Someday Soon (17 page)

The drugs smothered the worst of it. He didn’t fight it—he hadn’t the strength. Instead he waited impatiently for the angel of death to arrive. The will to resist was gone, the will to live tenuous.

“Cain?”

Linette’s voice came to him on a cloud, sounding ethereal, celestial. An angel of life when he’d expected the Grim Reaper to come swooping down to claim his soul.

He struggled to open his eyes but discovered he hadn’t the strength. Linette, here? It wasn’t possible. Perhaps he was already dead and didn’t realize it. But if that were the case, he didn’t understand why he should continue to hurt this way. Was this hell, to be trapped within earshot of the woman he loved? Already he’d been cursed never to hold her or love her again. He was sentenced to hear her call to him from another world and helpless to respond. Cursed to love her until his heart felt as if it would burst wide open and be unable to give her the assurance of his caring.

Perhaps this was all some part of a drug-induced dream. He must be dreaming, and yet…and yet, he felt her hand pressed over his, heard her soft voice, trembling with anxiety.

He’d never mentioned Linette to any of the men of Deliverance Company. Not even Mallory. He’d wanted to protect her from who he was and what he did. She was honest and pure, and he didn’t want to taint her goodness.

“Oh, Cain,” Linette said breathily. She must be close, because he could feel her soft breath fan his face. “Listen carefully, my darling. I love you. I’m here.”

With every ounce of strength he possessed, Cain tried to respond, but the effort quickly drained what reservoir of energy he possessed.

“I’m praying,” Linette continued, her voice trembling with emotion, “that you’ll feel my love for you. Feel it, Cain. Let it be your shelter.”

His shelter.

It was as if he’d walked out of the freezing cold into a room with a fire burning in the fireplace.

“I’m sorry, miss, you’ll have to leave now.”

The authoritative female voice sounded from behind Linette. Cain tried to protest but once more found it impossible to so much as flutter his eyelids.

“So soon?” Linette protested.

“I’m sorry,” the other woman said, sounding sympathetic. “But you can only spend five minutes every hour with your friend. Those are the rules.”

To hell with the rules!
Cain screamed in his mind. He needed Linette.

“I’ll be back,” Linette promised. Her lips brushed his brow, and her fingers squeezed his. “Just remember what I said,” she whispered in parting. “Let my love be your shelter.”

A crushing pain filled his chest when she walked away.
The agony was familiar. This was what it had felt without love in his life. This emptiness. This loneliness.

Before he was aware of time passing, Linette was back.

“Hello, my darling,” she whispered. She spoke to him in soothing tones, and he felt it again—the warmth he’d experienced when she’d first arrived. It was as though a heated blanket had been wrapped about his shoulders. Around his heart.

“I met your friends,” she whispered. “They love you, too.”

If he’d had the strength, Cain would have laughed out loud. He’d never thought of Murphy as the loving type. He was well aware his men respected him. Leave it to a woman to confuse regard with love.

“I’ll be back soon,” Linette promised.

He heard her footsteps against the floor as she walked out of the room. This time the warmth didn’t go with her. It stayed, and for the first time since he’d been shot Cain realized he was going to live.

He knew this with a certainty he didn’t question.

Linette was with him.

Linette loved him. He had a reason to fight.

Cain’s men didn’t like her
. In the beginning, Linette thought it might have been her imagination, but the resentment was far too real to ignore. At times it seemed to come at her in waves, as though she were responsible for what had happened to their leader, their friend.

The man called Murphy was the worst. He acted as if she were an intruder. He made it plain that he didn’t want her at the hospital. She could feel his indignation every time she returned from her hourly five minutes with Cain. Murphy seemed to believe he should be the one to linger at Cain’s bedside. Yet when Linette had offered to let him visit Cain instead of her, he’d gruffly insisted she be the one.

“How’s Cain doing?” Jack Keller asked when she stepped back into the waiting area. She’d been in Grenada a week now. In that time Cain had revealed
only a few visible signs of improvement. Linette celebrated each one. The doctors weren’t making predictions on his chances of survival. They claimed Cain had hung on far longer than the experts had anticipated. If anyone would break the record, it would be he.

Those brief five-minute sessions with Cain drained Linette’s energy. It was as if he demanded every ounce of strength she possessed, as though her being with him were what gave him the energy to live.

She frequently returned to the waiting area exhausted and literally collapsed onto the chair. More often than not, Murphy, Keller, or one of the other men would be waiting for her, eager for word of Cain’s condition.

Although he hadn’t spoken, Cain knew she was there. He’d squeezed her hand the day before, the action so weak that Linette had nearly wept. First with joy and relief and then with despair that he’d stepped so close to death’s door—that she’d come so close to losing him.

“Cain’s better, I think,” she answered Keller’s question. Of the men of Deliverance Company whom she’d met, Linette liked Keller the best. He was a no-nonsense sort of person, a little rough around the edges, with a hard-as-tacks exterior, but he cared deeply about Cain.

Keller—she never had learned any of the men’s first names—was a pacer. In the week she’d been in Grenada, Linette had watched the gruff-looking man make deep grooves in the carpet with his constant pacing.

Murphy was the dark, silent type. Exactly why he didn’t want her in Grenada Linette couldn’t fathom. It was as if she were trespassing over territory he considered sacred.

“You think Cain’s better?” Murphy’s low voice mocked her. He looked her way, and his gaze narrowed with dislike he didn’t bother to disguise.

“Have I done something to offend you?” Linette asked. She hated confrontation, avoided it whenever possible, but she’d had about all she could take of this man’s attitude.

“Not me, you haven’t,” Murphy returned.

“Who, then?”

“Cain.”

“Cain?” Linette felt at a loss to understand this sullen man. “How have I hurt Cain?” If they were going to keep tabs, she could name a few infractions he’d committed against her, beginning with concealing the truth about himself.

“You messed up his head,” Murphy said, glaring at her. “We all knew something wasn’t right with Cain, and hasn’t been for months. What we should have guessed was that it involved a woman.”

“You can’t blame me for what happened to Cain.”

“You messed up his thinking,” Murphy shot back. “Cain was willing to sacrifice his life, and now I know why. He couldn’t think straight anymore.”

Linette found she was shaking—not because of what Murphy told her; she’d guessed as much herself—but because she was tired and worried and afraid. Afraid what he said was true, that Cain had taken unnecessary chances because his mind had been on her instead of the mission.

“Lay off her,” Keller snarled at Murphy. “Can’t you see she’s had about all she can take already?”

“See what I mean?” Murphy flared. “We barely know
her, and already she’s causing dissension between us. Women are nothing but trouble.”

“You didn’t have to tell me about Cain,” Linette said, fast losing her patience. “I’d never have known if Tim Mallory hadn’t contacted me.”

“Mallory’s a prime example of what a woman can do to ruin a decent fighting man.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“It’s true,” Murphy insisted. “Mallory used to be one of us. He was as good a man as any I’ve known, then he had to go and fall in love. Look what’s happened to him since.” He rammed his fingers through his short hair and pinched his lips as if to bite back a curse.

“Within a week of his return to Deliverance Company, there wasn’t a one of us could bear the sight of him. He was rude, cantankerous, and miserable, and all because of a woman.”

Linette briefly remembered Tim Mallory mentioning his fiancée.

“From what I understand, Mallory’s got a ring looped through his nose and is being led around some pasture in Washington State. Mallory married. I never thought I’d see the day.”

“I heard he was raising llamas,” Keller inserted, shaking his head in wonder.

“Llamas?” Murphy cried. From the way he said it, one would have thought his cohort had desecrated a national monument. The mercenary slapped his hands against his thighs. “I rest my case.”

“It’s not fair to blame Linette for what happened to Cain,” Keller mumbled, not sounding any too sure.

“You’re damn right I blame her.” Murphy tossed
Linette another of his menacing looks. “Now that I think about it, Cain hasn’t been himself for a good long time. Next thing we know, he’ll be applying for a regular job just so he can keep his sweetie-pie happy. Women and mercenaries simply don’t mix.”

“The nurse told me she thinks Cain’s made a turn for the better since Linette’s arrival.” It was Keller again, looking slightly embarrassed at Murphy’s accusations.

“Who’s to say that Linette had anything to do with it?” Murphy argued. “Cain’s got the best medical team in the world working on him. You might credit the doctors.”

“He was as good as dead, and we both know it.”

The two men faced off, glaring at each other. “I say it was Linette,” Keller returned heatedly.

“Please, don’t,” Linette pleaded. She placed herself between the two of them. Each man was several inches taller than she. Linette braced her hands against their chests, feeling a little like Samson between two giant pillars. Samson without hair, weakened and blind.

“The last thing you should be doing is fighting,” she told them, struggling to remain calm herself.

“Then leave,” Murphy told her.

“No,” she returned evenly, although her heart was in turmoil.

“She has every right to stay if she wants,” Keller insisted. “Cain needs her.”

“The hell he does. Deliverance Company is Cain’s life. He doesn’t need anything more than that.”

What Murphy said was true. The message had been delivered by Cain personally months earlier. “All right. All right, I’ll leave,” she said, shocking both men.

They diverted their attention to her. Keller’s eyes
were filled with what looked like disappointment, and Murphy’s shone with intense satisfaction. He’d gotten what he wanted.

“But in my own time,” she amended. “When I’m sure Cain will recover.”

She’d leave, she decided, when her heart had the strength to walk away from him. Again. But this would be the last time.

“When?” The question came from Murphy and was no surprise.

“Soon,” she promised.

“Not soon enough,” Murphy muttered, then turned and walked away.

Cain sensed a difference in Linette. She was gentle and encouraging as always, yet it felt as if she were miles away emotionally. She’d erected a roadblock between the two of them. It wasn’t what she said or how she behaved; it was mental, and it confused the hell out of him.

The effort demanded to open his mouth was beyond comprehension. Saying her name proved to be a test of sheer physical endurance. The lone word worked its way up his throat, catching on emotion and gratitude.

“L-in—ette.”

“Cain?” Her voice elevated with joy. “I’m here.” She lifted his hand to her lips and kissed his knuckles repeatedly. He felt moisture against the back of his hand and knew she wept silently.

He wanted to tell her so many things and struggled valiantly to remain conscious. No longer did the cold
plague him. He was warm and comfortable and within minutes fighting the lull of sleep.

Days blended one into the other with barely a notice. Cain was able to calculate the time by which nurse was on duty. The older nurse with white hair and angel eyes worked the graveyard shift. The pert brunette was with him from three to eleven. One named Hazel who arrived early in his day. Days of the week were more difficult to figure.

None of it mattered as long as Linette was with him. Each day was a gift to be cherished.

Then, when he’d mastered the ability to remain conscious for more than three or four minutes at a time, Linette left him. It might have taken him some time to realize she was gone if it hadn’t been for Murphy.

“Where’s Linette?” he asked his friend.

“Gone.”

Cain felt as though someone had knifed him. “Gone?”

“You don’t need her.”

“What made her go?” Cain demanded, his voice shockingly weak.

“She has responsibilities. It’s better this way, don’t you think?”

Cain rolled his head to one side, unwilling to answer. Better for whom? Him? Not likely. It would have been a kindness to let him die rather than nurse him back from the brink of death and then doom him to a fate of loneliness.

He hadn’t asked her to come, Cain reminded himself. He wasn’t entirely sure who had told her he’d been injured. Mallory, most likely, but how he ever found out about her, Cain couldn’t guess.

“You don’t need her,” Murphy went on to say.

Once more Cain didn’t respond.

“There’s nothing like a woman to screw up a man’s thinking. I’m right, aren’t I?”

Cain forced a nod. He might was well admit the truth. Murphy was right. He’d proved he could make it without Linette, and she sure as hell didn’t need the likes of him.

“She’s beautiful.” Linette sat in Nancy’s living room and gently cradled her sister-in-law’s newborn baby daughter in her arms. A wealth of emotion filled her as she studied this perfect child. “Welcome, little Michelle,” she whispered, her voice soft and low.

“We named her after Michael,” Nancy said, studying Linette. Home from the hospital for only two days, the other woman looked fabulous. “You don’t mind, do you?”

“Michael would be so pleased and proud,” Linette whispered. “He’d consider it a great honor. I do, too.” It came to Linette then how freely she could speak of her dead husband these days. Generally when his name cropped up, she experienced a sudden, crushing sense of loss. She wasn’t sure when this had changed, but she was grateful.

With her index finger, Linette outlined Michelle’s plump, pink face. The infant smelled of baby powder and summer and was precious beyond words. The love Linette experienced for this new life flooded her heart.

“Mom and Dad came to visit me while I was in the hospital,” Nancy said casually, but it seemed to Linette
that her sister-in-law was studying her, waiting for some response.

“I imagine they were thrilled to death with Michelle.” Linette knew Nancy’s relationship with her parents had been strained since the Christmas holidays. She hoped that this birth in their family would bridge their differences.

“They were very pleased we named her after Michael.”

Linette nodded. That much was understood.

“They asked about you,” Nancy said. “They wanted to know if you were still involved with Cain.”

“What did you tell them?” It grieved Linette that her last meeting with Michael’s parents had ended so badly.

“I thought you were dating Charles Garner, but when I called to tell you about the baby, Bonnie told me you were on some Caribbean island, and that Cain McClellan had been badly injured.”

“I was with Cain,” she admitted reluctantly. “It didn’t look like he was going to live.”

“I see.”

Perhaps Nancy did. At their last conversation, Linette had claimed it was over between her and Cain and that she was dating someone else.

Charles. If she were suffering regrets, it was over her brief relationship with the attorney. She hadn’t phoned him since her return, and she wouldn’t now. Their last conversation had gone poorly. She’d tried to explain why she was leaving for Grenada so abruptly. She’d told him about Cain’s injuries and that it was a matter of life and death.

Charles had grown cold and angry and insisted she stay in San Francisco. Linette had never seen this side of
him and pointed out that he had no right to demand anything of her. He’d called her a fool, and perhaps she was, but then so be it. She refused to allow him to make decisions for her.

Later, when she’d had time to think over their heated conversation, Linette decided it was best not to see Charles again. Clearly he expected more from her than she was willing to give.

“What about Charles?” Nancy asked, disrupting Linette’s thoughts.

Linette answered with a short shake of her head.

“But I thought you liked him?”

“I was crazy about his boys,” Linette admitted, and experienced a deep twinge of regret. “Unfortunately their father isn’t nearly as appealing.”

“What about Cain?” The question was low, as if Nancy were afraid of asking. “Oh, Linette, I’ve been so worried about you.”

“There’s no need. I sincerely doubt that I’ll be seeing Cain again, either.”

“But you’d like to?”

Linette didn’t need long to think over her reply. “Yes.”

“How can you say that, knowing what he does?”

Linette laughed softly and pressed her lips against the sleeping infant’s brow. “I suppose I should have learned my lesson a long time ago,” she admitted, but it was all wishful thinking, and she knew it. She expected never to see Cain again, but that didn’t mean she would stop loving him.

The doorbell chimed. Eight-year-old Christopher darted across the living room carpet as if he expected to find Santa Claus on the other side. Before Nancy could
stand or Linette could place Michelle inside the ruffle-laden bassinet, Christopher had thrown open the door.