She lay there for a long time, with her eyes closed, taking deep breaths and trying to get ahold of herself. Slowly, the fog began to clear from her thoughts. Slowly, she managed to control her shaking. Slowly, disturbing thoughts seeped into her consciousness.
She blinked her eyes open. The clock read 11:45 p.m. She hadn’t slept, not really. She’d dozed in fitful, uneasy snatches, buoyed by whatever drug they were dripping into her veins through the IV. She felt spacey, disconnected. Still, she knew Logan should be back at the cabin by now, and the phone at her bedside had not yet rung.
Those disturbing thoughts seeped out of the shadows and took solid form, and though she tried to wrestle them away, she could not destroy them. She thought about Logan, out there in the park with her, as she succumbed more and more deeply to the allergic reaction. Logan, alone in the quiet wilderness—alone with a woman going into cardiac arrest Logan, who’d lost his faith, who’d given up medicine. She remembered the panic shining in his eyes as he gazed down at her. She remembered the way his hands shook as he frantically made a signal fire.
She realized, with cold dread, that she had inadvertently sent Logan back to Mexico.
The phone rang, jangling her nerves. She fumbled for it, dropped the receiver on the nightstand, then cradled it against her ear. “Hello?”
“Ginny?”
Logan’s voice sounded rough, rugged. A little anxious. She could read no more into it. “Hello, Logan.”
“God, it’s good to hear your voice.”
Her heart gave a little trill, but she stifled it and bit her lower lip, struggling for words to speak the uncertainties in her heart. “It’s good to hear yours, too.”
“I stayed as long as I could. I just missed you,” he said. “Dr. Davies told me you came to just after I left. But I had to go, Ginny. I didn’t know how long you’d be out. And I had…I have some things I need to do.”
He sounded unlike himself. Incredibly restless. Edgy, uneasy. She heard him on the other end of the line, making noises, as if he was pacing, antsy, struggling to choose his words. She wasn’t sure she wanted to hear those words—she knew that nothing urgent waited for him back at the cabin. She suspected he just had to get out of the hospital, away from her and the hell she’d put him through.
“Listen, Logan,” she said, licking her parched lips. “The doctor told me it was you who saved me out there.”
“No,” he said, a little too swiftly. “I mean, I kept you going, but you were lucky. The ranger saw the fire, drove out to investigate, called 911. Ginny—” He sighed, then rushed on. “We can’t talk about this now. Not so soon. We have to talk—but you’re tired and should get some sleep.”
She winced back the tears. She wanted to talk to him, she wanted him here, by her side, holding her hand. She wanted more than that, too. She wanted a future with him. She wanted to know that ten years down the road she’d be waking up by his side, making love with him, arguing with him about who was going to feed the baby.
“Dr. Davies told me she wants you there for observation at least until the day after tomorrow,” he said. “I’ve got to go to Spokane, and I might have to stay overnight, but I’ll be back in time to pick you up and drive you back here. Is there anyone you want me to call?”
“No,” she said, her voice small, hating that he was being so kind, so efficient, so…detached. “I’ll call my parents from here.”
“Okay.” He made restless, hurried little noises. “Okay, then. Rest, Ginny. I’ll keep in touch. I’ll see you the day after tomorrow.”
Ginny stared at the receiver after Logan hung up as the painful realization dawned upon her. Logan might have saved her life, but in the process, Ginny had lost him.
The sharpness of the pain was like the cold steel of a garden spade, and she was a garden grub unexpectedly unearthed and exposed to the hot dry air and blinding light of day. By instinct, she curled into herself, blindly fixed the receiver into the cradle of the phone. She tightened her hands into fists and crossed her arms over her chest, then pulled her knees up to protect herself, closing her eyes against the pain.
This will pass, she told herself. It always did. She’d lost enough loved ones in her lifetime—through departure as well as death—to know the stages of grief. She’d already passed through shock. What shock was there in the knowledge that Logan didn’t love her as much as she loved him? She’d known him for less than two weeks, and only a few days of it were dedicated to “hot sex.” She’d been more the fool to become so swiftly emotionally involved. Stage two was denial, which she never bothered with. Why deny the inevitable? No one stayed with her very long. Anger, stage three, was a waste of energy. She simply needed to go through the fourth stage—realization. Realization that, once again, someone she loved had abandoned her. Then, and only then, could she finally attain the fifth and final stage—acceptance.
All very scientific, she told herself, tense against the pain emanating from the region of her heart. She just needed time to pass through each phase, time to grieve and to heal. She’d see Logan one last time, pack up her stuff at the cabin, go back to the university. She had lots of data to crunch, lots of tests to run on the distillates of those plant species. She had papers to write up and submit for publication, grant forms to fill out, end-of-year academic reports to give to the dean, three graduate students whose projects she had to oversee. She had plenty of work to do, plenty of experiments to plan and perform….
Then, suddenly, she couldn’t think of work anymore. The pain overwhelmed her. One hot tear slipped out of her eye and burned a trail down her cheek, then soaked into the pillow.
I love Logan Macallister.
A simple truth, undeniable. Spoken in her heart. She loved him, body and soul. Deep inside her, she suddenly realized that no amount of work was going to “busy” her out of this pain.
She blinked her eyes open and stared at the white room, at the blank walls and shining floors, at the IV bag hanging from the stainless-steel pole. The sound of nurses’ footsteps came from the hallway, along with the murmur of voices. For one brief, piercingly vivid moment, she imagined herself fifty years from now, lying in a hospital bed like this one, in a stark hospital room like this one, feeling her life ebb away as she lay there…all alone.
Fear seeped into the pain. She did not want to be alone anymore. She did not want to spend a lifetime alone. She wanted…
Logan.
Logan as her husband. Logan’s eyes in her children’s faces. Logan’s babies in her home. Logan’s love in her heart.
Her body loosened. She let her arms fall to the bed. Air flowed through her mouth, filled her lungs…then flowed out again. Her chest throbbed where Logan had performed CPR. The tears dried in her eyes.
She straightened her legs out on the bed, turned on her back, stared up at the ceiling squares punctured with hundreds of tiny holes. She began to imagine what it could be like…if, for once in her life, she dared to dream.
LOGAN STRODE INTO Pine Woods Community Hospital, then stopped for a moment in the middle of the busy, echoing hallway just to breathe the air. Just to feel the electricity of the place, the vibrancy, just to revel in the feeling of his senses awakening, of his mind turning on again.
Three days ago, he thought he would never feel this way again. Three days ago he’d been a dead man, and now he’d come back to life. It hadn’t been an easy transition, but he’d made it, and now all he wanted to do was make up for wasted time.
He took the elevator to the fourth floor and bounded down the hall to Ginny’s room. They’d had a brief, impersonal phone conversation that morning, arranging for her discharge, and she’d sounded normal enough. Revived, impatient to be out of there. But the phone conversation didn’t prepare him for the woman he saw when he walked into her room.
She stood by the window, awash in the white light of midafternoon. Her skin looked pale, almost translucent; her hair freshly washed and hanging loose over her shoulders. It gleamed with golden-red highligh
ts and lay as silky and soft as that of a child. She wore the same clothes she’d had on that day in the park, but the linen had long lost its crispness. When she turned to him, all wide, tea-colored eyes, she looked like a lost, frightened little girl.
He took a step into the room, instinctively wanting to take her into his arms, enfold her, engulf her, kiss her worries away—but he resisted. He stiffened, fixed himself in place. He had to be cool, careful, and approach her the way his father had taught him to approach an injured wild thing—with great patience and great gentleness. He’d nearly scared Ginny off once before with the intensity of his feelings. He’d be damned if he’d scare her off again.
Instead he thrust forward the bunch of wildflowers he’d gathered from the backyard that morning. “No bees,” he said, grinning at her over the wilting blossoms. “I promise.”
She smiled then, hesitantly, and as she walked toward him, he noticed her back straightening and her spine going stiff, and his old cool-tempered Ginny—the strong woman he’d come to love—was back again.
“They are lovely.” She took the bouquet, buried her face in the flowers, then peeked at him over the petals. “Thank you.”
He didn’t know what to say; she looked so beautiful. So touchable. He was afraid that if he said anything, he’d say too much.
“Are you ready to leave?”
She nodded. “Papers all taken care of. Just waiting for you to wheel me out in that thing.” She pointed to a wheelchair waiting just inside the door. “Hospital policy, you know.”
“Climb in, then, and let’s get out of here.”
He wheeled her down the hall, anxious to get her out, wondering how he was going to say all he had to say without messing the whole thing up. Dr. Davies stopped him in the hallway to talk for a few minutes. Logan bobbed his head at her chatter and escaped as soon as he could. He left Ginny at the entranceway to the hospital and brought the car around.
“My Saab,” she said, gazing at the sleek foreign car as he pulled up. “You brought my Saab.”
“I thought you’d want a smoother ride than what you’d get in my truck.”
“That was very…nice of you.”
“I told you I can be a pretty nice guy, once you get to know me.” He came around and opened the passenger-side door for her, made an exaggerated gesture of welcome. “Your chariot, my lady.”
She gave him a strange look and slid inside. He settled into the soft leather driver’s seat and the car purred onto the highway as his mind raced faster than this driving machine ever could. The fine make of the car made the silence of the interior as deafening as any rock concert.
“Logan,” Ginny began sometime later, fussing with her hands in her lap, “you seem to be in an odd mood today.”
“I am.” He struggled for a moment, then figured there was no easy way to do this. “I’ve got a job.”
“What?”
“I’ve got a job, Ginny. That’s what I was doing yesterday. Looking for a job.”
“Oh.” She shifted in her seat. “That was…quick. And wonderful.”
“Something happened that day in the park,” he said, flexing his hands on the wheel. “Something changed. I don’t know how to explain it.”
“You saved my life.”
He turned to her then, and it struck him how close she was to him—he could see the depths of her eyes, the sprinkling of freckles across her nose and forehead. The sweet softness of her lips. He glanced back to the road, saw a turnoff just ahead and abruptly pulled off the road.
“Logan?” She grasped the dashboard. “What are you doing?”
“I’m not going to do this in the car,” he said abruptly. “I want to see your eyes. We have to do this face-to-face.”
Logan pulled off the highway, turned down the road, caught sight of a small park in the center of town and found a parking spot dose by. He slammed out of the car, came around and opened the door. He seized her hand and pulled her out. “Come on,” he said. “There’s a bench over there.”
The grass, still damp from the recent rain, gave beneath their feet Logan pulled her along until they reached a little wrought-iron bench, shaded at the base of an enormous oak tree. Yet when he got there, he couldn’t sit. He was wound up tighter than a top.
“Okay, Ginny. I didn’t want to dump this all on you, but I can’t hold it back any longer.”
She was staring at him, wide-eyed, shell-shocked and mute.
“Something happened that day in the park,” he continued, “something I can’t explain for the life of me. You…when you went into shock…by God, Ginny, I was scared.”
“I know.” She met his gaze levelly. “Mexico.”
“Yes. Mexico.” He planted his hands on his hips and looked at her and realized that she did know—she did understand. Of course she understood. “It was all happening again, and I couldn’t handle it. I was so sure I’d screw up.”
“You didn’t.”
“I know. I couldn’t.” He thrust his hand through his hair. “It all came back to me with crystal clarity, all that I had to do, all that must be done—the confidence came back,” he explained. “And all the doubt, all the anxiety…it just burned away.”
“I’m glad to hear that,” she said with a soft little smile. “By the way…did I thank you yet, for saving my life?”
He swallowed the growing lump in his throat. “Did I thank you yet—for saving mine?”
Confusion clouded her eyes.
“You saved me, Ginny,” he said, seizing her hands. “It all came back to me—the thrill, the excitement, the -ability. I could do it again, and moreover, I wanted to do it again.”
“Oh, Logan…”
“I’d forgotten what it was like. I’d forgotten how important the work is. I’d forgotten that I was born to do this. When I left you at the hospital, I went straight to the cabin and started making phone calls. Old buddies who’d left the organization and come to work in the States. Friends from medical school, professors I’d kept in touch with. I was just probing, just seeing what I could find. I had an interview by the end of the day. Yesterday, they offered me the job.”
“Congratulations.” She managed an uneven smile. “I’m so happy for you, Logan, I really am. Where…will you be working?”
“Spokane,” he said. “The community hospital emergency room.”
“Not that international organization?”
“No. Not anymore. It’s time for a change, and they need me at the community hospital.”
“Then you…you could live right near the university.”
“Right near you.” He tightened his grip on her hands. She looked bewildered, confused, overwhelmed with information, but he was unwinding and nothing could stop this now. “I didn’t want to tell you all this yesterday. I didn’t want to tell you a damn thing until it was all settled.” He braced himself. “I wanted to be worthy of you, Ginny.”
She sucked in her breath, a swift, sharp sound. Her eyes grew, and she searched his gaze with her own. “Logan…you didn’t need a job to be worthy of me.”
“I damn well did,” he said. “For my own peace of mind, if not for yours.”
“Logan, it doesn’t matter,” she said, taking one step closer to him as he lost himself in her eyes. “It doesn’t matter at all.” She filled her lungs, bracing herself for something. “I want you just the way you are, Logan. Garrulous. Unpredictable. Even unemployed.”
He felt his heart stop as what she was saying penetrated his whirling thoughts.
“I love you, Logan.” She trembled; he felt the tremors though all he touched was her hands. “It took me a while to figure it out, and it’s taking every bit of courage I have to tell you this—but I love you with all my heart. I want to marry you, if you’ll have me.”
“Hey,” he said as his heart made a giant leap. “Hey,” he repeated, tugging her close, “that’s my line.”
Her lips spread in a tremulous smile, a smile as big as Montana and her eyes were as warm as brandy
backlit by fire. “Have a problem with liberated women, Logan?”
“No, no,” he said, “I’m in love with one.”
Wrapping his arms around her, he felt their bodies and hearts merge in a warm, honeyed swell. He dipped his head down and captured her smile with his lips, then kissed her until an elderly passerby walking his dog interrupted them with a husky, knowing laugh.
“Yeah, I’m in love with one,” he repeated, holding her tight. “And it looks like I’m going to marry one, too.”
Epilogue
GINNY OPENED THE OVEN DOOR to a cloud of smoke. Waving it away with a quilted mitt, she pulled out a tray. The stuffed mushrooms clanked on the edges of the pan like lumps of coal. Clicking her tongue, she walked the tray across the kitchen, pressed her toe on the pedal of a hinged garbage can and trashed her failed experiment.
Someday, she would learn to cook, she thought. She was determined to have some kind of hobby; it might as well be a practical one. But right now, she thought as she reached for the phone, she’d just have to add an appetizer of stuffed mushrooms to the caterer’s order for this afternoon’s gathering.
Just as she finished placing the order, Logan came up behind her and slipped his hands around her expanding waistline.
“The mushroom experiment failed,” she admitted as he nuzzled her neck. “But no fire this time.”
“It wouldn’t be home without the smell of burnt food.”
She laughed, a laugh that dissolved into a husky chuckle. Logan’s hands were working magic on her swollen belly. Maybe it was the pregnancy, or maybe it was the thrill of six months of marriage, but Ginny couldn’t seem to get enough of her sexy husband. “Logan,” she moaned as his hands slipped lower, “my parents are due here any minute.”
“They’ll understand if their welcome is delayed.”
“And John’s going to be here… Do you want him walking in on us again?”
“I want you.”
She turned in his arms and smiled up at her husband. He’d changed so much in the past year. He’d lost that anger, he’d lost that frustration. The shadows hadn’t completely dimmed in his eyes, but they’d faded some. His job had given him a new sense of purpose, a fierce vitality that electrified him. Ginny found this new, confident, vital man incredibly, impossibly sexy. Now that they were married and promptly pregnant, he strode around with an air about him, as if the world were his oyster, and she his pearl.
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