Guarding Suzannah
Page 56
~*~
Grace Morgan felt like a dog’s breakfast.
Despite the painkillers the nurse had given her, everything she owned seemed to hurt, albeit in a distant way, and her head ached with a dull persistence. But she hadn’t cried.
In fact, she seemed unable to cry. Instead of tears, there was just a hot, heavy misery in her chest. If only Ray would come. If he were here with her, she could cry rivers.
She’d cry for her beloved Mustang, shockingly crumpled now, a red husk of twisted metal they’d had to open like a sardine can. How had she come out of it alive?
She’d cry for her carelessness.
She’d cry for scaring Ray, and for scaring herself.
Ray. He would gather her close and soothe her while the pain seeped out, soaking his shirt. He would lend her his strength, his toughness. He’d kiss her so carefully and sweetly….
She could almost cry, just thinking about it. Almost.
Ray, where are you?
On cue, the door swung open to admit her husband. Her heart lightened at the sight of him, so strong, so solid. His shoulders seemed to fill even this institutional-size doorway.
If she felt bad, he looked worse. Haggard. And for the first time she could remember in the six years she’d known him, he looked positively rumpled, and his face was shadowed with stubble as though he’d missed his second shave of the day.
Poor pet. He must have been so worried.
“Ray.” Her right arm hindered by IV lines, she reached across her body with her left arm. He took her hand, but there was something wrong. He looked … funny. Guarded. Wrong.
Oh, Lord, was she dying after all? Was her brain irrevocably damaged and nobody wanted to tell her? She could be hemorrhaging right now, her brain swelling out of control. Maybe that’s why her head hurt. Maybe….
Then he touched her forehead, brushing aside the fringe of hair peeping out from under the bandage, his gentleness dispelling her crazy impression.
“You all right?”
She would be now. “Yeah, I’m all right. Unless you know something I don’t.”
That look was back on his face again. “What do you mean?”
“They didn’t send you in here to tell me they mixed up the charts, by any chance? That my brain is Jell-O after all?”
He smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “No, your head is fine, as far as they can tell.”
She drew his hand to her cheek, pressing it there with her own palm. Some of the pain abated. “That’s what they told me, too, but you’d never know it from the way I feel.”
“Do you remember what happened?”
She swallowed hard, her throat tight with the need to cry. “I rolled the Mustang.”
“Like a cowboy’s cigarette, to quote Quigg.” Another ghost of a smile curved his lips. Lips he hadn’t yet pressed to hers.
She smiled tremulously. “I guess I’m lucky, huh?”
“Very lucky.”
The tears welled, scalding, ready to spill. “I really loved that car.”
“Something tells me you could love another one.”
Again that twisting of his lips. It wasn’t humor that lit his eyes. What? A vague, formless anxiety rose in her breast.
“A newer model, with fewer miles on the odometer. Or maybe something faster, flashier.”
She wasn’t imagining things. His tone was … off. What was it she was hearing? Accusation? Grace blinked. “Are you very angry? About the car, I mean?”
He seemed to swallow with difficulty, and his hand tightened on her chin. “Grace, I don’t give a damn about the car.”
For the first time since he entered the room, she finally saw what she expected to see in his face. To hell with the car. You’re okay. You’re safe, his eyes said. Her sense of strangeness dissipated.
“I was so scared.”
He pulled her into his arms. The dam broke and her tears spilled over at last.