by Jacobs, Ann
“It must be important for somebody to call this time of night. You’d better answer it.” Althea stretched out across the bed, over Jared, and picked up the phone. She handed it to him.
Scowling, he growled his name. Then his expression registered concern. “It’s for you. Your brother.”
Why would Jim be calling her here? Althea pulled the sheet up higher even though she realized the idea that her brother could see her made no sense. “Hello.”
The news wasn’t good. Jim sounded frantic. Mary had collapsed not long after Althea had left their place. They were at the hospital in Dahlonega, waiting for the ambulance helicopter that would rush Mary to a big hospital in Atlanta.
“I’ll come right away.” Jim had been there for her when she’d needed him. She’d be there for him now.
“What’s wrong?” Jared was already up, pulling on his clothes, before Althea hung up and crawled out of bed.
She had trouble finding her voice. “Jim’s wife is real sick. The baby. Something’s terribly wrong. They’re taking her to Atlanta. I have to go.”
What if Mary dies? How will Jim go on? What will happen to Gracie?
Jared cupped Althea’s face between his callused palms. “Is someone taking care of their little girl?”
His concern touched Althea. “Mary’s sister has her. I’ve got to get dressed and go.” Suddenly aware of her nudity, she crossed her arms across her breasts.
“They’ll all be okay. Calm down, honey. I’ll drive you.”
The way Jared jumped right in and took charge of the situation startled her. “I can—”
“You’ve got no business going by yourself.”
Maybe he was right. She took a deep breath, but that didn’t do much toward calming her speeding pulse.
She couldn’t help remembering another trip to another hospital. She’d never forget that night when Jim had stayed with her. She’d always feel the pain of her fingernails digging into her palms as she’d prayed in vain that Bill wouldn’t die. Not able to speak, she nodded as she took the bra and blouse Jared pressed into her hands and put them on.
She followed him downstairs and let him settle her in his car. After he started the engine, he turned to her. “Where in Atlanta are we going?”
“University Hospital.” How could she have failed to realize when she’d noticed Mary’s swollen ankles and unnaturally flushed cheeks this afternoon that something was horribly wrong? “Please God, let Mary be all right.”
Tires crunching gravel, Jared maneuvered around her Pathfinder, down the narrow road down Big Bear Mountain and onto the highway. “She’ll be okay. Do you need to stop by your place?”
“No. Omigod, please hurry.”
He reached over and patted her thigh then took her hand. “Relax, sweetheart. I’ll get us there, fast as I can and still be sure we’ll make it in one piece.” As gently as he’d touched her moments earlier, he massaged the back of her hand with his thumb then returned his hand to the steering wheel. A full moon lit the way as they sped around mountains with treacherous hairpin curves. As grateful as she was for Jared’s skill at handling the powerful sports coupe, she was just as glad when they got to the Interstate.
“You need some coffee?” he asked when he pulled off the highway at an all-night truck stop and stopped beside a gas pump.
His voice warmed the dark cocoon of the car interior, made her feel less anxious about Mary. “I’ll get us both some while you pump the gas.”
The drone of a hundred or more idling diesel engines, and the acrid odor of burning fuel greeted Althea as she made her way across the parking lot. Snippets of conversations being transmitted over dozens of squawking CB radios hummed in Althea’s ears. Once they were back on the road, she sipped her coffee, grateful for the quiet comfort that surrounded them as they sped down Interstate 75. She tried not to imagine the worst, silently prayed that Mary and the baby would be all right.
Jared reached over and gently pried her clenched fingers from around the empty cup. “Relax, sweetheart. We’ll be there soon.”
“It’s just—I don’t know. I’m so afraid…”
“You can call the hospital. Dial 6-1-1 for the number.” He took his cell phone from of the console and handed it to her. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you didn’t have one with you.”
“I don’t own one. Reception’s too spotty up in the mountains.”
“I know. I can usually get through from here, though. Go ahead and give it a try.”
She started to dial, then set the phone down. “They’d never be able to track Jim down. Not in that huge place. Thanks anyhow though.”
When he took her hand, his touch soothed her. Althea laid her head against the headrest and watched him drive. Through half-closed eyelids, she studied his reassuring profile, backlit in the surreal glow from the lights of cars and trucks they passed, silhouetted in the darkness relieved only by the reflection from the car’s control panel when they had the highway to themselves.
Lights came more often now as they came closer to Atlanta. Her mind focused on why they were here, speeding through the night. God, please let Mary and the baby be all right.
Althea couldn’t keep her muscles from clenching with fear, but having Jared there with her made the tension easier to bear. His quiet confidence bolstered her spirits, and his presence reassured her. Although the thought crossed her mind that she was getting in too deep with him, she was glad she’d accepted his help. She doubted she could have stood the waiting without him.
▪ ▪ ▪
A few minutes later, Jared watched Althea run into her brother’s arms as soon as they’d stepped off the elevator onto the University Hospital’s maternity floor.
He held back so she and Jim could have a minute alone. The man looked ashen beneath his leathery tan, and his shoulders drooped. It was as though he’d aged years in the week or so since he’d delivered Jared’s dining table and chairs.
No doubt the man was going through hell.
When he noticed how Althea’s hands were shaking, Jared moved closer and put a hand on her shoulder. He heard Jim say his baby boy was born and that they’d just taken his wife to Intensive Care.
“Mary will be all right, won’t she?” Althea sounded frantic.
Jim shook his head. “We’ve got to wait and see. The doctors say she had a stroke. She quit breathing twice on the way down here.” He paused, and when he continued he spoke so softly Jared figured he must have been talking to himself. “I never should have touched her again, not after the hard time she had, having Gracie.”
“Is the baby okay?” Jared was almost afraid to ask. When he saw Jim’s stricken look, he wished he’d kept his mouth shut.
Jim turned away, staring out the window for a long time. Althea took Jared’s hand. “The baby’s here almost six weeks too soon, but the doctors say he should be all right. Jim’s so concerned about Mary right now, he’s having a hard time thinking about his son.”
For several tense hours they sat, pretending to sip the vile stuff that came out of a machine pretending to be coffee. Needing to do something—anything that might help—Jared kept buying soggy cups of the stuff and tossing out cold leftovers.
Jim paced the length of the hall, stopped to stare through the glass in the swinging doors marked ICU then came back and sat for a few minutes. Over and over he repeated his trek, and every hour he disappeared through those doors to spend the five minutes the nurses would allow him with his wife. By morning he looked ready to be admitted, himself.
Jared had never felt so helpless or so mixed up. One minute he longed to care for somebody as much as Jim obviously loved his wife. As much as Althea obviously cared about both of them. With his next breath, he thanked God for sparing him the sort of anguish Althea and her brother were suffering.
Helpless to do more, he held Althea’s hands and murmured hopeful platitudes. When she finally nodded off to sleep, he tucked a pillow behind her head.
The sun was streaming into the solitary
window in the waiting room by the time Jim came out of the ICU again, a tired smile on his face. He told them Mary had come to and that the doctors now held out hope she’d recover from her ordeal.
“You’re welcome to go rest at my place.” Jared worried about Jim, who looked as though he might fall over any minute. “It’s only about fifteen minutes from here.”
Jim shook his head. “Thanks, but I don’t want to leave. Mary will need me here when she wakes up again, and the nurse said they’d let me hold the baby soon. You go on. Take Althea with you. She’s gonna get a crick in her neck, sleeping on the chair like that.”
Jared smiled. Had it only been eight hours since she’d shown up on his doorstep and said she wanted to make love? So much had happened, it seemed hardly possible. “Yes, she will,” he said when Jim gave him a peculiar look.
“Don’t you go hurtin’ my sister. She’s been through a lot.”
It felt strange to Jared, knowing he’d have to answer to someone beside his own conscience if things didn’t work out for Althea the way she wanted. He didn’t mind the feeling, though. Meeting her brother’s weary gaze, he held out his hand. “Hurting her is the last thing on my mind. Althea’s special.”
“That she is.”
Jared gave Jim his cell phone number and the one at his condo. “I know she’ll want to know right away when she’ll be able to see Mary and her new nephew.” Then he turned and gently tapped her shoulder until she opened her eyes.
▪ ▪ ▪
At the condo, Jared peeled away Althea’s clothes. All sleepy-eyed and warm, she tempted him mightily to strip down and finish what they’d started earlier. But he resisted, reminding himself she had to be exhausted. She needed sleep, not sex.
“Lie down with me.” Her eyelids drooped, but she smiled and held out her arms.
No force on Earth could have made Jared resist her. Stripping down to his underwear first, he lay beside her and pulled her close. His cock hardened instantly, apparently not caring that he’d just denied his body a full night’s sleep.
He shouldn’t have undressed, but he wasn’t about to get up and put his jeans back on. Nobody had ever died from sexual deprivation. Holding a tight rein on his libido by reminding himself Althea needed rest, he held her until he was certain she’d fallen asleep. Then he got up. He’d never been able to sleep once the sun came up, and with Althea beside him in bed, sleep was the last thing on his mind.
The condo he’d called home the last ten years looked bleak. It seemed as if no one had ever lived within the sand-colored, sand-textured walls, or sunk their bare feet into plush carpeting a few shades darker than the walls. The brown leather sofa and chairs, dark wood tables and desks—even the bevel-edged mirror on the wall—gave the place all the personality of a suite in one of the five-star hotels where he often attended conferences.
Jared wondered how he’d lived here, worked at the computer in the corner of the living room for hours at the time, even days on end, and not noticed before that this place had no heart. There was nothing around to indicate that a real human being had ever been in residence.
He’d known something was missing from his life. That’s why he’d bought the mountain where he was born and had the house built there. Still he had a sinking that his new place would have ended up as sterile looking as this one if it hadn’t been for his chance discovery of the ragged piece of cloth that had led him to Althea.
With her, he saw light and color and texture. He saw her as woman, himself as…well, certainly not the robot Marcie had constantly compared him to. Robots reacted according to a programmer’s whim, a designer’s control. When he was with Althea, his emotions grabbed him, made him react unpredictably. She made him think with his heart, not his mind. As if he were a living, breathing man.
Hell, he was a man, if his body’s reaction to her was any indication.
He looked at the mirror, tried to recall some of the times he and Marcie had shared in this room. There were pitifully few of those recollections in his memory bank. Strange. He had no trouble remembering the many hours they’d spent together in his office or hers, going over some marketing scheme she’d devised. But his mental picture of her here was decidedly fuzzy.
Business partners. They’d been more that than lovers even though they’d spent hundreds of nights together here or at her place. They’d fucked when the need arose, and when he thought about it he admitted the need had been more for sexual release than for each other. It didn’t say a lot for either of them, he guessed, that when they’d finally called it quits neither of them had needed more than one small box to call away the personal belongings they’d left in one another’s respective spaces.
With Marcie, he hadn’t felt out of place here. Now Jared stared at his reflection, wondering why the condo struck him now as cold when he’d never given the place much thought before. He’d considered it a convenient place to hole up when he had to leave his office.
Maybe Marcie had been right. He guessed he really had been a cold son of a bitch, a robot that went through the motions of being human. What he saw in the mirror disturbed him. Would he tire of Althea and lose interest in Big Bear Mountain? Would he revert to being the mechanical creature Marcie used to accuse of having built a business empire at the cost of his own self?
Jared couldn’t figure out answers now. He needed caffeine, real coffee made from real coffee beans. In the kitchen he found the essentials and brewed a pot. Since he had no sugar or milk, the brew tasted bitter. Medicine. Without stopping to savor it, he slugged down a mug of muddy liquid almost as bad tasting as what he’d bought from the machine at the hospital.
The clock over the sink said ten o’clock. Since he was here, he’d take care of a little business. Settling at the kitchen table, he picked up the phone and called his executive assistant, Laura Peters.
While he and Laura ironed out some details about this year’s holiday ad campaign, Jared couldn’t help thinking about Althea. They’d practically flown off Big Bear Mountain, not taking time to grab more clothes than the ones they’d put back on their bodies after Jim’s call.
He had extra things here, but Althea would need clean clothes. Before he hung up, he asked Laura to arrange for a store to send over some things for Althea to wear. “She’s about your size,” he said when Laura asked how she was supposed to buy clothes for somebody she’d never even seen. “Might be an inch or so taller. Damn it, how am I supposed to know what size she wears?”
Laura would get it right though. She always did. Her unerring efficiency was what kept Jared halfway sane. After answering what he thought were immaterial questions about Althea’s hair and eye color—even her age—he ended the conversation.
▪ ▪ ▪
Althea blinked then closed her eyes against brilliant streaks of light that filtered through half-closed vertical blinds into an unfamiliar room.
Slowly it came back to her. Mary’s stroke. The baby. Jim looking as though he’d lost his world. Hope had mingled with the fear on his face after his last visit to the ICU before she’d left with Jared.
Oh, no. Jared. They’d been about to make love when Jim had called.
She opened her eyes again, looked around and stretched out across the large, firm mattress. She remembered Jared had brought her here, to his condo. He’d lain beside her, held her. She’d loved the warmth and strength evident in his warm arms, his muscular body, before she’d drifted off to sleep. Where was he now?
Soft music filled the air. Althea wanted to curl up, bury her head in one of the soft, fat pillows. Her eyelids felt heavy so she closed her eyes again. The faint scent of tangy aftershave that lingered on the pillowcase reminded her of Jared. How he’d skimmed her naked body with his gentle, callused fingers, making her feel safe. At peace.
She recognized his voice, deep and sexy, singing along with a slow country song. He sounded a bit off-key, and the words were muffled by solid walls and distance.
She stretched then smiled. Jared was way
more than a hard body and a handsome face. He was a genuinely decent man. Not only did she want him, she liked him a lot—and that scared her half to death.
Suddenly wide awake, she sat up. What was she doing here, mooning over Jared when Mary might be dead or dying? She grabbed the phone on the night stand. While she waited for directory assistance to find the hospital’s number, Jared strode into the room, still wet and naked except for a beige towel he’d knotted around his lean waist. He set a good-sized bag on the chair beside her wrinkled blouse and skirt.
“Jim called about an hour ago. He told me to let you sleep and to let you know when you woke up that his wife’s going to be all right.” Taking the receiver from Althea’s hand as he sat beside her on the bed, Jared set it on its base. “Want to drive over and see her, make sure Jim doesn’t need anything?”
“Can we?” Relief washed over her. She wouldn’t wish the tearing grief that came with losing someone you loved on anybody, let alone her own brother. “You should have waked me earlier.”
He bent and brushed his lips across hers. “You needed the rest.”
“So did you.”
“I can’t sleep when it’s light outside. But I’ll be okay. This isn’t the first time I’ve stayed up all night, and it probably won’t be the last.”
She could tell he was tired. Dark circles accentuated his eyes. He’d set aside whatever plans he might have had to bring her here. And the fact he’d stood by her had helped her find the courage to be strong for Jim. Every new facet she uncovered about Jared made her like him more.
Not only was he the sexiest man she’d ever seen, he was the kind of man she could easily fall in love with, if only she hadn’t sworn she’d never risk her heart again.
She got up and forced herself to ignore the enticing picture he presented. His dark hair was damp from the shower, and nothing but that skimpy towel hid his hard, fit body from her gaze. Suddenly shy, she wrapped the beige top sheet toga-like around her naked body.