Wild Iris Ridge (Hope's Crossing) (10 page)

Lucy wanted to correct the woman, but it didn’t seem worth the trouble, not under the circumstances.

“Thank you again,” the woman said. “I don’t even want to imagine what might have happened if you hadn’t been here.”

“I like this outcome much better than the alternative,” Brendan said with a forced smile.

Lucy again sensed his tension. How did he do it? Go out on cardiac emergencies when his own otherwise young and healthy wife had died of a heart attack? It must eat him alive, wondering why he could save men like Martin yet hadn’t been able to save Jessie or their baby.

No one could have saved them. She wanted to tell him that. She had done a great deal of research on the rare condition that had killed Jessie. Lucy knew the mortality rate was high and even if he had been right next to Jessie with an AED, she still likely wouldn’t have survived.

“Well,” she finally said. “That was a little more excitement than I expected in Hope’s Crossing.”

He let out a long breath. “Don’t make the mistake of thinking because a place is small, nothing of significance happens there. The smallest moments in a person’s life can be life-changing.”

The other paramedics loaded the other man up on the stretcher and started to roll him out to the waiting ambulance when one of their radios crackled with static.

“Auto-pedestrian accident, Main Street and Silver Sage Road.”

“That’s just a block from here,” Brendan said. “Who’s the other team on duty?”

“Chen and Myers,” one of the EMTs answered. “They got called a half hour ago to a fall at the senior center. They might be done by now.”

“But probably not.”

“Yeah. Probably not.”

“Do you need to go help?” Lucy asked. “I can take care of Faith and Carter. I’ll get them tucked in just like last time.”

He looked torn. “Are you sure?”

“Yes. No problem. I’m happy to do it. You told me you trust me, remember?”

“You certainly proved yourself tonight.”

She knew she shouldn’t find such a glow of satisfaction from his words but she couldn’t seem to help it. Yes, she had been the marketing director for a Forbes 500 company and had moved up the ranks extraordinarily quickly, overseeing an international staff of five hundred people. She had traveled around the country on the corporate jet, had spoken in front of many industry leaders, all the tech movers and shakers.

But she had never helped saved a man’s life before tonight. All her other accomplishments in life seemed ridiculously paltry in comparison to this one thing.

“Thanks, Lucy. I owe you, again.”

She shook her head. “You don’t. I’m happy to help. It’s what friends do for each other, right?”

He studied for a long moment, as if struck by her words then smiled that slow, rare smile of his.

“I guess they do,” he answered. He hurried to the other side of the restaurant to hug his children and explain the situation to them, then tossed her the keys to his SUV on his way out the door.

CHAPTER NINE

“I
WISH
YOU
could stay in Hope’s Crossing forever and ever.”

Carter gave her a sleepy smile, and Lucy’s heart turned over in her chest as warmth soaked through her.

“Oh, darling. What a nice thing to say.”

“It’s true,” he insisted. “We could ride our bikes together in the summer and go skiing in the winter, and you could come to my birthday party. It’s in three weeks.”

“I think you’ve mentioned it a time or two,” she said with a smile as she tucked in his blanket.

“Because it’s going to be
so fun.
”

“I’m sure it will. I’ll be here for that, I promise.”

As for the rest—the forever and ever part—she didn’t know how to answer him. Stay in Hope’s Crossing? It was impossible, wasn’t it?

She loved the restaurants, the art scene, the excitement of city life. And she
had
loved her career: the creative challenges, the problem-solving, the heady rush of success. She wasn’t at all ready to give that up.

She knew the chances of being able to stay in Seattle were probably not the greatest, when she was ready to start putting out feelers. She certainly wasn’t going to find another comparable job in Hope’s Crossing.

“I can’t wait to do those things with you while I’m here,” she said. “But not tonight. It’s late and you’ve had a big day, mister. Time for you to get some sleep.”

“Okay,” he answered, already half-there.

She kissed his cheek, smelling soap and laundry detergent and a few lingering scent molecules of little-boy sweat.

“Good night, sweetheart.”

“Night, Aunt Lucy. I love you.”

With a lump in her throat, she turned off his light and closed the door then crossed the hall to Faith’s room, where the girl was sitting up in bed with
Anne of Avonlea
open across her lap.

She didn’t seem to be reading, though, mostly gazing into space. When she sensed Lucy’s presence, she looked up.

“Oh. Hi. Are you done with Carter?”

“Yeah. He was pretty pooped, I think.” She walked into the room. “How are you doing?”

Faith shrugged. “Okay, I guess.”

This serious little girl needed more wacky fun in her life. A good water-balloon fight or a dance-a-thon or a pie-eating contest.

She perched on the edge of the bed. “What’s up? You seem upset.”

Faith sighed. “I’m okay. Just thinking about that man at the café tonight. He almost died, didn’t he? Of a heart attack.”

Like her mother. Poor little lamb. “But he didn’t. Your dad saved his life. Wasn’t that amazing?”

“I guess.” Faith looked down at the stitching of her quilt.

“You don’t think so?”

“He’s always doing that. Pulling people out of wrecked cars and going into burning buildings and climbing up big mountains to get hikers who fell and stuff.”

Lucy thought that was just about the
definition
of amazing. “How many kids do you know who can say their dad spends his days helping people?”

Faith fidgeted with her blanket. When she met Lucy’s gaze, her eyes were troubled. “Sometimes I just wish he had a regular job, you know? Something where he couldn’t get hurt. If he dies, too, me and Carter won’t have a mom
or
a dad.”

The simple observation rocketed straight to her heart. This was obviously not the first time Faith had fretted about such a possibility. As a frequent worrier herself, Lucy could completely relate to the way those dark thoughts could creep over any brightness and hope.

She felt completely out of her depth having this conversation and prayed for the wisdom to say the right thing.

“What you say is true. But I know your dad, and I know he’s a careful guy. Every single moment he’s working, I’m sure he’s thinking about you and Carter and doing whatever is necessary to stay safe. The day I had the fire at Iris House, he was very concerned with safety, for me and his other firefighters and for himself.”

“He could still be hurt, no matter how careful. I heard Aunt Charlotte say that to him one time when she didn’t think I was listening.”

Lucy ran a hand over Faith’s hair. “Your dad loves you more than anything. You know that, right?”

Faith nodded.

“It would be really horrible if something happened to your dad, but that’s not going to happen.”

“Can you promise?”

She sighed. She wanted to, more than anything, but she also refused to lie to the girl. Faith was too smart to believe in hollow words, anyway.

“No. I’m sorry, I can’t. But no matter what, you would still have your grandpop, your aunt Charlotte, everyone else who cares about you. And me. Especially me.”

She wasn’t sure whether her words helped the situation at all, but Faith seemed to relax a little.

“It was pretty cool that my dad saved that guy.”

“Darn right,” she answered. “Now shall we read about Anne a little more?”

Faith held out the book for her. Lucy read until she saw the girl’s eyelids droop and even close a time or two.

“I’d say that’s enough for now.” She pitched her voice low.

“I’m not sleepy,” Faith mumbled.

Lucy smiled. “Of course you’re not. You can read a little more if you want.”

By that point, Faith’s eyes were completely closed. Lucy kissed her cheek, adjusted her quilt and turned off the bedside lamp before walking from the room and closing the door.

She stood in the hallway between the bedrooms, second-guessing everything she had said to Faith before they had finally started reading.

The whole conversation about Brendan’s risk potential was a minefield. She had navigated it as best she could, but now she wasn’t confident she had said or done the right things.

Should she have assured Faith that Brendan wasn’t going anywhere so she could clear that worry off her mental plate? Or was it better not to give the girl platitudes but to be frank and honest in hopes of better preparing her for every eventuality?

She had no idea.

She did remember that same sort of worry tormenting her when she was young and her parents were fighting again—that something would happen to one or the other and she would find herself all alone in the world.

Unlike Faith, she hadn’t been able to claim a large, loving extended family. Only Annabelle and Jess—an elderly aunt and a distant cousin. Now they were both gone, leaving her only with her father, a stepmother she wanted to think had become a polite friend of sorts over the years and the half sister who needed her.

Oh, Lord. Her sister was coming in less than twelve hours.

She wasn’t at all ready.

Instead of going out to dinner with Brendan and his children and then offering to babysit while he went off saving the good people of Hope’s Crossing from themselves, she should have been back at Iris House, taking care of the thousands of things she needed to do before undertaking the challenge of a difficult teenager.

She could at least make a list. Organization was one of her biggest strengths. She hurried into the kitchen and grabbed a magnetic notepad off the refrigerator and a pen from the little nearby painted tin can pencil holder that one of the children had probably made in art class.

She sat down at the table and started writing down thoughts as they came to her. The easy ones: change the bedding in the room she thought would work best for Crystal. Find out what she liked to eat. Stock the refrigerator with teen-friendly foods. Get a lock for Annabelle’s small wine collection.

Each thought spurred about a dozen others and the more she wrote, the more thin tendrils of panic began to tangle and snarl around her.

She didn’t know a damn thing about teenage girls. She was going to screw everything up, and Crystal would end up hating her, hating Robert, hating Hope’s Crossing.

She would probably run away and end up on the streets somewhere, a teenage junkie forced to sleep on steam vents in some rat-infested alley, with all her belongings in a backpack she stashed under a Dumpster.

The panic attack she had been fighting since the moment she opened the door of Iris House to find her father standing on the porch reached out and grabbed her by the throat.

No. Not now. She drew in a sharp breath then another. Why was the air suddenly so thin in here? She inhaled again, feeling light-headed with fear and the sick realization that she wasn’t going to be able to fight off this one.

Some tiny, functioning corner of her brain knew it was a reaction to seeing that man literally die in front of her and then be brought back to life, an aftershock to the whole mixed-up emotional morass of Jessie’s death under similar conditions and missing her so much and spending so much time with the children she had left behind.

Add to that her angst about the impending stress of having Crystal at Iris House, and this panic attack was a greasy black inevitability.

The rest of her didn’t give a damn for the reasons; she only wanted it to stop.

She couldn’t breathe, and the room seemed to spin and spin and spin.

She was hot, sweating, dying.

Her stomach churned, and she was certain she was going to throw up, right there in Brendan’s kitchen. She gripped her chest with one hand and the edge of the table with the other, trying to breathe, to will down the trembling and her rapid-fire heartbeat.

She wasn’t going to die. She wasn’t going to die. This was only in her mind.

The mantra wasn’t working this time, no matter how loudly she tried to scream it inside her head.

She was so turned inward with the battle, she only vaguely heard a door open somewhere in the house.

She heard Brendan’s voice as if he spoke from the wrong end of a telephone handset. “Sorry I’m late. That took a little longer than I’d planned, which is kind of the story of my life. I ought to get that phrase printed out on a three-by-five so I can just hand it out to all the people I leave waiting for me.”

She couldn’t have responded for anything, though the graying of her vision was starting to recede with each word he spoke. Brendan was here. He was washing his hands at the sink, his back to her. She forced herself to focus on his solid strength, to pause, to think, to breathe.

“I swung by the hospital,” he said. “You’ll be happy to know, our friend was doing great by the time I left. Laughing and joking with the nurses on the cardiac floor and already driving his wife crazy.”

Oh, dear heavens. She couldn’t let him see her like this. She drew in a sharp breath and then another. “That’s...good.”

Too late. He turned from the sink, his gaze intent at her thready tone.

“Are you okay? You don’t look well.”

“I’m f-fine. I need to go. I’ll...see you later.”

She lurched for the door, grabbing it with hands that still trembled like she had just been tossed headfirst into a frigid reservoir.

“Wait. Stop. Sit down,” he ordered. “You’re clammy and have no color whatsoever. What is it? What’s wrong?”

“I’m fine,” she repeated.
Please. Just let me go.

He moved to block her path with surprising speed for such a large man. Apparently, he hadn’t been an NFL running back only because he filled out a jersey so well.

“You’re nowhere near fine, Lucy. Come on. Sit down and I’ll get you a drink of water.”

“I don’t need your help.”

She wanted to snap and snarl the words, but they came out more like a pitiful whimper.

Though the panic attack was already fading and her heartbeat had begun to slow, she was weak, battered, wrung out—as if she had just floated serious rapids without a life raft.

“Sit down, damn it, before you fall over.” He shifted quickly into paramedic mode. “Your breathing is shallow and coarse and your skin is pale. Do you have asthma? Are you having any chest pain? When was the last time you had a physical?”

He asked the questions with careful calm, but she could hear the grave concern twisting through his voice. She knew exactly what he must be thinking.

It’s not a heart attack,
she wanted to say, but the words wouldn’t come.

“Have you had an episode like this before?”

More of the black fear faded. She swallowed hard and felt tears burn in her throat. She always burst into tears after the bad ones.

She had to tell him. He would only push her and push her until she did. She was going to have to tell him, even though the humiliation was far worse than anything else.

“Panic attack,” she managed. “It’s already starting to fade. See? My hands aren’t shaking as much. In about...five minutes, I’ll be perfectly f-fine.”

She waited for his expression to change to one of disgust or unease. Instead, he simply gave her a startled look and then went to the sink to pour her a glass of water.

“Here. This might help.”

She grabbed the glass from him and swallowed, as parched suddenly as if she’d been racing to Wild Iris Ridge in a windstorm.

Simply swallowing—some physical, tangible action—seemed to help calm her. She sipped again; at the same time she also focused on modulating her breathing.

“Better?” he asked after a moment.

She wanted to hide her face in her arms and pretend he wasn’t there watching her out of those concerned blue eyes. Instead, she forced herself to face him as those snaking tendrils of fear continued to recede.

“Yes,” she answered when she was moderately certain she could speak without her voice trembling. “I’m...sorry you had to see me fall apart. Bad timing on your part. If you had come home just a few minutes later, you would have completely missed out on all the fun.”

He sat down in the chair next to her at the table, his expression still tight with concern.

“How long have you been having panic attacks?”

She sighed, seeing no point in obfuscation or denial. He had just seen her greatest weakness. He couldn’t think any worse of her.

“I had the first one the week of Annabelle’s funeral. It scared me to death. I thought I was having a...” Her voice trailed off and she couldn’t bring herself to say the word.

“Heart attack,” he answered, his voice heavy as he sat there in the kitchen chair his late wife had probably picked out.