Burn

by HELEN HARDT

  “You don’t have to.”

  “I know I don’t have to. I want to.”

  For as long as she’d let me, before she found out the truth.

  * * *

  Melanie got a clean bill of health two hours later, and her release papers were signed. I wanted to take her straight home, but she insisted we go to the police station to retrieve her personals first. When we finally got to her loft—accompanied by a police officer since it was still considered a crime scene—we found her living room, kitchen, and bedroom in shambles—from the intruder or from the cops, neither of us knew.

  “Oh my God,” she said.

  “Just take the few things you need, ma’am,” the officer said. “I’ll give you some time in the bedroom.” He went to the living room.

  I thought quickly. “Just grab a change of clothes. You’re coming home with me.”

  “No, I can’t. I don’t want to impose.”

  “For God’s sake, Melanie. You’ve seen the size of my house. I live alone. You’re not imposing.”

  She gave me that soft smile. “Are you insisting?”

  “I am.”

  “Oh, good. I know I can’t stay here tonight, and I’m not sure…”

  “What?”

  “I’m not sure I’ll ever feel safe here again.”

  “You don’t have to worry about that for now.” Forever, if I had anything to say about it. But she wouldn’t feel the same way once I told her the truth, that I’d neglected to take her phone call on purpose.

  “I need to call my insurance company.”

  “We’ll take care of that when we get to my house.”

  “I’ll need to be here when they come…” She sat down on her bed with a sigh. “My God, Jonah, how do people function after something like this? I’ve helped people recover from much worse. Why am I nearly paralyzed with fear?”

  I sat down next to her and took one of her bandaged hands in mine. “You know that what you’re feeling is completely normal. You will get through this, Melanie. You will.”

  “Yes, all I need to do is want to do the work.” She let out a tiny laugh. “How many times have I said those words to others? Others who have been through so much more than I’ve been through. And you know what? They don’t mean anything.”

  “That’s not true, and you know it.”

  “I don’t know, Jonah. I just don’t know how to get through this.”

  “The same way you tell your patients how to get through things, Melanie. One day at a time. One hour at a time. Whatever it takes.”

  Tears misted in her eyes, and I pulled her into an embrace.

  My God, I wanted her. I wanted to take all the pain away. I wanted to find who had done this to her and pummel him into tomorrow. Why did the universe want to punish the people I loved most in the world?

  Chapter Twelve

  Melanie

  We arrived at Joe’s house in the early afternoon. He set me up in one of his guest rooms. I had been hoping he would put me in his room with him, but I didn’t dare ask for it. Perhaps he didn’t feel the same way I did.

  He yawned. The poor thing probably hadn’t slept very well in a chair.

  “Do you have work you need to do?” I asked.

  “Nothing that can’t wait.”

  “You run this huge ranch. I know you have work to do.”

  “This is more important,” he said. “What can I get you? What do you need?”

  You. I need you, Jonah.

  But I didn’t voice the thought. “A shower,” I said. “I haven’t had one since…”

  Since the night.

  My heart sped up. I would have to deal with this one way or another.

  Day by day, just as Jonah had said, and just as I’d told my patients on many occasions. Day by day.

  I would start with a shower. I’d have to take off my bandages. I wanted to get a good look at how they were healing anyway. Some of the cuts had been deep enough to require stitches, but most of them were pretty shallow.

  I went into my “room.” The shower wasn’t as decadent as the one in Jonah’s master suite, but it was wonderful. I turned it on and began to unbandage my hands when a knock sounded on the door.

  Jonah stood there. “I thought you might want this.” He handed me a small bottle of lavender essential oil.

  I couldn’t help myself. One hand still bandaged, I launched into him and slammed my lips onto his.

  He opened quickly and kissed me back.

  How I’d missed this. Had it really been only three days? I felt like a lifetime had passed.

  If only I could thread my fingers through his beautiful hair, but some of the cuts on my unbandaged hand were still oozing a bit.

  But as ravenous as he had been on my mouth mere seconds ago, Jonah unclamped his lips from mine and pulled back. “No, you need your rest. As much as I want you, I’m not going to start something with you now.”

  “Why would I not want you to start something? You stayed with me all night. You brought me to your home to protect me. I want you too. Now.”

  He backed away from me until he ran into the chest of drawers against the wall. “You need your rest. We shouldn’t be doing this.”

  “Jonah, please. I need to do this now. I need to feel the good in the world.”

  He shook his head. “I’m far from the good in the world, Melanie.”

  His full lips tightened, and he closed his eyes for a moment before opening them again. The muscles in his shoulders tensed. Even under his western shirt, I could tell. My God he was beautiful. Truly beautiful, just as he had always been. The streaks of silver at his temples and throughout his several days’ stubble drew me. I wanted to feel that stubble against my most intimate places. I wanted to feel alive. Alive with him. The man I loved.

  “You are everything good in the world, Jonah.” I cupped his cheek with my one unbandaged hand.

  He took my hand away from his cheek and kissed it. Then he opened it and looked at my wrist and my palm. “This is what happened because I wasn’t there for you.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  He stared straight into my eyes and cupped both of my cheeks. “Do you have any idea how strong you are, Melanie? Most people would have just accepted their fate, let themselves go to sleep and die in peace. But not you. You figured a way out.”

  Strong? I wasn’t strong.

  I cleared my throat. “The survival instinct is amazing in a human being. I’ve seen it in my patients, including your brother, and that’s all that was going on with me. It had nothing to do with strength.”

  “How can you say that?” He shook his head, his mass of dark hair swaying. “You’re so strong, so intelligent, and so…cunning. You figured a way out of an unwinnable situation. You’re incredible.”

  “No, you don’t understand. I wasn’t thinking at all. I was acting. I was surviving. And my adrenaline—”

  He placed his finger over my lips. “Yes, your adrenaline probably helped. It kept you conscious when you should have been passed out. I’m damned grateful for that, but you found the way out. Your adrenaline didn’t do that. You did. You used what you found and worked the situation to your advantage.” He shook his head again. “I’m not…”

  “Not what?”

  He swallowed visibly. “I’m not worthy of you, Dr. Carmichael.”

  I let my mouth drop open. I wanted him to repeat the words because I wasn’t sure I heard him correctly. He didn’t think he was worthy of me? After I had been the one who had left him hanging, sneaking out of his house like a scared teenager? He was so wrong. So, so wrong. I opened my mouth to say so, but he stopped me with a gesture.

  “Take a shower, Melanie. I’m going to make you a pot of tea or something. I don’t think I have any of that relaxing herbal stuff, but I’ll find something.” He turned away from me and walked out of the room, shutting the door behind him.

  Wow. He didn’t think he was good enough for me? The man was obviously delusional.
I had been the one who’d let him down, not vice versa.

  What was going on?

  I let out a sigh and then removed the bandages from my other hand. Of course my right hand had been injured worse. I was right-handed. Not that it mattered, since I was on a three-week leave of absence from work. I wouldn’t need to be writing much in the next couple weeks unless I went back to my work in progress—a book on preventing suicide in teens.

  My heart wasn’t in that at the moment. This whole situation had evolved because I hadn’t been able to prevent the suicide of a troubled young woman.

  I finished undressing, laid my clothes out on the bed, went to the bathroom, started the shower, and dropped a few drops of the lavender oil onto the shower floor. Soon the relaxing scent wafted around me. I inhaled.

  I was lucky to be alive. Damned lucky to be alive.

  I got into the shower, the water stinging the cuts on my hand. I washed my hair quickly, and then my body.

  Lucky…

  Gina hadn’t been so lucky.

  Why did I deserve to be so lucky?

  And then it hit me with the force of a thousand marching soldiers. What I had gone through. What I had escaped. The true reality of it all.

  I could be dead right now.

  Dead, and no one would ever have known what had happened to me.

  I slowly slid my body down the slick shower wall until I was sitting, my knees clasped in front of me.

  And all those tears I’d tried to hold back finally fell.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Jonah

  I found a few tea bags in a cupboard and boiled some water. One was labeled chamomile, the two others Earl Grey. I had no idea which Melanie would prefer, so I chose the chamomile. Funny, how little I knew about her—other than how great she was at driving me insane in the bedroom. She liked Thai takeout. She liked red wine. She liked the scent of lavender. I smiled. She liked to wear beige cotton bras and underwear. God, how amazing she would look in that Midnight Reverie line I’d seen in the lingerie shop near her office. I had shredded a couple pairs of her cotton panties. Perhaps I’d replace them with purple lace. I smiled again, but my lips curved quickly downward.

  Unfortunately, there was no future for me with Melanie. Not after I’d failed her in her moment of need.

  I would never see her in deep purple lace. I would never see her wearing the diamond choker buried in my top dresser drawer either.

  I’d been determined that she would surrender to my darkest, deepest desires, so determined that I had purchased the elegant piece of jewelry to give to her as a collar, to show the world that she was mine and mine alone.

  That could never happen now. How could I ask her to let me bind her? To let me handcuff her? Not after what she had just been through.

  And definitely not after she found out how I had let her down in her time of greatest need.

  After the chamomile had steeped for about ten minutes, I walked back to the bedroom where I had situated Melanie. I knocked on the door, but she didn’t answer. Perhaps she was still in the shower. I opened the door, and sure enough, the shower was running. I set the cup of tea on the night table and turned to leave when I heard a whimpering—a soft whimpering, like a child crying.

  Unable to look away, I knocked softly on the bathroom door and opened it. “Melanie?”

  Through the glass doors, I could see Melanie huddled on the floor of the shower, the water still pelting her.

  My heart began to beat wildly. Was she okay? Quickly I yanked the shower door open, grabbed her, soaking myself, and pulled her out of the wetness, carrying her like a baby.

  “It’s okay, sweetheart. I’m here. I’m here.” I set her down gently on the toilet and grabbed a large towel, wrapped it around her, dried her off as best I could, and then brought her out to the bed where I laid her down. “Baby, talk to me. Are you okay?”

  She sniffled against me as I held her.

  “Please, tell me you’re okay.”

  “I’m okay,” she whimpered.

  It was a silly question, I realized in retrospect. Of course she wasn’t okay. She had been through a major ordeal. She would need some time to heal now.

  I was well-versed in needing to heal.

  “It’s okay to cry, sweetheart.”

  She hiccupped. “I had to hold back the tears for so long. I couldn’t let them get through. I had to keep my brain on, had to figure out how to get out of there. And then in the hospital… Everyone around… I just couldn’t let myself…”

  “And you don’t think you’re strong?” I shook my head. “Baby, you’re the strongest woman I’ve ever met.”

  She burst into tears once more and rubbed her face into my shirt.

  “It’s okay to cry. Go ahead and cry. I’m here. I’m here.”

  She sobbed for only a few more minutes before she regained her composure. I reached for the box of tissues that sat on the night table, pulled one out, and handed it to her. “Here you go.”

  She blew her nose loudly and then reached for another tissue to wipe her eyes. “I’m sorry you had to see that.”

  “I’m not. I’m glad I could be here for you.” I was going to be here as much as I could for her until it was time to tell her the truth. That I had failed her.

  And then she would leave me.

  But right now, she needed me. I would not fail her at this moment.

  She pulled back from me a bit. “I know better than to break down like that.”

  “Baby, after what you’ve been through, you’re entitled.” I took her hands in mine. “Do you need some help bandaging these up again? We have all kinds of first aid supplies around here. Ranching work causes a lot of injuries.”

  She looked down at her hands. “The ones that are stitched are fine. Maybe just Band-Aids for the few that are still open.”

  “Stay here. I’ll be right back.” I returned with one of our many first aid kits. “Do you want antibiotic ointment?”

  She shook her head. “There’s no need. Antibiotics are severely overused in our country.”

  I couldn’t help a small smile. She was still being a doctor, even after all she had been through. I softly pressed Band-Aids over the larger cuts and then kissed each of her hands. “Did you bring anything to change into?”

  “I just grabbed some clothes out of my drawers and threw them in a duffel bag. I honestly don’t even know what I brought. I just wanted to get out of there. Quickly.”

  “Never you mind about that. I have something that will fit you perfectly.”

  I got up, went to my own bedroom, and grabbed the robe she’d worn three days ago. I brought it back to her and placed it around her shoulders, removing the towel. “I think this fits you.”

  That got a small smile out of her. Lord, even fatigued, with her wet hair hanging in yellow strings around her face, she was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen.

  I reached for the mug on the night table and handed it to her. “This is chamomile. I think it’s supposed to relax you.”

  She nodded and took the mug, taking a shallow sip. “Thank you.” She set it back down on the table.

  “What else can I do for you? Let me take care of you.”

  “Just hold me, Jonah. Please, just hold me.”

  I lay down on the queen-size bed and gathered her into my arms. She fit so well against my frame, as if we were perfectly formed to fit together like puzzle pieces. Just having her in my arms like this made my cock burn. It hardened against the denim of my jeans.

  Making love wasn’t what she needed right now, but when she nuzzled against my neck and started kissing me there, I lost all my resolve. With a groan, I pulled her against me and took her lips with mine.

  I had learned to be gentle with Melanie, to bring her into my world slowly, and now, even though I desperately wanted to turn her over and spank her bottom red until she was screaming for more, I suppressed my urges and was determined to go gently.

  She opened her mouth for me in
stantly, but instead of forcing my tongue inside like I normally did, I went slowly, licking around the edge of her lips, nibbling on them, and then running my tongue along her gum line. Slowly and tenderly I twirled my tongue around hers.

  And I was shocked when she pulled away.

  “Jonah? What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing. We don’t have to do this if you don’t want to.”

  “I do want to. What kind of kiss was that? Where’s your normal kiss?”

  “My normal kiss?”

  “Yes, your forceful, mind-bending kiss. That’s what I want. That’s what I want now. What I need.”

  “I was trying to be gentle, after all you’ve been through.”

  She smiled, and God she was beautiful.

  “You’re sweet to consider my feelings. But I need you right now. I need you. I need to feel alive. What better way to feel alive than to share my body with somebody I care about? Somebody I—” She stopped abruptly.

  “What?”

  She bit her lip. God, she was sexy.

  “Someone I…love, Jonah.”

  I jerked my head back, dazed. “You what?”

  She sat up, biting her lip again. “Someone I love.”

  I started to speak, but she stopped me.

  “No, I have to say this. Twenty-four hours ago, I didn’t know if I would live. Let me tell you, looking death in the face makes you rearrange your priorities quickly. All I could think about was that I had fallen in love with you, and I might not ever be able to tell you. I love you, Jonah. You don’t have to say it back. I don’t expect it. But I know I can’t go one more minute without telling you.”

  I opened my mouth. The words “I love you too” hovered on the tip of my tongue. Because I did love her. I loved her with all my heart. But once I told her the truth, that I had purposely ignored her phone call, she would no longer want me.

  She touched her fingers to my lips. “Don’t say anything now. Please. Just know that I love you. That’s all I need for now, for you to know that. And for you to make love to me.”