Need You Now (Love in Unknown)

chapter 19





Caine glanced at the big grandfather clock in the corner of his office. Ten p.m. Jesus. He needed to get home. Home. Fortune Hill felt so empty without Mel around. He still half expected to see one of her books in the living room or one of her hair ties in the bathroom. In the middle of back up his stuff, his phone rang.

“Gage, what’s up?” He stuffed another file into his briefcase to look over when the insomnia hit at three in the morning. He’d become resigned to the fact that he couldn’t sleep through the night and did his best to be productive instead of lying awake.

“Have you heard from Mel?” Gage’s voice was taut and worried.

Caine frowned. “No. She still isn’t talking to me. Why?”

“She’s been working late every night since she dumped you.” The faint sound of sirens screamed in the background. “I make her call me when she’s walking to the car and she promised to never stay later than ten. She should have called by now, but she hasn’t. I’m on my way over right now, but I’m still five minutes out.”

A sense of unease crept up and down Caine’s spine. He dropped the briefcase and took off out of the office at a fast jog. His heart began to pound. Dread coursed through his veins faster than a shot of whisky. He had to be wrong. Had to be. If he wasn’t… “I’m on my way over there. Portia’s in town. She came here earlier this afternoon, trying to convince me to take her back. Seemed pretty pissed when I wouldn’t.”

“You don’t think she’d go after Mel, do you?” Gage’s tires screeched, obviously going too fast around a curve.

“Wouldn’t put it past her. All that hair dye’s done a number on her head.” Caine burst through the doors of Town Hall. The square was empty. No lights were on over the bakery. Hell. “I’ll call you when I’ve got Mel.”

Gage grunted. “I’m sure she just forgot to call.”

Caine prayed to whatever god would listen that his brother was right, but his gut told him he wasn’t. Now that he was outside, Caine picked up the pace. He was running full out and it still didn’t feel like hew as going fast enough. Every second felt like an hour. He had to get to Mel. Had to see her. Portia might be crazy, but he didn’t think she’d actually hurt anyone. Still, he didn’t want to take a chance.

All of the lights in the clinic were turned off from what he could tell, but Mel’s car still sat in front. He didn’t see another car anywhere on the block, but that didn’t mean much. He started to charge into the building, but thought better of it. If someone was in there, he’d make things worse storming in like a cowboy. Slipping around the building, he let himself through the back door into the kitchen Doc Booth always used as the break room for the staff.

He listened, but couldn’t detect any movement on the ground floor. A board creaked over head. From the direction it came from, they were in one of the exam rooms upstairs. But which one?

Careful to avoid the noisier steps, Caine moved up the stairs as fast as he could. He checked Mel’s office first, but found it deserted. Not good. The hell with cautious. Blood drummed in his ears. “Mel? You here, sunshine?”

“In here!” The voice that answered wasn’t Mel’s. Lights peeked through the crack under one of the doors.

He opened the door carefully. Mel stood at the far end of the former bedroom, hands held up level with her shoulders. Usually pale, her skin now blended in with the pure white walls behind her. He knew she fought for every ounce of calm, but she wasn’t showing fear. Good girl. “You okay?”

“Of course she’s okay.” Portia stood off to one side, a gun trained on Mel. “She attacked me! I had to wrestle this gun away from her. I was just about to call the cops when you showed up.”

Caine moved between Mel and the gun. He kept his voice level. “We both know that’s not what happened, Portia. Mel doesn’t even own a gun. She hates them.”

“That’s not what the registration will say. It’s amazing how easy it is to get a fake ID these days.” His ex-fiancée looked like an escapee from a bad action flick with her slicked hair and bodysuit. Her hand on the gun didn’t waver. Her dad had taught her to shoot at a young age. “Poor little genius girl couldn’t handle her boyfriend leaving her for a better woman. She went to her beloved clinic and shot herself. How tragic.”

He took a deep breath, searching for control. He had to get that gun away from her. If she still had it when Gage showed up, someone was going to get hurt. “No one is going to believe you, Portia. And I’m not going to let you shoot her. Not ever. So why don’t you hand over the gun and we can forget this whole thing ever happened?”

“Why are you defending her? She doesn’t deserve you.” Portia’s body began to shake a little as she grew more agitated. Images of Mel’s lifeless body sent bolts of icy fear through him. “You belong with me, not her.”

“Isn’t that my decision to make?” He took a small step toward Portia. A few more steps and he’d be close enough to get the gun away from her. Break her arm, if he had to.

Portia laughed, the sound maniacal as it echoed out into the quiet house. “Men aren’t capable of making decisions when it comes to getting married. Everyone knows that. It’s up to women to steer them in the right direction. It would have worked before, but you were weak. Now you’ve had the chance to get her out of your system and we can be together.”

“Okay.” Talking sense into her wasn’t going to work. He felt like he might choke on his heart. Every muscle screamed to reach behind him, to take Mel and shield her until he had her out of this room and away from Portia. “Just give me the gun and we can go back to my place to talk about our future together. Can you do that?”

She hesitated for a second. “You have to promise that you won’t leave me again. Keep her on the side if you have to. I don’t care if you have a whole harem on the side. You just have to marry me. I was born to marry a man like you.”

Over her hysterical orders, he heard a car pull up outside. Gage. Thank God. “Okay. I got it. Now, give me the gun and we’ll get out of here. Mel won’t say anything to anyone, will you, sunshine?”

“No. Of course I won’t. Ms. Brewer’s just having a bad day.” The steel in Mel’s words reassured him. She knew what he was doing.

“Give me the gun, Portia.” Caine moved forward, fingers wrapping around the cool metal and her boney hand. He thought his heart might burst when her grip loosened enough for him to take the gun. Flipping on the safety, he sat it on the counter. “Let’s go.”

With a hand on the small of her back, he turned Portia around and guided her out of the open door. He made a motion to tell Mel to stay behind. The last thing he needed was for Portia to have a change of heart and attack Mel as they went downstairs. He remained alert, hoping Portia hadn’t heard Gage entering the house the same way Caine had. All he had to do was get her to the ground floor, away from Mel, and they’d be all clear.

Halfway down the stairs, Portia stopped. “What was that? Somebody else is here.”

“Probably just the wind. This old place is really creaky at night.” Get downstairs. Get downstairs.

Portia shook her head. “No. Someone’s here. You called somebody, didn’t you? That policeman brother of yours, right? You bastard.”

Before he could stop her, Portia reached down into the knee-high boots she wore. In the pale light from the open exam room door, he saw the glint. A knife. He reached up to try and catch hold of her wrist and get it away from her, but she was too fast. Twisting, he felt the blade slice through his shoulder, a blinding pain ripping through the left side of his torso.

“Police! Drop the knife!” Gage barked the order from the foot of the stairs. Through his haze of pain, Caine saw his brother shine a flashlight at Portia with one hand and use the other hand to keep his gun trained on her.

Portia didn’t drop the knife. Instead, blinking from the glare of the flashlight, she stomped her feet like a two-year-old in a tantrum. “You bastards! You idiotic, stupid small town hicks! You’ve ruined everything! Everything!”

She tried to stab at Caine again, but a gunshot rang out through the house. A screech of pain followed and he saw her cradling her shoulder. Gage didn’t waste any time, climbing the stairs two at a time. “Mel! Get your ass down here. Caine’s hurt!”

#

The next few hours were a blur for Mel. A really painful, awful, nightmarish blur. She’d known she wanted to be a doctor at age nine. Never in the twenty years since then had she imagined she would have to use her medical training on the man she loved. Blind panic threatened to take over the second Caine left the exam room with Portia. All she’d wanted to do was curl up in the corner and sob through the fear. Then she heard Portia losing it with Caine. Every cell in her body screamed for her to run to him, but she knew it would make things worse.

If she lived two lifetimes, she’d never forget the utter terror she felt when she heard that gunshot. All she could see in her head was Gage or Caine with a gaping wound, dying on the stairs. Gage’s shout pulled her back to reality.

Blood stained Caine’s crisp blue shirt. Kicking into doctor mode, she went to him, examining his shoulder and side. The slash was deep and about five inches long, but Portia had missed any major organs. As she worked, she was vaguely aware of Gage checking on Portia. She learned later that Gage shot the bitch right through the hand.

Mel rode with Caine to the hospital in the ambulance, not letting the EMTs touch him. When they got into the emergency room, the doctor on duty, Dr. Jameson, refused to let her work on him anymore. “You know the rules, Dr. Carr,” he admonished. “No treating loved ones. Go sit in the waiting room and I’ll come to get you once he’s settled.”

Hands red with Caine’s blood, she tried to find the energy to argue with the other doctor, but she couldn’t. Shock settling in, she knew. One of the nurses led her to the waiting room and forced her to sit down. A little while later, a cup of coffee was pressed into her hands. At some point, Micah showed up, leaving their mother to take care of Jax. That’s when she really broke down.

“It’s okay, squirt. It’s okay.” With her big brother’s arms around her, Mel almost believed that. Intellectually, she knew that Caine’s injury wasn’t fatal, that he would recover. But here in this waiting room, she didn’t get to be the calm, rational doctor. She had to be the scared, worried girlfriend.

“I could have lost him tonight,” she sobbed. “I could have lost him and I never even told him I loved him.”

Another hand joined MIcah’s rubbing soothing circles on her back. Gage. “He knows you love him. Don’t worry about that. Get it all out now so he can see that beautiful smile of yours.”

Mel honestly didn’t know what she would have done without them. The brother of her blood and the brother of her heart. They’d supported her through every major change in her life. Having them with her now made it almost impossible for her not to feel better. All of the worry and pain and uncertainty of the past few months crashed into her. Her chest tightened and loosed with waves of relief. No more crazy phone calls. No more vandalized cars or trashed offices. The only things between her and the man she loved right now were an elevator, a few doctors, and a really big apology. At this point, she’d grovel if she had to, as long as she saw him breathing.

By the time Dr. Jameson came down to the waiting room, she’d stopped the tears, but still hadn’t let go of Gage’s or Micah’s hands. They were keeping her sane. “You can go up and see him. We’ll keep him overnight for observation, but the wound was mostly superficial. Lots of stitches, but he’ll be good as new in a couple weeks.”

She barely registered Gage and Micah thanking Dr. Jameson. All she cared about was seeing Caine. Feeling his pulse beating healthy and strong under her fingers. Some remnants of her doctor self kept her from sprinting through the halls and up the stairs. One of the nurses on the second floor saw her coming and directed her toward the right room. Mel stopped just outside the door and took a breath.

Caine’s big body look so out of place in the narrow hospital bed. An IV drip was attached to the bed of his right arm. A bandage covered his left shoulder and sent a wave of nausea through her. Just a few inches lower and Portia could have got his lungs, his heart, an artery. Mel looked down at her hands, expecting to still see blood. Vaguely, she recalled Micah or Gage wiping them with a wet cloth at some point. Didn’t matter. She still felt the warm stickiness of the blood that had pumped out of Caine from that shoulder. The tang of iron still filled her nose, the familiar scent that she’d thought herself immune to after all these years.

“Stop standing there worrying, sunshine. Trying to rest over here and your brain’s being too damn noisy.” Caine didn’t open his eyes and his voice sounded like it’d been run over gravel, but a smile tugged at his lips.

She walked over to sit on the chair beside his bed. The second she sat down, he took her hand in his right one. The fingers of her free hand rubbed light circles on the pale skin on the inside of his wrist, taking solace in counting the steady beats there. Eventually, his eyes opened, warm and blue and alive. “You okay, sunshine?”

“You were stabbed by your crazy ex-fiancée and you ask if I’m okay?” Mel sniffed, tears stinging the back of her throat again. “I really must look like hell. Probably all red and splotchy.”

Caine shook his head, wincing a little at the movement. A lock of shaggy hair fell in his eyes. “You’re always gorgeous. I’ve just never seen you cry before.”

“Well, being held at gunpoint and seeing the man I love gushing blood is a bit much for even me to handle.” She looked down at their entwined fingers, his big hand so warm around hers. She never wanted to let go, but he did. He reached up to cup her chin, tilting her head to look at him.

“Love, huh?” His expression went all soft. It might be the pain meds dripping into his veins, but she didn’t think so. “So I have to get stabbed and be in a hospital bed for you to finally ‘fess up?”

Mel laughed, the sound a little watery. God, she loved this man. Everything about him, even his overprotective alpha male tendencies. “Well, if a certain someone's ex-fiancée hadn't broken into my clinic, I would have come by your office to tell you that tonight."

“Yeah?” Blue eyes turned almost electric with happiness as they eagerly moved over every part of her.

She nodded, turning her face to kiss his palm and cup it in her own. “Yeah. It really sucked to be away from you. I know it wasn’t fair of me to keep so much from you. I just…I was scared, Caine. Scared to feel so much for someone, then and now. Getting hurt by you would be a thousand times more painful than anything I felt before.”

Losing him forever, she now knew, would have been almost unbearable. She finally understood how her mother could spend a year trying to block out the world and the pain. To love someone meant risking the pain of losing them; it meant giving them the power to hurt you irreparably when you lost them. It also meant not wanting to miss out on a single one of the memories that could happen between this day and that.

“I will never, ever hurt you, Mel.” Caine patted the bed, urging her to sit beside him. Throwing protocol to the wind, she did. Even pale from blood loss, the man radiated heat and vitality, and all she wanted to do was curl up and stay by his side forever. “I know I haven't said it yet, but I love you, sunshine. So much. You're everything to me. Everything.”

Suddenly shy, Mel laced her fingers with Caine’s. “I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you about the pregnancy scare. It’s something I’ve worked really hard to forget. I knew telling you was the only way I could think of to end things and keep you safe. After what Portia did to your golf cart, I was terrified of what she might do next and I didn’t want to see you hurt because of me.”

“Would you have ever told me about it if this thing with Portia hadn’t been going on?” Caine squeezed her hand reassuringly.

Mel buried her face in his good shoulder for a minute, taking strength from the clean, masculine smell of him. “I…I think I would have. I’ve never felt so alone as I did during those weeks you were gone. It was hard. Being with you, even as casually as we were, had been a fairy tale for me. Reality hit me really hard and I just couldn’t stand to be let down again. Given time….given time I know I would have trusted you enough to tell you. You have this way of breaking through my defenses and sneaking into my heart.”

“I understand.” Two simple words that meant the world to Mel. Unable to speak, she leaned forward and kissed him. When his tongue darted out to tangle with hers, she pulled back, resting her forehead against his. “Easy there, Mr. Mayor. You’re not quite in shape for that just yet. There’s plenty of time for making up when you’re out of here.”

“Will you come home with me and play doctor?” A teasing light danced in his eyes.

A life of love with her best friend? A life of possibility and laughter? She could do this. There was no way she wasn’t going to do this.

Mel laughed, kissing him again. “That’s the best offer I’ve had in a long time.”