by Kara Lennox
The pain in his chest grew stronger, and Reece found himself taking in great gulps of air. “I’ll be there,” he said, because any other answer would prolong the conversation.
“You’d better be.” His father disconnected.
Chapter Thirteen
Sara got tired of listening for the sound of Reece’s car. How long did it take to grab a toothbrush and razor?
She wasn’t the type of woman who sat around waiting for a guy. So she got out of bed, took a quick shower, threw on her most comfortable jammies and set about cleaning her room.
As she attacked the clothing strewn all around, she tried to see her space through Reece’s eyes and shuddered. Her lack of housekeeping skills had probably bothered him a lot, yet he hadn’t said anything.
Reece was like her father in some ways, she realized with a start. He ran his life with an almost military precision and attention to detail. But unlike her father, he didn’t criticize or expect everyone else to live up to his standards.
She knew Reece might never understand her ways, but he’d stretched out of his comfort zone to meet her halfway. The least she could do was try to do the same. Keeping her room a bit neater was a start.
She put a quick coat of furniture polish on her table and placed a grouping of candles in the center. She was about to light them when her cell phone rang.
She knew even before she answered that it wasn’t going to be good news.
“Reece?” She tried not to sound too anxious.
“Yes. Listen, I’m really sorry, but-”
“You’re not coming back?” Her voice sounded shrill even to herself. Deep breaths. Listen to what he has to say.
“There’s a hurricane.”
“Right, Chelsea. But they don’t even know if it’s going to hit near here, and even if it does, it won’t make landfall until Monday morning.”
“You knew about the hurricane? And you didn’t say anything?”
“Um…yeah. I didn’t think it was that important.”
Now he was the one taking deep breaths. “Well, it is important. Apparently flights are already being rescheduled, the airport is crazy-you should watch the news.”
She hated watching the news. It was so depressing.
“I’ve got to try to catch an earlier flight,” Reece continued in a harried-sounding voice. “I’m going to the airport now. I can’t afford to miss my meeting on Monday. I’m already skating on thin ice.”
She sighed. Maybe he was simply looking for an excuse to disentangle himself from her. Their affair had gotten pretty serious pretty fast; she’d probably scared him off with her intensity.
“Okay. Have a safe flight.”
“I’m leaving the car here. You can use it until I figure out what to do with it. I’ll give Max the key.”
That was something, at least. “That’s very generous of you. I’ll take good care of it.”
“If they order an evacuation, promise me you won’t stay on the island.”
“This house has withstood more than a hundred years’ worth of hurricanes. It’s not going anywhere.”
“Promise me.”
“All right, I promise. But it’s not going to be that serious.”
“Sara…there’s a lot of stuff I want to say, but I don’t have time now.”
Ditto.
“I’ll talk to you soon, okay?” He sounded agitated, and she could hear someone yelling in the background, urging Reece to hurry.
“All right. Take care.”
“You, too.” He disconnected, and Sara sank onto the bed, feeling like a flat tire. Was this it, then?
She’d started to believe, or at least hope, that Reece was the one in capital letters. She’d never felt like this about any man. She’d started to fantasize about how they could be together, even going so far as to wonder if she might learn to love New York. She’d envisioned exploring the city with Reece, going to the top of the Empire State Building, trying funky little restaurants tucked away in obscure neighborhoods-okay, maybe not that.
But clearly it wasn’t going to happen. He was going home-alone. His stupid meeting was a lot more important than her, and if she was going to fall in love with some guy, he damn well better make her a priority.
She reached for the lamp, then thought about the pregnancy test she’d shoved into her bathroom cabinet. She should take it now. She wanted to know the worst.
Five minutes later, she had her answer.
She was going to have Reece’s child.
Sara turned off the lights and crawled under the covers, feeling oddly peaceful. A little scared, but…happy. She’d thought it would be a disaster, but it wasn’t. It was a miracle. Reece might not see it that way, though.
Oh, Lord, how was she going to tell him? On the phone? Should she fly to New York?
She hoped the answer came to her during the night.
THERE WERE TWO WAYS off the island. The short way was to take a five-minute ferry ride, the long way was to drive south for several miles, then cross a causeway.
A long line of cars waited for the ferry, ensuring at least a twenty-minute wait.
“Let’s take the causeway,” Reece said, too antsy to wait in line. “I don’t like the ferry anyway.”
“You’re the boss.” Max pulled a highly illegal U-turn and headed for the two-lane highway that would take them to the causeway. Traffic was pretty heavy on it, too, but at least it was moving.
“You think I’m crazy for leaving, don’t you?”
“I’m thinking any guy who chooses a crowded airport over a beautiful woman waiting in bed for him is beyond crazy,” Max replied.
“It’s not like I’ll never see her again. I’ll come down to visit you guys and-”
“And she probably won’t be speaking to you. Girls don’t like it when you cut out on them.”
“I talked to her. She wasn’t mad. She’s very understanding.” But she had sounded disappointed. So much so, in fact, that his decision to leave had wavered slightly. Was he walking away from the best thing to ever happen to him? Would he regret choosing work over Sara, as he’d regretted his treatment of Elaine?
He’d liked Elaine, enjoyed her company, and was sad when they broke up. But that was nothing compared to the way he felt about Sara. She made him feel like…like his birthday and Christmas morning and New Year’s Eve all rolled into one.
“Why do you keep rubbing your chest?” Max asked.
Reece hadn’t even realized he was doing it. “I’ve been having chest pains.”
“Are you serious?” For once, Max sounded solemn. “Have you been to a doctor? My dad had a heart attack, remember. It’s nothing to fool around with if you’re having symptoms.”
“I’m thirty-four years old. I’m not having a heart attack. It’s just…indigestion or something.”
“So have it checked out. You’re so anal about everything else, I can’t believe you didn’t see a cardiac specialist at the first twinge. Your face is kinda red.”
“It’s nothing.” But he had to admit, at the moment it didn’t feel like nothing. The pain was sharper than it had ever been before. Each breath produced a new stab, and he felt he couldn’t get enough oxygen.
The roads near the airport were insane. Reece was on standby for several flights to New York over the next few hours. Surely he would get on one of them.
But when he saw the crowd at the airport, he got a little nervous.
“I’ll park and come in with you,” Max said. “My bet is you aren’t getting on a flight tonight.”
He’d better, because tomorrow didn’t look any better. The flight he had a reservation on was canceled.
By some miracle Max found a parking place. Reece grabbed his small duffel out of the minuscule trunk of Max’s ’Vette, then headed for the ticket counter.
The lines were already snaking through the ticketing area. Children laughed and screamed and ran circles around the adults, most of whom barked impatiently into the cell phones glued to their
ears. Even the line for first-class passengers swelled with at least thirty people, and it didn’t seem to be moving.
Out of habit Reece kept an eye on his watch. He tapped his foot and willed the line to move faster. But everyone seemed to be in a bad mood, giving the poor ticket agents a hard time. It almost felt as if the atmosphere was pushing down on them all, announcing the coming storm.
He glanced up at the flight monitor. A number of flights were flashing “delayed” or “canceled.”
“It’s not just our weather problem,” Max said. “New York is having some freakish weather. Maybe you should see if you can get a flight to some other city, rent a car and drive the rest of the way.”
He didn’t want to do that. He just wanted his nice, first-class seat, where he could work on his laptop and prepare for Monday’s meeting. He would undoubtedly have a slew of e-mails from Bret wanting answers to this and that.
“Why’s it so hot in here?” Reece grumbled. “Haven’t they heard of air-conditioning?”
“It’s all these people. Hey, chill out. If you don’t make it home in time, Uncle Archie will just have to understand. You were best man in Cooper’s wedding-it wasn’t like you could just skip it. And a hurricane isn’t your fault.”
“Archie’s vocabulary doesn’t include ‘understanding.’”
Finally Reece made it to the front of the line, and the agent called him.
“What’s your destination today, sir?”
The pain in Reece’s chest returned, the strongest it had ever been. His knees nearly buckled with the pain, he was sweating like a racehorse, and his hands and feet tingled. Hell, this wasn’t indigestion.
“Sir?” the ticket agent said, looking concerned. “Your destination?”
Reece looked at Max. “The closest hospital. I think I’m having a heart attack.”
THE NEXT FEW MINUTES were a blur. Max declared he could drive to the hospital faster than any ambulance, and he made good on his promise, ignoring speed limits, blasting through red lights with a honk and a prayer.
It was fortunate Reece knew where they were going and, with the help of the ’Vette’s V-8 engine, they made it to the hospital in under ten minutes. Max slammed on the brakes in front of the emergency-room entrance; moments later two men in blue scrubs were dragging Reece out of the car and into a wheelchair.
He felt a little better now that they were away from the stifling air of the terminal, but his chest still felt like an elephant was sitting on it.
Before he could blink, they had him on a gurney and were stripping off his clothes.
“Hey, don’t cut that!” he objected. “That’s a brand-new shirt!”
In response the nurse shoved a white pill in his mouth and made him drink water, then slapped an oxygen mask over his face.
They swarmed around him like seagulls over a crust of bread, drawing blood, sticking electrodes all over his bare chest. The nurses barked out his vital signs to the doctor who’d just barged in.
“Heart rate eighty-five…”
“BP one seventy over ninety-five…”
“Oxygen saturation…”
The doctor wasn’t terribly pleased, judging from his response, ordering esoteric-sounding lab tests and a chest X-ray.
Reece closed his eyes. What if he was dying? He didn’t want to die yet. He had a lot of living left to do. Real living, not just existing day to day, letting his father and brother dictate his every move. His only real enjoyment, he realized, was when he lost himself in numbers.
His cousins had been right all along to ditch their jobs at Remington Industries. None of them would ever have risen much higher, not with all those older brothers. But each of them on his own-who knew what they could achieve?
If he lived through this, he was going to resign. And he was going to tell Sara how he felt about her, and that he wanted them to be together-some way, somehow.
Oh, God, what if he never got the chance?
He opened his eyes and tried to focus them on one of the nurses. “Tell Sara I love her.”
“What was that?”
Damned oxygen mask. He reached up to yank it off so he could speak properly. “Tell Sara I love her.”
“Please, sir, try to relax.”
Relax? When his neat, orderly life had suddenly turned into an episode of ER?
The nurse tried to put the oxygen mask back on, but he wouldn’t allow it. This was important. “I need a phone. Get me a phone.”
“Give him two milligrams of diazepam,” he heard someone say, and abruptly he lost any urge to fight what was going on. He lay back on the gurney and relaxed, letting the medical professionals run their tests and talk about him as if he was no more aware than a dead fish.
Maybe this was what dying felt like. It wasn’t bad.
Gradually the frenetic energy around him dissipated as one by one the nurses left, whispering.
Max entered the treatment room. He looked a bit shaken. “Jeez, Reece, you scared the hell out of me. Don’t ever do that again.”
“Did they give up on me? Am I about to croak or what?”
“You big goof. You weren’t having a heart attack. You were having a panic attack.”
“What?” That couldn’t be right. Hysterical teenage girls had panic attacks. He was Reece Remington, thirty-four-year-old financial analyst and CPA.
“The stress finally got to you, dude.”
“Oh, my God. All this because I’m suffering from stress?”
“Apparently so. I told you to chill out.”
“You can’t tell anybody. You can’t tell Archie.”
“Are you kidding? Uncle Archie isn’t exactly on my speed dial. But I did tell someone.”
Oh, no. “Who?”
“Sara. You were yammering at the nurse that you loved her. I thought…well, I thought if there was anybody you really wanted to see…”
Reece pinched the bridge of his nose, wondering what had happened to his glasses. “Did you have to do that?”
“I thought you might die or something. Sorry.”
Reece knew it wasn’t Max’s fault. “It’s okay. I’ll just call her and tell her I’m okay. Where’s my phone?”
“You can’t use a cell phone here.”
“You call her, then. I don’t want her to worry.”
Someone tapped on the door. “Hello?”
Max stood. “Too late. That’s my cue to take a walk.”
“Bring me my duffel, okay?”
“Yeah, okay.”
Sara entered the room and Max slipped out.
Reece groaned inwardly. What on earth was he going to say to her?
“What happened?” Her face was pale, her lower lip trembling. “You had a heart attack?”
Reece realized then that he was still hooked up to an I.V. drip and a couple of other machines-something measuring his heartbeat, maybe his respiration. And he was almost naked, except for underwear and a thin hospital gown.
“I didn’t have a heart attack.”
“Oh, thank God. What was it?”
“It was just…something else. Nothing serious.”
“What was it?” she asked again.
He wasn’t going to admit to Sara or anyone else that he was suffering from anxiety. Remington Industries did not promote people who couldn’t handle stress. “Nothing, okay?”
She came closer and placed a hand on his forehead. It felt nice, and for a moment Reece closed his eyes and surrendered to the soft blanket of Sara’s concern.
“It must have been something. Max sounded scared out of his wits when he called.”
He struggled to find an explanation that would satisfy her. He didn’t want to lie, but he couldn’t stand having her see him like this. “I was having chest pains. But it turned out to be nothing.” He removed her hand from his forehead and squeezed it. “Thank you for coming.”
“Wild horses wouldn’t have kept me away. I broke all kinds of laws, including a few laws of physics, to get here.”
“I’m sorry you came for nothing.”
“It’s not nothing,” she insisted. “You’re hooked up to machines.”
“They’ll unhook me soon.” Sara didn’t look at all relieved. “Sara, I’m fine, really. How’s the weather out there?”
“Little bit windy,” she answered distractedly. “I haven’t checked on the hurricane in a while.”
Windy. That didn’t sound good. Even if the hurricane dissipated or made landfall somewhere else, high winds here could ground a lot of planes.
He needed to get back to the airport.
“Do you have to stay at the hospital?” Sara asked.
“No, of course not. As soon as Max brings me a shirt, I’m out of here.”
“And you’re still planning on going to New York?”
“Yes, of course. This doesn’t change anything.”
“Oh.”
Except something had changed. His brief brush with death-even if it hadn’t been real-had forced him to realize he was in love with Sara. He’d been ready to tell her. Desperate to tell her.
But now…now was a lousy time.
“Sara, you and I aren’t through.”
“No?”
“No. Remember when you offered to drive my car up to New York?” he ventured. “I think it’s a good idea, and I’ll make it worth your while.” He couldn’t expect her to take off all that time from her other jobs and not be compensated.
“I thought you thought it was a terrible idea.”
He shrugged.
“Well, um, I’ll have to check Valerie’s schedule and see how long she’ll be here to take care of Miss Greer. I don’t want to leave her alone, not yet.”
That was when Reece realized his idea of importing Sara to New York, of keeping his job and having Sara, too, was a pipe dream. Even if she were willing to relocate, she wouldn’t be happy there away from a woman who’d been like a grandmother to her, her friends, the town that had embraced her.
Besides, she had no job up there, no home. She could stay with him, but were either of them ready for that kind of commitment?
“We’ll work something out.”
A doctor entered the treatment room then, looking rushed and harried as E.R. doctors always seemed to. He grabbed Reece’s chart from the foot of the gurney and consulted it, then smiled a bedside-manner smile that didn’t exactly reassure Reece.
