After the Midnight Hour

by Linda Randall Wisdom

  Nothing felt right. Or sounded right.

  What was that beeping sound? And why did she hurt all over?

  Rachel kept her eyes closed as she took mental stock of herself. All she knew was that her head hurt and that there were strange sounds around her.

  Did I finally die and go to heaven? Does heaven have all these strange noises?

  “Baby, I’d feel a hell of a lot better if you’d open those beautiful eyes of yours for me.” A familiar voice caressed her ears.

  Her stomach tightened. Did Jared die, too?

  Then she remembered. She’d somehow managed to escape the house, but everything after that was a blank.

  Rachel opened her eyes and slowly turned her head in the direction of the voice she loved so much.

  An unshaved Jared sat in a wheelchair by her bed. His normally bronze skin was pasty. She could see the heavy bandages that were wrapped around his chest and his features starkly etched from the pain he must have suffered. She knew immediately he should be in bed.

  “Jared,” she whispered.

  He leaned forward, grimacing in pain and covered her hand with his. He brought it up to his mouth.

  “You’ve had me worried, darlin’,” he said in a low voice. “You have no idea what I’ve gone through the past few days, waiting for you to wake up. You scared the hell out of me.”

  She looked around the room, noted the strange-looking boxes by her bed and the even stranger sounds they made. “What is this?” She looked down at the tubes attached to the back of her hand.

  “You’re in the hospital.” He grinned, but concern still shadowed his eyes. “I had to do some major begging, but they took pity on me and put you in the room next to mine.”

  She wanted to tell him it didn’t look like any hospital she’d been in before. She started to move her head, then pulled back when white-hot pain streaked across her forehead.

  “What is this?” she whispered, nodding toward the machines.

  He smiled. “Monitors. They measure your blood pressure and heart rate.”

  “Heart rate? Blood pressure?” Now she was truly confused. “But how? And how did I get here?”

  “It seems you fell off the porch and hit some pretty hard dirt. Maya called 911. Paramedics joked that they spent their entire shift out at the ranch. That old witch was with me after I got out of surgery.” He grinned wryly. “I’ve got to say she wasn’t exactly who I wanted to wake up to. You’ve been unconscious for the past four days, sweetheart. You suffered a head injury. The doctors think you tripped on something when you left the house, and I’m letting them go with that theory. Which brings us to something very good.” He looked at her lovingly. “You do realize you’re now outside of the house, don’t you?” he murmured.

  Rachel thought back to those moments before she’d stormed through the doorway. At the time, all that mattered was reaching Jared.

  She looked past him to the window. A window through which she could see the bright light of day. It was past dawn and she was not only still in mortal form, but she was away from the house.

  “You were so badly hurt and I was afraid you would die in the hospital,” she murmured. “And I did not want you to be there alone. I wanted to be with you and tell you how much I love you.”

  “Then whatever you did worked, because I’m still here.” He kept her hand imprisoned in his. “And so are you.”

  “So I’m…” She gestured toward the monitor. She still didn’t understand what had happened.

  Jared nodded. He kept his eyes on her as if afraid she might disappear at any moment, even if it was long past dawn.

  Rachel felt long-buried emotions start to rise up inside her. After so many years of solitude, the idea of freedom was slow to come to her. She opened her mouth to speak, but instead of words coming out, tears streamed down her cheeks.

  “Oh, Rach, no,” Jared groaned, holding her hand as carefully and as tightly as he could. He leaned forward, taking her into his arms, mindful of the IV tubes. “Don’t cry, Rachel. Please, don’t cry,” he begged.

  She nodded her head as if agreeing she wouldn’t, but the tears continued to fall.

  “I never thought I would be free,” she sobbed against his shoulder. “I did not think I would ever be free again.”

  “But you are,” he soothed, stroking her tangled hair back from her face. “You found the key, Rachel.”

  She shook her head. “But I didn’t find anything. All I knew was that I needed to be with you.”

  “And you are with me,” he assured her, kissing the tears from her cheeks. “You’re not disappearing from me again. I’ll do whatever it takes, even if I have to tear the house down to make sure you’ll always be safe.” He pressed his lips against her forehead, then the tip of her nose, before moving down to her lips.

  She touched his battered face with her fingertips as if she still couldn’t believe he was real. That this wasn’t some sort of dream. The dampness she found against her fingers told her more than she expected.

  “You are crying,” she said with a sense of wonder.

  He smiled. “What you’re seeing is relief,” he told her. “These days have been pretty long while I waited for you to wake up.”

  She continued touching his face with her fingertips. “It is all too much.”

  “Information overload,” he agreed. “All you need to worry about now is getting well.”

  Fear still lurked inside her. She had been cursed for so long. The idea that she was free was overwhelming.

  “When I woke up after my surgery, Maya was standing by my bed. She told me you had been brought in with a head wound,” he explained. “She also said I didn’t have to worry about anything happening to you when dawn came. It didn’t help that I couldn’t get out of bed to see for myself, but then I realized it was the middle of the night and Maya was standing there.” Jared framed Rachel’s face with his hands, his thumbs brushing away the last of her tears. “No more tears, darlin’,” he murmured.

  She smiled at his gentle command. “I am so glad you are all right.”

  He moted at the expression in her eyes and sighed. “Aw, sweetheart, you can’t look at me as I’m some knight in shining armor, because my armor is more than a little tarnished.” He took a deep breath. “Rachel Weatherly Bingham, I love you more than life itself. When I heard you’d been brought in here with a head injury and they thought you weren’t going to wake up, I thought I’d die myself.” The stark anguish on his face betrayed his feelings. “I know I’m no prize. I forget myself in my work sometimes. I’m land rich and cash poor. I don’t really have a lot to offer you, but I can promise you that I will do everything in my power to make sure you never cry again. I will do everything I can to keep that beautiful smile on your lips and hear you laugh. You’re my other half, Rachel.” He stopped talking, fearful of her response.

  She reached out and stroked his whiskery cheek. Before her sat the disreputable man who’d stolen her heart from the beginning. This was the man she had fallen in love with. “And you are the other half of me,” she admitted softly.

  “Of course, we’ll have to do something about getting you an identity,” he said with a smile. “Don’t worry. I have contacts in low places who can handle that for me. In no time, you’ll be Rachel Weatherly to the world, even if it will be only for a short time, since I intend for you to become Rachel Stryker. How does that sound?”

  “I say yes,” she said with a breathy sigh.

  He felt a lightening in his heart he had never known before. “Is that yes to everything? To a preacher and a gold ring and forever and ever with me and a dog who will dig holes in the garden I know you want to plant?”

  She nodded, happier than she’d ever imagined she could be. “Yes to everything.”

  Jared didn’t waste any time in sealing the proposal with a kiss that soon turned explosive.

  They were so lost in each other they didn’t see a familiar figure standing in the doorway. Maya’s normally stern
features were relaxed in a broad smile as she overheard them place their hearts in the other’s keeping.

  She moved off, aware that a new chapter for the couple was just beginning and that the last remnants of Caleb Bingham’s evil hold on his wife and land were gone—forever.

  “All right, handsome, you’ve been on the loose long enough.” A willowy woman wearing angel-print medical scrubs walked into the room. She took one look at Rachel and started taking her vitals. “I thought I told you to alert us immediately if the lady woke up.”

  Jared didn’t take his eyes off Rachel. “She woke up and she’s agreed to marry me.”

  “Congratulations, or maybe I should offer her my sympathy, since you’ve been nothing but trouble since you were brought in. Now it’s time for the doctor to check out Miss Weatherly and time for you to go back to bed.” She took hold of his wheelchair and turned him around.

  “I’ll be back once I can lose the warden,” he promised over his shoulder as he was wheeled toward the door.

  “Do we need to tie you to the bed?” the nurse mock threatened him.

  He grinned at Rachel as he answered her. “Sorry, beautiful, I’m an engaged man. I only let Rachel use the handcuffs.”

  Rachel fell back against the pillows. She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, so she settled for both. The nurse smiled when she returned to her side.

  “That man has been in here more than he’s been in his own bed,” she said. “I’d say you are one lucky woman.” She handed Rachel a tissue.

  Rachel mopped her eyes and blew her nose. She thought of everything that had led up to this moment. She knew she would endure it all again in a heartbeat as long as it meant she would have Jared in the end.

  Her smile was brighter than any sunlit day. “Yes, I am.”

  “Jared Stryker, you are supposed to take it easy!”

  “I am taking it easy.” Jared kept a tight hold on Rachel’s hand as he pulled her outside. Harley ran alongside, jumping at them and barking in pleasure at having company. “That’s why we have to wait before I can carry you over the threshold. I can’t afford to pop any stitches with that extra weight.” He grinned at her.

  “Jared!” She playfully smacked his arm. “I am not that heavy!”

  “I don’t know. All that hospital food seemed to have put a few pounds on you,” he teased, twirling her around him. He enjoyed watching her calf-length skirt swirl around her legs. One of the first things he had done once they were both released from the hospital was to take Rachel clothes shopping. For a man who hated to shop for himself, he greatly enjoyed watching Rachel take another step into the twenty-first century. “Look at us, Mrs. Rachel Weatherly Stryker,” he whispered. “We’re outside at—” he glanced at his watch “—ten o’clock in the morning.” He twirled her around again.

  “You are both crazy!” Maya called from the top of the stairs.

  “Any reason why she had to come with the deal?” Jared wrapped his arms around Rachel and pulled her up against him.

  Rachel felt her spirit fly with the joy she felt. She found she couldn’t stop smiling, and she’d been doing a lot of that lately. Especially since Jared had not only found a way to make her a real person in the eyes of the state of California, but to arrange a quick marriage, too.

  “Are you kidding? The entire judicial community will turn handsprings to see me married and respectable,” he had told her when she asked him if that was possible.

  She kissed him because she loved hearing him say the word married. And because she just plain loved kissing him.

  “Maya is like a member of the family,” she reminded him.

  “I have some mother-in-law jokes for you then.”

  All Rachel knew was that she discovered what it meant to love someone so much it hurt, and Jared learned that love filled the void that had been inside him for far too long.

  “With you, I have the entire world,” he told her, feeling the need to share with her all he felt.

  She looked up at him, the sunlight glowing on her upturned face. “We have everything.”

  Barking diverted them for a moment.

  “Dammit, Harley! I told you no more digging!” Jared shouted at the dog, who was again furiously digging in the middle of a dirt patch set aside for Rachel’s flower garden.

  The dog lifted his head from the hole he’d dug, then slowly backed up, his teeth fastened on something. He kept backing up as he dragged it out of the ground.

  “What do you have?” Jared asked, crouching down to the dog’s level. He held out his hand. “Come here, boy.”

  Harley made his way toward them, dragging a small bag he’d pulled out of the earth. He dropped his find in front of his owner’s feet.

  Jared looked down at the bag, then at Rachel. She gazed at it, then at him. Both could see the leather was old and scarred, and just under the tattered flap of the bag something metallic caught the sun and glittered brightly.

  “Do you think—?” They spoke simultaneously.

  Harley nudged the bag with his nose, and a few gold coins slid out, falling to Rachel’s feet.

  Maya stood on the porch above them and just smiled.

  ISBN: 978-1-4268-7117-7

  AFTER THE MIDNIGHT HOUR

  Copyright © 2005 by Words of Wisdom

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the editorial office, Silhouette Books, 233 Broadway, New York, NY 10279 U.S.A.

  All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

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