Love Under Two Jessops (28 page)

“What did you do, run through the flames?”

“Yeah, I didn’t think the wall was very thick and it had just started. I didn’t even really think, I just broke through and then hit the ground and rolled.”

“Fucking lucky, man.” Andrew couldn’t think of another thing to say. The EMT working on him finished, and nodded to him.

“All done here,” the paramedic said.

“Come on, big brother. Our next stop is the clinic in Lusty.”

“I’d kind of like to follow this through, Andy. It doesn’t hurt all that much. I’d like to know the whole story. The police are going to contact the man’s next of kin.”

“Don’t matter what
you’d
like. I’ve got orders.”

Grant sighed. “The dads are pretty pissed, huh? And our brothers? I can just hear them. You know I’m going to be teased unmercifully because this is the second time in a year I’ve gotten myself injured.”

Andrew shot his brother a grin that he knew likely looked evil. He figured it was the least he could do by way of payback, considering the hell he’d just been put through.

All during the drive from Waco to the scene, Andrew hadn’t known how badly Grant had been hurt. He’d been told there was one fatality, but he didn’t know who that had been. He hadn’t known the man who’d died had been the suspected arsonist until just moments before he’d arrived.

And he hadn’t known his brother’s actual condition until he’d seen him.

Now, he said, “I imagine the four of them
are
pretty upset, and yeah, you know our family. Teasing is just another love language for Jessops, Kendalls, and Benedicts. But the orders I mentioned—to get you back to Lusty ASAP and safe and sound, I might add—came from Chloe.” Then Andrew folded his arms in front of his chest and waited.

“Oh, shit.” Grant swallowed, and got to his feet. “Did you talk to her? How did she sound? Fuck me. With all that she has yet to deal with, I had to go and do this? Damn it! What was I thinking?”

Andrew tilted his head and looked to the heavens, as if the answer he needed was to be found there. Then he shook his head. “Sorry, Grant, you know creative writing was never my forte.” Then he turned to Artie, who appeared slightly amused by their byplay. “Tell me, Artie, what would be a good word for pissed times ten, with a hundred pounds of terrified thrown in for good measure?”

Artie shook his head. “Doghouse is the only word that comes to mind.”

Andrew nodded. “Sort of like that ad a couple of years ago I laughed at on YouTube.”

“I remember that one,” Arte said. “Made me bust a gut laughing myself—once I realized that it could also save my marriage.”

Grant was looking antsy, so Andrew played it out. “You didn’t see it?” He asked his brother. “Well, in the ad—a jewelry store ad—this guy bought his wife a vacuum for their anniversary. She was so not happy. In the next scene, she was dragging him by his ear across a long field, toward a doghouse. She made him get into it, and he tumbled down a tunnel into a “men who’ve pissed off their women” kind of prison. You should look it up and watch it. Funny as hell.”

Grant seemed to understand, finally that not only was Andrew having fun at his expense, he was delaying his return to Lusty, too. He said, “That’s it. Let’s go. And for once I don’t give a damn how fast you drive.”

Andrew nodded to Artie, who said, “I’ll come over to Lusty and debrief y’all when I have all the facts.”

Andrew had to open the car door for Grant, because his hands were taped. Fortunately that appeared to be the only thing on him that had been injured.

As soon as he got the car started, Grant said, “Damn it, I don’t think I can hold my cell phone to call her. This is a pain in the ass.”

“How bad does it hurt, really?” Now that they were alone, he knew his brother would be honest with him.

“Like a son of a bitch, but that don’t matter. I
have
to talk to her now. Christ, I never thought. After what she’d gone through in her life—damn it.”

“This is
my
car, bro, and you forget that one of the snazzy features it’s got is that built-in Bluetooth.”

“Thank God. Call her, brother.”

“I’m calling.” Andrew pulled out his cell phone, and hit the speed dial.

The sound of a phone ringing came over the car’s radio.

* * * *

Chloe collapsed into a chair in the waiting area of the Lusty Clinic. In front of her, Robert Jessop—one of the four Drs. Jessop who attended at the clinic, and her men’s eldest brother—squatted before her. She could see the concern on his face, and knew she wasn’t completely the cause of that.

She didn’t realize how cold she felt, how badly she shook, until he reached out and took both of her hands in his, ostensibly to warm them. He chafed her hands and held her gaze.

“Breathe deeply, Chloe.”

Robert’s tone, commanding and deep rather than convivial and cajoling, seemed to be exactly what she needed. She drew one breath in deeply, exhaled, and then repeated the process. Soon, the shaking subsided. With the shaking gone, the sense of paralyzed shock began to dissipate.

She didn’t register the sound of feminine footsteps, until a mug was held out to her.

“I didn’t know if you would prefer coffee or tea, so I made you hot chocolate, instead.”

Chloe looked up at Robert and David’s wife, and her good friend, Jillian. She tried to return that woman’s sunny smile, but knew she failed, miserably. Robert released her hands and she accepted the mug.

“Thank you.” She took a couple of tiny sips, letting the heat of the drink into her belly. From the moment she’d gotten the call from Andrew—a frightened and unnerved Andrew who was on his way to a fire scene—until just a few moments ago, her entire world had shattered, hurling her back in time fifteen years.

Her worst nightmare seemed to be coming true. It was all happening again. Everything important and vital was being ripped away from her and there was not one damn thing she could do about it.

Chloe had left the spa and run to the clinic, bursting through the door looking, she imagined now, like a wraith come to life, like death warmed over. Robert had placed his hands on her shoulders, and given her an update, that the EMTs on the scene had treated and
released
Grant. His words were still echoing in the air between them when her cell phone had rung, and she’d heard Grant’s voice.

She gave herself major points. She hadn’t broken down and cried like a baby when she’d heard that sweet, sweet sound. But it had been close.

They’d be there soon, and she needed to pull herself together. She didn’t want the first thing either of her men saw to be a weepy, pathetic-looking woman.

She would much rather they encounter a formidable Valkyrie ready to tear a strip off both their damn hides for putting her through this.

“That’s better.
Now
you look fierce.” Robert grinned at her, and damned if she didn’t grin right back. He rose from his haunches to sit in the chair facing her. Chloe met his eyes and sobered. She hadn’t spent much time with any of her men’s siblings, but there was something about this particular brother who inspired confidence—and confidences.

“I’m sorry I fell apart like that. Andrew called me when he was on his way to the fire, before he knew what was what. And for a few minutes I was…well, I was in a pretty scary place.”

“You were back in the past, back to when you heard about those tornadoes and feared the worst for your folks.”

“I was.”

Robert looked annoyed. “I need to give my baby brother a lecture on how to take care of his woman. He never should have called you before he knew something concrete. Hell, he never should have called you at
all
.”

“No.” Chloe understood Robert’s instincts. She’d known a couple of Doms in her lifetime, and she applauded men so devoted to the care of those who needed them in just that way. Chloe also knew there wasn’t much of the sub in her at all.

She stretched out her hand to Robert. When he took hers, she said, “Andrew reached out to me when he needed me the most. That’s…that’s what I want us to be, each of us for the others. That’s
my
idea of a perfect relationship.” Her grin slipped and she knew she was showing Robert Jessop that fierce expression again. “I told him he’d better bring Grant to me here at the clinic whole and uninjured or there’d be hell to pay. I didn’t start to fall apart until after he hung up the phone.”

It didn’t escape her attention that Jillian stood beside her husband, rubbing his shoulder—nor that David Jessop was leaning against the reception desk trying to look casual.

This
Dr. Jessop might be concerned about the brother en route, but David’s main focus was on the brother who was right here in the room with them.

“Grant said his hands are a little burned, and though they hurt, it’s not too bad.” Chloe met Robert’s eyes. “Of course,
he’d
tell me he just was a little under the weather if he had the world’s worst case of pneumonia.”

“Don’t you worry, sweetheart. I’ll be giving that little brother a
very
thorough exam the moment he gets here.”

“We both will. And the dads just called. They’ll likely arrive mid-exam and want in on it, too.”

For the first time in about a half hour, Chloe felt like laughing. She took another drink of her chocolate and set the cup down, no longer needing to hold it for its warmth. “As Ginny would say, boy howdy, is Grant going to be pissed.”

Robert opened his hands as if in supplication. “I have no idea why. He knows the price to be paid in this family for getting his sorry ass hurt twice in one year.”

“And one of our dads
loves
to administer shots in the tush,” David said. “So Grant’s is likely to
be
a very sore as well as sorry ass.”

Chloe felt like giggling. And then the squeal of brakes had her bounding out of her chair. She recognized Andrew’s car, and took two steps toward the door. Then suddenly her legs wouldn’t move anymore. She felt frozen in place, the fear exploding again when she noticed Andrew run around the hood of the car to open the passenger door.

She didn’t even notice Jillian opening the clinic door.

And then he was there, in the waiting room and she didn’t have to take another step, because he came to her. He wrapped his arms around her, holding her ferociously tight when she would have demurred, when she would have hesitated for fear of hurting him. She buried her nose in his shirt, and the scent of smoke that permeated the material surrounded her.

Chloe had meant to appear strong, and formidable. She thought of all the women of strength in this town, women she knew and respected and, oh God, women she loved and wanted more than anything to emulate.

And she shuddered and sobbed and held him tight.

Grant Jessop held her and bowed his head over her and proved in a heartbeat that he got her more than she fully knew until then.

“I’m here, baby girl. I’m here, and I’m always going to be here. I’m never going to leave you. I promise.”

“You can’t know that. Things happen.”

“Yes, things happen. But we both know there’s more than this, right here. Don’t we?”

He’d spoken quietly and she didn’t know if anyone else heard him, or not. She didn’t care. They
did
both know there was more than what could be felt or seen in the moment. They’d both felt and seen something “other.”

He was here now, and he was real, and she knew that if she let herself live in the fear of what might happen, she would forever deprive herself of what might be.

“I was so afraid, and all I could think of were the things I never said to you. When my folks died, all I could think about was that the last conversation we ever had between us was filled with my angry words. I was so mad I had to stay home the whole time and babysit because I’d planned to go to a dance, and now I couldn’t.” Chloe couldn’t stop the flow of words. Her hands opened and closed on the shirt covering Grant’s back, but she wasn’t really in the clinic, she was in the past. “As they left I was so mad, I wanted to lash out at them, hurt them. And then they died, and I felt like it had been my fault. Like it had been all my fault.”

“No!” Grant lifted her face using his wrists, and Chloe blinked as he bent and kissed the tears on her cheek. “No, it wasn’t your fault. Hell, there were lots of times when I was a teen when I fought with my parents and wished them to hell. Seriously. Don’t think there’s ever been a kid born on this earth who didn’t. You didn’t cause what happened to them, baby girl. And being angry and wishing them to hell does not make you a bad person.” He moved and wrapped his arms around her once more.

“It’s all right, Chloe. Everything is going to be all right, now. I love you.”

“I love you too.” She mumbled that against his chest. And then she stepped back, and cupped his face in her hands. She met his gaze and said, “Don’t you
ever
scare me like that again, you big galoot.”

“Hey!” Grant grinned at her. “I know what that word means and I’ll have you know I’m neither clumsy nor thoughtless.”