by Maggie Price
“She’s still in recovery. I’ll tell the nurse to let you know when she’s moved to her room. You can go in and stay five minutes, no more. I assure you, she won’t know you’re there. It’s unlikely she’ll wake until morning. The best thing you can do for your daughter is go home and get some rest. After she wakes up is when she’s going to need you here.”
While Georgia and Fred asked the doctor a few more questions, Sloan expelled the breath he’d been holding. He was shaking, he realized. Trembling. Filled with relief that the first barrier had been crossed.
But only the first. He intended to be there to help Julia over each and every one.
Julia fumbled her way through the suffocating darkness, trying to find her way out. The air had the consistency of syrup, too thick to pull into her lungs. No, she thought as her head filled with the roaring sound of rushing water. It wasn’t the air. She couldn’t breathe because someone had dropped an anvil on her chest and left it there.
Her fingers flinched. In her half-lucid state, her fuzzy brain took a moment to send the message that an answering, steady hand had tightened around hers.
Sitting beside her in the dimly lit room, Sloan watched her eyelids flutter open, then close again. That and the faint flexing of her fingers were his first indication that she might regain consciousness—however briefly—hours before the doctor had predicted.
God, what if she’d woken up and he hadn’t been here? He set his jaw, knowing now how right he’d been to make the call to the hospital administrator. It was the first time he’d ever used the power behind the Remington name to bring him special privileges, and he felt zero remorse.
Her hand twitched weakly in his.
“Jules, can you hear me?” he asked softly as he placed his other hand against her cheek. Paleness had wiped away her tan, giving her skin a thin, bone-china look that scared the hell out of him.
Her lashes fluttered again, then closed.
“Jules, try to stay with me for a minute. Just a minute.”
Slowly her eyes opened, focused. “Sloan...”
Her voice was flat and far away, and the sound of it tightened the fist around his heart.
“I’m here, baby. Right here.”
“Where am...?” She shifted minutely and a silvery flash of pain shot through her eyes. “Oh, God.”
“You have to stay still. Very still.”
“Rick shot me. In the...chest.” She winced, as if each breath was a wheezing, hurting effort. “How...bad?”
“The doctor said you’ll be good as new in no time. All you need to do is rest.”
It nearly broke him to watch pain cloud her eyes. God, if only he could trade places with her. If only he could keep her from hurting. “I’m going to get the nurse, have her give you something.”
Julia’s hand moved in his. The flutter of a moth’s wings would have had more strength.
“Don’t...leave.” Her eyes closed. “Don’t...go.”
“I won’t. I’ll stay right here. I swear to you, Jules, I’ll stay.”
Chapter 14
Halliday gathered up the newest photographs of his sixday-old son from the wheeled table that bridged Julia’s bed. “Now that we’ve gotten the important stuff out of the way, let’s talk a little more about the case.”
“Okay.” She saw the stain of baby slobber on his right lapel and smiled.
“Fox—or should I call him ‘Sly?’—sang like a church choir,” Halliday said. He settled onto the edge of the bed, the mattress shifting with his weight.
Julia leaned, trying to find a comfortable position. Her smile faded and she gritted her teeth when the bandage tightened on her chest.
“You all right?”
“Fine,” she said through clenched jaws.
In the four days since the shooting, the ache in her chest had gotten worse, not better, as shocked nerves began to regain their function. The doctor had assured her that was normal. God forbid she’d have to experience the abnormal, Julia thought, waiting for her muscles to unclench.
“So, you got Rick to confess,” she.stated when the pain turned from hideous into simply breathtaking.
“To every sin he’d committed since third grade.” The smug look Halliday gave her transformed into a frown as he flapped a hand in her direction. “What’s with all the lace and stuff, Cruze?”
She glanced down at the frothy peach robe with its row of tiny, shell-shaped pearl buttons that ran from throat to hem. “Mother brought it by this morning. The only way I could get her to agree to go back to work today was to promise to wear this thing. She says it’s ghastly the way some patients walk the halls with their underwear hanging out the back of a tacky hospital gown.”
Halliday grinned. “She should just be glad they’re wearing underwear.”
“I doubt that’s occurred to Mother. She said she wants me to look elegant on my ‘daily spins along the corridors.’ Never mind that I’m so shaky by the time I make one lap that I’ve come close to crawling back to bed.”
“At least if you pass out in that robe, you’ll look good.”
“I’ll look like a damn Kewpie doll.” It was Julia’s turn to flap her hand in his face. “Get on it, Halliday. Tell me more about the case.”
“We found a former employee of Remington Aerospace on who Vanessa used her sneaky tricks with the personnel files. A guy by the name of Tony England.”
“What about him?”
“He and Vanessa worked at the San Francisco office a couple of years ago. They were both in the running for the same job. It meant prestige and a substantial promotion. All bets were that England had the job sewn up tight. It took everybody by surprise when he quit the day before the promotion was to be announced. Nobody knew why.”
“I guess you found out.”
Halliday nodded. “England’s résumé listed an impressive educational background. Only problem was, he hadn’t completed his MBA like he’d claimed. Vanessa found out and confronted. him. All he had to do was quit and she’d keep her mouth shut about how he’d perpetrated a fraud on the company. That’s what he did.”
“And she got the promotion,” Julia added.
“Right. Talk about a woman with a dark side,” Halliday commented as he slid off the bed. He stood quiet for a moment, taking in the lush, flowering bouquets that crowded every surface of the room. “Did Remington send all these?”
“Most of them.” Julia extended her arm across the table to touch the crystal vase that held flawless, violet blue hydrangea blossoms. In her mind’s eye she pictured the banks of blooms that had glowed in the moonlight while she and Sloan made love in the hot tub. It seemed like a lifetime ago, instead of just a week.
“Speaking of Remington, where’d he get off to?” Halliday asked. “I thought he’d taken up permanent residence here.”
“He has.” Julia pulled her bottom lip between her teeth. Although Sloan had been an almost constant presence since she’d regained consciousness, he’d said nothing about the night they’d spent in each other’s arms. Nothing about the angry, seemingly final words that had passed between them the following morning.
Nothing about his plans to leave for D.C.
“Cruze?”
She frowned, scrambling to remember Halliday’s question. “Sloan went to take a shower. They’ve given him unlimited use of the doctors’ locker room.”
Halliday chuckled. “I’ll bet they have.” He checked his watch. “I’d better get back to work—”
“He sleeps there, Halliday,” Julia said quietly. “A nurse told me Sloan didn’t leave this room for the first forty-eight hours after they brought me in.”
“You gave him a hell of a scare. You gave us all—”
“The nurse says he comes back in here at night after I’m asleep. He just sits by the bed and holds my hand.”
Halliday inclined his head, his expression softening. “The guy cares about you, Cruze. Don’t tell me that comes as a surprise.”
“I know he cares
,” she said, staring toward the window, where the morning sun streamed through the open blind. “But Sloan doesn’t let his feelings rule him. He cared about me two years ago and he still walked out. A few hours before I got shot, he told me again he was leaving, moving to D.C.” She paused. Hurt filled her, tightened her throat. Hurt that came with the knowledge that the hours they’d spent in each other’s arms had done nothing to lessen Sloan’s determination to walk out of her life a second time.
She dragged in a deep breath and raised her chin. “Now that the case is cleared, he’s free to go. I reminded him of that yesterday.”
A blond brow slid up Halliday’s forehead. “What did he say?”
“Nothing. He just looked at me, then changed the subject.” She raised an unsteady hand, toyed with the shell-shaped buttons at her throat. “I know him, Halliday. He had nothing to do with what happened, but he feels guilty because his best friend shot me. What if Sloan’s staying here because of some misplaced sense of guilt?”
“Whoa, Cruze. You may have taken a bullet in the chest, but it’s your brain that’s not working right. Believe me, it wasn’t guilt that had Remington pacing the wax off the tiles while you were in surgery.”
“He was worried. Everyone was—”
“He called the hospital administrator and threatened to bulldoze the wing he’d just built on this place if he didn’t have twenty-four-hour access to your room. I have to admit I like Remington’s style.”
Julia opened her mouth, closed it again. “Sloan threatened to tear down the building?”
“Just one wing. The guy’s dealing with a lot of emotions where you’re concerned, Cruze, but misplaced guilt isn’t one of them.”
She blinked back the swell of tears that had teetered on the brink of spilling ever since she’d regained full consciousness. To Julia, tears had always been a sign of weakness, as the ones she now fought were. The doctor had assured her the feeling of vulnerability that had settled over her was a temporary result of her injury, as were the disabling weakness and chronic fatigue that allowed her to perform only the most simple tasks. But knowing the symptoms would fade as she healed didn’t make the constant threat of tears any easier to bear.
As he watched her, wariness settled in Halliday’s eyes. Shoving his glasses higher on his nose, he took a step away from the bed. Then another. “You’re not going to start crying, are you?”
“Back off, Halliday, I don’t cry. Ever. I’m just...trying to figure out why Sloan won’t tell me how he feels.”
“How the hell do I know?” Halliday asked, easing his way farther toward the door. “He’s a guy...you know how often we screw up when it comes to dealing with women.”
Hair slicked back from his shower, Sloan walked into the sun-drenched room just as the nurse unwound the blood pressure cuff from Julia’s arm.
Surrounded by a rainbow of lush blooms and dressed in the peach gown Georgia had brought that morning, Julia might be considered the picture of good health by the casual observer. Her long, dark hair tumbled past her shoulders, glistening from the recent shampoo Georgia had arranged. Blush tinted her cheeks; lipstick that matched the gown—another gift from her mother—slicked her full lips.
Sloan set his jaw. He was far from a casual observer. To him, no amount of makeup could camouflage the lack of color in her skin or disguise the hollow look around her eyes. The frailness that seemed to hang over her tightened the ever-present fist around his heart.
“Hello, Mr. Remington,” the plump nurse said, smiling as she glanced across her shoulder.
“Agnes.” Sloan set his shaving kit beside the small stainless-steel sink, then walked to the bed. Careful to avoid the IV tube suspended from the pole to Julia’s arm, he leaned and placed a light kiss against her temple. He felt the warmth of her flesh beneath his lips, remembered the icy feel of her skin as she’d lain bleeding on the floor of Rick’s office. She had come so close to dying. So close.
“How do you feel?” he managed after a moment.
She scowled. “The same way I felt two hours ago when someone else took my blood pressure.”
Agnes gave a brisk nod as she jotted a note in Julia’s chart. “We like it when our patients get testy. That means they’re getting better.”
“If that’s the scale you use to judge things, then I’m fully recovered,” Julia muttered. “Why don’t you tell Dr. Averey how much better I’m feeling so he’ll sign my release papers?”
“I’d hate to try to tell the doctor how to do his job.” Agnes fluffed the pillows behind Julia before gathering up the chart and heading for the door in a rustling blur of starched cotton. “Give it a few more days, Sergeant Cruze. He’ll probably consider letting you go.”
“A few more days,” Julia echoed hollowly, and sank against the pillows.
Sloan saw the sides of her mouth tighten and realized the movement must have jarred her incision. He turned and walked to the window. He couldn’t handle the misery in her eyes.
“I knew staying here wouldn’t be easy for you, Jules.” He dipped his hands into the pockets of his slacks as he stared blindly out at the sun-drenched parking lot. “So I talked to Dr. Averey about releasing you now, setting you up with full-time nurses.”
“What did he say?”
“That he’d reevaluate your condition in a couple of days and let me know.” Sloan turned in time to see the glimmer of hope fade from her eyes. “I’m sorry.” He crossed to the bed and took her hand. “You need to get some rest now.”
“Do you know how many times a day someone tells me to rest?”
His lips curved. “I bet you’re going to tell me.”
“Too many.” He saw her gaze sharpen on the bruise on his right cheek, which had transformed to healing shades of yellow gray and green. “Speaking of rest, when was the last time you slept through the night?”
“I get enough sleep.” He raised their joined hands and placed a soft kiss against her knuckles. “We’ll talk later—”
“Now, Sloan.” She tugged her hand from his. “You haven’t left this place in four days. And how come I never see you eat?”
“I eat while you’re resting.”
“I’m not an idiot. Don’t treat me like one. I may be zonked out most of the time, but I know what you’re doing. And you and I are going to talk about it.”
His brow creased. “The doctor said you need to stay free of stress—”
“I’m going to explode if we don’t talk this out. Right now.”
He nodded slowly. “All right, talk.”
“You’re doing the exact thing you denied me—you know that, don’t you? You walked away from me so I couldn’t be with you while you were sick. You were afraid I’d stop eating. Afraid I’d let my career go down the tubes. Afraid I’d stop sleeping just like your mother did when she took care of your father. Like what you’re doing now with me.”
“It’s not the same.”
“I’m stuck in a hospital bed, the same as you were,” she said. “Have you been to your office lately?”
Not since she’d been shot. “It’s been a few days.”
“Have you looked in the mirror?” she continued. “It’d be hard to decide which one of us has the darkest circles under our eyes.”
He reached, rubbed the pad of his thumb across her cheek. “The only way yours will go away is if you rest—”
“Don’t you dare try to placate me, dammit.” She batted his hand away, then sucked in a breath, pain settling in her eyes.
“God, Jules, don’t talk.” He gripped her hand. The tears that welled in her eyes, then streamed down her cheeks, nearly broke him. “We can discuss everything you want—for however long you want—after you get out of here. For now, you’ve got to build up your strength. And the only way to do that is rest.”
“How can I rest when every time you walk through that door I look to see if you’ve got plane tickets sticking out of your pocket?” She grabbed a handful of tissues out of the box beside the vase o
f hydrangeas and dabbed at her eyes. “I don’t cry. I hate to cry.”
“I know—”
“You told me that morning at the guest house you were leaving. The case is closed. You’re free to go.” Her chest heaved. “Why prolong this, Sloan? Why the hell don’t you just go?”
“The only way I’ll leave is if you tell me you want me to go.” He clenched his fist against his thigh and waited for her to do just that.
But she didn’t say the words. She was crying too hard to say anything.
Mindful of the IV tube, he slid onto the edge of the bed and gathered her close. He closed his eyes as her sobs racked her body. “Don’t cry,” he said, placing a soft kiss against her hair. “Baby, please don’t cry.”
“I’m...not,” she said, and sobbed harder.
In the four days since the shooting he had come to the knife edge of things. He had sat beside her bed, holding a hand he’d always thought delicate, but knew now was strong. Her slim body appeared fragile, but after unending hours of watching her—just watching—he’d come to the understanding that she possessed an inner strength and purpose that made her capable of dealing with whatever fate dealt her.
Why? he asked himself. Why had it taken him so long to see and fully understand all that she was?
He had planned to wait until she healed—both physically and emotionally—to tell her how he felt, tell her what she’d wanted to hear that morning in the guest house. Tell her that he would beg, crawl—do anything, as long as she gave him another chance and let him back into her life.
He stroked his hand down the silken fall of her hair and listened to her helpless sobs that made him want to weep himself. Now he realized he could no longer wait to tell her.
“I can’t stand to see you hurt.” He leaned away just far enough to place soft kisses against her wet cheeks. The briny tang of her tears flooded his mouth. “I can’t stand it, Jules. Every time I picture you on that floor with your blood pumping out of you...” His own body quavered against hers. “I thought you were going to die in my arms. I thought you were going to die.”