Clay

by Jennifer Blake

  “Fine.” The sheriff paused. “It’s a shame we didn’t know about Lainey sooner. Looks like Janna could have used some help.”

  “Yeah. But there’s always after this is over.” The comment was a dipstick of sorts, a small test of the family waters.

  “Lainey will have more cousins than she knows what to do with, that’s if she makes it.”

  “She’ll make it,” Clay said. “At least, she will if her uncle has anything to do with it.”

  Roan set the Stetson he’d been holding back on his head then tugged the brim down until he was watching from under its shadow. “So that’s the way it is?”

  “That’s the way it’s going to be.”

  “She’s a Benedict and a Benedict she’ll always stay.”

  “One way or another.” Clay’s tone carried not a hint of compromise.

  Long seconds ticked past while Roan surveyed him and Clay stared back, shoulders straight and gaze unflinching. Then Roan’s taut features relaxed a fraction. “What about her mother?”

  “I’d prefer it if she was around, but if not, well, so be it.” The muscles of Clay’s shoulder were so tight with tension that it barely lifted with his shrug.

  “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

  “Yeah,” he said in grim agreement. “So do I.”

  14

  She must have been a little insane the night before, Janna thought, or else so strung-out and exhausted as to be incapable of rational judgment. There could be no other reason why she’d allowed Clay Benedict to take over and railroad her into bringing Lainey here. In the bright light of morning, it seemed incredibly stupid. She might as well have hired a stunt plane to tow a banner announcing the presence of her daughter with end stage renal disease in the same area where the mutilated teens had been found.

  She’d risked her best chance of a transplant for Lainey, not to mention imprisonment, and for what: a set of broad shoulders and a pair of dark blue eyes? The short answer was yes. Yes, and also because the simple truth was that she had not been completely rational since the day she met Clay Benedict.

  Janna glanced at him where he sat on the room’s single straight chair while she rested on the narrow love seat that made into a single bed. His lean cheeks were shadowed by beard stubble, his hair tousled by wind and rain and the rake of his long fingers, and he still wore the black T-shirt that he’d jerked on with jeans and running shoes with no socks. Still, he appeared ready and able to rearrange the world once more if it was required.

  It wasn’t fair.

  As if he felt her gaze on him, he turned his head. Their eyes met for an interminable moment. Then abruptly, deliberately, she looked away.

  She was grateful to Clay for his efforts, of course. It was possible that he’d saved Lainey’s life. But what good was it if her daughter was going to die eventually anyway?

  But it wouldn’t happen today, thank God. At least, it seemed less likely now than it had twelve hours ago. Lainey still looked incredibly small and fragile in the hospital bed, but she was breathing easier and her color was better. The numbers on the digital blood pressure monitor that sat beside her bed were slowly descending toward normal. She had awakened once from her sedated sleep, but had only looked at Janna and Clay then smiled and went to sleep again. That was probably the reason her mother had the capacity to think, now, about the future.

  They had dodged the bullet one more time, she and Lainey. But how many more times did they have before their luck ran out?

  Abrupt changes in blood pressure, like the one that had triggered this emergency, had always been a problem with Lainey, as with any renal patient. Her BP had to be checked eight times a day, every day that rolled around. Anything could make it rise, from an argument over whether she’d brushed her teeth to a relatively harmless stomach upset. Janna feared the cause for this dangerous incidence had been Lainey’s terror over the threats of Dr. Gower’s nurse. It would not have happened if Janna hadn’t called her in the first place. Or perhaps it would have if the cause was an infection that the tests Nurse Fenton had wanted to do would have shown—in which case it was wrong not to have permitted them. Either way it was her fault.

  Such thoughts made bad company. They certainly didn’t make the time pass quickly.

  Nurses came and went on their changing shifts, always checking, constantly monitoring Lainey’s vital signs. The hospital public address system chimed with unknown signals and scratchy calls for a multitude of hospital personnel. An older man moaned a woman’s name over and over from a room farther along the hallway. Tray-laden carts rattled along the hard terrazzo flooring outside. The frequent interruptions and constant noise made even dozing impossible. Janna had turned on the television around midmorning in the hope that it would provide white noise to cover the racket outside. Instead it became another irritant. She left it on, however, since it filled the oppressive silence between her and Clay. After a while, she no longer heard it as she stared with burning eyes at the opposite wall.

  Toward noon, Roan came and took Clay away. His summons was official, Janna thought. Though the sheriff kept his voice low, she was sure she heard him mention the state police and questions. Clay had little to say when he returned, just that it was routine business, nothing to worry about.

  She stared at him with a worried frown. “What do you mean by routine?”

  “They wanted to know where I’ve been the past few days.”

  “What did you tell them?”

  “That I was with you, of course. That you had me sort of tied up.” The look he gave her was clear, yet carried both amusement and heat in its depths.

  “You didn’t?” she asked, her voice faint.

  He smiled. “I did, but I don’t think they took it literally.”

  “You didn’t go into details then.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding. I’d as soon not become the biggest joke in the parish.”

  “No, I can see that.” Her relief was so great that she felt weak with it, although she could see that being with her at the camp gave him an excellent alibi. It did not escape her that it provided one for her as well. “Do they want to question me?”

  “Not just now. Roan persuaded them that it can wait.”

  It could wait, but not forever. At some point, she was going to have to decide what she was going to say. Or if she would be around to say anything at all.

  Janna had skipped lunch; she wasn’t hungry and certainly didn’t feel like facing the hospital cafeteria alone. Clay had eaten with Roan but on discovering that she’d gone without, walked down to the cafeteria and returned with a plate lunch for her. She ate the meat loaf, cabbage and corn bread to be polite, though she hardly tasted it. Afterward, she tried to convince him that he might as well go home, that she and Lainey would be all right. He seemed to agree, but never quite made it out the door. Why he was so intent on staying was a mystery she was too tired to unravel. Then in late afternoon it became blindingly clear.

  Janna heard the voices first, low female tones in a pleasant give-and-take that ceased just outside the room. She looked up as the door opened, expecting to see yet another aide or nurse bent on taking vital signs.

  The two women who stepped inside could not have looked less like hospital staff. One was willowy and chic in matching blue silk slacks and shirt and with her sun-streaked brown hair coiled in a cool and regal coronet on top of her head. The other had a soft and maternal appearance with her freckle-dusted skin, russet hair pulled back in a rubber band, loose dress of lavender linen skimming her body, and sleeping baby held in the crook of her arm.

  Janna sat up straight on the love seat as she looked from one to the other. “I’m sorry,” she began, “but I think you must have the wrong room.”

  “Come in, come in,” Clay’s voice cut across hers as he rose to his feet with a warm grin firmly in place and his arms open in a wide gesture of welcome. He enveloped the women in quick, affectionate hugs, then bent swiftly to brush his lips over the fine d
ark fuzz on the baby’s head. Only then did he turn toward Janna.

  “Meet a couple of my favorite Benedict women, Janna,” he said. “The one holding the future prom queen is Regina, married to my cousin Kane, and the other is our local claim to fame, an author-type married to my cousin Luke, though better known as April Halstead. Ladies, this is Janna who’s been staying at Denise’s old fishing camp. The sweet thing in the bed is her daughter, Lainey.”

  Benedict women. There had been a time when Janna would have been overjoyed to meet them, a time when she’d even dreamed of joining their ranks. Now her first reaction was suspicion. It was followed by something very close to fear.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked, her voice tight.

  April divided a quick glance between Clay and Regina, then stepped forward. “Roan called us since he thought you might need reinforcements. I hope you don’t mind?” She extended her hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet any friend of Denise’s. Or Clay’s.”

  The woman had the kind of bedrock confidence that came from a lifetime of being beautiful and more than a few years of being famous. At the same time, she was perfectly natural, with a warm smile that carried an underlying sweetness that was as disarming as it was enthralling. She was everything a Benedict should be, and everything Janna was not. She was also impossible to dislike.

  “Thank you,” Janna said in cool tones as she accepted the hand April offered. “It’s nice of you to bother, but we’re fine.”

  “Does that mean your daughter is better?” Regina asked, moving forward in her turn. “I have a son only a little older than your Lainey. I can’t imagine what it would be like for Stephen to be so ill.”

  “Lainey isn’t quite over the hump,” Clay answered for Janna, “since it’s only been eighteen hours or so. But she’s stable and she’s a fighter.”

  “We hope, that is, I’m sure everything will be fine.” It was Janna’s standard answer to all such queries, and had been for years, the main reason being that she didn’t care to go into the gruesome and sometimes depressing details. She was also wary, just now, of a growing tendency to include Clay in her thinking, as if they had a common bond. They certainly didn’t, regardless of his actions during the night or even their brief closeness the afternoon before.

  “I’m so glad,” Regina said simply. “But you really should get some rest, you know. Stress does strange things to people. April and I thought you might like a chance to take a shower and sleep a few hours, if the crisis is almost past. Clay could drive you out to our place, The Haven.”

  “Or you can crash at Chemin-a-Haut,” April put in at once.

  “I thought we might just go back to Grand Point,” Clay said.

  April gave him a quick sparkling look. “Did you, now?”

  “Really,” Janna said at the same time and with a total lack of enthusiasm.

  “No ulterior motives, ladies, I promise,” he said, raising his hands, palm out, in a gesture of surrender. “I just figured it would be easier for the hospital to know where to contact us.”

  “Since they know you’re concerned, I see.” Regina’s voice was deadpan and her face completely innocent. Possibly too innocent?

  “Now look,” Clay began.

  “I appreciate the offer, all of you,” Janna said, raising her voice. “But Dr. Hargrove said it will be twenty-four hours before we can breathe easy. I’m not going anywhere until that time is up, and maybe not even then.”

  “Mama?”

  That plaintive call, muffled by the nasal oxygen tube, came from the bed behind her. Janna spun around as if on oiled wheels and moved to her daughter’s side. She was aware of the others gathering closer as well, but ignored them in her concentration on Lainey. Touching her hand, she said, “Here, honey.”

  “Thirsty.”

  It was such a common complaint, since her fluid intake had to be rigorously controlled, and yet that one word, the first she had spoken in hours, affected Janna with such joy that tears rose in her eyes. “I’ll see if you can have an ice chip or two.”

  Lainey nodded, then allowed her gaze to roam around the room. A small smile curved her lips as she saw Clay, but faded when she noticed the women beside him. She stared from one to the other with puzzlement in her face. “Who are they?”

  “These ladies are some of Clay’s family come to visit with him,” Janna said, forestalling any other explanation. Lainey didn’t need to be upset by anything more.

  “Hello,” Regina said. Even as she spoke, her gaze moved from the child’s small features to Clay’s face, then back again. “You’re a beautiful girl, just like—”

  “Like your mother,” April said hastily as she flashed a glance toward Janna.

  “Do you think so?” Janna inquired without inflection. It almost seemed they were making mental comparisons between Lainey and Clay, but that would mean they knew her daughter was a Benedict. They could only know that if Clay had told them, perhaps during a call while he was gone to lunch or on that secret trip away from the camp that Arty had mentioned.

  Who else knew of it? The answer to that question was crucial. The more people who knew, the less likely it was that she could ever contact Dr. Gower again. Particularly if one of the many who shared the secret was the sheriff of Tunica Parish, Roan Benedict.

  Lainey had been lying quietly with her gaze on Regina, apparently caught by the ornate amethyst pendant that lay just below the hollow of her throat. Now she spoke up again. “That’s a pretty necklace.”

  Regina put a hand on the stone. “It belonged to Kane’s Grandmother Crompton. Kane’s grandfather gave it to me when Courtney Morgan was born.” Her smile turned droll. “I think it was a bribe, to be sure I’d keep producing kids until he has a great grandson.”

  “A family heirloom,” Janna said, her voice expressionless.

  “I suppose so. It will belong to Courtney one day.”

  “In the meantime, no one is better qualified to look after it,” Clay said easily. “Regina is an expert and dealer in antique jewelry, though she mostly buys and sells on the Internet these days.”

  “I’d never sell a single stone of anything from Kane’s family, of course, since I don’t want to be drummed out of the clan,” the red-haired woman said with a low chuckle.

  Janna could imagine how she felt. Once she had thought that being accepted by the Benedicts would be the grandest thing imaginable. She’d longed to be a part of that huge extended family as some longed for paradise, still yearned for it like a child with her nose pressed against the window of a candy store.

  She might well be close to gaining her wish, or so it appeared. But all she could see, all she could think about, was the threat that came with it.

  “Thirsty, Mama,” Lainey said, returning to her complaint as her attention waned.

  “I’ll find Hargrove,” Clay said. “Maybe see if we can get his okay on those ice chips.”

  Janna didn’t object, but the look she gave him as he left the room accused him of cowardice for choosing that moment to escape.

  Clay returned a few minutes later with the doctor in tow. Janna remained with Lainey while she was being checked, but Clay stepped outside with his cousins’ wives. Their voices made a low background murmur. It was impossible to tell what was being said however, even if Janna’s main concentration hadn’t been on what Dr. Hargrove had to tell her about her daughter.

  “Her heartbeat is clearer and stronger,” he said as he took the earpieces of his stethoscope from his ears and folded the flexible tubing in his hands. “But it still has the distinctive sound that indicates mild pericarditis, or fluid around her heart. You know, I expect, that it’s enlarged as well?”

  Janna inclined her head in assent. She could have recited Lainey’s many symptoms in her sleep. “She didn’t complete her dialysis last night. She has excess fluid from the fill stage.”

  “It’s possible that’s a part of her pericarditis, all right, but we can’t be sure. We’re watching her fluid build up a
nd will start dialysis as needed. Unless you’d prefer to see to it yourself?”

  “Yes,” Janna said quickly. “Yes, I would.” No one else would be as gentle or as careful during the long drawn-out process as she would be. No one else could understand Lainey’s pain so well.

  “Whatever you like. We’ll make the equipment available.” The doctor paused, then went on. “Just remember that you aren’t superwoman. From what I hear, you’ve had Lainey’s care on your shoulders without relief for too long. It won’t help her if you collapse.”

  “That’s not going to happen.”

  He snorted, a soft sound of disagreement. “You’re dead on your feet this second but too keyed up to know it. Fatigue is funny. It can catch up slow or it can hit you like a fast freight train, but it will get to you one way or another.”

  She met his gaze across the bed. “I don’t suppose Clay Benedict suggested you talk to me, did he?”

  “Would it make any difference if he had?”

  “None whatever.”

  “Then no, Clay didn’t say a word. It’s just that I’m a poor, overworked country physician who’d as soon not be called out to see about you and Lainey two nights in a row.”

  “I’ll do my best to remember that,” Janna said, and discovered that her lips could still curve enough to return a friendly smile.

  “My other prescription,” Hargrove said, “is to let someone help you. You don’t have to do this alone.”

  He reached to touch her hand, a light, impersonal brush of his fingertips that offered human warmth and understanding. At the same time, she thought she saw distinctly masculine appreciation in his eyes. She liked him, she discovered, and what was more important, she trusted him. With that last realization, came the knowledge that she didn’t quite trust Dr. Gower, hadn’t for some time. It was an idea with unpleasant ramifications. She had no time to consider them, for Dr. Hargrove was speaking again, giving care instructions on his way out of the room.