The Men of Medicine Ridge - Diana Palmer [52]
At some level, she was aware that he was speaking to her. But she was fighting the pain and the drugs, and her mind was foggy. She felt his touch, first on her cheek and then lightly brushing her mouth. He was whispering in her ear, words that sounded like the softest kind of endearments. At that point, she was sure she was dreaming. Mack never used endearments….
It was late that night before she returned to something approaching consciousness. She looked around the room with surprised amusement. Vivian was asleep in the chair by the radiator. Mack was sprawled, snoring faintly, in the chair beside her bed, with her hand still gripped in his. Beside him, on the floor, Bob and Charles were asleep sharing a blanket on the cold linoleum. She could only imagine the nursing staff’s frustration trying to work around them. And wasn’t there some rule about the number of visitors and how long they could stay? Then she remembered the uproar Mack had caused on his arrival, and she imagined he’d broken every rule they had already.
“Mack?” she whispered. Her voice barely carried. She tried again. “Mack?”
He stirred sleepily, and his eye opened at once. He sat up, increasing his firm hold on her hand. “What is it, sweetheart?”
The endearment was disconcerting. He stood and came closer, bending over her with evident concern. “Tell me,” he asked softly. “What do you want?”
She searched his face with hungry eyes. It had been weeks since she’d seen him. There was something different….
“You’ve lost weight,” she whispered.
His gaze fell to her hand in his. “So have you.”
She wanted to tell him that she’d been only half alive without him, that it was the lack of him in her life that had aged her. But she couldn’t say that. She’d been hurt and someone had called him. Probably her serious condition had caused Vivian to finally tell him the truth. He’d come out of guilt. Perhaps they all had.
She pulled her hand out of his and laid it across her chest. “I don’t need anything,” she said, averting her face. “Thank you,” she added politely.
The effect of that cool, polite reply hit him hard. She was conscious again, and she’d be remembering their last meeting and what he’d said to her. He put his hands deep in his pockets and studied her for a long minute before he went to the chair and sat down. The breath he let out was audible.
She was still groggy enough that she went back to sleep at once. Mack didn’t. He sat brooding, watching her, until the first rays of dawn filtered through the venetian blinds. Around him, the boys and Vivian began to stir.
Vivian got up and looked out the door, noticing the bustle of early-morning duty shifts. “Why don’t you three go get us a nice hotel suite and have a bath. I’ll stay here with Natalie while they get her bathed and fed. By the time you come back, she’ll be ready for visitors.”
Mack was reluctant. Vivian pulled him out of the chair. “You’re absolutely dead on your feet, and you look fifty,” she said. “You’re not going to be any good to anybody until you get some rest. Have you slept at all?”
He grimaced. “She woke up in the night,” he said, as if that explained it all. His face was drawn with worry and guilt. “She remembered what I said to her. It was in her eyes.”
“She’ll remember what I said, too,” Vivian replied. “We’ll get through it. She’s not a person who holds grudges. It will be all right.”
He hesitated. “She isn’t going to want to go home with us,” he realized. His face began to tauten. “But she will, if I have to put her in a sack! If she wakes up before I come back, you tell her that!”
The loud tones woke Natalie. She winced as she moved, and her chest hurt, but her eyes lifted to Mack’s hard face, and they began to sparkle. She struggled to sit up. “I’m not going…anywhere with you, Mack Killain,” she told him in as strong a tone as she could manage in her depleted condition. “I wouldn’t walk to the…elevator with you!”
“Calm down,” Vivian said firmly, easing her down on the pillows. “When you’ve gotten your strength back, I’ll get