Chapter 10 #2
Annalee’s eyelids popped open, and she found herself squinting through a much brighter world than the overcast one she’d left behind. She soon realized it was because she was lying beneath a set of fluorescent lights.
She groaned and tried to sit up, but a wave of lightheadedness kept her on her back. Good, clean air was puffing into her nose and mouth. Her blasting headache from earlier was nearly gone. So was most of her nausea. The best part of all was that she was breathing on her own again.
Hawk’s tanned features appeared above her. He looked so haggard that she reached for him, cupping his face in an effort to soothe him.
He bent over her, resting his forehead against hers. “I thought I’d lost you.” Emotion made his voice hoarse.
She pushed the oxygen mask aside so she could speak. “I’m starting to get the feeling that God still has plans for me. For us.”
“He must.” He gently dragged his lips over hers.
“Where’s Running Bear?” she murmured against his lips, almost afraid to ask.
“He’s fine.” He replaced the oxygen mask over her mouth and nose. “Just breathe. We’ll pick apart every detail of your latest escapade later.”
She wiggled impatiently beneath the blanket covering her, wanting to do so much more than breathe. She had a thousand questions burning on her lips, but she loved him too much not to humor him. At the moment, she was content to learn that Running Bear had been clever enough to evade Rosamund’s deadly clutches.
A nurse entered the room to check her vitals and pronounced them back in the normal range. Then she turned off the oxygen mask and removed it. “You’re looking so much better, Mrs. Dakota. How are you feeling?”
Annalee gave her a thumbs up. “Happy to be alive.”
“You’ve been through a lot.” The nurse picked up the patient chart hanging off the end of her bed and wrote a few things on it. “The attending physician would like to keep you a little longer for observation. He’ll probably order a repeat of your blood tests before he discharges you.”
Annalee nodded. “Whatever he recommends is fine with me.” She owed it to Miley and Hawk to be the healthiest version of herself she could be. As soon as the nurse left the room, she pinned him with a beseeching look. “Tell me everything!”
“Rosamund was arrested.” He gently brushed her hair back from her face. “She’s got a mile long list of charges against her. It’s not helping her case that I installed a security camera in the greenhouse. Everything she did and said to you in there was captured on video.”
Amazement flooded her. “When did you find time for that?”
He tapped a finger against her nose. “I’m a security guy, remember? After going to work for Lonestar Security, I installed cameras all over my property. Didn’t even bother to hide most of them. According to statistics, just having them is a deterrent to crime.”
She hurriedly asked her next question. “Has anyone been able to track down Running Bear yet?” She wanted to see for herself that he was fine.
Hawk glanced toward the door of her hospital room to wave someone forward. “It might be better if I let him do the talking for himself.”
Running Bear moved to her bedside.
“I was so worried about you!” Hawk leaned back so she could hold out her arms to their favorite councilman.
“Right back atcha.” He leaned over her bed to ever-so-gently embrace her. He kissed her forehead before straightening. “My heart is broken over what happened to Chayton.”
“Mine, too.” There was a strange sort of relief in discovering the truth about his death, though. It was the closure Annalee had so desperately needed. “He was a good man, a good husband, and a good father. He didn’t deserve to leave the world that way.”
“No, he did not.” Running Bear’s expression tightened. “It makes me all the more thankful for the time you and Miley got to spend with him. Now that I’ve gotten to know you both, I understand just how much joy you gave him. I only wish I could’ve spent more time with him myself.” He pointed upward. “But I live in the hope of seeing him again.”
“Me, too.” Her eyes swam with dampness.
He glanced at Hawk and exchanged a silent message with him. Then he started talking again. “I have some news that I think you’ll find welcome.”
She smiled through her tears at him. “Nothing you have to say will top the fact that you’re alive and well, but lay it on me.”
Adoration gleamed in his eyes. “The last thing my brother told me before he passed was that he’d changed his will again. Everything he owned…it’s a good thing you’re sitting down already.” She could practically feel the excitement vibrating through him. “It’s all yours.”
“Mine?” Her smile faded. “What about Edward?”
He shook his head. “Ace never mentioned him.”
A sense of sadness settled over her. “That hardly seems fair. From what I understand, Edward has been single-handedly managing Dakota Farm for a while now. He’s been doing a good job of it, too. What’ll become of?—”
“Dakota Farm is yours, my dear,” Running Bear repeated firmly. “You can do whatever you want with it.”
That didn’t sound right to her. “I don’t understand. My father-in-law could barely stand the sight of me.” Whereas he’d adored his stepson, hadn’t he?
“I suspect that leaving everything to you was his way of reclaiming Chayton as his son.”
“If it’s truly all mine,” she murmured, unable to wrap her brain around it just yet. Dakota Farm was more than an hour’s drive from the rez. “How in the world am I supposed to…?” Divide my time between here and there? She finished the perplexing question inside her head, not wanting to sound ungrateful. However, her life was here. Her heart was here.
Hawk had taken a seat beside her bed, giving Running Bear the floor to make all of his grand pronouncements. He leaned forward and reached for her hand again, meeting her questioning gaze. “Like you said yourself, Dakota Farm is already under good management. You might be able to negotiate some sort of agreement with Edward to keep him on board.”
Her lips parted as conflicting emotions flooded through her. “Rosamund’s son,” she murmured. “You think I should keep Rosamund’s son on staff?”
“He was three-years-old, too, when his mother’s quest for revenge started.” Hawk caressed her fingers. “Seems to me that a little grace all around might be in order.”
“Hear, hear!” Running Bear chimed in, moving to the window to gaze out of it.
“You’re right. You both are.” A sense of relief crowded out the misgivings churning inside her. “You have a heart of gold, Hawk Chesney. So do you, Running Bear. It’s one of the many reasons I love you both.” She swallowed a sigh. “I’m still not looking forward to moving away from the rez, though.”
Alarm leaped into Hawk’s gaze. “Who said anything about you moving away?”
As she raised and lowered her shoulders helplessly, she was dimly aware of Running Bear exiting the room. “I guess I always knew our occupation of your cozy cabin wouldn’t last forever.” Her heart bled at the thought of leaving it. During the months she and Miley had lived there, his cabin had come to feel like home. So did the gardens and park area behind it. And the people. They’d become more than neighbors. They were now her friends.
“What if it could last?” Hawk sat forward in his chair, studying her with a strangely vulnerable light in his eyes.
“What are you saying?” she whispered.
“Stay,” he begged quietly. “Marry me. Be mine and let me be yours forever.”
Her breath caught in her throat. There were so many things on her heart she wanted to tell him. For the space of a few heartbeats, however, she was rendered speechless while his gaze burned into hers —hoping, longing, waiting.
Miley’s voice wafted their way. “There’s only one right answer to that, Mom, because I’m not moving again. Not away from the rez, anyway. My friends are here. My job. My whole life.”
The defiant edge to her voice made Annalee start laughing and crying at the same time. There was a pleading note in her voice, too. “I couldn’t have said it better myself, hon.” Boy, there was no privacy to be had at the hospital! None whatsoever!
Hawk’s shoulders relaxed as he drank in her happy tears.
“My whole life is here, too, Hawk. It’s with you.” She smiled through her tears at him. “Yes, I will marry you. I would be honored to marry you.”
He produced an oval diamond ring in an antique rose gold setting.
“It’s so beautiful,” she breathed as he slid it on her finger. It was a surprisingly good fit for a ring she’d never tried on before.
“Glad you like it. It belonged to my mother.” He swooped in to seal their engagement with a kiss.
She dreamily kissed him back, loving the fact that she was wearing such a special ring. He’d never spoken much about his parents. All she knew was that they’d died while he was young, and Running Bear and his wife had finished raising him.
The fact that he was sharing a family heirloom with her spoke volumes about the way he loved her. Never before had anyone had the ability to unravel her from the inside out the way he always did. However, he was always there to pick up the raw threads of her emotions and twine them around his heart, making the two of them stronger together than apart.
Running Bear lightly cleared his throat from the doorway, alerting them that he’d returned. “There’s someone else who’d like to see you, my dear.”
Annalee turned her damp gaze toward the door and nearly forgot to breathe. A woman who was her mirror image stood there. “Mirabelle!” She choked out her twin sister’s name. Then she held out her arms.
Mirabelle was boyishly thin and moved with a lithe grace across the room that made Annalee think of a wildcat. “I’ve waited thirty-two years for this day.” Her voice was as choked as Annalee’s as she bent over the hospital bed to enclose her in the gentlest of hugs.
“I’m so sorry,” Annalee wept, clinging to her. “I’m heartbroken over everything you’ve suffered.”
“Don’t be.” There was grit and spunk in her sister’s voice as she straightened. “As the old saying goes, what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger, and that’s exactly what I am now. Stronger.”
It was true. Her sister was a portrait of strength in a pair of black running pants and a sleeveless white gym shirt. Emblazoned in hot pink block letters across the front of it were the words, WORK IT OUT.
Questions bubbled to Annalee’s lips. “How did you manage to get free?” She hoped her sister didn’t mind her asking something so personal so soon.
Mirabelle tossed her blonde ponytail behind her. “For starters, the rogue doctor who spent decades falsifying my medical records got arrested on multiple counts of malpractice. Also, an old friend reached out to me a few months ago through his attorney. The legal and financial assistance he’s been giving me has been a game changer. I’m gonna track him down and thank him as soon as I leave this room.”
She shivered as she glanced around the antiseptic chamber with its white walls and beeping machinery. “No offense, but I don’t like hospitals.”
“That’s understandable.” Annalee was dying to ask who her sister’s old friend was. She had her suspicions, but it didn’t feel like the right time to keep grilling her. Mirabelle was too jumpy, and she was clearly ready to end their quickie reunion. “Before you go, I’d like to introduce you to my fiancé, Hawk Chesney.”
“Your fiancé?” Mirabelle glanced in surprise between the two of them.
“I popped the question right before you walked in,” Hawk explained in a voice that was husky with exultation, “and she said yes!”
“Oh, wow! It just happened, huh? Congratulations!” Mirabelle shook his hand, then gave Annalee another hug.
When she tried to pull away, Annalee held on a little longer. “Please come over for dinner and a visit soon!”
“Sure. Thanks!” Mirabelle gave her an awkward smile and dug a flip-top phone from her pocket. “Here’s the number to my burner.” She looked it up and rattled it off. Then she pocketed the phone and moved toward the door. “Sorry to dash, but I really am allergic to hospitals.” The look she darted around her was downright spooked.
Annalee’s heart ached for her. She had no idea how a person was supposed to heal and move on from what her sister had been through. It was going to take a miracle for sure.
“How about I walk you out?” Running Bear followed her to the door. “I’ve waited a long time to meet you, my dear. I’d like nothing more than to visit some more on your way out.”
Mirabelle gave him a nervous up-down nod and all but dashed toward the door.
“Oh, and if you’re looking for a job,” Annalee called after her, “I’m gonna need someone to help the current manager run Dakota Farm.”
Mirabelle skidded to a halt in the doorway and spoke without turning around. “Are you, by any chance, referring to Edward Dakota?”
“I am. He’s doing an amazing job,” Annalee informed her cheerfully. “No complaints. But running an operation that big is gonna take more than one person. Just think about it, will you?”
Mirabelle was still for a moment. Then she nodded and disappeared around the corner.