Safe Harbor (23 page)

HANNAH stood in the center of her room, shaking, bile rising in her throat. Around her, face up on the floor, were shards of the full-length mirror, replicating over and over a horrifying, monstrous image of her body. She looked like a cross-patch quilt, not real, someone sewn together.

She pressed her fingers to her eyes hard, stemming the flow of tears. She would not do this. She wouldn't. She was alive. Her sisters were healing her. Anyone else would be dead.
Dead
. She needed to be grateful for the miracle they'd handed her, not too vain to cope with the results. The slashes on her body would fade with time—much faster than normal. Libby was certain the Drake sisters could keep most of the scars from showing too much. She needed to be grateful.

"Hannah?" The knock on the door was soft. Hesitant. Persistent. "Honey, we heard a crash. Are you all right?"

Hannah swallowed hard and grabbed her robe, hastily covering her body. She didn't dare take a step with her feet bare. Glass was scattered all over the floor. Large, jagged pieces and small tiny shards. Ruined. Like her life. Like her face. Her body.
Everything
. "I'm fine, Sarah. I just dropped something. I'm just about to lie down."

"Let me in, honey. I'll help you pick it up. I heard something break."

"I've already got it." She needed Sarah to go away. They all had to leave her alone and give her some time. She was broken into a million pieces, just like the mirror, and she had to find a way to put herself back together. She had to find a way to believe in herself. She didn't want to be like this—scared and lost and feeling so alone.

Mostly she couldn't stand the deception anymore. She could feel her sisters' pity. Poor Hannah. Whatever will she do? We have to think for her. Figure her life out, now that she's ruined. The sympathy was killing her. She couldn't be in the same room with them, and they whispered.
Whispered
. As if she was on her death bed. Maybe that's the way all of them viewed her now. Hannah Drake, the model, certainly was. And who the hell was she now?

"Hannah?" Sarah knocked again. "Let me in."

"Sarah." Hannah's voice broke. She choked. "You've got to give me some space. I'm sorry, I just need time. Give me time."

There was a moment of silence. She could feel the weight of Sarah's hurt and sorrow crushing her—crushing both of them.

"Hannah, open the damn door."

There was nothing soft or hesitant about the command or the voice. Jonas didn't believe in coddling. He'd see her for the coward she was. He'd think it was vanity. Poor little Hannah, unable to stand not being the Barbie doll.

Immediately following Jonas's demand, she could hear her sisters whispering to him, furious that he would use that tone and maybe upset her. Protecting her, standing up for her and she so didn't deserve it. She hated that they wanted to protect her—that they felt it was necessary. All of them jumped him, demanding he back off and let them handle her. Because poor little broken Hannah needed to be handled.

She felt the insistent burn of tears. How utterly pathetic could she get, standing in the middle of her room with broken glass surrounding her—
mocking
her—and her sisters and Jonas crowding together outside her door whispering together. If it wasn't so wretchedly sad, she would laugh.

She'd managed to keep everyone at bay the first week home by simply staying in bed, but her refusal to eat had upset them all so much, and she could see she was wearing them out as they tried to heal her, so she'd made the effort to get up.

"Hannah. I'm not kidding around with you. Open the fucking door now." There was an edge to his voice, as if he were gritting his teeth and biting out each word. Her heart accelerated and her throat seemed to swell.

There were more whispers. She could have told her sisters all the demands in the world wouldn't work on Jonas. He was going to come in. There were no walls between Jonas and Hannah. He never allowed them unless he was the one erecting them. He simply smashed every barrier down. She closed her eyes. When he opened the door—and he would—her sisters would see the mess she'd made and the sympathy would pour from them with such force she would be overwhelmed and drowning instantly.

She wished she could just disappear. Instead, when she heard Jonas working the lock, she reached out to him.
Please don't let the others see in, Jonas
. It cost what little pride she had left, but she made the plea. Her sisters didn't need to see just how weak and useless she really was. Jonas already knew. Maybe they did, too, maybe that was why they always bailed her out, thought for her, directed her and babied her. She hadn't been able to bear the look on her mother's face so she asked her to leave along with the aunts. If one more person fussed over her, she might jump off the balcony.

"Sarah, Kate, just stay out," Jonas barked, holding the door closed. "I'm not going to hurt her. She's quite capable of putting me in my place if she needs to. Go away and let me talk to her alone."

"She's fragile, Jonas. Don't be such a bear with her." Kate's voice was low and anxious. "You can't just barge in on her and yell at her."

"Why would you think I'd do that?" Jonas asked.

"Maybe using the 'F' word was a clue," Kate said.

Hannah found the churning in her stomach easing a bit.

Jonas was not going to treat her as if she might break apart any second—even if she already had.

Jonas slipped inside, shut the door and turned the lock. She stayed very still as he surveyed the damage. Her full-length antique free-standing mirror was shattered, only two small, jagged shards hanging from the frame. The glass was everywhere, scattered all over the floor, pieces even sticking up like small daggers, glittering like silver.

"Don't move, baby," he said. "Not one step."

"In spite of what everyone thinks, I'm not suicidal, just irrational." Her voice came out in a husky whisper, one the doctors said she would have to get used to. She kept her hand in front of her face. He'd seen her swathed in bandages, but she'd taken them off to look and the sight had been hideous. She didn't want to look in a mirror and she didn't want to see her reflection in his eyes. Most of all, she didn't want to see pity on his face.

Jonas stepped through the glass and caught her up, cradling her in his arms. "On the bed or out on the balcony?"

She blushed. Not just her face, her entire body. His breath was warm on her neck. Her robe had gaped open and he was staring down at the slashes standing out so raw and angry across her bare flesh. "Jonas. Don't look."

"Why the hell not?"

"Stop swearing at me. And you know why. It's aw-awful." She closed her eyes. She would not stammer. She refused to be any more of a mess than she already was.

Jonas took her to the edge of the French doors and set her on her feet, his hands going to the front of her robe and sweeping it open before she could stop him. "I'm so fucking glad you're alive, do you really think I care what the stitches look like? I want to see if you're healing properly. The docs didn't want you to come home yet."

All the color drained from her face. She gasped. A single strangled cry escaped as she attempted to step back and jerk her robe closed, but he held the material apart ruthlessly.

"I don't know, baby," he mused, "it still looks painful." The pads of his fingers brushed the curve of her breast. "Has Libby taken a look at this? Because she needs to. It's very red. Could be infected."

Only a few short weeks earlier, Jonas had touched her breasts, his mouth had been right where his hands were, hot and hungry with need and desire. She expected to feel his revulsion and outrage, but instead, there was calm acceptance mixed with worry for her and approval of the rate her sisters were healing her. Not so fast that it drained all of their energy and left them unable to function, yet she was alive and the wounds were healing from the inside out.

But not where anyone could see.

She felt very vulnerable standing there naked, her robe held open while he inspected the wounds as clinically as if she was a broken statue glued together rather than a real flesh-and-blood woman. She didn't know which was actually worse. The wounds traveled from her face to her belly. Horrible deep slashes and punctures, shallow ones that ripped across her pale skin.

"What did Libby say about children?" His voice turned gruff. His fingertips drifted up to her throat, slid over the gashes there, traced a path along her breast, down her ribs to her stomach and finally to her abdomen, where he lay his palm, fingers splayed wide. "Can we still have children, Hannah?"

She blinked back tears at the rasping in his voice. His emotion didn't spill over to swamp her, but it was there, buried deep, and she heard it in his voice. "There is no 'we,' Jonas, there can't be."

"Don't give me a lot of bullshit right now, Hannah." He let go of her robe and transferred his grip to her arms, yanking her to him hard, bringing her body tightly against his. He buried his face in her neck. "I thought I had this under control. You're safe. Damn it, you're safe."

Jonas spoke out loud, needing to hear the words, but a tremor ran through him, the terrible rush of unspeakable terror as images filled his mind. He pressed his face tighter against her neck, crushing her in his arms, trying to hold her close enough—tight enough—to wipe out the inconceivable. He thought he was over that moment other than when it haunted his dreams. Each night he woke in a sweat, her name on his lips, bile in his throat and a gun in his hand. But seeing her body brought back every slash and brutal stab of the knife. He knew where every mark would be. How long, how deep—in utter horror he had watched the scene unfold on television until his mind had gone numb.

For one moment he couldn't breathe. He'd thought he was past it all, yet here he was clinging to her, needing comfort, instead of providing it for her. She was ragged. He'd expected that. He hadn't expected her withdrawal from him, or her denial of their relationship, but he should have. He had to shift back, get his feet under him and sort it all out.

Hannah stood frozen in his embrace, shocked beyond words—even of comfort—and it was her natural inclination to comfort others. Jonas was a rock. Always. He'd been so stoic in the hospital, it had never occurred to her that he'd been so terrified. Her hands went, of their own volition, to the nape of his neck, tunneling into his hair. "I'm all right, Jonas," she lied.

He lifted his head and pressed his brow to hers. "Not yet, honey, but you will be. And you didn't answer my question. What did Libby say about children?"

Hannah couldn't make herself deny she loved him, not when he was so shaken. "I can have children, Jonas, but…" She trailed off, both hands in his hair. He was trembling, his powerful body revealing the extent of his fears. Somehow, because he needed her to be strong, she found she could be. Maybe she could be all right again. Maybe she could find a way to believe in herself. Hannah Drake. Who was she? How did she define herself?

"I'm so glad, baby. It would have been okay. I would love a child we adopted, you know. I thought about that a lot, Hannah, so if Libby is worried that it could hurt you, or be dangerous, we'll go the adoption route."

She shook her head, tightening her fingers in his hair. He wasn't going to listen to her about ending their relationship. As far as he was concerned, they had crossed a bridge together and there was no going back. She honestly didn't know how she felt about it.

He pressed a kiss against the jagged wound splitting one side of her face in two. "You sit out on the balcony while I clean this up. I don't want you walking around barefoot."

"Please don't say anything to my sisters." She stepped away from him, drawing the robe tightly around her, careful to keep her back to the ocean. She could hear the helicopter circling overhead. "I wish the photographers would go away."

He grinned at her. "Well, you're doing wonders for the economy around here. Prices for rooms have tripled and even quadrupled in Sea Haven. Especially when it comes to rooms for the paparazzi. Everyone is trying to protect you in their own way. The Salt Bar and Grill where Trudy Garret works has put up a new sign, no shirt, no shoes, no service, no paparazzi, not that it seems to deter them. None of your sisters can step outside without being photographed."

"Hand me my blanket." She indicated the one at the foot of the bed.

Jonas crunched more glass under his feet as he caught the soft blanket up and handed it to her. Hannah draped it over her head like a cape with a hood, hiding her face in the folds.

She turned then, keeping to the shadows of one corner, but lifted her hand and brought in the wind from the sea. It rushed in, hard and fast, pushing at the helicopter so the pilot had no choice but to take it away from the house. "If I keep the wind blowing strong, they can't come at me from the air and I can get a little peace." She pushed her hair behind her ear and sank into the chair she'd put in the corner of the balcony where she could face the sea.

She found it endearing that the townspeople would seek to find ways to drive the photographers and reporters away. It was one of the things she loved about Sea Haven. While it was true that they knew one another's business, they were also open and friendly and supportive through every crisis or every wonderful event.

She glanced down to the beach and was shocked to see Joley and Elle striding along the sand in plain view of the cameras. Elle raised her hands as if in fun, gesturing wildly toward Joley, who turned and blew a kiss up toward Hannah.

Hannah bit down on her lip. God only knew what her two younger sisters might do. It didn't take long to find out. The sand rose up in answer to Elle's graceful hands.

Hannah's wind took the grains of sand, whirring them into tight eddies that swayed in tall columns across the beach, slamming into camera lenses, pummeling the men and women trying so desperately to get a shot of Hannah's ruined face. The wind rose, blasting the particles harder so that they bit into flesh and covered hair, got into mouths and equipment, driving the intruders away.