Necessary Secrets Page 13

  Jon watched her. She could feel his gaze linger on her skin. “They’re still here?”

  “Yes. You know, that day we blazed a trail up to this very spot. Actually, I think the trail was already here, but we were convinced we’d done all the work.”

  “How did you get to the start of the trail?”

  “Funny you should ask.” She flicked up her eyebrows. “We borrowed Denise’s father’s pickup. He was in farming once, but he got out of it later and became an accountant. Lucy, being the daughter of Trail’s only tow truck operator, drove. I was going to drive back. I was so excited. All I’d driven were tractors.”

  “What happened?”

  “Well, it didn’t quite turn out as well as you think. Lucy got the truck stuck. So, we figured we’d let it sit while we hiked up here.” She laughed. “I don’t remember our logic for leaving it, but it sounded really good back then.”

  “Teenagers are rarely logical.”

  “How true. Anyway, when the three of us got up here that day, we sat facing each other and made a pact.”

  Jon threw her an amused look. “I can’t wait to hear this.”

  “We vowed to be happy. We promised each other we’d do anything to be happy. Of course, Denise, the prissiest of us, wanted clarification on what we meant by ‘do anything.’ Lucy told her flat-out we deserved happiness after all we’d endured, and just shut up and agree.”

  “Endured?”

  Sylvie smiled. “I know. Compare my life now with back then, and my teenage years look like a Sunday picnic. After that, we climbed back down.”

  John smiled. “To the stuck truck? How’d you get it free? Steal Lucy’s father’s tow truck?”

  Sylvie feigned a guilty look. “Not quite. While we were gone, Lawrence found it and called the police, figuring something awful had happened to Denise’s father. The police then called her house and got her mother all freaked out. After a while, of course, we arrived back at the scene of the crime, only to find the police and a bunch of local men, mostly fathers of our school friends, ready to start searching the woods for Denise’s dad.”

  “Where was he?”

  “He was still out plowing his fields. Didn’t know a thing was wrong. You know, I never did get to drive the truck. Dad grounded me for a month. He used to be really strict.”

  A curious sense of belonging rippled through her. Who would figure she’d feel such emotion while recalling her father’s punishment?

  “Must have been why you joined the military. To drive enough trucks to catch up with Lucy and Denise.”

  She shook her head and turned to watch the vista. “No. I enlisted to escape the ranch. It wasn’t doing well back then, like most of the ranches during the late eighties. I used to think back then that Dad should have just dissolved the whole operation and moved into a retirement apartment.” She sighed, her foolish reminiscing watering her eyes. “Dad wasn’t that old, yet I figured he was ancient.”

  She sagged against one of the large outcroppings of rock. “I’m sorry. I’m starting to sound maudlin. It’s been such a good day. I don’t want to ruin it.”

  He grunted out a strangled word, something she didn’t catch. After two long strides, he reached her and, automatically, she fell into his open arms. How good it felt.

  He spoke into her hair. “Don’t expect to be able to turn off the waterworks right away. Give it some time.”

  “But I feel so much better. I mean, when the doctor and I talked, we went through the whole list of symptoms and…well, it’s just…it was so clear what was wrong. The constant worry, reliving all that had happened.”

  Jon stiffened in her arms and she shut her eyes, knowing he expected more.

  She clenched her jaw. Oh, please don’t ask. Not now. Not ever.

  She felt him tighten his grip on her. Oh, don’t let me go. Forget I spoke.

  The minutes lingered and Sylvie gave herself up to the embrace.

  Too soon Jon released her. She straightened her clothing. “Let’s forget the last few minutes, okay? You must think I’m a real flake.”

  Surprise flared in his eyes. “A flake? Why would you think that?”

  “All right, maybe not a flake, but a fool.” Her mind raced for some way to change the subject. Anything to lead the conversation away from what had happened.

  Too late. Like a movie in front of her eyes, she relived it all. Rick, wounded, in the back of the truck. She, on top of him, crazy with fear that she’d die a virgin—without ever experiencing the joy of lovemaking—

  A knot of shame choked her. One night of total idiocy left her private dead and her pregnant.

  She wiped her face with cold hands. “I should have realized what was happening to me weeks ago. It’s not like post-traumatic stress has never been discussed in the military. PTSD had been part of the briefings we had to attend before going to Bosnia. It’s just that my own debriefings afterward were practically nonexistent because I came back earlier than the rest of the company. I kept thinking my symptoms were just hormones. I’m such a fool.”

  “No.” He shook his head, almost violently, still keeping his distance. “You’re neither. In fact, I have to say, I’ve never met a woman with your strength and smarts.”

  She bumped into the outcropping when she backed away from him. “Me?”

  “Sure? Who would have suggested straightening that old line shack instead of tearing it down?”

  “It hasn’t been done successfully yet.”

  “It doesn’t matter if it’s ever successful. The idea is good enough to try. Lawrence, with all his vast experience, didn’t consider it. But you used your experience and resourcefulness to try a different approach. Like they say, you thought outside the box.”

  She stared at him. Was something good coming from her tour of Bosnia? Something besides the baby growing inside of her?

  Pride swelled in her at the sight of Jon’s admiring smile and the sound of his encouraging voice. Incredible. Twice in one day she’d felt a kind of hope, anticipation that even the tiny baby within had not yet produced.

  Jon turned back to the vista they’d come to see. He was talking on about how great the scene looked, but she couldn’t focus on his words. Instead she leaned against the rock and watched him, hoping the weeks left would go so much slower than what was already behind her.

  Because she wanted Jon to be a friend and more. He glanced over his shoulder at her, a look that was both warm and haunted.

  But friends don’t lie to each other, a demon inside of her taunted. And neither do lovers.

  The knot returned to her throat. Maybe she should tell him the truth about Rick’s death and risk the court martial. His need for the truth lingered under the surface all the time. And as much as he didn’t show it, he still begrudged her keeping it to herself.

  She could easily take the heat off her, but she’d have to omit the selfish part where she hadn’t wanted to die a virgin…and omit most of what Rick had said.

  An omission was as bad as a lie.

  But Jon deserved to know Rick’s last hours. It was worth a court martial. She reached out her hand.

  A pain struck hard at her abdomen, punching out her breath and weakening her knees.

  “Oh!” She collapsed onto the rock floor, just as another agonizing jab clawed her again. Through a blur of tears, she caught Jon spinning around, and after one swift stride, reaching for her. One of her hands met his arm, the other cradled her belly.

  “What is it?” His rushed voice pierced her pain.

  “I…I don’t know. I stood up straight and this sharp pain just hit me.” She blinked his worried features back into focus. Her heart throbbed in her throat, choking her. “Oh, God, Jon, I hope it’s not the baby!”

  The millisecond that the doctor left the examination room, Jon plowed over to him. “How is she?”

  The doctor stepped back, startled. “Would you like to go in, Mr. Cahill? Sylvie said she’d like to see you.”

  His heart racing, J
on charged into the room. The same one he’d taken Sylvie to that first day they’d met. His heart had been in his throat all that day, but this time…hell, it seemed lodged there worse than ever.

  Sylvie lay on her side, an ice pack on her swollen abdomen. Jon threw her a questioning look. Then one to the doctor who’d followed him back in.

  “She’s pulled a muscle.” The doctor peered disapprovingly over his glasses at her. Sylvie looked away. “She shouldn’t have taken up mountain climbing halfway through her pregnancy.”

  “The trail was a bit steep in parts. It wasn’t mountain climbing,” Sylvie mumbled.

  “Your abdominal muscles are stretched enough, and during pregnancy, ligaments loosen. No more long walks. And no walking at all for the next few days, either.”

  Jon tunneled shaking fingers through his hair, afraid to feel relief yet. “The baby?”

  The doctor faced him, his face still bland. “Is fine. In fact, he’s quite active for being so young. She’s only strained a couple of lower, supporting muscles and a groin muscle, though I suspect that one not as much. Have her keep some ice on it for the next few hours, then she can alternate between warm packs and cold packs. Bring her back in if she doesn’t improve in a day or two.”

  “Thank you.” His heart still pounding, Jon closed the door behind the doctor. Damn it, Sylvie should have known better.

  Yeah, and he should have known better, too. She’d smiled and chatted all the way up the steep climb and he hadn’t suspected she might not be able to manage the hike. They’d both still been reeling with the almost-euphoria of knowing the cause of her erratic behavior. He’d been giddy with relief as they ate lunch, then she’d suggested a bit of hookey from the ranch.

  He should have been paying more attention to her needs.

  Well, from now on he would. “Feeling up to going home?”

  She shoved away the cold pack and struggled to the sitting position. “Are you going to treat me like an invalid if I say ‘yes, let’s go home’?”

  He offered his hand, but she brushed it away. Anger rose in him. She had no plans to take it easy. “Sylvie, you are going to take it easy.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “The hell you are. If you don’t do as the doctor says, I’m moving into your house and camping out in front of your bedroom door.”

  She opened her mouth, no doubt to protest, but said nothing. A blush feathered its way up her neck as she pulled down on her shirt. By the time she allowed him to help her off the table, her face glowed bright pink. “All right. You win.”

  “Now you’re talking.” He liked winning. And this easy little victory felt damn good because Sylvie didn’t give him many. And yeah, he also liked the idea of paying attention to her needs. All of her needs.

  A familiar need of his own heated his groin, and to cover the unbidden lust he straightened the paper sheet she’d been lying on.

  Forget it, Cahill. She’s off-limits. He should focus on being grateful that she and the baby were okay. She had nothing more than a pulled muscle that was already straining to accommodate her swelling womb.

  The one filled with his only relative. The one that had been pressed against his palm out on the range, and the one whose skin, smooth and pale he’d seen last night. So begging to be kissed.

  He gritted his teeth. “Let’s go. And remember, Sylvie, you stay in your bedroom and don’t do a thing. Or else I’m moving into your hallway.”

  Sylvie had relented and retired to her room, not before dropping a few of the PTSD pamphlets the doctor had given her on the kitchen table. Jon had seen the stack during supper and knew there were several more, probably in her room, waiting to be read. He’d only come in for some ice cubes, choosing the errand over Lawrence’s latest lesson of the actual mechanics of a vaginal delivery.

  Jon was probably the only officer on the entire police force in Toronto who’d never had the privilege of delivering a baby, something of which he was rather secretly proud. There had always been a hospital or an ambulance close enough to save him the terror. Besides, Michael and Purley were more likely than him to need the information that Lawrence was reciting. He wouldn’t be around for Sylvie’s delivery.

  Popping the ice out of the tray into a small container, Jon pushed aside the disappointment the idea of leaving created. He’d be here only for another month. Get Sylvie back on the road to recovery, somehow take Allister aside when he got back next week and explain to him what she’d gone through, maybe suggest the older man read those pamphlets.

  Jon set the container on the counter while he filled the ice cube tray with tap water. An unbidden thought struck him like a sucker punch. He’d never feel Sylvie under him. Even now the taste of her skin from out by the line shack and the vision she’d created in her office simmered his blood.

  She wasn’t his. No more than his ex-wife had been his when she finally admitted she was pregnant with another man’s child. A thick sigh seethed through his gritted teeth. How the hell did he get mixed up with another pregnant woman? A woman who wasn’t carrying just a baby, but a secret she refused to reveal.

  God forgive him, he’d give his eyeteeth to spend one night in her bed, secret be damned.

  All right, he’d admitted the dangerous notion. Now forget it. Looking to distract himself, he grabbed one of Sylvie’s pamphlets and hastily scanned it.

  It listed some classic symptoms, dry statistics and a few addresses at which more information could be obtained. Then the pamphlet underneath caught his eye. “Spousal information on PTSD: don’t let it destroy your relationship.”

  Still holding the ice bucket, he flipped open the narrow paper.

  Sharing a traumatic experience can draw people closer, and the resulting emotions can manifest as romantic feelings. When the sharing is done with a spouse or partner, PTSD, properly treated, can help to strengthen a relationship, but sometimes a third party may be involved. It is necessary to understand that the romantic feelings may simply be a manifestation of the shared stress or grief or whatever initially triggered the PTSD.

  Jon dropped the pamphlet like a hot potato. Damn, that was what had happened to him and Sylvie!

  He’d been grieving, too. At first Sylvie had been a place where he could assign his grief and anger, but later, as the weeks rolled by and his anger eased, a different emotion arose.

  Those warm, fuzzy feelings, those hot flashes of lust where he wanted nothing more than to carry Sylvie to her bed and explore her ripening body, they were all his body’s way of trying to find someone to grieve with. After all, he had no one. Rick had been his only relative and, unable to bear the thought of losing him, Jon had looked to share his grief.

  The hard, desperate lump inside of him burned his gut, leaving him with one brutal solution.

  Until he left, he must not let the grief and stress trick him into thinking he and Sylvie should be anything more than friends. They had to focus on her health and nothing else.

  Sylvie smiled at him over breakfast the next day. “Since we didn’t get into the rental store yesterday, would you like to go in with me this morning?”

  Purley and Michael had eaten early and left. Michael’s shoulder was bothering him today, an injury from a cattle drive years ago, and he needed Purley’s help in the barn. Lawrence, however, lingered over his second cup of coffee.

  Jon glanced at him. “Don’t you think Lawrence would be a better choice?”

  “Don’t look at me.” Lawrence didn’t lift his head from yet another library book, The First Year of Life. This book was infinitely preferable to the previous ones, but Jon wished Lawrence would restrict his reading to the evening. “Got the vet coming this afternoon. One of the cows needs looking at.”

  Sylvie frowned. “Nothing serious, I hope.”

  “Don’t think so.” He shut his book. “She’s just not feeding her young ’un, that’s all. You two go on ahead and get that equipment. We’ll be ready for you.”

  Jon’s heart stalled in his chest. Di
d Sylvie have to look at him as though she wanted him to pull her into one of his stupid embraces and hold her until he gave in to the inappropriate lust and dragged her off to bed? She had no idea how long the list of reasons against this relationship was becoming.

  But, hell, he’d told her he’d help her and that meant with the line shack, too. He swallowed. “I’ll be ready whenever you are.”

  “And he needs a new heart,” Sylvie explained as they pulled into the rental store’s parking lot. She wasn’t used to asking men out on a date. Had she rushed her words of explanation?

  Jon parked the truck in the first available spot before looking at her thoroughly confused. “Who needs a new heart?”

  She gaped at him. “Haven’t you been listening?”

  He looked as if he’d been a million miles away, his expression not just distant but also deeply sad. Was the ranch boring him? Was he thinking of his life back home? Was the fact that she carried his nephew or niece now losing its appeal?

  Or was he thinking that since she would probably never reveal the last hours of his brother’s life, it was time to throw in the towel and leave?

  She could tell him the barest facts, the ones Tirouski had insisted she keep to herself, but that would precipitate a stream of events worse than anything she’d witnessed in the military. And Jon would eventually learn the whole truth.

  He shoved the shift lever into park. “All right. Let’s start at the beginning. Who needs a heart?”

  “Fred Barker,” she started again with a long exhalation, “he’s one of the hands over at the Cavanaugh ranch. He’s had congenital heart failure for a few years and has been on a donor list for nearly as long. Well, they’ve found a heart for him. He’s headed for Calgary’s Heart Center as we speak, but he won’t be able to afford the antirejection drugs. They cost thousands a month.”