She left the bed and walked across the room to stare at her naked body in the mirror. The slight defect in her breast didn’t even show from the front. She had to turn sideways and lift her arm to see it. There was only a slight indentation in her skin and a thin scar where the cancerous tissue had been removed.
She turned away and headed for the shower. She made the spray as hot as she could stand it and stood there as long as she dared, wishing the warmth would seep into her bones and melt the ice that held her feelings frozen inside. If only she could cry, she might feel better. But all she could muster was an awful sense of desolation.
She dressed in the most comfortable jeans she owned and her favorite shirt. She made herself smile into the mirror as she dried her hair, hoping that would make her feel better. Her grin had the look of a corpse in rictus.
That did make her smile. The curl of her lips was fleeting, a single instant of relief from the oppressive sorrow she felt. But it gave her hope that she could survive this second, even more devastating loss of a loved one.
She smelled coffee as she headed toward the kitchen. She was grateful there would be something hot and strong to drink, but she wasn’t looking forward to seeing Randy. The two of them were going to have some hard times together—considering it was no longer possible to save the Double D.
She stopped dead on the threshold to the kitchen. Colt stood with his back to the sink, his hips resting against the counter, his hands gripping it on either side.
“What are you doing here?” she said cuttingly.
“I thought you might need some coffee,” Colt replied.
She watched him swallowing furiously. Any second, he was going to have to bolt for the bathroom.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake! Eat a cracker,” she snapped.
“Will that help?” he said, his face tinged with green.
“It works for pregnant women with nausea. It ought to work for you.” She crossed to the cabinet and pulled out a box of soda crackers, ripped open the bag and stuck a cracker in front of his mouth. “Open up.” He opened his mouth, and she stuck it inside.
He bit off a bite, chewed carefully and swallowed. He took another small bite, and another, until the cracker was gone. “Thank you,” he said at last.
His color still wasn’t too good, and sweat dotted his forehead, but at least he didn’t look in imminent danger of puking. “Sit down,” she ordered. “Have you tried drinking any of that coffee you made?”
“Not yet,” he admitted.
“Something carbonated might be better for your stomach.” She crossed to the ancient refrigerator, pulled out a can of ginger ale and popped the top. “Drink this.”
He looked wary. “My stomach—”
“Drink it,” she ordered, shoving the can into his hand.
He took a sip, then looked down at her. “Satisfied?”
“I’ll be satisfied when you’re gone from this house.”
“I’m not leaving,” he said.
“I make you sick, Colt. Physically ill. You look worse than a calf with the slobbers.”
He grimaced. “That bad? Then you shouldn’t be shoving me out the door. Sick as you make me out to be, I’m likely to ruin the upholstery in my Mustang. Now that would make me truly ill.”
Jenny felt a rising hope shoving its way upward from inside, trying to get out. But there was no way it could get past the ice that was frozen around her heart.
“Why are you here, Colt?”
“I need some answers, Jenny. I want to know about your cancer.”
She was shocked to hear him say the word aloud. She watched to see if he was going to be sick, saw him swallow hard and reach for another saltine.
He’s trying, Jenny. Give him a chance.
She’d given him a chance. And he’d broken her heart. It had taken all night to put the pieces back together. Why should she let herself be hurt again?
“All I want to do is talk,” he said, anticipating her refusal. “Have a cup of coffee and talk with me, Jenny. You owe me that much.”
She stiffened. “I don’t owe you anything. Not after last night.”
She watched all the blood leave his face. She pulled a kitchen chair out from the table, grabbed him by the arm and shoved him into it. “Put your head down before you faint,” she said, shoving his head between his knees.
Too late, she realized she should never have touched him. His hair felt soft beneath her fingertips, and the warmth of the skin at his nape heated her skin. Melting the ice. Thawing her heart.
She jerked her hand away and backed up. She turned and crossed to the percolator and poured herself a cup of coffee. He started to lift his head, and she snapped, “Keep your head down!”
She placed a handful of saltines and the can of ginger ale on the table in front of him, then retrieved her cup of coffee—a mug, not one of the delicate china cups he’d given her—and sat down on the opposite side of the table from him. “All right. Take your time and come up slow.”
He looked pale, but at least he was no longer white as a ghost.
“Ask your questions. Then get out.”
“Why didn’t you tell Huck? Or me? Why did you keep it a secret?”
“I was afraid if I told Huck it would be the excuse he needed never to come back,” she said. “And we both know how you feel about sick people.”
“You didn’t give us a chance.”
“You were both thousands of miles away. In Germany, I think. Or was it somewhere in Southeast Asia? Huck had a dozen chances to quit flying and come home and marry me. He never took one. Why should I think my being sick would make a difference?”
She saw the pain and regret on Colt’s face, but he didn’t contradict her.
“How far along was the cancer before you discovered it?” he asked.
“Because of my family history, my gynecologist suggested I get a baseline mammogram when I turned thirty, a healthy mammogram for comparison purposes, to make it easier to identify anything abnormal if it showed up in the future. Since my mother got breast cancer when she was thirty-four, I figured it might be a good idea.
“Except, that first mammogram revealed a tiny spot, not much bigger than a pencil tip, but there, just the same.” She shivered and took a sip of hot coffee to warm the cold inside.
“It was a shattering moment,” she admitted, meeting Colt’s gaze with difficulty. “There was something hard and foreign inside me, attacking me, trying to kill me.”
She watched Colt swallow hard and reach for a saltine.
“I couldn’t even feel a lump,” she continued inexorably, mercilessly detailing the facts he’d demanded. “But it was there. Without the mammogram, I might not have known until it was too late.”
“So you had surgery to remove the cancer?” Colt asked.
“My doctor performed a lumpectomy.”
She saw Colt cringe and remembered how she’d felt the first time she imagined a knife slicing through the soft flesh of her breast. “My doctor told me she thought she’d gotten all the cancerous tissue. But there was no way to know whether the disease would come back. I had radiation.”
“How?” he asked, his brow furrowing. “I mean, without anyone but Randy finding out.”
“Randy knows?” she said, her eyes darting toward the doorway that led to his room. She started to rise, to go to her brother, to assuage his fear.
Colt grasped her wrist from across the table and held her in place. “Randy’s fine. I want to hear the rest of it.”
She sank back into her chair, staring at his hand until he released her. Her eyes locked with his. “The rest of it. You mean the fury and resentment I felt? The fear of losing a part of me to the surgeon’s knife? And of all things, a breast—the part of a woman that most symbolizes her femininity, the one truly sensual gift she can give to her husband and lover, the means of nursing her children.
“I ranted at fate. I was quite melodramatic. I frightened the horses in the barn. Better them than Randy or
any of my brothers.”
“You should have told them.”
“Don’t tell me what I should have done! Do you think I don’t know they would have dropped everything to come running? Do you think I don’t know how much they care? But I love them just as much as they love me. What could they do, really, to change anything? The cancer is either going to kill me, or it’s not. Nothing they do or say is going to change that.
“In the meantime, their lives would have been turned upside down. They would have been miserable worrying about me. It was better my way.”
“How do you think they’re going to feel when they find out the truth?” Colt asked.
“If the lumpectomy had worked, they would never have needed to know.”
She saw Colt go still. Saw the growing awareness in his eyes of what she’d just revealed.
“It’s back?” he asked, his voice grating like a rusty gate.
She threaded her hands together in front of her, gripping them so hard her knuckles turned white. “I had a follow-up mammogram the day I went into town by myself. The doctor called last week. She wants me to come in for a needle biopsy. She’s afraid she made a mistake not doing more radical surgery the first time.”
Jenny saw Colt was swallowing furiously. He closed his eyes and gritted his teeth so hard she saw a muscle jerk in his cheek as he fought off the nausea. When he opened his eyes, the terror was barely hidden behind a facade of composure. “Is that why you never finished the wedding dress?” he asked.
She nodded.
“When is the biopsy scheduled?” he asked.
“I was going to spend the day in town tomorrow ‘running errands,’ for the wedding,” she confessed. “I have to be at the doctor’s office at eight-thirty. I planned to have the surgery, recuperate at her office, and be home in the afternoon.”
“I’ll go with you,” he said.
“You don’t need—”
“How the hell do you know what I need?” he said in a voice filled with barely controlled rage. “I need to live my life with you. I need to go to sleep with you in my arms and wake up with you in the morning. If all we’re going to have is a few months or years together, I want every minute I can get.”
“I have cancer,” she said, emphasizing the word.
“And it makes me sick—literally—to know that,” he retorted. “I’m as angry and frightened as you are, Jenny. Maybe more so, because I’ve wanted you all my life, and now, when I thought we’d have a lifetime together, you tell me you may already be dying. I don’t know how to cope with the anger I feel. Or the fear.”
They stared at each other for a long moment, both aware of the crossroad they had reached. Jenny could go on alone, or she could ask Colt to join her.
“You could hold on to me,” Jenny said at last, reaching a hand across the table.
Colt grasped her hand like a lifeline. Their fingers entwined, but soon that wasn’t enough for either of them. As though led by some unseen hand, they both rose and moved around the table toward each other. Colt’s arms closed around Jenny, and she knew she was where she belonged.
“Give me another chance, Jenny,” Colt whispered.
The ice cracked around her heart, leaving the pulsing organ exposed and vulnerable, capable of feeling…everything. “Oh, Colt.”
“Don’t deny me, sweetheart. Let me love you. Let me be a part of your life for however long we have left together on this earth.”
What woman could refuse an offer like that? “All right, Colt. For as long as we have together, I’m yours.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THE HARDEST THING COLT HAD EVER done was sit in the doctor’s office, surrounded by sick people, and wait for Jenny while she underwent a needle biopsy on her breast. Jenny had explained Colt’s problem to her doctor, who had prescribed something to control his nausea.
But no pill could relieve his dread that Jenny might die from cancer. The disease was arbitrary; it killed with equal disregard for age or gender, race or creed. And Jenny was right; there was nothing he could do about it.
Except live life with her to the fullest every day.
The instant they left the doctor’s office after the outpatient surgery was completed he said, “Marry me, Jenny. On Saturday, as we planned.”
“We won’t have the results from the biopsy by then,” she countered as he helped her into his Mustang.
“I don’t care.”
“There’s no time to finish my wedding gown.”
“I dropped it off with my mother this morning. She’s taking care of it,” he said as he settled into the driver’s seat. “Any more excuses?”
She eyed him solemnly. “I don’t think it’s fair to you. I may not have very long to live.”
“I’ll take whatever time I can get.”
“You seem determined to do this.”
“I am.”
“What will people say?”
He shot her a triumphant grin. “I know I’ve won when that’s the only argument you can come up with. You know I don’t give a damn what other people say. If it feels right to you and me, that’s all that matters. Will you marry me on Saturday?”
She chewed on her lip for a moment, then seemed to make up her mind. He held his breath until she said, “All right. Okay. You win. I’ll marry you on Saturday.”
He hit the brakes and swerved the convertible to the side of the road, skidding to a stop on the shoulder.
“What’s wrong?” Jenny cried.
“Nothing’s wrong,” he said. “I simply felt an irresistible urge to kiss you silly, that’s all.”
Impossibly, unpredictably, she laughed. “You’re crazy, Colt!”
“Crazy in love with you,” he said, leaning over to touch his lips to hers.
She moaned, and he deepened the kiss, slipping his tongue inside her mouth and tasting her. His heart beat wildly in his chest, with joy and with fear. She was so very precious. How would he bear it—Colt forced himself to focus on the delicious sensations caused by her tongue sliding between his lips, touching the roof of his mouth, then withdrawing to be followed by his tongue, tasting her.
He would find a way to make her understand that, even if more radical surgery became necessary, it wouldn’t matter to him. The only thing that mattered was keeping her alive. He broke the kiss at last, but pressed his cheek against hers. “I love you, Jenny.”
“And I love you,” she whispered.
“We’d better get going,” he said, forcing himself back to his own side of the car. “We’ve got lots of company waiting at home.”
“Oh, Colt. What have you done?”
“What you should have done two years ago. I called your brothers, had them meet me at Hawk’s Pride, and told them about the cancer.”
“You had no right!” Jenny said, her hands clenching into fists.
“I have every right,” he retorted. “I love you. That means I’ll do everything within my power to make your life easier and happier. Even if it means making your brothers’ lives a little unhappier.”
“What did they say?” she asked anxiously. “How are they taking the news?”
“How do you think they took it? They were angry and hurt.” He rubbed his jaw and said, “Sam took a swing at me. He thought I’d known all along and had kept it from them.”
“I’m sorry. Sam always was a little hotheaded.”
“Once I explained, he apologized. But now that they know, they want to be there for you, Jenny. It was all I could do to keep them from coming to the doctor’s office this morning. They compromised by agreeing to see you after the surgery at the Double D.”
“How can I face them?” she said.
“Just remember they love you.”
When they arrived at the house, they found all four of her brothers putting a coat of fresh, white paint on the house. But they weren’t the only ones at work. All of Colt’s brothers and sisters had joined in to make various improvements on the property.
The shutters o
n all of the windows, as well as the front door, had been painted a deep green that matched Jenny’s new Jeep. Flowers and shrubs had been planted around the front porch, and an entire lawn had been laid in thick patches of green.
“Ohmigod, Colt! Look what they’re doing,” Jenny said.
“It’s a wedding gift, Jenny. From my family and from yours. They’re helping to make our house a home.”
Colt saw the sheen of tears in Jenny’s eyes and felt his own throat swell with emotion. “You don’t mind, do you? James and Tyler suggested it, and I said it sounded like a good idea. When Mom and Dad and Jake heard what your brothers planned to do, they wanted to be a part of it. And when my brothers and sisters—”
She cut him off with a kiss. “I love them for it,” she said simply. “All of them.” She let herself out of the car before he could get the door for her and headed around to the front of the house to survey their work.
Colt had to walk fast to keep up with her. “Jenny, are you sure you’re up to this?”
She smiled at him over her shoulder. “I want to thank them, Colt. I want to tell them all how wonderful I think everything looks.”
And she did, even going so far as to drop onto her knees and tuck a little extra earth around the red geraniums his mother was planting beside the front steps.
Jenny had guts, all right. And stamina. He kept a wary eye on her, wanting to make sure she didn’t do too much. The surgery had been done with a local anesthetic, and Jenny swore she was okay. But Colt had seen enough of Jenny to know that if someone she loved asked her to pick up a house, she would give it try.
When the painting was finished, Jenny watched over the cleanup, and more than one brother said, “Yes, Mother,” as she issued instructions on how it should be done. As the afternoon wore on, her too-bright eyes and her too-fast speech told him she had reached the limits of her endurance.
He announced it was quitting time, and everyone should gather on the back porch for a glass of iced tea and fresh-baked, hot-from-the-oven chocolate chip cookies his sister Cherry had made. Jenny sat in one of the two wooden rockers on the back porch—a gift from his parents—while his mother occupied the other. His father stood behind his mother, in much the same protective way Colt stood behind Jenny. Some of his siblings sat in chairs that had been brought outside from the kitchen.
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