Colder Than Ice (36 page)

The next minute Josh realized they were bundling Beth into an ambulance.

Dawn noticed at the same time. “Is she all right?”

“She's going to be,” Bryan said. “Go on, Dad. Ride in the ambulance with Beth. Dawn and I will follow in the pickup.”

Josh glanced at the pickup truck, where it sat just out of range of the explosion, safe, dusty, but unharmed; then he nodded, his gaze focusing again on Beth. Her skin was pale, her head lolling as they jostled her into the back of the ambulance.

“She'll be okay, Dad,” Bryan said.

Again he nodded. “Tell Jax to leave the crowd control to Frankie and her men. She needs to secure the body.” He nodded toward Young. “She shouldn't let it out of her sight until the Feds come to claim it.”

Bryan nodded. “I'll tell her. Go on, Dad, I've got this.”

Josh met his son's eyes. “I know you have. Thanks, Bry.” Then he moved forward and climbed into the back of the ambulance, grateful for Jax and for Frankie Parker. Grateful for Bryan, too. But beyond all of that, he was afraid—terrified of
losing Beth. Of all the things he'd ever lost in his life—and hell, he'd lost a lot of them—losing her or losing Bryan would surely bring him down. Those were losses from which he would never recover.

He sat beside the gurney, closed a hand around her limp one, leaned down close to her ear. “Be okay, Beth. Be okay for me.”

S
he was lying in a bed, unconscious and unable to wake up, and yet…aware.

The state was a familiar one. So familiar that for a time in her mind she wasn't certain there had ever been anything else.

But if there had been nothing else, then where was that yawning chasm that had once lived where her memory belonged? She knew who she was. She was Lizzie. She'd been at the Young Believers' Compound, and there had been a raid—and she'd been shot. But she'd gotten her precious baby out—given her to Jewel. And there was no one in the world she trusted the way she trusted Jewel.

And then she'd been in a hospital. She had known she was in a hospital by the smells and the sounds. The same as now. Antiseptic. Lysol. The soft steady beep of some kind of monitor. The hushed voices of those who came in to care for her. The occasional voice on a loudspeaker.

It seemed as if there had been something in between. Some break between the before and the now, a time when she had not been in this state. But it was gone now, vanished in the mists.

And then there was that voice again. The one that came so often that it was familiar by now. It was always accompanied by the touch of a warm, solid hand closing around hers. This time he also stroked her hair away from her forehead, and he said, as he always did when he came, “I'm so sorry. I wish it had been me instead of you. If I could make this better, I would. I'm so sorry.”

She knew he was sorry, whoever he was. She knew. God, he'd told her often enough.

“Beth, please come back to me. I don't want to lose you again, not again. I love you, Beth.”

She frowned. Now
those
words were very different. He loved her? How could he love her? She didn't even know who he was. And why was he calling her Beth?

“Come on, honey. Dawn's worried sick about you, and Bryan's pacing a hole in the waiting room floor. Please wake up. Please?”

Dawn. Wait, that was Sunny's name now. And she was all grown-up. And just as smitten with Bryan as Beth herself was with his father. Joshua.

“Joshua,” she whispered. And even as she said his name, the veils fell away and she remembered. She'd awakened from that coma so long ago. She'd lived an entire lifetime since then.

And yet the hand holding hers, and the voice speaking to her—they were the same.

“Joshua.” She opened her eyes.

He smiled down at her. “Hey. It's about time. The doctors kept telling me you were going to be fine, but God…”

“You were there,” she whispered.

He lowered his head. “I was going to tell you, Beth. I swear I was. I just—God, I couldn't bear the thought that you'd hate me for it. Yes, I was there. It was my bullet that destroyed your life all those years ago.”

She held his gaze. “I know. But that's not what I meant.”

“No?”

She shook her head slowly, as things became crystal clear at long last. “You were there—in my hospital room. When I was in the coma.”

He looked surprised. “I was, but how did you—”

“Your voice. I could hear you, Josh. I could feel you there. You were what kept me from giving up. That voice and the touch of your hand—you brought me back.”

He swallowed hard; she watched his Adam's apple swell briefly. “I'd have kept coming, but they told me there was no hope. You'd be gone within a week, they said, and I had to move on.” He shook his head slowly. “All this time, Beth, I thought you were dead. I thought I had killed you. When I saw you again, on Maude Bickham's front porch, I…”

He didn't finish. He didn't have to. She understood.

Her door had swung open while he'd been speaking, and Bryan and Dawn had come quietly into the room. Bryan spoke now. “Beth, my Dad has spent his life beating himself up for what he did to you. His guilt cost him his marriage, his job, the chance to raise me, and God only knows what else. He wanted to tell you—he did—but he was so afraid you'd bolt and maybe end up dead. He couldn't bear to be responsible for that—not again.”

Josh turned to face his son. “Thank you, Bryan. But I think she needs to hear all this from me.”

“I just wanted her to know,” he said.

“Are you okay, Beth?” Dawn asked.

Beth nodded. Josh said, “She's okay now, but…I need a minute.”

Dawn cast Beth an understanding smile, then put a hand on Bryan's arm. “I just wanted to see for myself,” she said. “Come on, Bry. Let's give them some privacy.”

The two teenagers backed out of the room. As they did, Josh turned, pushing a hand through his hair, sighing deeply. “I don't expect you to forgive me, Beth. Hell, I don't deserve your forgiveness. I let you lose everything—again.”

“But I haven't lost everything.”

Turning, he faced her. She sat up in the bed, and Josh quickly moved closer to prop her pillows behind her.

“The inn…” he began.

“Is just a building. Boards and nails and plaster and paint. Just a building. It doesn't matter. When it blew up—I thought, for one horrible instant that I really had lost everything, the things that really matter. I thought I'd lost the people I love more than anything I've ever loved or ever will. Dawny. And you.”

He blinked down at her; then he sank onto the edge of her bed, as if his legs wouldn't hold him any longer. “You still love me—even knowing what I did to you?”

“I've loved you for a while now. You know that. The only thing that kept me uncertain was that I knew you were keeping secrets, my fear that they would destroy me. But now I know what you were keeping from me, Josh. And how much it's hurt you—it cost you as much as it cost me, that long-ago mistake. You lost your child, your life, just like I did.”

He closed his eyes.

“All that's gone, and what's left is just this. I still love you. I'll always love you.”

He gathered her very gently into his arms. “I can't believe it. I can't believe how damn lucky I am.”

She slipped her arms around him, and when he turned his mouth to hers, she kissed him deeply.

When their lips parted and his eyes were roaming her face in something like wonder, he said, “Mordecai is dead. This nightmare you've been forced to live, Beth, it's over. You can live anywhere you want now, any way you want.”

“I know.”

“The inn is gone, but—”

“It's insured. Probably overinsured. Maude put the insurance policy in my name when she signed the place over to me. It was in that envelope full of legal papers her lawyer gave me. The premiums were paid through the end of the year.”

He nodded. “So you can start over.”

“I don't want to start over, Josh. I want to pick up right where we left off, you and I. Minus one big secret standing between us.”

He smiled slowly. “I'm really glad to hear you say that. 'Cause I've been carrying something around with me for days now, and—” He sighed and pulled it out of his pocket. “Maude Bickham gave me this right after you and I met for the first time, on her porch. I think maybe she knew who I would ask to wear it. She must have seen it in the way I looked at you. Or the way you looked at me. Or…I don't know.”

Beth gasped when he opened his hand and revealed Maude's antique diamond ring. The huge pear-shaped stone was surrounded by tiny, glittering emeralds and sapphires. “Oh, Josh.”

“Marry me, Beth?”

She met his eyes, smiled slowly and nodded. “Yes.”

“O
ur first guests are here,” Joshua said, sliding his hands over Beth's shoulders as she wiped her hands on a kitchen towel and turned into his arms. “Great. I've got the chicken ready to go.”

“And I've got the barbecue hot and waiting.”

“Did you tell Bryan?”

“Bryan's already out in the driveway. He'll probably open their car door before they come to a complete stop.”

“It's nice, they're both going to the same college this fall.”

“Even nicer that it's an easy drive from here.”

She smiled, and, turning, they walked arm in arm through their inn. They'd had it rebuilt as closely to the original structure as they could, and it still smelled of fresh paint and new lumber. It was furnished in antiques, and photos of Maude and her husband at various times of their lives had been donated by locals and hung in every room.

It had been costly, despite the insurance. But Josh had sold his condo in Manhattan, and that had brought in more than enough to make up the difference.

They walked out the front door, onto the porch and down the steps to where the newly painted sign swung in the summer breeze.

Maude Bickham's Blackberry Inn

Beth and Joshua Kendall, Proprietors.

Beth took a moment to relish the way reading that sign made her feel before heading down the sidewalk to join Bryan in greeting their first guests; Julie Jones McKenzie, her husband Sean, and the daughter she and Beth shared—with each other, and now with their husbands, and, the way things were looking, with Bryan. Dawn.

They were not a traditional family, Beth thought. But they were her family—all of them.

She had reclaimed the life she had lost in a misguided government raid long ago. And it was better than she had ever dreamed.