“Let me stay here,” the patient begged. “I’m fine right here.”
“Your lower extremities are chilled and your feet are like ice,” Jaci said. “Nakisha and I will help you.” She motioned for the nurse’s aide to get the wheelchair which sat collapsed against a wall in the corner of the room. “We’ll go slow. There’s no rush.” Jaci kept her voice calm, soothing.
Ian wished he’d had a nurse like her during his long recovery.
Jaci looked over at him. “If you and Mr. Janovich could make a space for the bed in the family room, that’d be great,” Jaci said.
While he helped tie up about one hundred pounds of old newspapers and magazines in easy to lift bundles for recycling, Ian listened to the sounds coming from the end of the hallway. Screams. Crying. Jaci’s calm reassurance and gentle coaxing. How did she do it? How did she deal with anguish, pain and poverty day in and day out and still maintain her positive outlook and sense of humor?
He’d known she worked as a nurse. She never spoke much about it, and for some reason he’d pictured her gallivanting from ritzy estate to ritzy estate checking on post op liposuctions and face lifts, maybe the occasional Botox injection gone wrong. Prior to today, he’d never pictured Jaci serving meals in a soup kitchen or tending to a woman in a filthy, smelly, water-damaged basement apartment while her alcoholic husband lay passed out on the couch—which he knew because he’d flat out refused to let her enter the dilapidated building alone. He’d never imagined what she actually did in the course of a day. The people she helped, the lives she impacted.
His respect for her quadrupled.
By six o’clock that night Jaci had completed eight patient visits while Ian had wet-vacuumed three basements, fixed a sump pump, hooked up two generators, hauled wood, chopped wood, drove to find an open convenience store for water, batteries, and/or non-perishable food, got two propane tanks filled, worked with three men to move the metal roof that’d blown off a shed, and rescued a cat from on top of a refrigerator in a basement flooded with over a foot of water. His left leg throbbed, his body ached, and if he closed his eyes he’d be asleep in under a minute.
He hadn’t felt this good in months.
* * *
In an upsetting turn of events, Jaci slowed her stride so Ian could keep up with her as they walked from his Jeep to the entrance of their complex. During the course of their long, exhausting day his left-sided limp had progressed from slight to pronounced. Yet each time she’d suggested he rest, he’d refused, making himself available to assist her patients and their families and in two instances, neighbors. “When you get inside you should take two ibuprofen and a hot bath.”
“Care to join me?” he wiggled his eyebrows.
She landed a playful punch to his upper arm. Just like old times. Except things between them had changed. Because Jaci had dared to question the fun, carefree, no commitment nature of their relationship. Because she’d dared to think she didn’t have to forgo the money in her trust because the idea of marriage, of someone monitoring her every move and commenting on/trying to control her every activity left her cold. That maybe her obligatory five years living as wife to a husband—at five million dollars per year—could actually be spent with a man she liked and found attractive, a man who had seemed to like her, too, a man who didn’t crowd her and who spent more time overseas than at home. The ideal solution!
But fearing rejection and the ruination of a friendship she’d valued, Jaci had put off the all-important discussion. And, with the clock ticking on Ian’s departure, she’d made a poorly thought out impulsive move meant to entice him and show him just how good the two of them together could be. She’d given him exactly what he’d been angling for since they’d met—her body.
And once he’d gotten what he’d wanted from her, he’d walked away—ran actually. Without a backward glance. Making the hours she’d spent in his arms, feeling wanted, cared for and hopeful, that much more heartbreaking.
Valuable lesson learned: Never let your guard down.
So where did that leave them? After everything that’d happened in the past year, could they still be friends? Did he even want that? “I get why you didn’t write me or e-mail me while you were in Iraq. But after you were injured, when you were back in the states recovering in the hospital, why didn’t you call me then? I’m a nurse. Maybe there’s something I could have done to help in your recovery.” Then it occurred to her. “Unless you already had someone with you.”
“I didn’t.”
“So you’d rather—”
“I’m sorry if I was too busy fighting off the surgeons who wanted to amputate my leg, fighting infection, and fighting my own damn demons to pick up the phone for a chat,” he snapped in what used to be an atypical show of anger.
It must have been terrible. “I would have come to you,” she said, swiping her ID in the security scanner. Despite everything, she would not have left him to suffer alone.
“Which is why I didn’t call,” he said quietly as he opened the door and waited for her to walk through.
She stopped to look up at him.
“Listen.” He took her by the arm and led her into the lobby. “It was my decision to join the army. To serve and protect my country. I knew the risks, and I accepted them. Why should I inconvenience you because of my life choices?”
“It wouldn’t have been an inconvenience.” Not really.
“Can we not talk about this right now?” He inclined his head and traced his eyebrows with his thumb and middle fingers. “I think this conversation would turn out better for me after you’ve had a good night’s sleep.”
Good call. They entered the elevator and she pressed the buttons for the fourth and fifth floors. “Thank you for coming with me today.” Had she been on her own, she no doubt wouldn’t have gotten home for hours.
“Thank you for letting me tag along on a day in the secret life of Jaci Piermont.”
He’d done a lot more than tag along. “Not as glamorous as you thought, huh?”
“No. It wasn’t quite what I’d expected,” he admitted, placing her nursing bag on the floor and bracing his right shoulder on the side wall of the elevator so he could relieve the pressure on his left leg. “I can’t help wondering what compels local society’s favorite princess to circulate among the sick and elderly and the poor and disenfranchised, in dirty sometimes dangerous conditions, when she has the means to join the ladies-who-lunch-and-plan-fundraisers-to-benefit-the-less-fortunate crowd. And why she kept it a secret from a friend who she would have dropped everything for, to take care of him in the hospital.”
“Mom didn’t come from money,” Jaci explained. “She always said, ‘If you want to make a difference in people’s lives you need to be an active participant in those lives.’ She felt strongly that simply taking the easy way out and throwing money at a problem didn’t make it go away. And I agree.” As far as not telling people every detail of how she filled her time, it was no one’s business. Working as a nurse and with the Woman’s Crisis Center gave her a sense of purpose, of accomplishment and fulfillment. Why taint that by telling people who would only respond similarly to how Ian had. ‘Why work when you don’t have to?’ ‘Don’t go into that building, don’t go down to that part of town, it’s not safe.’ Just because an area was rundown and inhabited by poor people, didn’t mean it was unsafe. Residents of the low income housing projects she frequented looked out for her, and if she needed to, she coordinated visits with another nurse or requested a police escort.
But by far, the biggest reason she didn’t share her occupation as a nurse and exactly what she did for the crisis center—at least in addition to her fundraising responsibilities—was if word got round to Jerry Three he’d make it impossible for her to do the ‘demeaning’ work she loved. He’d agreed to let Jaci and Jena attend college for nursing purely to keep them out of his hair and so they could help with their mother’s care. But in his opinion women of high society were nothing more than bejewel
ed pets meant to adorn a man’s arm and cater to his every whim. And his stepsisters were nothing more than instruments for advantageous pairing with his business associates to inflate his bottom line.
Not gonna happen. No matter how hard he pushed. She and Jena both deserved more than men only interested in their money or business dealings with their father’s company.
The doors opened on the fourth floor. Jaci turned to take her nursing bag, but Ian had already picked it up and was exiting the elevator.
“Ian, please. You shouldn’t walk any more than you have to. You need to res—”
“If you tell me to rest one more time I’m going to kiss you so long and so deep that resting will be the last thing you’ll want me to do.”
That sounded sooo good. She smiled. “You really should....” ‘Rest’ did a daring shimmy-shake on the tip of her tongue.
Ian picked her up by the waist and set her back to the wall. Their eyes level, the width of a paperclip separating their lips. “Say it,” he whispered, his breath warm its scent enticing. “I dare you.”
Seconds from wrapping her arms and legs around him, and blurting out, “rest,” Jaci was saved from an embarrassing show of need by a neighbor carrying his trash down the opposite end of the hallway.
Ian set her down but kept his eyes locked with hers. “The day I am physically incapable of accompanying a woman to her door is the day I’d rather be dead than alive.”
Behind the door in question two babies with exceptional lung capacity cried out their displeasure for everyone in the complex to hear. Jaci set her forehead to the cool metal. After a night of disrupted sleep, during which she’d gotten up each time Jena had, followed by a full day of work made more demanding in the aftermath of a hurricane turned tropical storm, she’d give anything for a nap.
Ian took her by the hand. It felt so good. Big, warm, and strong. “Come upstairs.” He gave a little tug. “Decompress for a few minutes.” He understood.
“I can’t.” But she allowed herself to be led back to the elevator. “I should be jumping into the fray to help Jena.”
“In an hour you’ll be recharged and in better shape than you are now.”
Maybe. She fished her phone out of her coat pocket and hit two on speed dial. “Hey, it’s me,” she said when Jena answered. Dual unhappy babies raged in the background. “I’m just checking in. Everything okay?” Of course things weren’t okay. Jena was alone with two very loud, screaming infants. She needed help. She needed her sister. Jaci stopped.
“We’re good.” Jena sounded way more cheerful than Jaci’d expected.
“Right,” Jaci said, heading back to the condo. Tired or not, Jena and the babies had to come first.
“No. Really. Hold on.” After a muffled, “Would you hand me that cloth?” Jena resumed talking to Jaci. “When one cries it gets the other one started. Just like mom said we did.”
“Is someone there with you?”
“Yes. Mrs. Calvin. And she’s just as wonderful as you said.”
Jaci let out a relieved breath. “So you’re okay for another hour or two?”
“We’re getting ready to do baths, then it’s bottles and bedtime. In an hour or two I’ll be ready to chat over dinner and an over-sized glass of the Sauvignon Blanc I found in your fridge.”
Jaci smiled, looking forward to it. “It’s a plan. See you then.”
After washing up in the bathroom, foraging through Ian’s kitchen for a snack, and washing the dishes in the sink, Jaci called her favorite Italian bistro and ordered four chicken Marsala dinners to be delivered at eight o’clock. Treating Ian to dinner was the least she could do. And Justin would have to come home from the police station at some point.
Finding the pill bottle she sought in the cabinet by the refrigerator Jaci called out to Ian, “Did you take some ibuprofen?”
No answer.
“Ian?”
No answer.
She filled a glass with water and carried it, and the medicine, into the living room where she found Ian still in his jacket, still wearing his boots, still sitting on the sofa where she’d left him...fast asleep. In the hospital for three months, home for three weeks, it was amazing he’d managed to accomplish as much as he had before collapsing from exhaustion.
He looked so handsome, his face completely relaxed, his lips parted, his jet black hair short but thick on top, shaved to his scalp on the sides. So big and strong, but recovering from a serious injury. Her wounded warrior. Well, not hers but. Oh, to heck with it.
Jaci knelt at his feet to remove his wet boots and socks, noticing the edge of a dark red scar looping around his left ankle—which was swollen. Hesitant to get caught snooping where she didn’t belong, or worse, thrown to the ground like an enemy soldier, Jaci resisted the urge to push his pant leg up farther.
Instead she put his boots on the mat by the door and went to his bedroom to get a couple of pillows and a comforter to put under his leg to elevate it.
“Ian,” she said quietly, hesitant to touch him after what’d happened when she’d tried to wake him that morning. “Lie down.”
“Jaci?” he asked sleepily. “Sorry. I need a few...”
Since he recognized her she placed her palm on his cheek to guide him. “I brought you a pillow.” With a gentle push, he slid to the side and lowered his head. “Lift your legs.” He winced and groaned in pain, more asleep than awake. Jaci helped him lift his left leg onto the couch. “Scoot onto your back.” He didn’t move. “C’mon, Ian. Help me.” She pulled his right hip toward her and he shifted onto his back. A minute later Jaci had the comforter stuffed under his leg, a knit blanket over top of him, and the alarm on her cell phone set for seven forty-five.
With the scent of Ian on the pillow beneath her head, she settled into the other couch.
* * *
Jaci jolted awake to a gruff male shout. Her fist pressed to her pounding heart, she scanned her dimly lit surroundings, remembering she was at Ian’s condo.
“Answer me.” He gave an order.
On the verge of telling him to stop yelling, she caught a glimpse of him in the light from the kitchen, still lying on the sofa across from her, his eyes closed.
“Can’t move.” He thrashed his head from side to side, strained like trying to escape something, his breathing fast and heavy.
“Ian?”
No response.
Jaci sat up not sure if she should wake him. Perspiration beaded on his forehead.
“Hurts.” Ian let out a heart-wrenching groan. He jerked his upper body from side to side. “Dying. Medic.”
Jaci got off the sofa and walked toward him. “You’re home in New York,” she said, trying to reorient him to the present.
“No. Can’t leave my men,” he mumbled.
She stepped closer. “Ian. Wake up. It’s Jaci.”
“Jaci,” he whispered on exhalation like the name soothed him.
“Yes.” She walked to beside the sofa and kneeled.
“Jaci,” she said. His body relaxed.
“You’re home. You’re safe.”
“Not safe.” He stiffened and resumed the fight against invisible restraints. The knit blanket tightened around his midsection. “They’re out there.”
Her heart squeezed. What had he gone through? How could she help him?
“Dead,” he mumbled, grief-stricken. “All dead.”
At his devastated tone Jaci knew she had no choice but to wake him, to rescue him from the horror of his nightmare. That morning he’d awoken oriented and aroused as soon as he’d recognized it was her body pinned beneath him. Maybe she could expedite recognition and avoid a full body slam to the thankfully plush area rug by going in for a kiss instead.
Deciding it was worth a try, she stood, leaned in, and careful not to touch any other part of him, set her lips to his.
Within seconds he was kissing her back. Yes! Tentative turned wow turned big time mistake when his hand clutched the back of her head, applied way more p
ressure than necessary, and mashed her lips onto his. Triumph morphed into concern when his strong arm clamped around her upper body, dragged her on top of him, and squeezed her chest to his in what she hoped was an uncomfortably tight, one-armed hug and not some military maneuver meant to kill by restricting an adversary’s ability to draw air into the lungs.
“Please don’t be a dream,” he murmured against her lips. Pleading. “Please don’t be a dream. I need you to be real,” he said. Desperate. Clinging to her like he’d plummet into an abyss if he let go.
“I’m real, Ian. And you’re—”
“Thank you. Thank you, God.” He moved her head, buried his face in the side of her neck and inhaled deeply. “I remember...every detail of our night together. I have recreated it in my mind hundreds of times,” he said, his mouth moving along her skin, his hands sliding under the back of her sweater set. “Your smooth skin. Your sweet scent. And your taste,” he opened his mouth and took a toothless bite that ended in a wet, devouring, vision-blurring kiss on her neck. “Succulent.”
She lifted her head to look at him. “Are you still talking in your sleep or did you honestly just compare me to a perfectly cooked pork chop?”
He smiled. “Succulent as in ripe, flavorful, and desirable.”
Man he had a way with words. “Welcome back.”
He turned his head, giving her a good view of his ear. “Was it a bad one?”
“Yeah. You want to talk about it?” she asked.
“No.” He rocked his pelvis, as if she hadn’t already noticed his erection against her thigh. “I’d rather replace a bad memory with a good one.”
If only it were that easy. She moved her thumb over a small scar on his right temple and one on his chin that she hadn’t noticed before. “You find that’s an effective way of dealing with your nightmares?”
He looked back up at her. Serious. Sincere. “I sure would like to find out.”
“With me?” She rubbed her index finger along his plump lower lip.
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