Clay (15 page)

“Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe the whole thing is getting to me.”

“Can she wait for the nurse?”

His question carried a knife-edge of doubt. She answered the tone as much as the question. “She’ll have to, won’t she?”

“Not if you take her out of here.”

Janna pressed her lips together without answering. Turning to the table, she set down the cups she held, then pulled out a chair and slid onto it. Behind her, the kettle began to whistle. Clay padded over to fill the coffeepot, then brought it with him as he joined her at the table. For long moments, the only sounds were the trickling coffee, the rain overhead and the thunder that boomed now and then, echoing back from the tree-fringed lake beyond the open back door.

There was tension in the quiet between them, but little real strain; they had moved past that at some time during the last few hours. Janna could feel weariness trying to sneak up on her. She put an elbow on the table and propped her head on the heel of her hand.

“Get some rest,” Clay said, his voice abrupt. “I’ll keep watch.”

“No, no, it’s okay.” She sat up straight again with an effort.

“Drink this then.”

She hadn’t seen him pour the coffee, hadn’t known that it had finished dripping. Her brain felt as if someone had filled her skull with foam packing peanuts. As she reached for the cup he offered, he wrapped her fingers carefully around it before he took his own away.

The brew was hot and strong, and slid down her throat like the elixir of life. Its jolt was welcome, but not as reviving as she expected.

She risked a quick look at Clay. He lounged back in his chair with his coffee cup resting on his thigh and his legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles. The heat building in the house gave his bronze skin a perspiration sheen to go with the raindrops still glinting like silver beads among his chest hair. His air of relaxation was less than total, however, since he was completely motionless and his gaze was fixed on her chest.

A single downward glance showed Janna that she was attired like a candidate in a wet T-shirt contest. The soft, damp material draped over the curves of her breasts with perfect fidelity, including the tightening of her nipples under the intensity of his gaze.

Deliberately she stared at him until he looked up and his gaze locked with hers. A slow tide of dark color invaded his face and he shifted in his chair in a telltale movement before turning his attention to his coffee.

He wanted her, that much was clear. The question was why. She was bedraggled and exhausted, a hollow-eyed harridan without makeup or even the pre
tense of civility. The only answer she saw made her feel a little sick inside, especially after her earlier moment of trust.

Revenge.

That was it, she thought, though not revenge of a simple, physical kind. He had no use for crude retaliation, not Clay Benedict. In return for taking his freedom, he meant to have nothing less than her self-respect. He’d joked about being her sex slave, but in reality that was what he was intent on making her.

The pain of that suspicion was so great that she could hardly think, had difficulty drawing air into her lungs. She stood up in a single fast move that sloshed coffee from her cup in a steaming wave. “I think I’ll change and lie down with Lainey, after all.”

He didn’t try to stop her as she moved in the direction of the bedroom. When she paused at the door a second to look back, he was sitting as she’d left him, watching her with the blank look of incomprehension in his eyes. Doubt touched her with cool fingers. She hesitated, said in a tremulous request, “Call me? When the nurse gets here, I mean.”

He gave a short nod, but that was all. As irrational as it might be under the circumstances, she missed his smile.

Janna came awake to a touch. Clay stood over her with his hand on her shoulder. The instant she opened her eyes, he released her and stepped back.

“Car coming,” he said quietly.

She was so groggy with sleep that it was hard to
focus, still she could see that he’d changed clothes. The rakish, half-naked satyr who had sat in her kitchen was gone. In his place was a neat and somber Southern gentleman in a black T-shirt and jeans, one who looked more alert and purposeful than any man should. Nothing in his face or manner even hinted that he had any designs on her body or her psyche. Why then did she feel as if she had slept unmolested only by grace of his forbearance and self-control?

“Thank you,” she said through dry lips.

“No problem.” He paused, as if he expected some comment that didn’t come, then went on. “The rain has stopped. I’ll wait outside for this nurse.”

She nodded her understanding. As he left the room, she resisted the impulse to watch him.

By the time Anita Fenton stepped inside the screened porch ahead of Clay, Janna had brushed her hair, splashed cool water on her face and straightened the dress made of hand-dyed fabric in a crazy quilt patchwork design that she’d changed into from her wet clothes. She felt marginally more collected, but was still uncomfortably warm since the power remained out. At least the generator still hummed steadily on the porch.

Anita Fenton, wearing a polyester shirt and slacks set and carrying a molded metal case, glanced at their makeshift power source. An expression of incredulous scorn crossed her face. For a second, Janna was aware of the uncertain grip she held on her temper as she waited at the screen door. Reminding herself to have a care, she said as pleasantly as possible,
“Come inside, please. I’m really sorry to get you out on such a bad night.”

“Never mind. I’m here now. Where is Lainey?”

“Sleeping.”

“Really.” The sarcasm in the woman’s tone suggested this was proof she had come on a fool’s errand.

Janna, catching Clay’s gaze, saw his face tighten with irritation. That helped her feelings for some reason. “This way,” she said to the nurse over her shoulder as she led the way toward the bedroom.

At the open doorway, Nurse Fenton pushed past Janna and strode to the bed. Putting out a red-nailed hand, she shook the sleeping child awake with a quick, almost rough, movement.

Lainey raised her lashes. Her face blanched, and she gave a small scream. Eyes wide and fever-bright, she sprang up, then scooted away in the bed until her back was against the headboard. Her retreat disturbed Ringo who had somehow found his way into the bed with her. He leaped in the air from where he had been snuggled between the pillows. Coming down on all fours with his tail straight up, he hissed like an angry cat as he faced the source of danger.

“Shit!” Nurse Fenton jerked back her hand, then swung toward Janna. With an angry flush mottling her face like a rash, she demanded, “What is this?”

“You startled her,” Janna said sharply. “And Ringo.”

“I have no time for coddling a silly little girl,” the nurse snapped. “And I certainly didn’t come all this
way to be attacked by a wild animal! I’d have thought you’d know better than to allow so unsanitary a creature near your daughter.”

From the corners of her eyes, Janna saw Clay step to the foot of the bed, his face grim and eyes narrowed. To the nurse she said, “Ringo is perfectly clean, and he helps calm Lainey.”

“Oh, yes? He doesn’t seem to be doing such a fine job right now. Are you going to control your child so I can examine her?”

Janna didn’t trust herself to answer. Leaning toward Lainey, she held out her hand. “Come on, honey,” she said in cajoling tones. “Nurse Fenton needs to take a look at you.”

“No sticks,” Lainey said in a high, near-frantic whine, even as she cringed away. “No sticks.”

“No sticks, I promise,” Janna murmured in reassurance.

“I may as well do the presurgical blood test, as long as I’ve come all this way,” Nurse Fenton said in hard contradiction. Setting her case on the bedside table, she opened it and took out a packaged hypodermic syringe.

The result was entirely predictable. Lainey went into hysterics. Screaming and kicking, she scuttled away to the fullest extent of the tubing attached to her stomach catheter. Janna put a knee on the mattress and stretched a hand out toward her, intending to draw her into her arms to soothe her. A small, flying heel caught her in the mouth, so she fell back, tasting blood. Clay, with a frown between his brows
and concern darkening his eyes, stepped quickly around to the far side of the bed.

“For heaven’s sake,” the nurse said in angry contempt. “Get me a sheet. I’ll wrap the little brat up so tight she can’t move a toenail.” As she spoke, she ripped open the syringe, then pulled out a length of latex ribbon of the kind normally used for constricting the arm to raise the blood vessels.

“I don’t think…” Clay began, his voice hard.

“I can handle it,” Janna interrupted.

The nurse turned a hard stare on Clay as if just taking note of his presence. “Who is this man, and what’s he doing here anyway? Dr. Gower will not be pleased that you aren’t following instructions.”

“The doctor knows all about Clay,” Janna said shortly. She reached for Lainey again and almost had her, but the panicky child made a dive in Clay’s direction. She might have tumbled over the side of the bed if he hadn’t caught her by her elbow, then sat down quickly on the mattress so she fell into his arms. Ringo, scampering after her, wasn’t quite so lucky. He slid over the edge where he clung to a corner of the sheet with his sharp claws for a second, then dropped to the floor.

“Well, finally, someone who can actually hold down the little wretch. Get her arm, will you, while I find a vein.” Nurse Fenton, without the raccoon to contend with, pushed Janna to one side and climbed onto the bed. She crept forward on her knees.

Lainey shrieked. Babbling and pleading, she grabbed Clay’s neck in a stranglehold, then wrapped
herself around him. Her clear plastic dialysis tubing snapped tight across the rumpled sheets.

“I’ve had enough of this!” Nurse Fenton’s eyes flared and her lips clamped in a hard line as she grabbed the stretched plastic tube in a hard fist. “Come here right now, brat, or I’ll make you one sorry little girl.”

Janna cried out as she saw that the nurse meant to drag Lainey toward her by the tubing attached to the shunt in her stomach incision. The woman was between Janna and her daughter. She was going to be too late to stop her.

Clay shot out his hand like a striking rattlesnake, the movement so fast it was little more than a blur. His hard fist closed over the nurse’s wrist in a grasp tight enough to whiten his knuckles. “Drop it,” he said in slicing menace. “Do it now, or I’ll break your bones like so many toothpicks.”

The color drained from Nurse Fenton’s face. She crumpled to one side with her mouth open in a gasping cry. Slowly, one by one, she opened her fingers and let go of the tube.

“Back up. Get off the bed.” Clay flung the red-haired woman’s wrist toward her face.

She followed his orders, even as she threw an accusing look at Lainey. The girl was quiet, though it was impossible to be sure whether her shocked silence was because of Clay’s violence or the novelty of having someone protect her from medical personnel. She huddled in his lap as he circled her with a protective arm.

With the space of the mattress between her and Clay, the nurse curled her lips in a malevolent sneer. “You’ll regret this,” she informed him. “Lainey’s kidney will go to someone else. I’ll see to it.”

“Get out,” Clay told her without expression. “And don’t come back.”

Janna, caught between fierce gladness and horror, drew breath to protest. The look of blazing contempt that he turned on her stopped the words in her throat. He had no more use for one who would condone frightening and hurting a child, she saw, than for the person who would do it.

Voice a little shaky, she said, “But Lainey needs—”

“She doesn’t need this.”

There was no shadow of compromise in his voice. And he was right; she saw that clearly. It hurt that he’d recognized it before Lainey’s mother who should have been the protector of her welfare. “No,” she said quietly. “No, she doesn’t.”

Clay’s smile was like a reward. It curved his lips in approval, shone with a brilliant and unearthly blue sheen in his eyes, and beatified the small room. It was a loss when he turned back to Nurse Fenton. In entirely different tones, he said, “You heard the lady.”

The woman gave Janna a last narrow-eyed stare. Then she gathered her belongings and stalked from the room. Seconds later, the screen door of the porch banged shut behind her.

Janna let out the breath she’d been holding without
noticing. Then she crawled across the bed and shifted closer to Lainey and Clay. She reached for her daughter, and Lainey put out her arm, leaning near enough to crook her elbow around her mother’s neck. She didn’t release Clay, however, so that Janna was pulled into a tight, three-person hug. After a second, she felt Clay ease over to reduce the tension on Lainey’s tubing, then the warm strength of his arm enclosed her in his hold along with her daughter.

It felt so good, so right, that a hard knot formed in Janna’s chest and she swallowed salt tears. Protected, she felt protected, and something else that swelled her heart and filled her with such heat that it radiated from her very pores.

He was quite a guy, Clay Benedict. Whatever he might have done or intended to do, she owed him. In her gratitude to him, she was willing to give him anything he wanted, at least for now. No matter what the form or what it might cost her, she would allow him his recompense. Or even his revenge.

A
sharp pain in his groin snatched Clay from sleep. Sheer instinct made him try to roll away, but he came up short. He was pinned to the bed. Lainey lay with her back to him and her head and shoulders resting across his outflung arm. She was jerking as if in the grip of some nightmare. It was her sharp little heel that had gouged him as she kicked out in her sleep.

On the other side of the girl, Janna was curled toward him with one foot tangled between his ankles. As he blinked awake, he saw her lashes lift as well. She focused on her daughter who was turned toward her. Fear and comprehension invaded the silver-spangled gray depths of her eyes.

Before he could form a word, she shoved to a sitting position on the mattress and reached for Lainey. She dragged her daughter across her lap. Leaning backward, she plucked a child’s hairbrush from the nightstand then thrust the slender, blunt-ended handle into Lainey’s mouth. Deftly she extracted her swallowed tongue.

Lainey was having a convulsion.

It wasn’t the way Clay had dreamed of waking up when he’d gone to sleep in Janna’s bed.

With a wrenching contraction of stiff muscles, he surged to his feet. He stared down at the arched, shuddering body of the little girl whose eyes were rolled back into her head so only the whites were visible. As he watched, she went limp, barely breathing. Janna had been right in her mother’s intuition. The situation was bad.

God, he felt helpless. Guilt seized him as well, as if he’d somehow wished this on Janna with his insistence that she face the possible consequences of bringing Lainey so far into the swamp. Certainly there was no satisfaction in being right.

Something had to be done. There was only one possibility that he could see.

He hesitated a second, then asked in soft query, “Janna?”

“Yes,” she answered in a voice like tearing silk. “The hospital. We have to go.”

“I’ll be back from Arty’s with the airboat by the time you get her tubes out and throw what you want to take with you into a bag.”

She frowned at him. “My car’s outside.”

“Twenty minutes to Turn-Coupe by water, three hours to Baton Rouge by car. Your call.”

She closed her eyes while she drew a deep breath. Then she opened them again. “Hurry.”

“You’ve got it.”

On the way out, he snatched up the cell phone from the kitchen table and punched in a number. Seconds later, he was talking to Roan. In less than half a minute, he had the promise of an ambulance and police
escort waiting for them when they docked at Grand Point. Tossing the phone back down, he hit the porch at a dead run.

The rain had stopped, but the lake steamed in the dark like a giant cup of black coffee. Digging a paddle into the murky liquid, he sent the boat flying toward Arty’s place.

When Clay returned, Janna was standing on the dock with Lainey, wrapped in a sheet, in her arms. She was pale and her hair straggled around her shoulders in long, shining hanks, but he’d never in his life seen anything that twisted his guts with so much longing, respect and possessive passion. Leaping to the dock, he bundled mother and daughter into the airboat, and then shoved off again. As the gap widened between the rickety dock and Jenny, he sprang back onboard. Dropping into his seat, he turned to Janna. “All set?”

She nodded with a jerky movement of her head. “Just go.”

Something in her face as she met his gaze in the dashlight clutched at his heart. He felt the full weight of responsibility for this move press down on his shoulders. Over and above that, he acknowledged a flash of pride that she had enough confidence to follow his lead, plus something more that he didn’t dare examine. The dependence and gratitude in her face were unwanted, even as he felt his stomach muscles clench to board-hardness with his determination not to fail her.

Voice deeper than expected, he said, “Hang on.”

The airboat roared into life, then Clay sent it flying toward Turn-Coupe. Trees, water, fog, blown spray; these things whipped past and around them. He narrowed his concentration to the stretch of water just ahead of the boat as he negotiated twisting channels and stretches of open lake he knew so well that he could have followed them blindfolded as well as in the dark. The airboat skimmed the water, bouncing on a soft cushion of air and spume, dancing around curves, answering his slightest touch instantly and with consummate grace. Time spun past as well. He glanced at Lainey. In the faint glow of the running lights, the girl appeared comatose, uncaring for the wind of their passage that whipped her hair across her white face. Clay pushed Jenny into a higher speed.

Minutes that seemed like eons later, he swerved from the main channel into the long, fingerlike cove that would lead him home to Grand Point. Ahead of them, he caught the welcome flash of blue and red lights, saw the shapes of an ambulance and Roan’s police unit. Over the airboat’s roar, he called to Janna, “Almost there.”

“Yes. I see,” she said with a catch in her voice before she brushed Lainey’s hair away from her closed eyes then pressed her lips to the top of her small head. She looked away then, but not before Clay caught the sheen of moisture in her eyes.

A mere fragment of time later, he was slowing, letting the airboat slide up to the Grand Point dock under its own impetus. Hands reached out to pull the
boat in and secure it. Med techs in blue-and-white saluted Clay and spoke quietly to Janna as they took Lainey from her. They transferred the child to a waiting gurney with care and dispatch, then loaded it into the ambulance. Janna climbed inside and settled at the head of the gurney. The doors closed, and the emergency vehicle rolled away.

Clay put his hands on his hips as he stared after the ambulance, watching it disappear around the bulk of the main house, headed for Turn-Coupe. His responsibility was over; Lainey’s well-being was out of his hands. He should have been relieved, but only felt empty inside.

Roan had left his patrol unit and walked out to stand beside him on sun-warped boards of the dock. “You did it, huh? Got the woman and the kid here where you wanted them?”

Clay met his cousin’s stern, assessing gaze in the blue flash of the lights from his patrol unit. “It’s not like that.”

“Isn’t it? Even a little?”

He shook his head. “If Lainey doesn’t make it…”

A corner of Roan’s mouth took on an odd curl. “Think her mother will blame you?”

“She could.”

“With reason?”

“God, no!”

“What I thought.”

As his cousin fell silent, Clay said in brooding tones, “Lainey should be at Children’s Hospital in New Orleans at the very least, maybe even Oshner’s
Medical Center. Someplace with a major kidney unit.”

“Simon Hargrove’s a good man,” Roan said, speaking of the head physician and surgeon at the Turn-Coupe hospital. “He knows what he’s up against and is waiting to get started. He’ll make the right decisions for her.”

Clay nodded. It would have to be enough. For now.

“Think I’ll head on over there, see to it that the kid gets checked in all right,” Roan said, tipping his head in the direction of his police car. “You coming?”

“Try leaving without me,” Clay answered.

Janna was seated in front of the admissions desk, filling out forms, when Clay hit the hospital emergency room. He lifted a hand, but didn’t stop. From somewhere in one of the back examining rooms, he could hear Lainey moaning. Following the sounds, he found her stretched out on an examining table while Dr. Hargrove checked her and the duty nurse, who happened to be Clay’s cousin, Johnnie Hopewell, tried to keep her still.

“It’s okay, punkin,” he said quietly as Janna’s daughter turned piteous eyes in his direction. “I’m here.”

The nurse, a plump, motherly sort with curling dark hair and a hundred-watt smile, looked up. “Speak of the devil,” she said cheerfully. “I was just telling Lainey that you’d show up any minute.”

“Darn right,” he replied though his gaze was on the little girl on the table.

“Benedict,” Dr. Hargrove said in greeting as he reached across the patient for a handshake. “Glad you’re here. Our girl is not good. She’s had a sudden spike in her blood pressure, maybe from emotional causes, maybe from infection. It probably brought on the seizure her mother described, as well as her unconsciousness when she first arrived. She seems to have a degree of paralysis on her left side, and I’ll bet my next year’s house note that her hemoglobin is low. We can’t rule out other problems without a battery of tests. But the main thing is to get her stabilized and her blood pressure down. Speed counts as much as accuracy right now.”

Clay nodded, since the news wasn’t too far from what he’d expected. “Think you can handle it here?”

“Yes, if I’m right,” Hargrove answered with precision. “It’s a matter of finding the right combination of drugs as fast as possible. But she can be airlifted to Baton Rouge or New Orleans, if that’s what you want.”

“It’s her mother’s decision.” The Flight for Life medical helicopter had been an option in the back of Clay’s mind all along. It was common practice for rural hospitals to airlift critical patients to more sophisticated centers, and it would mean access to expert treatment for Lainey.

“My mistake,” Hargrove said. “I need to know, though, one way or the other.”

Clay gave him a level look. “You can still get things started, can’t you?”

“I have the mother’s signed permission, if that’s what you mean.”

Every second counted, Clay knew, and his gut instinct warned that time was running out. The elevated blood pressure could still cause a full-blown stroke with attendant brain damage, complete paralysis or even death. If Lainey were his child, he wouldn’t want treatment delayed an instant longer than necessary.

“Do it,” Clay said. “I’ll clear it with her mother.”

Johnnie, who had been following the exchange between him and the physician, said, “This young lady said she’d let me give her a couple of little sticks if I promised to use this stuff I have here to numb the skin and keep it from hurting. Well, and if you’d hold her hand.”

Clay could see that the “little sticks” in question were going to stretch to several for tests, medications and to insert a heparin lock for the IV solution and antibiotics that waited nearby. Even knowing Lainey was in good hands, the best available within a hundred miles, Clay still cringed inside to think of it. He could feel sweat pop out between his shoulder blades and across his forehead. The last thing under the sun that he wanted to do was to stay in the same room when so many needles were plunged into anyone, especially Lainey. It was too much like feeling them pierce his own skin.

And yet, how could he refuse? Lainey was willing
to endure it if he stood by her. Her courage touched him as nothing ever had before. He couldn’t chicken out while she needed him, was ashamed that he would even think of it. It was such a little thing, after all, and the knowledge that he could help her by doing it seemed to ease the ache in his heart.

Clay picked up the small, cold fingers that lay on the disposable paper sheet tucked under Lainey’s frail arms. His quick wink brought a watery smile to her pinched face, but the terrified resignation that lay behind the effort almost killed him. In that moment, he’d have given anything to be able to take the pain for her. Anything.

“Yeah, she’s a brave kid, and my sweetheart to boot,” he said, his voice husky and his eyes never leaving hers. “Hold on tight, punkin. It’ll be over in a few seconds.”

Lainey gave him a solemn nod, then her thin fingers curled firmly around his palm. He held her tense gaze a brief moment longer, until her small nod signaled that she was ready. Then he looked across her at Johnnie and Simon Hargrove, and his hard stare said plainly that they’d better make damn sure that they didn’t hurt her an iota more than necessary and that the seconds he’d promised were all that it took to get the job done.

By the time Janna arrived five minutes later, Lainey lay quiet and still with her eyes closed so her long lashes rested on her small, puffy cheeks. Clay glanced up as the door opened. He saw Janna put her
hand to her mouth while the color receded from her face until it was bloodless.

“Sedated,” he said in sharp explanation. “Just a mild tranquilizer and Benadryl to prevent a reaction to the packed blood cells they’ve started. It made her sleepy. That’s all.”

Janna stared at him a long moment, then looked toward the different IV racks around the head of the bed. Finally she met the gaze of Clay’s cousin who had been detailed to remain with the patient and check her blood pressure at ten-minute intervals. As Johnnie added her nod of reassurance, Janna looked around for a chair. Locating one against the wall, she dropped into it then closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the wallpaper behind it.

“There was so much paperwork because I don’t have insurance,” she said, her voice uneven. “I don’t know what I’d have done if Roan hadn’t stepped in and told them to let it go. This is a strange hospital for Lainey, with doctors and nurses that she doesn’t know. I was afraid she’d be terrified. They kept saying you were with her, but I couldn’t be sure.”

Clay wanted to ask why she would think he was unreliable, but it wasn’t the time or place. Voice even, he asked, “You saw Hargrove?”

“He told me the next twenty-four hours will be crucial.” Her lips curved in a hard, tight smile. “Of course they always are.”

“Then you know about the possible airlift.”

She opened her eyes. “He mentioned it. Apparently you didn’t think it was necessary.”

“Not so. Say the word and it’s done.”

She studied him as she absorbed the message behind his simple statement, that he was perfectly willing to defer to her wishes. Finally she said, “I’ve heard mothers of other renal patients talk about helicopter airlift. It costs thousands.”

And she’d said there was no insurance, Clay remembered. He tilted his head. “You’d be for it if cost wasn’t a problem?”

“But it is.”

“I got that part. Not to worry, there are ways.” Clay tried for a casual, offhand note, but wasn’t sure how well he succeeded. The look his cousin Johnnie gave him said she suspected that what Clay had in mind involved his own pocketbook, still he knew she wouldn’t interfere.