What Doesn't Kill Her Read online

  “Ice cream!”

  “Don’t tell her I said you could.” Max could get quite a stern tone to his voice. “That would be lying!”

  “Okay...” Rae’s enthusiasm audibly waned, and the sound of her boots faded in the distance.

  Max stepped through the door.

  Dr. Brundage finished her sutures, pulled off her gloves and stepped back to let Brenda cover the wound. “Who’s your next of kin?” she asked Kellen.

  “I guess...Max. Why?” Kellen asked warily.

  “You’re going to need care. Are you going home with him?”

  “Yes,” Max said.

  Dr. Brundage looked at Kellen for confirmation.

  “Yes,” Kellen said.

  “Good. Listen up, you two.” Dr. Brundage stared into Kellen’s eyes. “Although with the drugs I put into you, I don’t think you’ll remember. I’m keeping you here overnight. I’m not happy about the look of this puncture. We never want any kind of puncture with an unsterile object. I think we can safely say the roof tile was not sterile. We’re going to do a course of intravenous antibiotics. Then we’ll send you home with instructions and pain pills and—”

  “I want to see the bitch!” In the corridor, Roderick’s belligerent voice got louder again. “Let me see the bitch. I want to see her now!”

  Dr. Brundage looked up in annoyance. “Shut that door,” she said to Max.

  But a harried-looking intern stuck his head in. “Dr. Brundage, I’m sorry. We’re transporting this guy to Portland for surgery, and he’s throwing a fit. He wants to speak to your patient.”

  Max clearly didn’t give a damn. “Drug him!”

  “We can’t give him any more drugs. He’s had the limit and he’s still yelling.” The intern turned his head back toward the continued shouting, then looked at Kellen. “Is it possible...?”

  “No, it is not possible!” Dr. Brundage said.

  The synapses in Kellen’s brain flashed her an urgent dispatch. “I’ll see him. I want to see him.” Because what message was so important to a guy with a compound fracture that he stayed conscious to say it?

  Dr. Brundage sighed. “All right. Is she ready to be transported to a room?”

  “Yes, doctor.” Brenda removed the brakes from the bed and Dr. Brundage helped her wheeled it toward the door. They maneuvered Kellen into the corridor and placed her so her head was even with Roderick’s.

  What few strands of hair the guy had were stuck together with blood and perspiration. His skin was sweaty pale green. Both legs were wrapped and elevated. Clearly, despite whatever drugs they had given him, he was in agony. Yet his bulging blue eyes narrowed on Kellen. He rolled onto his shoulder toward her. His hand shot out and grabbed her neck, and he spoke.

  Max struck his fingers away.

  Dr. Brundage shouted, “Get him out!”

  The staff shoved him toward the door.

  But Kellen had heard him loud and clear. As he stared into her eyes and squeezed her throat, he had clearly said, “Run, bitch.”

  4

  The resulting infection kept Kellen in the hospital for an extra two days and by the time Max came to get her, she had read the first four books in the Mercy Thompson series, laughed herself silly with her three best Army friends—Birdie and Temo and Adrian, who drove down from Yearning Sands Resort to visit—listened every afternoon to Rae’s description of the enthralling happenings at day camp and was locked in a battle of wills with Dr. Brundage, who wanted her to stay another day.

  When Kellen finally won, Dr. Brundage turned to Max and said, “You make sure she stays in bed for another three days at the least.” She turned back to Kellen. “Do not work out.”

  She lectured as if Kellen liked to exercise, when in fact Kellen’s goal was to be in shape to defend herself. Against what, she didn’t know, but having some guy grab her by the throat and say, “Run, bitch,” sent a chill down her spine.

  Yes, Roderick was probably drunk and crazy. He’d climbed onto the winery roof, for the love of God. When he grabbed her, he had been on enough drugs to send a normal person to paradise. Telling her to run made no sense, and being so hostile made no sense, either. It was as if he was warning her of some impending doom, when in fact her life had never been so boring. Or peaceful. Whatever.

  Dr. Brundage finished her lecture with, “A few days off won’t kill you.”

  “Probably not,” Kellen muttered.

  “Don’t let her do anything,” Dr. Brundage ordered Max and handed him a page of instructions.

  He read through the list. “I have no control over any of the women in my life, including you, Brundage.”

  “Fair enough.” Dr. Brundage helped Kellen into a wheelchair. “Kellen, Brenda will be in to push you to the doors. Try not to do anything stupid at least before you leave the hospital grounds.”

  “I haven’t done anything stupid at all,” Kellen said.

  Max and Dr. Brundage snorted in unison.

  Kellen wanted to smack them both, but getting in the wheelchair had exhausted her, and she slept until Max pulled to a stop in front of the sprawling two-story farmhouse.

  Max’s home had been built in 1913 for a large family, added onto throughout the past century and now blended architectural styles with a relaxed comfort. In 1971, the Di Luca family had recognized the wine-producing potential of the Willamette Valley and acquired the land with the intention of growing primarily pinot noir. Grapes replaced orchards. Their venture had been successful, their wines expanded to include traditional Italian varietals, and when Max had needed a place to bring his baby and forget his lost love, he had brought Rae and his mother, Verona, to a home that had been, according to her, a wreck dedicated to the survival of the fittest.

  Being a woman of exceptional character, Verona had not only taken care of Max and the child, she had also refurbished the home. The kitchen was modern, the plumbing and electricity were all new and worked reliably, the wooden floors had been refinished, the furniture invited a person to lounge and enjoy; all that, and it retained hints of its farmhouse roots.

  Now Verona stood on the steps of the wide porch, smiling coolly, as Max helped Kellen out of the passenger seat.

  Rae, on the other hand, was thrilled to have her mother back and hopped around so much she put exhausted pleased tears in Kellen’s eyes.

  Max fended off their daughter, sent her away and put Kellen to bed in the main floor master bedroom—Max’s bedroom.

  She was trembling with weakness. Max handed her a pain pill and a glass of water; her hands shook so much she dropped the pill and the glass rattled against her teeth.

  He sat down on the bed and helped her swallow the pill and drink the water.

  That was embarrassing. Yes, they’d once been lovers. Yes, they’d created a child. But she remembered only bits and pieces of her time with him, and she didn’t remember anything about the thirteen months in a coma. For her, everything about living in Max’s house was awkward, and even more awkward was her relationship with Max. Were they supposed to become lovers again? Could they be friends with a child? Did Max even want her anymore? Sometimes she knew he did, but sometimes he looked at her as if she was a stranger he didn’t quite like.

  “I’m not the person I used to be,” she blurted. “Before.”

  “No, you’re not. You’re not the Ceecee I knew in Pennsylvania who was frail and fragile and needed someone to care for her. You’re tough.”

  It sounded like a critique. “I like being tough.” No one can hurt me when I’m tough.

  “You’re a good role model for our daughter.”

  There. He hadn’t said he liked her the way she was now. Which meant he didn’t, and she guessed that answered the question about them becoming lovers.

  That was fine. She didn’t want to be lovers, either. Look at the mess she’d made of everyone’s li
ves last time she slept with him: a shot to the cranium, a baby her body sheltered, nurtured and produced while she hovered between life and death, a year forgotten. Better to stay cool and distant, be friends, like civil divorced parents of the same child.

  Yes. That was perfect.

  Too bad she remembered...things. Warm hands, gentle caresses. Brown eyes, heated glances. A man’s body and her body, and nights without end... For the first time since she’d moved into his home, Kellen allowed herself that deep rare upsweep of sexual arousal Max could so easily create.

  Not the time to remember all that! Not here, not now! Focus!

  She didn’t sound breathless at all as she said, “I don’t know that you approve of our daughter wanting to be like me.”

  “It would be good if you could explain to her in a way she understands why she needs training before she behaves like LightningBlast.” His emphasis echoed with sarcasm.

  “Me explain it to her?” Kellen laughed, then grabbed her stitches and waited for the pain to subside. “She never listens.”

  “You’d be surprised. She hears everything and that little mind is quick and nimble.” He leaned forward and looked into Kellen’s eyes, not like a lover, but like a medical professional accessing her condition. “This possibly isn’t the time, but we have to talk and the pain pills are cracking that clamshell you keep so tightly closed.”

  “Talk? About personal stuff?” Oh, no.

  “You sound like me when my sisters want to discuss emotions and feelings. I wonder if I’m as annoying as you are?”

  She supposed she should be crushed instead of wanting to smack him. “What can be so important that it can’t wait?”

  “Why were you crawling through the shrubs?”

  “Um.” Busted! “What?”

  “That day you rescued Roderick Blake, why were you crawling through the azalea hedge?”

  She wet her lips. Obviously, a good plan, waiting until the pain pill took effect to interrogate her, and one she had been trained by the Army to circumvent.

  She could lie or pretend not to understand.

  But two things—they might not be lovers, but they were in a relationship; they were the parents of a child, and deceit wasn’t a good option. If he asked why she’d been crawling in the shrubs, he probably had unassailable evidence that she had. “Obviously, my skulking skills aren’t all I hoped.”

  “My mother saw you.” He gestured out the window.

  Yes, the back of the winery was clearly visible from the house, and his mother did not like Kellen. “Of course she did.”

  “Three days in a row.”

  Kellen took a long breath.

  He didn’t wait. “You were hiding from Rae.”

  She let out the breath with a whoosh.

  “She comes home from school, excited to tell her new mommy about her day, you listen for a half hour, send her for a snack and you sneak away.”

  “She’s a lovely child.” Kellen meant it.

  He spoke softly, “But she’s not your child.”

  “I know she is!” Really, she did.

  “You know it in your mind. You don’t know it in your heart.”

  What kind of man said this stuff? “She’s a nice little girl.”

  “She is a nice little girl.” He leaned back, away from her, and wrapped his hands around one knee, and his dark eyes shone with anger.

  Kellen suspected at least some of it was directed at her.

  He looked at her. “What I’m trying to say is—you don’t love Rae.”

  “I like her.”

  “You’re her mother, but to you, she’s merely someone’s nice child.”

  Kellen hadn’t understood before. Now she began to glimpse the depth of the tragedy being played out in this home.

  Max hadn’t dreamed it was possible for her to return, and when he saw her again, he thought, or hoped, the two of them could once again fall in love.

  But Rae stood between them.

  They couldn’t create a family because Kellen didn’t feel the depth of emotion for Rae a mother would feel. Maybe if she hadn’t been in the military... Maybe if she hadn’t been so careful to do no more than form friendships... “I don’t know what to say. I wish—”

  “I wish, too. I had hoped that time and exposure would begin to form a love between you, but if you’re crawling through bushes to get away from her, that’s not working.”

  Kellen leaked tears. She wiped them off on her sleeves. In a tiny voice, she asked, “Do you want me to go?”

  “No! No, I’m not saying that.”

  “What do you want? I am trying. I have been trying. I simply don’t know how to form that kind of bond with her. With any child.” When she looked at Rae, when she felt twinges of affection, she was transported to that terrible moment in Afghanistan when—

  The smell of charred wood and burned flesh. A metal coil melted in the dirt and the knowledge of young lives ended too soon.

  He sensed nothing of her terrible memories; instead, he smiled as if bitterly amused. “That’s part of the problem. If you’d hidden in a day care instead of the Army, we’d have somewhere to start. But when Rae hugs you, you flinch.”

  There weren’t enough pain relievers in the world to get Kellen through this conversation without anguish. “It’s not that I don’t want to be part of Rae’s life. I do. But I have never loved anyone without grief.” God. Had she really said that?

  He focused on her so sharply she would have scampered backward if she could move. As it was, she could only stare back and wish she could pass out.

  No such luck.

  He leaned forward, put his hands on either side of her hips and spoke right into her face. “I’d tell you not to worry about the pain, but that would be lying. Being a father is the most excruciating torture I’ve ever endured, and that includes losing you. Being a parent is worrying every time Rae leaves my sight. I want to wrap her in Bubble Wrap, and instead, when she falls out of a tree and splits her chin open, I have to tell her to shake it off and admire her stitches. When she gets bullied, I hurt for her, and I want to step up and tell that little girl to knock it off or give her and her mother a good thump on the head. Instead, I have to read up on techniques to handle bullies and discuss them with Rae. I worry about her math skills, her reading skills. When she’s five minutes late, I remember how kind she is and hope to God some pervert doesn’t tell her he needs help, because no matter how clearly I tell her she has to be careful with strangers, I know she would go to help a stranger with a good story and I’ll never see her again.”

  “Dear God.” Kellen pressed her knuckles to her stomach.

  Max continued, “She’s going to get older, she’s going to go through adolescence and be miserable, because that’s what adolescence is. She’ll have pimples and braces. She’ll date the wrong guy. She’ll be hurt every day and she won’t admit it to me. I’ll do the wrong thing. Say the wrong thing. I know these are the good times. I know it’s going to get worse.”

  Kellen was horrified. “Why does anybody want to be a parent?”

  He thought about it, grinned. “Well. When I was sleeping with you, becoming a parent was the last thing on my mind.”

  Kellen remembered only fragments of the times she’d spent with him, but somehow the moments in his bed were imprinted on her mind; the hours when he lingered over body, the deep kisses that tasted of wine and passion, the weight of his body covering hers, the way he taught her to pleasure him. She hadn’t brought out those memories, but now, here they were, dusky with sunset and bright with sunrise. “Right,” she whispered.

  He seemed unaware, sounded matter-of-fact. “But I did always want to be a father. Didn’t you ever want to be a mother?”

  “Yes, but I thought it was impossible and...”

  “And?”

  She rocked back
and forth, caught herself and stopped the betraying gesture. “I didn’t think I was fit.”

  “Why not?”

  “I did such a lousy job of...of becoming an adult. Of picking a partner.” She was skittering around a truth she didn’t want to discuss, not with Max. Not with anybody. She had a victim’s mentality. Somehow, even now, she felt guilty about her husband’s abuse. “While I was living on the streets, I almost got killed and raped. I was such a disaster.” She didn’t remember over a year of her life. Why did she have to remember all the bad stuff?

  “While you were in a coma, I kept your papers in a locker close to you, in your hospital room. You had been so protective of those papers. They’d seemed to give you a sense of safety. That turned out to be not so smart, since when you woke, you got dressed, took them and joined the Army.” He was getting to the meat of the matter. “But in the meantime, I used them to research you and your family.”

  Just like that, everything got complicated. “You did? Of course you would. That’s fair.”

  “Your cousin was Cecilia, married to Gregory Lykke, and they were involved in an infamous murder/suicide.”

  Kellen breathed slowly, trying to slow the spinning of her head. “That’s right.”

  “You’re Kellen, Cecilia’s cousin, and you witnessed the deaths. The police wanted you for questioning.” Max spoke slowly, as if trying to find the right path through a minefield of personal information.

  “That’s right, too.”

  “When I met you, you told me your name was Ceecee.”

  She wet her lips. Ceecee, her childhood name, short for Cecilia.

  He tapped his blunt fingers on the blankets and watched them. “I suppose you didn’t want to talk to the police? You were keeping a low profile?”

  “Yes.” That made sense. It was even true.

  He nodded, but he stared up at her as if he didn’t believe or didn’t understand or something equally uncomfortable. “You look very much like your cousin Cecilia.”

  “We were like sisters. When we were kids, sometimes people couldn’t tell Kellen and Cecilia apart.” There! That was completely true.