Wounded Heroes Boxed Set

by Judith Arnold

  After countless laps, she rolled off the track and drove home. When she reached the house, she saw two vans in the driveway. "Oh, thank God." She put her head down on the steering wheel. One was Joe’s. She had to take deep breaths to calm herself. She didn’t care who the hell he’d brought with him, just that he’d come to her.

  Making her way out of her own van seemed to take forever. Soon, she wheeled into the house through the garage entrance. No one was in the kitchen. She didn’t call out but made her way into the living room. Where she found Joe, sitting next to a nice-looking woman about Dana’s age.

  Who was in a wheelchair. What was going on here?

  "Joe?" she said in a croak.

  He glanced up and his face bloomed with the best smile she’d ever seen. "Hey, there she is." He stood, crossed to her, bent down and kissed her. Then he squatted in front of her. "I got somebody I want you to meet."

  She glanced at the visitor. "Hello." The woman gave her a tiny wave. Dana turned her attention back to Joe. "What’s going on?"

  "You’ll know soon enough. Right now, I want you to promise me that you’ll hear us both out. Don’t object. Don’t give counterarguments. I’ve done a lot of research on this, both on the Net and in person."

  "You’re scaring me, Joe."

  "No, sweetheart. This is good. So good for us."

  Dana swallowed hard. She remembered when they’d first met, he’d asked her about new treatments for her disability. Dear God, please don’t let him argue about fixing her. She thought she’d die if he did, because it would mean he couldn’t accept her as she was.

  Trust him!

  She would. Head held high, she looked over his shoulder. "I’m afraid Joe’s being rude."

  The woman smiled. "No, just covering all the bases." She looked at Joe.

  "Yeah. Now, Lynne."

  Slowly the woman wheeled over to her. There was something about her…as she got closer, Dana’s heart beat sped up. When she reached Dana, her whole body was trembling. What was Joe doing? How could he hurt her like this?

  Then Lynne said, "I have a crush injury identical to yours. I’ve been in this chair my entire adult life." Then she put her hand on the little bump in her stomach. "And this is my second child."

  Dana burst into tears.

  ***

  OH, NO, HE’D made her cry again. Geez!

  "Honey, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you cry."

  Still, the tears.

  "Look, Lynne runs a workshop for women with paralysis who want to have children. I, um, took it."

  Now Dana sobbed.

  "I did research, too. On the Net." He picked up the stack of papers he’d set on the table. "Here’s the information and personal testimony."

  More crying—harsher.

  Lynne wheeled even closer. "Dana, stop crying."

  "I…can’t."

  "You can have a child. You can get help taking care of him as an infant, toddler, forever if you want, but you won’t need that. Once my son reached ten, I was no longer terrified I couldn’t take care of him. There are techniques for emergencies, like always having someone on call, constant carrying of your cell phone, as well as live-in help."

  No dent in Dana’s sobs.

  Lynne stopped and looked helplessly at Joe.

  "Dana, please! Don’t be sad."

  She must have cried herself out because she did wind down…eventually.

  He put his hands on her knees. "Oh, geez, I thought you were going to cry forever."

  She was staring at Joe. He couldn’t read her expression or tell what she was thinking.

  "Honey, please, keep an open mind."

  "I…what?" Now she seemed confused. She glanced at Lynne. "Oh, you think I’m…oh, no. I’m not upset by you bringing her here." She grabbed Joe’s hand. "Just the opposite. You’ve given me a chance at something I wanted and never, ever thought I could have. Thank you so much."

  Joe let go of her hand, fell back spread-eagled on the floor. "Jesus, thank God."

  They spent the next couple of hours talking with Lynne. Joe knew everything she told Dana, but watching Dana’s face during Lynne’s convincing recitation was mesmerizing. At four, when she left, he was enervated.

  Dana turned to him, where he sat on the couch. "I don’t know what to say."

  "Well, don’t get too far ahead of yourself. There are caveats here, woman."

  Giving him a sham frown, she asked, "What are you talking about?"

  "This having a baby stuff will only work within certain parameters."

  God, she loved when he got devilish. "What are they?"

  He picked up a paper. "You haven’t read the research yet. This first article says women have the most luck getting pregnant with officers of the law."

  "It does, does it?"

  "Uh-huh." He picked up a second. "This one says we have to do it three times a day."

  "For how long?"

  "Until we get pregnant."

  "What else?"

  "Finally, the baby has to be named after my Dad. Joe or Joanne, I don’t care."

  Tears in her eyes again.

  "I’m sorry, I…"

  "Stop apologizing. I can’t believe all this is happening."

  "Think this will help you in believing I love you and I know we can work out any stupid hang-ups I had. I’m seeing a therapist for those, by the way."

  "Oh, Joey. I already decided I wanted some more counseling, too."

  He gave her a mock frown? "What? I did all this for nothin’?"

  She laughed, he laughed and then they sobered. "Really, Joe, before this grand gesture, I’d decided I wanted to give it a shot. Did you get my texts?"

  "Yeah, but I had to be sure about this first before I told you. It took me a while to get all the information. There’s no guarantees, though, we’ll get pregnant. You still want me, even if we don’t?"

  "Yes, Joey Moretti, I still want you, no matter what." She threw her arms around him and whispered, "Like a wise man once said, nothing’s a hundred percent."

  He held her tight, moved by her mention of his dad’s words, by her admission she wanted him, no matter what. Raising his eyes to the heavens, he promised Joe Sr. that this time, he wouldn’t blow it with Dana.

  And he swore he heard his Dad say I know you won’t, son. I know you won’t.

  -THE END-

  Waiting For You is part of Kathryn Shay’s The Right Match trilogy. Be sure to check out the trilogy and Kathryn Shay’s complete booklist.

  For news about upcoming books and exclusive sneak previews, subscribe to Kathryn Shay’s free newsletter.

  SILKEN THREADS

  * * *

  By Patricia Ryan

  ~

  Copyright 1999 Patricia Ryan

  For my dear friend and critique partner, Kathryn Shay, with love and appreciation

  Chapter 1

  * * *

  May 1165, London’s West Cheap District

  HOW DO YOU tell a man you’ve come to take his wife away? Graeham wondered as he knocked on the red-painted double door of Rolf le Fever’s Milk Street town house.

  He’d pondered the matter at some length during his storm-ravaged Channel crossing and the two-day ride from Dover to London, but no easy answer had come to him. It was a dicey business, removing a woman from her husband’s home, one that might call for the most silken finesse...or savage force. Graeham automatically touched the horn handle of the dagger sheathed on his belt, hoping he wouldn’t need to use it.

  The iron door knocker was shaped like the head of some unidentifiable beast with a gaping mouth, from which curled a long, demonically pointed tongue. Graeham reached for it again, but hesitated as footsteps thudded from within, accompanied by a man’s voice. "Where the devil are you, you bloody worthless wench? Didn’t you hear that knocking?"

  The door swung inward with a squeal of corroded hinges. The fair-haired man who had opened it looked about Graeham’s age, although Graeham knew him to be, at five-and-thirt
y, fully a decade his senior. He was taller than average, though not as tall as Graeham. Pale, smooth-boned, clad in a calf-length tunic of emerald silk trimmed in sable and cinched with a jeweled belt, Rolf le Fever more closely resembled a royal courtier—or his own notion of one—than a merchant, however prosperous he might be.

  Le Fever assessed Graeham up and down with eyes the color of water, his expression that of a man contemplating an insect. Little wonder; unwashed and unshaven, his split-front riding tunic and leathern leggings grimy from the road, his unbound hair hanging limply, Graeham must have looked as if he were there to empty the privy.

  "Rolf le Fever?" Graeham inquired, although there was no quesion in his mind whom he was addressing.

  "Tradesmen enter round back." Le Fever stepped away from the door and began to swing it shut.

  Graeham slammed a hand on it before it could close. "Gui de Beauvais sent me."

  At the mention of his father by marriage, le Fever slowly reopened the door. "Lord Gui sent you?"

  Graeham opened the hardened leather case resting against his hip, suspended by a cord across his chest. He pulled out a folded sheet of parchment bound in gold cord that had been sealed with the baron’s insignia, and handed it to the merchant. "His lordship’s letter of introduction."

  Le Fever broke the waxen seal, slid the cord out of the slits in the crisp parchment, and unfolded the letter, his mouth silently forming the words as he struggled to decipher them.

  Opting for tact—at least for the time being—Graeham said, "I apologize for my appearance. I’ve been traveling for the better part of a week, and I’ve only just arrived in London."

  "Indeed." Le Fever refolded the letter and tapped his chin with it. "Where’s your mount, then?"

  "I left them—"

  "Them?"

  "I have two." One for me and one for your wife. "I left them at St. Bartholemew’s." It was on Lord Gui’s advice that Graeham had chosen the renowned monastic hostelry, located outside the city wall, over Holy Trinity or one of London’s many public inns. His lordship had extolled the priory’s hospitality, but Graeham hadn’t been there long enough to sample it. Upon his arrival a short while ago, he’d stabled his exhausted horses and proceeded by foot through Aldersgate—one of the seven gates that provided access into London proper—and through the bustling city streets to the retailing district of West Cheap, mindful of his mission. Too mindful perhaps, for le Fever might have proven more receptive had Graeham taken the time to clean himself up and dress as befitted the emissary of a distinguished Norman baron.

  He was overeager. Little wonder, considering the urgency of his assignment...and his stake in its success.

  "May I come in?" Graeham asked. "I have a matter of some importance to discuss with you."

  Le Fever drilled his eerily transparent gaze into Graeham. "Lord Gui describes you as a retainer. That’s not very specific."

  "I’m one of his serjanz."

  "Ah. A military man," le Fever said, as if that explained Graeham’s appearance. He tucked the letter beneath his belt. "Come." Turning, he strode through a small entrance hall and up a flight of stairs to a second-floor landing, with Graeham following; the stairs continued upward to a third level, Graeham noticed.

  "You’re English," le Fever observed as he led the way into a sizable chamber, opulently furnished and bedecked in silken hangings, its floorboards plastered with smooth white clay.

  "Aye." Graeham couldn’t help smiling, gratified that the eleven years he’d lived in the Frankish county of Beauvais hadn’t completely erased the native accent with which he spoke the Anglo-Norman common tongue of his homeland.

  Le Fever motioned Graeham into an ornately carved chair, one of two facing each other before a hooded fireplace set into a stone chimney. A hellish blaze roared within it, out of keeping with the mild spring afternoon. The merchant crossed to a corner cupboard painted with leopards and fleurs-de-lys. "Do you have a name, serjant?"

  "Graeham."

  A ring of keys dangled from a chain attached to le Fever’s belt, much like a lady’s chatelaine. Sorting through the keys, he chose one and unlocked the cup¬board. "Graeham of...?"

  "Some in France know me as Graeham of London—I was born here. But I’m also called Graeham Fox."

  "For your cleverness?"

  "For my hair." And for his cleverness, but sometimes it was best to be underestimated. "In sunlight, it has a reddish cast." When it was clean, which it hadn’t been since his last bath, back in Beauvais.

  Le Fever’s expression hovered somewhere between indifference and disdain. "One must take your word for that, I suppose." He retrieved a flagon and a silver goblet from the cupboard. "Something to cool your throat after your journey?"

  "Ale, if you have it. I’ve missed English ale."

  "Wench!" le Fever shouted. After a moment’s silence, he snarled, "God’s tooth," and stalked to a corner stairwell. "Aethel! Where the bloody hell are you?"

  Something scraped on the ceiling overhead—a chair?—and then came the hurried descent of footsteps on the stairs. A doughy serving wench appeared, clutching her apron in one hand and a spoon in the other. "Beg pardon, Master Rolf. I was upstairs feeding Mistress Ada, and I didn’t hear—"

  "Go down to the buttery and bring our guest some ale. Step lively."

  "Yes, sire." Aethel cast Graeham a swift, curious glance as she darted back into the service stairwell.

  "Pointless creature." Le Fever filled the goblet with wine and sat opposite Graeham to sip it. Rings glinted on his fingers and thumbs. When he crossed his legs, Graeham glimpsed, beneath the hem of his tunic, the intricately embroidered garters that secured his chausses just above the knees. The snug hose were fashioned not of wool, but of gleaming plum-colored silk—an understandable affectation, Graeham supposed, given that his host was not only London’s most prominent silk merchant, but master of the newly established Mercer’s Guild.

  "I can’t help wondering," le Fever said as he eyed Graeham over the rim of his goblet, "what ‘matter of some importance’ could prompt Lord Gui to send a soldier to his daughter’s home."

  Tread carefully. "His lordship misses Mistress Ada, and is eager to visit with her. Given his advanced years and ill health, it would have been unwise for him to attempt such an arduous journey himself. He sent me to escort his daughter across the Channel to him."

  Le Fever’s eyebrows quirked, just slightly. "He wants you to take her back to Beauvais?"

  Slowly Graeham said, "To Paris. He’ll visit her there."

  "Ah, yes," le Fever sneered. "Ada has never set foot in her own father’s castle, isn’t that right? Tell me— does the baron’s lady wife even know about the twin daughters her husband sired on that Paris whore?"

  "Nay," Graeham said evenly. "And, as I understand it, their mother was a dressmaker."

  Le Fever snorted contemptuously. "They call themselves all sorts of things." He took a long swallow of wine and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. "I’m afraid your journey has been for naught, serjant. I have no intention of consigning my wife to the care of a complete stranger, especially..." His frosty gaze took in Graeham’s disreputable appearance.

  "I assure you she’ll be entirely safe with me."

  Le Fever smiled thinly. "That’s really not the point. ‘Tis quite irregular for a married lady to travel abroad without her husband. ‘Twould reflect badly on me, and I do have a reputation to maintain. I’m a man of consequence in this city, after all, regardless of what his lordship may think of me."

  Something clattered on the floor upstairs. Le Fever did not avert his unnervingly steady gaze from Graeham.

  "Are you aware," Graeham said, "that your wife has maintained a steady correspondence with her father since your marriage to her last year?"

  "What of it?"

  "Six months ago, the letters stopped coming."

  Aethel reappeared with a stein of ale for Graeham, at whom she smiled shyly before disappearing back into the corner sta
irwell. A moment later, there came footsteps on the floor above, and another grating of chair legs. Listening closely, Graeham heard Aethel saying something apologetic in muffled tones, followed by the much softer voice of another woman.

  Tracking Graeham’s gaze to the ceiling, le Fever said, "My wife has been ill since Christmastide. When she’s recovered, she’ll resume her correspondence with her father. Is that why he wants to see her? Because she stopped writing?"

  "That..." Graeham gained a moment by taking a slow sip of ale. Too bitter, but it tasted like ambrosia; it tasted like England. "And because of what she communicated to him while she was still writing."

  Setting his stein on a little table next to his chair, Graeham reached into his document case and brought forth a short stack of letters. Le Fever eyed them uneasily, as well he might have.

  Graeham said, "Your marriage appears to have soured within days of the wedding."

  Le Fever made a sound of derision. "We were married in Paris. Three days later, while we were in a boat crossing the Channel, she told me what her father had declined to mention before the nuptials—that the daughter whose hand he’d so generously offered me had, in fact, been born on the wrong side of the bed. He’s never publicly acknowledged Ada and Phillipa, never even owned up to their existence. I thought I’d negotiated a union with a baron’s daughter, but what I ended up with was a wife I daren’t speak of, lest someone inquire after her parentage. How could such a marriage possibly benefit me?"

  "‘Twas to protect the delicate sensibilities of his lady wife that the baron opted for circumspection regarding—"

  "He hid those girls away in Paris like the shameful little secret they were. And still are." Le Fever drained his wine in one swift tilt of the goblet.

  "On the contrary, after their mother died, he delegated their upbringing to the care of his own brother, a canon of Notre Dame. They were well provided for, educated, given every possible advantage. He visited them frequently."