Shotgun Honeymoon

by Terese Ramin

  He didn’t want her sitting there while they gave him transfusions against the blood he’d lost, and for which hers was a perfect match.

  In muttered incoherence he’d begged Guy—who’d turned up immediately when called despite having to leave Hazel home with their barely ten-day-old daughter after Jonah’d been found concussed at his post not far from the trailer—not to let them use her as a donor.

  Guy had taken one look at her, sized up the situation, and particularly her fury at Russ’s doltish heroics, taken her adamant “I am his wife” with a snort of “It’s about damn time” and gotten out of her way.

  And for two…

  Well, for two…he was Russ. She adored him. Loved him to pieces. Heart, soul, body, mind and all the other places nobody’d ever thought to name. Loved him.

  And he was an idiot. A big, studly, macho, card-carrying idiot.

  And she’d nearly lost him because of it.

  A drop of emotion slipped off the end of her nose and landed in her frappalatte.

  Because he had to protect everybody and he wouldn’t back off.

  Which had left her, in the space of a month, wedded, bedded and… Well, okay, so “nearly widowed” didn’t rhyme the way “him nearly deaded” did.

  She blinked and another unaccustomed bit of eye-weather skidded down her cheek and dripped off her upper lip. She blotted her face with a hand. God, what was the matter with her? She didn’t do this. Ever. As in never ever. And since the evening Buddy’d tripped her and Russ had stopped him and married her, she’d gotten weepy…

  A lot.

  As in all too damn frequently.

  She sucked more frozen ice cream and coffee and let herself wallow a little deeper in self-pity.

  Today she’d finally gotten up the courage to buy and take a pregnancy test, and well…it had minused out.

  Damn it.

  Exactly as she’d predicted.

  And not only that, but she was two weeks late for her period, no doubt due to all the stress from Russ and Maddie and Jess and Charlie and Buddy and…God knew what else. And she was so bloated she’d had to take off her wedding ring and leave it on the kitchen table.

  She sniffed. Thank God there was no on around to witness her self-pity party, because if there had been she’d have had to bag her head and hide in a barrel.

  Or maybe she should simply shoot herself.

  In the foot, of course.

  Her lips twitched with self-deprecating humor at the thought. No sense doing the shooting somewhere it might actually accomplish some good. Like maybe in the butt.

  Grinning outright now, Janina turned at the sound of her name.

  “Janie, hey, Janie!” Tobi leaned across the seat and gunned the engine on her elderly Ford pickup in an attempt to keep it from dying in the middle of the street. “You on your way to the hospital or to work?”

  Janina moved in to lean over the door and made a thpppt! face. “Russ is weak and can barely talk but he said I make him nervous, fussing around him. So he kicked me out of his room. The idiot can’t see it scares me to death to not be there. I’m on my way to work. Maybe it’ll take my mind off him.”

  Tobi nodded sympathetically, not even commenting on the fact that she was babbling.

  “Where’s your car?”

  “Garage.” Janina nodded vaguely in the direction of the place that did her tune-ups. “I was on my way to get it.”

  “Get it tomorrow.” Tobi pulled her door latch. “I’ll drive you to work, you can stay with me tonight, be like old times. We can talk, you can relax, let Russ miss you for a while.” She grinned her demon grin. “Make sure he does.”

  Janina bit her tongue on a half smile. The idea had a certain appeal even as she automatically went to reject it. Even married to him, Janina couldn’t see herself running after Russ forever, tending his wounds and being shoved out the door every time he got hurt just because…well, she really didn’t understand the “just because.” Just because he was Russ, she supposed. And she had no intention of losing him just because he was an idiot, but if he wouldn’t listen to her say that…

  Maybe she’d better figure out a way to demonstrate it.

  She nodded at Tobi. Pitched the remains of her frappalatte toward the nearest trash bin, walked back to the truck and started to climb into it. “Okay,” she said. “Let’s do it—”

  “Janie?”

  The hitch in her friend’s voice and the look on Tobi’s face stopped her cold. The expressive Navajo features and bright black eyes were frightened—an unusual expression for her in-your-face pal. She swallowed. Hesitated. But didn’t look back. If you didn’t look, if you acted normal whatever was there, it couldn’t see your fear.

  “What?”

  Tobi grabbed her wrist, dragged her bodily onto the seat. “Buddy,” she chattered hoarsely, and made an effort not to point at him. “Out there. Exactly where you were standing. Drinking the drink you threw away. Watching you. I didn’t see him before. I don’t know where he came from.”

  Refusing to be spooked, Janina turned her head and gave him back stare for sta winked boldly at her and cupped his crotch crudely, sucked from her discarded drink.

  And laughed.

  Then he cocked an imaginary weapon at her, popped off a make-believe round and blew her a kiss. “See you,” he said.

  She swallowed a lungful of fury and snapped face front to stare out the Ford’s windshield. Said in a voice so soft and menacing it scared Tobi, “I look forward to it.”

  “You did what?” Jeth Levoie stared at his oldest brother in something like astounded pity.

  Russ blinked crankily out at him from amid the tubes and bandages running around his left arm and shoulder, the oxygen tube chapping his nose that they’d promised might be able to come out two days ago but that was still in because he’d developed a bit of a cough with fever.

  “Sent her home,” he breathed a bit unsteadily.

  “You jackass,” Jeth said succinctly.

  Russ glared at him.

  Jeth clarified. “When the woman who loves you wants to stick around and tend to your shot-up hide, you let her.”

  “Like you?”

  “You know damn well I let Allyn take care of me when I was shot,” Jeth said patiently. “In fact, you know freaking well she’s the only one took care of me when I was down.” He eyed Russ meaningly. “Bathroom breaks and everything.”

  Russ grimaced. “Go away.”

  Jeth grinned. “Not till I’ve fluffed your pillows.” The grin faded. “Seriously, Russ. She wants to be here, don’t shove her away. She’ll think you don’t need her or want her.”

  “I can’t let her…be here all the time. She’s pregnant. She’ll wear herself out.”

  “After growing up with Mom, I can’t believe you said that.”

  Russ laughed roughly, winced at the pain. “Yeah. Well. Ma’s not Janie. Janie’s sure she’s not pregnant and that she never will be. She thinks she needs to convince me that I won’t want to stay married to her if I find that out. I tried to tell her. She thinks it was an act to distract Charlie. Some of it was. But I still know it. It’s on her skin. I can—”

  “Smell it on her,” his brother finished, nodding. “Yeah. I know that one. So does Guy.” He thought about it a moment. Shrugged. “Okay, what do you need?”

  “Find a wheelchair and get someone to pull these tubes so I can sign myself out of here,” Russ said promptly.

  “Ah…” Jeth eyed him dubiously.

  Russ raised a finger to forestall objections, forced strength into his voice. “Charlie said something that night that I’ve finally remembered and I have to know what he meant.”

  Jeth raised an eyebrow.

  Russ swallowed“He told Janina, ‘I couldn’t save her, but I saved you.’ I have to know what that means. He wasn’t entirely lucid at the time, but he said it more than once. He also said something about her knowing everything even though she doesn’t realize it.” He moistened cottonmouth, re
ached awkwardly for his water glass, sipped at the bent straw. “He might have meant Maddie, but Janie was there that night. She and her mother lived in the trailer across from the Thorns. She got out a shotgun to back me up when there wasn’t anyone else there and she doesn’t know I saw her. I never mentioned it to her. Didn’t want her involved. She never volunteered anything, so I figured she didn’t see anything more’n anyone else coulda seen from the front of the place. But maybe…”

  He took another sip of water. Looked at his brother. “I have to know. Make sure she’s okay. Will be okay. Permanently.”

  “Sh—” Jeth started, and blew out a breath. “Why didn’t you mumble this on your deathbed when they were bringing you in ’stead of all that stuff about Guy keeping Janina outta your way and safe so you don’t have to worry about her? You brain-dead idiot, you’d made it clear, we’d have taken care of this a long time ago ’stead of turning Janie loose to get into whatever the hell trouble she wants.”

  “Russ, you can’t even stand. What are you doing here?”

  Hurriedly Maddie attempted to steer him to a chair in the suite she and Jess had taken at La Posada until everything with Charlie was sorted out. Jeth and Guy could have manhandled him just fine between them, but Maddie was the managing sort and almost always had been. Experience had taught them to let her lead while they got out of the way.

  And picked up the pieces left in her wake—if Russ hadn’t collected them first.

  Russ grunted. “Judas, Mad…leave the stitches and bandages. They’re all that’s holding me together.”

  “No glue and staples?” Jess asked mildly.

  “Hell, I don’t know. I was asleep. Feels like a truckload’s in there though. Run me through a metal detector and find out.”

  Maddie wrinkled her mouth. “You signed yourself out of the hospital, didn’t you?”

  Russ tried to find a comfortable position in the chair and didn’t answer.

  “Does Janie know?”

  There were no comfortable positions for a body that should still be propped up and pumped up on painkillers and not out wandering about trying to hold coherent conversations with anyone.

  “She doesn’t, does she.” A flat statement, and not a particularly pleased one at that.

  His shoulder and chest throbbed, entire body hurt, head ached. His skin felt like fire.

  “Russ?” Maddie almost sounded anxious. He must have zoned out for a minute. “You in there?”

  Russ gathered himself. Focused on her. “Mad, Charlie said something about Janie…about not being able to save you, but saving

  “You dumb jerk.” She was in full fettle now. “That woman loves you more than I ever thought about doing even when I thought I was straight, and you can’t even let her know you pulled your plugs and went running off into the wild blue chasing something you think Charlie said when he was crazy.” She poked his nowhere-near-healed shoulder and demanded, “What is she going to do if she goes over to the hospital and looks in your room and you’re not there? What’s the first thing she’ll think? Dead, that’s what. That you died and nobody called because you didn’t want her there badly enough to make them.”

  She threw up her hands and stalked away from him. “You are such an unbelievable idiot, Russ Levoie. And I am glad I don’t have to fall in love with men.”

  When she reached Jess, she touched her partner’s cheek then kissed her gently, lingeringly, before tossing a look of pure loathing over her shoulder at Russ and marching into the bathroom, nose in the air, to slam the door behind her.

  She opened it almost immediately. “And I’m not coming out,” she informed him, “until you use the sense God gave you to call your wife and tell her where you are.”

  Jeth looked at Guy, who glanced at Jess, who nodded. “That seems to state it quite clearly,” she said.

  “We tried to tell him,” Guy agreed.

  “We told him to send Jonah,” Jeth pointed out. “So he sent Jonah to stand guard at the hospital.”

  “Cowardly,” Guy said.

  “Stupid,” Jeth put in.

  “Uncommunicative,” Maddie yelled through the bathroom door.

  It took every ounce of will he possessed, but Russ pushed himself erect, sucked as much air into his lungs as he could manage and bellowed, “I don’t freaking care what you call me, just get the hell out here and tell me what I need to know to protect the pregnant woman I love from whoever your father thinks he saved her from. Damn it, Maddie.”

  Then he collapsed back into the chair and allowed himself to blank out for a full three seconds.

  Janina and Tobi finished totaling up the last of their evening checks and exchanged coin tips for paper cash before Manuel, the Fat Cat’s assistant manager, left the office and emptied the till for the night then headed into the back to change.

  “You mind if we run by the hospital before we call it a night?” Janina asked. “I want to check on Russ, let him know where I’ll be in case he tries to call.” Her mouth drooped. “Not that he will, or at least he hasn’t yet.”

  Tobi huffed a breath. “Janie.” Stopped.

  Janina waited. Said, “What?” when Tobi didn’t go on.

  Tobi shook her head. “No. Never mind. None of my business.”

  “But you wonder if I need my head examined ’cuz I’m not acting like myself about Russ anymore,” Janina suppliryly.

  Tobi grinned. “Yeah. Somethin’ like that.” She shook her head. “No, exactly like that.”

  Janina shrugged. “Join the club. I don’t know who I am anymore either. It’s eggshells and glass all over the floor and I don’t know where to step. And the dumb thing is, I’m not sure it’s actually him, but me. I’m the one all of a sudden can’t think how to put words together. Simple words. Tell him what I mean, what I think, how I feel. I don’t even know if I should.”

  She made a face. “It’s like…we got married and I…” She hesitated, then, “Lost my bearings. I don’t get the impression he lost his. Maybe he did. He must have. He’s ridiculous as all get-out about some stuff, but the things he knows, that he understands, about me…” She blew out a long sigh. “It’s amazing. And then there are those times when I’m sure I should leave him, that we did it too fast and it was wrong and…”

  She tucked her tongue behind her bottom teeth to keep her lip from quivering. “Damn. And lately I cry about everything and he’s shot and if I lose him…”

  She sniffed. “I haven’t even told him I love him yet, and I don’t know why, ’cuz I do, I always have, but he’s such a fool, you know?” She appealed to Tobi for confirmation the other woman wisely didn’t offer. “If I told him and he didn’t…and he never said it back or he couldn’t live with what I can’t ever be—”

  There was a crash and the sound of flying glass and crunching metal and wood at the front of the diner. Then the rear door into the back room caved in and a brand-new ATV came smashing toward them. It squealed and careened and skidded to a stop sideways in front of them, bouncing on its tires. Buddy Carmichael sat astride the machine, grinning gleefully at Janina, meaty hands encased in studded leather half-gloves. He aimed and fired his imaginary weapon at her, using both hands to do it this time, then stood up on the seat of his ATV and cupped his hands around his mouth.

  “Hey, Daddy, come look what I found. We got her to ourselves this time and she brought us a friend, too.”

  Maddie hadn’t wanted to remember.

  Nothing new in that, Russ reflected, doing everything in his power to keep himself focused, awake. It was more difficult than he’d anticipated, though the pain helped.

  A lot.

  Still it was pain. And it was distracting. He didn’t need distracting right now. Because what Jess had finally gotten Maddie to remember was about more than Charlie. It was about Buddy’s father. And Buddy.

  And the fact that they’d both been there that night thirteen years ago.

  And that it had been Buddy’s father, not Maddie, who’d killed her broth
er. Murdered him, in fact, when the boy threatened to blackmail him over the things he’d been doing with Maddie up at the cabin that had burned when Charlie had held Jess captive in it. The things they’d taken photos of.

  Things they’d discussed doing to Janina, too, apparently.

  Which was where Charlie had drawn a line, and what he’d meant when he’d said, “Couldn’t save her, but I saved you.”

  Sick as he was, there was a line even Charlie hadn’t wanted to cross. But Buddy’s father hadn’t cared, and had even used Maddie’s terrified and confused mind to hide what he’d done. Had put the gun in her hands and forced her to pull the trigger in order to ensure the police finding gunshot residue on her hands.

  And now Russ had to know if Janina remembered seeing Buddy or his father at all that night. She’d already said she didn’t remember seeing Buddy or she’d never have gotten involved with him, but he had to probe, had to make her press her memory deeper for her own sake, own protection. Because he didn’t know how he could build a case, collect enough evidence to protect her from one of the area’s more influential residents if she didn’t know what Charlie was talking about.

  “Jeth, you there?” Jonah’s voice crackled through the radio.

  “We’re alive, number five,” Guy said easily to the fifth-born Levoie. “Come back.”

  “Tell Russ no joy,” Jonah returned. “I’m at the trailer but she’s not. And sorry, big bro, but she left her ring on the table. I’m headed for Tobi’s. Out.”

  For a moment Guy and Jeth were silent. Russ sat in the back, closed his eyes and waited for the hollowness to set in, the finality, the certain knowledge that Janina was gone.

  It didn’t come.

  In its place rose something else, another knowledge, a connection, the same kind he experienced when they made love, only different.

  More.

  And then his throat constricted, his lungs fell in on themselves and his heart started to fail. His good hand flinched, crushed the edge of the seat the way it might a windpipe. He gasped suddenly for air, struggled for it, and then he knew.