Washed Away (15 page)

“I’m going to take you to places you’ve never been,” he promised, his husky drawl doing the strangest things to her. “I’m going to give you some loving that you’ll never forget.”

He suckled the sweet pale flesh of her breast as his fingers worked on, and before she could beg him to end this delicious torture, she could feel the distant thrum of her orgasm. Her thighs taut, her pelvis tilting toward him, she uttered low moans of wonder, as he took her ever higher. The intensity of her orgasm was so overwhelming, she lay there spent and exhausted as the tremors abated. But when she felt his arousal nudging her trembling thighs apart, slipping inside her sweet warmth, there was nothing to do but wrap her legs around him and pull him
deeper inside, scarcely able to comprehend that the shuddering train of her roller coaster hadn’t yet come to a halt.

Noah called her name as he exploded within her, and she came again, clinging to his muscular back. And this time her eyes were open, and so were Noah’s, both capturing the overwhelming beauty of the moment. The terror and ecstasy of the last thirty-six hours had all been condensed and suddenly released. Tears of pain and joy coursed down her cheeks, followed by exhausted, exhilarated sobs that needed no explanation as he held her, loved her, adored her.

For the last time.

T
IME HAD NO MEANING NOW
.
It was almost impossible to comprehend that so much could happen in thirty-six hours. Nearly drowning. Being saved. Beth’s accident. Falling in love….

It was as if the world had been put on pause since Noah had pulled her from the river, minutes ticking away like hours, giving them plenty of time to get to know each other, enough time to cement the attraction that had been there from the first time they set eyes on each other.

But now God, or the powers that be, had clearly decided to get things moving. The darkness that had bathed them receded at an alarming rate. Gray fingers of dawn crept through the room. Birds that should surely stay quiet for an hour or so longer sang the dawn chorus with a gusto that under any other circumstances would have been beautiful.

“Stay.”

Even though she was facing away from him, Cheryl had known he wasn’t asleep. “I want to,” she admitted.

“But?” Noah asked, because clearly there was one.

“Please, Noah.” She shook her head, determined not
to let him see her tears, knowing this was as hard on him as it was on her.

Harder perhaps.

Noah didn’t have any doubts. He seemed to have enough faith in their relationship for both of them, it was she who was torn with indecision, she, who for the first time in her adult life had no idea what to do.

“Even when Joe left, and when my parents broke up, I knew I’d be okay.” She lay silent for a moment, gripped with the same piercing grief that had swamped her at the end of her marriage. And even though it had been two full years, still she managed total recall of horrible, aching emptiness, the thudding disappointment that all the hope and love that had filled them at the start simply hadn’t been enough. “But as bad as it was, as awful as I felt there for a while, I had my work, Noah, and I had my pride. Even though I’d lost everything, I still had that little piece of me that no one could take away. No one, that is, except…” Turning, she looked up at him. “Except you, Noah.” He didn’t answer, just stared back at her as she asked the most difficult question of all. “Would you do it for me?”

She blinked at him in the dim morning light, taking in every flicker of his reaction. “I’m not asking you to hop on a plane tomorrow, but if things did work out between us, could you ever see yourself selling your practice and heading to California to set up shop in Courage Bay?”

She didn’t want him to answer, didn’t want to hear him say it, but the silence that hung between them was even worse somehow.

“Cheryl…”

“Don’t.” Slipping out from under the blanket, she sat for a moment on the edge of the sofa, running a trembling hand through her long dark hair before turning her confused eyes to his. “Don’t try to sweeten it, Noah, because we both know the answer.”

“You’re not being fair, Cheryl. I’ve got a life here now, a career. I’m the only vet for miles. I can’t just walk away. You’ve been in Courage Bay two years, your family lives in—”

“It’s still my home,” Cheryl broke in. “It’s still my life I’d be upending, and the bottom line is that you wouldn’t do it for me.”

“So that’s it, then.” His voice was raw, and her pain was so raw she couldn’t bring herself to look at him as he spoke. “You set me some impossible test, and when I don’t measure up, you walk away.”

“It’s not impossible, Noah. What I’m asking you to do is no more than you’d be asking from me.”

She pulled on her clothes. It was easier to be angry than admit to feeling the chasm of despair where her soul used to be.

“I’m going to get Beth and the boys ready….”

“Don’t go, Cheryl.”

A strong hand gripped her wrist, attempting to pull her back down onto their bed, but she shook him off, knowing one look, one touch and she would break down.

“Stay and talk.”

“There’s no point.” Heading for the door, she didn’t even turn around.

THE ATMOSPHERE
was so tense in the house that she escaped to the shed and stood staring at the piglets’ wagging tails, her eyes so dry she couldn’t squeeze out a single tear.

“They’re on their way.” Noah was in the doorway, standing hesitant and unsure, but Buster had no such reserve. Slipping between Noah’s legs, she headed toward her mistress. Noah walked over more slowly. “I brought you these.” He handed her some clothing. “Just some old jeans and a sweater I shrunk in the wash. Figured you’d be more comfortable traveling in them.”

“I can only see eleven.” Gesturing to the baby pigs, she sniffed rather ungraciously, her eyes scanning the straw for the one that was missing.

“Yeah, it died,” Noah said in a matter-of-fact voice, then changed tack when he saw her face crumple. “Cheryl, it happens all the time. The mother overlays them, or they’re the runt. It’s just the way it is….”

He was trying to help, trying to say the right thing, but each word only wounded her further. God, why did everything have to make her cry? Accepting a tissue, she blew her nose loudly, then sniffed again. She managed a wobbly smile when finally she faced him.

“I’m doing you a favor, really,” she said.

“How did you work that one out?”

“Aren’t vets’ wives supposed to be salt-of-the-earth types?” Cheryl sniffed. “Rosy cheeks and practical natures? I’d never let you sell any of the piglets. We’d be overrun with eleven more Mabels. The dogs and Geor
gina would all be sporting pink bows. I’d ignore all your food charts, sneak Georgina chocolate….”

“Sounds good to me.”

She could hear the
thud-thud
of choppers in the distance, and it was almost a relief when Noah pushed open the massive rolling door. Buster whimpered in her arms, knowing something was up and begging for reassurance. But all Cheryl could do was cling to the short clipped fur, feel the solid weight of the little body in her arms and wish things didn’t have to be this way. They watched as the giant black bird swooped out of the sky, the trees bending beneath the power of the false wind the rotors created.

“Mitch is here, too!”

The surprise was evident in Noah’s voice, and Cheryl managed to lift herself out of her gloom long enough to head over. A fire department vehicle pulled up near the helicopter.

“The road must have cleared,” he concluded.

“Who’s the other guy?” Cheryl asked, mentally answering her own question as she registered the man’s pale, anxious face. He jumped out of the truck and ducked his head before running under the blades toward the house. “Hal?”

Noah nodded. “I’d better go and talk to him. You get dressed, I’ll meet you outside.”

He greeted the worried husband as Cheryl darted into the clinic bathroom to change, then wandered around, silently bidding goodbye to everything that had become familiar. She felt Buster’s cold nose
against her hot tear-streaked cheeks, the worried whimpers matching her own feelings, and as she stroked the dog, soothed her, the whimpers faded, and Cheryl wished her own problems and fears could so easily be erased.

“Hey.”

The voice was reassuringly familiar, so much so that a fresh batch of tears pricked her eyes. Seeing the rough, knowing face of Mitch Kannon standing by the fire truck, Cheryl felt her resolve crumble. He wasn’t a fire chief all of a sudden, wasn’t a tough, assured emergency worker. He was more like a father figure who really seemed to understand what she’d been through. Coming over to Cheryl, he held her for a moment.

And Cheryl wasn’t the only one struggling with emotions. Appalled at her fragility, Mitch gripped her in a bear hug, obviously stunned that the brittle, confident woman he had sent out on the easiest job had suffered so much, that the proud, good-looking New Yorker he had waved off was like a fragile child in his arms, an angry scar over her cheek and a flood of pain in her heart.

“I’m sorry about the Jeep, sorry that I wasn’t there to help when the storm hit….”

“We managed,” Mitch said gruffly, “and I don’t want to hear another damn word about the Jeep. It’s a hunk of metal, Cheryl. Don’t give it another thought. You’re safe.” His voice was thick. “I tried to tell you to get off the bridge, Cheryl. I was screaming into my phone for you to back off, but there was so much static on the line that I knew you couldn’t hear me. Then all of a sudden
the line cleared, and all I could hear was you screaming. I thought we’d lost you, Cheryl. I thought for sure you’d drowned. I radioed through for a vehicle to head straight down there, and when they radioed back and said the bridge was down…”

“I can come back and work,” Cheryl offered, but Mitch immediately shook his head.

“You’re in no fit state to work. You’re on the first flight out of here.”

As if in response, she gave a moist cough and struggled to catch her breath. Mitch eyed her in concern, and suddenly home sounded good to Cheryl; the cool, white emptiness of her apartment, the order of the life she had created for herself in Courage Bay.

Mitch was right; home was where she needed to be.

And yet…

Forcibly she pushed her misgivings aside as Beth was stretchered across the grass by an efficient emergency retrieval team. Cheryl knew then that her time was up, and she sought out Noah, scarcely able to believe he hadn’t come out to say goodbye. Mitch would be too busy to linger once Beth and Paul were safely boarded onto the helicopter.

“I don’t know how to thank you,” Beth said as Cheryl approached the stretcher and gave Beth’s good hand a squeeze, “and how sorry I am for what happened.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Cheryl said. “It was an accident.”

“Even so, you could have—”

“Don’t,” Cheryl broke in. “I’m fine, and you will be soon. Don’t linger on the whys and what-ifs.”

“You’ll be telling me soon that this was for the best, that one day we’ll look back on all this and be glad it happened.”

“Maybe.” Cheryl smiled bravely, but her heart wasn’t in it. Even with all that she’d found here in Turning Point, it surely couldn’t cancel out the raw ache she was destined to lug around for the rest of her life—the pain of Noah’s rejection.

And it
was
a rejection.

He wouldn’t move to Courage Bay for her, and no amount of shuffling facts changed the final score.

Give up on her career for a man?

Been there, done that, Cheryl thought ruefully.

And though Noah was a million light years from Joe, the equation was the same, and she had promised herself that she would never put herself in that situation again.

“How do you do it?” Noah was beside her, trying to smile. “You’re the only woman I’ve met who could sex up an old pair of jeans and a baggy black sweater.” He gave up trying to keep the moment light, and she watched as he swallowed hard, then dragged in a breath before talking again. “I brought a couple of your fans along to say goodbye.”

And there was Georgina, shivering beside him. The horse looked old and tired, and Cheryl realized she wasn’t the only one the storm had emotionally and physically battered.

“Hey, little lady.” Putting Buster down next to Madge, Cheryl cuddled the soft chestnut-colored fur
and ran a gentle hand over the horse’s long proud face. “It’s over, Georgina, you’re safe now.” Concerned, Cheryl turned to Noah. “She doesn’t seem well.”

“She’s tired, Cheryl,” Noah replied. “Tired and old and very sick.”

“It’s the same with her mistress.” Mitch Kannon’s voice was grim. “We evacuated Mary last night. She had a heart attack. It doesn’t look good.”

“What will happen to Georgina?” Cheryl swallowed hard. “I mean, if her owner doesn’t make it. She won’t have to be destroyed, will she?”

Noah shook his head, but Cheryl’s relief was short-lived. “I’d be happy to have you, wouldn’t I, girl?” Noah said softly, but his voice was hollow with sadness. “But if Mary goes, I’ve a feeling Georgina won’t be too far behind.”

“Best get on.” Mitch was shaking Noah’s hand now as Buster flung himself at Cheryl.

Even though dogs didn’t cry, she could have sworn there were tears in those confused black eyes as Buster howled without shame, yelped and nipped as Noah prized her off.

“She’s going to miss you,” Noah said gruffly. “We’re all going to miss you.”

“I’m sorry.” Cheryl’s teeth were chattering so violently she could barely get the words out.

“You’ve got nothing to be sorry for,” Noah said.

But Cheryl pushed on, refusing his comfort. “I should never have said I was free to love you when I didn’t know the truth.”

“You have to think of yourself first, Cheryl, and as much as it hurts, I do understand. I’m sorry, too,” he added sadly. “Sorry that I can’t just walk away from my life, that I can’t—”

Mitch was tooting the horn, oblivious to all that had taken place. This wasn’t a casual farewell, but even if he had known, it wouldn’t make a difference. There was no time in his busy schedule for long goodbyes. Not when there was a town to take care of.

“I have to go,” Cheryl said, but she couldn’t move her legs.

“I’ll…” Noah started to say, but Cheryl shook her head fiercely.

“Let’s not make promises neither of us is prepared to keep, Noah. Our time together was special, magical, wonderful, but I’m not up to long-distance love, I need more than a phone call or an e-mail to sustain me.”

“Remember Alexis and Ewa,” Noah reminded her, wiping her tears away with his hands. “The whole world was against them, but still they came through.”

“It was a nice story.” Cheryl gave a watery smile. “But it belongs in the past, Noah.”

It was only a few steps to the fire department vehicle, but she felt as if she were walking the plank. It took an almost inhuman physical effort just to haul herself into the truck, and, unlike for Georgina, no amount of chocolate would have made leaving easier. She was walking away from the best thing to ever happen to her, and she couldn’t bring herself to turn for one final wave.

“Let’s get you home,” Mitch said.

That sounded nice, but right now Cheryl truly didn’t know what home meant.