by Joss Wood
He saw her as she was now, today. Strong. Independent. Confident.
Leaving was something she had to do.
Wasn’t it?
“Tanna? Where are you?”
Tanna jerked her head back at the loud shout from the hallway. She saw the WTF? look in Levi’s eyes, knowing she hadn’t imagined the panic in Carrick’s voice.
“Tanna, I need you, dammit!” Carrick’s voice was a loud roar outside the door.
Levi spun around, opened the door behind him to Carrick, whose face was ashen beneath his tan.
Tanna placed a hand on her brother’s arm, her nails digging in to grab his attention. “Carrick! What’s the problem?”
“It’s Sadie. I think she’s choking. You need to come.”
Tanna didn’t hesitate; she just kicked off her shoes, lifted her skirts and started to run.
Eleven
The doors to the ambulance had barely closed when the driver accelerated, desperate to take Sadie, who was still breathing via a pen tube jammed into her throat, to the nearest emergency room. Tanna felt Finn’s arm around her waist and Ronan’s big body shielding her from the freezing wind. Soft fabric enveloped her and Tanna looked down to see Ronan’s jacket on her bare shoulders.
Ronan placed his hand on her back. “Honey, you need to get inside. Your feet must be freezing.”
Tanna looked down, suddenly realizing she couldn’t feel her toes. Coming back to where she was—standing on the cold stone steps leading up to the hotel’s front door—she looked around and blinked.
“Where’s Levi?” she asked, as Ronan and Finn escorted her back into the lobby of the iconic Forrester-Grantham hotel. Tanna saw the strange looks she was getting and shrugged. Let people talk—what did she care? She wouldn’t be staying in Boston so what people said didn’t worry her.
“We’re not sure, honey,” Finn gently told her.
She looked up into Finn’s face and blinked back her tears, not wanting to hurt him by telling him that, while she appreciated his support, she wanted Levi.
Right. Damn. Now.
“I’ll go up to the function room and see whether he’s still there,” Ronan offered.
Tanna watched Ronan walk away and stared down at the grubby, wet hem of her dress and her blue feet. She felt like she was operating outside of herself, like she was watching herself go through the motions.
“Are you okay, Tan?” Finn asked, obviously concerned.
She really wasn’t.
She was going to toss her cookies—and her champagne and those delicious canapés—right now.
Breathing through her nose, Tanna counted to ten, then to twenty, pushing the nausea away. Images of the past twenty minutes floated through her brain, Sadie lying on her back, her eyes wide and terrified, gagging from the obstruction in her throat. Her hand fluttered around her neck, silently begging Tanna to help her.
Tanna’s training kicked in and she’d started barking orders like a drill sergeant. By the time she was done, she’d performed an emergency tracheotomy and Sadie was breathing again, her blue eyes wide and scared.
Tanna hadn’t panicked or seen dots in front of her eyes or battled to breathe. No, she’d remained calm and cool and in control, doing what she needed to do, what she’d committed her life to doing. She’d saved Sadie’s life, just like she’d saved other lives in other situations.
Addy was still dead, but Tanna was paying it forward as best she could. This was what she was supposed to do. Working at Murphy’s was lovely, fun and light and fluffy, but it wasn’t important, imperative. Saving lives was.
And she’d done it. Without a single PTSD symptom.
Tanna felt Levi’s heat and then his big arms came around her, cuddling her close. Tanna turned, buried her face in his chest and wrapped her arms around his waist, wishing she could slide inside him.
“Well done, Tan. You saved her life.”
“Can’t stop shaking,” Tanna told him, feeling tears slip down her face.
“I’ve got you.” Levi stroked her back, up into her hair, his hands and body warming her as Ronan’s designer jacket couldn’t do. Handing her shoes to Finn, his strong arm around her waist, he led her to a sofa in a secluded corner of the lobby and sat down, pulling her onto his lap. Tanna buried her face in his neck and just cried harder, her sobs coming out as a series of hiccups.
She normally only fell apart when she was alone, when she was guaranteed her privacy. But this was different, she wasn’t seeing Addy, she couldn’t smell blood, she wasn’t back in her long-ago car, her legs pinned by metal.
She wasn’t crying because of the PTSD, she was crying because, this time, for the first time, she recognized herself again, as the EMT she’d been for so many years. She’d done what she needed to do, quickly, efficiently.
She’d saved Sadie’s life. And maybe, just maybe, her PTSD symptoms had left as quickly as they’d arrived.
Tanna wasn’t sure how long she cried. It could’ve been for two minutes or twenty, but eventually Levi patted her back and commanded her to stop. The combination of his sharp tone and the light grip of his fingers on her shoulder snapped her head up and she stared at him through waterlogged eyes.
“I don’t understand—this is what you do. This is what you trained for,” Levi said. “You’ve been in worse situations than this, Tanna, surely?”
Tanna nodded. “Yeah, obviously.”
“Then I don’t understand your reaction, the tears and the falling apart,” Levi said, thoroughly confused.
Tanna wiped her tears away with the heels of her hands, conceding it was a fair point. She slid off his lap and perched on the edge of the sofa next to him.
“Well?” Levi demanded.
She wanted to lie to him, but she didn’t have the energy. “For the last few weeks, I’ve been battling with flashbacks of my accident, with anxiety and a range of other PTSD symptoms.”
Levi stilled, his hand tightening on her thigh. “When did this start, exactly?”
Tanna pulled Ronan’s jacket tightly across her body. “A couple of weeks before I left London, I attended an accident. A teenage girl was trapped, and they had to cut her out of the car.”
“Just like you.”
No. Wrong. He didn’t understand. “Not me—she looked just like Addy. I felt like I was back there, in the car, with her. At that accident scene, I was the first person to reach the girl, but I froze. I couldn’t treat her. I zoned out. My colleague had to take over.” Tanna nodded, staring at the wall behind him. “Like Addy, she didn’t make it. She stopped breathing and I can’t help thinking if I had done something for her sooner, I could’ve saved her.”
She hadn’t admitted this, not even to herself. But Tanna knew she had to lance this wound, allow the muck to flow out. “I feel so damn guilty, Lee. About her and about Addy. Since then I’ve been having flashbacks, anxiety and really bad dreams, and worse than that, I second-guessed myself on the couple of rescues I attended after that. My supervisor sent me to a psychologist, and I was put on medical leave. They strongly recommended I take a vacation and that I use the time to get therapy for my PTSD symptoms. And if I don’t get it sorted out, I won’t have a job.”
Tanna stood up, sliding her arms into the sleeves of Ronan’s jacket. She pulled in a long breath, held Levi’s eyes and forced herself to speak. “I didn’t fall apart just now because I had flashbacks, Levi.”
“Okay.” Levi frowned, puzzled. “I don’t understand what you are trying to tell me, Tanna.”
“I fell apart because I didn’t,” Tanna quietly stated. “I saw Sadie and I knew what I had to do, and how. I didn’t think about the accident, about Addy, about that night so long ago. I just did my job.”
Tanna sent him a small, sad smile. “I think I’ve conquered my demons, Levi.”
She could go back to London, return
to her job.
So why wasn’t she ecstatically happy?
* * *
The next morning, Levi walked into his kitchen, crutches under his arms. Jules and Darby and Callie stood at three of the four corners of the big table, each holding a stack of different colored rectangles. The table was covered by a large piece of paper printed with circles.
The heading Lockwood–Brogan Seating Arrangements was a solid clue they were discussing his least favorite subject.
Again.
“Why does wedding planning have to take place at my house?” he demanded.
“Because Noah threatened to kidnap me and whisk me off to Vegas if I asked him one more wedding-related question,” Jules told him, her attention elsewhere.
Noah was getting married and Levi was the one suffering for it? So not fair.
“Where’s Tanna?” Callie asked after he gave her a kiss on her cheek. His mom looked amazing, happy and fit. Mason was good for her.
Levi didn’t think he was good for Tanna.
Levi rubbed the back of his neck, thinking back to the night before. After her rock-his-world declaration, Tanna had extracted herself from his arms and headed for the restroom. When she returned, she was extraordinarily pale but dry-eyed and composed.
And as remote as a Siberian wilderness.
Instead of sleeping with him downstairs, she’d returned to the guest room and he’d given her the space she so obviously required. He’d barely slept himself, missing her soft breathing, her soft body, her gorgeous, feminine scent. He needed to see her, now. Immediately.
Crap, he was toast.
“So, what actually happened last night?” Callie asked. “I heard Tanna was involved in an emergency rescue at the Murphy cocktail party.”
Levi couldn’t believe how fast news traveled in Boston. And Callie, once one of Boston’s most popular socialites, was still one of the first people to hear anything interesting.
Darby’s head shot up. “What happened?” she asked, placing rectangles around a circle on the table.
“Carrick’s new art detective choked and Tanna gave her an emergency tracheotomy,” Levi told them, heading for the coffee machine. “She saved her life.”
Jules’s eyes widened. “That is so cool.”
It was cool. But saving people had taken an enormous toll on Tanna and nobody realized the heavy burden she carried. And, as much as Tanna wanted to believe she was cured, he wasn’t convinced PTSD symptoms came and went that quickly. In a few weeks, months, there might be another trigger and the symptoms could come roaring back.
He knew what she needed, and it wasn’t a career that made her relive that long ago, horrible night in all its Technicolor gruesomeness. He’d been so angry with her for so long, but he’d finally accepted and understood why she’d needed to run.
And how naive he’d been to think she was ready for marriage a few months after a serious accident, after seeing her friend die. How arrogant he’d been to think that by pulling her into marriage, pulling her under his wing, he could just make those horrible memories go away.
He’d wanted to protect her, had been so convinced marriage was the way to do that. He’d been so damn determined not to let anything bad happen to her again, to wrap her up in cotton wool, to love the memories of that night away.
But trauma couldn’t be wished away, or simply forgotten or camouflaged by a white wedding and good sex. It had to be dealt with, examined, worked through, looked in the eye and wrestled with.
Tanna had been attempting to come to terms with her trauma by choosing a career where she could make a difference, to atone. To give back and lessen the survivor’s guilt she lived with.
But Levi knew what she did not: guilt couldn’t be assuaged by doing a job she hated.
Okay, maybe hate was too strong a word—a job she was good at but didn’t particularly enjoy. Because her eyes didn’t light up with excitement when she spoke about emergency medicine, her lips didn’t curl upward like they did when she was talking about a painting or admiring the design of a dress, the intricate work that went into making Victorian-era jewelry.
He knew what she didn’t: she belonged in Boston, at Murphy’s, working in a field she adored, with her family. She’d blossomed since she’d come back to Boston. And her unfurling had nothing—okay, maybe a little—do with him. But any fool could see she was happy here, that Boston was where she needed to be.
Levi stared out the kitchen window, thinking hard. His agreement with Tanna, if they could still call it by that name, had only a few weeks left. Revenge was forgotten and he’d moved past the idea of a no-strings fling. He didn’t have much time to persuade her not to go back to London, to start a new life, or a new chapter of her life, in Boston.
With him.
Levi pushed his phone into the back pocket of his faded jeans and stared out onto the snow-covered back garden. They were older, wiser, still crazy attracted.
They worked. Nobody else did, or ever would. She was his person and she belonged in Boston, with him.
And damn, it was time she realized that.
Levi wanted her in his house and his life. He still wanted to marry her, wanted her to be the only one to wear his ring.
His heart lurched into his throat and felt like it was stuck there. He’d tried that once before and it hadn’t worked out. She’d bailed.
She wouldn’t do that again, he argued with himself.
Or, if she wanted to, he was pretty sure he could talk her out of it.
They’d made no promises, but he could see their connection—it was too early, and he was too scared to call it love—in her eyes. It was in her actions, in her touch, and he sensed it when she curled up into him, pulling his arm around her to hold her close. He saw it in the way she loved to touch him—from soft, gentle, I’m-so-glad-you’re-here touches to hot, greedy kisses at night.
It would be okay—it had to be. Life would never be so cruel as to give him a taste of her only to rip her from his life again.
They’d make it this time. They were stronger, wiser, older, more sensible. It would be fine...
“Levi, where do you think we should put Cousin Bob?”
Levi gripped the bridge of his nose with his thumb and index finger. “The point is, why would you invite him in the first place? He’s a stepcousin once removed and we only ever see or speak to him at weddings. Or funerals.”
“He’s family!” Jules protested, but her eyes told him she was willing to be convinced.
“If you invite him, you’re asking for trouble.”
Jules nodded. She crumpled the rectangle and tossed it at Levi’s chest. “Cousin Bob will not receive his formal invitation. That okay with you, Mom?”
“Since the man tried to French kiss me on my wedding day, I’m more than okay with it.” Callie smiled, her eyes far away. “Your dad punched him, sent him flying into the cake.”
His sisters’ mouths fell open and Levi laughed.
“I’ve seen pictures of your cake. It was beautiful,” Jules wailed.
“And it tasted like sawdust. All of Aunt Penelope’s cakes did. She was brilliant at icing, but her cakes were revolting,” Callie explained. “I wasn’t upset.”
Weddings, Levi thought. He couldn’t wait for this one to be over. But, as soon as it was done, he’d have to listen to DJ’s plans, then Darby’s. Why was life punishing him like this? And why in his own house?
“Morning.”
Levi’s head spun around to see Tanna across the room, standing in the doorway, dressed in jeans, boots and her thigh-length leather coat. With a multicolored scarf wrapped around her throat, she looked like she was heading out.
She probably wanted some air, Levi told himself. Maybe she thought they needed supplies—he had to be misreading the I’m leaving sign flashing in her eyes.
He was overreac
ting...
He hoped.
Tanna answered the few questions his nosy sisters threw at her about last night’s excitement, her answers becoming more clipped as the discussion progressed. Yeah, she was still upset by Sadie’s choking incident and she didn’t want to rehash it.
Tanna stepped into the kitchen and put her hands into the pockets of her coat. It was warm in the kitchen. In a second, she’d slip it off, head for the coffee machine, slide into a chair.
Tanna just looked down at the large sheet, her expression curious. “Are you trying to torture Levi with wedding plans?”
He was pretty sure that was their intention. “I don’t have any room at Lockwood House,” Jules replied.
Yeah sure, he wasn’t buying what she was selling. Jules lived at Noah’s family estate, Lockwood House, the first house in the country-club community, and still magnificent. Callie and Darby, beneficiaries of the Brogan Family Trust, lived in houses just as big.
“BS,” he said.
Jules exchanged a look with Callie and gently shrugged. “Being here makes me feel closer to Dad. It’s as if I’m waiting for him to come in from work, just hanging like we used to do. He’d be so involved in the planning, driving me nuts—”
Levi stared down at his coffee cup, wishing he could ignore the jealousy he always experienced when he heard the sad, wistful, loving note in his sisters’ voices when they spoke of their father.
His relationship with his father had been so different from the twins’. With them their dad had been softer, more relaxed, kinder. They hadn’t seen the extremes of his personality, his drive and his reckless need to push the boundaries.
They had no idea their father took so many risks, that he flew so close to the sun.
Why was Levi so different from Ray? Why did he need to have everything tied up, corralled and controlled? Why did he feel the need to restrain his dad’s actions, have this fierce need to protect his mom and sisters? Where had that come from and why was he like that?
