Programmed To Please (The Tau Cetus Chronicles) (19 page)

Mark debated silently. Well, why the hell not? It was over now, and he’d survived.

With a sigh, he told her.
All of it.
The Beautiful Dolls sting. J the sexbot. Jai confessing to being human. The bullet she’d taken to save his life.

It felt better than he’d expected to get it all off his chest.

Hell. Maybe
he
was the one in need of comfort after all.

By the end of the story, Leora was dry-eyed and staring at him.
“You love her.”
It wasn’t a question, just a statement of fact.

“Yes, I love her, but it doesn’t matter
.
Everyone who has contact with me is

automatically put in jeopardy. You. Bursus. Jai. Being involved with me is just too dangerous.”

“But— ”

“
No.”
Marque cut her off
.
“There’s no chance for Jai and me. Hell, I’d love to be at the hospital right now, to see how she’s doing, to thank her for the unbelievable sacrifice she made for me, but it’s better,
safer
, for her if I stay away.”

Leora stared at him, her eyes wide. “But that means you may never see the woman you love ever again...”

Marque felt an odd twinge in his chest. Trust Leora to get right to the heart of the matter with just one simple statement. Was she only now realizing that his life was just as miserable as hers?

Those doubts about his career choice assailed him once again.
Shit.
Why did life have to be so damned difficult?

The look of profound sadness on his sister’s face was almost too much for Marque to bear. He was about to suggest they go sit on his couch when a quiet knock on his office door drew his attention. The door opened, and his assistant, Talesin, gave Marque an apologetic look, and then stepped aside.

Theus swept into the office.

Fuck.

Leora sucked in a frightened breath, and Marque didn’t blame her. The dangerous-looking man in black would send a chill of fear down anyone’s back. 

Theus took one look at Leora, and raised a questioning eyebrow in Marque’s direction. Marque ignored it. As notoriously reclusive as Marque had to be in this job, he didn’t owe Theus any explanation for the presence of a woman in his office. Especially when that woman was his beloved sister. Damn it, he was fucking sick of this life.

Wait a minute…

An idea sprang into his brain.
There just may be a way out of this life.

He sent Theus a sharp glance. “Carron?”

Theus shrugged casually. “Alive. But not for long. Just until he gives up the name of the traitor on the High Council. I’m…
working
…on that now.”

Marque could just imagine how Theus was ‘working’ on Carron. There would be pain involved, probably a lot of pain. Marque never, ever wanted to be on Theus’ bad side. “The traitor on the High Council is your real problem, not Anson Carron,” he said. “I may have a better suggestion for what to do with Carron after he talks.”

Theus’ eyebrow rose higher.

#

Jai had no idea how long she’d been drifting in and out of consciousness. Hours? Days? Weeks? The first thing she’d become aware of when she’d opened her eyes was that she was still alive. And she was certain she was alive because every single cell in her body hurt. Hell, it even hurt to breathe. In fact, it hurt
most
to breathe.

How on earth had she survived Anson Carron’s bullet? He’d been close enough to use her for target practice.

Her first few moments of lucidity didn’t last long, and unconsciousness brought her blessed relief from the pain.

The next time she’d surfaced, she’d become more aware of her surroundings. She was in a large hospital room. And by the look of it, the ICU. So. Her wound was as bad as she’d expected. Aside from the occasional ghostly visitation by a nurse or doctor dressed in white who came in to silently check on her, the whooshing of machinery and steady beeping of monitors were her only companions.

The pain in her chest was a little less excruciating now, but frankly, not having the searing pain to occupy her thoughts meant she had time to think. And thinking was bad. She definitely preferred the oblivion of sleep. After all, being unconscious was easier than remembering what had happened that last day at Beautiful Dolls.

Marque had rejected her. And still, she’d risked her life to save his.

Because I love him!

A love destined to be unrequited.

She’d cried herself back to sleep.

The next time Jai had opened her eyes, it was because her hospital bed was being wheeled down a long green hallway. There was no way to mark the passage of time in this sterile, lonely place, but she supposed being moved to a private room was a positive sign. At least now during the times she managed to force open her eyelids, her bleary gaze sometimes saw Wyatt at her bedside. At other times, it was Commander Rainey. But no Marque. Never Marque.

Not that she honestly expected him.

I love you, Jai…

She must have been completely delirious after she’d been shot, because she could have sworn she’d heard Marque say those precious words in her ear.

Impossible. If he’d said them, he would be here, wouldn’t he? And she was fairly sure that Wyatt had told her on one of his visits that Marque had also survived the attack by Carron. Funny how her ears still seemed to work even when her eyelids refused to open. And she couldn’t speak at all, because of the breathing tube stuck down her throat.

I love you, Jai.

No. She definitely must have been fantasizing those words after taking Carron’s bullet. Marque’s last statement to her at Beautiful Dolls had been,
I can’t even stand to look at you.
That, she remembered clearly.

Oh, well. It was good Marque had survived. It would be a damned shame for Jai to have thrown herself into the path of a bullet if Marque had been killed.

“Miss Turner? Can you hear me?”

Jai forced her eyes to open. Lately, her hours of consciousness outweighed her hours of sleep, much to her regret.

She stared into the kind face of a white-coated doctor. At least, she figured he must be a doctor. He looked very official. Gray hair. Wire-rimmed glasses. At least sixty.

He smiled. “I’m Maren Jonat. How are you feeling today?”

Actually, she was feeling a little stronger. The pain in her chest was easing by degrees – it was now more of a dull, steady ache, destined to remind her of what had happened. Several times she’d stolen a peak under her hospital gown, only to be faced with the sight of a long, bandaged incision running down her breastbone. Hell. Her heart must have needed some major repair work.

She grunted.

The doctor’s smile widened. “I know you can’t speak with that tube down your throat, but you’re doing so well that we’ll be taking it out later today.”

So she was doing well, was she? How the hell long had she been here?

As if reading her mind – or at least the questioning look in her eyes – the doctor pulled a small pad of paper and a pen out of his lab coat pocket. He offered them to her.

Jai felt one of her eyebrows rise in surprise. She reached out to take what the doctor offered, mindful of the IV needles stuck into the back of both of her hands, and aware of the dangerous swaying of the plastic bags attached to metal stands by her bedside that her motion created.

The doctor pulled up a chair next to her bed, and sat.

Jai squeezed the pen in her right hand. Christ, how weak she was! Very carefully, she wrote on the pad.

How long here?

The doctor nodded. “Five days. You’ve made a remarkable recovery, considering.”

Jai frowned, and scratched again on the pad.
Considering what? Bullet?

The doctor cleared his throat. “Miss Turner, the bullet pierced your lung and heart. We’ve re-inflated the collapsed lung – that’s the reason for your breathing tube – but you were clinically dead when you arrived here. The only way to save your life was to implant an artificial organ in your chest.”

Despite the tube in her throat, Jai sucked in a loud breath, and was rewarded with the now-familiar aching in her chest.
She had an artificial heart?
Dropping the pad and pen, she pulled at the neck of her hospital gown, trying to wrench the garment down far enough to have another look at the long incision in her chest, even as the heart monitor beside her bed began to beep crazily.

The doctor leaned over, and pried her hands away. “Please, Miss Turner, calm down. You’ll be fine. I promise. In fact, you’ll be better than fine.”

 The doctor forced her hands back down onto her mattress, and Jai mentally grasped for her yoga mantra.
I am relaxed. I am…relaxed. I…am…relaxed.
Once she’d taken a few deep, steadying breaths through her nose, the doctor released her hands.

“That’s better,” he approved with a kind smile. “Now. The average hospital stay for recovery after a heart transplant is seven to ten days.  With our current technology, there’s no chance of rejection with an
artificial
heart, so if you continue to improve, we can release you in just another two days.”

Two days?
She’d be strong enough to go home in two days?

Well, maybe physically. But how long would it take her to mentally come to grips with the fact she had an artificial heart
?

“Now, now. Don’t cry,” the doctor soothed, and Jai was shocked to discover tears were streaming down her cheeks. “With regular checkups, your heart will last longer than most human ones.”

The words were cold comfort. They might medically be true, but...

But it’s not my heart!

What do you need a heart for? The man you love doesn’t love you!

Her tears came harder.

The doctor began to fidget in his chair. “Please, Miss Turner. It will be all right.” He stood. “Maybe I’ll just send in a nurse…”

Jai shook her head violently and grabbed for the pen and paper. She wrote furiously, and then turned the pad to Jonat.

Need time to process.

The doctor nodded. “Of course. I understand completely. I’ll leave you alone, then.” He made a hasty and obviously relieved exit.

The next few hours passed in a blur as Jai tried to stay calm and rationalize her situation. What was the important thing, here? She was alive. Living was better than dying, right? And if it took an artificial heart to keep her alive, then so be it. Besides, it’s not like she could give the device back at this point. And she
could
still feel with this heart. Hell, the loss of Marque continued to set off a deep ache in her chest.

Jai looked warily at a nurse who stopped in to see her, but the woman hadn’t come to comfort or to psychoanalyze her, but to blessedly take out Jai’s damned breathing tube. One of her IVs was also removed, and Jai noticed an ugly bruise on the back of her left hand where the puncture had been. She rubbed at it idly.

The nurse had just finished pouring Jai a glass of water, raising Jai’s bed to a sitting position, and fluffing a pillow behind her back when Commander Rainey and Leith Wyatt entered her room. Wyatt was carrying a small duffel bag, and Jai stared at the men with mixed feelings.

Visitors are not what I need right now. I’m still trying to process this artificial heart thing…

Both men looked highly uncomfortable to be here, and Jai’s too-efficient new heart registered her reaction on the monitor next to her bed.

Damn it. What now? I can’t deal with anything more today!

The nurse took one look at the beeping machine, and made a small tsk-ing sound at the men. “Don’t upset her.” Then she breezed out the hospital room door.

Wyatt watched her go, and then turned back to Jai. “Hey,” he said, giving her a small smile.

“Hey,” she responded warily, surprised at how scratchy her voice sounded.
Well, that’s what a tube down your throat for five days will do to you
. She gratefully took a sip of water from the glass next to her bed.

“You’re looking a helluva lot better than the last time I saw you, Turner,” Rainey said gruffly. This was Talis Rainey’s version of a compliment.

Despite his words, Jai was sure she looked a wreck. It had been five days since she’d showered, after all. She hadn’t even been able to leave her bed to go to the bathroom because of the breathing tube. Still, she appreciated Rainey’s concern. “Thank you, sir.”

Rainey cleared his throat. He looked around the room. He put both hands on the back of the chair that Dr. Jonat had recently vacated. Then, with a sigh, he turned the chair around, straddled it, and sat. “Aw, hell, Turner…”

Jai closed her eyes, but the damned heart monitor gave her away again. She was pretty sure she did
not
want to hear whatever Rainey apparently dreaded telling her.

“Take it easy, Jai,” Wyatt soothed. 

Rainey blew out a loud breath. “Listen. I’m sorry things didn’t work out between you and Marque Callex.”

Jai’s eyes flew open and her eyebrows rose in surprise.
What?
This
was what was making Rainey so uncomfortable? “I don’t understand, sir.” Damn, her throat hurt.

Rainey ran a hand over his thinning grey-black hair. “I know you were in love with Callex.” He couldn’t seem to look Jai in the eye. “In your five years in this job, I’ve never seen you
care
about anyone, much less a notorious arms dealer. Hell, I thought you were crazy, but through your investigation, we discovered Callex was clean. Working with the High Council. That’s why when Theus contacted me on Thursday afternoon to say Chavis Smith was in custody, I kept the information to myself. Instead of immediately calling off our operation, I wanted to let you have the opportunity on Friday to tell Callex you were human. To give you a chance with him. ”

Jai’s eyebrows reached her hairline. Holy shit. Down deep, her gruff boss was actually a hopeless romantic? Who would have ever guessed? Her artificial heart started aching again.