Smooth Irish (Book 2 of the Weldon Series) (23 page)

The day before they were to go to the
yacht party. She supposed it would have to do. “Thursday will be
fine.”

As soon as they drove up to her
apartment, Brad got out and walked her to her door. She managed to
find her keys and he took them from her and unlocked it.

Turning her way, he studied her for a
minute and she almost ducked around him and dashed inside. Why was
he paying attention to her now? A week ago she’d wanted him to look
at her, to kiss her, now she didn’t.

“
You’re right, Nancy. We
need to talk. I guess I’ve been really busy lately and I have to go
now too. Make sure you get plenty of rest,” he said then brushed
her cheek with a brotherly kiss and left.

Nan stumbled into her apartment
surprised to feel tears brim her eyes. She walked back to her bed,
saw it all a tumble from her and Jackson being together, saw the
wilted spray of honeysuckle lying on the floor and started to cry
harder. She didn’t know why she was crying. It wasn’t like she and
Jackson had broken up, they hadn’t even been together in any
official capacity to break up. He’d asked her to spend the weekend
in his bed and she had. She’d asked him to dinner and he’d
come.

So if she was feeling pain, if she
felt as if she’d made a mistake; it wasn’t anybody’s fault but her
own. She made her way out to the couch with a box of tissues and
curled into a ball. Shakespeare jumped up and Nan snuggled him into
her embrace. Just as soon as she rested, she’d call Jackson and
tell him about his truck.

Thirty seconds later, her left eye
popped open. If his truck was still at the hospital, then where was
Jackson? He never came back inside the Emergency Room, and didn’t
show up with the rest of the family when they had come. Her right
eye popped open and she knew she wouldn’t rest until she made sure
he was all right.

In fact, if she wasn’t so exhausted,
she would have realized it before she left the hospital, would have
known she needed to check on Jackson.

Getting up, she marched over to the
phone, but Jackson didn’t answer. Was he there and just not
answering, or had something happened to him? She had to know.
Besides, he left his African violet behind.

Bleary-eyed, she drove the miles to
Jackson’s cabin. Despite the bright summer sun, the cabin appeared
dark and neglected. No breeze lifted the air and it hung hot and
humid about her. She heard the distant cry of a crow and almost
dreaded putting one foot in front of the other. Needless to say,
she was glad Butz had Jackson’s truck so she didn’t have to look at
its hood and be reminded of how wonderful her butt had felt on it.
She kept her eyes purposely averted from his tarp covered Harley.
It definitely just didn’t exist as far as she was concerned. Not if
she was going to stay calm and deal with this problem that had been
a major problem between her and Jackson since the very beginning.
He had to open up and tell her what in God’s name haunted him, or
she would have to say goodbye for good.

For all she knew goodbye for good may
be exactly what he meant last night when he to her to forget he
existed. She half expected to see him sitting on the porch with his
guitar. He wasn’t, but she heard the faint strum of a chord from
inside the cabin. She knocked and called out. “Jackson, how did you
get home?”

“
I walked and hitched. Go
away, Nan. I made a mistake and I’m sorry.”

He’d walked? She opened the door and
saw him. He half sat, half sprawled on top of the messed up bed.
Like she, he still had on the same clothes he’d worn last night,
but his were a good bit dirtier. Dust and mud speckled the bottom
of his black pants and his shirt that he’d tied her up with hung
unbuttoned and misshapen over his broad shoulders. He looked like
hell. A half-empty bottle of whiskey on his bedside table didn’t
improve her mood; she was starting to get pissed off. He’d rather
drink than talk to her or help his brother.

“
I brought the African
violet.” She set it on his table.

“
Take it back. It won’t
live in this cabin.”

Now she was more than pissed off. “So
that’s it? You’re sorry. You made a mistake. I’m to walk away and
never darken your door again?”

He played a jarring chord. “Yeah.
That’s it. I never promised you more than sex.”

She paced back and forth, counting
each point on her finger. “Let’s replay this. I walked away three
months ago, because I knew that this was a mistake. But NOOO. You
aren’t happy with that. You have to come barging back into my life
bearing sticky buns and honeysuckle sprays. You have to take me on
Harley rides and bury yourself so deep inside me that you drive me
to heaven. Have you ever heard of such a thing as body language? A
man can promise more in his touch than he can ever follow up with
his mouth. And I’m supposed to accept a wham-bam-sorry-ma’am and
forget it?”

He shut his eyes and turned away from
her. “You don’t understand. Just let it go. It’s better this
way.”

His rejection cut her deep and she
fought back tears. “What don’t I understand, damn it? What are you
hiding? Were you driving the car that killed Amy?”

He tossed the guitar down on the bed
and stood. He marched angrily her way, then swung around and paced
to the other end of the cabin. “God no. That isn’t what happened,
but even that might be preferable.”

“
Then what? What the hell
is it?”

He rubbed his hands through his wild
hair. “I was freaking asleep in the back seat is what. I was so
damn hung up in being the best ER doctor at Chicago General that I
worked every shift I could. That left Amy alone most of the time
and she wasn’t happy. She decided to have kids, and suffered two
miscarriages. When she got pregnant with the third, she didn’t want
to tell our families about it until she made it through the second
trimester. She was so afraid something would happen and she didn’t
want everyone to know if it did. Then we were going to be coming
home for Christmas, and she decided to surprise everybody. Amy
wasn’t feeling great and didn’t want to go to the hospital’s
Christmas social, but I insisted. Yeah, I had to be there to make a
good impression. My career was everything. I had worked a double
that day and she drove while I slept in the back seat. Amy died
because I insisted we go and I asked her to drive. There’s nothing
you can fix, Nan. Go home.” Jackson walked over and opened the
door.

Nan sucked in air. Tears stung her
eyes at the raw pain she heard and saw in Jackson. The tragedy tore
at her heart; yet couldn’t he see that he couldn’t take the blame
for everything? She shook her head. “How do you know that? How do
you know she would have lived if you had been driving? Are you
psychic? Did you know there was going to be an accident that
night?”

Jackson folded his arms; his reddened
eyes were brutal and hopeless. “No. She died because she was seven
months pregnant and when the other car hit ours, her stomach
slammed into the steering wheel and ruptured her uterus. I couldn’t
save her and I couldn’t save our baby. She died screaming for me to
help her and all of my medical training couldn’t. All it did was
prolong her agony a few minutes more. If she had been a passenger,
odds are that wouldn’t have happened. Go on back to your life,
Nan.” Jackson left the door open and walked over to take a swig of
the whiskey.

Nan wanted to scream. She wanted to cry; she wanted
to shake him until it changed everything. “I’ll go back to my life,
Jack. But Amy’s death was an accident. All of us can look back at
things and see what we should have done differently.” She touched
his shoulder and he shrugged her off.

“Damn it, Jack. You can’t waste your whole life like
my father did just because hindsight is better than foresight.
You’re only accountable for the future. Knowing what you know now,
what decisions are you going to make in your life today? Tomorrow?
That’s what you’re responsible for.” It was like she was talking to
a brick wall. The dead expression on his face never changed. She
had to reach him. “Would Amy have wanted you to turn your back on
everything you aspired to and believed in?”

She picked up the broken doorknob still lying on the
floor and tossed it on to the bed. “Is living this way some sort of
testament to her and your unborn child?”

Jackson flinched, but Nan pursued. She
wouldn’t be able to look herself in the mirror if she didn’t say
what she had to say now. “Do you think shutting yourself up and
never sharing anything about her does anything for her
memory?”

Tears rolled down her cheeks and her breath caught
in her throat. Still she forced the words in her heart out. “If I
were to die, and if I had someone to remember me, I wouldn’t want
them to shut me away in a closet. My father spent his life
punishing himself. Are you being any different? I’m not comparing
him to you. What happened to you and Amy is different. Maybe at the
time, if you had made different choices, the accident wouldn’t have
happened. You can’t know that. Only God does. Hell, for all you
know the same thing could have happened that night because she
could have decided to go to the grocery store while you were
sleeping. Would you still be blaming yourself if that had happened?
All you are doing is punishing yourself for being alive. You can’t
forgive yourself for living and until you can do that, all you’re
going to do is hurt the people around you.” She rushed to the door,
knowing that at any minute she was going to break from the pain
ripping through her.

At the last minute she turned back. “Being with you
was different. I felt something special starting to grow. I’ve been
alone most of my life and for just a little while, I didn’t feel so
alone. I don’t think it would have lasted long. I couldn’t live
with broken doorknobs and not knowing where the clock is. It’s okay
to lounge in bed for a day every now and then. Every day would
drive me crazy. Our take on life is too different to mesh. But I
want you to know that you have things inside you to give. And you
have something I don’t have, a family. Walking out on Jesse last
night hurt him. Don’t throw your family away, Jack. Relationships
are too precious to lose.”

She started to cry. Biting her lip, she walked out
the door.

Jackson followed and put his hands on her shoulders.
“Don’t do this to yourself, Nan. I can’t be what you want. I can’t
make a commitment, be a father, or a husband. I had a family and I
killed them. I never meant to hurt you.”

Nan pulled away, her emotions like a gnashing sea,
stripping away at the barriers she’d spent so long building. “No,
you didn’t mean to hurt me. But it wasn’t an accident that we
became involved. We both chose it and we’ll have to live with the
fall out. Even if you asked me to stick around, I wouldn’t. I
learned from my father that only you can help yourself. Nobody else
can. Don’t waste your life like my father did.”

She turned and ran to her car. Her
tears fell like a heavy rain and the sobs in her heart were lost in
the song playing on the radio,
Tears In
Heaven
.

She now knew why Jackson played the song. And part
of her heart was crying tears in heaven too. Tears for what he lost
and tears for what would never be between them. For even though she
walked away from him, she knew she loved him.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

She'd left the damned African violet. He didn’t know
what to do with it. For a long time after Nan left he stood rooted
to the spot staring at the damned plant. Part of him was relieved
she’d gone. It meant he didn’t have to deal with her hurt. She was
right. He should have left her alone. At least they hadn’t gotten
any more involved than they had. What lifelong consequences could
just a few days have? She’d get over it. He’d get over it and
everything could go back to the way it was.

And she was right about another thing. Once the
newness of being together had worn off, their lives would have
clashed.

But that’s all she was right about. He marched over
to the whiskey bottle and took an unsatisfying swig. The alcohol
did nothing to help ease the bite of Nan’s words. He stung all over
and it pissed him off. But the biggest ache of all centered in the
middle of his gut and in his already dead heart.

Why couldn’t she have just left?
She didn’t know what in the hell she was talking about. He’d heard
Amy die, crying about their baby. He’d felt their life’s blood
cover his hands. And
he’d
fought for their lives and failed. If there was a
God in heaven, he was no friend.

Grabbing the whiskey, and a pint of Tequila for good
measure, Jackson stomped out to the porch and gave the swing a good
kick. It swung back and slammed against the porch railing, knocking
out the decorative slats, then swung forward at a crazy angle and
clipped his knee. He welcomed the pain. Taking another long draught
from the bottle, he plopped down into the moving swing and the damn
thing broke so that his feet were in the air and his head landed on
the porch with a thump. He didn’t bother to get up. By the time he
finished the bottle, it wouldn’t matter which end was up
anyway.

* * *

“Wake up, bro.”

“Gos asway,” Jackson managed to slur through his
hangover. He forced one eye half-open, wincing at the blinding sun.
It looked like there were six Jesse’s standing over him.

“Not this time. Your family has a few things to say
to you and you’re going to sober up enough to hear them.”