Straight from the Heart (13 page)

The aftershocks hadn’t even begun to subside when Jace started building the sensation again. He moved against her and inside her with a grace that was beautiful and natural. Her response was equally beautiful and natural. Her hips lifted to meet his deep thrusts, her breasts arched into the heat of his mouth. Her hands stroked his back and the taut muscles of his buttocks, teasing him, urging him. Her sighs of delight became whimpers and moans as sexual tension tightened inside her, building toward another explosion.

Jace kissed her ear. “I love you, sweetheart. I love to please you, honey.”

Rebecca felt herself teetering at the edge of blissful oblivion. Jace told her how close he was to the same precipice. She remembered times in the past when they had taken each other over that edge. Jace remembered too. Now it beckoned them again, lured them closer with each stroke, with each murmured word, with each caress. Then Jace soared over it, calling her name, and Rebecca followed right behind him.

For a long time afterward they were silent. Rebecca turned on her side to face the stream and the sunset. Jace snuggled behind her, pulling the edge of the quilt up over them as the air began to cool.

“Where do we go from here?” he asked softly, tucking Rebecca’s black hair behind the delicate shell of her ear. “You know I love you, Becca. I’ll never hurt you again.”

She rolled over and pressed two fingers to his lips. “No promises, Jace, please.”

No promises you can’t keep.

The hurt in his twilight-blue eyes cut at her heart.

“You still don’t believe in me.”

“I believe you’ve changed in a lot of ways, Jace.”

“But not in the way that matters most.” Angry, he moved away from her and started tugging on his clothes. “You’re holding your breath waiting for me to revert to type, aren’t you?”

Sadness welled in Rebecca’s heart as she sat up with one hand clutching the quilt to her chest. What she and Jace had just shared had been wonderful, like nothing else she’d ever experienced. But she knew it wouldn’t last. Jace was a man out of his normal environment; he needed her now. When the effects of his accident became nothing more than unpleasant memories and the Kings called him back to Chicago, he would go. He would leave her, just as he had before. He would go back to a lifestyle that didn’t allow for memories, and she would be left with nothing but memories.

With his jeans on and his shirt hanging open, Jace stood and turned to look down at her. “Will you go to Chicago with me tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow? Why?”

“I want to show you why I changed and why the changes are permanent. You won’t take my word for it, so I’ll give you proof.”
And pray to God you don’t hate what I used to be so much that you won’t be able to stand the sight of me
.

Rebecca frowned at the bitterness in his voice but nodded. Maybe what he had to show her would make a difference. Maybe it would tell her about the pain he’d gone through that had aged his beautiful blue eyes so. Maybe it would somehow free her heart to love him as completely as he wanted her to, as completely as she longed to.

                  7                  

They drove to Chicago in almost total silence. It was a cloudy Saturday morning with the threat of rain hanging heavy in the air. Rebecca drove, knowing Jace didn’t even like to ride in a car since his accident, let alone drive. She had gathered from comments he’d made that he no longer possessed a driver’s license—a real turnabout for a man who had once filled a three-car garage with sleek Italian sports cars.

Jace stared at the dull gray road that stretched out before them and at the gray horizon beyond it. He sat on the passenger’s side, his fingers toying nervously with his seat belt, looking as if he were going to meet a fate worse than death. Lord, he was dying for a cigarette or a drink, or both. The need was always stronger on the days he went to visit Casey. It was then that panic would claw at his insides and the coward in him would beg for a shield to protect him from what he’d done.

He had never,
would
never give in to that need.

It was even worse with Rebecca sitting beside him. Soon he would have no secrets from her. He wondered if it wouldn’t have been better to have kept this reality to himself. The closer they came to Chicago, the more he believed he would rather have gone on with her being hesitant to trust him. There was every chance she would walk away once she found out the whole truth about his past. He didn’t think he could live through that.

From the corner of his eye he studied Rebecca. She wore a white cotton blouse with a pattern of flowers and leaves embroidered and cut out across the bodice, revealing patches of creamy flesh. Her lavender skirt was gauzy and gathered delicately at the waist. Her profile was worthy of any antique cameo he’d ever seen.

She was lovely, much more so than she realized. One of Becca’s greatest insecurities had always been that she was all intellect and no femininity. Tenderness welled in Jace’s heart. He had never known a woman who had more claim to the description of feminine. To him she was everything a woman should be. More than anything, he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her. He understood everything about her—her strengths, her fears, her flaws—and he loved her for all of them. If he lost her…

If he lost Rebecca and Justin, it would probably be no more than he deserved, he thought as he directed her off the expressway.

Rebecca could sense the tension building in Jace with every mile. Still she asked no questions about their destination. Obviously he did not want to talk about it. Even after she had parked the car in the lot of the beautiful modern hospital in a posh Chicago suburb, Jace offered no explanation. They crossed the parking lot together in silence as the rain began.

Inside, the hospital was Saturday-quiet. There was no bustle of people waiting for appointments or arguing over accounting errors on their bills. The weekend staff, made up of nurses and bleary-eyed residents, went about their business with calm efficiency. Visitors talking in hushed tones lingered in a lobby worthy of a luxury hotel.

Jace bypassed the information desk and went directly to a bank of elevators. Tapping the toe of his black loafer impatiently against the smooth marble floor, he rammed his fists into the pockets of his pleated gray trousers and waited for the elevator doors to open.

As they rode up to the tenth floor, Rebecca watched his pallor increase. The haunted look in his eyes made her want to go to him and put her arms around him. Whether that desire was to comfort or be comforted, she wasn’t sure. Her own nerves were jangling. She’d never known Jace to be so solemn about anything. He hadn’t even cracked a smile since they’d made love the night before.

It frightened her how alone she felt now that Jace had withdrawn into himself. What was going to become of her when he left?

The elevator doors opened on a special care unit. The nurses’ station sat at the center with rooms situated around it like spokes around the hub of a wheel. Fluorescent light glowed above the wood-paneled, pentagon-shaped desk area. The nurse manning the station must have been fifty. She looked big enough and mean enough to play tackle for the Bears, but when she glanced up and saw Jace, her features melted into a motherly smile.

“Hi, stranger! We’ve missed you around here,” she said in a clear, rough voice that she automatically toned down out of deference to the patients in the rooms around her.

“Hi, Sophie,” Jace said, forcing the corners of his mouth up. “I can’t get here as often as I’d like to. I’m living in Mishawaka now.”

“So we heard.” She made a face. “Management boneheads. Smart money says you’ll be back for the stretch drive. Lindenfelder’s defense stinks up the place. He couldn’t match you at third if he was twins.”

“We’ll see,” he said, dismissing the topic as if it were as unimportant as the weather. “How’s Casey?”

The light in Sophie’s eyes immediately dimmed to a soft glow of sympathy. She couldn’t quite muster a smile for him. It was a look Rebecca had seen many times. She had been on the receiving end of it again and again as disease had slowly robbed her mother of life. She herself had given that look to patients, to families of patients, when a prognosis couldn’t meet their hopeful expectations. Her heart ached for Jace, even though she didn’t know what his connection to this patient was.

“No change,” the nurse said. “I’m sorry, Jace. He’s holding his own. That gives us something to hope for.”

With a shaky sigh, Jace nodded and turned away. His hand reached back for Rebecca’s. She latched onto it as if it were a lifeline and followed him away from the desk to one of the rooms.

Who was Casey, she wondered. A family member or a friend? A man or a woman? Why had Jace never spoken of this person before? What kind of medical problem were they about to face? Questions flew through her mind with the speed of light, but there was no time to search for answers. She caught a glimpse of the room through the window that faced the nurses’ station, but all she saw was the foot of the bed and a chair. They stepped inside and Jace closed the door behind them.

It was the room of a patient who had been there for some time, Rebecca thought as she glanced around. Get-well cards were pinned to a bulletin board on the sterile white wall. Children’s crayon drawings of animals and spaceships and baseball players were taped beneath it. There was an autographed Chicago Kings pennant above the bed. A team picture stood on the small metal cabinet against the far wall beside a thriving African violet and a photograph of someone’s parents. An afghan crocheted of blue and gold yarn was neatly folded at the foot of the bed.

“Becca,” Jace said softly, “this is Casey Mercer.”

He was a handsome man of perhaps twenty-two or twenty-three, with strong features, short dark hair cropped close to his head, and thick long eyelashes that curled boyishly along his cheek. Rebecca had a feeling his eyes would be brown, but she couldn’t see them.

Casey Mercer was in a coma. Machines monitored his vital signs as he lay unmoving on the bed. He was thin. Skin that had the shiny translucence of fine porcelain was stretched over bones that were too prominent.

Jace went to him and took Casey’s long, frail hand in his own. “Hey, Mercer,” he said in a soft, teasing voice. “Red alert. There’s a beautiful woman in the room. I brought my friend, Rebecca. Remember? I told you about her. I figured it was time I told her about you.”

The young man remained motionless, but Jace went on speaking as though it weren’t a one-sided conversation.

“I should have warned you, huh? You could have dressed up. Hell, you’re too pretty as it is. An old guy like me hardly stands a chance. Besides, you don’t need to steal my girl when you’ve got a bevy of beautiful nurses waiting on you hand and foot, right? One of these days I’m going to come up here and catch you chasing them around the bed.”

Rebecca blinked back tears as she watched Jace pause to swallow the lump in his throat. She didn’t know Casey Mercer, didn’t know what Jace’s connection to the young man was, but she didn’t need to. She could feel everything Jace was feeling—helplessness, anger, sorrow. His pain was her pain, because she loved him.

“The team needs you, kid,” Jace said thickly. “You’d better get your butt in gear and snap out of it. You know how you’re always telling me you’ll be the best damn shortstop ever to wear a jockstrap. Well, you’ve got to back up bull like that, Mercer, otherwise people will think you’re just as full of it as I am.”

Silence was the only retort Jace received.

Gently he placed Casey’s limp hand back on the bed. He tapped his friend’s cheek affectionately with his fingertips.

“Hang in there, buddy,” he whispered, rubbing a knuckle at the moisture under his eyes. “I’m so sorry I screwed up your life.”

They were the only people in the tenth-floor lounge. No one had even bothered to turn the lights on. The room was gloomy with shadows. Rain washed down the plate glass windows in silvery sheets. Jace sat on a chrome-legged table near a window, staring out at nothing, trying to gather his thoughts. He braced one foot on the seat of an orange plastic chair. Rebecca sat watching him, patiently waiting for him to speak. Thunder rumbled in the distance.

“It’s hard, you know,” Jace said softly, still focusing his gaze outside. “He’s just a kid. Nothing but guts and instinct. I never saw anything like him on the infield. Quick as a cat.”

“What happened?” Rebecca asked, speaking in the whisper hospital lounges seemed to inspire.

A muscle tugged in Jace’s cheek as the pain cut through him. “Me. I was his idol. Some idol,” he said bitterly, his mouth twisting in a grimace of disgust. “Because of me, he may spend the rest of his life in that room.”

“The accident,” Rebecca deduced aloud. “He was with you?”

Jace didn’t answer her right away. He looked down and traced a finger around the edge of a cheap glass ashtray, desperately wishing he had a cigarette. When he spoke again, he started the story at the beginning.

“When I got called up to the show, I figured I had the world by the tail. I was hot, popular. Everybody wanted to know Super Cooper. I was making more money in a year than some small countries. It’s not an excuse, but you have to understand what money like that can do, how it can make you feel invincible. I threw it around like candy at a parade. You know, I always did like to play fast and loose with my cash. Easy come, easy go.” He flashed a grin that died quickly. “I liked to have a good time. I liked everybody to have a good time.

“Most of it’s gone now. What I didn’t gamble away or throw away on bad business deals went to Casey. This is an excellent hospital for the kind of care he needs. His folks couldn’t begin to afford it, and his insurance wouldn’t cover it all.

“Casey came up last season from the triple-A team in Lexington. It was like
déjà vu
for me. Everybody wanted to know Casey. Right off the bat he started hanging around with me. No party was complete without Jace the Ace and Casey.

“The night of the accident we’d been out ramming around in my Porsche, party hopping. He asked me if he could drive because he’d just ordered one of his own, and he wanted to practice impressing women. I let him, even though I knew he wasn’t in any shape to get behind the wheel. ’Course, I wasn’t any better off. We were doing eighty-five on the Dan Ryan Expressway, and Casey looked over at me with this big bright grin on his face and said, ‘Don’t you know, Jace, I want to be just like you. You’re my hero.’”

He could still see Casey’s handsome young face glowing with life in the lights from the instrument panel. The image of that smile was frozen for all time in his mind, just as those words would forever ring in his ears.

“That was the last thing he ever said to anybody.”

Rebecca closed her eyes against the pain she felt for Jace and for Casey Mercer. She remembered Jace at Casey’s age, brash, charming Jace who had thought his luck would never run out. Now he sat staring out the hospital window struggling under the weight of responsibility, not only for his own mistakes but for Casey Mercer’s as well.

“There’s nothing quite like nearly killing someone to make you take a good hard look at yourself,” he said sardonically. “I came out of the crash with a bum knee and some broken ribs and a second chance I didn’t deserve. I’m not going to screw it up. Something good has to come out of this, or what happened to Casey will all have been for nothing. I can’t let that happen.”