “You already know who I am,” she said. “That’s the real problem, isn’t it? I should have realized you would, if you were visiting the site. I wasn’t thinking straight. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Why did you kiss me again?”
“Answer my question first.”
He hesitated. “I was protecting you.”
Was that the most important thing? Or was it the guilt? His guilt.
Guilt more than grief.
“Protecting me,” Lauren echoed. “Just that?”
“Protecting myself,” he admitted.
“Because you feel guilty that you didn’t grieve for your wife.”
“Yeah. Wouldn’t you?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never been in that situation.”
“Trust me, there’s guilt.”
His eyes stung and he felt a terrible urge to tell her more, to babble it all out as if there was never going to be another chance in his whole life. Refusing to give in to it, he clamped his mouth shut so hard that he tasted blood on his lip.
Why had he felt this need to open up to a stranger, when he’d never acknowledged it to anyone else? Not to his mother, his older sister or his best friend. Mom still tiptoed around him as if his heart was buried in Becky’s grave. He’d never admitted to Mom that he’d married Becky purely as a matter of honor, and he never would. It was a code of belief he’d inherited from his father. Real heroism lies not only in doing the right thing but in keeping quiet about it afterward.
There was more to it than that, however. He didn’t want to admit to Mom how misguided he’d been to get involved with his office manager in the first place.
Hell, he’d known Becky was attracted to him from the beginning. He’d had that from the opposite sex since he was fifteen. That was when he’d shot up over six feet, his acne had cleared up, his physique had filled out and his sister Helen’s giggling sixteen-year-old friends, with their thin veneer of maturity and sexuality, had suddenly found it impossible to behave naturally anywhere within fifty yards of him.
He hadn’t understood it at fifteen, he’d blushed fire red every time, and he’d hated it. Even a couple of years later, when he understood it a whole lot better, he’d still hated it.
Since those teen years, he’d never been able to deal with women who were too blatantly interested. It turned him right off. Becky could have written the book on that kind of behavior and he hadn’t responded to it at all.
Until Dad died.
Now, that was grief.
And Becky had been so…thoughtful, gentle, careful. She’d stopped her relentless flirting. She’d stopped engaging in transparent maneuvers to get him alone after everyone else had left for the day. Instead, she’d poured all her substantial energy and drive into genuinely anticipating his needs.
She’d gotten a little tipsy and tearful at a company party—he’d found it cute and out of character—and he’d had to drive her home and tuck her into bed. How he regretted what had happened next! Within a month, there had been a “mistake” and she was pregnant, just when he’d realized that the word mistake applied most of all to their whole relationship.
Guilt more than grief. He should have stuck to his initial instincts about Becky Gordon. He shouldn’t have gone to bed with her. He shouldn’t have let Dad’s death cloud his judgment and make him so vulnerable…
“So you lied to me,” Lauren finally said.
“I didn’t.”
“No?”
“I never lied. I just didn’t tell you what I knew. About who you were.”
“Or your full name.”
“Or my name,” he agreed. “Why did you kiss me again?”
“Because I have no regrets, and I wanted to prove it. That excuse is off the table, Lock. We’re sticking to what’s left.”
He sighed. He wanted to tell her that things would look very different in the morning, in her nice bright private hospital room.
You’ll marry Ben, and you’ll be miserable from day one. You’ll watch an expensive divorce coming at you like a runaway train, and you’ll hate me for hearing the truth from your own lips when you weren’t prepared to listen to it yourself.
“What’s your name?” she repeated softly.
“Lock,” he answered through gritted teeth. “I’m sorry, but it’s still Lock. Do what you want, but you won’t be able to say that I didn’t try to keep this easy for both of us.”
The machinery stopped. Lauren thought she could see some light filtering down from above. Of course the rescue team probably had the whole site floodlit to assist with their work. Kyle’s voice pushed toward them along the duct cavity once more.
“Sorry about the noise, guys. We’ve almost reached you. You still okay?”
“We’re okay,” Lock answered.
“Lauren?”
“Yes, I’m here. I’m fine.”
They started to feel the vibration of heavy machinery as the bricks above them were cleared away, then there was a shout and the sound of the engine diminished once more. Again, they heard Kyle’s voice.
“Just the platforms now, Lauren, Lock. There are four of them, overlapping. We’re going to take the last couple of ’em real gentle.”
Time passed. It felt like around ten, maybe fifteen minutes. There was an earsplitting scraping sound right above their heads, and Lauren screwed up her eyes against the sudden glare of the work lights.
Her body from the knees down was still trapped beneath the final piece of splintered wood. She tried to open her eyes, but the light was blinding and right in her face. There were people surrounding them, uniformed rescue workers, paramedics. Voices came in a confusing sequence.
“Lock, we want to try to get you out first.”
“We’re going to cut away the last board around your legs, Lauren.”
“Lauren, what can you move?”
“Not much,” she gasped.
Lock was trying to climb out of the cavity but his limbs had stiffened in the cold, confined space and he needed help. Hands reached down. More qu
estions came.
“Do you have any loss of feeling?”
“Can you try to drink this?”
Medical equipment appeared. More hands. Yet more questions. Lock was freed, staggering and crooked on his feet, which were about the only parts of him that she could see. The loss of his warmth immediately make Lauren start shaking again.
Her eyes were getting used to the bright light now. She opened them, looked for him, saw a broad, dusty, chambray-clad back that had to be his and tried to say his name, to thank him, or tell him not to go, but the words stuck hard and dry in her throat. Ambulance officers and rescue workers surrounded him. She tried to move her legs and felt pain ripping through one of them like a knife slicing through fresh bread. She almost fainted.
“We’re going to need more tools,” someone said.
Someone else had dropped a heated blanket over her and tucked pillows under her head and shoulders. A stethoscope dangled into her vision and she grabbed the arm that was reaching for the silver disk at the end of it.
“My baby,” she said urgently. “I’m pregnant. Please don’t let anything happen to my baby!”
Her words unleashed a new barrage of questions from the paramedic. She answered them as best she could, then heard raised voices from over where Lock was still standing.
“We have an ambulance for you, Lock. It’s okay.”
“I’m not hurt. I want to get home to my kids.”
“We need to check you out first.”
“Check me out here, then I’m getting home to my kids. My mom will be frantic. She didn’t know I was visiting this site today. She won’t have heard—”
“She needs a local in her leg and—” The new voice cut in over Lock’s, and Lauren missed both sets of words. But then the new voice, the paramedic’s voice, added directly to her, “I’m giving you a shot, okay?”
“Okay.” She nodded. “Where?”
“In your leg. And I’m setting up an IV line in your hand.”
“Go ahead.”
“Are you current on your tetanus?”
She thought for a moment, then nodded. “Yes, I had one around two years ago.”