She pushed open the door, then stopped abruptly. The room was filled with people. All of Seth’s family was there. Her eyes darted to the still figure on the bed. Two doctors stood beside him. She moved closer. She could do this … she had to do this.
As she drew nearer, a movement caught her attention. Her heart raced. Had Seth moved? What was going on?
Dr. Benson, Seth’s surgeon—the one who’d told her to pray—looked up at her, his face wreathed in smiles. “Look who’s awake.”
She dropped her gaze to the man on the bed. Though his eyes were dull and glazed, she saw life there. Something she never thought she’d see again. Almost too afraid to hear the answer, Honor looked at the doctor and asked, “What does this mean?”
“It means he’s out of the woods, my dear. That miracle I told you to pray for actually happened.”
thirty-two
Eighteen days later
The hospital door swung open. Seth looked up in relief, only to curse under his breath at the sight of yet another nurse. Honor hadn’t come by today, and it was getting close to lunchtime. Where the hell was she?
“Don’t you look cheerful?” the nurse chirped.
He glared. “You get poked and prodded at all hours of the day and night and see how cheerful you feel.”
A sly look crossed her face. “I saw that pretty little freckle-faced woman who makes goo-goo eyes at you coming down the hall. Guess I’ll just have to tell her you’re too grumpy for visitors today.”
“Like hell.”
When she didn’t change her expression, Seth gave in and sighed. “I’ll be good.”
Chuckling, she said, “That’s better. You’re getting out of here tomorrow. One would think you’d be in a better mood.”
Yeah, one would if one knew where the hell one stood with a certain beautiful freckle-faced woman.
Honor spent hours with him each day. They read newspapers, talked about current events, watched television, read books, and chatted about the weather. It was like they’d been married for about eighty years. Either that, or they now had a platonic relationship.
Every time she left for the night, he kept expecting her to kiss his forehead, the way his mother used to, or kiss his cheek like a sister. Hell, she never even got that close. She probably knew better, since he’d pull her into his arms if she did.
Death had come so close that his mother had tearfully described the last rites Father Dawkins had been in the process of giving him when Seth had suddenly opened his eyes. He remembered very little of the shooting. One minute he’d been reassuring Kelli that she was safe. He remembered someone screaming, a sudden searing, paralyzing pain, and then nothing more.
Waking up to see his entire family standing at his bedside, along with the priest who had heard every confession from him until he’d stopped going to confession, had been a shock.
Then Honor had been there. Her eyes bloodshot, her face ash white. He’d been drugged and in pain, but one thing he knew for sure: he never wanted to see that look on her face again. Seeing her like that had hurt him a hell of a lot more than three bullets. Though those had hurt like a bitch, for sure.
His family had stayed for a couple of days, but he hadn’t talked with them much. It’d taken six days before he could speak with any coherency. By that time, they were gone. Though each of his brothers and sisters had come by, one by one, and said goodbye, Seth still felt like a stranger with them.
His mother had wanted to stay, but he had insisted that she leave with the rest of the family. She had looked so worn out and worried, he’d been more concerned about her health than his own. Seth had promised to come home for a long visit as soon as he was able.
Tomorrow he was being released. He was still as weak as water, had several weeks of physical therapy to get through, and couldn’t work for at least two months. Not that he had a job to go to. In fact, he wasn’t sure where he was headed. His doctors had told him he could do his PT anywhere.
The door opened and Honor came into the room. Would he ever get to the point where his heart didn’t skip beats when he saw her? He knew the answer to that. Problem was, he still wasn’t sure what her thoughts were. Right now, it seemed as if they had a nice friendship going and nothing more. Damned if friendly was what he felt.
“Good morning. How are you feeling?”
“Why does everyone keep asking me that?”
She grinned, not one bit put off by his bad mood. “Well, let’s see. For starters, you have three extra holes in you that you weren’t born with and you look like something the cat gnawed on and then dragged home. Other than that, I’m not sure.”
Seth held out his hand to her. “Come over here and put me in a better mood.”
Instead of coming to him, she settled on the couch by the window. Seth almost growled at her again, but the sunlight on her face gave him pause. Though she looked a hell of a lot better than she had three weeks ago, he noticed that she was paler than she should be and her mouth looked tense and taut.
“Are you ready to talk about it?” he asked.
“Talk about what?”
“What that bastard put you through. Every time I’ve brought it up, you’ve tried to tell me you’re fine. You don’t look fine.”
She shook her head. “I won’t deny an occasional nightmare or the incredible anger I still have against the creep, but I’ve had no real residual aftereffects.”
“Come on, sweetheart. This is me you’re talking to. I heard the shit you had to go through.”
Her lips trembled as if she was trying to keep from crying. Unable to watch that without holding her, Seth put his feet on the floor.
Her eyes wide, she held out her hand to stop him. “You shouldn’t be out of bed.”
He snorted. “I’m getting out of the hospital tomorrow. I damn well better be able to walk a few steps.” Despite his cocky self-assurance, when he reached the couch, he felt like he’d run a marathon.
Damned weakness
.
Sitting beside her, he said softly, “Talk to me.”
She swung her face toward him and Seth lost his breath. Tears glistened in her eyes, her pretty mouth twisted with emotion, and her breath hitched in an effort to hold back her sobs.
“Honor … sweetheart. Tell me, please.”
“Do you honestly think that what I went through with Alden Pike is what’s bothering me?”
“Then what?”
“Seth, you almost died.”
He shook his head, still confused. “But I didn’t.”
Honor swallowed, trying to articulate something Seth couldn’t seem to comprehend. How could she tell him that he might be well on the road to recovery, but she wasn’t? The nightmares she had weren’t of her experience with Pike. They were of Seth getting shot. Seth dying. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw his face, ghost white and still as death. She couldn’t get the image out of her head.
“Come here.”
With infinite gentleness, Seth pulled her into his arms. She knew he was still sore, so she tried not to lean into him too much, but when he bent his head toward her and whispered gruffly, “Let go, sweetheart,” she could no longer hold back.
With her face buried against his chest, sobs ripped through her body with the force of a tornado. Anguish, fear, grief, and every other emotion she hadn’t allowed herself to express for almost three weeks erupted from her like a geyser.
How long she stayed like that, she didn’t know. Seth’s arms were the best things she’d ever felt in her life and she didn’t want to leave them. From time to time, she heard him whisper soft endearments, and he kissed her hair several times. For the most part, he just let her cry.
Finally, feeling like a freight train had been dropped from the sky on top of her, she pulled away. Seth produced several tissues, and Honor tried to set her face to rights.
Knowing she looked like the wrath of hell, she lifted her head and said, “I’m sorry.”
His smile achingly tender, he touched her cheek with his fingertip, catching a teardrop. “Is that the first time you’ve cried?”
She nodded. “I couldn’t let go before. I knew if I did, I’d never make it back.”
“My brave, beautiful Honor.”
She felt neither brave nor beautiful. Though the doctors had assured her that Seth would live, and each day, she saw that he was getting better and stronger, she hadn’t really trusted them. Not until she came in this morning and saw him so gloriously grumpy, obviously more than ready to leave this place, had she finally allowed herself to believe he would be all right.
“I never want to have to go through something like that again.”
He shrugged. “Not a lot of crazed maniacs on my little island in the Keys.”
Pain speared through her heart. He wanted to go back to his home in Florida. They hadn’t discussed the future. Hell, she’d just finally accepted that there could be one. But now that the future loomed before her, “lonely” and “empty” were the only two descriptions she could think of if Seth wasn’t there with her.
“So you’re going back to Florida?”
“It’s where I live.”
She knew he was eyeing her carefully. Suddenly, Honor didn’t care who said it first and maybe he would never say it, but they’d gone through too much for her to let pride or fear get in the way. If she had told him years ago, things might have been different then.
She straightened her shoulders and faced him with the truth: “I love you and I want a future with you.”
There, it was out there. Was he going to stomp on her heart all over again or tell her what she so desperately wanted to hear?
Seth, being Seth, surprised her again. Taking her hand, he held it to his mouth, pressed kisses all over it, then put it against his heart. “I loved you from the moment I saw you across the room at that party. That’s never changed … never will change, no matter what happens in the future.”
Honor didn’t know whether to be elated or brokenhearted. “What are you saying?”
“Just that the Seth Cavanaugh you fell in love with five years ago doesn’t exist anymore. I need you to know that.”
Confused, she shook her head. “What?”
“Those years, that experience, changed me. You said that you never stopped loving me. Well, that man you once loved doesn’t really exist any longer. I don’t think he ever will again. We’ve spent almost no time getting to know each other since we’ve been together again. I just think—”
Honor pulled her hand away and sat back against the couch. “You need to tell me what happened.”
Seth sighed. Hell, might as well. She needed to know not only how he’d changed, but why. Maybe talking would give him some kind of closure.
Refusing to look away from the possible judgment and disappointment he might see in her face, he held her gaze and said, “The things I had to do to keep my cover … the filth I was surrounded by daily—they changed me. Turned me into a man I no longer recognized.
“I tried to keep a distance from Clemmons’s raunchier side of life. Most times that worked, because Hector wanted me to maintain a semirespectable façade. Avoiding everything wasn’t possible, though.” Disgust filled him as he remembered some of the things he’d seen and done to keep his cover. “His weekend parties were notorious. Drugs, sex, women. I couldn’t not go. Not only because Clemmons insisted, but a lot of his business transactions took place then. I had to be around in case something came up I could use against him later.
“Close to the end, Hector became a desperate man. So many people had betrayed him, or he’d gotten pissed at people and found a way to ruin them. He had few friends left. I was still part of his inner circle but not exactly a part of it—still maintaining my halfway-legitimate businessman persona. He trusted me, but he didn’t trust me enough. Getting dirt on him was taking much longer than we’d expected. I had some things that would put him away for a few years, but nothing that was going to do away with him permanently, like we had planned.
“Even though we couldn’t pin anything serious on him that would stick, with my connections, I was able to provide intel the department needed to make it worth their while for me to stay undercover.” He shook his head. “I wanted out … God, how I wanted out. And then one day it all came to a head.”
The compassion and understanding he saw in her eyes almost shattered his control. How the hell had he gotten so lucky to have a woman like Honor love him?
She asked softly, “What happened?”
Breaking eye contact with her, he looked toward the window, but in his mind, he was hundreds of miles away, seeing the horror, the absolute carnage of Clemmons’s final fury.
“Have you heard of Kings Run?” Seth asked.
“I remember that it’s one of the most exclusive resorts in Texas. I went there once because of a case … had to interview one of the employees. Never went there for fun, though … it was a little above my lifestyle.”
“But the murders, you heard of them?”
“Yes … it was called the massacre at Kings Run. Some wealthy businessman rented the entire place to celebrate his birthday. Gunmen broke in and killed a bunch of people.”
Too often, when Seth closed his eyes, he still saw those lifeless bodies scattered around the resort. To his eyes, it had looked like hundreds. “Fourteen, to be exact. Women, men … five children. The gunmen planned to take out everyone.”
Honor gasped, and he could see that she’d finally caught the connection. “My God, how could I have forgotten? That’s what brought Clemmons down. Three men were found tied and gagged in the middle of the hotel lobby. The survivors claimed that a masked man attacked the gunmen and single-handedly took down all three of them. They were contract killers and testified that it was Clemmons who hired them.” She paused to stare at him and then whispered, “You were that masked man, weren’t you? You saved all those people.”
Seth swallowed the bitterness at her words. Saved
all
those people? No, he had saved some … but not all of them.
Rubbing his wounded shoulder, which was beginning to ache, he said, “Clemmons wasn’t one to do his own dirty work, even in hiring people for a kill. This job was different for him—personal. I knew something big was going down, but I didn’t know what or where. I overheard some whispers and managed to catch the word ‘King.’ ” His mouth twisted. “You know how many places in Houston start with ‘King’?
“I told my handler what I could. The only thing the department could do was cover as many King places as we could.”
“And then it turned out not to be in Houston,” Honor murmured.
“Yeah. We had ten different locations in Houston staked out. The ones we thought would be the most likely. Instead, he went about thirty miles outside the city.”
“How did you find out?”
“Dumb luck. I remembered that Herman Oakes, the man who was celebrating his birthday, had been in one of my restaurants the week before and had mentioned that he was having a big birthday bash out at Kings Run. Oakes and Clemmons had done some business deals but had parted ways, seemingly amicably, the year before.
“I had nothing to go on but a hunch. I went out there expecting nothing, really. The instant I drove into the parking lot, I heard the shots. Before I got out of the car, just as an afterthought, I grabbed a ski mask I had stuck in my console from a skiing trip a few weeks before.”