CLOSE TO YOU: Enhanced (Lost Hearts) (45 page)

             
Pepper picked up where Hope left off. "We were afraid she was dead. Now we discover this beautiful, wonderful woman is our sister, and she's had a happy life, and we're so happy and so relieved. So yes, it's your fault she grew up happy, and we love you for it. You're part of our family now."

             
Kate wanted to kiss them both. Mom was still crying, but she was smiling, too. She opened her arms. "I'd be honored to be part of your family."

             
Kate didn't know how to be a sister. Not to anyone— not to these women, not to those men. But at the moment Hope and Pepper embraced Mom, Kate embraced the family.

             
The Prescotts were once again a family.

              Six days later, Teague watched Kate walk into his hospital room. At the sight of him in his leather jacket and his jeans and running shoes, her eyes widened. Her smile blossomed. She seemed so damned happy to see him.

             
Well. He could cure that.

             
She wore blue jeans, a long-sleeved white T-shirt, and a hideous brown, blue, and orange thigh-length knit cardigan that he wouldn't have given to the poor.

             
She looked . . . beautiful.

             
His breath caught, and the headache that nagged at his brain—and that he always denied having—worsened.

             
"You're dressed!" she said.

             
"And ready to go." He picked up his suitcase and headed toward the door. "More than ready to go."

             
"You can't just walk out of here." She caught his arm. "The nurse will bring a wheelchair."

             
Her touch seared him like a lightning bolt. Didn't she know . . . ? Didn't she realize . . . ? Every time she brushed her lips against his, every time she slid her arm beneath his shoulders, he burned with need.

             
During the last week, he'd carefully wrapped himself in indifference. Emptiness would work as an anesthesia against the pain that he knew would come . . . when he told her the truth.

             
But every time she touched him, the electricity blasted away the darkness, illuminating the dark corners of his soul and bringing him to unwilling life.

             
He steeled himself to sound indifferent. "I don't need a wheelchair."

             
She sounded patient and amused when she replied, "The hospital doesn't care if you need a wheelchair. They don't want you to fall down on the way out and sue them."

             
Great. She'd started humoring him. She probably didn't feel the strain of not making love for a week. She certainly seemed to be handling the advent of her family well.

             
Better than he was. All the Prescotts had come to visit him once a day, and they had enfolded him in their affections. He had saved their sister's life. They loved him without reservation.

             
When they weren't here, Kate talked about them. She filled him in on all their idiosyncrasies, where they went, and what they ate. She confessed her mixed feelings about inheriting such a close-knit family—God knows he related to that. She told him how strange she felt when she realized she had killed another human being—although Oberlin had scarcely fit the description.

             
He told her how he had handled the amazing mix of emotions he'd experienced when he'd killed in the service. When he was done, she nodded and told him that Dan had said the same things.

             
Kate didn't need him anymore. Oberlin had been right about one thing: Teague didn't fit in her life.

             
"I don't want a wheelchair," he said stubbornly.

             
"
You
tell her." Kate widened her eyes in mock horror. "Godzilla's on duty."

             
"Shit." The crease in his skull ached. He pressed his fingers into his forehead.

             
The door bumped open, revealing a wheelchair with Godzilla the Monster Nurse at the helm.

             
Kate rubbed his arm, then stepped away to let Godzilla manage him into the chair. Before he knew it, he was traveling through the hospital corridors like an old man so enfeebled he couldn't even walk a block. The passing nurses bid him cheery farewells, and two of them smiled in a way that reminded him he was not an enfeebled old man but valuable dating material.

             
Kate noticed, too, because she moved closer and put her hand on his shoulder.               And the lightning flashed through him again.

             
He shouldn't have made love to her in a storm. The charge still lingered in the air, igniting his desire and scrambling his thoughts.

             
He'd lost his mind . . . and his heart.

             
Near the entrance to the hospital, Kate took his suitcase and left him to bring her car around. He waited grimly, Godzilla breathing down his neck, but she couldn't stop him when Kate drove up. He stood and got in the car on his own. Godzilla slammed the door as if she were glad to be rid of him.

             
"Let's get out of here." He glanced over at Kate.

             
She put the car in gear and drove off, and she was grinning. She had the nerve to look happy.

             
"What?" he snapped.

             
"A week ago, I thought you were dead." She actually sounded happy, too. "Now I'm taking you home."

              "No, you're not. We're going to visit . . . someone." Bleakly he took Fate by the neck and twisted. "Turn left here."

             
Kate raised her eyebrows, but did as she was told. "Do I get to know who we're going to visit?"

             
"Juanita."

             
"Juanita from Ramos Security?"

             
"Yes." He took a breath. "Her name is Juanita Ramos."

             
Kate stiffened. "She's your . . . ?"

             
"Cousin. Juanita is my cousin."

             
"Good." Kate relaxed again, handling the powerful little car with ease. "Any reason why we're visiting her now when you should be going home to rest? I mean, I can chat with your relatives later."

             
"No. There is no later." He couldn't delay. He'd been dreading this moment ever since he woke in ICU and realized that for the first time in his life, he loved someone with all the fervor and fire of his Latin soul. Love . . . love required the truth. No woman could love him once she
knew
. Certainly not Kate with her Protestant morality and her upright character.

             
Of course, she would feel sorry for him. Be kind to him . . . and the thought of her kindness made him grind his teeth.

             
Kate pulled up to Juanita's apartment building and parked in a visitor's parking space.

             
The place was shabby, in need of paint, and Teague found himself explaining, "She won't let me help her. She insists on living on her wages, and her condition is expensive. . . ." He trailed off. He shouldn't be trying to whitewash himself. "Come on."

             
They got out. Kate met him in front of the car. He indicated the way, but she didn't seem to understand he wanted her to walk ahead. Instead she slid her hand into his. "Is she expecting us?"

             
"Yes." Tension held him in its grip.

             
"Are there more in your family?"

             
"No one that I claim."

             
"Then this is sort of like meeting your parents, isn't it?" Her grip tightened.

             
He wanted to shake free of Kate's hand. He wanted to kiss her fingers. He wanted to be absorbed into her bloodstream, see with her, hear with her, breathe with her. He was dying a slow, agonizing death, and she didn't even seem aware of his pain.

             
"No." He stopped before Juanita's door. He knocked. "No. Not at all like that."

             
The look Kate shot him told him she wasn't as unaware as she would like him to think. She knew something was going on. . . . Well, of course she did. He hadn't voluntarily touched her since he awoke six days ago. And he wished he could kiss her one last time.

             
She seemed to know what he was thinking, and she was willing. She leaned against him, her body pliant. She turned her face up. She closed her eyes.

             
His resistance was no match for her surrender.

             
Juanita answered the door. "Oops!" Her brown eyes twinkled. "Want me to go away again?"

             
"No." Harshly he shook off Kate's enchantment.

             
As if she were hurt, Kate looked down and bit her lip. But better a little pain now than the slow grinding disillusionment of years.

             
Juanita moved her wheelchair out of the way. "Come in! I've been expecting you." At home, she usually wore a loose-fitting dress and slippers to keep her feet warm.Today she was dressed like the hostess at a party, with a red shirt that made her dark hair glow, a flowered skirt that looked appropriate for a fiesta, and flats that looked fashionably comfy.

             
"Something smells good." Kate followed Juanita through the tiny apartment toward the dining room.

             
"I knew Teague would be hungry after eating that awful hospital food—unfortunately I know my way around the hospital—so I fixed shrimp enchiladas and charro beans."

             
Teague couldn't believe the round laden table with its celebratory tablecloth, the loaded casserole, the Crock-Pot, and the shining silverware.

             
"And look—" Juanita lifted a cloth napkin to show them a pile of tortillas.

             
"Did you make them yourself?" Kate asked.

             
"No, but I bought them at the Tortilla Stand." Juanita grinned. "Margarita?"               "Only one. Teague's not allowed to drive." Kate grinned back.

             
"I'll bet he hates that." Juanita moved efficiently through her kitchen, putting the finishing touches on the salad. "Teague, would you pour while I get the plates?"

             
"I can drive." Teague could scarcely contain his irritation as he poured Kate a margarita from the frosted pitcher. This meeting was not going as he had planned. He'd envisioned a hurried visit to show Kate the reality of Juanita's condition, then a quick conversation and a speedy dismissal, followed by years of desolation.

             
Yet Kate had said she was meeting his relatives, and she'd acted as if it meant something. Juanita was behaving the same way. What was it with women? Why did they have to make everything an event? Why did they have to make unwarranted assumptions?

             
What was he going to do without Kate?

             
He knew the answer. He'd seen hell a few times in his life. He walked through hell more than once. He recognized hell in the darkness, the barrenness of light, of emotion, of being. And when Kate was gone, he would live in hell.

             
"Your home is lovely." Kate sipped her drink. "Did you decorate it yourself?"

             
"Thank you, I did! I knew I wanted a little sense of home—Teague probably told you I was raised in the same border town as he was—"

             
"No. He just today told me you were his cousin. "Kate's voice was matter-of-fact as she tattled on him. "I thought he was a complete and total orphan."

             
"He doesn't tell people we're related." Juanita's voice was equally matter-of-fact. "He has a thing about nepotism, and of course I can't get a job just anywhere. I have to work for him or take a lower-paying job."

             
Teague hated that it was true. "Juanita's the best security person we have. Her reports have resulted in more than a dozen arrests in the past year."

             
"I owe the state of Texas a lot," Juanita said. "The Shriners Hospital in Houston operated on me for free. That's why I'm able to get around as well as I do. So it's kind of great being able to say I protect the capitol."

             
"I used to have a job at the capitol, too." Kate dipped a chip in the beans. "This is wonderful. You'll have to give me the recipe."