Convincing Jamey

by Pappano, Marilyn

  “I was up on the roof,” he continued in that flat, dead voice. “I heard them talking. I heard Ryan say that her mouth was going to get her killed, maybe today. By the time I got down there, she was already on the ground, and he was kicking her.”

  As they reached the beginning of Karen’s fence, Jamey gave him a long, dark look. “You have a hell of a best friend, Reid.” Then, after a moment’s heavy silence, “Go across to the bar. Ask Cassie if I can borrow her car.”

  The kid took off, returning a moment later with a set of keys. He opened the back passenger door, then stepped back so Jamey could carefully lay Karen on the seat. Straightening, he closed the door, then took the keys. “Stay at the bar, would you? Keep an eye on Alicia and Cassie. Don’t let either of them leave.”

  The next two hours were a blur—the reckless drive across town to the nearest hospital, the nurses and doctors hurrying in and out, the questions he was asked and the forms they wanted him to fill out, the arrival of her friends. Jamey didn’t wonder how they found Karen. They were a cop, an FBI agent and a U.S. Attorney; they could probably find out anything—including, he hoped, where Ryan Morgan was. He just told them what he knew, and Bennett and Sinclair left immediately for Serenity.

  Finally, when the waiting had become almost more than he could bear, a doctor approached Jamey and Smith Kendricks. “Mr. Montez?”

  Mention of Karen’s husband—of Kendricks’s good friend—who had died six years ago in one of these hospitals made Jamey swallow hard. Kendricks didn’t react at all. “No Mr. Montez,” he said. “Jamey O’Shea and Smith Kendricks. We’re friends of Karen’s. How is she?”

  “Bruised and battered, but nothing’s broken. We would like to keep her overnight, but she insists that she’ll rest better at home. Is there someone who can stay with her?”

  When Kendricks didn’t answer, Jamey did, though with reluctance. “Yes.” If she went back to Serenity, of course he would stay with her...but he didn’t want her going back. He didn’t want her to ever set foot on that damned street or in that damned neighborhood again.

  The doctor didn’t seem to notice his hesitation. “You can see her if you’d like. We’ll take care of the paperwork, and she’ll be free to go soon.”

  Together they followed the doctor to the room where Karen lay on a gurney, her head turned in the opposite direction, looking so small and vulnerable. Kendricks hung back, though, gesturing to Jamey to go in alone. He did so, approaching the bed slowly, reaching out when he was beside her to gently touch her hand. Immediately she turned and tried to smile, but the effort was painful. “How do you feel?”

  “Numb.” She turned her hand so her fingers could wrap around his. “I’m sorry, Jamey. I knew I wasn’t supposed to go out, but I heard a cry, and I saw Alicia looking as if—”

  “Shh. It’s okay. I’ll yell at you later.” Bending closer, he brushed his hand over her hair, still damp and caked in places with mud. Her clothes had also been muddy, he remembered, and bloody. In the hall while he’d waited he had noticed that her blood was on him, too, a red stain the rain hadn’t washed away. “Are you sure you want to leave tonight? Why don’t you let the doctor keep you, like he wants?”

  She shook her head. “I’m going home, Jamey. If you don’t take me, I’ll call a cab.”

  “Cabs won’t go into Serenity.”

  “Then I’ll go as far as they’ll take me, and I’ll walk the rest of the way.”

  He was surprised that he could manage a halfway decent grin. “You’re stubborn enough to do it, aren’t you?”

  She tried another awkward little half smile, half grimace. “You bet.” Growing serious again, she touched her face gingerly. “Do I look as bad as I feel?”

  “If you feel like death warmed over. You’re twice as pale as normal and about two dozen shades of purple, black and blue. The colors don’t exactly go with your hair, but you’re still beautiful.”

  Her laughter was unexpected, and it ended in a pained wince as she raised one hand to her ribs. “That’s quite a line of blarney, Jamey O’Shea. My clothes are over there. Will you help me get dressed?”

  “I kind of like your gown.”

  “Oh, yes, it’s so fashionable. Please?” She nodded toward the countertop and the small pile of clothing, but he still hesitated.

  “Karen—”

  Raising one hand, she covered his mouth. “Please don’t argue, Jamey. I want to go home. I want to lie in my own bed. I want to go to sleep beside you, and I want to wake up beside you. Please, I need that. I need you.”

  Without another word, he got her clothes, helped her sit up and pulled the gown from her shoulders. Her shirt was wet and made her shiver when he pulled it over her head and down to her waist—at least he hoped it was a chill and not pain. He had never dressed an injured woman before, certainly not in damp clothes that clung and dragged instead of simply sliding into place.

  He completed the job without causing her too much discomfort, then settled her on the bed again. “You have company,” he said, going to the door before she had a chance to speak.

  Kendricks came in, moving to the opposite side of the gurney. She greeted him, then chided, “You didn’t have to come down here.”

  “Yeah, right. Jolie wanted to come, too, but she’s with the kids.” Kendricks touched her chin lightly. “Maybe next time maybe you’d better pick on someone your own size. I think this guy got the better of you.”

  “Only because I wasn’t prepared.”

  “Oh, yeah? How do you prepare for someone like Ryan Morgan?”

  “You hang around someone like Jamey O’Shea,” she replied, squeezing his hand tightly.

  “It didn’t do you much good tonight, did it?” Jamey asked grimly. “I wasn’t there in time to stop Morgan.”

  Kendricks spoke up again, the teasing gone, his tone totally serious. “Michael and Remy and about half the NOPD are out looking for Morgan. Until they arrest him, Karen, come and stay with Jolie and me. We have plenty of room, and we both really want you there.”

  Although he knew it was irrational, some part of Jamey wanted to object to the invitation. If Karen went home with anyone, it should be him. He should be the one to take care of her. After all, he was more a part of her life than the Kendrickses, the Bennetts or the Sinclairs. But he didn’t belong in her life, just as she didn’t belong in his. She did belong with people like the Kendrickses. She belonged anywhere away from Serenity. Away from him.

  “I appreciate the invitation,” Karen said, “but I’ve got to go home. Jamey will look out for me. It’s one of the things he does best.”

  “You’re sure?” At her nod, Kendricks shrugged. “Then can I give you a ride?”

  “I have...” Jamey hesitated as she inconspicuously squeezed his hand hard enough to numb his fingers. “...a car,” he finished, giving her a puzzled look.

  “Then I’ll see you soon.” Bending, the other man brushed a kiss to her forehead. “Until they get this guy in custody, be careful, will you?”

  “I will.”

  As soon as Kendricks was gone, Jamey freed his hand and flexed his fingers. “What was that about?”

  “I was afraid you would mention Cassie. It is her car you have, isn’t it? No one else on Serenity owns a car, and I haven’t gotten my tires replaced yet, and she was supposed to come over this evening.”

  “Yes, it’s Cassie’s car, but what does that matter?”

  “I never told you her last name, did I?” She swung her legs over the side of the bed, waited a moment to equilibrate, then slid to the floor. “It’s Wade. As in the Wades who lived on Serenity Street. As in Jolie Wade’s baby sister and Smith’s favorite sister-in-law.”

  He gave a dismayed shake of his head. He had never guessed that Cassie and Jolie were related, but why should he? He must have been away in the Army by the time Cassie was born, and her family had moved off soon after he’d returned. As far as he knew, none of them but Jolie had set foot back in the old neighborhood, an
d even she had done it only for a series of award-winning articles and, more recently, for the sake of a friend.

  “See why I didn’t want you to mention her?” Then, trying to look innocent, she reached for his hand and asked in a small voice, “Can we go home now?”

  Trying to stifle a groan, Karen shifted on the bed, seeking some position where her bruises didn’t hurt, but such a position, she suspected, didn’t exist. Her body ached in places where no one had even touched her—not Morgan, the doctors or the nurses. Even her toes were sore.

  From the darkness outside her room, Jamey appeared in the doorway. “Are you all right?”

  It was around four o’clock in the morning, and he had asked the question repeatedly—when he had carried her in from the car, when he’d lain down beside her, when he’d gotten up soon after for fear his closeness might make her more uncomfortable, every time she sighed, every time she groaned... She would smile if it didn’t hurt too much. It was nice to have someone so concerned for her. There was a certain comfort in it, and she needed all the comfort she could get.

  “I’m fine,” she lied. “You can quit watching the street, Jamey. No one’s coming around here tonight.” Michael, Remy and the others had searched, but there’d been no sign of Morgan or his gang anywhere. They had interviewed Reid, who had saved her from further injury and had gotten a black eye, swollen knuckles and a few scrapes of his own for his efforts, and Alicia, who had finally calmed down and had gone home with Cassie. Now the street was quiet, the buildings dark, showing no sign of life.

  Except Jamey, prowling like an edgy, hungry cat seeking prey.

  “Why don’t you take the pain medication the doctor gave you? Maybe you could get some sleep.”

  “In a little bit. You know what would help more? I need to take a bath, wash my hair, get clean.” She wanted to wash away the smell of the hospital and the dirt that had escaped the nurse’s perfunctory cleaning. She wanted to wash off the residue of mud that had caked her hair, and most of all she wanted to wash away the residue of Ryan Morgan. She needed to be cleaned of him.

  She waited hopefully but expected him to argue, to insist that she stay in bed. To her great gratitude, he didn’t. He thought about it a moment, then nodded. “I’ll run the water. You wait here.”

  She waited until the bathroom light came on, spilling out into the hallway, then she carefully eased to her feet. Movement was painful and slow, but she managed to make it halfway to the bathroom before he came back for her. He helped her into the bathroom, then left her leaning against the sink for support while he checked the temperature of the water and added sweet-scented bubble bath. Drawing a breath, she turned to face herself in the mirror. She hadn’t caught a glimpse yet, but she knew exactly what she would look like.

  One moment passed, then another and one more. Jamey shut off the water and came to stand behind her, his hands resting on the basin’s lip beside hers, his gaze locked on her reflection. “Do you know how many times I’ve seen this?” she whispered.

  His blue eyes shadowed with bewilderment, he shook his head. “It’s not so bad.”

  She raised one trembling hand to touch the battered, swollen face in the mirror. “That’s what Kathy used to say,” she murmured. “She would come to our parents’ house looking like this, and she would say, ‘It’s not so bad. It doesn’t hurt. It looks a lot worse than it is.’ And my mother and I...we let her pretend. If we told her it was bad, she shut us out. For days she refused to have anything to do with us. And so, to keep peace with her, we let her lie. We supported her lies. We told her no, it wasn’t so bad...but maybe it shouldn’t have happened. Maybe Davis had a problem. Maybe she should get help.” Her eyes grew damp, and her voice began to quiver. “One day the police chief—my dad’s best friend—came to the house. He’d been at the hospital, where Davis had taken Kathy after one of their fights. She was dead. In one of his uncontrollable rages, her husband had beaten her to death.”

  Jamey cautiously slipped one arm around her waist. When she didn’t wince, he slid the other one around and held her. “I’m sorry.”

  “We were twins. Identical twins. She was a part of me, and I stood back and did nothing while her husband killed her one punch at a time.” Her smile was crooked, thin and bitter. “When we were kids, she used to tease that I was wearing her face. This is how she looked the last time I saw her alive.” The tears started then, stinging the raw scrapes on her cheek. “Oh, Jamey...”

  He held her gently and let her cry, murmuring soft words and softer sounds. When she was finished, he pulled her nightshirt over her head, then lifted her into the great old claw-foot tub. As she settled with a weary sigh, he pulled the ladderback chair to the side of the tub and sat down, leaning forward, elbows braced on his knees, to watch her. Finally he spoke. “That’s why this place is so important to you.”

  She nodded.

  “But it’s not worth dying for, Karen.”

  She stared down at the bubbles that covered the steamy water in a froth. She’d known this was coming. From the moment Ryan had dragged her into the alley, before the first punch had landed, one of the few thoughts that had penetrated her fear had been that Jamey was going to use this to bolster his arguments in favor of her leaving. He couldn’t have asked for better ammunition, and through her foolishness—and her concern for Alicia—she had handed it to him on a platter.

  “You’re doing this for Kathy, but do you think she wants you to suffer the way she did? To endure the same abuse that she did?”

  “I’m doing it for me, Jamey. All the plans I ever made for my life involved a family. I was going to be a good wife and a wonderful mother. That was going to be my life. But Evan died, and I’m never going to have babies of my own. I have to have something to want, to fill my time, to care about and dream about, to work for. I have to make a new future for myself in a place where I’m not Evan’s widow, Kathryn and Robert’s daughter or Kathy’s twin, where I can be just plain Karen. The crazy lady. The do-gooder. The dreamer. The fool.”

  “The red-haired bitch.” His tone was curt as he repeated Ryan Morgan’s insult.

  “That, too. I don’t expect everyone to think kindly of me. I would know I was doing something wrong if Ryan did,” she said with a hint of a smile before turning serious again. “If I left, Jamey, where would I go? What would I do?”

  “You could go home. You could go to some other neighborhood that’s not so dangerous. You could find some other place with people who need your help.”

  “And give up all of this?” she teased. “Jamey, I can’t afford to go someplace else. All my money is tied up in this house, in these plans. If I walk away from here, I’ll be walking away from everything I have.”

  “And if you don’t walk away, Morgan or some other punk just might make good on his threat to see you carried out. Nothing here is worth dying for.”

  He was wrong, she knew. Plenty of people on Serenity were worth dying for. They were certainly worth living for. But she didn’t argue the point with him. She was too weary, too sore, for arguments. “Let’s just agree to disagree,” she said with a sigh.

  The slight curve of his mouth was more grimace than smile. “That shouldn’t be hard. We’ve been doing it from the beginning.”

  Sinking a little deeper, she tilted her head back so that her hair fell from the rim of the tub where she had gathered it earlier and floated, then sank below the surface of the water. Closing her eyes, she slipped lower until only her face remained out of water, wetting her hair completely, then sat up again. Without being asked, he got the shampoo from the small table nearby, knelt beside the tub and squirted some into her hair. While she lathered the length of the curls, his long, strong fingers kneaded and massaged her scalp, then her neck, sending heat and relaxation through her body. “You do that well,” she murmured with a yawn.

  “Maybe I missed my calling. Maybe I should have been a hairdresser instead.”

  The idea of Jamey, with his own shaggy, carelessl
y unstyled hair, standing behind a salon chair instead of a bar amused her. “You’re a good bartender and a good friend. Your customers need that far more than they need a decent haircut.”

  He rinsed the shampoo from her hair, then pulled the plug and helped her from the tub. While she stood dripping on the rug, he got a towel from the wicker table. When he turned back, for a moment he simply stared at her body. She didn’t need to look. She felt every one of the bruises that appalled him. “Because I’m so pale,” she said softly, “what would be an ordinary bruise on you looks spectacular on me.”

  He touched one mark that extended across her ribs, his fingers so light that she barely felt them. Abruptly pulling back, those gentle fingers curled into a threatening fist. “I’m so damned sorry...but not as sorry as that bastard’s going to be when I get hold of him. I’m going to kill the son of a bitch.”

  “No, you’re not.” She wrapped her hand around his and held it tightly. “You’re too good a man to resort to vigilante behavior...but I appreciate the desire.”

  He wound the towel around her dripping hair, wrapped another around her body and lifted her into his arms. She didn’t need to be carried—the hot bath had done wonders for her aches and pains—but she didn’t say so. She didn’t protest at all. She simply rested her head on his shoulder and allowed herself to feel pampered. Treasured. Even a little bit loved.

  Ten o’clock came and went, but O’Shea’s stayed locked up. Jamey had dozed for a few hours in the easy chair beside Karen’s bed, then had sat there another few hours, simply watching her, before he finally headed downstairs. As he popped the top on a soda from her refrigerator, he wandered out onto the porch, feeling the force of the morning heat with his first step. If God was feeling merciful this morning, He would turn the skies dark, stir up cooling winds to chase the heat and humidity to the east and send an easy, steady rain all day and into the night to make the weather bearable. But the sky was blue, without a cloud to be seen, the smooth pale color broken only by shimmering, shifting heat waves.