by Diana Palmer
“Doesn’t matter.” Chase frowned. He looked back at Colin. “This is where my family is.” Returning his attention to the woman who had protected his son with her own body, he gazed at her as if he’d like to memorize every line, every detail. “When I think of what could have happened, and I wasn’t here—”
Nettie touched a hand to his lips, stopping the words. He looked at her in question then gave a brief nod. She was right; this wasn’t the right place.
“Colin’s going to stay overnight. Did they tell you?” she asked quietly, while Lilah stood near the bed, talking to the rapidly tiring seven-year-old.
“No. I arrived only a minute or two before you came in.” Worry, a once-unfamiliar sensation for Chase, crept into his stomach and chest for the umpteenth time since he’d become a dad. “Is everything—”
“He seems to be fine,” she hastened to reassure him. “But he was out cold when I found him. He’d fallen off his bike into a ditch. Since Kalamoose is a full hour from here, the doctor thinks it’d be a good idea if he stayed overnight.”
Chase expelled a noisy breath. His stomach was starting to roll as if he were on the high seas. Resignedly, he wagged his head. Who knew that the simple act of loving would require Dramamine? “What about you?” he demanded of the brave, gorgeous woman before him. He touched the cast. “Is this a bad break? I don’t even know how it happened.”
Nettie made a face. “I slipped on my way into the hospital,” she muttered.
“Hey, kids,” Lilah called softly. “I think the patient could use a little shut-eye. Maybe you two should take the conversation outside for awhile?”
“Nnooo,” Colin mumbled plaintively from the bed, though his eyes were already closed. “I’m not sleepy. Ice cream…”
Chase smiled at Nettie, rose and moved to his son’s bed. He bent to give Colin a kiss filled with gratitude. Every time he thought about how close he’d come to never knowing his son, it took the breath right out of him. “Rest,” he said quietly, stroking Colin’s hair. “Tomorrow we’ll have a party. Hot dogs and potato chips and so many flavors of ice cream, Baskin-Robbins will be jealous.” Before Chase had even finished his sentence, Colin was snoring softly.
Lilah grinned.
“How are you?” he asked, touching her elbow.
“Absolutely fine. My hairdo got rained on,” she patted the bouncy, blonder-than-before waves, “but I never even saw the funnel. Anyway, I’m heading back to California soon, where the only natural disasters are earthquakes and running out of Kava Kava.” She nudged his arm. “Why don’t you take my sister to the cafeteria for a cup of their gruesome decaf and a little hospital food? She hasn’t had dinner yet.”
“What about you?” Nettie said. “Have you eaten?”
“I have a diet bar and a candy bar in my purse. If you two will get going, I can eat the candy bar and pretend I did it by mistake. Here,” she handed Nettie the crutches then whispered in her ear, “Interesting newsflash on porcelain—being the strongest compound and all.” She winked. “Good luck.”
Nettie smiled then waved off all help as she maneuvered herself up. It was tricky going, but she did it. Chase held the door while she preceded him into the hallway. He hovered near her elbow. From the corner of her eye, she saw him reach for her several times as she tottered, but each time he stopped himself, and slowly but surely they made their way to the elevator and down to the first floor. Silently, they disembarked the elevator. The wall directly in front of them had an arrow pointing left for the cafeteria, but when Chase turned that way, Nettie stopped him.
“Not yet,” she said. “I want to go someplace else first.”
Chased raised a quizzical brow, but followed her without comment. He seemed immersed in thought and spoke little as she led him to a small chapel tucked into a corner of the first floor.
The walls were painted the cool new blue of a morning sky. Pictures of angels and saints hung at various points and though clearly this was a Catholic chapel, a petite statue of the Virgin Mary shared space at the front of the room with a simple cross and the Star of David. Peace and comfort filled the room as if they were entities.
“I like it here,” Nettie said, speaking in a respectful hush even though she and Chase were the chapel’s only visitors. “I spent a lot of time here when Uncle Harm was sick. I’d sit in that front pew,” she nodded, “and I wouldn’t think of anything. I wouldn’t even pray, really. I’d just be here and feel the stillness.”
When she paused, Chase put a hand on her back. “Do you want to sit down?”
Instead of answering, Nettie executed a skipping quarter turn to face him. There was so much to say, and she swallowed hard, unsure of how to begin. The last time they were together, she’d told him she did not love him and never could. On top of her bureau at home, the engagement ring he’d bought for her sat, still in its box, waiting to be returned. Oh, she’d made a series of wrong turns on the road to this moment. And looking at Chase now, Nettie wondered if he’d even want to hear what she had to say.
Fidgeting, she tottered on her crutches. Immediately, Chase put a hand beneath her elbow to steady her. “Come on, let’s sit down. I’m afraid you’re going to tip over.” Carefully he helped her to a pew.
“Thanks,” she said as he took her crutches and propped them against the pew in front.
“I haven’t thanked you yet. I’m not even sure how.” He gazed at her, sober eyes reflecting the depth of his gratitude. “Protecting Colin during that tornado was incredibly brave.”
“Brave?” She shook her head. “Oh, no. I don’t think I was brave,” she admitted, undoubtedly the easiest confession she would attempt this afternoon. “When I first went out in the storm, I was petrified.” She shivered again, merely thinking about it. “By the time I realized we were in a tornado, I wasn’t thinking at all.”
He smiled. “That’s what the great heroes say, you know. That at some point they stop thinking and act on instinct.”
Great heroes? Nettie grimaced. “I’m not a hero, Chase.” She braced herself to deliver the first critical truth of the day. “In fact, it was my fault Colin was in the storm to begin with. I yelled at him because he broke something that was…well, it was special to me. I completely overreacted, though. I wasn’t being fair, and I hurt his feelings.”
“What did he break?”
She took a breath. “A plaster casting. It was a likeness of my son.”
Chase’s expression told her she’d blindsided him completely. His brow darkened with so many emotions Nettie couldn’t hope to read them all. “Your son?”
Feeling somehow as if she were standing on the edge of a precipice, about to jump, she nodded. “Today is Tucker’s birthday. He would have been six.”
“Would have been?” The question was raw and reluctant.
“My son died three years ago in a car accident with my husband.”
The words emerged more evenly than Nettie would have believed possible. But as she watched Chase quickly attempt to school his features, she saw not only the pain he felt on her behalf but also the pain of not being given this information sooner.
“I don’t talk about it often, Chase. Not to anyone.”
Beside her on the cushioned pew, Chase clasped his hands behind his neck and shook his head. Two floors above the softly lit chapel, his son lay recovering from an accident already being viewed as a terrific adventure. He looked at Nettie again, dusty and injured from her attempts to help his child, and he wanted to take her in his arms. He wanted to squeeze her way too tightly to remind himself that she was real and that she was fine and that everyone was safe.
When he felt the touch of her fingers, soft and warm, on his hand, he was shocked to feel longing burn behind his eyes. Nettie was watching him with an expression that was earnest and seeking.
“I want to talk about it with you,” she said, “if you want to listen.”
He nodded, and she began in a voice sometimes halting, sometimes flowing like an unda
mmed stream, to tell the story of the losses she had known, beginning with her parents, ending with her child.
“For the longest time I thought the accident was my fault. If I’d been there in the car, there might have been something I could do. Or if I hadn’t fought with Brian before they left…” Briefly she closed her eyes then reopened them and looked directly at Chase. “It sounds so ridiculous when I say it out loud, but I truly believed I should always be able to keep the people I loved safe.”
“It doesn’t sound ridiculous to me, Nettie. Not anymore.” Chase did pull her into his arms then, burying his lips in the dark curls still matted from their wrestle with the wind. “My God, when I think of you alone in that storm with Colin—”
“But we weren’t alone.” She pulled back to look at him, hoping that what she had to say would somehow make sense to a man who was inherently brave. “I have been terrified of this life. I’ve been frightened of anything I couldn’t control or predict, and my fear became like an armor. I put it on every morning, and all day and all night I let it steer me away from anything I thought could possibly hurt me or someone I loved.” She reached around to take one of his hands, looking down at it, smoothing the strong fingers. “Life is small when you live it in fear. There isn’t room for anything wild or unpredictable. And that’s what love is.”
With his free hand, Chase wove through the hair at her nape. “I came back early from New York,” he confessed, “because nothing made sense there without you. I got on that plane today promising myself I wouldn’t push you. But I’d already decided we’d wait—Colin and I. We’d wait just as long as it took for you to realize you wanted us, too.”
When tears came to Nettie’s eyes, Chase gently swept them away. “I’ve never been as scared in my life as I was when I heard you were in that tornado,” he muttered fiercely. “Every time I picture the two of you…” Again he pulled her close, enveloping her. “I understand that you’re frightened. You have every right to be. But I swear I’ll always protect you, Nettie. You and Colin. On my life, I’ll protect you.”
With her cheek nestled against his chest, Nettie shook her head. “You can’t, you know,” she said softly and without regret. “No one can protect anyone all the time. But I love that you want to.”
Stubbornly, Chase insisted, “I never should have left in the first place. If I hadn’t, you wouldn’t have been alone. I would have been there today.”
“But you were.” Nettie arched back to look at him. “You see, that’s the whole point. Oh, Chase, no one can make a tornado stop. You can’t guarantee we’ll always be safe. But you were with us. I felt you, as truly as if you were in that ditch, like a great warm coat had settled over my shoulders. And suddenly I was strong. Holding Colin in my arms and loving him, feeling you love me—that seemed more real than anything else in the world.” She blinked up at him, this man who had come to rescue her from a life drained by caution. “I don’t want to be safe, anymore, Chase. I just want to love you.”
Chase stared at the woman in front of him a long time before dropping his arms. Lightly, giving her room to move also, he cupped her face and brought his lips to hers. The kiss they shared began slowly and with relief, like a homecoming, but soon it built to something breathless and risky and wild, ripe with all the danger of desire and all the glorious exuberant promise.
When they pulled away, they were both grinning dazedly.
“I love you.”
“I love you.”
The avows overlapped each other.
Nettie’s brows rose. “No fair,” she complained. “I wanted to say it first.”
Chase laughed. “You can say it first next time. In fact…” Taking her left hand, he brought it to his lips. “How about if we spend the rest of our lives taking turns?”
“The rest of our lives?” Nettie managed a watery grin. “See, there you go again,” she said in a choked whisper. “I wanted to say it first.”
For a moment, they simply looked at each other. Then Nettie launched herself at the man she loved and kissed him with every corner of her heart.
High on the morning-blue walls of the hospital chapel, painted angels looked down benevolently as a young woman chose life and love again and a man staked his claim to forever. Anyone watching would have sworn the angels danced for joy.
All the characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author, and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all the incidents are pure invention.
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First published in Great Britain 2010
Harlequin Mills & Boon Limited,
Eton House, 18-24 Paradise Road, Richmond, Surrey TW9 1SR
TO WEAR HIS RING © by Harlequin Enterprises II B.V./S.à.r.l 2010
Circle of Gold, Trophy Wives and Dakota Bride were first published in Great Britain by Harlequin Mills & Boon Limited in separate, single volumes.
Circle of Gold © Diana Palmer 2000
Trophy Wives © Janet Colley 2005
Dakota Bride © Wendy Warren 2002
ISBN: 978-1-408-90073-4