Allison couldn’t do anything for Tess. But she could try to help Josh.
She knocked again, louder.
A dog woofed once.
Josh answered the door, game controller in hand, big-screen battle raging behind him. Doing his teenage best, Allison thought, to keep his mind off what had happened, to keep his cousin distracted. Good boy.
He nodded. “Miss Carter.”
“Hi.” There was a fiery crash on the TV behind him. She did her best not to wince. “I came to see how you were doing.”
“I’m fine.”
Sure you are, she thought. You and your dad. Always fine.
She offered the box she held. “I brought pizza.”
“Thanks.” As if recalling his manners, Josh stepped back to let her in.
Taylor hunched on the couch behind him, clutching the other controller, Fezzik at her feet. On the coffee table in front of her, on the counter behind her, crowding the table and set on the floor, were dishes, plastic-wrapped deli trays and bags of sandwich buns, foil-covered casseroles and baskets of fruit, cakes, cookies, fried chicken, a…ham?
Allison blinked. “Wow.”
Josh surveyed the outpouring of support with her. “Yeah. People like to bring food around here. Mostly when somebody dies.” He smiled, but his voice was bleak.
Allison’s heart squeezed.
“We should get some of this labeled and into the freezer,” she said, deliberately brisk. “Your grandmother might be glad not to cook right after she gets out of the hospital.”
Josh looked more cheerful. “I guess.”
“Got masking tape and a marker?” Allison asked.
“Duct tape.”
She smiled. “That’ll work.”
Taylor watched Allison from the couch while Josh rummaged in the kitchen for supplies.
“Hi, Taylor. How are you doing?”
Taylor gave her a dark look from under the bill of her cap.
Okay, stupid question.
She had nightmares, Matt had said. In a few short months, the little girl had lost her mother, said good-bye to her father, been uprooted from her home. And now her grandmother was in the ER.
Allison tried again. “You want to help me start a list?”
Taylor regarded her suspiciously. “What kind of list?”
“What people brought over, what dishes they came in,” Allison said patiently. “So you can give the dishes back and say thanks to the right people.”
“Josh already said thank you.”
“We should still write a list.”
Keep them busy, she thought. Keep them from brooding.
With all three of them working, organizing the donations took less than half an hour. Most of the casseroles came labeled already, so they could quickly be added to the list and carried across the yard to the inn’s freezer. The rest Allison divided depending on whether the items needed refrigeration or not.
“You want to keep out this fried chicken for dinner?” she asked Josh.
“Nah.” His smile was so much like his father’s it took her breath away. “I’d rather have pizza.”
She turned on the oven. “We’ll keep the chicken in the fridge, then. Your dad might be hungry when he gets home.”
“Maybe. I don’t know when he’ll be back.”
She slid the pizza onto a cookie sheet to reheat. “When was the last time you talked with him?”
“Before you came. He’s not allowed to use his cell phone where he is, and reception sucks anyway. He had to call from outside.”
“How’s your grandmother?” she asked quietly.
A quick shoulder jerk. “It was a bad wreck. She’s out of surgery, Dad said. He hasn’t seen her yet.”
Four…No, five hours later? Dear God. Matt must be out of his mind with worry and grief.
How is he? she wanted to ask, but she would not lay the burden of her concern on Josh’s young shoulders.
“He sounds okay,” Josh volunteered, surprising her. “But it’s hard to tell with Dad. He’s tough.”
She smiled and risked a pat on his arm, trying not to overstep her boundaries as his teacher. Trying not to undermine his boy’s dignity. “Must run in the family.”
Josh looked at her, his face unguarded, open, only sixteen. Sudden tears glittered in his eyes.
She remembered her brother, Miles, who felt everything and had no way to show it, and she thought of Matt, weariness in his eyes, saying flatly, We’re handling it.
Maybe so, she thought. But Josh shouldn’t have to handle this alone.
She put her arms around him, and he ducked his head against her much shorter shoulder to hide his tears.
MATT STOOD TO stretch. Outside, the sky was fading, but the harsh lights of the waiting room held time still and the dusk at bay.
His sister Meg blew into the cold stale air like a summer squall, dark and fast and crackling with energy.
“Dad!” She went into his arms and hugged him tight. “How’s Mom?”
Tom raised a shaking hand to stroke her hair, his granite composure cracking. He closed his eyes.
Matt’s heart wrenched with helpless pity. He was reluctant to take the lead, to take control with his father standing there. But Tom had never been one for talking. Without Tess, he was speechless.
All Matt’s life, his parents had been there, an unquestioning support, an ever-present backup, a port in the storm. Now that their roles were reversed, he had to be there for them.
Matt cleared his throat. “You missed the doctor. Mom’s out of surgery.”
“Matt.” Meg flew to his arms.
He held her hard, absorbing her strength and the smell of the world outside the hospital. She was still wearing what he thought of as her City Girl clothes, black skirt, big bag, knotted scarf.
She raised her head from his chest, her blue eyes damp. “Are you okay?”
She sounded so much like Mom Matt almost lost it.
He ignored her question. “We didn’t expect to see you till tomorrow.”
“My secretary found a flight from Newark to Raleigh. I rented a car and drove the rest of the way.”
“Expensive,” Tom said, finding his voice.
She shrugged. “I can afford it. I wanted to be here.”
And his sister didn’t let anything stand between her and what she wanted, Matt thought, amusement warming the coldness inside him.
“So.” Her gaze lasered in on Matt. “What’s up with Mom?”
Tom turned away again to stare down the hall.
“Steering wheel broke her rib and her hip. Pelvis,” he corrected, dragging the heavy words from the depths of his fear, trying to arrange them in order for Meg. “The surgeon said they repaired the most life-threatening injury and the rest will just take patience and time. She had a lot of bleeding. The, um, rib punctured her lung.”
“Any damage to her spleen? Her liver?” At his narrowed look, she held up her BlackBerry. “I had time to research abdominal trauma on the plane.”
Of course she did.
“Liver,” he said. “They removed part of it.”
Meg’s eyes widened. “Oh, God, Matt.”
“It’s okay,” he said, even though it wasn’t, not really. “She can actually grow it back. Kind of like a starfish. The doctor said she’ll have to have another operation in a couple of days on her hip. But they stopped the bleeding. That’s the most important thing. Her prognosis is good, they said.”
“Have you seen her? Talked to her?”
He shook his head. “The nurse says we can’t go back yet.”
Meg lifted her chin and narrowed her eyes, transforming in the space of a breath from devastated daughter to stone-cold city girl. “We’ll just see about that.”
Fourteen
MATT PULLED IN behind the cottage and sat in the truck, raw and unsettled and too tired to move. Caffeine jangled through his system. Fatigue gnawed down to his bones.
If he closed his eyes, he could still see his mot
her, small and frail, as white as the sheets that covered her, a tube down her throat and another in her chest, hooked to machines that blinked and beeped and breathed for her.
So he kept his eyes open, staring into the darkness beyond his windshield.
Meg had argued against him driving home tonight. He’d been up for twenty hours straight. Her secretary had already booked them two rooms in a hotel near the hospital. We don’t need two crashes in one day, Meg had said fiercely.
But Meg was the one who had to stay at the hospital, the one who would argue and ask questions when the orthopedic team came in the morning, the one who could advocate for Mom and hold Dad’s hand.
Somebody had to be there for Josh and Taylor.
Matt climbed stiffly from the truck. Which was why he was here in the dark hours before dawn and not at Allison’s.
God, he wanted her, wanted to lose himself in the blind, hot rush of sex, wanted to bury his grief and fear in the warm welcome of her body. Wanted her energy, her optimism, her comfort.
But wanting wasn’t needing, he told himself.
He had people who needed him. Family who depended on him. Josh had sounded okay on the phone when they talked around ten, but he could be faking it.
They all could be.
He walked up the path, feeling as creaky as an old man, and let himself into the inn. He’d told Josh to let Taylor sleep in her own room tonight and to bunk in an empty bedroom. Thank God they weren’t expecting guests before Friday.
His tired mind grappled briefly with the problem of the coming weekend. How was he going to handle the charters, the guests, the kids alone?
He shut the thought down. He couldn’t, wouldn’t, go there now.
He climbed the stairs to check on Taylor. As he pushed open the door, Fezzik raised his head from the foot of her bed, ears alert, eyes gleaming in the glow of the night-light. On the job. Matt reached out and rubbed the dog’s head, communicating thanks, taking comfort. Taylor curled in a tight, defensive ball under the covers, her blond hair sticking up like the spines of a puffer fish. Asleep, he thought, and some of the tension inside him eased.
He closed her door and went in search of Josh. A faint light shone from the Stede Bonnet Room. Josh must have left a light on and the door cracked in case Taylor woke and came looking for him. Matt smiled. He hadn’t expected that kind of thinking from his son.
He flattened his palm against the panel, easing the door open. The smell hit him first, cinnamon and vanilla. His pulse thudded. He rubbed his eyes.
A dim light from the bathroom fell across the curves and valleys of the bed. Rounded hip, slim arm, hair spilling across the pillow.
Not Josh, he realized, and suddenly felt a lot better.
Allison.
ALLISON WOKE TO a prickle of awareness like a whisper against her skin, like a change in temperature.
Adrenaline pumped through her. The kids.
She pushed herself up on one elbow, her gaze seeking the door. A tall, broad-shouldered figure was outlined against the moonlight from the hall.
Not Josh, she realized, and suddenly felt a lot better. Matt.
She stretched out her arm and clicked on the bedside lamp.
He looked tired, she thought, her heart twisting. Haggard. The yellow light cast shadows in the creases of his cheeks, the lines scored from nose to mouth. She wanted to press her lips at the corners of his eyes, in the hollow of his throat.
“Hi.” Her voice was husky with sleep and concern.
“Hey.” She saw the effort it cost him to smile. “What are you doing here?”
He didn’t sound upset.
She returned his smile. “Well, I was trying to get some sleep,” she teased, adding softly, “I’m glad you’re home.”
He still leaned against the doorway. As if he would fall down unless he was propped up. Swinging her bare legs out of bed, she went to him, sliding her arms around his hard waist, lending him her strength and support.
He wrapped his arms around her and held on, sharing her heat, stealing her breath, their hearts in rhythm. Gradually his rigid muscles relaxed.
“How’s your mom?” she asked.
His chest expanded with his breath. “Better. Alive. She’s busted up pretty bad. Goddamn drunk driver. Ribs, pelvis, lung, liver. The police said she was lucky she didn’t crack her skull wide open.”
“So, she’s conscious?”
“Not really.” He sighed, stirring her hair and her heart. “They’ve got her doped up, because of the pain and to keep her from fighting the tubes. She looks like hell.”
“Then you got to see her?”
She felt him nod. “Before I left. She’s only allowed two visitors every thirty minutes, and with my dad there…and Meg…”
“Josh told me your sister came,” she said.
He nodded again. “Flew into Raleigh.” His voice was raw with heartache, rough with fatigue and frustration.
She squeezed his waist. “And you came home to take care of the kids.”
“Yeah. How’re they doing?”
She took one of his big, callused hands between both of hers and tugged him toward the bed. They’re fine, she almost said—the Fletcher family anthem—but he deserved more of an answer than that.
“Josh is great,” she said. “Taylor was a little quiet all evening.”
Matt obeyed her nudging, dropping onto the edge of the mattress. “She’s always quiet.”
Quiet, fine. But Allison suspected that there was more to Taylor’s silence than simple reticence.
“How did Taylor’s mother die?” she asked abruptly.
He stiffened but answered readily enough. “Brain aneurysm.”
“Oh, God, that’s awful.”
He scrubbed his face with one hand. “Yeah.”
“Did Taylor ever see her mother in the hospital?”
“I don’t know. Why?”
“I wondered if maybe your mother’s accident brought back any memories for her.”
Matt’s eyes sharpened, concern cutting through his fatigue. “She give you any trouble? Problems at bedtime?”
She hastened to reassure him. “We were fine. Taylor was fine. Did you know she sleeps with the dog?”
Matt nodded. “Protection. From monsters under the bed.”
Allison felt a prickle of unease, stirred by instinct or her teacher’s training. “Imaginary monsters? Or real ones?”
Matt frowned, uncomprehending.
He looked so tired. Her heart clenched. She didn’t want to hit him with this now, when he was already reeling on his feet. But more than his feelings—or hers—was at stake. She had to think about Taylor.
“She wore sweatpants to bed,” Allison said.
His brows knit. “So?”
“It’s seventy degrees outside.”
He shrugged. “You want me to buy her pajamas, I’ll buy her pajamas.”
Allison sighed. “I don’t think Taylor needs pajamas. The sweatpants are a sign, like the oversize jerseys or the baggy jeans. Or the nightmares.”
He shook his head. “Lots of kids—”
“Have nightmares. I know.” The silence crowded between them. Should she say more? At this point her suspicions were only, well, suspicions. “There’s also the fact that she doesn’t like to be hugged.”
Matt’s eyes had darkened to navy. His face set like stone. “She hardly knows us. Not everybody’s a hugger.”
Allison’s stomach dropped. But having come this far, she forced herself to go on. “I don’t know anything about Taylor’s situation before she came to live with you. But have you considered that she might benefit from professional help?”
“You mean a shrink.”
“A child psychologist, yes,” she said calmly. “Taylor’s a strong little girl with a loving family. I’m sure she’ll heal in time. But her experience is bound to leave scars. It doesn’t help to ignore her wounds.”
Or yours, either.
“Better than having some exper
t pick at the scabs. Taylor needs her parents. No therapist in the world can change that. And I can’t give them to her.”
The frustration in his voice tore at her chest. He was such a good man, with so much love to give. But his feelings were buried as deeply as Taylor’s.
“You’re there for her,” Allison said softly. The way you’re there for everyone else.
“I don’t know what to do for her.”
“You could start by talking to her,” she suggested. “More than anything, Taylor needs to know that she can confide in you. That she doesn’t have to deal with whatever’s upsetting her alone.”
She could see from his face that the idea made him uncomfortable, but he nodded slowly. “Yeah. I can do that.”
She looked down at him, at the harsh stubble of his jaw, the tender line of his mouth, and felt her heart unraveling and spooling at his feet. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to hit you with this tonight.”
He shrugged. “I had to hear it sometime.”
The silence collected again like shadows in the corners of the room. Matt sat, his gaze turned inward, his thoughts far away while she waited, aching for him. Yearning for him.
He roused, raising his head. “Did I thank you for coming over?”
The tension inside her eased. “You couldn’t keep me away,” she said honestly.
“I appreciate it.” His gaze captured hers. “You being here for the kids.”
For them.
For you.
I love you.
The realization loomed inside her, solid as a rock sticking out of the ocean, staggering in its simplicity.
She loved him. Loved his quiet steadiness, his uncomplicated directness, his commitment to family, his determination to do the right thing. Loved Matt, the whole man.
She wanted to sing with her discovery, to shout, to babble promises.
But tonight wasn’t about her. Or even about them. She couldn’t burden him with her feelings now while he was raw and reeling.
She would not tell him.
She rested her hands lightly on his shoulders, feeling his muscles heavy and warm under her palms.
She would show him instead.
“I didn’t think they should be alone.” She stroked a line from his neck to his shoulders, digging her fingers in a little to loosen the knots of tension there. “Nobody should be alone at a time like this.”
Carolina Home Page 18
