CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT – HAYLEY
I fell, drifting, through layers of white mist. It wrapped me in warmth and everything was silent, the tendrils of it passing by me like snow on a dark night. It felt as if I was falling faster and faster. I saw something lying on a bed. Then I woke up.
My arm was sore. It was a dull pain, different to the pain I had felt earlier. It was a pricking, tugging sensation, as if someone stuck pins in me. I rolled over. I opened my eyes.
I was looking at a white ceiling. My body was warm. I stretched, and felt the slide of satin under my hands. I could smell roses. I sat up. I knew where I was.
My arm hurt, the pain becoming a searing, nagging ache as I moved the muscle once again. I closed my eyes. But the pain was nothing compared the stifling warmth that filled my chest. I was home!
Not the home I had left, the cottage in Montrose under the oak-trees. Beckett’s home. Home.
The thought of it brought back a pain to my chest as memory flooded back. Beckett had gone back in. He had pushed me out of the way and I had fallen, my arm shot, and he had gone back in again.
He was hit. I could see the blood. He must have been hit again. They killed him.
But if he was dead, why was I here? The thought that he must have ordered it, or I would not be here but in a hospital somewhere, gave me hope. He must still be alive, or who had brought me home?
I leaned back against the headboard and looked around. It was not my room, but one similar. The trees outside the window were missing, replaced with a distant view of lawns. And the bed faced the window instead of having it on the left side. But the scent of roses was the same and, when I focused on the dressing-table, there were the same kind of flowers in the bouquet as the ones put out for me, all those days ago when I arrived.
I was alone in the room. I listened to the sounds of the house. A car whispered past on the distant roadway. A bird sang in the grounds somewhere. Someone raked gravel. And, in the next room, I could hear voices.
“…and don’t you think it would be too soon…”
“No!” the voice was hushed, but urgent. “No. I don’t. Doctor, I have to…”
“Mr. Sand, I’m telling you. Wait…”
The door burst open and Beckett was there. He filled the doorway. Beckett, who was wearing a nightshirt; deathly pale and smelling of surgical scrub and medication. Beckett, who was swaying a little, with a vast bandage swathing his right shoulder, but who made his way over to the bed and sat on the edge of it, staring at me.
“Hayley,” he said, his voice a broken whisper.
“Beckett.”
He covered his face with his hands.
“Hayley,” he said again. “I am so, so sorry.”
“Don’t be,” I whispered. “I’m sorry too.”
He laughed, then.
“No,” he said, still smiling. “No. Don’t be sorry. You have nothing to be sorry for.”
He reached for my arm. My fingers twined in his. He took my hand, breath scalding my cool fingers as he lifted it to his mouth. He kissed the knuckles, the back of my hand, my fingers. Held it to his chest, his long, muscled, wonderful fingers stroking the back of my hand.
I felt my heart leap as his touch flowed up my nerves, making my entire body tingle even though it had been through so much pain. There was nothing of that left in me now. All that pain and terror and sadness slipped to the back of my thoughts as I looked at him.
He looked at me.
“Hayley, you’re safe now. They’re gone. They’ll never harm you again. We got the police on to them—Peter tipped them off,” he explained.
“Peter?” I asked.
He smiled tiredly. “My security chief. He’s the one who got us out of there.”
“No,” I shook my head. “You got me out of there. You saved my life, Beckett,” I whispered. “They were…they were going to kill me.” The memory returned to me and I screwed my eyes shut, trying to lock out the feeling of standing in front of a man with a gun, facing my death.
“I know,” he said softly. “Those bastards.”
I shivered. He shook his head, stroked my hand.
“I know,” he said softly. “That’s not the point. The point is you’re here now and we’re safe and it’s never going to happen ever again.”
I smiled. “Yes. That’s the point.”
We sat there silently a while. A man appeared in the doorway—the doctor, I presumed. How Beckett was getting it right to have me hospitalized at his home I had no idea. I was so glad he had done. The doctor—a tall man with sparse hair and a strong, rugged face—smiled at me, studied us both for a moment, as if making calculations in his head, then departed.
Beckett looked up at my face and looked round at the doorway.
“The doctor,” I explained succinctly. “He’s gone.”
“Oh.” Becket looked pleased. “Good.”
“Good?” I asked.
“Good,” he repeated. “Because I don’t think Doctor Brenner would approve of what I’m about to do as part of my recovery plan.” His eyes shining with that wonderful naughtiness that only he seemed to have, he leaned forward and, moving slowly so as not to tear open the wound in his shoulder, kissed me.
I felt my body melting into his as his lips, soft and tender, moved over mine. My body—beaten and bruised as it was—responded eagerly, and I was soon holding him to my chest, pressed tightly together as his tongue slipped between my lips. I crushed him against my breasts, and he moaned. I gasped in longing. We were on the bed together, him sitting on the edge, me sitting up against the board.
“I brought tea for the patients,” a voice said at the door. He shot upright and we both looked round guiltily as Mrs. Delange—apparently our self-appointed caregiver—came in.
“Mrs. Delange!” Beckett grinned.
“I think Doctor Brenner would have something to say about his patients being out of bed,” she said. Then she grinned at us and dropped an eyelid in a slow wink. “But that’s the doctor’s business, and I’ll mind my own. Tea is here when you are ready for some.”
“Thank you,” I said gratefully.
“What about coffee?”
Mrs Delange shot Beckett a glance. “No coffee while you’re recuperating, Mister Sand,” she said firmly. “Doctor’s orders…I’m just obeying him.”
“I shall have a word with Doctor Brenner,” Beckett said loftily. We all laughed.
When Mrs. Delange had gone out, we sat together on the bed. He took tea and held it carefully, saucer in the right hand, tea in the left.
“How is your shoulder?” I asked, pouring my own tea from the pot Mrs. Delange had left on the table by the bed.
“Sore,” he commented, rolling his right shoulder back experimentally. He winced. “It hurts. Doctor said they took a while in surgery getting the bullet out. Said I could thank Heaven it wasn’t a higher caliber or I could have lost the use of my arm.”
“Hell,” I said, whistling through my teeth. “I do give thanks for that,” I added fervently. “What did he say about my arm?”
“He said we were lucky to get you into theater on time. It was bleeding heavily. You lost a lot of blood. They transfused you, though. So he said you shouldn’t suffer too badly from the loss. Me neither,” he added.
“Oh.” I winced, thinking about all the surgery my poor body had undergone. My left elbow had a cotton swab on the crease, stuck with wound-tape. I guessed that was where the transfusion had gone in. “Thank you for organizing…all this,” I added, inclining my head to the bedroom.
“It was nothing,” he said. “Least I could do. Good thing Dr. Brenner has a good idea of my wants and needs and leverage to make it all work. I’m not sure I’d be allowed to recover at home without his say-so.”
“It’s nice here,” I said, sliding on the sheets. My recovery would be much faster for the beautiful surroundings, good food and the presence of my loved ones. That I knew for sure.
“I’m glad you like it,” he said, giving me that rare grin that made him look like a boy again—naughty and shy.
“Beckett…” I began.
“I’m sorry about all the…”
We spoke together and he stopped. “Your turn first,” he said politely. I grinned at him.
“Becket,” I said slowly. “I’m sorry about the problems we had. It was my fault.”
“No, it was mine,” he said softly.
I shook my head. “No! I was the one who ran away. If I had stayed, none of this could happened!”
He sighed. “No, that wasn’t it. I put you in danger, and if I thought about that too much, I would have never forgiven myself. Anyway, let’s not think about it like that. I’m just going to be glad it’s over.”
“Me too.”
We sat silently, sipping our tea, listening to the sound of someone raking gravel and the birds, singing in the trees outside the window.
“Estella…” I began a half-formed question.
“She’s here. She was with Mrs. Delange, organizing the rescue process. Peter phoned the house and they got Doctor Brenner down here with an ambulance crew just in time.”
“They did a good job,” I commented, looking at him and then at my arm. It was covered in bandaging and it felt bruised, but undamaged.
“They did,” he said. He was swirling the tea, looking into the depths of it. When he looked up his green eyes were deadly serious. “Hayley?”
“Yes?” I said. My heart clenched at the wistfulness in his voice, the pain in it.
“This is serious. When I…when I thought I’d lost you…” His voice shook and his face twisted as if in pain. “When they said they would hurt you if I didn’t stop them…my world ended, Hayley. I can’t live happily without you. Not ever again. This is a proposal.”
I stared at him and he laughed.
“This is the craziest proposal in the world,” he continued. “Seeing as how we’re already married—in the eyes of the world, that is. But I want it to be real, Hayley. Will you be my wife?”
I stared at him. I put down the cup carefully, so as not to break anything. Then I crawled down the bed, body shaking, and wrapped him in my arms.
He held me and we sat there together, embraced, saying nothing; our hearts beating in slow time with one another.
He kissed me and I kissed him back.
“Beckett, yes,” I said, very quietly but very certainly. I had never been more certain about anything else in my life. “Yes. I will be your wife.”
Outside the birds still sang and the leaves still fell and someone still raked them. Inside, everything had changed. We were together, and in love, and we would spend the rest of our lives together. We had promised ourselves that, and each other. It was true. It was forever. We were getting married.