Man of Honor (Passion in Paradise Book 4) (22 page)

“It won’t be when I
rip it out of his chest and hand it to him,” Zeke muttered, striding toward the
bed.  Reaching her side, he reached out to gently push the hair off the side of
her face and bent to press his lips to her temple.  “How do you feel, Kitten?”

Ignoring his question
and doing her best not to lean into his too comforting touch, Honor stared at
the woman in the white coat.  “Aubrey, right?  Aubrey Daniels?  Mack’s sister?”

“That’s right, Honor.
 Call me Bree, though,” Bree invited with a smile.  “I’m a doctor here on staff
at Paradise General now.”

“Yes, I know.  You’re
a crazy person’s doctor.  I’m
not
crazy, and I didn’t try to kill
myself!” Honor insisted, her body going tense as the other woman nodded slowly.

“Nobody said you did,
Honor,” Bree assured her calmly.

“Ice did!  He thinks
I did it for some kind of attention, but I didn’t do anything of the blasted
sort!  ALL I did was take my headache pills which were definitely prescribed to
me by a professional physician.  I don’t need any kind of psychiatric help for
that!  If I do, then half the blame town of Paradise needs help, damn it,”
Honor cursed, making a face when she realized how impolite she was being to the
other woman.  Her mother would cut out her tongue if she heard the way she was
speaking to a person who was trying to help her, and Honor felt a wave of shame
descend over her.  “I’m sorry.  That was terribly rude of me.  You’re a
psychiatrist and that’s a noble profession.  A healer’s profession.  I just
don’t happen to need your services, Bree.  I don’t need them because I am a
perfectly sane, rational human being.  I must have just had a bad reaction to
the medicine, but I did not and would never try to end my own life,” she vehemently
maintained, her voice almost frantic as the need for somebody to believe her
clawed its way up her throat.  “Where’s the rest of my family, Zeke?  Is that
why nobody is here?  They think I tried to off myself?” she asked, somewhat
hysterically.

It was true; she’d
done a lot of stupid things in her life.  From walking down a dark road at
night and refusing Zeke’s offer of a ride eight years ago all the way up to
thinking that purple would make a pretty nail polish color, she thought with a
disgusted look down at her painted lavender nails.  Nope, she wasn’t a stranger
to making judgment errors.  But she was also a long way from being careless
with her life.  Even when she’d wanted to die all those years ago, something
inside her had kept fighting, kept striving to keep breathing when she’d been
dumped, naked and cold, in a hole in the ground.   She’d learned an agonizing
lesson that night: Life was precious and scarily easy to snuff out when someone
took a notion to try.

“Of course not!  It’s
late.  I sent most of them home hours ago when it was clear you were going to
be alright, but were also gonna sleep awhile longer.  Harmony, Patience, Maggie
and Jake are all camped out in the waiting room downstairs, napping.  I told
them I wasn’t going to leave you and the hospital would only allow one person
to be with you in your room at a time while you were asleep.”

“Oh,” Honor exhaled
weakly.  “Okay then.” she said, accepting his explanation gratefully.  Her
family hadn’t abandoned her after all.  Hopefully, none of them believed that
tripe Ice had been spouting off either.

“Baby, we need to
talk about that medication you swallowed though,” Honor heard Zeke say in that
grave, serious voice she’d learned the hard way was usually a prime indication
that exceptionally crappy news was coming her way.

“What about it?” she
questioned hesitantly as she saw the tension etched on Zeke’s face.  “Don’t
tell me that you believe I tried to hurt myself, too!  You?  The guy that
swears he knows me better than anyone?”

“Honey, you’ve been
depressed and distant.  I wasn’t sure what to think at first…”

Honor’s eyes flashed
as her temper rose.  “I’m not depressed!” she denied.  “And if I’ve been
distant, it’s because you’ve been squatting in my house, invading my space. 
Distance was a defense mechanism.  Plus, I’ve been tired and maybe a tad
overworked, but I am NOT depressed.  I think you should leave now, too,” she
informed the man that claimed to love her.  “Especially if you believe I’m that
weak, Ezekiel.”

Watching as Zeke exchanged
a frustrated look with Bree, Honor saw the older woman incline her head
slightly.  “Okay,” she said, looking between the two of them, “Why do I feel
like I’m missing some key information here?  What do you all know that I
obviously don’t?”

“Why don’t I take it
from here, Zeke, and fill in the patient on what’s been happening while she’s
been resting,” Honor heard Dr. Daniels suggest as she stared at Honor with an
understanding gaze. Tracking Bree’s movements when the doctor grabbed the
padded stool from the corner of the room and rolled it beside the bed where
Zeke stood, Honor held her breath.

“So, Honor, you
remember taking some medication, correct?  For you migraine?” Bree asked.

Honor nodded.  “I get
bad headaches,” she mumbled.

“How long’s that been
going on?” Bree questioned, unhooking Honor’s chart from the end of her bed and
flipping it open as she extracted an ink pen from her breast pocket with her
free hand.

“A few months,” Honor
answered vaguely.

“Years,” Zeke
declared at the same time.

Honor glared at the
man standing by her bed.  “She’s talking
to me
.”

“Then tell
the
truth
,” Zeke growled, his eyes darkening as he frowned at her.  “Won’t help
anything if this woman doesn’t know the full story.”

“While he is right,
he should really choose to invoke his right to silence before I throw him out
of here,” Bree drawled with a telling look at the lawman.  “Remember, I have no
fear, Sheriff,” she added pointedly.

Honor got the feeling
that the other woman was warning Zeke about something, but she was clueless as
to what that something was.  Heck, she felt clueless about most everything. 
Was she destined to remain in the dark where her own life was concerned for
whatever time remained of it?  “You know, I’m gettin’ real tired of feeling
like the odd man out here.”

Bree smiled.  “I just
warned our friendly, local sheriff earlier that I was going to be your
advocate, not his.  I thought it might be a good idea to remind him of that.”

“Oh.”  Honor stared
at the grinning doctor.  “Uhm, not many people warn Zeke about anything.  They
sorta….”

“Get intimidated by
him?” Bree supplied helpfully.

“Well, yes,” Honor
assented, shooting Zeke a quick look of uncertainty.

“I think that you and
I aren’t most people, Honor.  Neither one of us seems particularly concerned
about ticking off the local law enforcer, do we?  I like having things in
common with my patients.”

“But I’m not your
patient,” Honor denied quickly.

“Actually, hon, for
the time-being, you are,” Bree returned calmly.  “You see, there’s a bit of
confusion about those medications you took.  For your headache, you said. 
Which you’ve suffered from for…”

“I hate to agree with
him about anything, but Zeke’s partly right about my headaches.  I’ve been
having those headaches on and off for years, but they’ve gotten quite a bit
worse these last few months.  Today’s was the worst,” Honor admitted
reluctantly as Zeke chuckled beside her.  “Don’t be a horse’s butt,” she
growled, offering him a glare as he settled a warm hand over hers.

“You gotta let me
enjoy this just a little, Kitten.  You admit I’m right an average of three
times a year.  It’s like Christmas and Easter… I gotta celebrate when those
times come around.”

Honor just pursed her
lips at that.  The truth was that Zeke was right about her a lot more than he
was wrong, and his ability to see into her soul tended to scare the ever-lovin’
daylights out of her.  He knew her entirely too well for her piece of mind. 

“Are they coming more
frequently or just strengthening in intensity?  Or both?”

“Both,” Honor
acknowledged truthfully as Bree continued jotting down notes on the chart in
her lap.

“I see in your chart
that your doctor has already done a cat scan and MRI for any kind of
neurological problems and everything came back okay on that score.  Any changes
in your life lately that might make these horrible headaches make a bit more
sense?” Bree queried, staring at Honor with clear eyes.

Now it gets tricky,
Honor thought a little desperately.  She didn’t want to lie outright to a woman
who was trying to help her, but at the same time, she just wasn’t ready to
confide everything she’d been hiding either.  Not to the doctor and certainly
not to a worrisome sheriff intent on keeping her safe.  Zeke already shadowed
almost every move she made.  The fact that she’d been able to hide the notes
she gotten so far was a blooming miracle.  When he found out, he was likely to
blow a fuse in his brain with the yelling and growling he’d do.  Feeling his
observant eyes on her, she shivered.  Something didn’t feel right here. 
Turning her head, she caught his perceptive gaze with hers, and her jaw
dropped.  “You know, don’t you?” she whispered faintly, her teeth sinking into
her bottom lip as his stance went rigid and his face tautened. 

“What would I know,
Kitten?” he asked her, his voice low and soft.

Honor heard her
heartbeat thundering in her ears, and the longer she stared at him, the more
horrified her expression became.  How in the world had he even gotten that
stupid box?  She’d kept it in the locked drawer of her desk.  In the long run,
she knew it didn’t matter though.  Her secret was clearly out.  “I….I….can
explain, Ezekiel.”

“Please try,
darlin’,” he invited silkily.  “Try to make me understand why you would
willingly put yourself at risk when I was right there in your life… in your
house
…
ready, willing, and more than fuckin’ able to protect you from the son of a
bitch sending you threatening notes and pictures you should never have to see
again!” he finished on a echoing roar that bounced off the concrete walls of
the small hospital room.

Honor watched as the
door flew open and a set of concerned nurses appeared.  She relaxed as she
witnessed Bree shoo them out of the room before the other woman turned back to
Zeke.  “Sheriff, lower your voice,” she demanded tersely.  “You are on a floor
full of ill patients; act accordingly or I swear, I’ll shove you out that door
myself.”

Zeke’s intense gaze
never wavered from Honor’s pale face.  “Tell her to answer the question, Doc.”

“She doesn’t need to
order me to do anything,” Honor snapped, finally finding her backbone.  “I
didn’t tell you that I was getting threats because you’re already killin’
yourself trying to find the people responsible for my car accident.  You’re
still looking for two of my rapists,” she continued, spitting out that vile
word as if it tasted as disgusting as it sounded.  “You’re already doing
enough.  I didn’t want to add a heaping helping of deranged stalker to the list
of whack jobs trying to drive me nuts!  I was praying the jerk would just get
bored and go away,” she rationalized tiredly.

“Kitten,” Zeke said
much more quietly, “You’ve seen those pictures and read those notes.  You know
this guy is very probably
not
just your stalker.  He’s very likely one
of your rapists as well.”

Honor’s stomach
dropped as he stated what she’d known deep down all along.  “I know,” she
accepted bleakly.

“No more secrets,
Honor.  Is there anything else that I should know?”

“The box tells you
everything I’ve seen or gotten from that monster, Zeke.  If you have the box,
you have all I’ve kept from you.”

Clearing her throat,
Bree leaned forward to drop her hand over Honor’s knee.  “I know that was hard
for you to share, Honor.  It sounds like you’ve had a lot of really good
reasons to have splitting headaches, but the drugs that were found in your
system this morning and caused your heart to arrest at the café weren’t
prescribed for any kind of migraine.”

“Wait!  What?” Honor
asked.  “I arrested?  Is that why my chest hurts so?”

Zeke nodded.  “Miss
Orla found you in the office, baby.  You weren’t breathing and your heart had
stopped.  Ice and Diego did CPR until the ambulance arrived and they shocked
you and brought you back to us.”

“Holy crap,” Honor
gasped, shocked.  Looking from Zeke to Bree, she shook her head.  “Seriously?”

“Yes.  Seriously,”
Dr. Daniels informed her gravely. 

“I took the pills
that were in my bottle.  I’ve taken them before and never had this kind of
thing happen.”  Honor felt like squirming as the doctor stared for a few
unsettling moments.

“So, you didn’t
deliberately take something different today?” Bree questioned.

“No.  I poured out
two pills from the same bottle I’ve used at least half a dozen times in the
past week or so.”

“Honor, the drug that
the lab found in your system is called Seconal.  It’s a
very
powerful
medication used to sedate patients.  Generally before they go into surgery. 
The amount you had in your bloodstream was lethal.  You say you only took two
capsules?”