Keep On Loving you (26 page)

So Mac was driving, her hands squeezing the steering wheel, bracing to do whatever was necessary to keep her family calm and contained. Her job was to minimize the drama, and so falling apart was not an option.

Brett was standing at the doors as she rushed into the emergency entrance at the small regional hospital. He caught her by the shoulders and studied her face as if assessing her status. “Okay,” he said. “Here's the deal.”

Mac continued her slow breathing as her brother explained they'd already put Poppy in an ambulance with Ryan to go down the hill to a larger facility. Shay, Jace and Angelica were already following behind. He'd waited for Mac so they could travel together.

“But why down the hill?” Mac asked, trying to keep fear out of her voice.

“You know this place is so small they practically send everything beyond splinters to a bigger hospital. But they said when there's the potential for soft tissue injury they particularly want a patient to be at a facility with more diagnostic equipment.”

But she wished she could see her sister,
now
. “Do they have any idea exactly what's wrong?”

“We won't be certain until she's seen by the doctors there and had those tests,” he said. “Now come on, let's go in my car.”

It was a tense forty-minute drive. She asked only one question. “Is Ryan losing his mind?” The other man's ex and his little boy had died in a fire. Hospitals—and the thought of something happening to Poppy—were sure to wig him out.

Brett glanced over. “We're all losing our minds.”

“I'm good,” Mac said, instantly. “I'm holding it together.”

Her legs were even steady as they rushed into the much bigger hospital. There, they had to follow a painted line to their destination, and the
Wizard of Oz
–ishness of it brought a hysterical bubble of laughter into Mac's throat. But she swallowed it down, and she was glad of it when she arrived in the waiting room.

Four pairs of eyes—Ryan, Jace, Angelica and Shay—swung to her.

“Hey, everybody,” she said calmly. “How's our Pop? She's gonna be mad if anything gets in the way of the upcoming wedding.”

“Nothing's getting in the way of the wedding,” Ryan ground out. Even with his hair askew and his face already haggard, he looked determined...but beyond stressed.

Mac immediately walked over to him and enclosed him in her arms. His banded around her, tight enough to communicate his dread. “She wasn't making any sense during the ambulance ride.”

“Well, you know Poppy,” Mac said, trying to sound unalarmed. “She doesn't make sense a lot of the time.”

“Yeah.” Ryan pressed his cheek against the side of Mac's hair. “I couldn't talk her out of loving me, thank God.”

“You and Mason are the best things in her life,” Mac said, patting his back. “She'll be bossing you both around again in no time, you'll see.”

Mac made the rounds of the others after Ryan retreated to a chair, a picture of abject anxiety with his head in his hands.

Angelica was wiping away tears with her palms, so Mac found her a box of tissues and squeezed her shoulder. Brett took a cushion beside his wife and slung an arm around her, looking more as if he was holding on than offering support. In return, Angelica curled herself into him, so they appeared to be a single unit.

Shay was pacing, Jace's concerned gaze on her.

Mac went to him first. “London's getting Mason from school?”

He didn't take his eyes off his wife. “Yeah, when it lets out. One of her friend's moms is going to take them both home, keep them there as long as necessary.”

“Okay.” She touched his forearm. “Walkers are tough, Jace.”

“I don't think I am,” Jace said. “Not when I can't fix things for her.” He nodded at Shay.

“Let me see what I can do.” She patted him one last time, then headed for her sister.

When she got near, Shay stopped her movement and addressed Mac in a voice of hoarse but muted outrage. “
Our
Pop!”

“Yeah, little sister,” Mac said softly. Though Shay was younger than Poppy, like everyone else in the family, she had a deep protective streak when it came to that particular sibling. Poppy had never asked to be defended and was most likely insulted by their habitual need to shield her, but there it was.

Tears sprang into Shay's eyes, and Mac felt her own despair shudder through her. But she clamped down on it and kept her spine straight. “C'mon,” she said to Shay, holding out her hand. “I know what will help.”

Shay squeezed hard on her fingers as Mac led her toward Jace. “He needs to hold you, yeah?” she whispered. “Can you give that to him?”

Without answering, Shay slipped her hand from Mac's and walked right into her husband's arms, resting her forehead on his wide chest. Jace shut his eyes and seemed to be breathing again, as he closed her in his embrace.

Now that the two couples were united in support of each other, Mac returned to Ryan. He didn't look up, though, and she didn't try to reach him in the place where he'd retreated. Instead, leaving a chair between them, she took her own seat and settled in to wait.

It was hell to keep her knees from shaking and her expression free of the grinding dread carving a hole in her belly. She clasped her hands loosely in her lap and stared at a stack of bedraggled magazines, seeing a thousand images of her little sister.

Always smiling. Often laughing.

Crying over car commercials, for goodness' sake!

Kissing her son.

Looking at Ryan as if he'd hung the moon and the stars just for her.

She just had to be all right.

Poppy holds all my hope. I think if we can keep her buoyant and bright, then I might eventually be that way, too.

A doctor came through the door to the examining rooms. “Mr. Hamilton?”

The waiting area flooded with apprehension as Ryan jumped to his feet. The doctor gestured for him, and Ryan ate up the space with quick strides until he and the other man disappeared, the door swinging shut behind him.

Angelica released a soft sob that she tried smothering against Brett's shoulder. The sound sent Mac's dread on another forage through her belly. Shay must have been feeling much the same, because she said, “
Our
Pop,” again in that same distressed and almost disbelieving tone.

Their Pop.

Then the door opened again and a nurse in pale pink scrubs looked at them. “Walker family?”

They stood.

“You can all come this way. Not for long...but come on back.”

Mac was the last of their party to approach the room. Everyone huddled in the doorway, but no one was talking, so she had to peek around Brett's arm to see what was going on.

Poppy lay cocooned in the hospital bed, her head slightly elevated. There was a bandage on her forehead near her hairline, her face was pale, but her eyes were on Ryan. He sat on a chair beside her, one of her hands in two of his.

His head was bent and he'd brought her fingers to his mouth.

“Ryan,” she heard Poppy say. She lifted her other hand—an IV needle in the back of it—to stroke his hair. “My love.”

“I worried I might lose you.” He'd whispered, but they could all hear him. Mac wondered if she should let him know the two of them had witnesses, but she figured Ryan wouldn't care about that at this moment.

Ryan only cared that Poppy was all right.

“I'm okay,” she said now, confirming that. Her hand stroked his hair again as he once more kissed her knuckles. “See? One piece?”

“I want to get married,” Ryan said.

Poppy smiled. “Well, good thing, since we have all those people coming to the yacht club on Saturday to witness that very event.”

He looked up into her eyes. “I mean right now. We have a license. This place will have a chaplain.”

“I'm wearing a hospital gown!” Her brows slammed together, and then she winced as if that hurt.

“Careful, baby.” Ryan leaned in to drop a kiss on the bandage near her hair. “And I don't care what you're wearing. Let's get married.”

Poppy squinched her eyes, then glanced past her fiancé's shoulder to catch Mac's gaze. “Tell him I'm not getting married in a hospital gown.”

The tight grip fear had on Mac's heart loosened. “I don't know. Angelica got married in jeans.”

“But she drew the line at sweatpants,” Brett said, grinning. “And I don't think Mace would be too happy to miss it, right?”

“Collect him when you collect the wedding license.” Ryan didn't take his gaze off Poppy. “You'll do it, won't you, Mac?”

“Mac first wants to know the extent of Poppy's injuries,” Mac said. “They told us we couldn't stay long.”

“A concussion. Bruising from the seat belt,” Ryan said. “I think they were worried about cracked ribs or a fractured sternum, but that turned out not to be the case.”

“Ouch,” Shay said sympathetically. “Does it hurt very bad, Pop?”

“Not too much. But it gives me an out from all those prewedding crunches I've been doing.”

“That you've been
talking
about doing,” Brett corrected, a smile in his voice. Then he turned serious. “You scared the shit out of us, Pop.”

She shifted her gaze from Ryan to her big brother. “I know. Sorry.”

“Is your head going to be okay?” he asked. “Because we all know it's already kind of soft.”

“Oh, you.” She stuck her tongue out at him.

“The air bag deploying caused the concussion,” Ryan said. “Which I guess explains all that weird stuff she said in the ambulance on the way here.”

“I didn't say weird stuff.”

“You wanted me to tell the doctors about ‘her.' You were quite insistent.”

“Oh.” Poppy made a face, then slid her gaze to the side. “Well...”

Mac narrowed her eyes. Something was going on, she'd known it for days. “Pop?”

Her sister looked up at the group still hovering in the doorway. “There's a reason I asked for all of you to be here. Somebody get their phone out to take a picture.”

“I don't need a way to remember you being banged up in a hospital bed,” Ryan groused. “I don't
want
a way to remember that.”

“Angelica?” Poppy asked.

The other woman obligingly pulled out her phone.

“Now, honey,” Poppy told Ryan. “Look into the camera—”

“Poppy,” he said, sounding exasperated.

“
Look
into the camera.” When he at last followed direction, she continued. “Because I want to have a photographic record of what the famous Ryan Hamilton looks like when I tell him I'm pregnant.”

For a moment Ryan's face went blank, then it registered stunned amazement. He whipped his head from the direction of the camera toward his bride-to-be. “Poppy?” he whispered. “Yes, we decided to try, but so soon? Really?”

She beamed him the sweetest of smiles. “Surprise!”

In the five additional minutes they were allowed in her room, they found out that the news was to have been her wedding gift to Ryan—but she'd had to tell the doctors, so she wanted everyone to know. Oh, and that she wasn't actually sure it was a girl but had taken to calling the baby “her” in her mind. The infant wasn't due for another six-plus months.

And the last thing they learned was that Ryan Hamilton still looked movie-star handsome with tears of relief mingled with tears of joy running down his cheeks. The Walkers shuffled back into the hall as he pressed his face to the mattress beside his beloved while her tender smile beamed down at him, her gentle hand slowly sifting through his hair.

They trailed back toward the waiting room. First Brett and Angelica holding hands, then Jace and Shay, arms wound around each other. Mac followed on stiff legs. The emotional overload should have rendered her near-numb but as she thought of the pair behind her and gazed on the couples in front of her, a knife's edge of loneliness found its way inside her.

Silly, to hurt, when there was so much to celebrate.

But that pain was there, nearly agonizing, as she walked back into the waiting room...and saw Zan.

His gaze arrowed straight to her and his body followed, pushing past the other couples to reach her. His hands went to her shoulders and she looked up. “How'd you know to come here?” she asked.

“London called.” He gazed into Mac's eyes and his fingers tightened on her. “Poppy?”

Mac mustered a smile. “Battered, but okay. And guess what else? She's pregnant.”

His eyebrows winged up, and then he grinned. “Sweet,” he said. “Auntie Mac times three.”

Hold on, hold on, hold on
, she ordered herself again.
Keep standing, don't lean in, keep your cool.
But how much she liked what he'd said—Auntie Mac times three. How much she liked that he knew to count London as well as Mason and now the new baby.

And she liked that he'd come directly to her. That his hands were on her.

That he was studying her face with such obvious concern. “
You
okay?” he asked now.

She widened her smile even while pain seared through her. “Absolutely!” she lied, because that knife she'd felt earlier had done it again, and worse. This time it shattered her armor to pierce straight through her heart.

Her previously well-defended heart.

It was breached now, and with that gentle “
You
okay?” Zan Elliott had unwittingly twisted the blade a total of three times.

One spin for each word that bubbled up in her consciousness. Three words that meant loneliness was a feeling she would have to learn to get used to, probably forever. Those dire, dreadful, impossible three words.

I. Love. You.

She was in love with Zan.