Fatal Hearts

by Norah Wilson

  “Josh?”

  “Yeah, I kind of talked to him. And by kind of, I mean I know it was probably me having a conversation with myself while out of body, and Josh was a projection of my own mind. But it felt like he was there. I told him I needed to get back, because now that I’d found you, I couldn’t lose you.”

  “Josh? Omigod.” She clamped a hand over her mouth and her eyes flooded again.

  “Or my oxygen-deprived brain’s projection of him. Whatever the case, it was comforting. He was happy, peaceful. Like maybe death isn’t the lonely, cold, dark place I imagined it to be.”

  Tears streamed down her face, but she was smiling. “That makes me so happy. You have no idea.”

  “I’m not saying it was Josh. I don’t know if I believe in that woo-woo stuff.”

  She grabbed some tissues and blotted the tears, then blew her nose. “I choose to believe it. It’s so comforting.”

  “Then you’ll also be comforted to know he says he’ll come back and kick my ass if I do anything to hurt you.”

  Her laugh was choked with emotion. “What about . . . Did he say anything—”

  “He still loves you. He’ll always love you. But he says it’s different there. And, yes, he knows I love you and he’s good with that.”

  She sniffed. “Really?”

  “Really,” he said. “Now, can we get back to the part where you said you love me too?”

  She tossed the tissues and sat down on the edge of the bed again. “It’s true. I tried not to. I tried really, really hard. I kept telling myself you’d be leaving soon—that I wanted you to leave so I could get back to my normal life, but I couldn’t help myself.”

  He took her hand. “Does this mean you’ll release me from my promise?”

  “It does.” She bent to kiss him and he caught the back of her head and held her mouth there, giving her all the tenderness in his heart. She pulled back a moment later to give them both a chance to breathe.

  “But don’t go thinking you can get away with that again,” she said sternly. “No dying to get your way.”

  He laughed. “I wouldn’t dream of it, baby.”

  EPILOGUE

  Boyd looked out over the crowd assembled to watch him and Hayden take their marriage vows. He’d always thought that if or when he got married, it would be one of those city hall civil ceremonies. Hayden would have been good with that, but he’d wanted to give her a beautiful, intimate wedding.

  And, yeah, okay, he’d wanted the world to watch as the most extraordinary, strong, kind, brave, beautiful woman pledged to love him. Well, everyone in his world anyway. A world that had grown enormously in the past year.

  He glanced to his left where his best man, fellow Fredericton City Police Detective Ray Morgan, stood. Of course, Morgan looked like he’d stepped straight out of the pages of GQ in his charcoal-gray tux. The man had actually sat down with Hayden and Boyd to pick the tuxedos. Grace Morgan had been terrifically helpful to Hayden too, in picking out gowns for the attendants.

  Morgan adjusted his tie and raised an eyebrow.

  Boyd lifted a hand to his own tie to find it slightly askew. Leave it to the clotheshorse to notice that millimeter by which it was off. He adjusted it. Morgan gave him a barely perceptible nod.

  The organ’s tempo changed slightly, and his half brother, Jordan, entered the church with Hayden’s grandparents and guided them to their seats. His groomsmen were doubling as ushers, given how small the gathering was. Boyd had felt a little weird asking Jordan to do it, but he hadn’t been at all insulted. Not much of Sylvia in that one. He was much more like his father, thank God. A year after the two of them met, Boyd still didn’t feel like they were true brothers, and maybe he never would. On the other hand, the only bar he had to measure sibling relationships was being one half of identical twins. Probably most sibling relationships didn’t measure up to that. And to Jordan’s credit, he was a good man and a decent fisherman. He was also endlessly grateful that Boyd didn’t hold his mother’s heinous actions against him.

  As Jordan made the stately walk to the back of the church again, Hayden’s mother came in on the arm of his other groomsman, Detective Craig Walker. Now those men—Ray and Craig and a few of the other guys—felt more like brothers than his half brother did. But family was family, and he was grateful for all of it.

  Hayden’s mother shot him a smile that outshone even the beautiful, shoulder-baring dress she wore. Hayden had said the dress was designed by one of Haiti’s hottest designers, Jean Yves Someone-or-Other. Boyd knew nothing about fashion, but even he could see how the garment brought together, with surprising harmony, the colors of the sea and earth of Evelyn Walsh’s native Haiti. Of course, like her daughter, Mrs. Walsh could have worn a burlap sack and still looked fantastic. Evelyn’s skin was slightly darker than Hayden’s, and she had brown eyes and short-cropped, tightly curled dark hair. She possessed the strong European facial features indicative of her mixed heritage. And when she smiled like she was doing right now, Boyd could totally see Hayden in her. He smiled right back.

  He let his gaze sweep the crowd, lighting with pleasure on Frank and Ella McBride. Beside them sat the Senator. He had an aide beside him who helped with his mobility issues. His recovery had been remarkable, perhaps because he’d never actually had a stroke. At least not initially. As it turned out, he’d gotten an anonymous tip that his first love, Arianna Duncan, who’d disappeared from his life without explanation, had given birth to twin boys before she died. Boyd’s money was on Dr. Gunn dropping that dime. Wherever the tip had come from, Lewis Stratton had hired a private investigator to try to find Arianna’s boys, but Sylvia had found out. She’d started poisoning him immediately. What she passed off to the doctors as a stroke was a toxic metabolic issue created by drug intoxication. She’d carefully managed him from that point on, keeping him minimally conscious. He could talk quite well now, and he had done so at length with the police.

  Behind them sat Boyd’s aunt Sandra, her daughter and son-in-law, Angela and Jeremy Wood, and their now toddling baby girl, April.

  So much family. And now he was about to acquire some more. He glanced back at Hayden’s mother and the various aunts, uncles, and cousins in the pews behind. It was easy to see where Hayden got her passion and humor from. If he and Hayden had kids, he hoped they inherited all of that. Of course, there was a chance they could inherit his LQTS, which would suck. They hadn’t made any decisions, but Boyd had made it clear that he was a fan of adoption if she didn’t want to risk it. Kids were still a ways off, though. She’d yet to do her first stint with Doctors Without Borders, or DWeeB, as he liked to call it, if only to get a rise out of Hayden.

  She actually had a few months left on her residency. And to Boyd’s surprise and delight, she’d recently announced that she’d accepted the recruiter’s offer to come back to Fredericton after her months in Haiti. One of her rotations had introduced her to a collaborative practice on the Northside, and she’d been totally sold on their multidisciplinary approach. It wasn’t Toronto or Vancouver, but her experience there showed her there were plenty of people who needed her services. People who were marginalized by poverty, illiteracy, mental illness, addiction, and countless other reasons.

  Boyd had kissed the hell out of her, then dragged her out house shopping. She’d wanted a house with a huge interior wall big enough for his beloved panoramic art installation, but he’d shaken his head. The feeling that he used to get from looking at that picture he now got from looking into her eyes, only it was a million times better. He’d since sold both the condo and the art to the same buyer. Their life was here, at least for the moment, and give or take a few DWeeB bumps.

  The organ music changed again, jolting him back to the moment. Hayden’s maid of honor, Courtney Clark, a friend from Hayden’s high school days in Montreal, was coming up the aisle on Jordan Stratton’s arm. She looked gorgeous in an elegan
t gray gown. She took her place with a smile for Boyd.

  Next came bridesmaid Gayle Ballard, one of Hayden’s friends from med school, on the arm of Craig Walker. Dressed in a slightly different but identically colored gray gown, she looked a little dazzled by the size of her escort. But Boyd knew Craig was as happily married as the rest of them. There must be something in the water in Fredericton.

  Boyd smiled at the next pair. Grace Morgan, looking as classically beautiful as ever, on the arm of Tommy Godsoe. Tommy was a former police K-9 handler turned K-9 breeder and trainer, and he and Boyd got on like brothers from other mothers.

  Then every eye in the house was on the double doors as Hayden came through on her father’s arm.

  His breath caught at the sight of her. The dress she wore was beautifully simple, and it hugged her curves lovingly. Her gorgeous hair had been twisted up, but not in the loose, sexy thing she usually did with it. This was smooth and sleek, and as lacking in ornamentation as the clean lines of the dress. If this was Grace’s influence, he approved. It gave her a classic, timeless look. And her face . . . God, he loved that face.

  He got an elbow in his side. “Breathe, McBride,” Ray Morgan murmured. “If you faint, everyone’ll think you died.”

  Man, drop dead once and they never let you forget it. “Isn’t that getting old for you, Morgan?”

  “Nope.”

  Hayden and her father had reached the chancel steps and Michael Walsh took his daughter’s hand and placed it in Boyd’s. “Take care of her, son.”

  “I will, sir.”

  As her father moved to take his seat, Boyd whispered to Hayden, “Are you ready for this?”

  There it was, that light in her eyes, the one he never tired of seeing. The one that made him feel like he could do anything, take on anything.

  “I’m ready.”

  As they turned to face the minister, Boyd swore he could feel Josh with him, feel his approval and that warm, cocooning peace. Then the sensation was gone.

  The minister was talking, but Hayden was staring at him, wide-eyed. “Josh?” she mouthed.

  He gave her a slight nod and mouthed, “Yeah.”

  Smiling as though she felt the same sense of benediction he did, she faced forward again.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  To Staff Sergeant Matt Myers, of the Criminal Investigation Division of the Fredericton Police Force, my deepest gratitude. Matt keeps me on the straight and narrow with respect to police procedural elements, including gently correcting me when I fall into American terminology/concepts in my Canadian setting.

  I am also deeply indebted to Dr. Stephen MacLean, who was the perfect consultant for this project. Not only is he an MD with a wealth of experience staffing ERs (my heroine is a medical resident working largely in an emergency department), he is also a film producer/writer with a deep feel for story.

  I definitely had a dream team in Dr. MacLean and S. Sgt. Myers, and I wish to emphasize that any mistakes I’ve made or liberties I’ve taken are entirely my own.

  Thank you, too, to my editor, JoVon Sotak, and the amazing team at Montlake Romance.

  To my agent Cori Deyoe, thank you for always being in my corner.

  A big thank-you to my family for their patience during the deadline craziness.

  And for their unflagging support and encouragement, thank you to so many writer friends, particularly my homies, Heather Doherty, Lina Gardiner, Kate Kelly, Barbara Phinney, Linda Hall, and Lori Gallagher. And out there in the wider world, thank you to the awesome Pamela Clare, Bonnie Vanak, Alice Duncan, Alice Gaines, Jan Zimlich, and Mimi Riser, to name but a few. Also, the amazing authors of Rock*It Reads. Last but not least, a shout out to the Wet Noodle Posse, who’ve been wielding those wet noodles—and sharing their support and knowledge—for eleven years.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Photo © 2013 Studio 16 Digital Photography

  Norah Wilson is a USA Today bestselling author of romantic suspense, including Every Breath She Takes, Guarding Suzannah, Saving Grace, and Protecting Paige. A native Canadian, Wilson lives in Fredericton, New Brunswick, with her family. Visit her website at www.norahwilsonwrites.com.