by Tina Beckett
Whatever needed to be done was going to be done by him.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
REBEL RAISED HER HEAD and looked into his eyes. “My back is on fire. Got anything for that, Doc?” Her smile was as stiff as her movements, but she curled her left arm around Alejandro.
“Judd is bringing me a special herb concoction we use on the horses. It will help as soon as I get it on you.”
Her brows shot up. “The horses? You’re using a horse liniment on me?”
“Sure. If they like it, I don’t see why you shouldn’t.” A small smile lit him up. If she was starting to crack jokes, she was going to be okay.
“Yes. Lupe makes a salve out of the herbs we grow.”
Judd arrived, skidding to a halt beside them. “I got it.” He shoved the container, the size of a mint tin, into Duncan’s hands. “Here.”
Lupe arrived at that moment with a tray for Alejandro, laden with her special hot chocolate, a few cookies and a picture book. “Come over here, Alejandro, so Duncan can tend to Rebel.”
This time, when she held her hand out to him, he took it and allowed her to lead him to the chair across the room beside Rafael, whom Duncan hadn’t even seen come into the room. The great man said nothing, but Duncan could see the tension around his eyes and in the set of his mouth, firm and displeased. Duncan nodded to him and received a return gesture.
“Let me see your back. You’ll be amazed at how well it works. The horses make a fuss at the medicinal smell as it’s camphor, but I don’t think you’ll mind.”
Rebel turned her back to him, and he raised her shirt over her shoulders. Red welts covered her back, swollen in places and already deep bruises showed themselves. He dipped his fingers in the salve. Starting at her trim shoulders and moving downward, he applied the ointment. She winced several times, but it couldn’t be helped. After settling her shirt again, she sat on the edge of the couch so her back didn’t touch anything.
Jake shuffled into the room, carrying two neoprene packs of some sort. “When the horses get hurt we put these ice packs on them. I figured you and Alejandro could use them, too.” He cleared his throat and blushed gloriously as he approached Rebel.
Duncan raised his brows. Apparently, Rebel had made quite an impression on the men in the family, no matter what their age. He obviously had some competition for her attention. That made Duncan smile. She’d already been accepted by the family, and she didn’t even know it.
“Thanks, Jake.” Duncan took the cold gel pack from him and placed it gently on Rebel’s back. She closed her eyes and gave an audible sigh.
“That’s fantastic. Thanks, Jake.” She reached out for his hand without opening her eyes.
The young man shook her hand roughly and turned a florid shade of red, matching Lupe’s scarlet trumpet vine on the portál. “Glad to help.” He dropped her hand, and then she opened her eyes. “I…uh…got something to do.” He backed away from her, prepared to bolt from the room.
“What’s the status out there?” Rafael questioned, and hit him with a stern stare.
“It was the old homestead foundation, sir.”
“I thought we blocked that well off some time ago.”
“It wasn’t the well, sir, but some sort of storage room. Maybe the root cellar.” Jake said. “The backhoe’s still out. I can just plow the whole thing over if you like and cover it for good.”
“Go ahead. Then we need to start going to the other old home sites and making sure there aren’t more death traps we’ve forgotten about.”
“I’ll get it done right now.” Jake left to do the job.
Rebel leaned against Duncan’s shoulder, and he was glad to be her support. Her gentle breathing against his skin was something he wanted to savor for years to come. This woman who had no qualms about putting herself in harm’s way for others deserved to be cherished and adored.
He’d been so determined to have his own way he hadn’t been able to see there was another way to be had! He’d been so determined to make Rebel see things his way, to do things his way, he’d nearly driven off the woman who excited him, inspired him, and stirred his passion for living.
Lupe paused in front of him until he looked up.
“She deserves your best, no?”
“She does, and she’s going to get it.” He stroked Rebel’s hair and pressed his cheek to the top of her head.
Rafael stood. “Come on, kid, let’s go see if you can help me figure out this new cellular phone.” Alejandro looked with longing at Rebel. “She’s in good hands but needs to rest right now. Come on, Pedro. You too.”
“Okay.” Alejandro took Rafael’s hand and allowed the man to lead him away, Pedro following behind.
“Rebel, you are an amazing woman. I wish you knew that.” As Duncan held her, her breathing changed from the easy, restful pace to rapid and anxious.
“Duncan.”
She leaned her head back and looked up at him and all he wanted to do was kiss her. So he did, dirt and all.
Leaning in to her, he opened his mouth over her parted lips. Somehow, he wanted to put all his fear and all his love into that one kiss. He cupped the back of her head gently and kissed her. She allowed him to take what he wanted, the glide of her tongue over his assuring him she was no longer upset but needed him as much as he needed her.
Breaking the kiss, he held her close, the tremors surging through him coming as a surprise.
“You can’t leave.”
“I’m not going anywhere.” This was where he wanted to be for now. With a hand that still shook he brushed some of the dirt from her face.
“Herm told me.” She sat upright, urgency in her expression. “You love that place. You can’t leave.”
“What exactly did Herm tell you?” He frowned, puzzled by this. Did she have a concussion?
“He said you resigned this morning. You can’t do that.”
Duncan smiled and gave a head shake. “He exaggerated a little.” Warmth stirred in his chest at her reaction.
“You didn’t resign?” Confusion warred with relief in her eyes.
“No. I came in to say goodbye to everyone as I decided to take the rest of the month off to help with the chili harvest. Not resign the whole thing.”
“Oh, that man! He made me believe you’d resigned and weren’t ever coming back, and I was the only one who could talk you into keeping your job!”
Speechless for a moment, Duncan pulled her against his side. “And you thought you could do that?”
“I thought I might be able to help, yes.” She placed one arm around his waist. “You aren’t leaving?”
“No, I’m not going to leave the ER, but I do need to spend some more time here. The situation today with Alejandro and the lack of serious healthcare here has made me wake up to where I am needed just as much.”
“I see.” She looked away. “That’s good.”
“But we need to talk about us, Rebel.” He stroked the hair back from her face, extricated a chunk of dirt. “I know you’re in pain right now, but I can’t wait any longer.” Here goes. This was going to be the hardest conversation he’d ever had with anyone, but for both of them it had to happen, it had to be done. And if he couldn’t make her see, couldn’t convince her of his sincerity, then he would have to move on. Again.
Her chin trembled, but she nodded. “Go ahead.”
“I know you’re still grieving about your family, and it sucks.” He wanted to touch her, comfort her, but making it easier wasn’t going to help either of them.
“Grieving?” She took a deep breath and let out an agonized cry, as if coming to a conclusion on her own for the first time. “I’m not grieving, Duncan. I’m feeling guilty!”
“For what? You didn’t do anything.”
“I. Survived.” Emotions choked out of her. “I was supposed to help my mother, I was supposed to make things better for her, and I didn’t. I couldn’t! All I did was live and remind her every day of what she’d lost.” Painful though it was,
she stood and began to pace.
“None of that was your fault, Rebel. None of it.” He punched a fist against his thigh, unable to contain the temper that ate at him on her behalf. “You were a child. And if your mother expected you to do anything else, then she was out of her mind with grief, too.”
“It was my job to be good, to be quiet, to help take care of them when my mother needed a break.” Tears streamed down Rebel’s face, making muddy tracks, and the memory took her deep.
Duncan paused, wanting to reach out to her, to hold her, to comfort her, to make it better in some way, but he knew he couldn’t. He couldn’t take away her pain, but he could be there when she let go. He stood and watched as she moved through the pain that had shaped her entire life.
“I did what I could, and it was never enough. It was never going to be enough. I was never going to be enough. Even as a kid I could see that.” She took in a breath, her eyes still glazed as she whispered her pain out loud. “I emptied trash cans and vomit basins, and stood up on an old wooden box so I could reach the controls on the washer when I was eight. I went to school in the day, but when I got home I became the mother, the nurse, the caretaker, and my mother went to work.”
“So you stayed home with all of them?” Incredulous, he could hardly conceive of the responsibility heaped on the tiny shoulders of a child.
She nodded and reached up to tug on a strand of her hair, wrapping it round and round one of her fingers. “Yes, but they weren’t all sick at the same time. The first one, my dad, went on for three years.”
Duncan closed his eyes, unable to fathom the pain and the loss of a vital part of her youth. No wonder she was such a strong nurse. She’d been at it since childhood. “What happened after that?”
“Well, I don’t remember much from some of those years. Just going to school and staying up with my dad until my mom got home.” She shrugged. “Fortunately, he died at the beginning of my summer break when I was eleven, so I had the whole summer to recover.”
“You don’t really recover from the death of your father, though, do you?”
“No, I mean from the exhaustion of caring for him. I had a few months to recover before school started again.”
“I see.” He settled on the arm of one of the couches. “What did you do then?”
“The boys were okay for a couple of years, then when I was about thirteen or fourteen, I don’t remember, the boys started showing symptoms, and we got a clue it wasn’t just Dad.” She let out a heavy sigh. “Ben had a stroke when he was twenty-three. He was the oldest.” She shook her head and tears flowed again. “My mother was so proud of him when he got this job working construction. He loved to build things, and she was so happy he was doing what he wanted.” A sad smile curved the corners of her mouth upward. “He was in a heavy equipment accident at the construction site where he worked. No one ever figured out if he had the stroke first and then the accident happened or the other way around.”
Duncan didn’t think it mattered, chicken or egg, the result was the same. “So that’s how you found out he had Huntington’s?”
“Yeah. When the neuro symptoms lingered longer than the rest of his injuries, and he couldn’t go back to work. After that it was bam, bam, bam.” She hit the back of one hand against the palm of the other for emphasis. “They all became symptomatic within three years and died within five.” Though her breathing had settled, she inhaled an erratic breath as her body calmed and she told her story.
“The emotional pain must have been excruciating.” He couldn’t conceive of it. Even though he’d faced his own pain and saw the pain of others on a daily basis, he just couldn’t wrap his head around what she’d gone through as a child.
“It doesn’t matter now, but there it is. You know what my deal is and why.”
Without responding, he stood and placed his hands on her cheeks and lifted her face upward until she looked him in the eye. Hers were the saddest eyes he’d ever seen, and now he knew why. “Did your mother ever thank you, or tell you she was proud of you?”
The green darkened and the tears she’d managed to contain welled again and overflowed. “No.” Her chin quivered, and she began to cry in earnest.
Then he did comfort her, held her against him and gave her the support of his body as he held her and let her cry against him, let her cry for the childhood she’d never had and the family she’d lost. “I’m proud of you, Rebel. I’m so proud of the woman you’ve become, of the humor you’ve maintained, of the compassion you share, and the insight you’ve developed. Of your passion when we make love.” He stroked her hair and didn’t know if she heard him, heard his words or the things he meant when he said them.
“I’m such a mess, how can you be proud of me?” Pressing her face against his neck, she hid her face from him.
“Because I love you, Rebel. With all my heart, and all my soul, I love you.” At those words, she stiffened, stilled, and he didn’t know if she even breathed. With gentle hands, he pushed some of her hair back and bared her face. “There you are.”
“You must be delusional or something.” Red, blotchy-faced, with tears still flowing, she was the most beautiful person he’d ever known.
“Why? Because I love you?”
“Yes,” she whispered, and the seemingly endless fountain of tears continued. “You’ve seen the real me, all of me, and you can still say you think you love me?”
Using his thumbs, he wiped the tears from her face and placed a kiss on the tip of her dirty, red nose. “I don’t think I love you, I know I do. You’re one of the strongest women I’ve ever known, Rebel Taylor, and I want to know more of you every day.”
There were no words to describe her feelings. Relief, guilt, loss, confusion, but most of all love for Duncan. The kind of love she’d heard about and read about but had put down to good fiction, wild fantasy, or drunken debauchery. Never in her life would she have thought she could find that kind of love for herself. “I don’t deserve you, Duncan. Or this family or—”
“Shh. Yes, you do. From the second you set foot on this property, you’ve been welcome. From the second you looked at me in the parking lot when we met, I’ve been unable to get you out of my mind, and you’ve found a place in my heart. I want you in my life.”
“I don’t know how you see all of those things in me, but I’m so…glad…you do.” She clutched him against her and this time there were tears of joy, of happiness along with the pain left in her, but if Duncan was beside her, she knew she could take at least one step forward to having a normal life, to having a great love in her life and putting behind her the pain of her past, the childhood torn away from her by death and disease. “I don’t know how to say the words.” She looked at him, begging him to understand.
“The words ‘I love you’?”
Nodding, she pressed her lips together.
“Then I’ll say them for you, every day, until you can say them to me.” He pressed his forehead against hers, holding her, trying to help her see she was worthy of his love. “I love you, Rebel Taylor. Will you stay with me, will you love me, and be my wife?” He felt her stiffen again. “It’s not too soon, it’s not too fast, it’s barely fast enough for me.”
Then she smiled, and he knew they were going to be okay. Even if she couldn’t yet say the words, she loved him.
“Dr. McFee, what will people think? We’ve only know each other…for how long?”
“It doesn’t matter how long we’ve known each other.” He curved some of that wild hair behind one ear. “People will think I’m damned lucky you agreed to be my wife. Say you will?”
“I will be your wife and stay with you and…love you.”
“Will you be part of this crazy family and help me to open a free clinic here in Hatch? I know it’s a lot to ask all at one time, but when you see your dreams right in front of you, how can you not grab hold with both hands?”
“I…I never thought I would marry or have children, so I cut that dream out of my life a l
ong time ago.”
“I want to take you on all those trips you never took, and I want to check everything off that long bucket list of yours, and experience with you all the things you’ve never done.”
“Well, that’s quite a lot,” she said with a laugh, and she knew she would be okay. Really okay on the inside. With time, with love, maybe a little therapy and his support, but she would be okay. Now, she could breathe again and for the first time she inhaled a sense of relief she’d never had.
“Duncan McFee, I will marry you and be part of this crazy family of yours and travel anywhere you want to go. As long as you’re with me, it will be home.”
Duncan held her close, mindful of her injuries, and the tremor of fear inside him began to subside. All was going to be well with them, and he’d spend his lifetime ensuring she knew it. “I love you.”
“But what about children? I can’t give you any babies.” He knew her history, but would he accept it? That could be the deal-breaker for them both.
“You don’t know that. Not for sure.” He took her hands in his. “I think it’s time for you to know.”
“To know wh—? No.” She shook her head and tears filled her eyes. “I can’t, Duncan. I just can’t. I already know.”
Though she tried to pull away from him, he held on to her hands. “Darling, you don’t know, and neither do I.” He drew her a little closer. “What I do know is that I love you. The results won’t stop me from loving you. It will give you some peace, and that’s what I want for you more than anything.”
“Peace? How can you say that when having the test will determine how long my life is?” Her eyes were wide with fright he’d put there, and her chest rose and fell quickly.
“No, it won’t. That test is what it is, and that’s all. It doesn’t determine how long your life is or how well you live it. I’ll be with you every step of the way, and I will love you through whatever happens.”
“I’ve never known anyone like you, Duncan McFee. I can’t believe you love me enough to want to know the truth about me.”
“I already know the truth about you. You are a wonderful, caring, vibrant woman who loves deeply. That’s the truth of you. What I want is to bring you peace, to ease your mind, and take away the pain that’s been in your heart for too long.”