Читать книгу From Humbug To Holiday Bride - Zena Valentine - Страница 9

The telephone awakened him late in the night.

Hamish answered the ring quickly, before he was entirely awake. There was a telephone next to his bed and getting late-night calls wasn’t uncommon in his line of work.

“Hi, Hamish,” she said, and he dropped back on his pillow and groaned. He hadn’t seen B. J. Dolliver for three days.

He glanced at his clock. “It’s nearly 3:00 a.m.,” he said, his voice still hoarse from sleep. “Where did you get my number?” He vaguely remembered giving her his card, but he believed she’d thrown it away.

“It’s in the yellow pages under righteous,” she quipped.

“What’s wrong, B.J.? Why are you calling me so late?”

“I’m moving out of this place,” she said. According to his fuzzy calculations, he had been visiting her every few days for nearly four weeks.

“Well, that’s great. They’re letting you go. You must be making good progress. How’s the arm?” Although she’d never appeared to accept his offer of friendship, she’d never followed through on her threat to have the hospital staff remove him.

“Arm’s getting better all the time.”

“Where are you going?”

“I get to pick the place.” He sensed a warning in the way her voice lilted up slightly on the last word, and he tried to shake off the fog of deep sleep that clouded his thoughts.

“So, have you made a decision?” he asked, wishing he could think clearly.

“I thought maybe you’d drop by and help me with that.”

“When?”

“In about an hour, preferably.”

“No more games, B.J. It’s nearly three in the morning. What’s the problem?”

“The problem is, there is no problem!” she cried. “It’s all cut-and-dried, all decided! The medical profession is turning me loose. They’ve given me all these wonderful places to choose from for the next phase of my life. Beautiful places. One of them even has a swimming pool.”

“I don’t understand,” he mumbled, pinching his eyes closed, wanting to know what was causing her distress.

“You wouldn’t. I don’t even know why I called you. See you around, Hamish.”

“Wait!” He was afraid she would hang up and he couldn’t allow that. He forced his mind to work, threw the covers back and turned to sit with his legs over the side of his old four-poster bed. “Give me time to dress. It’ll take me half an hour to drive—”

“No…that won’t be necessary,” she said, but her voice was suddenly soft and hoarse.

“What?”

“Forget I called.” He thought he heard a slight warble, but he couldn’t be sure. “Go back to sleep,” she said, clearing her throat. He closed his eyes again and stood on the cool hardwood floor, rotating his shoulders to stretch his muscles as he dressed. “Hamish?” she questioned when he didn’t answer.

“I’ll be there,” he said.

“No. I didn’t mean it. Really, 1 didn’t mean it. I was just…it was stupid…I’ll never forgive you if you embarrass me by coming down here in the middle of the night. Besides, they just gave me a sleeping pill, and I won’t even know you’re here.”

“You wouldn’t have called if you weren’t in trouble,” he replied.

“Trouble?” she chided, but he detected a lack of force in her words. “You know me better than that. Now, go back to sleep. I’m going there myself.”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Please,” she whispered. “Please don’t be so damned…serious. I swear I’ll never forgive you if you come down here at this time of night. I swear it.”

He was torn with indecision, and then she hung up, saying, “I’m getting very sleepy,” slurring her words slightly. “Very…sleepy.”

He sat on the edge of the bed, feeling the cool draft on his feet. He was now wide-awake, agitated because once again she had tied him in knots, and wondered what he should do. He knew in his heart that she had been desperate to call him. She had never called him before.

He dressed quickly and slipped out of the house into the pre-dawn night. As he drove to the hospital, he blamed her stubborn, prickly pride for how she had reached out in despair with one hand while insulting him and pushing him away with the other. Then he thought about her early life, the. trauma of her mother’s death, being neglected by an insensitive father. He remembered the fear he had seen in her eyes and suspected there were probably very few people she had learned to trust in her life. And yet she had become a strong, accomplished woman. He understood why she had wrapped her pride around herself like insulation from a hurtful world.

He fought a sense of foreboding while he drove to the hospital. He had a sickening feeling in his gut. She needed him. She must, he realized, to have called him like this.

He prayed for serenity and guidance while he hastened to her room. When he strode through the door, he found her sitting on the side of her bed, dangling her feet over the edge. She was beautiful, her hair tousled from sleep, the scar on her face fading to pink.

She wore one of those ugly, thin hospital gowns pulled off one shoulder, her legs bare to midthigh. Her muddy green eyes looked up at him. “You came,” she whispered, and then her eyes closed, and he knew he was in trouble. He wanted to touch her. He wanted very badly to touch her. “There,” she rasped, pointing to a messy array of colored pamphlets.

He reached out and picked up several, then glanced quickly through them. They were promotional brochures, glossy and brightly colored, featuring modern buildings, Victorian mansions, sterile bedrooms and lots of people in residence—people in wheelchairs, most of them with white hair, wrinkled skin and empty eyes.

He looked questioningly at her, fanning the brochures out in front of him. She nodded, her eyes filling with tears. “Nursing homes,” she confirmed. “I get to choose one.”

“Oh, my God,” he gasped, dropping them onto the bed. He picked her up impulsively, as if she were a child, and when he felt her good arm go around his neck, he held her against him, her legs dangling free over his thighs, her face nestled in his neck. He turned in a slow circle, burying his face in her hair, and he let his heart ache while his body reveled in holding her. Absently, he pulled her gown closed over her back and held it there with his arms clasped around her. She felt frail and soft. Helpless. Warm. “Am I hurting you?” he whispered into her tangled hair. She shook her head a little wildly, and he felt wetness on his neck. “They can’t send you away. You’re going to get well,” he whispered. “I won’t let them do this to you. I won’t let it happen.”

Lost in comforting her and not wanting to let her go, he failed to notice how much time had passed until his arms felt the strain, and he finally returned her to the bed.

Her mouth was open slightly in obvious bewilderment, and he noticed how very kissable it looked. She had felt good pressed against him. She had felt damned good in his arms. He might have intended to give her comfort, but there was something deeper going on, and he recognized it all too well.

Quickly, he went to the closet and got her robe. He helped her get her injured arm into it. She kept her face lowered, obviously unwilling to let him see the tears she had likely fought not to shed in the first place.

“I have money,” she said finally in her husky voice. “But I have nowhere to go. I can’t take care of myself yet.”

“Your father? Another relative? A friend?”

“No. No, I can’t Nobody would want me. I can’t.”

“We’ll think of something, dear lady,” he said, sitting alongside her on the bed. “We’ll think of something.”

“There’s a convalescent center nearby, but it’s all old people. They’re all old. And I’m young, damn it. I’ve never needed anyone to take care of me. Never. I don’t know what I’m going to do now.”

“We’ll find somewhere else,” he reassured her.

“They’ve given up on me because I haven’t made any progress lately. They think this is as good as I’m going to get. They’re wrong. I’m going to get better. I’m going to get much, much better.”

“I believe you.”

“You’re the only one who does.”

“Well, you called me,” he sighed. “I didn’t think you had kept the number.”

She reached over with her left hand and used it to raise her limp right hand. There, written across her palm was his telephone number in ballpoint pen, smudged but legible, as if she had traced over it many times. “It’s been there for weeks. Every day after my bath, I go over it again so it won’t fade, so I’ll always know where it is,” she said.

Something lurched in his chest when he looked at her palm and thought of her outlining his phone number in her flesh every day and only calling him in the middle of the night when she was desperate. He raised her chin and looked into her glistening eyes. He saw that something in her had been defeated, and even though she had consistently rejected his efforts to help, he was now apparently her last resort.

He remembered the day Maralynn had died. He’d stayed with her all night long, sitting beside her bed. At the time he’d felt there was something bleak and desperate about a hospital in the middle of the night when sounds echoed only occasionally through the halls, amplified by the absence of people talking and moving about. He’d thought then that it was best to be asleep. It had seemed to him that if you didn’t get to sleep before darkness descended on the hospital, you would not get to sleep at all.

He tried to imagine what B. J. Dolliver had gone through, and he decided she had agonized for a long time before she’d called him. He suspected her pride would not have let her call unless she was overwhelmed with fear.

“I can’t stay here,” she said.

“When did you get the pamphlets?”

“Two days ago. They expected me to make a decision by now. I think I’m supposed to be gone. I told them I could pay for the room if my insurance doesn’t cover it.”

“Why did you wait so long to call me?” he asked.

He watched her raise her chin in a weak reflection of defiance. “I vowed I would not call you at all.”

“But what about that?” He gestured toward her limp hand with his telephone number written on her skin.

“I never intended to use it,” she said after a long silence.

He sighed. “Your destructive pride driving you to the wall.” He looked at her. “How do you expect me to arrange something in less than twenty-four hours?”

“You believe in miracles. I know you do. I don’t know anybody else who believes in miracles,” she said in a tearful, jerky voice.

Deep in thought, he stuffed his hands into his pockets and ambled to the windows. There was only one place he wanted to take her, and it was probably the last place she ought to be. He could let her sleep on the daybed in his office, and probably Mrs. Billings and the children could help. He didn’t think some people in his congregation would like the idea, but then he didn’t like the idea much himself. And although Mrs. Billings would be thrilled at first to have her heroine under their roof, he was sure B.J.’s rough edges would wear her welcome thin in quick order.

It was an idea bordering on insanity, he realized. She wasn’t his responsibility. She was dangerous to him, in fact, a threat to the orderliness of his full, rich life. How could he even think of taking her home, now that he found himself attracted to her?

Still, there seemed nowhere else for her to go. She was terrified of a nursing home, so terrified that she had finally swallowed her pride and called him. What he feared most was her feeling defeated and helpless and taking an easy exit to avoid a fate worse than death. He remembered Mrs. B repeating Deborah’s fears, although until now he had assumed they were both mistaken. He had to know.

“What if I can’t find a place?” he asked.

“You said you would.” For the first time, he sensed the flatness in her husky voice.

“If I can’t, then what?” She hesitated. He listened closely to her voice, to each nuance and pause. His back to her, he kept his eyes shut to sharpen his perceptions of her. “Then what?” he insisted, not kindly.

“I won’t go,” she said, and he barely heard her.

“If I walk out this door today and say I can’t help you, what will you do?” She didn’t answer. “What will you do?” he demanded, letting frustration edge his words.

“I’ll wave goodbye,” she said, and although he recognized she was trying to be flippant, he caught another meaning in. her choice of words, and he wondered exactly what his options were. Was he being manipulated? Would she put a finish to the job if he left her now? It seemed unlikely since she was so determined to get well. But what if he was wrong?

He opened his eyes to see the shadowy street below illuminated by splashes of gold from streetlights and faint reflections from the pink horizon in the east. Dawn was breaking. Trying to focus his thoughts, he rubbed his chin, then clasped his hands.

What should I do? What’s my direction?

He reminded himself that he’d never been good at analyzing things, always ending up going in circles. The bald, fearsome truth was that he found it exciting—the thought of having B.J. close by in his home, under his protection, within reach of his touch. He hoped that it was his heart and mind speaking and not some other part of his anatomy.

He thought about Mrs. Billings having been a registered nurse most of her life, and he thought about the medical aids still in the house from his wife’s illness—the tub rails, the upstairs hall rails and the wheelchair ramp stored in the barn that served as a garage. They were all there, the pieces that fitted as if meant to be.

When he turned to look at B.J., she was lying still. Finally asleep, he thought. He left her then and found the cafeteria open. He drank some coffee, walked around the neighboring streets, watched the sunrise and finally visited the chapel.

The halls were alive with the usual daytime sights and sounds when he returned to the vicinity of B.J.’s room. He wanted to talk to her physician, Dr. Wahler, who was not available.

The nurse he had met before was at the station, however, and as free as ever with her opinions. “She’s being unreasonable,” she said, shaking her head sharply. “It isn’t a retirement home. It’s a convalescent center. Of course there are elderly people, but not entirely, and therapy can be continued. Or private nursing can be arranged for her.”

Hamish didn’t like the way she frowned and pursed her lips, as if she was exasperated with her patient.

“She can probably afford it, three shifts a day, installation of aids in her condo.” Her shrug was like a dismissal, and Hamish left her to call Mrs. B.

“I hope you’ll bring her home,” she suggested.

“There are other places for her to go. I don’t know whether to recommend a convalescent center or private care,” he told her.

“Neither is a good choice,” Mrs. B insisted. “Both are for people who have no one.”

“Well, that fits B. J. Dolliver pretty well. And it’s her choice to be alone,” he reminded her.

“So, who’s the one person who has successfully ignored her no-visitor plea?” she challenged.

When he did not reply, she charged ahead, “Who’s the one person she called when she needed help? Who’s there now trying to help her?”

He inhaled deeply and closed his eyes against the obvious. It was what he wanted. And feared. B.J. in his home day and night, needing him, goading and arousing him while she healed under his family’s care. B.J.—making him feel alive, so alive.

“It’s your decision, Hamish, but if you’re taking votes, you know which way mine goes,” Mrs. B said.

“We’ll see,” he muttered before he broke the connection.

Back in her room, B.J. once again sat on the edge of her bed, waiting for him. He patiently explained the benefits of the options available to her, avoiding her eyes and finally rising abruptly from the chair and walking to the window, turning his back on her again so that she wouldn’t see that his heart wasn’t in what he was advising.

“It’s your decision,” he said at last.

“Go away,” she rasped.

Rudeness. Now that was something he could handle. “So we’re back to that, are we?” he charged, swinging around to face her.

“Just go away. Who needs you?”

He moved to her bedside and saw what a fragile mask she was presenting to him, and something melted behind his ribs and seeped, burning, into his midsection. “You do,” he said finally.

“I never needed you,” she whispered, but her lips quivered, almost imperceptibly.

“I think you do,” he insisted, swallowing hard against the urge to gather her in his arms.

“I can’t go to one of those…places. I can’t. I won’t.”

“You can have private care in the comfort of your condo.”

“Strangers, all of them, changing shifts every eight hours, talking to me as if I’m six years old. Breakfast at eight, lunch at twelve. Oops, can’t fix dinner, that’s for the next shift. Prodding and poking, taking my blood pressure in the middle of the night. What kind of home life would that be? They would hate me. I’m not an agreeable patient. It wouldn’t work.”

He stared hard at the tangle of her hair. Her face was turned away from him. “Okay,” he said, more harshly than he intended. “Okay,” he amended, softening, “you can come home with me.”

She searched his face with despair and anxiety. She wondered if he saw what she felt, if he sensed how many sleepless nights she had tossed, dreading the dawn. Did he see that she was as near to defeat as she had ever been? Certainly she hadn’t tried to hide her wariness, but then she had called him, and that was because she had grown curiously attached to him. God knew, she didn’t want to trust anyone.

She watched him, the handsome, quiet strength in his face, the way he stood before her, unaware of how substantial and real he appeared, the only solid person in her life.

“Yeah, I’ll go home with you,” she said softly.

She stiffened when she saw a flash of regret, then thought suddenly that he was going to find a way to waltz around his decision. But the dreaded words did not come. If he thought he had made a mistake inviting her to his house, he wasn’t going to retract his offer.

Her body still tingled with the heady experience of being swept up in his arms when he’d charged in like an avenging angel at four o’clock in the morning. Now, she longed to be close to him, to feel the soothing power of his tenderness.

“There will be conditions,” he told her, his voice low, but not soft. This was a time for firmness and resolution, it seemed, a time for promises to be made.

“I’ll do whatever you say,” she conceded softly before he realized what she had said. He would never know the damage to her precious pride, she realized.

“You will give me your word,” he said, “your solemn and sacred word that you will be courteous and sensitive with my children and Mrs. Billings. And that you will not insult, or in any way offend, a single member of my congregation.” She looked at him in mute misery, trying to hang on to the self-sufficiency that had deserted her. “I promise to take good care of you,” he added, but his voice was little more than a whisper. “I will do the best I can.”

She felt the trembling in her chin before she felt the hated tears spring into her eyes, then she dropped her head and felt her body convulse in sobs. It was her surrender although she wasn’t sure exactly what it was she was surrendering to. Tenderness? Trusting herself to the care of another? The loss of her independence? Was she going to find his care an alternate imprisonment, second only to three shifts of paid professionals in her own condo?

He came to her and held her against him, stroking her hair as she wept into his shirt, and she succumbed to his reassurance. For the first time in her life, she felt the full weight of her body and spirit being shared by another.

“You’ll be free to come and go as you please. We’ll make sure you can continue your therapy. We’ll help you get well. It won’t be the best of accommodations, but at least you won’t have to worry about steps. You can help out around the house if you want to, whatever you can manage from your wheelchair. And you don’t have to be nice to me. You can be as insulting and rude as you like with me.”

She pounded her good fist against his chest. “Damn you,” she cried between sobs. “You’re the damnedest man I ever met.”

“We won’t make you go to church, either,” he added as she pulled away from him and her sobs began to lessen. “And you don’t have to pray if you don’t want to,” he said. She wanted to scoff at that. She knew he wouldn’t be able to live up to that promise.

She took one last weak swing at his arm. “You are the most infuriating human being. I can’t wait for the day when I can walk away from your house and tell you where to stick it.” Her words came from habit and confusion, and a kind of familiar shame because she was being despicably weak.

He laughed and ruffled her tangled hair. “Then you’ve given me your word? And we’re checking you out of here?”

“Yes, yes, yes,” she replied with renewed hope. “We have to stop and rent a wheelchair first. The crutches are mine. And I don’t have any clothes to wear. They cut me out of the ones I was wearing when I was brought in.”

“Like taking a new baby home,” he teased.

She didn’t like his reference, but she ignored it. She wanted to get far away from the hospital as fast as possible. “The key to my condo is in my purse. Maybe you could pick up a few things for me? It isn’t far.”

“I can handle that,” he said laughing. She thought she should be angry with him, but he was so damnably endearing. Most likely he would get all the wrong things, but she simply gave him the key.

Hamish Chandler had confounded, entertained, infuriated and motivated her from the moment she first opened her eyes and found him studying her face. She had fought him every minute, every inch of the way, over the past few weeks because it was her nature to fight for her independence and her achievements and any threat to them. And at the same time, she had found herself baffled that she could not imagine getting on with her life without his being a part of it.

The man was an enigma, and she wondered why she was so oddly attracted to him. Probably, she thought, because the car accident had addled her brain as well as damaged her body. And now she was going to his house because she had nowhere else to go.

She had seemed to come alive once the decision was made, although there seemed little of the feisty scrapper left in her, Hamish thought, as he drove to her condo.

His call to Mrs. B had been happily received. Things at home were even now being prepared for their new houseguest. He wondered if it was possible to prepare his family for B. J. Dolliver’s interesting personality and how long she would be able to abide by the conditions he had set down.

When he arrived at his destination, he let himself into B.J.’s condo and was fascinated by what he found. Photographs had been enlarged and framed in shiny chrome to decorate her walls. Awards were propped haphazardly on her dresser; clippings were in messy piles in the dining room and in her bedroom. He looked through some of them, then placed them carefully in a suitcase. Maybe it would give B.J. something to do, sorting them, reminding herself how good she was and what she would one day go back to.

The condo was an expensive place, and her furniture was exotic and eclectic, obviously collected from around the world. He took two large framed photos off the bedroom wall, wrapped them in a coverlet from her bed and carried them to his car trunk. He would hang them in his house so that she would feel more at home.

In the bedroom, he went through her dresser drawers and closet, trying to remember the kinds of things a woman needed and liked. He eventually filled two suitcases and then a grocery bag with shoes.

It dawned on him as he was packing that she was not going to be impressed with his house, not when she was accustomed to the luxury she had surrounded herself with. Maybe her long stay in the hospital would have dulled her expensive tastes, he thought. All her possessions looked costly, fashionable contemporary pieces mixed with beautiful antiques and exotic-looking imports. And there was the hot tub in the screened deck off her bedroom.

No, she wasn’t going to be very happy with his home.

On the way back, he stopped to pick up the electrically powered wheelchair that had been reserved for her by Dr. Wahler. When he finally got to the hospital, he carried in the overnight bag so B.J. could get dressed. He didn’t expect her to remove each item while he stood there, but that was exactly what she did, flinging bra, panties, blouse, skirt, comb and brush, sandals, deodorant and makeup down on the bed. “Well, I see you were in the right place at least,” she said wryly. “But I don’t usually wear lacy underwear when there isn’t anyone to impress.”

“I thought Mrs. Billings might have to help you undress,” he retorted. He didn’t want to hear that she had lacy underwear to impress a man. He didn’t want to think of her with another man. He tried to concentrate on how welcome it was to hear her displaying a little of her old abrasive spirit.

“By the way,” he added, “I had intended for you to sleep on the daybed in my office, but that simply won’t work. You’ll take over my bedroom, and I’ll stay in the office. I hope you won’t mind.”

“But it’s your bedroom. Why should I mind?”

“My bedroom is upstairs.”

“But I can’t…how will I—”

“I’ll have to carry you up and down,” he said, and then he looked away as curious sensations gripped him. He didn’t want to feel the heat that was coursing through him. He didn’t want to acknowledge how pleasant it had been to hold her against him and that what he was feeling for her was more than compassion.