The Way We Wed

by Pat Warren

  By the time they returned to the cattle station, the sun was slowly sinking. They got some inquisitive looks which they studiously ignored. Not to be put off, Jeff stopped in front of their rooms across from one another and came to a decision.

  “You’re coming with me tonight,” he said, and pulled Tish into his room before locking the door. She did not protest.

  Remembering that happy time in Australia softened Jeff’s features. “Oh, I know we hadn’t worked out all the problems between us—the age thing which still bugged you, my time-consuming residency with months to go yet, you going back into the field which I wasn’t in favor of. But there, in the vast plains of Australia, we both knew without a doubt that we loved each other and we belonged together. We promised we’d work things out no matter what.

  “And I believe we would have if only the next morning, just after dawn, all hell hadn’t broken loose.”

  Jeff leaned back in the chair, his mind back in Australia. “That was when Russell and the stockmen finally got Lise back to the station with the gunshot wound in her shoulder. I got a little worried that I might not be able to help her. The bullet had just missed one of her lungs. Russell was breathing down my neck every second, but I fixed her up. Finally, I felt as if I were earning my keep in SPEAR.

  “The shock afterward was when we learned that Simon, who Lise had known all her life as her father, Art Meldrum, was the one who’d shot her when he’d realized that she’d told his stockmen the truth and they’d turned against him. Unbelievable. He shot his own daughter, then took off like the coward he is. Damn, I’d like to see us get him.”

  Again, Jeff leaned forward and took her hand, his voice once more low, but with an underlying anger. “He’s the one responsible for you being here, Tish, the one responsible for that bomb.” He felt his free hand curl into a fist. “I’d like a few minutes alone with him, but I think I’d have to get in line.”

  He forced himself to relax, worried she’d pick up on his anxiety. “Anyhow, a short time after I’d patched up Lise, we got the call and you were ordered to New York.” Jeff sighed deeply. “If only your name hadn’t been on the list of agents needed here.” Letting go of her hand, he scrubbed his fingers over his ravaged face. “If not then, maybe you’d have been hurt another time. This is very dangerous work, Tish. I wish with all my heart I could talk you into taking a desk job in SPEAR and leaving the field. I know you like the work and that you’re good at it. But honey, I need you as much as SPEAR does. More, I think.”

  Suddenly, their shaky future overwhelmed him. “Listen to me, talking as if you could climb out of this bed tomorrow. Lord, but I wish you could. I wish you’d come back to me, move back with me. To hell with the age difference, Tish. You have to live, babe, because I have to show you that we can make our relationship work. East taught me that family is what you create when you love someone and that age doesn’t matter. Love is all that matters, and my love for you will never change.”

  Emotions flared up inside him and he wished he could control them better, but he couldn’t. Jeff bent his head, laying his cheek onto the side of her bed. “Please, Tish, come back to me. I need you so much.”

  Choking back tears, he sat like that a long, long time. Finally, emotionally and physically drained, he fell into a restless sleep.

  She felt as if she were walking down a long tunnel. Her footsteps were slow, hesitant, indecisive. There was no one to lead the way, to help her along.

  Her feet felt so heavy, as if each step took monumental effort. The wispy walls that surrounded her were white and filmy, the air hazy, as if she were in a foggy place. Something kept tugging her backward, but she struggled to go forward. She needed to get somewhere, but she wasn’t sure where.

  As she moved slowly along, she heard a voice as if from a great distance. She tried moving faster, toward the sound. The voice grew slightly louder and finally, she recognized it.

  Jeff! Jeff was calling to her. She listened hard, cocking her head, trying to make out the words. Please, Tish, come back to me. I need you so much. She felt tears slipping down her cheeks. She needed him, too, so very much. She wanted to tell him, but she was having trouble speaking. There was a heaviness in her chest.

  Slowly, she moved down the tunnel toward the light glowing at the end. One step after another, seeing more clearly now. The heaviness lifted and she struggled to open her eyes….

  Tish blinked once, then twice more. The haziness slowly drifted away and she looked around. A hospital room, tubes in her nose, her arm, a heavy bandage just below her throat. Why was she here?

  Then it came back to her. New York, the bomb going off, people screaming, the sound of a building shattering so loud, so terrible. Glass breaking, steel falling, bricks hurtling. And something heavy hit her, something sharply painful, and she fell, fell down and down, a long way. She blinked rapidly to rid herself of the memory.

  Gingerly, she tried to move her arms and felt no pain. Then she shifted her head and that’s when she saw him.

  Jeff was there, seated in a chair alongside her hospital bed, his head resting near her hand. His eyes were closed and he looked like he hadn’t slept in days.

  A sudden memory returned and fear leaped into her heart as her hand flew to her stomach and gently pressed down. The baby. Was it all right? How extensive were her injuries? Was the baby still there, still okay? Oh, Lord, she couldn’t lose another child. She just couldn’t.

  Tish felt her cheeks grow damp. Was that why Jeff had been upset, because they’d told him she’d lost their second baby? Just when they’d found their way back to one another in Australia, rediscovered a love that had at first frightened Tish, then filled her with joy. Would he still love her if she lost his child yet again?

  She hadn’t had a chance to tell him about the baby she was carrying, the child that had been conceived on their last night together in that small apartment in L.A. She’d only just realized it herself on her way to the New York assignment, thinking she’d been late only as a result of the miscarriage.

  Jeff hadn’t wanted her to return to the field, yet she’d felt she needed some distance. Then in Australia, when they’d found their way back to one another finally, he’d again asked her not to go to New York on this new assignment. But she’d gone, certain she could handle herself. And now, what if she’d lost the baby as a result of the blast, as a result of her insistence on working in the field? Jeff would have every reason to stop loving her.

  Her eyes stayed on him, his wonderful face. Even asleep, he wore a frown, one she’d undoubtedly put there. He was such a good man, so loving and caring. Yet she’d given him nothing but grief. She should probably walk away, let him find someone who wouldn’t be constantly hurting him.

  But how could she when she loved him so much, when just a touch from him could set her on fire? It had been like that since the first day they’d met. She hadn’t trusted those feelings, thinking her passion for Jeff was merely physical and would grow cold with time. She’d been wrong. Instead, her desire for him had grown with each encounter.

  Tish decided she couldn’t wait any longer. She had to know.

  Gently, she touched his hair, drawing her fingers through the thick blond strands, willing him to wake up.

  He’d been dreaming of a day filled with sunshine at Red Rock Ranch in Arizona. He and Tish were riding Domino and Belladonna side by side, on their way to their favorite spot by the stream, in the saddlebag a lunch packed for later, after they’d made love in the shade of the old cottonwood tree. He was happy, gazing at her beautiful, smiling face. As he rode, a branch brushed at his head, snaring his hair. He reached up a hand to push it away and…and his hand touched flesh.

  Jeff’s eyes flew open and he saw that Tish’s hand was in his hair. Lifting his head, he saw her eyes were open and on his, that a gentle smile was forming on her lovely face. “Tish! Oh, thank God, you’re awake.”

  “Hello, Jeff.” How good it felt to see him so clearly.

  Easi
ng a hip onto her bed, he leaned down to her. “How are you feeling?”

  She moved her head around, testing, then frowned. “I have a headache, but that’s all. How badly am I hurt?”

  “You’re coming along just fine. But you had a severe concussion and you’ve been in a coma for three days now….”

  “Three days!” Her hand flew to her stomach. “The baby! Is the baby all right?”

  Jeff’s face registered his stunned surprise. “What baby?” Was she back in time, remembering the days before the miscarriage?

  Tish licked her dry lips. “I was on my way to New York on the last leg of the trip from Australia when I figured out that I was pregnant. I didn’t have a chance to tell you and—”

  His mind busily did the math. “But we’d only made love a few weeks ago in Australia. You couldn’t know so soon.”

  She shook her head. “No, it had to have happened back in the apartment in Los Angeles before I left, that last night. Don’t you remember?”

  He did then, their poignant farewell. “Then you’re about three months along! That’s wonderful, honey.” He leaned to hug her awkwardly around all the tubes.

  But Tish was still concerned. “Wait, Jeff. What if I—I lost the baby in the bomb blast? What if my injuries caused…” She couldn’t say any more, the words clogging in her throat.

  Why hadn’t Dr. O’Neill mentioned her pregnancy? Jeff wondered. But it didn’t matter. He smiled down into her worried eyes. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t care, not as long as you’re alive and okay. You’re the most important thing in my life. Baby or no baby, our marriage is what matters, our love is the important thing.”

  As he pulled her into his arms, Tish felt tears of joy slip from beneath her closed eyelids. He loved her still, no matter what had happened. And she would spend the rest of her life trying to make him happy.

  Finally, gone were her fears that someone wouldn’t love her for herself alone. She was the most important thing in his life he’d said, and she was overjoyed to hear the words.

  “I love you, Jeff, more than you’ll ever know,” she whispered.

  Epilogue

  Some time later, Jeff sat in the chair alongside Tish’s bed holding her hand. He couldn’t stop smiling, thrilled that she was going to be all right. Her fingers wrapped in his, she clung to him, too, fearful of letting him go.

  The nurse had been in, pleased that Tish had awakened. She’d taken her vital signs, marked her charts, examined her briefly and cranked up her hospital bed so she’d be more comfortable. Before leaving, she’d told them that she’d paged Dr. O’Neill who was in surgery and he’d be in as soon as he was finished.

  “My wife tells me she might be pregnant,” Jeff told Thelma. “Is that so?”

  “I’d rather Dr. O’Neill discuss that with you, Doctor.” She left them alone.

  Tish looked crestfallen. “That doesn’t sound good. Why wouldn’t she tell us? Surely that information has to be on my chart. I mean, what kind of doctor would examine a patient and not pick up on a pregnancy?”

  Jeff was more optimistic. Her awakening had buoyed him, had made him believe that more miracles could happen. “A busy one, maybe. His main concern was saving your life. He might not have checked for a pregnancy.” Although he doubted that. In most patients of child-bearing years, an automatic pregnancy test was usually taken to prevent administering a medication that might harm or terminate the pregnancy. The thing that struck Jeff as odd was that Dr. O’Neill hadn’t mentioned the baby to him, a medical colleague. However, he wasn’t going to worry Tish with that just now.

  Trying to control her impatience, Tish let her eyes roam over Jeff instead, admiring his strong, masculine face that needed a shave. He also had acquired some worry lines that she hated having put there. She squeezed his hand. “You look so good to me.”

  “Not half as good as you do to me. In my entire life, not even during the episode in Idaho when I was buried alive, have I ever been as scared as I’ve been these last three days. Promise me you won’t do this to me again, Tish.”

  Blinking back an emotional rush of tears, she nodded.

  “Do you remember what happened before the blast, or don’t you want to talk about it?” Jeff asked.

  Before she could respond, a tall man with brown hair gave one quick knock on the ICU door and walked in, his amber eyes on Tish, his handsome face forming a smile. “Hey, lady, it’s about time you woke up!”

  Tish smiled back as Jeff got to his feet. “Del! I’m so glad you’re okay.”

  “It takes more than a little old bomb to take us out, right?” he said, walking over.

  “Jeff, this is Del Rogers, the SPEAR agent who saved my life.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t go that far,” Del said modestly.

  “Of course, you did. You pulled me to safety after the blast. That’s my last memory of that day.”

  Impressed and grateful, Jeff turned to the man. “I sure want to shake your hand,” he said. “I can’t begin to thank you.”

  “You’re very welcome.” Del shook Jeff’s hand, then turned to Tish. “I heard you were in a coma and I wanted to come over sooner, but I’m on assignment. Finally found the time and they told me at the desk that you’d just come to.” He reached to touch her hand. “I’m so glad you’re going to be all right.”

  “Me, too. Thanks, Del, for everything.”

  Seemingly uncomfortable with being thanked so emotionally, Del stepped back. “I’ve got to get going.” He nodded to Jeff. “Nice meeting you.” He took a last look at Tish. “I’ll see you later.”

  Tish watched him walk away. “What a great guy.”

  “I’m grateful he was around to help you.” Just as he glanced at his watch, the cubicle door slid open again and finally Dr. O’Neill walked in, still in his operating scrubs. “Doctor,” Jeff greeted him, “we have a surprise for you. She’s awake at last.”

  “So I’ve been hearing,” he answered, moving to the bed and removing his stethoscope from around his neck. “How do you feel, young lady?”

  “A little headachy but otherwise all right.” Tish impatiently held still while he listened to her heart and lungs, waiting for him to tell her his findings.

  Finally, Dr. O’Neill straightened, a smile on his thin face. “You’re doing just fine and, to answer the question you haven’t asked, your baby’s fine, too.”

  “Oh!” Tish’s hands flew to her mouth and her eyes filled with tears. “Thank you,” she whispered.

  O’Neill turned to Jeff. “I debated about telling you, but I didn’t want to add to your worries in case something went wrong.” He smiled then. “You’ll be able to take her home soon.”

  Jeff felt his heart swell. Tish alive and well, the baby okay. He couldn’t have asked for more.

  “I’d take it easy for a while if I were you, young lady,” the doctor said. “No climbing around bomb sites.”

  “I’ll keep close tabs on her, Doctor,” Jeff promised. “I think we’re overdue a trip to Disneyland, right, honey?”

  “That’s right,” Tish answered. “Don’t worry, Doctor,” she added, happiness lighting up her pale face and adding color, “my days of playing secret agent are over.” She reached for Jeff’s hand. “From now on, I’ll leave all that to my husband.”

  Special thanks and acknowledgment are given

  to Pat Warren for her contribution to the

  A YEAR OF LOVING DANGEROUSLY series.

  ISBN: 978-1-4592-0703-5

  THE WAY WE WED

  Copyright © 2001 by Harlequin Books S.A.

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