Warrior's Embrace (15 page)

When he finished organizing the Louisiana
photos, he saw the last group he’d shot in Mississippi. No use to
torture himself. He tried to bypass the pictures, but couldn’t.
Against his better judgment, he began sorting through the photos of
Virginia.

She had a face that loved the camera. In
close-ups, with lips slightly parted and eyes sparkling, she was
vibrant, lush, provocative.

Bolton bent close and studied the photographs
with a magnifying glass. He had captured every detail, even the
barely discernible mole on the left side of her lips.

The camera didn’t lie. She had the look of a
woman in love. Why did she leave? Why?

There was a knock, then Callie called through
the door, “Are you all right in there?”

“Yes.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.”

Silence on the other side of the door, then
Callie’s cheerful voice.

“I’m going to make us some hot
chocolate.”

“I don’t want any hot chocolate.”

“It’ll be good for you.”

“Callie... stop trying to coddle me.”

“I’m not. I don’t get these domestic urges
very often so you’d better take advantage while it lasts.”

Virginia dominated the room with her secret,
seductive smile. Something inside Bolton snapped. He flung open the
door.

“For Pete’s sake, Callie. If you’re all that
hot to play nursemaid, why don’t you get married and have
kids.”

She stepped backward as if he’d slapped
her.

“That’s mean, Bolton!”

He’d regretted the words the minute they were
out of his mouth. But it was far too late to take them back.

“I’m sorry, Callie. I didn’t mean that.”

Callie wasn’t so easily placated.

“You blame me for letting her leave. That’s
it, isn’t it, Bolton? You blame me.”

“I don’t.” He reached for her, but she
sidestepped. “I don’t blame you, Callie. I blame myself.”

“I blame myself.” Callie sat down on the
sofa, her hunched shoulders evidence of her misery. “Why didn’t I
take her back to you instead of to the airport?” She looked
stricken. “Will you ever forgive me, Bolton?”

“Hey now...” He sat down and put his arm
around her. “There’s nothing to forgive....” She sniffled, and he
dug into his pocket and handed her a handkerchief.

“It’s going to be okay, Callie.” A glance at
his watch told him Virginia should be home by now. “I’m going to
call her right now, and she’ll explain everything.”

He dialed her number and got her machine.

“Virginia... this is Bolton. If you’re there,
pick up. If not, call me the minute you get home. I don’t care what
time it is, call me.”

“Maybe she’s not there yet,” Callie said.

“Maybe.” Bolton dialed the airport to request
information on her flight.

“That flight arrived on time, sir. Forty
minutes ago.”

Virginia would have been out of the small
commuter airport no more than fifteen minutes after landing.
Another fifteen minutes and she would have been home.

Bolton dialed her number again. Four rings,
and her machine didn’t click in. His jaw tightened as he gripped
the receiver and listened to the hollow ringing of the
telephone.

o0o

“You want me to answer it?” Jane asked.

Her hair was sticking out in bright red
tufts, her face was devoid of makeup, and her clothes looked as if
she’d picked them out of the clothes hamper, which is exactly what
she had done.

When Virginia had called her from the Tupelo
airport, she nearly went beserk. She was wearing her pajama top
with orange jogging pants, pink tennis shoes, and mismatched
socks.

“No. There’s nothing else to say to him.”
Virginia jumped off the sofa and kicked her luggage. “Why, Jane?
Why?”

“It’s going to be all right, Virginia. I just
know it is.”

That had been Virginia’s first reaction.
Denial.
This can’t be happening to me. Everything is all
right.
But on the long flight from Arizona, virtually captive
in an uncomfortable seat with no one to talk to and nothing to do
but think, Virginia had become angry. Now her rage bubbled
over.

“You can say that. You’re not the one with a
lump in your breast.”

Jane was crying when she got off the couch
and put her arms around Virginia.

“Hold on to me, Virginia. Just hold on.”

“Oh, God, Jane. I didn’t mean that. You know
I didn’t.”

“It’s all right, Virginia. You have every
right to be mad. Take it out on me. I’m tough, I can handle
it.”

Virginia put her head on Jane’s shoulder, and
the two of them sobbed. The phone started ringing once more, a
reminder that there was a world outside the living room, a world
where people didn’t know that Virginia had a time bomb ticking in
her chest.

“Cancer, Jane... I can’t believe it.”

“You don’t know that. The doctor didn’t say
that.”

“Ninety percent chance, that’s what he
said.”

When she had called the number Callie gave
her and heard the response, “Good afternoon, Women’s Clinic,”
Virginia hadn’t panicked; she’d only been curious. Even when the
nurse said to hold for Dr. Mason, she had never dreamed she would
be hearing news that would rip her entire life apart.

“I’m afraid your mammogram was not good,
Virginia,” Dr. Mason had said. “We found a lump growing near the
rib cage.”

Virginia had felt as if she were watching a
movie, listening to a make-believe doctor tell the awful news to an
actress playing the role of a famous writer. The actress, of
course, was brave and stalwart. She didn’t have shaking hands and
sweaty armpits like Virginia.

“There must be some mistake,” she had
said.

“There’s no mistake, Virginia. The
radiologist spotted it right away. That’s why she took so many X
rays.” A short pause. “The location is not good. There’s a ninety
percent chance it’s cancer.”

Women who felt wonderful didn’t have cancer.
Women who had just spent two days in the mountains making fabulous
love to a magnificent man didn’t have lumps in their breasts.

It couldn’t be happening to her. Not now. Not
when she had finally decided to take the greatest risk of all.

“We’re going to hit this thing as soon as
possible, Virginia,” Dr. Mason had told her. “I’ve already called a
surgeon to arrange for a lumpectomy.”

Virginia felt as if she were caught up in a
hurricane that was sucking her out of her house, out of her life,
out of her skin. She wanted to rant and rave, to scream at Dr.
Mason and the radiologist, to make them take it all back, to insist
that they call her and tell her they’d made a horrible mistake. But
she was helpless. Nothing she could say or do would change the
facts: Something sinister was eating her flesh away; something ugly
was destroying her life.

She gripped Jane’s pajama top so hard, her
knuckles turned white.

“I’ll be disfigured, Jane.”

“A lumpectomy is not disfiguring. They don’t
take any more than necessary.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Yes, I do. Myrtle had one three years ago.
Don’t you remember?”

Myrtle. Jane’s cousin in Memphis.

“Didn’t she die?” Virginia said.

“God, I’m sorry. I never should have
mentioned her. But she was sixty-nine. You’re young, Virginia.
You’ll lick this.”

The specter of death had crept into the room.
Virginia stalked to the piano and grabbed a crystal vase. “I’m not
going to die!
”

Virginia heaved the vase against the
fireplace, and then sank to the carpet among the shattered
glass.

Bolton had traced her breasts as the sun
shone on them. “So beautiful,” he’d whispered.

Had it been only that morning? It seemed a
thousand years ago.

Who would want a woman with chunks carved out
of her breast? Worse yet, what if the lump turned out to be cancer
and they had to do a radical mastectomy? Who would want a woman
with only one breast? Who would want a woman who was going to
die?

Tears ran down her cheeks and into the
corners of her mouth, and she never even noticed their salty
taste.

“What if they have to take my whole breast?”
Virginia lifted a ravaged face to her friend. “Please don’t let
them do that to me.”

“I won’t, I promise I won’t,” Jane said, and
then she crumpled.

They sat among the broken shards and clung to
each other, crying, best friends who had never lied to each other
before.

Callie slept on Bolton’s couch, and he didn’t
sleep at all. He stared at pictures of Virginia until he thought he
would go mad. Then he called his dog and the two of them raced
along the foot trails through his property. When he was so
exhausted he could barely stand, he came back inside and made a pot
of strong coffee.

The sky held only a hint of pink, but it was
already morning in Mississippi. Would Virginia be up? He didn’t
want to wake her. On the other hand, he didn’t want to wait until
she was already gone. She was an early riser. Sometimes she took
her Arabian on a long morning ride, and sometimes she went outside
to watch the sunrise over her lake. If she really wanted to get
away from everybody, she packed a picnic lunch and carried her
laptop to her favorite spot in the woods.

Bolton was good at his job, and that job had
been to interview the famous novelist Virginia Haven. He probably
knew more about her than her ex-husband.

He picked up the phone and dialed. Her
machine was back on.

“Virginia... if you’re there, please pick
up.... Talk to me, Virginia... tell me what’s going on...”

Virginia sat on the edge of her bed with her
arms wrapped around her knees, listening to the sound of his voice.
She’d hardly slept at all, and every nerve ending in her body was
screaming. She longed to pick up the receiver; she longed to cry on
his shoulder.

“Oh, Bolton,” she whispered. “Don’t do this
to me.”

“I know you love me, Virginia. Why did you
run?”

She clenched her hands into fists and
tightened her grip on her knees.

“Yes,” she whispered. “I love you,
Bolton.”

“Are you there?... Don’t do this to us.”

She squeezed her eyes shut and rocked back
and forth on her bed.

“Oh... God... I love you....”

“I don’t believe your note, Virginia... You
always have a choice... I’m—”

The answering machine beeped, cutting Bolton
off in midsentence. What was he saying? I’m... what? Angry? Hurt?
Coming?

For one heady moment she imagined that he
would come again and everything would be exactly as it had been
before. They would race through the woods on the Arabians and
devour each other in the kitchen and cuddle close in her double
bed. Time would stand still.

There would be no yesterdays and no
tomorrows. Only the moment.

The phone rang again.

“I’m not going to let it end like this,
Virginia. I’m coming, and I’m not going to leave until I get some
answers.”

There was a click as he hung up. Bolton
always did what he said he was going to do. He was coming to
Mississippi. But it wouldn’t be the way it had been the first time.
Instead of discovering a successful, vital woman he would discover
a total wreck. She was on the brink of losing her breast, her mind,
her very life. Even her career was in jeopardy. What publisher in
his right mind would risk signing a multiple book contract with a
woman who might never even make the first deadline?

Virginia went into the bathroom and vomited.
Jane appeared in the doorway, bleary-eyed and frazzled.

“I heard you up,” she said. She wrung out a
washcloth and held it to Virginia’s forehead. “Was that the
phone?”

“Yes... Bolton.”

“Do you want me to call him?”

“No... yes... God, I don’t know. I feel like
I’ve been run over by a freight train.”

“It must have been the same train that hit
me.”

Virginia managed a pale grin. Then she saw
herself in the mirror.

“Tell me that old woman is not me,” she
said.

“That old woman is not you. I promise.”

“He said he was coming.” Jane rolled her
eyes. “I can’t let that happen, Jane. What am I going to do?”

“Look, Virginia. I know I said some things
about the age difference and all that, but who am I to make that
kind of judgment? Miss Old Maid of the Century. Maybe that was envy
talking, or jealousy.”

“Hush, Jane.”

“I think he really loves you, Virginia.”

“What difference does that make now?”

“It might be a very good thing if he comes.
You need all the support you can get right now.”

“I have you and I have Candace. No... he
can’t come.”

For a few blessed moments, Virginia forgot
about the
thing
growing in her breast as she pawed in her
bedside table drawer for her cell phone.

“What are you doing?” Jane plopped down
beside her.

“I’m going to send him a text.”

“Do you think that will stop him?”

“It has to.”

o0o

Bolton was packing his bags when the text
arrived.

“The answer is simple. I don’t love you.
Don’t come. I don’t want to see you. It’s over.”

He read the words three times, his alarm
mounting with each reading. Something was terribly wrong. His
instincts had been screaming at him since the day Virginia left him
on the mountain. He had to find out why.

Did she think a text would stop him?

Bolton called Glenda Williams who answered on
the first ring.

“Glenda, this is Bolton.”

“Great. Are you packing your bags?”

“Yes, but not to fly to California. I can’t
do the interview with Brad and Angelina.”

“What do you mean, you can’t do the interview
with Brad Pitt? Bolton, you’re the only one who can do this right.
You
can’t
let me down.”