Smooth Talking Stranger (35 page)

Gage arrived nearly at the same time Liberty and Churchill did, all three of them looking as haggard and distracted as the rest of us.

Feeling like an interloper in a private family matter, I went to Churchill after Haven had hugged him. “Mr. Travis,” I said hesitantly. “I hope you don’t mind that I’m here.”

Travis seemed older and more fragile than I had seen him on previous occasions. He was facing the possible loss of one or both of his sons. There was nothing I could say.

He surprised me by reaching out and putting his arms around me. “‘Course you should be here, Ella,” he said in his gravelly voice. “Jack’ll want to see you.” He smelled like leather and shaving soap, and there was a faint tinge of cigars . . . a comforting fatherly smell. He patted my back firmly and let go.

For a while Gage and Hardy talked quietly, mulling over what might have occurred on the boat, what could have gone wrong, all the possible scenarios of what might have happened to Joe and Jack, and all the reasons to hope. The one scenario they didn’t discuss was the one most on all of our minds, that one or both of the brothers had been fatally injured.

Haven and I went out into the hallway to stretch our legs and get her some coffee from a vending machine. “You know, Ella,” she said hesitantly as we headed back to the waiting room, “even if they both make it, there could be a rough time ahead. We could be talking amputation, or brain damage, or . . . God, I don’t even know. No one would blame you if you decided you couldn’t handle it.”

“I’ve already thought of that,” I said without hesitation. “I want Jack no matter what shape he’s in. Whatever’s happened to him, I’ll take care of him. I’ll stay with him no matter what. It doesn’t matter to me, as long as he’s alive.”

I hadn’t meant to distress her, but Haven surprised me by giving a few muffled sobs.

“Haven,” I began in contrition, “I’m sorry, I—”

“No.” Regaining control, she reached out and took my hand, squeezing tightly. “I’m just glad Jack’s found a woman who will stand by him. He’s been with a lot of women who wanted him for superficial reasons, but—” She paused to fish a Kleenex from her pocket and blow her nose, “—none of them loved him just for being Jack. And he knew it, and he wanted something more.”

“If only I—” I began, but through the open doorway, Haven caught sight of movement in the waiting room. A door on the opposite side had opened, and a doctor came in.

“Oh God,” Haven muttered, nearly dropping her coffee as she hurried into the room.

My stomach dropped. I was paralyzed, the fingers of one hand digging into the door frame as I watched the Travis family gather around the doctor. I watched his face, and their faces, trying to divine any reaction. If either of the brothers had died, I thought the doctor would say so immediately. But he was speaking quietly, and no one in the family revealed any emotion other than bleached anxiety.

“Ella.”

The sound was so quiet, I barely heard it through the blood-rush in my ears.

I turned to look down the hallway.

A man was coming toward me, his lean form clad in a pair of baggy scrub pants and a loose T-shirt. His arm was bandaged with silver-gray burn wrap. I knew the set of those shoulders, the way he moved.

Jack.

My eyes blurred, and I felt my pulse escalate to a painful throbbing. I began to shake from the effects of trying to encompass too much feeling, too fast.

“Is it you?” I choked.

“Yes. Yes. God, Ella . . .”

I was breaking down, every breath shattering. I gripped my elbows with my hands, crying harder as Jack drew closer. I couldn’t move. I was terrified that I was hallucinating, conjuring an image of what I wanted most, that if I reached out I would find nothing but empty space.

But Jack was there, solid and real, reaching around me with hard, strong arms. The contact with him was electrifying. I flattened against him, unable to get close enough. He murmured as I sobbed against his chest. “Ella . . . sweetheart, it’s all right. Don’t cry. Don’t. . .”

But the relief of touching him, being close to him, had caused me to unravel. Not too late. The thought spurred a rush of euphoria. Jack was alive, and whole, and I would take nothing for granted ever again. I fumbled beneath the hem of his T-shirt and found the warm skin of his back. My fingertips encountered the edge of another bandage. He kept his arms firmly around me as if he understood that I needed the confining pressure, the feel of him surrounding me as our bodies relayed silent messages.

Don’t let go.

I’m right here.

Tremors kept running along my entire frame. My teeth chattered, making it hard to talk. “I th-thought you might not come back.”

Jack’s mouth, usually so soft, was rough and chapped against my cheek, his jaw scratchy with bristle. “I’ll always come back to you.” His voice was hoarse.

I hid my face against his neck, breathing him in. His familiar scent had been obliterated by the antiseptic pungency of antiseptic burn dressings, and heavy saltwater brine. “Where are you hurt?” Sniffling, I reached farther over his back, investigating the extent of the bandage.

His fingers tangled in the smooth, soft locks of my hair. “Just a few burns and scrapes. Nothing to worry about.” I felt his cheek tauten with a smile. “All your favorite parts are still there.”

We were both quiet for a moment. I realized he was trembling, too. “I love you, Jack,” I said, and that started a whole new rush of tears, because I was so unholy glad to be able to say it to him. “I thought it was too late . . . I thought you’d never know, because I was a coward, and I’m so—”

“I knew.” Jack sounded shaken. He drew back to look down at me with glittering bloodshot eyes.

“You did?” I sniffled.

He nodded. “I figured I couldn’t love you as much as I do, without you feeling something for me, too.” He kissed me roughly, the contact between our mouths too hard for pleasure.

I put my fingers to Jack’s bristled jaw and eased his face away to look at him. He was battered and scraped and sun-scorched. I couldn’t begin to imagine how dehydrated he was. I pointed an unsteady finger at the waiting room. “Your family’s in there. Why are you in the hallway?” My bewildered gaze swept down his body to his bare feet. “They’re . . . they’re letting you walk around like this?”

Jack shook his head. “They parked me in a room around the corner to wait for a couple more tests. I asked if anyone had told you I was okay, and nobody knew for sure. So I came to find you.”

“You just
left
when you’re supposed to be having more tests?”

“I had to find you.” His voice was quiet but unyielding.

My hands fluttered over him. “Let’s go back . . . you may have internal bleeding—”

Jack didn’t budge. “I’m fine. They already did a CT, and it was clean. They want to do an
MRI
just to be sure.”

“What about Joe?”

A shadow crossed Jack’s face. Suddenly he looked young and anxious. “They won’t tell me. He wasn’t doing well, Ella. He could hardly breathe. He was at the wheel when the engine exploded . . . he may be really fucked up.”

“This is a world-class hospital with the best doctors and the best equipment,” I said, one of my hands settling carefully on his cheek. “They’ll fix him. They’ll do whatever they have to. But. . . was he burned badly?”

He shook his head. “The only reason I got singed a little was because I had to push through some burning debris to find him.”

“Oh, Jack . . .” I wanted to hear everything he’d been through, every detail. I wanted to comfort him in every way possible. But there would be time for that later. “The doctor was talking to your family in the waiting room. Let’s find out what he said.” I gave him a threatening glance. “And then you’re going back for the
MRI
. They’re probably looking for you right now.”

“They can wait.” Jack slid an arm around my shoulder. “You should see the redheaded nurse who was wheeling me around. Bossiest woman I ever met.”

We went into the waiting room. “Hey,” I said in a wobbly voice. “Look who I found.”

Jack was immediately surrounded by his family, Haven reaching him first. I stood back, still breathless, my heartbeat galvanized.

There were no wisecracks as Jack embraced his sister and Liberty. He turned to his father and hugged him, his eyes glittering as he saw the runnel of a tear down Churchill’s leathery cheek.

“You okay?” Churchill asked in a rusted voice.

“Yeah, Dad.”

“Good.” And Churchill touched his son’s face with a sort of gentle cuffing pat.

Jack’s jaw quivered, and he cleared his throat roughly. He seemed relieved to turn to Hardy, with whom he exchanged a manly half-hug back-pat.

Gage was last, taking Jack by the shoulders and surveying him intently. “You look like shit,” he commented.

“Fuck you,” Jack said, and they embraced each other roughly, the two dark heads close together. Jack gave him a few forceful thumps on the back, but Gage, mindful of his brother’s condition, was far gentler.

Jack swayed a little and was immediately pushed in a chair.

“He’s dehydrated,” I said, going to the water dispenser in the corner and filling up a paper cup.

“Why aren’t you on an IV?” Churchill demanded, hovering over him.

Jack showed him his hand, where an IV needle was still inserted and anchored with tape. “They used a fourteen-gauge needle, and it feels like a six-penny nail was shoved into my vein. So I asked them for something smaller.”

“Pussy,” Gage said affectionately, rubbing the top of Jack’s rough, salt-stiffened hair.

“How’s Joe?” Jack asked, taking the water from me and drinking it in a few gulps.

They all exchanged glances—not a good sign—and Gage answered carefully. “The doctor said Joe has a concussion and a mild case of blast lung injury. It may take a while for the lungs to get back to speed, maybe up to a year. But it could have been a lot worse. Joe’s in respiratory distress and has borderline hypoxia—so they’re treating him with supplemental high-flow oxygen. He’ll be spending some serious time in
ICU
. And he can hear out of one ear, but not the other. At some point a specialist will tell us if the hearing loss is permanent.”

“That’s okay,” Jack said. “Joe never listens anyway.”

Gage grinned briefly, but sobered as he stared at his younger brother. “He’s going in for surgery right now, for internal bleeding.”

“Where?”

“Abdomen, mostly.”

Jack swallowed hard. “How bad?”

‘‘We don’t know.”

“Shit.” Wearily Jack rubbed his face with both hands. “I was afraid of that.”

“Before they corral you again,” Liberty said, “can you tell us what happened,Jack?”

Jack gestured for me to come to him, and he pulled me into his warm side as he spoke. It had been a clear morning, he said. Fishing had been decent, and they had gotten an early start back to the marina. But on the way they’d seen a huge brown seaweed mat, about an acre in size. The mat had formed its own ecosystem with algae, barnacles, and small fish, all living amid the accumulated driftwood and mermaid purses.

Figuring there was good fishing around or under the mat, the brothers had killed the engine and glided up to the seaweed. In just a few minutes Jack had hooked a Dorado, the rod nearly doubling and the reel screaming off a bunch of line as the acrobatic fish took off. It leapt from the water, revealing itself to be a five-footer, a monster, and Jack had followed around the boat to keep the line from catching. He had shouted to Joe to start the boat and go toward the fish, otherwise it would gain too much line. And just as he started to reel it in, Joe had started the engine and there had been an explosion.

Jack fell silent at that point, blinking as he struggled to recall what had happened next.

Hardy murmured, “Sounds like a buildup of fumes.”

Jack nodded slowly. “Maybe the bilge blower cut out? Hell knows with all that electronic crap . . . anyway, I don’t remember anything about the explosion. All of a sudden I was in the water, and there was debris everywhere, and the boat had turned into a fireball. I started looking for Joe.” He looked agitated, his words coming in choppy bursts. “He’d grabbed on to a floating cooler—remember the orange one you got me, Gage—so I looked over him. I was afraid he’d gotten a leg blown off or something—and he was all in one piece, thank God. But he’d gotten one hell of a knock on his head, and he was struggling. I got hold of him and told him to relax, and I towed him to a safer distance from the boat.”

“And the weather came in,” Churchill prompted.

Jack nodded. “Wind picked up, water got rough, and we were getting pushed away from the boat. I tried to stay with it, but it took too much energy. So I just held on to Joe, and the cooler, and I swore I wouldn’t let go no matter how long it took for someone to find us.”

“Was Joe conscious?” I asked.

“Yeah, but we didn’t talk much. The waves were too rough, and Joe was having a hard time breathing.” Jack worked up a rueful smile. “The first thing he said to me was, ‘Guess we lost that Dorado?’ ” He paused as everyone chuckled. “And later on he asked if we should worry about sharks and I said I didn’t think so, since it was still shrimp season and most of the sharks go offshore to pick off throwbacks.” A stark, endless hesitation. He swallowed hard. “After we’d waited a while, I could tell Joe was getting worse. He told me he didn’t think he was going to make it. And I said—” His voice broke, and he dropped his head, unable to finish.

“You can tell us later,” I whispered, putting my hand on his back, while Haven handed him a wad of Kleenex. It was too much, making him relive it so soon.

“Thanks,” Jack said gruffly after a minute, blowing his nose and letting out a sigh.

“Here you are.
” A strident, accusatory voice came from the doorway, and we all looked up to behold a stout, redhaired nurse with a ruddy complexion, pushing an empty wheelchair into the waiting room. “Mr. Travis, why did you run off like that? I’ve been looking for you.’

“I took a break,” Jack said sheepishly.

The nurse scowled. “That’s the last break you’ll get for a while— you’re getting a new IV needle put in, and you’re going for your
MRI
, and I may think up some extra tests to pay you back for scaring me half to death. Disappearing like that. . .”