A Family For Christmas. Tara Taylor Quinn
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yet...wow. She was so young. With such soulful, intelligent eyes.
And a face swollen almost out of recognition.
“Is he coming after you?” He had to know.
“I don’t think so.” For the first time, she looked away when she answered him.
“I need to know the truth.”
Glancing back at him, she said, “That is the truth. I think he thinks I’m as good as dead, if not gone already. I slurred my words. Started walking crooked. Talking crazy. Told him he had two faces.”
Symptoms of a brain bleed. “You need to get to a hospital.”
“I lied and faked it all. I just wanted him to quit hitting me.”
He had a feeling it hadn’t been nearly as easy to fool the bastard as she made it sound.
“Won’t he get suspicious when he finds you gone?”
“He drove me up here, hauled me out into the woods and left me there. That was sometime yesterday. I think.”
Holy hell! What kind of a beast did that to his own wife?
Studying her face, seeing small lines in her stretched skin, indicating previously healed lacerations, he knew he’d already answered his own silent question. Only a beast would do something like that.
He’d left her to die. And...
Their gazes met. For the first time, he saw stark fear in hers. It was almost as though he’d heard her words before she said them aloud. “He can’t know I’m still alive. If you alert anyone, he might find out...”
Simon wasn’t in the market for company. At all. Of any kind.
But he wasn’t turning her away.
He might be half-blind. A failure. He was not cruel.
“If you stay here, I won’t alert anyone. If you go, I will.”
“How long do plan to keep me prisoner?” The unflappable voice was back.
Maybe he should have seen the question coming. Figured a woman who was used to beatings might think that way. He was used to trying to put himself in young minds when it came to his patients.
“As a doctor, I can’t just let you walk out of here in this condition. You die and it’s on me. Believe me, I’m not up for any more of that kind of guilt right now. I want you to stay here for as long as it takes to get you healthy. I need to start you on antibiotics, too,” he told her, hurrying there at the end.
He’d said too much. I’m not up for any more of that kind of guilt right now.
Clearly, he was out of practice when it came to acting like a rational member of society, or even holding a normal conversation.
Hence his extended trip to the woods. And...maybe...a little bit because of it.
She was studying him. He waited for some takedown regarding his guilt comment. But when she finally spoke, all she said was, “Fair enough, Dr. Walsh. I don’t leave, you don’t call. Just until I’m recovered enough to disappear on my own.”
Simon nodded, not sure if he’d come out from the conversation—the day—unscathed. He’d load his gun—just in case her story didn’t hold up. Or whoever had beaten her came looking.
He’d tend to his patient, and then he’d send her on her way. Without alerting anyone to her presence.
From there, she was on her own.
And so would he be.
Just as he’d planned.
CARA SWALLOWED THE water held to her lips. Whenever the doctor was in the room, she mustered up the wherewithal to speak as though nothing was wrong. Years of practice protecting Shawn—but mostly she had been protecting...
No, she couldn’t go there—had honed her ability to continue on through the pain. As though it didn’t exist.
Sometimes she wondered if pain was just a figment of the imagination. Thought a lot about the power of mind over matter.
She could deal with living in a body that hurt with every move she made.
It was the emotional stuff that she wasn’t so sure about. Wasn’t even sure she wanted to try anymore.
What was the point?
Except that...she wasn’t dead. Shawn had left her for dead. As she’d traipsed through the Nevada wilderness, hungry, hurting, nearly freezing to death at night until she’d found a ditch to huddle in, finding not even a path on which to walk, she’d accepted that she was going to die.
Had come to peace with doing so.
So why wasn’t she dead? Why was she lying on a nice mattress under a soft comforter, wearing a makeshift hospital gown?
The doctor had cut the sleeves off a man’s shirt and instructed her to put it on backward, buttoned only halfway up. He’d said nothing about her undies, and though she’d have liked a change, she’d left them on.
She’d shuddered a time or two as he ran his practiced hands over her body, feeling for breaks, discussing his findings. Her ankle was a little swollen—her doing. As was the bruise on her knee and the bit of swelling on her right wrist. The cuts on her arms and face—all of which he’d carefully cleaned, covered with some kind of ointment and then bandaged where applicable—were compliments of Shawn. The arm abrasions had come when she’d held them up to protect her face.
He’d tended to the bruises and cuts on her legs, too. Left there by the steel-toed tips of the boots her husband wore when he wasn’t surfing. Since moving to the West Coast he’d begun to fancy himself as some kind of cowboy surfer dude.
In the beginning, she’d thought he looked damned cute in his tight jeans and Western shirts unbuttoned to the navel. But somewhere along the way, everything about Shawn had ceased being a turn-on.
According to him he was the one who’d brought joy back to her life, which had been something she hadn’t felt since before her mother got sick and life had become a series of doctors. With her father’s contacts, there’d been a never-ending stream of them. Over and over he’d put her mother through examinations and treatments. All he’d really done was deliver them boatloads of dashed hopes. And...
No, she knew better than to open a door that she’d spent years nailing shut.
Funny, here she was, ready to go herself, and she’d been rescued by a doctor, of all people.
What did that mean?
“Get some rest...” Dr. Walsh had finished tending to her and was pulling the sheet and comforter up to her chin. She’d practically choked getting down the antibiotic and painkiller he’d given her.
A huge believer in accountability and in Karma, Cara decided against thinking for the next few hours. Just long enough to sleep.
Sleep brought clarity, which she needed to figure out what her still being alive meant.
It had been so long since she’d really slept. Without senses on alert. Without fear.
She had nothing else to fear now.
And she really just wanted to sleep.
For as long as he’d let her.
* * *
HE WOKE HER in the late afternoon. Checked her vitals. Shone the light in her eyes again. Gave her more to drink. Cara complied with words of thanks. Hoping to slip back into the forgetfulness of sleep.
“You need to eat.”
Her burning throat was barely handling the liquid, not that