by Raina Lynn
Rick was reeling from shock. “Everything from ‘Blake took me to the department yesterday.”’
So he’d heard it all. Garrett’s heart sank. “Rick, look at me.” The eyes swiveled around, but Garrett had doubts about how much they saw. “I’m not leaving home, not yet.”
The teenager pointed down the hall. “She’s moving back upstairs. I know what that means.” A new thought seemed to strike him, and he darted down the hall before Garrett could stop him.
“Mom, you can’t do this,” Rick wailed. “We’re supposed to be a family again!”
Garrett’s first impulse was to follow him, but getting in the middle of the hysteria in that room would serve no purpose at all. If he hoped to salvage this mess, he needed to approach it logically and with great care. Perhaps the best course would be to wait them out. Once a little exhaustion set in maybe he could get something accomplished.
Maggie was the first to storm out, her eyes swollen and red. “How can you put us through this?”
“You’re the one moving your clothes.”
“I don’t want to.” She wiped at her face. All he wanted to do was hold her and get her to trust him. “I just don’t want you to be a cop anymore.”
“No one’s going to be shooting at me.”
Rick stood at the edge of the hall, and Garrett motioned him on into the room. Another problem with teenagers was that realistically you couldn’t send them out of the room. They’d eavesdrop anyway, focus on the worst and make controlling the situation that much harder.
“Garrett, I don’t believe for one minute that you can be around other cops, ones who go out on the streets, while you sit back on your heels. It’s in your blood. The first chance you get, you’ll be right out there with them. I can’t live with that.”
“I know you can’t. That’s why I won’t put you through it again.” He turned to Rick, who looked on the verge of tears. “Son, you and I are going to Whole Family tonight, okay? Obviously, we had problems before the plane crash put me in this thing. We’re going to get them straightened out.” There was such hunger and fear on the boy’s face that Garrett wanted to scream out in frustration. “Will you come?”
He nodded slowly, and as one, they looked to Maggie.
“Oh, thanks a lot, Garrett. That makes me the bad guy.” Maggie gave Rick a desperate hug. “I’m sony. This is all my fault. I should never have asked him to come home. It only got everyone’s hopes up. I didn’t mean to set you up for this kind of hurt.” Tears got the better of her again, and she left the room.
Garrett met Rick’s eyes. For once, he saw himself there, the determination, the will to make tough decisions. All the boy needed was a little guidance.
“Son, I can’t guarantee that I can pull any of this off, but do you trust me to try?”
He watched, holding his breath as Rick weighed the request.
“Yeah, Dad,” he said slowly. “I trust you.”
He let out his breath. One down, one to go. “It’s going to be a rough trip.”
Rick shrugged self-consciously, still pretty strung out. “How can I help?”
Maggie walked into Blake’s office as he was rummaging through a file cabinet. “How could you have taken him down there?”
He looked up, then walked around his desk to pull her close, letting her cry into his lab coat. “The timetable on this little fiasco is running late,” he murmured. “I expected the compost to hit the fan last night.”
The next thing she knew he handed her a tissue with terse instructions to blow her nose.
“He’s my brother, Mag. What would you have me do?”
“Care enough about him to want him to stay alive.”
“And you have to love him enough to want him to live.”
That stopped her. As angry as she was at Blake, she’d hoped she could convince him how foolish Garrett’s actions were, but hope for an ally dwindled to nothingness. “What about the medical end of this? He simply can’t work yet, not at anything.”
“I know that. So does he.”
“How can you be so calm?”
He hitched a hip on the corner of his desk. “Mag, I’ve been a surgeon for eight years. He has made a joke out of every prognosis I’ve come up with. After the crash, when we wheeled him into surgery, I truly believed we’d never get him off that table alive. Now he’s standing up—granted, he supported all his weight on his arms, but the bottom line is he got his feet underneath him by himself. I can’t tell you what he’ll be capable of in three months. I simply don’t know.”
She started pacing. “It may take him years, but he’s going back to the streets. Just as soon as he can get there.”
Blake looked thunderstruck. “That’s not what he told me.”
“He doesn’t think he is,” she said dismissively, “but I know him. He won’t be able to stay out of it. A juicy case will come along, and he’ll go right back to undercover work.”
“Number one, he never got hurt working plainclothes. It was that uniform that acted like a target. Number two, he doesn’t lie. Even if he pulls off another miracle and recovers completely, he said he wouldn’t go back, and he won’t. He made a major concession to keep from losing you.” Blake scrubbed his fingers through his dark hair. “Mag, you’re not thinking this through.”
“That’s what he said.”
He stepped away from the desk, put his arms around her again and kissed the top of her head. “Then stop listening to the battle scars and listen to your head.”
She mulled it all over, trying to sort out the truth. Surely it was in there somewhere, but all her mind’s eye could see was another torn and bloodied uniform.
When Maggie got back home, her house looked like a cop convention, and she had to park two doors down. Cruisers and private cars came and went. Police officers—in uniform and out—swarmed on the lawn. At first she thought something horrible might have happened, but several men in civilian gear stood around nursing beers. Garrett Hughes had come back to the fold, and his old cronies had come to call.
A sick, hollow feeling settled into the pit of her stomach as she walked up the sidewalk. A group of four men she recognized descended on her as she crossed the yard. They all wore identical expressions of bewilderment and horrified shock. Few things were worse than cops with unanswered questions.
“Maggie, why didn’t you let us know what happened?” asked the tallest one. She’d met him once but couldn’t remember his name. “We would have been here.”
She knew she needed to be polite so she forced a smile but kept walking nonetheless. “The press kept quiet because of his undercover work and Garrett didn’t seem to want any contact with the outside world. I left it up to him.” She shrugged apologetically. Actually, calling his friends on the force had never entered her mind.
In the house were more cops. Pizza boxes littered the dining room table, and Garrett’s rolling laughter rumbled from the kitchen. The entourage still followed her. She kept moving.
“Hey, Hughes,” called someone, pawing through the food. “Do you want pepperoni or that mushroom mess Steuben brought?”
“Get a life, Roberts,” fired back a voice from the crowd.
The man closest to her touched her shoulder. Reluctantly, she stopped and turned. He didn’t really have a face, just a uniform.
“Maggie, we’re his friends. Did he think we wouldn’t want to know because he’s a Fed now?”
A jeans-clad buddy added in a lowered voice, “It’s rough seeing him like that. What can we do?”
It was all too much. “Guys, I’ve had a really rotten morning. If you want to know anything, ask him. I’m just his ex-wife. Nothing more.” She turned back around as Garrett came from the kitchen. The fading smile said he’d heard what she’d said, and it had hurt him deeply.
Guilt seared her heart. What more could she have said to let him know she didn’t want him? But with their attentive audience, she could hardly explain. They all knew about the divorce, and probably burne
d with curiosity over what Garrett was doing here in the first place.
A sudden pounding went off in her head, and she rubbed her temples. “I’ve got a headache, and I’m going upstairs where it’s quiet and lie down.”
She and Garrett stared at each other across the room, silent in the midst of the noisy crowd. Garrett, I love you. Why can’t it be enough? Why did you have to do this? Unable to think of anything to say, she retreated upstairs and scooped the clothes off the bed.
“Hi, Mom,” Rick called from behind her. “Did you get any pizza?”
She didn’t turn around for fear he’d see the agony that ripped her into pieces. “I’m not very hungry right now.” Passionately, she prayed he wouldn’t come into the room. For the moment, he didn’t seem upset at all. She supposed she ought to say something encouraging and supportive. After all, she was the parent. But how could she tell him that her worst nightmare had come true and that she couldn’t remarry Garrett if it meant marriage to a cop?
“You really ought to trust him, Mom,” he said softly. He sounded so much like his father that Maggie cringed.
She took a slow breath to keep from coming completely unglued. “It’s not him I don’t trust, honey. It’s a bullet.”
She felt him watch her as she hung up her clothes, then heard his footsteps as he went downstairs. Maggie took something for her head, then lay down, trying to figure out what had happened to her world.
Upstairs was anything but quiet. Masculine laughter and voices echoed from below. Occasionally, she picked out something Garrett said. Newcomers asked the usual plethora of hushed questions. Their more subdued tones made it hard to pick out words, but she had no trouble reading the emotions—horror over one of their own being in a wheelchair and fear of facing their own mortality. The impromptu open house ended as people needed to get home to their families or back on patrol.
“Maggie?” Garrett called from the bottom of the stairs. “It’s time to leave for the meeting. Are you ready?”
She wanted to put the pillow over her head. How could he expect her to go to Whole Family with all this hanging over them? How could she face patients and their families on an equal footing when she was supposedly the one with all the answers?
“I love you, babe. Come downstairs.”
“Dad, do you want me to go up and get her?” Rick asked. She couldn’t hear Garrett’s answer. “Are you sure?” After another pause, Maggie heard the front door squeak open and close.
“Maggie, Rick’s getting the car started, so it’s just the two of us. Since you’re not answering, I’ll assume you fell asleep and we’ll talk in the morning.”
Maggie rolled over. He knew full well she was awake but gave her a face-saving out anyway. She almost hated him for it.
The next morning, Maggie buried herself in paperwork in her office. At midmorning, a familiar knock sounded on her door. Her heart leaped into her throat, and Garrett let himself in. He wore a gray and black sweat suit and looked as dignified as if it were a tuxedo, the casual outfit setting off his dark hair and olive skin.
“Morning, babe.” Love, sadness and loneliness shone in his eyes and slightly crooked smile, but no censure.
She’d successfully avoided him since the day before. “What are you doing here? How’d you get here?”
He studied the wall a moment. “Steuben lives about a mile from the house. I called him and he brought me. As to the why... You forgot me.”
Maggie sucked in her breath. “Today is water therapy.” She almost threw up. Despite their problems, she’d agreed to handle his case. In essence, she’d forgotten a patient, morally unpardonable.
Then she heard what he’d really said. You forgot me. The first tears of the day started. “I hate crying.”
Without a word, Garrett moved around behind her desk and tried to gather her into his arms.
“Don’t touch me,” she demanded brokenly, pulling back. “Sapperstein can handle—”
“No, he can’t, babe. You assigned him to other cases. He’s busy. Besides, I’m your patient.”
Her head snapped up. Love radiated from him, enveloping her in a warm blanket where nothing bad ever happened. But she knew better. “I can’t.”
“Yes, you can. You’re a professional, and a patient comes first.”
“You’re fighting dirty again.”
“Whatever works. I told you I’m not giving up without a fight this time.”
The instinct for survival kicked in. “You have to choose, Garrett—me or being a cop. You can’t have both.”
He met her gaze without a twitch of emotion. “Why not?”
That stunned her. “How can you even ask?”
“What exactly about law enforcement can’t you live with?”
“You know full well what it is.”
“Humor me. Please?”
She let her breath out, and she put some distance between them. “It’s the danger. The not knowing.”
He looked unnervingly thoughtful. “So it’s not a fundamental hatred of cops?”
She glowered at him. “Don’t be absurd.”
“If it was safe and predictable would you object?”
He was setting her up, but she didn’t see how. If only she didn’t hurt so much, maybe she could think. “Stop playing mind games!”
“Our marriage isn’t a game, Maggie. Now answer me. If it was a nine-to-five job, could you live with it?”
“Yes, but no matter what you tell me, I’ll never believe you won’t go back to wrestling suspects with guns and knives and—” Her throat closed up.
He looked at her hard. She could see thoughts churning behind his eyes, and it frightened her. What if he found an argument to drag her back in? She loved him enough that she knew part of her would grasp at straws.
“Babe, I never intended to tell you this, but while I was in a coma, I could read your emotions.”
She felt her jaw go slack. He might as well have announced he was the tooth fairy.
“Don’t look at me like that. I’m not nuts.”
“What you just said didn’t sound particularly... normal.” If Blake or Sapperstein had said such a thing she’d instantly brace herself to be the butt of one of their jokes, but no hint of amusement lurked in Garrett’s eyes.
“Maggie, when I came out of surgery, I was dying. I wasn’t quite connected to my body anymore. New senses opened up. Old ones shut down. I felt what you felt, babe. Until then, I didn’t understand that you really couldn’t handle the stress. During our marriage, I didn’t completely believe it. I do now. That’s why I’m compromising.”
She still couldn’t quite comprehend she was hearing this. “You could read my mind?”
“No. Just your emotions. For a week I couldn’t see. I had no physical sensations at all. But I could hear, and I knew what people around me felt. Anger. Fear. Love.”
She shuddered.
“I learned what you went through when I got shot.” His voice caressed her with its gentleness and warmth. “Your worries about Rick scared me to death. You never said what was wrong, and I worked myself into a real stew thinking he’d been busted or worse. Being absolutely helpless was hell.” He gave her a crooked smile. “I never did thank you and Mom for reading to me every day. It gave my mind something constructive to chew on.”
Maggie remembered back to those first terrifying days. He’d been aware of everything. She didn’t know what to say, and she found herself staring into his eyes. The intensity of the love and truth that burned there was too much, and she turned away.
“Garrett, that’s too bizarre.”
“I know, babe, and I lived through it.”
Neither spoke for long moments.
“Whether you believe what happened or not, at least think about everything I’ve said,” he murmured. “For now, we need to hit the pool, remember?”
Maggie changed into her suit in the staff locker room. When she came out, Garrett had peeled off his sweats and was waiting for her. The sight
of his magnificent body reawakened things better left alone. She swallowed hard and tried not to think about it.
Their gazes met, and her heart grabbed on to the treasure of his smile, knowing it was emotional suicide but unable to stop herself. These remaining moments were all she’d have for a lifetime.
She wasn’t sure she believed the entire story about his coma experience, but she sensed a credibility that made her at least consider the possibility. Maybe he really did understand now. Not that it changed anything. He’d decided to go back anyway. Somehow that made it worse.
“Ready?” he asked, moving toward the pool’s edge.
“Can I be petulant and say no?”
He laughed, locked the wheels and slid down to the decking. She hopped into the water and waited for him as he maneuvered his legs over the edge. The overall scope of his accomplishments still amazed her.
“Have you tried standing again?”
“No,” he snorted. “My arm ached so bad afterward it kept me awake most of the night.”
Maggie was instantly alert. “Why didn’t you tell me? Did you tell Kelly what you did? I should have thought... Garrett, you could have undone the surgery.” She pressed her fingertips to her temples. “Why didn’t I—”
“That’s enough, babe,” he scolded gently. “Blake already chewed my tail.” With a quick shift, he dropped into the pool, treading water with his arms to keep his head above water. “It was something I had to do.”
Like being a cop. No matter what the cost. “Okay, let’s get at this.”
As she approached him, open desire flared in his eyes. An answering cry echoed deep within her, but she refused to let him know. He had a strong enough hold on her.
They went through the exercise routine, ending with the part she dreaded most, his lying fiat in her arms as he worked his legs. The simple contact of skin against skin was nearly her undoing. Worse, the evidence of his desire was blatant.
“You’re not going to apologize for that either, are you?” she said pointedly.
He chuckled. “Not on your life.” He sobered slightly. “Last night at Whole Family, after they broke up into small groups, the adults talked about sex and disabilities.” He stopped working and looked deeply into her eyes. “I’m sorry I accused you of being with anyone else. I was so eaten up by jealousy that I couldn’t see what should have been obvious. What you showed me was merely what you knew as a therapist, not as another man’s lover.”