Authors: Grace Marshall
‘I can do it.’ Garrett made a sharp left off the muddy track and barreled into the woods, bouncing and jolting and dodging trees and roots as best he could.
‘The police are on their way,’ Wade yelled. ‘They’re not far behind, but they’ll have to take the main road.’
‘Just get me there, Wade.’ Garrett downshifted and tromped the gas. ‘Just get me there before the Mustang.’
She saw the stand of trees, and she nearly wept that they hadn’t been cut down as the natural landscape slowly lost the battle to the growing industrial site. They were exactly like she remembered them, if a bit more scraggly. It would be over soon. She could feel his gaze locked on her face, and she did her best to look terrified, stressed – not that hard to do under the circumstances. But hiding her rage was more difficult. She felt her bottom lip tremble and she fought back the tears. He didn’t know they were as much tears of rage as they were tears for what she was about to lose, as much as they were tears of fear. He didn’t know, and that was good.
‘There, there, sweetheart, don’t cry. It won’t do you any good. I’m not swayed by your tears or your pleading. There was a time I might have been, but don’t expect sympathy when you still stink of Garrett Thorne. Don’t expect leniency when you deserve everything I can dish out to you and then some.’
Let him lecture, she thought. Let him think what he wanted. She picked out the tree, the perfect tree, and stomped on the accelerator as hard as she could. She hoped it didn’t hurt too much. Then she focused everything in her on thoughts of Garrett in her arms.
‘What the –?’ Those were the last words Edge got out of his mouth before she stepped hard on the gas. She screamed her rage like a banshee as the Mustang ploughed into the tree, and the unbelted Edge went flying through the windshield. With the sickening crunch of metal, the Mustang’s front end crumpled into the tree and the engine spluttered and died. The hard jerk of the safety belt forced the breath from her lungs and felt like it would cut her in two. The world went out of focus and wavered, threatened to go dark, and then cleared. Along with the clearing of her vision came the full understanding that she wasn’t dead, that her timing had been even more perfect than she could have hoped. She couldn’t see how Edge could have possibly survived smashing his way through the windshield into the woods. Surely that alone must have broken his neck. She struggled to get out of the seat belt and out of the car, then slipped on the wet ground, and fell to her knees, squinting to see as the rain set in again. She had just managed to get her feet when a muddied Jeep roared out of the woods and screeched to a stop right in front of her.
For a second, she didn’t recognize the man who shoved his way out of the driver’s seat covered with almost as much mud as the Jeep was. But then he spoke. ‘Kendra! Dear God, Kendra, are you OK?’
She broke into a run toward Garrett, afraid to say his name, afraid to say anything for fear it was all just a dream.
She was never quite sure of what happened next. There were police cars coming up the road. She could hear the sirens like background noise as Garrett pulled her fiercely to him. ‘Jesus, woman, I love you. I can’t lose you. Don’t you know that? I love you! I love you, Kendra Davis. Do you hear me? I love you!’
She was just about to tell him she loved him too, just about to tell him she wanted to be with him more than anything when out of the corner of her eye she saw movement, movement that registered with a cold prickle up the back of her neck. There was a flash of silver through the air, then Garrett yelled like a wildcat and shoved her hard. She landed on the ground with a jolt and rolled, confused, stunned. It was then she saw Garrett lurching, falling to his knees, and there was blood. There was so much blood where the knife lodged in his side. And suddenly Edge stood over him, covered from head to toe in pine straw and mud.
For Kendra, everything downshifted to slow motion. She knew only two things, that Garrett Thorne loved her, and that she would not let this monster take that away from her. Ever!
As Edge drew back to kick Garrett in the stomach, somehow Garrett caught Edge’s leg with an arm and unbalanced him. That was all it took. Kendra saw the world through a rage like nothing she’d ever experienced before.
Garrett pulled the knife out of his side with an angry snarl and struggled to pull himself to his feet and take advantage, but she was faster, and she wasn’t injured. She launched herself at Edge, screaming at the top of her lungs. ‘You sonovabitch! I’m not yours! I’ll never be yours!’
She landed a jarring kick in the man’s groin, and before he could utter more than a harsh grunt, she followed it with a hard right cross to his jaw. The impact of Kendra’s unexpected attack sent him flailing backward, his feet slipping and sliding on the muddy ground before his went down on his back. There was another sharp grunt as the breath left his lungs, then a cry of utter surprise. His eyes teared and his right hand jerked spastically to his chest.
Kendra skidded on the wet pine straw and nearly fell backward, but just as she gathered her balance for another attack she noticed the front of Edge’s white T-shirt bloomed bright red, and in the confusion that gripped her, it took her a second to see the jagged, sharpened stake that was the remains of a nearby tree branch broken off by last night’s wind and storm. It ran through Edge’s chest just below his sternum. He uttered another startled grunt, convulsed once, then his eyes glazed and he didn’t move again.
She watched his life’s blood drain away with a strange indifference that later might be the stuff of nightmares, but for now she just wanted to be sure he wouldn’t come back for more. Then she turned and practically fell onto her knees next to Garrett.
‘Call an ambulance!’ she shouted as the first police shoved their way out of their cars, guns drawn. ‘Damn it, call an ambulance now!’ She struggled out of her jacket, barely noticing the cold or the hammering rain. ‘You shouldn’t have pulled the knife out of the wound,’ she heard herself shouting at Garrett, as she pressed the jacket tight against his side to stop the bleeding. ‘Damn it, Garrett, you’ve only got so much blood you, know?’ Her words came out as a sob and she struggled to see through the tears.
Garrett winced and grabbed her other hand with a grip that belied the amount of blood he’d lost. ‘Jesus, woman, you’re bossy to the end, aren’t you?’
‘No, Garrett,’ she sobbed. ‘No! This is not the end! I’m gonna be bossy for a long time to come, so you’d better get used to it. Now shut up and stop bleeding!’
His eyelids fluttered and he winced again. His lips were pale and pressed tight in pain but he forced a smile. ‘I suppose I could get used to that,’ he managed. ‘The bossy bit, I mean.’ He nodded to the crumpled Mustang. ‘How did you do that?’
‘Stunt driving course. Gift from another satisfied client.’
‘Pity about the Mustang,’ he managed.
‘It’s just a car, Garrett. It’s just a car.’
She placed a finger against his lips and her heart nearly broke at his effort to kiss it. ‘I love you, Garrett Thorne, and you were right. You were right about me, I do deserve romance, and I want it from you, so stop bleeding, all right, just please stop bleeding, damn it!’
He uttered a little sigh that was some cross between pain and, she hoped, something much happier. ‘I’ll do my best,’ he managed, squeezing her hand hard.
From out of nowhere, Ellis and Dee arrived with Harris and Stacie right behind them, all piling out of Ellis’s Jeep. She barely noticed them crowding around. Ellis gently placed his jacket over Kendra’s trembling shoulders and Harris knelt next to her with a first aid kit.
‘Let me see,’ he said, gently easing Kendra aside, just enough that he could tend Garrett’s wound. Another one of Harris’s outdoor talents was that he was well-trained in first aid.’
Garrett eyed Harris suspiciously. ‘You’re not going to put the knife back in, are you?’
Harris grunted and bit his lip in concentration. ‘I might if you ever do anything to hurt my best friend.’
Garrett forced himself into a half sitting position, leaning heavily against Kendra. ‘Your best friend happens to be the woman I love, Walker. I would never hurt her. In fact –’ he gave another squeeze of her hand ‘– I plan to do my best to make her very happy, if she’ll let me.’
‘See that you do,’ Harris said. ‘Or this will seem like a little scratch when I get through with you.’
Garrett lost consciousness just as the ambulance arrived and, in spite of Harris assuring her that the wound wasn’t as bad as it looked, Kendra couldn’t believe it, wouldn’t believe it until the emergency room doctor at the hospital had reassured her.
Garrett was lucky, the doctor said. The knife missed both the heart and the lungs. They had kept him in the hospital for observation, and he had been pretty heavily sedated, but not so much that he hadn’t called for Kendra in the night, and not so much that he hadn’t been aware she was there, in spite of hospital regulations, curled up on the bed next to him. She wasn’t about to let him out of her sight again. Dee had brought her fresh clothes, and she had cleaned up as best she could in the bathroom of Garrett’s hospital room. In spite of exhaustion, she slept very little, and when she did, she was lulled to sleep by the slow, even in and out of Garrett’s breathing, by the steady, powerful beat, beat, beat of his heart, beneath her hand resting gently on his chest.
If anything, the crowd of reporters on the front lawn had swollen. But then the story that Carla Flannery broke about the chase and the ultimate death of Fredrick “Edge” Parks, the stalker of Tess Delaney and other women in the past, had captured everyone’s imagination. And what was about to happen next would be even more of a surprise.
Kendra and Garrett stepped out of the limo into rain-washed sunshine. There was a low mumbling among the press and they parted for the couple as they walked up to the porch through the strobe and click of flashing cameras and the myopic focus of television lenses. Don was waiting for them. He gave Kendra a kiss on the cheek and Garrett a gentle pat on the back.
‘Are you sure?’ Kendra whispered against Garrett’s ear, to the click, click, click of cameras capturing their intimate moment for all the world to see. Beyond the porch they could hear a television reporter’s excited voice giving her audience the blow by blow, along with a recap of the events of the Tess Delaney saga to date.
‘I’ve never been more sure of anything in my whole life,’ Garrett whispered back. He kissed her tenderly and took a deep breath. Then he squared his shoulders and turned to face the press, keeping a tight grip on Kendra’s hand.
‘I’m sorry you’ve all had to wait for our statement.’ He offered them a teasing smile. ‘But we’ve been recovering at my brother’s house for the past two days, and he and his fiancée only just now let us out on good behavior. As far as the attempted abduction of Kendra Davis, and the death of Frederick Parks, who has had a long history of violence, Carla Flannery has pretty well covered those details. That’s not what I’m here to talk about.’
Again it was the impatient Mike Pittman who spoke out. ‘Kendra Davis? Who is Kendra Davis?’
Garrett and Kendra looked at each other, and Kendra nodded. ‘I’m Kendra Davis.’
The press went wild, and it took a few seconds for everyone to calm down again. When they did, Garrett spoke into the enormous silence that followed. ‘I hired Kendra Davis to play the part of Tess Delaney because I didn’t want her identity made public during the Golden Kiss Awards.’
There was another low murmur of the press and everyone shuffled closer.
‘I thought that was Mr. Bachman’s job, to hire help for Ms. Delaney,’ Pittman said.
‘Ultimately it was Tess’s choice,’ Garrett answered. ‘It has been Tess’s choice from the beginning, and it still is.’ He shot Kendra an adoring glance that made her knees weak. ‘It’s impossible for Tess Delaney to allow Kendra Davis to pretend to be her any longer when … Well, when Tess is head over heels in love with Kendra.’
There was a wave of confusion in the crowd as Don stepped forward to flank Garrett, nodding his support. Then Garrett pulled Kendra close, took a deep breath, and found his voice, a voice laced with emotion that surprised Kendra, that made her feel things she never dreamed she would ever feel.
‘I’m Tess Delaney,’ Garrett said, in a confident voice. He spoke the words carefully, as though he wasn’t quite sure how they would feel on his tongue. Then he repeated them into the stunned silence. ‘I’m Tess Delaney.’
This time the press erupted into total mayhem, and it took ages to quiet them. It was only when Garrett pulled Kendra into his arms, grunting slightly from the pain of his injury, and lingered to kiss her deeply and tenderly that the press silenced. At last he turned to face them.
‘Tess Delaney has always written the deepest, the most sensitive parts of Garrett Thorne’s heart. Tess Delaney has always found a way to express what Garrett could never have expressed. She was the secret part of me making itself known through her novels, helping me know myself a little better. I kept her secrets and she kept mine. She always knew what I wanted, better than I did. It wasn’t until Kendra Davis came into my life that I understood what Tess was trying to say, what she wanted for me, what I wanted for myself. And now, I don’t need Tess to tell me that, any more. I see. I understand.’
The reporter from the
Oregonian
stepped forward. Her eyes looked as though she might have been crying. ‘Will Tess Delaney continue to write?’
Garrett smiled at her. ‘Tess isn’t dead. Of course she’ll continue to write. And now she has a new muse.’ He smiled at Kendra. ‘A flesh and blood muse. I won’t say nothing has changed. Everything has changed. But I will say that for Tess Delaney, at last it really is time to come out into the world and celebrate the love she writes about.’ He turned and took Kendra’s hands in his. ‘And this is the woman I want to celebrate with. This is the woman I want to love and romance for at least the next 50 years or so. If she’ll have me.’
And, damn, if she wasn’t crying! Kendra Davis, who never shed a tear, Kendra Davis, who had lived her life completely free of romance and love until Garrett Thorne came along. She was crying in front of the whole world. And she was nodding and throwing her arms around his neck. The word “yes” came out, sounding more like a hiccup. She wasn’t sure he even understood it. But she made sure when he pulled her close that he heard and understood very clearly her next words. ‘I love you, Garrett Thorne. I love you with all of my heart.’