by Leslie Kelly
“It’s not,” Deborah interjected.
“I’m talking to my sister.”
Oh, how he hoped the claws didn’t come out again.
Maddy shook her head. “Oh, no, Tabby you can’t. Tell me you’re not going through with this.”
Before she could answer, they reached the hospital. Every woman in the car leaned forward, wearing expressions of fear and anxiety. Jake almost pulled into the emergency entrance, by habit, but remembered, at the last minute, to go to the front. “Go on inside,” he told them. “I’ll park and meet you.”
Maddy barely spared him a glance. She still appeared shell-shocked, stunned from the revelations from their short but informative car ride.
He was worried about Jason Turner. Very worried. Right now, however, he could throttle the man’s wife and daughter for having aired their personal dramas—and man-hate—on the night when he and Maddy had reached their own crisis point.
Before she got out of the car, he grabbed her hand, silently urging her to be strong. To not give in to the pessimism that had just been dumped on her head. “Maddy, I…”
“Thank you for driving us,” she said, her eyes averted, her voice calm. “I have to go.”
He didn’t like her mood. Not one bit. But there was nothing he could do. Not now, not until she’d found out whether her father was going to live or die.
After that, however, he intended to finish the conversation they’d started before dinner. And to reverse any damage the two other women in her family had caused.
THAT NIGHT WAS one of the longest of Maddy’s life. She, Tabitha and Deborah shared an uneasy truce in the hospital waiting room, while her father went into surgery.
A double bypass. And they hadn’t even realized there was a single thing wrong with him, beyond occasional high blood pressure.
Fortunately, Jake kept them informed about what was happening. He served as a liaison between the medical staff and the family. Not to mention a comforting presence for Maddy.
She didn’t, however, allow herself to lean on him too much. Because even while racked with worry for her father, she couldn’t stop replaying the conversation on the ride over here. The awful revelations, the sadness, the bitterness.
All the happy thoughts she’d had twelve hours ago about how the Turners seemed to finally have come out from under their unlucky-in-love-curse…. Look at them now. Tabby and her father both freely admitting they weren’t in love with the people they’d pledged—or planned to pledge—to love until death. What in heaven’s name was wrong with her family?
And was it also wrong with her?
Bradley was with them. He’d arrived shortly after they had. Despite being a jackass, in her opinion, he’d at least offered whatever comfort he could to Tabby. Not exactly warm, he hadn’t been a disapproving, judgmental cold fish, either.
Well, maybe a disapproving one, at least when he’d first been introduced to Jake. But the judgmental glint had finally disappeared from his eye.
“Hopefully the word will get out to everyone else, too,” she told Jake when they had a private moment. “I’ll do my best to make sure everyone knows Bitsy and Oliver were crazy. Considering everyone saw you save my father’s life, only a fool would believe the story, anyway.”
Which said a lot about Bradley, who had still believed it until confronted with a truth he couldn’t deny—Jake’s friendly interaction with the hospital staff, who knew him by name and by reputation.
“Don’t worry about it. I don’t care.”
“I do. My family has done enough damage to you.” She heard her own stiff, formal tone and half hated herself for it. But she couldn’t bring herself to ease up. Because while part of her wanted desperately to just lean on him, fall into his arms and take whatever comfort he could offer, emotionally, she couldn’t risk it.
He opened his mouth to argue, as if realizing she’d begun to draw away from him, to retreat behind the barrier that had safely guarded her heart for so long, but the door to the waiting room was suddenly pushed in. Spying the surgeon, one of the best in the city—who’d come to the hospital immediately when he’d found out about her father—they all leaped to their feet.
“The procedure went very well. While I don’t want to be premature, I do think it’s safe to say Mr. Turner is well on the road to recovery.”
Those were all the words Maddy heard before slowly sinking back to her seat. The others hung avidly on every instruction, every detail the physician would provide. She didn’t. She instead sent up thankful prayer after thankful prayer, wondering if her own personal guardian angel—the mother she’d always imagined was watching over her—had been listening.
Hearing they could not take turns visiting for several hours, they all decided to head home for what was left of the night. Only an hour or two of darkness remained. Soon it would be the dawn of Tabitha’s long-awaited wedding day.
God, how life could change in an instant.
One of Deborah’s friends—not Bitsy, the woman didn’t have a death wish—had shown up and offered to drive her. And Tabitha left with her fiancé—obviously they had some decisions to make about the wedding.
Frankly, Maddy hoped her sister canceled the thing for good, rather than just postponing it until after their father recovered. But she sensed Tabby wouldn’t. One way or another, Tabby would probably marry the man. Because, despite loathing Deborah enough to ignore her advice, Tabby would go through it.
Her sister seemed ready to believe there was no such thing as true love. And more, that maybe there was even something wrong with her—something wrong with all of them—that made them genuinely incapable of sustaining the emotion.
Maddy could have told her differently. Because she had absolutely no doubt she was in love with Jake.
For now. That was the problem. She loved him now.
As for tomorrow? Well, despite her hopes and her dreams and her wishes over the past few weeks, she had remembered the truth—she didn’t believe in tomorrows and happily ever afters and love that lasted a lifetime.
Yes, she loved him right this minute. But next year? Five years from now? Had anyone she’d ever known loved a lifetime?
No. They hadn’t. Maybe in Jake’s world, not in hers. And the man was just too good to have to live with that uncertainty.
Which left her with only one horrible, heartbreaking option.
“You okay?” he asked after a long, quiet drive back to her building. The streets were deserted and the silence inside the car had been even louder than the one out of it.
“I’m fine,” she said once he’d parked in her reserved spot. “Thank you for being there.”
“I guess I should let you get upstairs and get some sleep. Want me to come back and pick you up later this morning to take you to the hospital?”
A simple question. The one he didn’t ask, however, was the one they were both contemplating. Did she want him to leave at all?
“Jake, tell me why you agreed to let me ‘hire’ you for thirty days. Why didn’t you tell me the truth?”
He smiled gently, reaching over to brush her hair back from her weary, tear-sore eyes. “Well, first, because you flat-out said you wouldn’t have anything to do with me if I didn’t take your check.”
True.
“But also because I knew you’d never give me a chance to just date you like a normal guy. You’d have to keep control…guard yourself. Keep on pretending you were that untouchable ice queen.”
He sounded so tender, so loving, despite describing her with a term she hadn’t even thought of in reference to herself in days.
“I saw a chance to see if something real could happen between us, and I took it, fully intending to tell you the truth as soon as I thought you were ready to hear it.”
“Today.” She glanced at the dashboard clock. “Yesterday.”
“Well, I don’t know that I thought you were ready. But I did decide I needed to get it out in the open. I couldn’t go on with it anymore, not o
nce I was sure how I felt about you.”
Maddy held her breath, wanting to stop him, afraid to hear the words. More afraid not to hear them—to never hear them come out of this man’s mouth at all.
She’d regret that until the day she died.
“I love you,” he murmured, lightly touching her cheek, turning her face to make sure she met his eye. “I love you, Madeline, and I’m sorry I was dishonest.”
She merely watched. She couldn’t give the words back to him, even though they were screaming a chorus in her brain.
“Tonight was bad and I know what you’re thinking. That you can’t trust me, that maybe I lied to you for the same reasons Bradley lied to Tabitha, and came clean for the same reasons, too. But it isn’t true. I love you.”
There she stopped him. He was in no way like her sister’s fiancé. She put her hand up, covering his mouth with her fingertips. “No. I don’t think you’re anything like him. I believe you.” She couldn’t deny him the rest of what she owed him. “And I forgive you. I know you didn’t set out to make a fool of me, or hurt me in any way.”
He hesitated, still waiting, so sexy-yet-vulnerable, holding out for the words she was not going to offer him.
They wouldn’t come. Not now, not ever. Not when she had the power to hurt him…tomorrow, next year. And not when she knew she could be crushed into unrelenting sorrow for the remainder of her life if he ever did the one thing that could most hurt her, too—stop loving her.
“I forgive you, Jake. But I don’t want to see you again.”
13
CONSIDERING SHE WAS BACK at the hospital by 10 a.m. on Saturday, Maddy might as well have stayed there. If she hadn’t left, if she’d just curled up on the lumpy sofa to wait until visiting hours, perhaps she could have delayed the inevitable moment when she’d had to rip her own heart out. Because that’s what she’d done with every word she’d said to Jake in the predawn hours.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered, rubbing her hands over her weary eyes as she watched the clock in the hospital waiting area. Her father was allowed two brief visits per hour, starting at eleven. She was the first of her family to arrive, and she could have come in a little later. But what was the point? It wasn’t as if she’d slept, nor had she been doing anything at home that she couldn’t do here. Worrying. Crying. Regretting.
If her fears about her father hadn’t kept her brain from emptying and her eyes from closing in the cold darkness of her room, her heartache over pushing Jake away would definitely have done the trick, anyway.
He hadn’t been pushed easily. He’d tried hard to dissuade her from doing what they both knew she didn’t really want to do. But in the end, with tears streaming down her face as she admitted she was too tired, too frightened and too confused to think straight, he’d let it go. Let her have her way.
Let her shove him out of her life.
Maddy was no fool. She knew he’d only left because he, too, was worried about her father—and Maddy’s own state of mind. If not for that, she figured they’d still be down in the parking garage below her building, arguing about whether or not he really loved her—and would keep loving her.
And whether or not she could allow him to.
Funny, the one thing he hadn’t even questioned had been her feelings. He took her love for him as an utter certainty, though the words had never come out of her mouth.
It didn’t matter. There was no hiding how she felt. From him, from either of them. “But that’s today,” she reminded herself as she watched the clock ease closer to eleven.
Tomorrow, well, her heart could prove to be as fickle and arbitrary as everyone else’s in her family. And Jake deserved more than that. So much more.
She loved him too much to ever want to hurt him that way. Even if she hurt every minute of every day for the rest of her life.
“You’re here!” a woman’s voice said.
Half fearing it would be Deborah, Maddy couldn’t help sighing in relief when she saw Tabby’s pinched, pale face. Rising, she took her sister in her arms and hugged her close, looking over her shoulder into the corridor beyond to make sure she had come alone. “Are you all right?”
Tabby nodded. “Fine.”
They drew apart. “You don’t look fine.”
“Well, hell, of course I’m not fine. Are you?”
Maddy shook her head. “But he’s going to be all right.”
“I know.” Tabby reached into her designer purse and plucked out a wad of tissues, offering one to Maddy taking one and then wiping under her own eyes. “Can you imagine? Puffy eyes in my wedding pictures?”
Maddy’s jaw dropped open. “What are you talking about?”
Tabby lifted her chin, her lips quivering, then straightening into a calm line. “Bradley and his family want to proceed with the wedding this afternoon.”
“No, you can’t do that!”
“They say it’s exactly what Daddy would want.”
They were probably correct. But that didn’t make it right.
“They also pointed out, quite correctly, that everything is paid for, food prepared, flowers in place. Dozens of relatives have already come in from out of town. And that Dad’s own surgeon said he was going to be fine. He just won’t be able to walk me down the aisle…this time.”
This time. Somehow, Maddy had the feeling Tabby was repeating verbatim words someone else had said to her. And she suddenly wanted to hit that someone for dumping such pressure—and guilt—on her sister’s slim shoulders.
“Don’t marry him.” The words had left Maddy’s mouth without her brain becoming involved in the decision. Her sister hadn’t asked for her advice—but she gave it anyway, unable to stop herself. “You know he won’t make you happy. You know you don’t love him.”
“I loved my first husband, and I have loved men since. Maybe marrying someone I don’t love is exactly the right thing to do.” She ran a weary hand over her face, looking every bit as exhausted as Maddy felt. “It’s for the best, Mad. I’m just not cut out for it, falling in love and staying in love. My father’s daughter, I guess.”
How could she argue that, when Maddy had tossed Jake out of her life for the same reason?
Before she could say any more, though, Tabitha glanced at the clock. “Come on, let’s go. She can’t bitch about us going in first if she didn’t bother to show up on time.”
Maddy didn’t even have to ask who she was. It was 11 a.m., Deborah wasn’t here, and nobody would keep them from their father’s side.
Reaching his room and gingerly pushing the door open, Maddy held her breath. She expected him to look near death. Pale and exhausted, weak, stuck with wires and probes and surrounded by machines.
He was stuck with wires and probes and surrounded by machines, and he did look tired and pale…but not at all on the verge of death. Instead, as he saw them standing in the doorway, he smiled and slowly lifted a hand. “My girls.”
They flew to his side and cried like babies. Both of them. The Ice Queen and the Rich Bitch, sitting on either side of their father, holding his hands and sobbing their eyes out.
Which he quickly got bored with. “Enough. I’m fine. Stop or you’ll soak my sheets. If the nurses think I wet this bed, I’ll never be able to show my face at a hospital fund-raiser again.”
Sniffling, Maddy managed a smile.
“What’s going on? I’m dying for news,” he said, trying to sound normal, though his weakness was underscored by the softness of his voice and the lines of fatigue and pain on his face.
“Everything’s fine,” Maddy said.
“Absolutely fine,” her sister agreed.
“The wedding?”
Tabby stared at him, and Maddy read the anguish there.
“You are going through with it, aren’t you? Don’t you dare let this—” her father waved to his own limp body “—stop you from proceeding.” Then, looking up at the ceiling, rather than at the bride, he added, “If you really want to marry him at all, that is.”
Tabby sucked in a surprised breath. Maddy, who’d known her father had been having doubts, did not.
“If you don’t, feel free to use your old man’s weak ticker as an excuse to get out of the whole mess.”
Tabitha just stared, her eyes huge in her pale face, not saying a single word.
Dad didn’t push it. “Poor Deborah, she’s not here?”
“I’m sure she’ll be here any minute,” Maddy said. “We just took advantage of the fact that we beat her by a few seconds.”
“Perhaps.”
“She was very worried,” Tabby admitted, albeit grudgingly.
“I’m sure she was.” Closing his eyes and sinking deeper into the pillow, he mumbled, “Don’t judge her…I’ve been quite unkind to that woman.”
Remembering what their stepmother had said—about how her husband had encouraged her to go have an affair—Maddy could only exchange a stricken glance with Tabitha.
“Shh, it’s okay.” Tabby stroked her father’s thinning gray hair.
“I don’t love her, you see.” His eyes closed, his words drifting into little more than a whisper, as if he was speaking more to himself than to them. “I’m not sure who said it, but it’s true. The only thing worse than being in a loveless marriage is being in one where there is love on only one side. You’d think I’d have learned that by now.”
“Stop it. She knew what she was doing,” Maddy said, more worried about her father’s health than her stepmother’s emotions. “Besides, you are capable of love, Dad. Just look at us. There’s no doubt in Tabby’s mind, or in mine, that you love us every bit as much as we love you.”
A different kind of love—but she wouldn’t allow her father to wallow in self-recrimination, not when he needed to recover.
Her words seemed to surprise him. His eyes flew open. “Oh, of course I’m capable of love, darling.” His frail hands slid across the thin hospital blanket, so he could grasp his hands around one of each of his daughters’. “I have loved greatly.”
And often.
