“I don’t think I am,” Jace said. “Not when I can’t fix things for her.” He nodded at Shay.
“Let me see what I can do.” She patted him one last time, then headed for her sister.
When she got near, Shay stopped her movement and addressed Mac in a voice of hoarse but muted outrage. “Our Pop!”
“Yeah, little sister,” Mac said softly. Though Shay was younger than Poppy, like everyone else in the family, she had a deep protective streak when it came to that particular sibling. Poppy had never asked to be defended and was most likely insulted by their habitual need to shield her, but there it was.
Tears sprang into Shay’s eyes, and Mac felt her own despair shudder through her. But she clamped down on it and kept her spine straight. “C’mon,” she said to Shay, holding out her hand. “I know what will help.”
Shay squeezed hard on her fingers as Mac led her toward Jace. “He needs to hold you, yeah?” she whispered. “Can you give that to him?”
Without answering, Shay slipped her hand from Mac’s and walked right into her husband’s arms, resting her forehead on his wide chest. Jace shut his eyes and seemed to be breathing again, as he closed her in his embrace.
Now that the two couples were united in support of each other, Mac returned to Ryan. He didn’t look up, though, and she didn’t try to reach him in the place where he’d retreated. Instead, leaving a chair between them, she took her own seat and settled in to wait.
It was hell to keep her knees from shaking and her expression free of the grinding dread carving a hole in her belly. She clasped her hands loosely in her lap and stared at a stack of bedraggled magazines, seeing a thousand images of her little sister.
Always smiling. Often laughing.
Crying over car commercials, for goodness’ sake!
Kissing her son.
Looking at Ryan as if he’d hung the moon and the stars just for her.
She just had to be all right.
Poppy holds all my hope. I think if we can keep her buoyant and bright, then I might eventually be that way, too.
A doctor came through the door to the examining rooms. “Mr. Hamilton?”
The waiting area flooded with apprehension as Ryan jumped to his feet. The doctor gestured for him, and Ryan ate up the space with quick strides until he and the other man disappeared, the door swinging shut behind him.
Angelica released a soft sob that she tried smothering against Brett’s shoulder. The sound sent Mac’s dread on another forage through her belly. Shay must have been feeling much the same, because she said, “Our Pop,” again in that same distressed and almost disbelieving tone.
Their Pop.
Then the door opened again and a nurse in pale pink scrubs looked at them. “Walker family?”
They stood.
“You can all come this way. Not for long...but come on back.”
Mac was the last of their party to approach the room. Everyone huddled in the doorway, but no one was talking, so she had to peek around Brett’s arm to see what was going on.
Poppy lay cocooned in the hospital bed, her head slightly elevated. There was a bandage on her forehead near her hairline, her face was pale, but her eyes were on Ryan. He sat on a chair beside her, one of her hands in two of his.
His head was bent and he’d brought her fingers to his mouth.
“Ryan,” she heard Poppy say. She lifted her other hand—an IV needle in the back of it—to stroke his hair. “My love.”
“I worried I might lose you.” He’d whispered, but they could all hear him. Mac wondered if she should let him know the two of them had witnesses, but she figured Ryan wouldn’t care about that at this moment.
Ryan only cared that Poppy was all right.
“I’m okay,” she said now, confirming that. Her hand stroked his hair again as he once more kissed her knuckles. “See? One piece?”
“I want to get married,” Ryan said.
Poppy smiled. “Well, good thing, since we have all those people coming to the yacht club on Saturday to witness that very event.”
He looked up into her eyes. “I mean right now. We have a license. This place will have a chaplain.”
“I’m wearing a hospital gown!” Her brows slammed together, and then she winced as if that hurt.
“Careful, baby.” Ryan leaned in to drop a kiss on the bandage near her hair. “And I don’t care what you’re wearing. Let’s get married.”
Poppy squinched her eyes, then glanced past her fiancé’s shoulder to catch Mac’s gaze. “Tell him I’m not getting married in a hospital gown.”
The tight grip fear had on Mac’s heart loosened. “I don’t know. Angelica got married in jeans.”
“But she drew the line at sweatpants,” Brett said, grinning. “And I don’t think Mace would be too happy to miss it, right?”
“Collect him when you collect the wedding license.” Ryan didn’t take his gaze off Poppy. “You’ll do it, won’t you, Mac?”
“Mac first wants to know the extent of Poppy’s injuries,” Mac said. “They told us we couldn’t stay long.”
“A concussion. Bruising from the seat belt,” Ryan said. “I think they were worried about cracked ribs or a fractured sternum, but that turned out not to be the case.”
“Ouch,” Shay said sympathetically. “Does it hurt very bad, Pop?”
“Not too much. But it gives me an out from all those prewedding crunches I’ve been doing.”
“That you’ve been talking about doing,” Brett corrected, a smile in his voice. Then he turned serious. “You scared the shit out of us, Pop.”
She shifted her gaze from Ryan to her big brother. “I know. Sorry.”
“Is your head going to be okay?” he asked. “Because we all know it’s already kind of soft.”
“Oh, you.” She stuck her tongue out at him.
“The air bag deploying caused the concussion,” Ryan said. “Which I guess explains all that weird stuff she said in the ambulance on the way here.”
“I didn’t say weird stuff.”
“You wanted me to tell the doctors about ‘her.’ You were quite insistent.”
“Oh.” Poppy made a face, then slid her gaze to the side. “Well...”
Mac narrowed her eyes. Something was going on, she’d known it for days. “Pop?”
Her sister looked up at the group still hovering in the doorway. “There’s a reason I asked for all of you to be here. Somebody get their phone out to take a picture.”
“I don’t need a way to remember you being banged up in a hospital bed,” Ryan groused. “I don’t want a way to remember that.”
“Angelica?” Poppy asked.
The other woman obligingly pulled out her phone.
“Now, honey,” Poppy told Ryan. “Look into the camera—”
“Poppy,” he said, sounding exasperated.
“Look into the camera.” When he at last followed direction, she continued. “Because I want to have a photographic record of what the famous Ryan Hamilton looks like when I tell him I’m pregnant.”
For a moment Ryan’s face went blank, then it registered stunned amazement. He whipped his head from the direction of the camera toward his bride-to-be. “Poppy?” he whispered. “Yes, we decided to try, but so soon? Really?”
She beamed him the sweetest of smiles. “Surprise!”
In the five additional minutes they were allowed in her room, they found out that the news was to have been her wedding gift to Ryan—but she’d had to tell the doctors, so she wanted everyone to know. Oh, and that she wasn’t actually sure it was a girl but had taken to calling the baby “her” in her mind. The infant wasn’t due for another six-plus months.
And the last thing they learned was that Ryan Hamilton still looked movie-star
handsome with tears of relief mingled with tears of joy running down his cheeks. The Walkers shuffled back into the hall as he pressed his face to the mattress beside his beloved while her tender smile beamed down at him, her gentle hand slowly sifting through his hair.
They trailed back toward the waiting room. First Brett and Angelica holding hands, then Jace and Shay, arms wound around each other. Mac followed on stiff legs. The emotional overload should have rendered her near-numb but as she thought of the pair behind her and gazed on the couples in front of her, a knife’s edge of loneliness found its way inside her.
Silly, to hurt, when there was so much to celebrate.
But that pain was there, nearly agonizing, as she walked back into the waiting room...and saw Zan.
His gaze arrowed straight to her and his body followed, pushing past the other couples to reach her. His hands went to her shoulders and she looked up. “How’d you know to come here?” she asked.
“London called.” He gazed into Mac’s eyes and his fingers tightened on her. “Poppy?”
Mac mustered a smile. “Battered, but okay. And guess what else? She’s pregnant.”
His eyebrows winged up, and then he grinned. “Sweet,” he said. “Auntie Mac times three.”
Hold on, hold on, hold on, she ordered herself again. Keep standing, don’t lean in, keep your cool. But how much she liked what he’d said—Auntie Mac times three. How much she liked that he knew to count London as well as Mason and now the new baby.
And she liked that he’d come directly to her. That his hands were on her.
That he was studying her face with such obvious concern. “You okay?” he asked now.
She widened her smile even while pain seared through her. “Absolutely!” she lied, because that knife she’d felt earlier had done it again, and worse. This time it shattered her armor to pierce straight through her heart.
Her previously well-defended heart.
It was breached now, and with that gentle “You okay?” Zan Elliott had unwittingly twisted the blade a total of three times.
One spin for each word that bubbled up in her consciousness. Three words that meant loneliness was a feeling she would have to learn to get used to, probably forever. Those dire, dreadful, impossible three words.
I. Love. You.
She was in love with Zan.
Again. Still.
Probably forever.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
AS THEY TRAVELED back to the mountains, Zan glanced over at Mac, noting her defensive posture hadn’t changed. Though the passenger side of his SUV had plenty of room, her legs were bent so the heels of her sneakers were perched on the seat cushion. Her arms were wrapped around her knees.
In the thirty minutes since they’d left the hospital, she hadn’t said a word or moved a muscle. On the outside, she looked rock-solid. On the inside...
“That had to be a scare,” he said, flicking on his headlights. The dark was coming on. The Walkers had stuck around for more updates on their sister, then gone to lunch as a group, all of them much quieter than normal. After returning with food for Ryan, they’d received a final update on Poppy.
The hospital wanted to keep her overnight. Well, that’s what the nurse said, but Zan wondered if the decision came at the behest of Ryan, who had the pretty face and the cash to get just about anything he wanted.
And he wanted his pregnant bride-to-be to have a night of rest and recuperation under professional supervision.
Zan understood the man’s feelings. Mac was clearly holding tight to a bundle of emotional stress and he was going to do what he must to help her release that. He didn’t like to see her hurting.
“Mac?” he said, trying again to get a response. “What do you say we go out for a nice dinner?”
She suddenly jolted, spine straightening, and even in the dim light he could see her anxious expression. “I’m supposed to take care of Mason tonight!”
“No, don’t you remember? Shay and Jace are keeping him, since he’s already with London.”
“Oh, right.” Her back relaxed into the seat, but she was still folded into a tight ball.
“So what do you say to dinner?” he asked again.
“Just take me home.” She rested her cheek on the top of her knees, her face turned away from him. “I’m tired.”
She had to give him directions. But he found her duplex off one of the narrow side streets near the village center. It was a no-frills white stucco box with a single-wide driveway and a solo garage on each end. “I left my car at the Blue Arrow hospital,” she said, as he pulled in.
“I’ll drive you to it tomorrow morning.”
She cast a swift look at him but didn’t say anything until he killed the car engine and made to exit the car. “You don’t need to get out.”
“I do if I’m going to rustle up some dinner for us,” he said, trailing her toward her front door, illuminated by a small porch light and painted a deep green.
“Zan,” she began as she shoved her key in the lock.
“Mac,” he countered. “You’ve had a rough day. Let me do this.”
Once they were inside, he saw the bathroom straight ahead, at the very end of a short hall. He made for it, then glanced around at the small tiled room. A relaxing bath was what she needed, but there was only a narrow stall shower. So he got that going, adjusting the temperature.
“What are you doing?” she said from behind him.
“Getting this just right so you can hop in and wash some of your stress down the drain.”
Backing out, he had to turn sideways to let her pass. “By the time you’re done, I’ll have something for us to eat. Don’t rush.”
She shook her head at him but proceeded inside the steamy enclave and shut the door behind her.
That gave Zan a real chance to look around. It didn’t take long. There was a good-size bedroom with a brass bed that looked as old as the mountains covered in a hand-stitched quilt. A small, painted dresser and a nightstand rounded out the furnishings. Another, smaller quilt hung on the open wall and opposite was a window framed by simple cotton curtains.
The living area was big enough for a comfortable-looking couch, covered in denim fabric with a crocheted blanket tossed over the top. A wooden chair with thick cushions on the seat and back was positioned at an angle to the couch and the flat-screen television sitting on a low table beneath the front window. The kitchen was an L-shaped countertop tiled in dark green and yellow with a small range and white-painted cabinets. All the rooms were—unsurprisingly—very clean and almost oddly tidy.
There were only two items stuck to the face of the fridge with plain round magnets: a crayon portrait with “Mason” scrawled beneath a round head with a big smile and a photo of London—probably her most recent school portrait.
It struck him, hard, that Mac should have more disorder in her life. There should be a bigger house with a man’s hiking boots tumbled on the bedroom rug and his jacket hanging in the entry. She loved to read, so books should be left open on the couch—one a thriller and one a romance. A cookbook should be tossed on the countertop with take-out menus used as place marks.
Where were the flowers in a vase, the ones her guy brought to her every Friday afternoon? A beautiful bunch that would last a full seven days until he came home with the next one.
There should be more things stuck to her fridge. Ticket stubs, a pending invitation, a dozen photos. More signs of life.
Signs of a fuller life, in which Mac had a partner who appreciated her—a man who didn’t mind brushing up against the occasional thorn because the honey beyond was so very sweet.
While Zan had been gone, he’d never imagined her having that life. For ten years he’d pictured her just as he’d left her, young and wild, though still rooted to her mountains. But in
that decade, she should have made a match and built the kind of relationship her siblings had with their significant others.
But then...then Zan wouldn’t have had this hiatus with her and it would be some other man’s pleasure to provide her peace and solace after a long day. Instead, it was he who had the opportunity to give Mac the security and space to let out all the emotional turmoil bottled inside her.
To once again be her shelter.
So he got busy.
She wandered into the kitchen with her hair slicked back wet and wrapped in a long robe. Beneath it he could see flannel pajama pants and a T-shirt. Her slippers were puffy and most likely down.
“Just in time,” he said, sending the wooden spoon in another circle around the saucepan. “There’s a glass of wine waiting for you in the fridge.”
“You’re cooking?” she asked, coming closer to peer at what was sitting over the heat and to look into the bowls on the counter beside the range.
“My specialty. A recipe I learned from an old gypsy woman in Kiev.”
“Hmm,” Mac said. “It sure looks like the chicken soup with alphabet letters and the Goldfish crackers I keep on hand for Mason.”
He glanced over his shoulder at her. “You mean the old gypsy woman lied to me?”
Her lips twitched, but then she turned away from him to head to the fridge, where she pulled out the wine.
The lip twitch he’d take. Mac had been strung so tight on the way back up the hill that he’d worried he’d never see her smile again.
“I’ve got nachos in the oven, too,” he said. “Baked like you like ’em.”
“Soup and nachos.” She sipped at the wine he’d poured for her. “Gourmet.”
“Your pantry, sweetheart. With a different set of ingredients I could have whipped up something more exotic that I learned on my global adventures.”
There was a tiny two-top seating area to one side of the room and he heard her pull out a chair there. Presumably, she sat. “Global adventures,” she mused. “What were you looking for, exactly, when you went adventuring around the globe?”
He shrugged a shoulder, turned down the heat on the soup. “What every traveler wants. Beauty. Spectacular vistas. Sunrises that blow your mind. Full moons so close you feel like you can dip your fingertips in the green cheese.”
Keep On Loving you Page 28
