All he and Kendra could do once the paramedics got there was pray.
Damien had his arms tightly wrapped around Kendra in the emergency room waiting area. She was inconsolable, fearing her mother wouldn’t make it.
“Baby,” he said, gently stroking her arms as he held her, “it’s going to be okay.” He felt inclined to tell her words of reassurance, even though he knew there were no guarantees. But the paramedics had been encouraged by her pulse once they’d arrived and the fact that she was breathing, albeit shallowly.
“If she dies…” Kendra croaked, unable to complete her thought.
“She won’t die.” And Damien said a silent prayer that she wouldn’t and also that she wouldn’t be afflicted with brain damage.
“Ms. Harris?” came a male voice.
Both Kendra and Damien looked up to see a man in green scrubs with a stethoscope around his neck.
“Yes,” Kendra said, rising slowly.
Damien stood with her and helped brace her as they waited to hear what the doctor had to say.
“I’m Dr. Marlow,” he began. “And the good news is that your mother is going to be okay.”
Though the news was good, Kendra’s knees buckled, and Damien had to hold her up.
“You’re the one who performed CPR?” the doctor asked, facing Damien.
“Yes,” Damien told him. “I’m finishing up my residency in oncology.”
“Thank God you were there,” Dr. Marlow said. “Mrs. Harris had a heart attack, but by the time you found her, she was in cardiac arrest.”
“Aren’t they the same thing?” Kendra asked, her voice a little shaky.
“No, but heart attacks can lead to cardiac arrest—where the heart stops beating altogether—if the patient doesn’t get immediate medical care. But your friend here—by giving her CPR once her heart and breathing had stopped—saved your mother’s life. A few more minutes and she could have had irreversible brain damage. Any longer, and she would have died.”
“Oh my God,” Kendra uttered and turned her head into Damien’s shoulder.
“But,” the doctor went on, “like I said, your mother is going to be okay. We’re giving her medication right now to unblock her arteries. We’ll see how well the drugs help before determining if she needs to have artery bypass surgery.”
“Oh my God,” Kendra uttered.
“I feel very positive that the drugs will do the job,” Dr. Marlow said. “Your mother will have to be in hospital for several days until we’re confident she’s healthy enough to go home.”
“Oh no,” Kendra commented. “She’ll be here for Christmas.”
“I’m afraid so,” the doctor told her. “But this is the best place for her right now.”
“Of course,” Damien said.
“Is she going to be okay…long term?” Kendra asked.
“Once she returns home, she’ll have to strictly monitor her blood pressure and make changes to her diet. And if she does, she’ll greatly reduce her chances of another heart attack. She’ll also need to take daily medication.”
“Oh, I’ll make sure she stays on top of her health,” Kendra said. “I’ll even get her on an exercise routine. Whatever it takes.”
“That will definitely help,” the doctor said. “Slowly at first, so there’s not too much pressure on her heart. By the time she heads home, I’ll make sure you know everything you need to.”
“Can I see her?” Kendra asked.
“You can. But only one visitor at a time.”
Dr. Marlow led the way to the room where Mrs. Harris was resting on a bed and hooked up to various monitors. The electrocardiogram machine was monitoring her heart rate. Damien stopped at the door, allowing Kendra to go in first.
After about a minute, Kendra came out into the hallway to get him. “My mother wants to see you,” Kendra said.
Damien entered the room, where he was pleased to see the robust Mrs. Harris very much alive. “I don’t know how to thank you,” she said. “You saved my life.”
“No thanks are necessary,” Damien told her. “I’m just happy to see you well.”
“Getting there,” Mrs. Harris corrected him. “Kendra is always telling me I need to cut back on all the fatty foods I eat. Guess I’m gonna have to start listening.”
“You’ll be just fine,” Damien told her, squeezing her hand. And after a moment, he said, “I’m sure Kendra is itching to get back in here to you.”
Damien left the room, where Kendra was standing at the door, ready to step inside and take his place. And he thought that was exactly what she was going to do. Instead, she threw her arms around his neck and hugged him tightly.
“Thank you, Damien. Thank you so much!”
“No need to thank me,” he told her. “Seeing your mother okay is all the thanks I need.”
“I have to thank you,” Kendra said, releasing him so that she could look up into his eyes. “If you weren’t there, if you hadn’t acted so quickly, my mother…she…” She stopped, unable to go on.
Kendra was an emotional mess, her eyes red, her voice still rife with grief. The worst hadn’t happened, and Damien didn’t know how she would cope if it had. This Kendra who stood before him was a fragile woman whom he had never seen before. And he knew without doubt that he wanted to protect her for the rest of his days.
“Shh,” Damien said and gave her a kiss on the forehead.
And as he pulled his lips from her soft skin, he remembered what she’d told him in the car. That they could be friends, but nothing more.
And despite the emergency with Mrs. Harris, his heart ached. Because even being here with Kendra and giving her comfort seemed so right. He wanted to be with her through good times and bad.
But he knew that this was the last place, and definitely the wrong time, to broach this subject with Kendra. So he simply rubbed her shoulders and said, “I’m just glad that I was there. Things happen for a reason, and God saw fit to put me in the place I needed to be at the right time.”
“You are still the hero of the hour,” Kendra said, offering him her first smile since this all had happened.
Damien watched Kendra walk back to her mother’s side, where she took her hand and gripped it. She sat in the chair opposite the bed and leaned in close, pressing her mother’s hand to her face.
Damien regarded them. He saw the love between them. Perhaps because of what Kendra had said about her father leaving them, he could see that she was fiercely protective of her mother.
He took a step backward from the door, then another. Kendra’s eyes were now closed pensively, or perhaps she was praying.
Damien suddenly felt like an intruder. This was a time for mother and daughter to be together.
Turning, he started down the hallway, his heart constricting as he walked away. He was glad that he’d been there for Kendra and her mother. But now that he was walking away from Kendra, and remembering their conversation in the car, he was struck with the very real feeling that the book had just closed on their relationship forever.
Chapter 12
The next forty-eight hours passed with no word from Kendra. Damien felt odd. He knew that she was busy with her mother, that she had probably not left her side. But still, he hoped that she would reach out to him.
Because he was more certain than ever that they had reconnected by fate’s hand.
The same way he had been the one to be there when her mother needed him, he was certain that fate had put them together at the airport to give them a second chance at love.
However, he also knew that Kendra needed to figure that out for herself. She had to want him as much as he wanted her.
A part of him had made the decision to walk away from her as he’d driven away from her mother’s house two days ago, but that had changed once he’d gone back and seen Kendra in a state of such distress. He was struck with the profound feeling that he needed to be in her life to protect her…and after two days of reflecting about their relationship, he wasn’t
going to walk away from her without a fight.
Christmas was three days away, and he knew what he was going to do. He was going to the store to buy a special gift for Kendra.
He was going out on a limb with the gift he had in mind. He knew he’d be taking a huge risk.
But he wasn’t going to let fear hold him back. After all, he had fate in his corner.
* * *
Kendra had been by her mother’s side for practically two days straight. She had gone home only to shower and change clothes, and only felt okay doing so because a myriad of other family had been at the hospital in her place.
She was exhausted, and when her aunt and uncle convinced her to go home for the night, Kendra reluctantly agreed. She needed a good night’s sleep.
With the stress of the past two days, she had put her personal life on the back burner. She’d been contemplating if she should take some time off from the senator’s office to stay in Louisville and care for her mother. She had allowed her mother’s plight to push any concerns about Damien from her mind.
But alone in her mother’s house now, Kendra thought about him. How, if not for him, her mother likely wouldn’t be here right now.
She’d allowed herself a full two days of no contact with him in part as a test to see if she missed him. If, with her mother’s medical emergency, she could put him out of her mind once and for all.
She couldn’t. And she knew that she never would.
In fact, she wanted to see him, finally have that conversation she had done her best to avoid. But she knew that it would seem wishy-washy to him if she were to suddenly call him up and tell him that she’d had a change of heart about their relationship. Or worse, he might determine that she wanted to be with him out of a sense of gratitude.
So she couldn’t tell him…she had to show him. Show him with a gesture that meant something.
She may have told him that they could only be friends, but she knew even as she’d spoken the words then that she was lying. The truth was, Damien had always had her heart—no matter how much she had tried to tell herself that that was not the case.
Being apart from him for two days, she realized that now more than ever. It was the very reason she was so afraid to talk about anything emotional with him. It was the reason she’d tried to dismiss their interactions as simply sexual. Because if she faced the truth—the truth that her heart was still as entangled with him as it had been years ago—she would have been lost. Especially if it turned out that Damien was solely happy to reconnect on a physical level.
But it was obvious that he was willing to explore their relationship again. And he made a compelling argument. The years had passed. They weren’t children anymore. Both of them had made mistakes, yes. But they were grown-up now.
And perhaps the most compelling argument—one Kendra had not even considered—was that he had been scared away by her unflinching attitude. All this time, she hadn’t thought about his fears. She had only considered that she was the one with everything to lose.
His words in the car made it clear that he had been just as afraid of things not working out. And she hadn’t really given him any true reason to trust her, had she?
She wanted to call him that night but resolved not to talk to him until she had the special gift she wanted to give him. Until she was able to show and tell.
The next day, she got up and headed to the mall. She knew exactly what she was going to get at the store. Two gifts. She headed to the toy store, a smile touching her lips as she anticipated what Damien’s reaction would be to the first gift she would present him. Years ago, he had confessed to her that his most favorite Christmas present had been a LEGO set from Santa. He had also told her that his delight had turned to devastation when his older brother had taken the LEGO pieces and tossed them into the fire to see them melt.
So Kendra was going to buy him a LEGO set. Not because she thought he needed one as a twenty-eight-year-old man. But to prove to him that their time together had been special—and that she remembered and cherished their meaningful memories and conversations.
She left the toy store with her purchase in hand and knew that she had one other place to go to. The second gift that she bought she would place into the first. She would let him rifle through the pieces of the LEGO set until he got to this special surprise.
Much the same way you had to peel away the layers of a person to get to their core.
To get to their heart.
* * *
Kendra called Damien later that evening, but his phone had gone straight to voicemail. Then she remembered that Tonya had said Alecia was being christened this weekend and figured that Damien must be busy with his friends and that joyous occasion.
She didn’t leave him a message but called him again the next day, the afternoon of Christmas Eve. She wanted to see him before she went to the hospital in the evening to be with her mother.
She hadn’t heard from him since he had left her at the hospital, and she hoped that it wasn’t because he was upset with her. She hoped that he was simply giving her time to be with her mother.
Surely he would have to know that at this point she was eternally grateful to him and would never want to walk away from him without staying in touch.
Of course he would know that. She’d told him that already, hadn’t she? That they would always be friends.
And that could be the very thing that had him turning his back on her forever. Because he didn’t want her as only a friend.
And Kendra didn’t want that either. But to convey that to Damien, she was going to have to take a chance. Put her heart on the line and, come what may, deal with the consequences. She wasn’t going to let him walk out of her life again without giving her all to win him back.
She was going to let him know just how much he actually meant to her. And it wasn’t because he had saved her mother’s life, but because she had never stopped loving him.
She dialed his number and waited. It rang three times, and she was worried that he wasn’t going to answer. She didn’t even know if he was still in town.
But before the phone rang a fourth time, he picked up. “Hello?”
“Hey,” Kendra said softly. “It’s me.”
“Yeah.” A pause. “How’s your mother?”
“She’s doing very well, thanks. We’re both so grateful.”
“Of course. I’m grateful, too.”
“I was really hoping I could see you today. I…I picked up a present for you.”
“That wasn’t necessary,” Damien said.
“It was—for a number of reasons. I know it’s short notice, but if you could come by, I made a little dinner. It’s not much…but maybe we could share it as we discuss something… Something that has to be said in person.”
“You want to talk?” Damien asked.
“Yes,” Kendra told him. “Very much so.”
“All right,” Damien agreed. “Though you don’t have to feed me. Because I’m heading to Steve and Tonya’s for a Christmas Eve gathering.”
“Oh. Okay, then. As long as you come by. I need to see you.”
“When?”
“It’s three o’clock. Soon?”
“I’ll be there in half an hour or so.”
Kendra ended the call and drew in a breath. Damien had sounded almost dispassionate, and that worried her.
But she would make him understand. She would make him understand that she loved him. She had to.
* * *
At three-forty, the doorbell rang. Kendra, who had been sitting in the living room, bounded out of the recliner and charged to answer it. And as she swung the door open, her heart fluttered in her chest at the sight of the man she loved.
She wondered if she would ever tire of seeing him. Just looking at him, at his incredible handsome face mixed with kindness, made her feel warm all over.
Seeing him at this point also made her nervous. Because she knew that it was now or never.
“Hey,” she said.
“I’m glad you came.”
“No problem,” Damien said.
“Come in.”
Damien entered the house and wandered into the living room. “How’s your mother?”
“She’s doing great. The medication is working to unblock her arteries, which means she won’t have to have surgery. I’m so happy.”
Damien smiled softly. “You’re very protective of your mother.”
Kendra nodded as she hugged her torso. “Yeah. I am.”
“I get it now,” he said. “Why you’ve always been so tough. I thought your need to control everything was part of an unbending personality. But now I realize that you just wanted to protect yourself from getting hurt.”
Kendra stepped toward him. “Damien, let me say something.”
“Let me finish,” Damien said. “I want you to know that I understand now. Why it seemed like you always had your heart guarded with me, despite how well we’d connected. And most important, I want you to know that I don’t blame you.” He paused. “I have something for you.” He reached inside his coat pocket and withdrew a small box wrapped in gold foil.
“What’s that?” Kendra asked.
“A Christmas present,” he told her. “I just want you to know, Kendra, that I never stopped loving you. I was afraid of getting hurt, just like you were. But seeing how much you love your mother…and knowing how badly you had to have been hurt by what your father did, walking out on both of you…” He exhaled sharply. “I guess in a way I became like your father. I didn’t stand by you. I was young, and I didn’t understand the dynamics of everything in our relationship. No wonder you weren’t happy to run into me at the airport.”
“Damien—”
“No,” Damien said, putting his finger on her lips. “Let me finish.”
Kendra closed her lips, but tears were already beginning to fill her eyes. He was nothing like her father, and she wanted him to know that.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t show you how much I cared for you ten years ago. But I hope you know that I’m a different man now. And even if things won’t be easy, I’m hoping you give us a chance. Seeing you again, it was obvious to me why my marriage didn’t work out. Why my wife accused me of not totally committing to her. And she was right—because the only woman I ever really wanted to commit to was you.”
Merry Sexy Christmas Page 18
