by J. R. Ward
He wasn't going to touch that question. Scarring was obviously an issue, given the man's back. "I couldn't recommend it."
There was a long silence while he continued to think things over and they gave him space. When he got to the end of all the options, he just stared at the two of them. The gorgeous wife was seated next to the scary-looking husband, one hand on his free arm, the other on his mutilated back, stroking.
It was obvious that his scars didn't affect his worth in her eyes. He was whole and beautiful to her in spite of the condition of his skin.
T.W. thought of his own wife. Who was just like that.
"Out of ideas, Doc?" the husband asked.
"I am so sorry." He shifted his eyes around, hating how helpless he felt. As a doctor he was trained to do something. As a human with a heart, he needed to do something. "I am so very sorry."
The husband smiled that little smile of his again. "You treat a lot of people with burns, don't you."
"It's my specialty. Kids, mostly. You know, because of . . ."
"Yeah, I know. Betcha you're good to them."
"How could I not be?"
The patient leaned forward and put his huge hand on T.W.'s shoulder. "We're going to take off now, Doc. But my shellan's going to leave the payment on the desk over there."
T.W. glanced at the wife, who was bent over a checkbook, then shook his head. "Why don't we just call it even. This really didn't help you."
"Nah, we took your time. We'll pay."
T.W. cursed under his breath a couple of times. Then just spat out, "Damn it."
"Doc? Look at me now?"
T.W. glanced up at the guy. Man, that yellow stare was positively hypnotic. "Wow. You have incredible eyes."
The patient smiled more widely, flashing teeth that were . . . not normal. "Thank you, Doc. Now listen up. You're probably going to have dreams about this, and I want you to remember I left here tight, 'kay?"
T.W. frowned. "Why would I dream--"
"Just remember, I'm okay with what happened. Knowing you, that's what's going to bother you most."
"I still don't understand why I would h--"
T.W. blinked and looked around the examination room. He was sitting on the little rolling stool he used when he treated patients, and there was a chair pulled over next to the patient table, and he had his eye protection in his hand . . . except there was no one in the room but him.
Odd. He could have sworn he was just talking to the most amazing--
As a headache came on he rubbed his temples and became suddenly exhausted . . . exhausted and curiously depressed, as if he'd failed at something that had been important to him.
And worried. Worried about a m--
The headache got worse, and with a groan he stood up and went over to the desk. There was an envelope on it, a plain creamy envelope with flowing cursive script that read, In gratitude to T.W. Franklin, M.D., to be applied at his direction in favor of his department's good works.
He turned it over, ripped open the flap, and took out a check.
His jaw hit the floor.
One hundred thousand dollars. Made out to the Department of Dermatology, St. Francis Hospital.
The name of the person listed was Fritz Perlmutter, and there was no address at the upper left, just a discreet notation: Caldwell National Bank, Private Client Group.
One hundred thousand dollars.
An image of a scarred husband and a gorgeous wife flickered in his mind, then was buried by his headache.
T.W. took the check and slipped it inside his shirt pocket, then shut down the laser machine and the computer and made his way to the back clinic exit, turning lights off as he went.
On his way home he found himself thinking of his wife, of the way she'd been when she'd first seen him after the fire all those decades ago. She'd been eleven and had come to visit him with her parents. He'd been absolutely mortified when she'd walked through the door because he'd already had a crush on her at that point, and there he'd been, stuck in a hospital bed, one side of him covered with bandages.
She'd smiled at him and taken his good hand and told him no matter what his arm looked like, she still wanted to be his friend.
She'd meant it. And then, proved it over and over again.
Even liked him as more than a friend.
Sometimes, T.W. thought, the fact that the one you cared about didn't care how you looked was the best healing there was.
As he drove along, he passed by a jewelry store that was locked up tight for the night, and then a florist and then an antique shop that he knew his wife liked to browse in.
She'd given him three children. Nearly twenty years of marriage. And space to work this career of his.
He'd given her a lot of lonely nights. Dinners with just the kids. Vacations that were limited to a day or two tacked onto dermatology conferences.
And a Volvo.
It took T.W. twenty minutes to get to a Hannaford that was open all night, and he jogged into the supermarket even though there was no closing time to worry about.
The flower section was to the left, just as he walked in through the automatic doors. As he saw the roses and the chrysanthemums and the lilies, he thought about backing up his Lexus and filling the trunk with bouquets. And the backseat.
In the end though, he chose one single flower, and he held it carefully between his thumb and forefinger all the way home.
He parked in the garage, but didn't go in through the kitchen. Instead he went to the front door and rang the bell.
His wife's familiar, lovely face peeked out of the long, thin windows that framed their colonial's entryway. She looked confused as she opened the door.
"Did you forget your--"
T.W. held the flower out in his burned hand.
It was a lowly little daisy. Exactly the kind she'd brought to him once a week in the hospital. For two months straight.
"I don't say thank-you enough," T.W. murmured. "Or I love you. Or that I still think you're as beautiful as the day I married you."
His wife's hand trembled as she took the flower. "T.W. . . . are you okay?"
"God . . . the fact that you have to ask that just because I bring you a flower . . ." He shook his head and hugged her into his arms, holding her tight. "I'm sorry."
Their teenage daughter walked by them and rolled her eyes before heading up the stairs. "Get a room."
T.W. pulled back and tucked his wife's salt-and-pepper hair back behind her ears. "I think we should take her advice, what do you say? And by the way, we're going somewhere for our anniversary--and not to a conference."
His wife smiled and then outright beamed. "What has gotten into you?"
"I saw this patient and his wife tonight. . . ." He winced and rubbed his temple. "I mean . . . what was I saying?"
"How about dinner?" his wife said, fitting herself into his side. "And then we'll see about that room?"
T.W. leaned into his wife as he shut the door. As they went down the hall to the kitchen together, he kissed her. "That sounds perfect. Just perfect."
TEN
Back at the Brotherhood's mansion, Z stood at one of the windows in his and Bella's bedroom and looked down over the terrace and the back gardens. His wrist burned from where the laser had been applied, but the pain wasn't bad.
"I'm not surprised by the whole thing," he said. "Well, other than the fact that I liked the doc."
Bella came up behind him and put her arms around his waist. "He was a good guy, wasn't he."
As they stood together, there was a whole lot of what-now floating around the room. Unfortunately he didn't have any answers. He'd kind of banked on the bands being removed, like that would somehow make everything better.
Although it wasn't as if there weren't still scars on his face.
From the nursery Nalla let out a burble and then a hiccup. A cry was next. "I just fed her and changed her," Bella said, pulling away. "I'm not sure what this is about--"
"Let me go t
o her," he said in a tight voice. "Let me see if I can . . ."
Bella's eyebrows lifted, but then she nodded. "Okay. I'll stay here."
"I won't drop her. I promise."
"I know you won't. Just make sure you support her head."
"Right. Got it."
Z felt like he was going unarmed into a field of lessers when he walked into the nursery.
As if sensing him, Nalla let out a whiffle.
"It's your father. Dad. Papa." What would she call him?
He went over and peered down at his daughter. She was dressed in a Red Sox onesie, no doubt a gift from V and/or Butch, and her lower lip was quivering like it wanted to leap off the tip of her chin but was afraid of the drop.
"Why are you crying, little one?" he said softly.
When she lifted her arms up to him, he checked the doorway. Bella wasn't in it, and he was glad. He didn't want anyone seeing how awkward he was as he reached into the crib and . . .
Nalla fit between his hands perfectly, her butt in one of his palms, her head cradled in the other. As he straightened and brought her up, she was surprisingly sturdy and warm and--
She grabbed onto his turtleneck and pulled into him, demanding closeness . . . and obliging her seemed shockingly easy. As he held her against his chest, she settled immediately, turning herself flush into his body.
Having her in his arms was so natural. And so was heading for the rocker and sitting down and using one of his feet to make them go back and forth.
Staring at her lashes and her plump little cheeks and her death grip on his turtleneck, he realized just how much she needed him--and not just to protect her. She needed him to love her, too.
"Looks like you are getting along," Bella said quietly from the doorway.
He glanced up. "She seems to like me."
"How could she not?"
Looking back down at his daughter, he said after a while, "It would have been great to get them removed. The tats. But she'd still ask about my face."
"She's going to love you anyway. She already does."
He ran his forefinger over Nalla's arm, stroking her as she snuggled even deeper against his heart and played patty-cake on the back of his free hand.
From out of nowhere, he said, "You didn't talk to me much about your abduction."
"I . . . ah, I didn't want to upset you."
"Do you find yourself protecting me from things that might upset me a lot?"
"No."
"You sure about that?"
"Zsadist, if I do, it's because--"
"I'm not much of a male if I can't be there when you need me."
"You are always there for me. And we did talk about it some."
"Some."
God, he felt like shit for all she had had to do alone, just because of his head fuck.
And yet her voice was strong and sure as she said, "When it comes to the abduction, I don't want you to know every little thing that happened. Not because you can't handle it, but because I don't want to give that bastard any more influence over my life than he's already had." She shook her head. "I'm not going to give him the power to upset you if I can avoid it. Not going to happen--and that would be true whether or not you had been through anything traumatic."
Z made a noise to acknowledge that she'd spoken, but he didn't agree with her. He wanted to give her everything she needed. She deserved nothing less. And his past had impacted them. Still did. Christ, the way he'd been about Nalla had been--
"May I tell you something in confidence?" she said.
"Of course."
"Mary wants a baby."
Z's eyes shot up. "She does? That's great--"
"A biological one."
"Oh."
"Yeah. She can't have one of her own, so Rhage would have to lay with a Chosen."
Z shook his head. "He would never do that. He won't be with anyone but Mary."
"That's what she says. But if he doesn't, she can't hold a piece of him in her arms."
Yeah, because IVF didn't work on vampires. "Shit."
"She hasn't talked to Rhage about it yet because she's sorting her own feelings out first. She talks to me so she can ride the peaks and valleys of her emotions without putting him through the wringer. Some days she wants a young so badly, she thinks she can handle it. Other days she simply can't bear the idea on any level and considers adoption. My point is, you can't work out all your stuff with your partner. And you shouldn't. You were there for me afterward. You're there for me now. I never question that. But that doesn't mean I have to drag you into the nitty-gritty. Healing is a multifaceted kind of thing."
He tried to picture himself telling Bella all the ins and outs of the abuse he'd been subjected to. . . . No. . . . no way would he want her to break her heart over the fucked up nightmare he'd been put through.
"Did you talk to someone?" he asked.
"Yes, at Havers's. And I talked to Mary." There was a pause. "And I went back . . . to where I'd been held."
His eyes flipped up and bored into hers. "You did?"
She nodded. "I had to."
"You never told me." Fuck, she'd been back there? Without him?
"I needed to go. For me. And I needed to go alone and I didn't want to argue. I made sure Wrath knew when I was leaving and I told him right when I got back."
"Damn . . . I wish I'd known. Makes me feel like a shitty hellren."
"You're anything but that. Especially now that you're holding your daughter like you are."
There was a long silence.
"Look," she said, "if it helps any, I've never felt like I couldn't tell you something. I've never doubted that you would man up and support me. But just because we're mated doesn't mean I'm not my own person."
"I know. . . ." He thought for a minute. "I didn't want to go back to where I . . . To that castle. If it hadn't been for the fact that she'd imprisoned another male down in that cell . . . I never would have gone back."
And he couldn't now. The place where he'd been held in the Old Country had long ago been sold to humans, eventually ending up in England's National Trust.
"Did you feel better?" he asked abruptly. "After you went to see where you'd been?"
"Yes, because Vishous had ashed the place. The closure was more complete that way."
Z rubbed Nalla's little round belly absently while staring across at his shellan. "I wonder why we haven't talked about it before now."
Bella smiled and nodded at the young. "We've had something else get our attention."
"Can I be honest? The steakhead in me needs to believe that if you'd wanted me to go with you to that place, you know I would have done it in a heartbeat and stayed tight for you."
"I absolutely know that. But I still wanted to go alone. I can't explain it . . . it was just something I needed to do. A courage thing."
Nalla glanced in the direction of her mother and made a squirming reach that was accompanied by a little burble of demand.
"I think she wants something only you can give her," Z said with a smile as he got up from the rocker.
He and Bella met in the middle of the room. As they made the handoff, he kissed his shellan and lingered a bit, with both of them holding on to their daughter.
"I'm going out, okay?" he said. "I won't be long."
"Be safe."
"I promise. I've got to take care of my girls."
Zsadist armed himself and dematerialized out west of the city, to a stretch of forest dead in the thick of farm country.
The bald clearing was fifty feet ahead, right by a stream, but instead of seeing an empty stretch among the pines, he pictured a single-room building with a plywood exterior and a tin roof.
What was in his mind was clear as the trees around him and the stars in the night sky up above: The facility had been constructed by the Lessening Society quickly and with an eye toward the temporary. What had been done inside, though, had been the stuff of permanence.
He walked over to the clearing, the twig
s of the forest floor cracking under his boots, reminding him of a quiet fire in the fireplace.
His thoughts were anything but calming and homey.
When you went through the place's door, there had been a stall shower and a drywall bucket with a toilet seat on it. For six weeks Bella had washed in the four-by-four-foot cubicle, and he knew she hadn't been alone. That bastard lesser had watched her. Had probably helped.
Shit, the idea of anything like that happening made him want to hunt the fucker down all over again. But Bella had taken care of the slayer's death, hadn't she. She'd been the one who had shot him in the head while the bastard had stood before her, captivated by his sick love for her. . . .
Fuck.
Shaking himself, Z imagined he was standing once again in the main room of the place. To the left there had been a wall of shelving with tools of the torture trade laid out on flimsy wooden boards held aloft by crude brackets. Chisels, knives, handsaws . . . he could remember how shiny they had been.
There had been a fireproof closet as well, one that he'd ripped the doors off of.
And a stainless-steel autopsy table with fresh blood on it.
Which he'd tossed into the corner like litter.
He could totally remember busting into the facility. He'd been looking for Bella for weeks after that lesser had broken into her house and taken her. Everyone thought she was dead, but he'd refused to believe it. He'd been tortured by the need to get her free . . . a need he hadn't then understood but couldn't deny.
The break had come when a civilian vampire had escaped from this "persuasion center," as the Lessening Society called them, and tracked his location by dematerializing out from the clearing at hundred-yard clips through the forest. From the map he'd drawn for the Brotherhood, Z had come here looking for his female.
The first thing he'd found had been a scorched circle of earth right outside the door, and he'd thought it had been Bella, left for the sun. He'd bent at the knees and put his hand to the ashed circle, and when his sight had gone blurry he hadn't known why.
Tears. There had been tears in his eyes. And it had been so long since he'd cried, he hadn't recognized what they were.
Coming back to the present, Z braced himself and stepped forward, his boots crossing over low-napped, weedy grass. Usually, after Vishous used his hand on a place, there was nothing left but ash and small bits of metal, and that was true here. With the forest undergrowth already grabbing hold, soon the clearing would be filled in again.
The three pipes that were set in the ground had survived, though. And would continue to exist no matter how many sapling pines sprang up.
