Saving Susannah

by Beverly Bird

  “I want to go into that barn and make love to you,”

  Letter to Reader

  Title Page

  Books by Beverly Bird

  About the Author

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Epilogue

  Copyright

  “I want to go into that barn and make love to you,”

  Joe said honestly. “I want it more than I ever wanted anything. But I need to know how much it matters to you first.”

  “Don’t do this to me, Joe,” Kimberly pleaded.

  “If it’s all a lark to you,” he went on, “just something here, something now, then we’re probably better off not doing it. Not getting in any deeper.”

  “Last night you said we were already in deep.”

  “I am,” he admitted quietly.

  “What is it you want me to say?” she demanded.

  He just needed something to hold on to. He needed her to say that she didn’t roll on hay bales as a matter of course.

  What he really needed, he realized, was for her to say she’d changed her mind and was going to stay with him. He needed her to say she loved him.

  Dear Reader,

  Any month with a new Nora Roberts book has to be special, and this month is extro special, because this book is the first of a wonderful new trilogy. Hidden Star begins THE STARS OF MITHRA, three stories about strong heroines, wonderful heroes—and three gems destined to bring them together. The adventure begins for Bailey James with the loss of her memory—and the entrance of coolheaded (well, until he sees her) private eye Cade Parris into her life. He wants to believe in her—not to mention love her—but what is she doing with a sackful of cash and a diamond the size of a baby’s fist?

  It’s a month for miniseries, with Marilyn Pappano revisiting her popular SOUTHERN KNIGHTS with Convincing Jamey, and Alicia Scott continuing MAXIMILUAN’S CHILDREN with MacNamara’s Woman. Not to mention the final installment of Beverly Bird’s THE WEDDING RING, Saving Susannah, and the second book of Marilyn Tracy’s ALMOST, TEXAS miniseries, Almost a Family.

  Finally, welcome Intimate Moments’ newest author, Maggie Price. She’s part of our WOMEN TO WATCH crossline promotion, with each line introducing a brand-new author to you. In Prime Suspect, Maggie spins an irresistible tale about a by-the-book detective falling for a suspect, a beautiful criminal profiler who just may be in over her head. As an aside, you might like to know that Maggie herself once worked as a crime analyst for the Oklahoma City police department.

  So enjoy all these novels—and then be sure to come back next month for more of the best romance reading around, right here in Silhouette Intimate Moments.

  Yours,

  Senior Editor and Editorial Coordinator

  * * *

  Please address questions and book requests to:

  Silhouette Reader Service

  U.S.: 3010 Walden Ave., P.O. Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269

  Canadian: P.O. Box 609, Fort Erie, Ont. L2A 5X3

  * * *

  SAVING SUSANNAH

  BEVERLY BIRD

  Books by Beverly Bird

  Silhouette Intimate Moments

  Emeralds in the Dark #3

  The Fires of Winter #23

  Ride the Wind #139

  A Solitary Man #172

  *A Man Without Love #630

  *A Man Without a Haven #641

  *A Man Without a Wife #652

  Undercover Cowboy #711

  The Marrying Kind #732

  Compromising Positions #777

  †Loving Mariah #790

  †Marrying Jake #802

  †Saving Susannah #814

  Silhouette Desire

  The Best Reasons #190

  Fool’s Gold #209

  All the Marbles #227

  To Love a Stranger #411

  *Wounded Warriors

  †The Wedding Ring

  BEVERLY BIRD

  has lived in several places in the United States, but she is currently back where her roots began on an island in New Jersey. Her time is devoted to her family and her writing. She is the author of numerous romance novels, both contemporary and historical. Beverly loves to hear from readers. You can write to her at P.O. Box 350, Brigantine, NJ 08203.

  Prologue

  “I’m sorry.”

  They were the only words Kimberley Mancuso heard. A whole stream of them had come before—medical technology that had gone over her head, inadequate assurances, vague explanations. All ending with those two words: I’m sorry.

  Why do they always say that? she wondered giddily. What kind of doctor, what kind of human being, would be delighted to impart this news? Her daughter was gravely ill. Her daughter was dying. Kim didn’t expect Dr. Manuel Parra to dance on his desktop.

  “Leukemia,” she repeated very carefully. Actually, she realized, she had heard three words clearly. That had been the other. A four-syllable explanation for Susannah’s uncharacteristic lethargy, her dwindling appetite, the sudden profusion of bruises that neither Kim nor Susannah could ever quite figure out the source of. And the fevers! Every little germ Susannah had come in contact with this past summer had taken grip with a vengeance, leaving her a little weaker, a little more depleted, than the one before.

  Leukemia.

  She was only ten.

  “Fix it,” Kim said, her voice finally cracking.

  “I’ve already taken measures,” Dr. Parra assured her. “The best course of action, that which we’ve had the most success with, is bone marrow transplantation. Let me try to explain. Stem cells are located in one’s bone marrow. Susannah’s stem cells are producing an excessive number of white blood cells. Therefore, what we must do is kill those stem cells via chemotherapy and radiation. We’ll follow this therapy by replacing her damaged stem cells with a graft of healthy cells. They in turn should produce healthy marrow and blood. I’ve put Susannah’s needs into the marrow registries, but I must tell you that an anonymous donor is something of a long shot.”

  What Kim heard was hope, an answer, a solution. “Then take mine. Take my stem cells or whatever.”

  He grimaced. “You’re not compatible. Your blood was tested when we ruled out inherited anemia.”

  “I’m her mother.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said again.

  Kim’s knuckles were going bone white where she gripped the arms of her chair. She stared at them, collecting herself again after that short rush of hope. Only her hands revealed her panic, her terror, she thought.

  She had learned a long, long time ago not to reveal agitation. It was alternately a blessing and a curse. It had probably cost her a fiancé, but no one ever saw her sweat. She was proud of that, and had perfected a haughty, even cold, demeanor over the years to show people that she could not be hurt.

  But she was hurting now. The doctor’s words clamored in her head, nausea swelled in her stomach and her eyes stung as she refused to cry. She was unaware of the fact that she had all but gnawed a hole in her bottom lip. Not my daughter, not my baby. It required an almost superhuman effort to push the emotion away this time.

  “This isn’t as simple as matching a blood type, Ms. Mancuso,” Dr. Parra continued. “What we need here are HLA matches. Hum
an leukocyte-associated antigens. These rest on the surface of the blood cells to differentiate our own from that of another person. We look at six HLA antigens when we do a transplant of this nature, and most physicians require a match on five. The higher the number of matches, the greater the chance that the patient’s body will accept the graft.”

  “Then what?” Kim asked thinly.

  “There’s still a minor risk of rejection. However, unlike solid organ transplants, the body learns to tolerate transplanted marrow after some time. Antirejection therapy needs to be continued for only six months in these cases, as opposed to the rest of Susannah’s life. There’s also the matter of GVHD—that is to say, graft-versus-host disease. That’s sort of a reverse rejection. In the case of GVHD, the donor cells recognize the recipients’s organs as foreign and attack them.”

  Kim blanched.

  “Again, therapy is continued against this eventuality for approximately six months. The good news is that children are far less susceptible to GVHD than adults. We don’t know why. Ms. Mancuso, I want to assure you that this conjunction of therapy produces roughly ninety percent remissions for three years or more. The absolute cure rate is over fifty percent. Susannah’s condition does not necessarily need to be fatal. Not today, not with our current knowledge and technology.”

  Kim nodded and looked at the wall clock. It was eleven in the morning. Susannah was in school. She wouldn’t be at lunch yet, still in class, Kim found herself thinking absurdly. She had picked her daughter up for doctors’ appointments so often lately that she knew Susannah’s daily schedule by heart. Susannah was currently learning history or some such thing without a clue in the world that her life hung by a thread.

  “Since we’ve already taken a blood sample from you,” Dr. Parra was saying, “there’s no need for further HLA testing. You don’t even have the same blood type. You’re AB with a negative Rh factor. Your daughter is B positive.”

  “How can that be?” she managed to ask.

  “No doubt her father is B positive.”

  Kim stared at him, then slowly closed her eyes in despair. She didn’t even know where Susannah’s father was anymore, she thought helplessly. She hadn’t laid eyes on Bobby Guenther in eleven years. He didn’t know he had a daughter. That hadn’t been a conscious decision on Kim’s part. It had simply been the way things worked out.

  “I’ll find him,” she vowed, and when she heard her words, the shock waves reverberated through her entire body. No, I can’t go back there.

  “That would be an excellent place to start,” the doctor agreed. “Our best hope is family—yours, Susannah’s father’s. Contact your kin. Susannah’s siblings would generally provide the best matches, but since she has none her parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles might also work. If we’re forced to look to the donor registries for marrow, we’ve only a ten percent chance of finding a match. Actually, that’s high, because donor registries have gotten a lot of press and attention these past few years. With more available donors there are more matches. Up until recently, the success rate among strangers was little more than five percent.”

  He was trying to reassure her, Kim thought. But it wasn’t working. The mere mention of family made her tremble even more.

  “There’s been some recent evidence that matching ethnic and racial backgrounds sometimes works, as well,” Dr. Parra continued. “I’d like to enter that with the registries.” He looked at Susannah’s chart again. “Mancuso. Susannah is of Italian descent?”

  The lie was on Kim’s lips. Habit, she realized. But the truth was important now. “No.” She choked out the word.

  Mancuso was simply the name of the restaurant across the street from her first apartment in L.A. She had so desperately needed to wipe the slate clean, to erase her past and start over, when she had fled from Texas and her family eleven years ago. She had started using a different name. For a while, she had even bleached her long, dark hair blond, as though that could turn her into a different person, someone without haunted memories, someone who slept without having nightmares, a girl who was wholesome and normal.

  She had finally been forced to accept that a few superficial changes weren’t going to make that happen. But by then she had grown so accustomed to using the name Mancuso it seemed simplest just to keep doing so.

  “Actually, I’m...Irish,” she told the doctor. “Susannah’s father was—” She broke off. She didn’t know that for certain, either. She had never asked Bobby. It hadn’t mattered when they were seventeen and in love for all time.

  Her throat tightened almost painfully. In love. What a crock, she thought bitterly. Bobby hadn’t followed her when she’d run from Dallas. No matter that they had planned to be married as soon as she graduated. No matter that they’d had so many glorious plans. He’d let her go. She had run only as far as L.A. Bobby could have found her if he had tried hard enough.

  What had his ethnic background been?

  “Guenther?” she whispered.

  “German, I would guess,” Dr. Parra answered. “But you should find out for certain and let me know.”

  “I’ll do that.”

  Then she was on her feet again, not quite sure how she had gotten that way. She wanted desperately to believe that this was all a very bad dream, that she would wake up and be weak with relief that it wasn’t really happening. Not now, when life was finally reasonably good. She had worked so hard to put horror and heartache behind her.

  But it wasn’t a dream. It was a nightmare that had slowly and inexorably been settling over her and Susannah for six months now. It was real, and she did not know how to escape it. This time she had encountered something they could not run from.

  She did not remember thanking the doctor. She had no memory of leaving his office, of sliding behind the wheel of her old car, with its rusted tailpipe. She did not know how she got onto the Ventura Freeway, and only realized she was there when traffic slowed to a crawl and she blinked and looked around. She got off at the first available exit and drove the streets in circles, until she somehow ended up north of Encino, parked beside the chain-link fence that protected the playground of her daughter’s school.

  It was lunchtime. Susannah was leaning one shoulder against the jungle gym. She was talking to another girl, and she looked so normal—a beautiful child with long, shaggy, blond hair and her father’s brown eyes. Kim’s heart broke. There was still a hint of the tomboy in her, but it was fading as she got older and under the stress of her illness. Susannah rarely had the energy to climb trees anymore.

  She looked ethereal, frail and fairylike, in the sunlight. Kim searched her face for the telltale pink splotches that always appeared high on her cheekbones with a fever. They weren’t there this time, though her eyes seemed unnaturally bright.

  Kim reached for the door handle. She meant to get out of the car, to go over to the fence. She wanted to tell Susannah that she was going to the principal’s office to take her out of school yet again. Then, when they were alone, she would tell her what the doctor had said, and tell her they were going to Texas.

  Kim’s stomach heaved. She had vowed never to return to Dallas. There was only one thing on God’s green earth that could convince her to go back on that promise to herself. She would do it for her daughter.

  Mom, Dad, Jake, Adam. Dr. Parra had suggested family, and they were the only relatives she had, dubious as their relationship was. If none of them matched, then she would go to Bobby and his family. She would do it with pride and dignity, and she would not mention the painful fact that he had never come looking for her.

  Kim really did mean to get out of the car. Instead, with that thought, she slid down in the seat as far as she could go. Then she covered her face with her hands and sobbed as she had not done since she was a teenager.

  Chapter 1

  Kim took her eyes off the highway long enough to dart yet another glance at her daughter. Susannah hadn’t spoken since Albuquerque, and they were now crossing the state line into T
exas. She was staring out the window, her face averted.

  “Scared?” Kim finally asked. Of course she’s scared. Don’t be an imbecile.

  “No.” It was more a mumble than a word. “Well, a little.”

  “Me, too,” Kim admitted. That brought her daughter’s eyes around to her at last.

  “It’s okay, Mom,” Susannah assured her. “It’s not like I need a heart or anything like that. That would be really bad.”

  Not for the first time, Kim was overcome with wonder that she had produced this optimistic child—she, who had learned long ago to believe in nothing. “I’ll keep that in mind,” she managed to say, her throat tightening.

  “I mean. I might be a little sick for a while as my body readjusts, but it’s not like they have to cut me open or anything,” Susannah continued.

  She had repeated Dr. Parra’s words verbatim, Kim realized. They had gone to see him one last time before they’d left L.A. At least she knew her daughter had been listening, not tuning out in that prepubescent habit she had recently picked up.

  “I’m not freaked out about that,” Susannah added.

  Kim stiffened. “What then?” But she knew what was coming.

  Susannah’s eyes went stubbornly back to the window. “Mom, you lied.”

  Kim felt her heart beating strangely and distantly, as though it had dropped way, way down below the pit of her stomach. “Yes,” she admitted, because it seemed pointless to deny it.

  “I mean, you said we had no family in the whole world. That it was just you and me.”

  “Well, it is, baby. For all intents and purposes, it is.”

  “But you’ve got parents. And brothers.”

  And they were on their way into Texas to find them, Kim thought, her stomach rolling.