by Ivy James
“You have no idea what you’re even suggesting. Don’t you get it? I know how awful it is that I don’t want my ill sister to be here, but I’d be an idiot to let her stay. I know her too well. You’re looking at the outside but I know the inside. I know what she’s capable of.” The tears trickled down her face, and she wiped them away with the back of her hand, the knife flashing beneath the kitchen lights overhead as she waved it about to emphasize her point.
“Maybe she’s changed. You said you haven’t talked to her in years.” He stepped closer. “Put that down before you cut yourself.”
“I’m fine,” Jenn insisted, sniffling. “It’s just…I feel so guilty, but no woman in her right mind would welcome Megan into her home with her h-husband.”
There it was again. And he didn’t like the images his mind was coming up with at all. But who was he to cast stones given his past? Granted, he hadn’t slept with any married women, but…“Fine, don’t trust her, watch her like a hawk but at least let her get well.”
“What about me?” Nick drawled quietly as he joined them. “That mean you don’t trust me to be in the house with her? Do you think if Megan or some other woman comes on to me, I’ll take her up on it?”
Ethan had never seen Nick look so pissed off. Aw, hell, things had just taken another downward spiral.
Jennifer wiped the last of the tears away and shook her head, but anyone watching could see that her effort lacked confidence. Her ex-husband had done a number on Jenn’s self-esteem. Now it appeared as though Megan had, too.
“No. Of course I trust you. Nick, please. I don’t want to fight with you. My point,” she stressed, “is that Megan loves to play games. This proves it,” she said with a wave of her hand in Megan’s direction. “All of our lives she’s used any situation to her advantage, now here she is doing it again. Yes, she’s sick. But trust me, something’s going on that she’s not telling us. And I’ve learned the hard way to watch my back. Something’s up with her, you mark my words. I’m sorry she’s ill, I feel horrible, but I don’t want her here, and neither one of you has the right to expect that of me.”
Ethan grimaced. Unless something drastic happened, this situation was going to go from bad to worse because the tension kept escalating. Nick and Jenn’s new marriage didn’t need that.
“I, uh, guess I could take her home with me,” he heard himself offer abruptly. Disgust rolled through him for giving over to the pressure he felt to fix things. Moron. “I’m not back to work full-time yet, and I heard her speak to Simon in French. She could…stay with me.”
Jenn nodded, eager as all get-out. “She’s fluent. Do you mean it?”
“It’s a perfect solution.” For them, anyway. “I don’t go back to work full-time until the end of the week. Megan can crash at my house, get well and translate whenever Simon gives me that look because my French is so bad he can’t understand me.” He smiled with way more enthusiasm than he felt. “We’ll be out of your hair in a few minutes.”
Jenn dropped the knife and came at Ethan, barreling into his arms and giving him a hug. Nick’s hand fell to Ethan’s shoulder and squeezed in a show of thanks, but he noticed neither of them offered up so much as a squeak of protest.
Sucker. A list cycled through his head, all the things he needed to be doing instead of this. Ethan left Nick and Jenn and made his way to the couch where he stared at Megan’s drawn, beautiful features. No doubt about it, he was already in over his head with Simon and here he was playing Dr. Fix-it. One of these days somebody really had to teach him how to say no.
He glanced over his shoulder and found Nick in the act of lowering his head toward Jenn’s for a heated kiss. Ethan sighed. Didn’t that figure? He was now responsible for a sick, potentially abused woman with a history of causing trouble and Nick was going to get lucky.
Ethan hefted Megan higher in his arms. A glint of shiny silver caught his attention and he glanced down, barely managing to stifle a groan at the sight of her sleek and sexy belly piercing. It was going to be a long week.
Because unprofessional or not, that was hot.
Chapter 5
MEGAN OPENED HER EYES, confused as to where she was when she didn’t see the dome light of her Buick overhead or hear the steady roar of highway traffic outside the car windows. Instead, she was in an amazingly comfortable bed and not too far from where she lay, a night-light cast a glow from beside a bathroom sink.
Huh? She blinked and looked around the nicely furnished bedroom, her brain slowly kicking into gear with fuzzy images of the events leading up to this.
The pressing need to pee had her moaning a complaint. She so didn’t want to leave the comfort and warmth of her covers, but she shoved them back and rolled to the right, her aching body protesting with pain and muscle soreness. As soon as she was upright she started coughing like crazy.
The bedroom door opened.
“Hey, where do you think you’re going?”
Megan continued to cough and stared dazedly at the shadow of her host. A light burned behind him, making Ethan Tulane seem all the more imposing. Flirting with him was fine and dandy, but how smart was it to accept help from a total stranger? Stay in his house?
Like you had a choice? Jenn worked this out, not you. Besides, what can he do to you that Sean hasn’t already done?
“Megan? You’re not sleepwalking on me, are you?”
“No, I’m ’wake. I have to…” She waved a limp hand in the air toward the door on the far side of the room. “Bathroom.” Was that her voice? She sounded like a bullfrog. A sleepy, grumpy, croaking bullfrog.
“Ah. Let me help you.”
“I can do it.”
“Okay. I’ll stick around, in case you need a hand.”
Never one to back down from a challenge when she heard one, Megan attempted to stand, but nothing worked the way it should. Her arms were too wobbly to give herself a decent push off the bed, her legs too weak, and her head whirled like a merry-go-round.
“Come on. I’ll walk you to the bathroom and leave you alone, then help you back. Deal?”
She would’ve said no. No woman in her right mind wanted a stranger—a handsome doctor if memory served—helping her in to pee, but she really, really had to go and no way was she going to make it all the way on her own.
This was his fault. Her memories might be fuzzy, but she remembered enough to know Jenn’s brother-in-law was responsible for waking her up to take medicine and drink gallons of fluids.
Even with Ethan’s arm supporting her, her progress was pathetically slow, and by the time she reached her destination she felt as if she’d run a marathon. Once inside, Ethan shut the door and she was able to take care of business by collapsing onto the seat. Washing her hands required leaning against the sink for support, her energy zapped.
Ethan knocked softly before he opened the door. He took one look at her and swung her up into his arms to carry back to bed. She knew she should protest the move, but she was so grateful she didn’t have to try to walk it that she kept her smart mouth shut and lowered her head to his shoulder, breathing in the scent of musk and man and—lemon-scented Pledge?
She squeezed her eyes closed to combat the dizziness when Ethan swung her around to lower her to the bed. This was what it felt like to be overcooked spaghetti. Even her brain was mush, a fact proven if she was smelling cleaning products instead of cologne.
Ethan tucked the blankets in around her waist then reached for the water bottle and pills on the nightstand. “Here. Time for another round. No arguing,” he said when she opened her mouth to do just that. “They’re keeping your fever down.”
She swallowed the medicine and scooted down into a more comfortable spot in the bed. “What time is it?”
“Late—or early, depending on how you look at it. Around one. Go back to sleep.”
Megan mulled that over for a second. She was tired, absolutely exhausted, but after all the activity she was also awake. “Can’t. Maybe in a little while. Why are yo
u awake?” The bed warmed her and took care of the shakes and chills she felt after being up and about. She probably looked like death warmed over, but she lacked the energy to do anything about it so why bother worrying? It wasn’t like she wanted him or any other man to notice. She wanted to be invisible, needed to be to stay a step ahead of Sean.
Ethan lifted one hand to his face and rubbed harshly, the bristle on his cheeks rasping in the quiet room. “I’m a night owl. Are you hungry? I could heat up some of that soup I gave you earlier.”
Sick or not, she sensed an evasive tactic. “Why can’t you sleep?” She could tell Ethan wanted her to shut up, drop the subject and take the stupid soup, but she didn’t want to. She needed a distraction in the worst way, something to keep her from thinking about Jenn.
Ethan capped the water bottle and set it aside. “Simon has nightmares.”
Megan studied his face. She couldn’t see Ethan well in the low light streaming in from the hall but she saw enough. Simon had nightmares, or Ethan? “What are they about?”
“Wouldn’t you rather rest?”
“In a minute. Tell me.”
Ethan leaned forward and braced his elbow on his leg. The pose was natural, casual, and it put her at ease even though he was so close. Strange, since she had a thing about personal space.
“I’d say he dreams of his homeland, the things he’s seen. Simon cries in his sleep and sometimes…he wakes up and I find him huddled in a corner of his room.”
Her heart ached at the image Ethan’s words brought to mind. No wonder she felt a connection to the kid. “He’ll tell you about them when he’s ready. Sometimes it takes time to work up the courage to talk about things that scare you. Maybe he thinks you won’t understand.”
“Maybe. Now get some rest. Good night, Megan.”
“Wait, don’t go.” She told herself to let him leave and mind her own business but something made her press. Maybe it was because Jenn wouldn’t talk to her and she needed a connection with someone, maybe it was because she identified with the expression Ethan wore. Whatever the reason, she didn’t want to be alone in the dark with only her thoughts and Sean’s threats for company. “We’ll talk about something else. Where is Simon from?”
Ethan made himself more comfortable at her side, a resigned sigh leaving his chest. “Niger. It’s a long story.”
Weren’t they all? “Long-distance girlfriend?”
His teeth flashed once more. “No, nothing like that. I took an assignment with Doctors Without Borders and…came home with a son.”
That was some souvenir. “What’s your specialty?”
“I’m a surgeon.”
“I’m impressed.”
“You shouldn’t be. It’s a job, like any other.”
O-kay. She plucked at the blanket and sheet, knowing she ought to be uncomfortable. But she wasn’t. As her mind had noted earlier, there wasn’t much Ethan couldn’t do to her that hadn’t already been done, and Ethan had a way about him that set her at ease. Weird.
Yeah, well, he’s practically felt you up. That sort of thing has a way of upping the comfort factor. “That’s not quite how most people view what you do. You know, what with the whole cutting people open thing going on. You don’t like being a surgeon?”
“I don’t like being made out to be more than I am.” His rich, husky voice slid over her nerves like the softest of sand.
“Just because I do what I do doesn’t mean I’m more important than anyone else.”
Megan frowned, aware there was more to Ethan’s comment than the obvious but not sure she wanted to pursue the subject given his mood and her growing awareness of him. It had to be the medicine kicking in. Why else would she be noticing his broad shoulders? The way his tone softened whenever he spoke of Simon?
But how many doctors, surgeons even more so, thought they were God because they held life in their hands? But here Ethan was, different in his belief. A part of her acknowledged that it was a trait to be admired. Another wondered if he was for real.
Her host shoved himself off the bed and stood. “You need to rest.”
She shifted on the pillow. “Why did you sign up with Doctors Without Borders?”
He hesitated a long moment and she could feel Ethan studying her in the light of the hallway.
“I made the decision to sign up after I’d been turned down for a promotion. I thought it would be nice to go somewhere where I could do some good and get back to the reason I became a doctor in the first place.”
“And let whoever passed you up choke on their mistake?”
“Why not? They made a bad decision.”
Why not indeed? Who wouldn’t want that kind of satisfaction? “Have they choked?”
“Yeah. The guy’s a lousy chief of surgery. The problem is that he’s now my boss and there’s nothing I can do about it unless I want to practice somewhere else.”
“Ouch. So you went to Niger. Did you like it?”
A slow, one-sided smile pulled at his mouth. “I loved it, although I wasn’t prepared in the least.”
“Prepared for what?” She’d learned to look beneath the surface during her time with Sean, watch for clues to his mood. Ethan was tired, maybe more exhausted than she was. Frustrated but calm. Still, here she was keeping him awake. Maybe she ought to let him go and not expect Ethan to entertain her.
“I thought I knew what I was getting into, but I didn’t count on meeting up with rebel forces.”
Whoa. “Seriously?” The warmth of him seeped through the blankets and into her side where he sat next to her, reminding her that he was here and alive so all had turned out well. Thank God. On a purely selfish level, what would she have done if he hadn’t made it back?
“The organization is fantastic when it comes to protecting their people, but some things are out of their control and can’t be helped. You know that going in. Some days are peaceful, some not. Eventually you wind up on edge, waiting for the next round because you know it’s coming. While I was there things got heated and it became a matter of when something would happen, not if.”
Images came to mind, her nightmares. The taunts and slurs and memories she tried to keep buried. A matter of when, not if, just as he’d said.
“Is something wrong?”
She’d tensed without meaning to. “No,” she said softly, pulling herself from the past and unclenching her fists from the blanket. “No, go on. What was it like?”
He hesitated a fraction of a second. “Beautiful. Terrifying. Medicine is in short supply. What they receive gets raided periodically by the guerillas and everything is rationed, even though the patients suffer for it.”
The sound of Ethan’s voice soothed the tension that filled her. She watched him, admiring Ethan’s dedication that he’d do something like that, take that kind of risk, and yet wondering why. Why go? Why volunteer? Was it brave, or stupid? In today’s world, why would someone who had a job and a house, a great career, risk it all?
Maybe because Ethan doesn’t think only of himself? If he did, you wouldn’t be here.
Maybe. And that was great; the world needed more people like Ethan. But she wondered if there was more to it. She couldn’t help but think people like that, people able to do those types of things, had never known true, life-and-death fear. Gut-knotting, heart-in-your-throat terror where you wonder if the end is a breath away. If they had, she believed most wouldn’t volunteer to go face more of the same. “How did you meet Simon?”
Ethan speared his fingers through his hair and raked the short strands back. “Word reached the camp that a group of children were trying to make their way to us.”
“Alone?”
“They’d started off with a couple of their teachers, but the adults had either abandoned them or died trying to protect them from the guerillas in pursuit. Simon is—was—my translator’s nephew. Isa had already lost his sister to AIDS a year earlier and he didn’t want to lose Simon to the fighting.”
Her brain focused on on
e word—AIDS. “Was Simon infected by his mother?” The shock of it gave her pause. After leaving Sean, she’d moved around quite a few times. But in every city she’d made a point of going to the support groups and counseling classes held at the shelters. She’d read the pamphlets and attended the free meetings on domestic violence and she knew the statistics.
“No. But the spread of the disease is one of the many reasons Isa asked me to bring Simon home as my son. Isa wanted Simon to be in a safer place, one where the meds are available if Simon ever needs them, where he wouldn’t be kidnapped and forced to fight.” Ethan rubbed his palm over his eye. “Simon’s tested negative for HIV twice already. He’ll have another test in six months, but it’s more of a precaution since the first two were negative.”
She thought of Simon’s sweet little face, pictured his huge honey-colored eyes. Innocent, and yet old beyond his years. “Simon’s here with you because his uncle didn’t make it.” Ethan gave her a slow nod, his expression so tormented a lump appeared in her throat. “I’m sorry.”
“Me, too.”
Her heart stalled in her chest when Ethan lowered his head. She was more than ready to drop the subject now but Ethan made no effort to walk away.
“We went after the kids. We had to because—If the rebels found them first, they’d force them into their army. It’s their standard recruiting procedure,” he explained, his tone taking on a lethal dose of disgust. “Their so-called army is filled with children, some of them not even in puberty, carting around machine guns because if they don’t, their family members are murdered as punishment.”
She covered her mouth with her hand. Poor little Simon. He must have been so terrified. Thank God Ethan had gone after them, that there were men left in the world who’d protect those who couldn’t protect themselves.
