by Marnee Blake
“Yeah. She’s on her way.” Her mother’s voice on the phone had been all wrong. She hadn’t cried, she hadn’t yelled. She’d accepted the news with an icy calm that settled deep in Meg’s heart. It was as if, after father died, her mother was always bracing for the worst. And she never stopped.
Will buried his hands in his hair, tugging softly. “This wasn’t supposed to happen.”
“It’s never supposed to happen. But, it does. In our community, it does.”
“Come on, Meg. There are lots of other jobs that are dangerous, jobs that need to be done. Jobs that save lives.”
“Does that mean I have to be happy that my family does those jobs?” Her brother lay in a cold, hospital surgical room. And Lance…they thought he’d sprained his ankle, and he was covered in bruises she heard. If he had hit a tree like Hunter, he could be the one on the operating table.
She didn’t want to think about that either.
The door to the waiting room opened, and Hunter’s doctor, Dr. Banks, stepped inside, his face mask hanging around his neck and his sleeves rolled up as if he’d just finished scrubbing. “Meg. He’s all done.”
“How is he?”
“He came through fine. He’s young and healthy.” Dr. Banks lifted his hands. “That’s not to say he doesn’t have a long road ahead, but he’ll get there. And if he’s anything like you, he’ll do it in record time.”
She sighed, the relief making her dizzy. “Thank God.”
“When can we break him out of here?” Will asked.
“He’s got to suffer through our hospitality for at least two more days. We have to make sure the new joint I put in his shoulder takes, and we need to be certain he’s clear of infections. He’ll spend tonight in the ICU, and tomorrow we’ll move him to a regular room.”
Meg nodded, holding out her hand to the doctor. “Thank you. I appreciate all your hard work.” Banks had an amazing reputation. He’d been at a charity dinner tonight and had come in specifically to help her brother because her boss, Dr. Colman, asked him to. She appreciated it. Bend was larger than Redmond, but the health care community was relatively small. They took care of their own.
“No problem. Happy to help.” He shook Will’s hand, gave them a few more details and instructions, and left.
In the now-empty waiting room, she and her brother couldn’t seem to find words to fill the silence. All they had been doing lately was arguing. When had they come to this point? She mourned their old easiness. Finally, she pointed to the door. “Why don’t you head home? I can wait for Mom. I’ll stay here tonight, in Bend, at my place.” She could use a night away from her mother’s place. Solitude.
“Are you sure? I can stay, you know—”
“I know. It’s no big deal.” She tried for a smile. “This is my regular stomping ground, remember?”
He grinned back, but it looked as forced as hers felt. “If you say so.” He stepped forward, folding her into his arms.
It had been so long since one of her brothers had given her a hug—a real hug—that she stood stiffly in his embrace, before folding her arms around his waist and tucking her head against his chest. She breathed in his familiar smell, closing her eyes, and wishing things were different between them. Everything was so hard. She wished she could span the divide, but she didn’t have a path forward with him. She wasn’t sure she ever would.
“Night, sis. Try to get some sleep, okay?”
She nodded and waved as he left her alone in the waiting room with the silence. The television was on, tuned to a cable news show. The banner streamed across the bottom of the screen, but she didn’t read any of the words.
How was Lance? Had anyone come to visit him? His grandmother didn’t drive anymore, and she didn’t know who else he had in the area to look after him. Had Dak come? She hoped so. If anyone deserved someone to care for him, it was Lance.
She wanted to be at his side at times like this.
She shouldn’t. It was a recipe for heartache. He’d warned her away. It spelled professional disaster. She didn’t seem to care. Right now, all she could think about was whether he was comfortable, if he was okay. It wouldn’t change whether she was with him officially or not.
Before she changed her mind, she set off for the nurses’ station. She recognized one of the nurses. “Hey, Annabelle. How are you?”
“Hi, I’m good. I heard your brother was here. How is he?”
“In recovery. Stable, right now. Thank you for asking.” She smiled. “I was wondering, though, if you could look something up for me.”
She leaned forward on her elbows. “Sure. What do you need?”
“Can you tell me which room Lance Roberts is in?” She shouldn’t be looking him up, not here. It was overstepping ethical bounds. Right now, she didn’t care.
Annabelle entered a few things into the keyboard, and her brow dropped. “You said Lance Roberts? I’m not finding anyone by that name.”
“Are you sure?” Surely, they hadn’t discharged him so quickly?
“Wait. Here. Says he checked himself out earlier.” She leaned back, away from the computer.
Meg patted her palm against the counter, glancing down the hallway. He checked himself out? They would’ve wanted to run lots of tests, check for internal bleeding. At least. There’s no way he would’ve gone through all of that testing in that amount of time. “Okay. Thanks a lot for checking.”
The other girl nodded as she answered an incoming call.
Meg pushed away from the desk, retrieving her cell from her bag. Pulling up her contacts, she started a message to Lance.
Hope you’re okay. She fired the text off quickly. Pausing, she warred with herself over whether she should say more. She shouldn’t. But that didn’t stop her from going on
I’ll be at my place in Bend. If you need me. She hit send, and then she added the address, before she could overthink it.
She slipped her phone back into her handbag and set off for the waiting room. She was being ridiculous. He wasn’t going to call her. He wasn’t willing to take a chance on her.
Hopefully, though, he was with someone who was taking care of him.
Her phone rang, and her pulse picked up. But it was her mother.
She swiped to answer the call, and propped the phone up to her ear. “Hey Mom, where are you?”
Chapter 12
Lance killed the engine, resting his palms against the steering wheel. The apartment building in front of him looked like every other apartment building in small, urban towns. Cookie-cutter windows, low-maintenance brick facade…there was no way to tell which unit Meg lived in. The place had no personality, no distinguishing character.
It was the opposite of where he expected Meg to live.
What was he doing here? He should go back to the bunkhouse, get a good night’s sleep, and prepare himself for the judgmental stares of the other recruits and jumpers tomorrow. But her text…
Was she okay?
He left the hospital as fast as he could. Couldn’t stomach the places. They wanted to run a bunch of tests. MRI, CT scan. No way. He was fine. And if he wasn’t, Joe Buchanan would have another excuse to fire him. He wasn’t going to let that happen. Better that he not find out.
So he hightailed it out of there, before they found anything to keep him. Before he left, though, he asked about Hunter. It took some convincing, but he got the nurse at his station to spill that he was still on the operating table. A little eavesdropping and he learned that they were working on his shoulder and his leg was broken.
Fuck. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go.
He closed his eyes. He ran through the events after their plane exit. He’d seen Hunter’s parachute tangle, he tried to think of all of the ways he could have done things differently, all of the ways he could have kept Hunter out of the hospital.
But he
couldn’t find anything he would’ve done differently. He slammed his palm against the steering wheel. Not Hunter…
He tried to imagine how his old friend must be feeling. They had always dreamed of becoming smokejumpers. An injury like this, it could sideline him for a year, longer maybe. Even forever. If there were lingering issues, he might never fight a fire again. Someone like Hunter, he didn’t deserve this.
And Meg…she was going to take this hard.
He should leave. He needed to be her friend, to keep his cool around her. Showing up at her place at 9 o’clock at night, it was too intense for friendship. He should send her a text. Ask about Hunter, see how she was doing.
But even though it would be smarter to do that, he had to see her, to verify with his own eyes that she was okay.
He was only going to stay for a minute. Someone was probably there. Meg had so many friends, a huge loving family…she wouldn’t need to be alone, not if she didn’t want to. He was just going to go up, make sure she was fine, and then he was going back to the air center, where he belonged.
Decided, he plucked the keys out of the ignition, and threw open the door. Stepping out, he winced as he put too much weight on his sore left foot. He had no idea how he was going to run on that tomorrow. But that was a problem for the morning.
Limping through the door of the nondescript building, he made his way past a bank of mailboxes on his right. Scanning the names, he found her. M. Buchanan, apartment 211. Tapping the sticker with her name on it, he headed for the elevators.
The whole ride up, he debated whether or not he was crazy. Probably. But he wouldn’t be able to sleep. He might as well check on her, since he was already here.
The elevator dinged. Stepping out, he followed the arrow toward her apartment. At number two hundred eleven, he inhaled a deep breath, listening for voices inside. There was only silence. He knocked three times.
The sound of a deadbolt unlatching greeted him, the knob turned, and the door swung open.
Meg’s face was free of makeup, her gorgeous auburn hair pulled back into a low ponytail. In low-slung sweats and a camisole, she was more coed than successful physician’s assistant and trainer of macho firefighters.
And she was the sexiest thing he’d ever seen.
He tucked his hands in his pockets to keep from reaching for her. “Hey.”
It wasn’t much by way of snappy greetings, but all of his intellectual conversation had flown out of his mind at the sight of her.
“Hey.” Her hand rested on the door jamb. She’d kicked her hip out to the side, and the angle gave him a view of bare skin over the waistband of her sweats. “You came.”
“You texted.” It wasn’t much of an explanation. In fact, he probably should have texted back. That would’ve been the proper thing to do. But it was all the reason he had.
“I did,” she said, swinging the door open. “Do you want to come in?”
There was nothing he wanted more in the world. But he shrugged. “I came to make sure you were okay.”
“Don’t you think I should be asking you that? You’re the one who fell out of a plane today.” Meg inhaled a broken breath, and caught her lower lip between her teeth, but not before he noticed its quiver.
“It’s okay, firecracker. I’m fine.” His voice was gruffer than he’d like, but watching her worry was ripping him apart. “A little banged up, that’s all.” Look at him. King of understatement. He had more stitches than he could count, and a bum foot. But, he hated how concerned she was.
Because she was one of his trainers. That was all. Not the one to complain to.
Yeah, and he was in denial.
She studied him, and he couldn’t help but think she could see right through him. “I bet. You checked yourself out of the hospital. Why didn’t you stay, finish your tests?”
He shrugged. “Feel fine. Don’t need any more tests.”
“You could have bleeding…”
“Meg, I’m fine.” He chuckled, rubbing his head sheepishly. “How’s Hunter?”
She sighed. “In a lot of pain. Still processing. They haven’t explained the full extent of his injuries to him yet, but I don’t think he is ready to deal with exactly what’s in store for him.” Sadness weighed on her features. “Hunter doesn’t get a cold well. He’s going to hate everything about rehabilitation.”
Lance grimaced. He could relate. He was a caretaker…his mom, his Gram. He hated having people take care of him and being laid up in a treatment facility would suck. “How long is he in the hospital?”
“Few more days. Then they’ll move him to the rehab center. Who knows how long he’ll be there?” She glanced over his shoulder.
Time for him to get to the point. “Listen, Meg…I came to tell you…I’ve gone over it a dozen times. More than that, probably. And I can’t think of any way I could have saved him.”
It was the truth. He didn’t know if she would believe him, didn’t know if anyone would believe him, but it was the best he had.
Her clear blue eyes met his, full of sorrow. “Is that what you think? That I blame you?”
“God, I don’t know. If you did, you wouldn’t be the only one.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m already beating the hell out of myself. You can jump on that bandwagon.”
“Someone messed with the parachute.” Her mouth thinned. “Will told me.”
“Good lord.” He buried his hands in his hair. Hunter had picked up his parachute. Not one he packed, the one he was supposed to jump with. That parachute had been meant for him.
He turned away from her, staring at the fluorescent lighting above him.
It should have been him. The guilt crushed him so thoroughly, it squeezed the air from his lungs.
“You saved him.” She stretched the words out, as if he wouldn’t understand them if she spoke them quickly. “You helped him get his reserve chute, you saved his life.”
He wasn’t ready to take that, but God help him, he couldn’t exactly tell her that though he might have saved him, he wouldn’t have been hurt if it hadn’t been for him in the first place.
Instead, he snorted, finally mastering his face enough to turn back to her. “His leg is broken and he’s sporting some new hardware in his shoulder. Some saving.” His words sounded bitter, even to his ears.
She shook her head. “You don’t see yourself right. That’s not what I heard happened.” She paused. “You’re a hero, Lance. You risked yourself to help him. You might not like that, and that might not be how you see yourself, but I do. Nothing you say is going to change that.”
Looking into her eyes was like looking into the sun. So bright. They awakened hope in him that he had no right to feel. When he looked at her, he could almost believe her. God, he wanted to. Through her eyes, he looked different. Not the cause of someone’s pain. Whole, worthy.
This had been a bad idea. He shouldn’t have come. This visit…it was only going to make it harder for him to keep any distance. It would leave him wanting more, when he had no right to do that. Not while he was investigating their fathers.
Not when it should have been him.
“I should go. I only wanted to check on you.” He was repeating himself. He stepped back, away from her, away from everything he wanted.
“No.” The one word had the strength of a cymbal crash. She squared her shoulders, and she stepped toward him.
His heart kicked up as she lifted her hands, cupping his face. He had been waiting so long for her touch. Closing his eyes, he tried to inhale, but his chest felt too tight. Her soft hands…it took everything in him to remain still, not to move, not to reach for her, too.
“Lance.” Her voice was a siren call. He steeled himself, determined to hold it together. But when he opened his eyes to meet hers, it was his undoing. She smiled up at him. “Come inside.”
Everything insid
e him tore apart.
“God, Meg…I can’t, not unless you want me to touch you.” Her eyes widened, her mouth opening, and she leaned forward, relaxing into him. He shook his head, backing away so that her hands fell from his face. “You don’t understand. You don’t want that. When I made you that promise, it was as much for you as for me. Our jobs, our families…and there are things here, things you don’t know…”
“So tell me.”
“I can’t.” He didn’t recognize his voice. It was too raw, full of longing. “I want you and I want to tell you. But, I can’t.”
She followed him, into the hall, and placed her hand on his chest, right over his heart. The heat from her touch, it burned into his soul. “I don’t care. All I know is that today, you almost died. You saved my brother’s life. And I…” Her eyes were soft, so soft. “Come in. Hold me. Please.”
He reached for her like a starving man offered his last meal. His arms curved around her slim back, and he pulled her against him with reverence.
He shouldn’t. God, he should leave now. But, he couldn’t.
As he dropped his head and covered her mouth with his, he didn’t think he’d ever tasted anything as sweet as the soft gasp she made.
Chapter 13
Meg’s kiss, the taste of her mouth, it was better than he’d imagined. With a low growl, he deepened the contact.
He’d been waiting to kiss her forever. Not only the past week since their near miss at her mom’s house, but since they were kids. He couldn’t remember a time when he hadn’t wanted her. Not just physically, but he’d ached for the right to hold her, to kiss her, for the moments when she’d want him to do that, when she’d allow him that privilege.
He was going to make the most of it.
Favoring his ankle and leaning on the wall to support them, he backed them into her apartment without breaking the contact of their mouths, closing the door softly behind him. He pulled away briefly to fasten the deadbolt, but he returned as fast as he could, his mouth against hers again.