Chapter 10
The chopper flew low over the foggy landscape, the day dark and stormy, lights standing out as if it was dusk. The babies were strapped into their car seats between Grace and Brett, her eyes fixed on the view out the window as her thoughts turned inward.
Brett couldn’t be married. He’d lived next door to her for more than a year, but she’d never seen the same woman twice, nor heard mention of a wife. He must be divorced, but why would his coworker be completely unaware of such a big change?
It was weird, to say the least. She couldn’t picture him as a husband, one half of a pair. It didn’t go along with her vision of him as a selfish, egotistical prick.
Come on, Grace. Be honest with yourself. You haven’t thought badly of him in quite a while.
Her pulse sped up as she remembered the feel of his palm on her inner thigh. She definitely hadn’t been finding him lacking in that particular moment. On the contrary, she’d liked him far too much.
She cursed her ridiculous and inappropriate attraction to this man. What was it about him that made women melt like butter?
If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.
Yes, that’s exactly what she should do. When they returned from this jaunt into the city, she would make sure Brett had everything he needed to care for the boys and quietly make her exit. Get that wall back between them where it belonged. Get back to her life with John.
Her throat clenched at the thought of her boyfriend. Would he be upset with her for helping Champion and not answering his call?
Only if you tell him you could feel Brett’s touch zing all the way up your leg.
She pulled out her phone and texted him. CAN’T TALK RIGHT NOW. I’M HELPING A FRIEND. MIGHT BE A COUPLE OF DAYS. LOVE YOU.
She stared at the last two words, her fingers hovering over the delete button. “You okay?” asked Brett, making her jump.
He was talking on the comm set, but she turned to him anyway. “I’m fine.”
His eyes were shadowed in the darkness of the chopper, but her stomach clenched at the intensity emanating from his body. “I’m sorry about… in the truck,” he said.
She shot him a censoring look, then looked pointedly at Dire.
Brett shook his head. “He can’t hear us. I’m only talking to you now.”
She turned away, not wanting to talk about this but knowing they had to move past it. “It was my fault, too.”
“Do you love him?”
The blunt question surprised her. It hurt that he would question her feelings for John, but certainly she deserved that much after the way she’d behaved.
You deserve to lose him altogether.
“Yes.”
“You sure about that?”
Now she turned around, temper flaring. “I made a mistake. A stupid, isolated mistake. What do you care, anyway?”
He shrugged. “I just don’t want to see you make a bigger, more legally binding mistake, that’s all.”
“Like you did? Dire mentioned you were married.” It had been meant as a jab, the pointed edge of his gaze showing she’d hit her mark.
“Yeah.”
She cocked her head. “He was under the distinct impression you were still married, as a matter of fact.”
“Uh-huh.”
“You are?”
“No.”
He didn’t elaborate, though her curiosity was piqued, and it further annoyed her that she wanted the details.
He was getting under her skin, each little bit of his facade that she chipped away another foothold on the mountain that was Brett.
And she just kept climbing, when what she really needed to do was rappel away from this mess and run home to her regular life.
She had to leave, get away from temptation and back onto solid ground.
Her eyes closed. Go back to John, go back to safety, go back to what was right.
But what about the twins? Her chest seemed to cave in on itself.
She’d made a promise to help Brett care for them, but damn it, she was attached to those boys.
She didn’t want to leave them any more than she wanted to leave Brett.
She was in trouble, and she knew it. Fatigue pulled at her, and she kept her eyes closed. She’d been up almost twenty-four hours, and she needed rest. Besides, it might keep him from talking to her. She leaned her head back on the seat and let her mind drift.
“It’s been a long time since the boys ate,” Brett said, startling her. He unbuckled Theo and lifted the baby into his arms like he’d done it a hundred times before. “Should I try to wake them or let them be?”
“You already picked him up.”
“I think we should wake them.”
She shrugged. He was already gaining confidence in their care. How much did he really need her to stay with him? If she left, he might be upset, but he would manage.
Sadness clawed at her. She didn’t want to leave, no matter that it was clearly the right thing to do.
She loved John. If he were here right now to see how she was behaving, if he knew the traitorous things she was thinking, he would stop loving her in a heartbeat.
She took a deep breath. “Brett, I need to go—”
He interrupted. “What’s this?” Holding the baby toward her, he pointed to a spot on the boy’s face.
She ran her finger down the baby’s cheek, narrowing her eyes when she felt a roughness to the skin and leaned in for a better look. A hive-like rash had appeared on the baby’s face, just below his eye. She held her hand to the baby’s forehead, noting a slight fever. “He’s warm.”
He handed the baby to her and reached for Toby. The look he gave Grace immediately showed his concern. She moved to them and felt for a fever. The second baby was even hotter than the first.
“What’s going on?” Brett asked.
“I don’t know.”
The chopper dipped, clearly descending as the Chrysler Building appeared in the window behind Brett’s head. She lifted the pant leg of the baby in her arms, searching the skin she could see, as Brett did the same with the other child.
She’d just found a second spot on the boy’s left ankle when Brett said, “Oh, my God.” There on the second twin’s upper calf and thigh was a large, angry red urticaria just like the one on his brother’s face and leg.
“They need to see a doctor,” Grace said. “At their age, a fever can be dangerous—”
“We have a doctor at HERO Force.” He put the baby back in his seat. “Buckle up. We’re landing.”
She did as he said, first securing the baby, then herself. The chopper touched down on a rooftop as the first stirrings of true panic bored down on her, the buildings of Midtown Manhattan illuminated around them.
They made their way to an elevator. Her instinct was telling her something was very wrong. The elevator came to a stop and she bent to pick up the carrier, noting the palest red spot on the opposite side of the baby’s face. “It’s spreading.”
She followed the men through a labyrinth of an office with smoked glass walls and gleaming wood surfaces before turning sharply into a bright white medical suite. “Find Razorback, now,” ordered Brett, and Dire took off at a jog.
She and Brett each unbuckled a baby, working by tacit agreement to see as much of the infants’ skin as possible.
They laid them on the examining table and undressed them, her pulse hammering at a fevered pitch when the baby’s arm was limp in her hand while she took off his shirt.
“Poor muscle tone,” she said. “He wasn’t like this before. ”
“Mine, too. He’s like a rag doll.”
Her mind whirled through medical conditions and symptoms, cross-checking what she was seeing with what she knew, but she was at a loss.
A deep male voice behind her made her jump out of the way.
“Excuse me, coming through.” The black man who moved beside her wore a skintight blue T-shirt emphasizing his muscles.
Sweat soaked the material in patches as if he’d been exercising, the stethoscope he reached for and swung around his neck conjuring a memory of a stripper at a bachelorette party.
Grace shook her head to clear it and rattled off the symptoms they’d observed, along with a summary of the infants’ feeding and sleeping patterns since they’d first been in her care. “I’m a nurse. Please, tell me what you see.”
He nodded. “Respiration is elevated. Rash consistent with an allergic reaction of some kind.”
“But the fever and the breathing—”
He cut her off. “Don’t go with an allergy. I know.” He unfastened the baby’s diaper, the inside purple where it should have been dry and white or yellow with urine.
Grace gasped. “It wasn’t like that before!”
Brett opened the other child’s diaper, an equally purple stain revealed.
“We need to get these children to a hospital, stat,” said Razorback. “I’m guessing some kind of metabolic disorder, but whatever the cause, they’re going downhill fast.”