“Yeah, hell—burned off—my chest hair.”
At that she scoffed. “I don’t believe it. There isn’t a single mark anywhere.” On that beautiful, sculpted torso that she’d thought never to lie upon again.
“Under—under wraps. Heard ’em—talkin’…” He paused, coughed a little, and looked up at her bleary-eyed. “Listen. Gotta tell you—gotta tell you…”
“Yes, Ben?”
“Gotta…” Once more, his eyelids closed, and his voice trailed off. Exhausted by so much effort, he was sound asleep.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Caroline’s consultation with her husband’s physician, Dr. Leo Scintilla, took place in a small antechamber constructed for just that purpose, adjacent to the nurses’ station. His prognosis was guardedly optimistic.
“It seems Mr. Taggart was turning slightly sidewise as the bullet hit. Instead of ramming into his heart, straight-on, as it was aimed to do, it took a somewhat altered path.”
The image, as she saw it, seemed very real. She shivered.
“Yes, he’s a lucky man.” The doctor was still wearing scrubs and clogs from some earlier surgery and appeared tired. Not surprising, with so many hours on his feet. He paused to sip from a lukewarm cup of beverage and then pat at his damp mustache. “We got the bullet out, got all the nicks and tears sutured and repaired, and sewed him up.”
“He—he said his heart stopped,” Caroline ventured tremulously. Another vivid image.
“That it did. He knows we had to use the paddles? Well, by gum.”
“Yes, apparently he heard someone telling someone else.”
The gray-haired doctor shook his head. “I can say this now, it was touch and go for a while. We weren’t sure—well, anyway, I’ve been in to see him every day since surgery, and everything looks good. The graze across his upper arm is minor, of course, compared to the fact that I was having to dig around in his chest.”
“And you think he’ll be all right?”
“I think we’ll do fine with recovery as long as we can have him chained to a hospital bed,” Dr. Scintilla said frankly. “Once he’s well enough to go home, you may have trouble keeping him confined long enough to heal.”
Caroline sighed. “I confess, that will be a problem. My husband is quite—obstinate.”
“Ahuh. Bull-headed, you mean.” He rose and eased the kinks from his back and shoulders. “Well, I think that’s it for now. Please let me know if you have questions of any kind. But, for now, he’s got a few weeks of recuperation ahead, and you may remind him to take it easy.”
She reached out to shake his free hand. “Thank you, Doctor. Thank you very much. You saved his life, and I—I can’t tell you—”
He smiled down at her. “It’s okay, Mrs. Taggart. That’s my job.”
The patient was more awake, more animated, more alert, when she returned to his room in the unit. It was late afternoon, and Caroline had grabbed the opportunity to take a nap in the lounge specifically set up for families, and to visit the cafeteria for more soup and a glass of iced tea.
“You look better,” he greeted her.
“Thank you. I feel better. You look better, too.”
“Ah. All manly and rugged, huh? Bet you can’t keep your hands off me.”
The first honest amusement she had known in several days bubbled up. It felt wonderfully refreshing, like the bubbles from a champagne bottle. “Same old Ben.”
“What, did you expect me to undergo some sort of conversion or something?” He eyed her. “Sit down here, will you, and talk with me?” And, as she willingly complied, “Carrie, can we please not fight any more? It puts me all outa kilter.”
Surprised that he was so willing to take the bull by the horns, she agreed. “I think we’re still trying to find our way in this marriage, Ben. It isn’t—quite—what either of us expected, and maybe—well, maybe both of us need to grow up a little. But—no, I don’t like fighting, either.”
“Ahuh. Carrie—” He tried to shift nearer the edge of the hospital bed but got tangled up in all the cords and wires attached to various places and cursed softly with frustration. “Touch me, will you?
There were a couplea times I came to long enough to wonder if I’d make it. If I’d ever see you again. And all I wanted was to have you beside me, with your head on my shoulder, and your hands doin” things—doin’ things…”
“Oh, Ben!” She broke down then. Her chair was pulled as near as possible, and she bent forward and burst into tears.
“Sweetheart, don’t. I didn’t mean to make you cry. Oh, Carrie, darlin’…”
“I thought—I thought I’d—lost you,” she sobbed. “I was afraid you’d—oh, Ben Taggart, if you’d gone and died on me, I never would have forgiven you!”
His fingers worked to get under her chin, to lift her dampened face up so he could see into her eyes. That was when, astounded, she realized that his lashes were as wet as her own. Still, Ben, as the everlasting Puck, was grinning.
For a few minutes they simply sat in silence, grasps intertwined, thinking and feeling about this incredible watershed moment, and what it portended for their future.
Finally, he began to smooth one finger up and down along her cheekbone. It was time.
“Carrie, I need to tell you some things. Facts about my past that—well, only Tom knows. So it’s important to me that you hear me out.”
Gravely she considered him, this man she loved with her entire heart and soul. “Yes, Ben.”
There was yet a hesitation, a reluctance to lay bare his innermost being to a woman, wife or not, he’d known for such a short time.
“Diane. The first Mrs. Taggart. She wasn’t killed in that car crash. She’s alive…somewhere. I don’t know where.”
Caroline swallowed hard. His grip tightened, as Tom’s did during an emotional moment, as if to lend strength.
“See, I have this brother…”
A ne’er-do-well brother, whose name was never spoken. Even now. He’d forsaken the family fortune only by not partnering in it, but was not too proud to take monthly allowances as a handout. Ben and a restless Diane had been married but a few short months when the brother returned to begin a passionate affair with his sister-in-law. Ben, traveling then perhaps more than in the present, had had no idea. Until Diane had announced her pregnancy.
“Sophie,” breathed Caroline.
“Yes. Sophie. Not my daughter, Carrie. She’s my niece.”
Merciful heaven, what a confusing chain of events. More pieces to the puzzle.
“After she was born,” Ben continued slowly, softly, “I told Diane I wanted a divorce. Not a separation. Not some marital counseling. A divorce. And she was never to be a part of Sophie’s life again.”
“Oh, Ben…” Of all times, she wanted to hold him, to cradle his head against her breast, to soothe with her body in all the caring ways she knew.
Between Ben and Tom, they’d worked out the arrangements. The paperwork was done quietly, and then the car was crashed and burned, and an elaborate funeral service put together. Diane was gone forever, erased, as if she had never been.
When Ben hated, he hated hard.
“I’m sorry. Ben, I’m so sorry.”
His expression, when he looked steadily at her, was bleak. “It took me a long time to get over the whole thing, Caroline. I threw myself into my work. Traveling, making deals, buying, selling—you name it. That’s all life meant to me. I forgot about Sophie.”
Thus the decision to try marriage for a second time. For two reasons, as he had told her in the beginning: as a mother for the little girl, and as a receptacle in his bed.
“But then you got here, and we were married.” Everything about him had just mellowed, sort of melting away all the hardness and toughness into one vulnerable human being. “And you were you. And I realized what I’d been missing. Carrie, I don’t want sex with you.”
Dazed, she stared at him. “You don’t?”
“No. I want to make love
with you. I want a family with you. I want to live in this house and grow old with you. Do you see that happening?”
Her heart seemed to have been torn out of her vitals and stripped into little pieces, each bit trembling with emotion. “Oh, Ben. Ben.”
“Yeah?” Looking as hopeful as a young boy about to capture the moon, he started to smile. “Damn me if I haven’t fallen head over heels in love with you, Caroline Taggart. It would make me mighty proud if you’d consent to be my wife.”
“Ben, you impossible man.” She began to laugh, giddy, everlastingly grateful. “I’m already your wife, in every way. And I love every foolish inch of you.”
When the door whooshed softly open and someone entered, she was doing her best to avoid every bandage and appendage even while bending over him to share the most exquisite kiss of their marriage
“Sorry about interruptin’,” said Tom, sounding not sorry at all.
“Huh,” muttered Ben, put out. Even given the shape he was in, he was in quite good shape, to judge by what was going on beneath the sheets. “So am I.”
“Glad t’ see you’re doin’ so well.” Removing his sombrero, he spun its crown on one finger and sailed it into the chair. Plainly he was planning to stay a while. “Got some news.”
Caroline turned. “What is it, Tom?”
“Caught your man,” he said casually.
“Yeah? Lundigan?”
“Yep. Not two hundred miles away, headin’ north.” Tom snickered. “Poor man’s truck broke down on the highway and he was fixin’ t’ get help. Winchester rifle still just a-layin’ in the cab.”
Involved, Ben was sitting up a little higher against the pillows. “Not the sharpest knife in the drawer.”
“Nope. So he’s been hauled away and put b’hind bars good and proper, son. Charged with attempted murder and whatnot, and we’ll have us a wingding of a trial right soon.”
Her hand tightened over Ben’s free and unencumbered fingers. “It’s done. The worst of it, I mean. It’s done and over with.”
He gave her the slow, sizzling grin that sent liquid fire all the way to her toes. “That part is, darlin’. The rest of it, for us, is just beginnin’.”
“Well, amen to that,” said Tom.
And the puzzle was complete, the puzzle of a family, with each piece put into its proper place.
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