James paced up and down in the small waiting room of Hidden Falls Hospital. He glanced up and caught Kim’s sympathetic gaze on him and smiled wryly. “I know, wearing a trench into the floor won’t help Iris but at least it gives me something to do.”
She nodded. Gestured to the magazine in her lap. “I’m reading a crochet pattern for a Santa cushion. And I don't even crochet.”
He took a couple of steps and then sat on the brown vinyl chair beside her. Her hair was still tied back and it made her look so young. He said, “You barely even know Iris. I don’t know why I brought you with me. I just assumed you were coming.”
For a moment a look of hurt crossed her face. “I did want to come. I care about Iris. I want to be here.”
She was so confusing. If only he could understand what went on behind that flyaway blonde hair and those all too innocent blue eyes. There was a conversation he had intended to have with her today. He had so much emotion rolling around inside of him. Maybe this was as good a moment as any to have that conversation. He took a breath.
In his line of work he had a lot of difficult conversations. He had been the one to tell families of accident victims that their loved ones weren’t coming home, explain to wives that their husbands were going to jail, he’d arrested hundreds of perps in his time, so why was this conversation so difficult?
Finally, he plunged in. “I checked up on you.”
She did not look all that surprised, simply gazed at him steadily. Then she nodded, “I thought you might.”
“Kim, you’re an associate of a known drug dealer. Honestly, I thought you were nervous around me because you were scared of uniforms. It’s not that, is it? It’s because I’m a cop.”
She closed her eyes briefly and looked as though she were in pain. She said, “If I had known you lived here in Hidden Falls I never would have come.”
That was obvious enough. He’d been drawn to Kimberly since the first moment he saw her. It wasn’t only her look of vulnerability and frailty, but something more. She was like a fairytale character; all dressed in rags but underneath she was pure princess.
However, he had an awful feeling that in this case she was the reverse fairytale. She looked like a lost princess but dig a little deeper and he discovered the dark underbelly of corruption. Not every fairytale, he reminded himself, had a happy ending.
He felt suddenly, furiously angry with her. “I don’t know what to do,” he exploded. “Obviously, my sister should not be hiring people associated with drug lords, but I see you in there with the customers, and you’re terrific. Iris says you can bake as well as she can.”
A tired smile lit her pale face and she shook her head modestly.
“Why don’t you tell me what’s going on?”
She looked so sad, so sad he wanted to pull her into his arms and tell her that everything was going to be okay, except that it wasn’t.
“I can’t. I know it’s hard for you to understand but I have loyalties. Please believe me, I have never knowingly broken the law. Not ever.” She gazed at him as though she expected him to believe her and, oddly, he did.
He was also a cop. “So, if you’re so innocent, why can’t you tell me how your name lit up like a freakin’ Christmas tree in my database?”
She shook her head. “Your database doesn’t lie.” She looked as though someone had let a little air out of her. She slumped in her seat and placed the magazine carefully on the table beside her. Then she said, “I’m leaving, okay? You don’t need to worry about me.”
“But–“
She stood up. “In fact, I’m going to go home right now and pack. Please tell Iris I’ll call her tomorrow and try to explain.”
And that irritated him even more. “What about Iris? You can’t abandon her.” She had already started walking away from him. He leapt to his feet and followed her. He walked so fast that, with his longer stride, he got all the way around her and then turned so he was facing her. If she wanted to keep walking she was going to bump smack into him.
She glared at him.
She took a step, and then another step, and he still didn’t move. They were so close that he could see the fine texture of her skin and hear the soft breath she let out. She looked like a woman whose access to the exit door has been cut off which, in fact, it had. She threw up her arms. “What do you want me to do?”
He wanted her not to be a drug dealer, he wanted her to be the sweet, nervous woman he’d first met. He wanted to be holding her in his arms so badly that before he even realized what he was doing he had reached out and pulled her towards him. Before she could protest he slammed his mouth down on hers.
The moment their mouths met, what little sanity he had left in stock fled. Her lips trembled slightly under his. For a moment he felt her go rigid and waited for her to pull away and then, with a tiny sob in her throat, she threw her arms around him and hugged him back, kissing him with all the passion he had felt between them from the first moment.
She pulled away first, her eyes wide and shining with a mixture of passion and horror. “I can’t do this.”
She stepped around him and this time he let her go. As she headed towards the elevator he yelled, “You can’t leave. Iris needs you.”
She had reached the elevator and jammed the button with her finger. She turned, a wry smile twisting her lips. “How can I stay?”
And then he said the truest words he knew. “Because I want you to.”
The elevator door opened and, before Kim could step into it, bodies and noise burst out, filling the narrow corridor. Rose, his sister and favorite GP, pushed out of the elevator first. She glanced from Kimberly to him and said, “Everything we know. Tell me now.”
She was in Dr. Crisis Mode, which he respected, but he couldn’t get his thoughts straight about exactly what was going on.
Behind her came her fiancé Dr. Matt Vasilopoulos and with them were Jack and Daphne, holding hands as though they could hold each other up through any crisis. He realized they’d been doing that ever since he could remember, holding hands to support each other through all the tough times as well as the good ones.
Before he could marshal his thoughts, Kimberly said, “We don’t know a lot yet. Dr. Bailey is with her and I know they called in an OB/GYN. We called the ambulance because she was bleeding and she passed out.”
Rose dealt with pregnancies both easy and difficult all the time. She nodded. Taking it in. “What’s the status on the babies?”
Kim shook her head. “We don’t know. Geoff’s the only one they allowed in there but no one’s come out to tell us anything.”
Rose glanced at her husband-to-be. “I’m going in.”
He nodded. “I’ll hold the fort here.”
She touched his shoulder. “Thanks.” Then to their mom and dad she said, “I’ll let you know as soon as I find out anything.”
At least now that his mom and dad were here, he felt that he could be useful. He said, “I’ve managed to figure out where the vending machine is. Who wants coffee?”
“Coffee would be good,” Jack said.
He headed towards the coffee machine. When he rounded a corner he nearly bashed into Marguerite. “I just heard. Mom called me from the road. How is Iris?”
“We don’t know yet. I’m about to get bad coffee for a bunch of people who mostly don’t even drink coffee. Will you come and help?”
She nodded. “Sure.”
When they returned, Rose was walking into the waiting room and with her was another woman in a lab coat with a stethoscope around her neck. The woman was already talking so he and Marguerite placed the coffees on a handy table and sidled up to listen. “We think they’re all going to be fine. We were able to stop the contractions and hemorrhaging. Mom and babies are both doing well. But Iris is going to need to stay with us for a few days until we’re absolutely sure everything has settled down. And then she needs to go on absolute bed rest.”
Daphne said, “Iris owns the Sunflower Coffee and Tea Company. Can she—“
She didn’t even get to finish her sentence before the doctor shook her head. “Absolute bed rest. I don’t even want Iris drinking coffee, never mind standing on her feet and making it.” She glanced at the group surrounding her and smiled. “You look like people who care about her. You’re going to need to be taking her meals in bed, visiting her so she doesn’t get too bored. Iris’s job is to stay in bed and rest so she can grow those babies. The longer we can keep them inside her, the better chance they have.”
“It’s not going to be easy keeping Iris away from her business,” Jack said.
Geoff spoke for the first time. “Iris wants those babies more than she wants anything.” He looked at Kimberly. “She’s so grateful that you came along when you did. Can you take over the café until she’s back on her feet?”
Kimberly glanced at him before answering, silently asking him not to make trouble for her. Maybe he was a fool to trust her, but it didn’t look like any of them had a lot of choice. He’d make it a point to check on her every single day at the café and make sure Iris’s trust wasn’t misplaced. He gave a slight nod. Then she turned to Geoff. “Tell her not to worry. I can handle it.”
The trouble was, now that he had the taste of her on his lips, could he handle it?