Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
TAMSYN
“Get the car,” Lucien tells Daniel. “Bring it around front. I’ll meet you out there.”
“Right,” Daniel says, taking off and admitting a burst of wind and driving rain as he leaves through the front door.
Lucien turns to me. “You stay here. No need for us all to get soaked. I’ll keep you posted.”
I shake my head. By now, I’ve found some of my little antiseptic wipes and bandages. I keep myself busy dressing Ravenna’s wound so I don’t have to meet Lucien’s gaze right now. This is all too raw, and I’m barely holding it together as it is. “I’m coming with you.”
I’m not sure where that came from. I’d just been so eager to run and hide, but now I discover that waiting around in the shadows isn’t really my style.
“Tamsyn. You don’t have to.”
Something about the new huskiness in his tone touches a chord inside me that only makes things worse. “You might need the extra pair of hands, and I’m the only one with any medical knowledge,” I say, finishing up with the bandage. “And how can you keep me posted when the phones aren’t working?”
“I know you well enough by now to know that I’m not stopping you,” he says wryly.
“Good.”
“ Tamsyn, ” he says, and my heart pangs again. “You can’t even look at me?”
I hesitate. I don’t want to face him, especially with Ravenna between us, but when have I ever been able to resist one of his requests? I look up and our gazes connect. The sight of his beloved face, paler now but with those silvery-gray eyes as direct and intense as ever, sparks that familiar sensation inside me. It’s as though we’re linked together by something invisible but strong, and he’s still just Lucien, even though he’s now Lucien the Husband rather than Lucien the Widower. And I don’t know how to turn off the part of me that always wants to reach out for him.
“I’m sorry,” he says harshly. “I should never have brought you here. It was a mistake.”
“Don’t be sorry,” I say, looking away and doing my best to swallow the growing lump in my throat. But it’s not going anywhere, and neither, apparently, are my feelings. It hurts to hear that he considers any part of our relationship to be a mistake, but what did I expect? That he’d be cool with exposing the resurrected love of his life to his new summer squeeze? “Ravenna is alive. This is wonderful news.”
We hear a horn just then, two short blasts to let us know that Daniel is outside waiting for us.
I wrap the blankets a little tighter around Ravenna’s shoulders—she’s very still right now, which is a relief and a worry—and shoot Lucien a warning look. “Be careful lifting her. We don’t need to jostle her any more than necessary. I’m assuming her spine is okay, but I really wish we had a stretcher or a backboard.”
“Her neck is okay,” Lucien says. “Daniel says she was walking around when he found her, remember?”
“Yeah, but I just don’t want to take any chances.”
“I’ve got her,” Lucien says, and he does. He lifts her in one smooth and easy motion, cradling her in his arms the way he might have done when they were newlyweds and he brought her home to Ackerley for the first time. I give myself a stern reminder that we’re in the middle of a crisis here and I am not important, but I still feel a dark blast of jealousy as I see his head bent over hers and the care with which he handles her. I’d better start getting used to the sight of them together and the idea that those arms will no longer be wrapped around me. Unfortunately, both things are way easier said than done.
Right now, though, it’s time for me to focus. So I dart ahead of him and open the heavy front door, admitting another burst of the raging storm. The wind whips the rain straight into our faces. I raise a hand to block it, doing my best to focus on the blazing headlights from the Range Rover straight ahead. Daniel’s got the back passenger side door open, and the dome lights provide a nice beacon. Lucien heads straight for it, his long strides navigating the slick steps as though he’s got a strain of mountain goat in his DNA profile somewhere.
“Come on,” Daniel calls from the driver’s side. “I’m afraid the road is going to wash out.”
I open the back door a little wider for Lucien. He swings Ravenna around, her head and all that long hair draped over his arm. He’s just about to settle her on the back seat when all hell breaks loose.
There’s a deafening boom, the kind that rattles your bones. A flash of light that burns my eyes. A crack. Then there’s the doom-laden smell of sulfur and burning wood. And the astonishing sight of that bolt of lightning as it retracts back to the sky from whence it came, leaving the massive tree at the opening of the circular driveway to fall to its death, taking the power lines with it as it goes.
“ Get down! ” Lucien roars, and we all duck as sparks and leaves fly and the power lines sizzle. It seems to take forever for the tree to stop shuddering and go still, but it eventually does. And we all slowly straighten again, blinking and dazed by what just happened. Another flash of lightning helpfully eliminates the tree’s enormous and pitiful carcass in its final resting place blocking our path.
Lucien recovers first, straightening with Ravenna in his arms and blinking away the driving rain as it hits his face. “Everyone okay?” he calls, his attention swinging between me and Daniel.
“Yeah,” Daniel says, reaching back inside the car to kill the engine and cut the lights before straightening and shutting the door. “Guess we’re not going anywhere, though.”
“We’ll take the back way,” Lucien says.
“No chance,” Daniels say grimly. “It’s all torn up. They’re re-paving it, remember?”
Epic scowl from Lucien. “What the fuck? That was supposed to be finished while I was gone.”
“When does anything ever get finished on time?” Daniel says with a hollow laugh.
“Looks like we’re stuck here for the night.” Lucien turns to me, his expression softening. “Tamsyn? You okay?”
“Yeah,” I say, swiping my entire arm across my face in a vain attempt to keep at least some of the rain away. But there’s nothing I can do about the driving wind other than raise my voice to make sure they can hear me. “I’m fine, but we better get back inside before some debris hits one of us in the eye.”
I turn back toward the house and quickly discover a startling new reality.
The lights are out.
I knew they had to be, right? I just personally witnessed the tree take out the power lines. But nothing prepares me for the looming monolith now spread out before us. Ackerley in the complete darkness looks like every childhood haunted house nightmare come to life. Another flash of lightning—mercifully a little farther away this time—heightens the sensation by illuminating all the dead-eyed windows. I hesitate because I don’t want to stay out here in the storm, but I damn sure don’t want to go into that house right now, either.
“What happened to the generator?” Lucien asks Daniel, heading back inside without breaking stride.
“Give it a minute,” Daniel says as we follow him.
But nothing happens.
“Fuck,” Lucien says when we’re all back in the foyer and Daniel slams the door against the wind, blocking out the little bit of ambient light that made its way inside. “Daniel, I need you to find every candle and flashlight in the place. Pronto. I’ll take her up to the blue bedroom.”
“I’m on it,” Daniel says, heading off.
Lucien starts for the stairs, but I put a hand on his arm to stop him.
“I don’t want you to take her all the way up there. She’s been jostled enough. Can we just put her on the living room sofa or something?”
“Good idea,” Lucien says, turning away from the staircase and heading for the living room. I hurry in front of him, stumbling against the chair and then the coffee table before eventually making my way to the sofa. I toss the throw pillows aside and push the coffee table out of Lucien’s way, guided only by the little bit of light coming in from the windows. There’s just enough of the full moon visible through the clouds for its light to reflect off the glittering bay and eliminate the living room. Otherwise, I’m sure I’d do a spectacular face plant against the furniture.
Lucien lays Ravenna on the sofa. She murmurs something fretful and shifts restlessly.
“Ravenna?” he says anxiously, leaning over her. “Can you hear me?”
“I’m tired,” she says, shifting again as she presses a hand to her newly bandaged forehead. But she seems groggy and doesn’t open her eyes. “My head hurts.”
Her voice, like everything else about her, is beautiful. It’s a little croaky and weak at the moment, but it sounds surprisingly husky and resonant. It’s the kind of voice made for whispering sweet nothings in someone’s ear all night long.
Lucien glances over his shoulder at me. “Can we give her something for that?”
Back to nurse mode for me. “Yeah. Do you have Tylenol? Also, I need to get her out of these wet clothes and into something dry so she can start warming up.”
“No problem. I can grab all that.” He takes a step or two toward the door before turning back. “Will she be okay?”
“I think so,” I say, trying to sound brisk, professional and reassuring. Now is the time for me to crank my nurse mode up to a hundred percent and ignore the part of me that’s so shaken by this turn of events. It’s good that she’s back, I keep telling myself. Thank God she’s back. Thank God she’s okay. Thank God Lucien is reunited with his wife. That’s how it should be. “We’ll watch her overnight. Get her warmed up. Maybe give her a little bath later, if she can tolerate it. It’s a good sign that she’s talking and moving her arms and legs. And I’m hopeful that there’s no bleeding on the brain. Otherwise, I suspect the crack on her head would be a lot worse. Don’t worry. I’ve got her.”
And I try to bring it all home with a reassuring smile, the one I give my patients all the time.
Lucien stares down at me, his expression unreadable. “I know you do. She’s in good hands.”
“Does she have any family you should call, or…?”
The question seems to startle him. “Ah, no. She has a sister, but they’re not close. And her parents died in a fire when they were teenagers. Their grandmother raised them the rest of the way. She’s also gone now.”
Wow. How sad that she’s back and there’s no one else to care besides her husband. “I see.” He hesitates as though he wants to say something else, but now is not the time. I need him to complete his mission. “ Lucien . Get her things.”
His jaw tightens as his attention swings between the two of us. Then he nods and sets off, disappearing into the darkness and leaving me to take care of Ravenna.
I sit at her hip on the sofa and do a quick assessment. Her shivering seems to have subsided somewhat, so that’s good. I reach for her wrist to take her pulse again. It was a little thready before, and I just want to make sure?—
“I’m wet,” she says, her eyes still closed.
“You are,” I say, pulling the blankets back and reaching for her shirt. She’s wearing a white linen oxford that’s plastered to her flawless ivory skin. I work my way through the buttons, pushing the two halves aside and sliding them over her shoulders and off. She helps me out by rolling from one side to the other, and the next thing I know I’m confronted with her breasts, which are small and perky, no bra needed. She’s got large, dark nipples and a lean torso, the kind of body that belongs to a runway model and that couldn’t be more different from mine. And it’s not that I’m into women or that I’ve forgotten my professionalism. I know how to take care of the patient, and that’s what I plan to do. It’s just that it’s harder to quash the womanly side of myself than I expected it to be. I can’t help my intrusive thoughts, which seem determined to remind me that Lucien enjoyed this body long before he enjoyed mine.
And probably much more than he enjoyed mine.
I shift my attention to her jeans, determined to ignore my plummeting morale. She’s got slim hips. Black lace bikini. A triangle patch of dark hair and trim thighs without an extra ounce of fat anywhere. Not like me. Endless legs, and pretty delicate feet, much smaller than mine. I pull her jeans all the way off and toss them aside, my cheeks flaming as I hastily re-cover her with the blankets and tuck them under her chin.
But honestly, I don’t know whether I’m protecting her or myself. Probably both.
I glance around, impatient for the return of the men. I’d like to get her dressed and give her that Tylenol, but they sure are taking their sweet time about?—
“What’s happening?” she says, startling me.
I hastily turn back to her and discover that— oh, shit —she’s awake. Really awake. Blinking and doing her best to focus her glazed gaze on me as she tries to sit up.