She shifted uneasily, swallowing the thick taste in her mouth. Painkillers. The right kind—not the kind that included a sedative, like the ones she’d taken the day before. Her grandfather had pointed out the difference when he was finally able to rouse her. Too late to be of any help, of course. The minute Bruce realized Daria was sound asleep—for whatever reason—he’d hustled the girls into his rental car. “Screw this,” he’d reportedly barked, “I’m taking you home where you belong.”
“Don’t blame yourself, Daria,” her grandfather had said, trying to comfort her. “He was determined to leave. If you’d been standing between him and the door, he might have done something we all would have regretted.”
She’d managed to book a seat on the earliest flight out of Rapid City, and Cal had supplied her with drugs that eased the pain without knocking her out. She felt miserable and nauseous, but at least her body managed to confirm that she wasn’t pregnant. PMS and cramps were the least of her worries.
“Are you feeling okay, dear?” the elderly woman beside her asked. “You look pale.”
“A bit of flu last week,” she lied. “I’ll be fine. Thanks for asking.”
At least she knew the girls were okay. Bruce had called several times—probably to forestall her impulse to contact the police and put out an Amber Alert. He’d calmed her down by telling her that the girls regarded the impromptu road trip as an adventure. Miranda had backed up his claim, although the tremulous wobble in Hailey’s voice had nearly killed her.
“My inhaler’s almost empty, Mommy. What do I do if I need it? Will Daddy know what to do?”
Of course not.
Bruce wasn’t the one who slept on the floor beside Hailey’s bed when she was having a rough night. He didn’t fill the humidifier or know how to operate the nebulizer. “He can go to any pharmacy, sweetness,” Daria had assured her. “They’ll call your doctor and get it refilled. Don’t worry. You’ll be fine. I promise.”
“When are you coming home, Mommy? I miss you.”
“Soon, baby. I’ll probably be there before you get back. Everything’s okay.”
No. That was a lie. Everything was not okay. She felt as though she was back to square one, but her lawyer had assured her they had options. She needed to return to Fresno, regroup and put any other plans she had on hold.
“You can’t fight the devil with a water pistol,” she’d told her grandfather that morning at the airport. “Thanks for trying to help, Grandpa. I’m sorry I turned your life upside down for nothing.”
He’d insisted she’d done nothing of the sort and that she was welcome to return sooner rather than later.
“We are beginning our descent to Fresno,” a voice said over the loudspeaker. “The flight attendant will be making one last sweep through the plane to collect any trash. Thank you for flying with us today. It’s been a pleasure….”
Home again. Not really. It wasn’t home without her daughters—nowhere was. Her pain returned on cue.
Once the plane had come to a complete stop, she pulled her backpack out from under the seat in front of her and edged sideways to escape the confines of her horrible seat. She slowly made her way to the front of the plane, the pain in her midsection radiating outward until it felt like someone was twisting a knife in her back. She gripped the handrail tightly as she descended the metal steps.
The sky was the dull color of lead, high fog totally obscuring the sun. The bite in the air felt every bit as cold as the Black Hills winter she’d left that morning, despite a forty-degree difference in temperature.
Another passenger held the door for her as she hurried inside. She smiled her thanks, scurrying to the main corridor where she knew she’d find a water fountain. She’d meant to ask the flight attendant for a water bottle but had forgotten.
She found the fountain, but a piece of yellow tape across it informed her it wasn’t working. “Damn.”
She considered buying a bottle but decided she needed to save her cash for the taxi ride home. The sooner she got there, the sooner she could call her lawyer and figure out a new plan.
She turned on her phone to check for messages.
“Please enter your password, then press pound.”
“Daria?”
She stared at her phone a full second before realizing the voice wasn’t coming from her in-box. She looked around. There, a few feet ahead, standing beside one of the artificial giant Sequoia trees that were part of the newly remodeled lobby, was William.
“Daria,” another voice said, far more sharply and imperiously.
“Hester?” The pain in Daria’s belly got worse. Bruce’s mother stood a few feet to William’s right. Two strangers meeting the same person? Didn’t that kind of thing only happen in the movies?
Hester turned to look at William. Her eyes narrowed, identical to the way Bruce looked when he was preparing to rip someone to shreds, verbally.
Daria hurried forward to try to keep whatever was going to happen from happening, but her body suddenly froze as a punishing pain as great as childbirth ripped through her. “Oh,” she cried. “Oh, no.”
She staggered, one step, two. Strong arms caught her before she fell. “William,” she gasped. He helped her to the closest bench. She leaned against him, afraid to move. “I think I need to go to the hospital,” she hissed on a low groan of fear and pain.
Hester had pushed her way close enough to hear the last word. “Hospital? What’s wrong with you? Are you pregnant? Oh, my God, you’re having another miscarriage.”
“No,” Daria tried to say, but all she could do was groan.
“How far along are you? Does Bruce know? Of course not. He would have told me. In fact, we just spoke and he didn’t say a thing about—” Her jaw dropped. “It isn’t his baby, is it? That’s why you ran away. What have you done?”
Daria’s body started to shake, whether from shock or embarrassment or anger, she couldn’t say. William cradled her tighter, obviously sensing her impending implosion. “You,” he said, pointing at Hester. “Back the hell off.” To the TSA guard who rushed to help, he ordered, “Call an ambulance.”
“Already on its way, sir.”
Other airport personnel appeared out of the woodwork, along with a few Good Samaritans. “I’m a nurse,” a woman in a pink jogging suit said. “How can I help? Try to breathe slow and steady. Help will be here soon.”
Daria tried to focus on the woman’s voice, but her true lifeline was William, who only moved when the paramedics appeared. Even then, he remained close by, holding her hand.
Hester stayed on the perimeter. Daria caught a glimpse now and then of the woman’s peacock-blue scarf. No doubt she was reporting a minute-to-minute play-by-play to her son, but she didn’t attempt to talk to Daria again. Thanks to William.
“What are you doing here?” she managed to ask him through clenched teeth as the paramedic took her pulse.
“Making sure you’re okay,” William said softly. “Not doing a very good job of it, am I?”
She smiled. “How…?”
“Cal,” he answered, cutting her off. “Shh. We’ll talk later. I’m not going anywhere.”
She liked the sound of that, but had to focus her attention on dealing with the emergency responders. She told them about her previous E.R. visit and gave them the name of her primary care physician.
“Okay. Let’s get you to the hospital and see if they can do a better job of fixing the problem this time, whatever it is,” the paramedic in charge said. To William, he said, “You can meet us there.”
“I’ll be right behind you.” He squeezed Daria’s hand and gave her one of his devastatingly handsome Cary Grant smiles. “Try not to get in too much trouble between here and there, okay?”
She might have been able to come up with a flip answer if not for the flash that suddenly exploded between them. “You’re Congressman Bruce Fontina’s wife, aren’t you? Can I get a statement for the
Bee?
”
Daria turned her head and closed her eyes, wishing she had the power to disappear.
Just when you think things can’t get any worse.
“Who are you, sir? How do you know Mrs. Fontina? One of the bystanders said she might be having a miscarriage—is it the congressman’s baby?”
William stepped in front of the man in time to block a second photograph of Daria on the gurney. He wanted to yank the camera out of the man’s hand, crack open the back and pull out a yard or two of film, but unfortunately, that kind of satisfaction had died with the advent of the digital camera. Popping out the media disk and stomping on it didn’t hold the same appeal.
So, he did what he was very good at—damage control. “Ms. Fontina is an old family friend. And if you know the Fontina family then you know they don’t appreciate the press intruding on their private affairs. She was flying home after visiting her grandfather and was taken ill. Her mother-in-law was here to meet Daria’s plane.”
“And you are?” the reporter asked suspiciously.
“An old family friend,” he repeated, dragging out each word as if the young man was a slow learner.
“Hey, man, I’m just doing my job.”
“Seriously,
man?
Which job is that? The reporting of real news or the harassing of average citizens?” William asked, barely able to contain his disdain. “There’s no story here. The lady is ill. It makes no difference that she’s a politician’s wife. Aren’t they allowed to get sick?”
“But—”
William stopped him. “Do yourself a favor. Drop it. Have you ever met Bruce Fontina?” He let the implication hang in the air between them.
The reporter frowned. “A couple of times.”
“Need I say more?”
The guy closed his notebook. “Whatever. But I’m going to follow up on this with a call to Mr. Fontina’s office. If I find out…”
William didn’t hear the rest of the threat because he was already on his way out the door. He had no idea where the hospital was, but his rental car had a mapping device so he wasn’t worried. He paused at the curb to let a car pass.
“My question is the same as that reporter’s. Who are you?”
He glanced to his right. The rotund woman with the ugly scarf. “You seemed pretty smoochy-woochy with Daria. Are you the reason she left my poor Bruce?”
“I assure you, madam, your poor Bruce is the sole reason Daria chose to leave her marriage. I only met her three days ago.”
She started to deny the charge but took a different route, instead. “Then why are you here? Do you live in town? You were obviously meeting her plane.”
“As were you, madam. No doubt with the same intention—to check on her well-being. Her grandfather called me and told me Bruce had absconded with their daughters and Daria was ill. He thought she could use a friend.”
He turned to leave.
“They’re his kids, too, you know,” the woman shouted. “He’ll be here soon enough, and you’d better hope he doesn’t find you hanging around his wife.”
“Ex-wife,” William would have liked to yell, but he didn’t.
He shoved the unpleasant encounter out of his mind as he paid the parking fee and followed the verbal directions of the GPS device. He’d come to Fresno for a reason. A foolish one, but that hadn’t stopped him from hopping in his plane the minute it was fueled and ready to go.
He couldn’t stop thinking about her.
There was a chance he was falling in love with her. He wasn’t an expert on love so he couldn’t say for certain. All he knew was that he’d never felt this way before, and he wasn’t ready to let go of this connection.
He found a parking spot in the visitor lot of the large, older-looking hospital and got out. He didn’t know whether or not he’d be allowed entrance to the emergency room, but he’d wait, anyway.
At the E.R., he got in line at the information desk, but before he had a chance to talk to someone, an interior door opened and the paramedic who had helped Daria poked his head out and looked around. He spotted William and said, “Come with me.”
“How is she?”
“In pain. They’re running some tests.”
Was it a miscarriage? He wanted to ask, but didn’t. He knew enough about the medical system to understand and appreciate patient confidentiality.
“Here you go,” the paramedic said, pointing to a closed door. “I’m taking off now. Good luck.”
William shook his hand. “Thank you.”
“She’s a nice lady. Tell her I hope things turn around for her, okay?”
William nodded. He hoped so, too. He also hoped he’d have the courage to say the right thing—even if that was goodbye.