Letting Jenny go, admitting that he didn’t know how to help her grapple with her fears that obviously tormented her, was the most difficult thing Frank had ever done. He’d wanted to fold her in his arms, to hold her and love her until she couldn’t walk away, but something told him that would only make the leaving harder, not impossible. He, better than anyone, knew just how stubborn and determined she could be. Yet knowing that he’d done the right thing didn’t make the days any easier.
Boredom, worse than anything he’d faced in the hospital, set in and, combined with the loneliness, made him cranky. By the end of the week, he was snapping at anyone who dared to set foot near him. He tried carving again, but one slip of the knife had marred the blue jay he’d been struggling to complete and he’d tossed wood and knives into the trash. A day later he dug them out and tried again.
When Sunday rolled around, he begged off from the family dinner. He felt as though a lifetime had passed since the previous week, and he wasn’t up to the questions and teasing innuendoes about a relationship that no longer existed. As soon as the excuses were out of his mouth, though, he knew it had been a mistake. By four, instead of gathering at his mother’s, the whole clan began descending on him. Tim and Jared were the first to arrive.
“You look okay to me,” Jared said after a close inspection.
“I’m fine.”
“You told Ma you were sick,” Tim reminded him.
“I think I’m coming down with something,” he amended hurriedly. “I’m sure it’s not serious, but it could be catching. You two go over to Ma’s.”
“We can’t,” Jared said.
“Why not? She’ll be expecting you.”
“No, she won’t,” Tim said, just as the doorbell rang. “That should be her now.” He glanced at Jared. “I’m betting on chicken soup. How about you?”
“Broth. Beef broth and custard.”
Frank groaned. “This is ridiculous. I am not that sick.”
“Then you shouldn’t have told her you were. Now we’re all going to have to eat wimp food,” Tim complained grumpily. “Do you have any idea how much I detest custard?”
There was a deeply offended gasp from the doorway. “What do you mean, Timothy Chambers? You’ve always said you loved my custard.”
“Cripes, Ma, you weren’t supposed to hear that.”
“Then you shouldn’t have said it, should you?” she said, hiding a grin. “Go out to the car and get the rest of the dinner.”
“Real food?” Jared inquired hopefully.
“Soup and custard are real food. Now, go.” Once they’d gone, she observed Frank closely and, with her finely tuned maternal radar, zeroed in on the real crux of his problem. “You and Jenny have a fight?”
“Why on earth would you ask that?”
“Otherwise, she’d be here nursing you.”
“Ma, I think you’ve gotten the wrong idea about Jenny and me.” She shook her head. “I don’t think so. What was the fight about?”
“It wasn’t a fight exactly.”
“What was it then exactly?”
“It’s private.”
She nodded slowly. “Okay. You do what you think is best, but, Son, don’t turn your back on your feelings just because things aren’t so smooth. If you love her, then you owe it to both of you to fight. Don’t let it slip away because of false pride.”
Frank didn’t think pride had anything to do with letting Jenny leave, letting her make her own choices, but maybe it did. Maybe it had hurt, thinking that she didn’t love him enough to try to save what they had. On the chance that his mother might be right, he made up his mind to go by the hospital on Monday, to talk to her and pester her until she saw that they could face the future and whatever it held—good or bad—a thousand times better together than they possibly could apart.
Energized by a stubborn determination of his own, and filled with hope, he strode through the hospital the next day, poked his head into Pam’s room to say hello, then marched on to the therapy room like Sherman taking on Georgia. He pushed open the door and stepped inside, glancing first at Jenny’s desk, then around the room. It was empty. The desk was ominously neat. He was still standing there trying to decide what to make of it, when Carolanne returned. She looked puzzled at finding him there.
“You here for a treatment?” she asked. “I don’t recall seeing your name on the list for today.”
“No. I’m here to see Jenny.”
Her friendly expression closed down. “She’s not in,” she said, her tone cautiously neutral.
“I see that. Where is she?”
“She took a few days off.”
Frank’s heart began to thud dully in his chest. “Why? Is she okay?”
Carolanne studied him with serious gray eyes. “Come on in and sit down,” she said finally. “I think it’s time we had a talk.”
Frank’s pulse began to race. “Dammit, tell me where she is. What’s happened?”
With the same spunkiness he’d encountered in Jenny, Carolanne pointed toward a chair. “Sit. You want some coffee?”
“Fine. Whatever,” he said impatiently, but he sat.
A lifetime seemed to pass before she handed him a cup of coffee, then pulled up a chair and sat opposite him. “Are you in love with her?” she asked bluntly.
“Yes.”
“Does she know it?”
“Yes,” he said, oddly disquieted by the personal questions, yet sensing that Carolanne really needed to know if she was to be equally honest with him. “I’ve told her.”
She nodded thoughtfully. “That makes sense then.”
“What makes sense? Dammit, would you stop hedging and spit it out? Is she okay?”
“I don’t know.”
Frank felt as though the air were being squeezed out of his chest. Before he could say a word, Carolanne looked contrite and held up her hand apologetically. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to alarm you. I just mean that she’s undergoing some tests. Bone scans, liver scans, blood tests, the works. It’s routine in cases like hers, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t scare the dickens out of her, out of all of us who love her. I don’t know if you can imagine what it’s like waiting out the results, waiting to find out if your life is hanging in the balance, if you’re okay or doomed to undergo more surgery, more radiation, more chemotherapy, more hell.”
Suddenly Frank made the connection between these annual tests and Jenny’s departure from his house. “Did she know these tests were scheduled a week ago?”
Carolanne nodded. “I think she scheduled them three or four weeks back.”
“Is she here in the hospital?”
“No, these are outpatient tests.”
“Who’s with her?”
“I’m not sure. I think Otis probably took the day off to drive her. He usually does, despite her arguments that she can do just fine on her own.”
“What’s her doctor’s name?”
The therapist balked at that. “If she didn’t tell you about the tests herself, then she won’t want you turning up there.”
“Don’t you see? I have to be with her.”
Carolanne continued to hesitate, then finally seemed to reach a decision. “Go to her apartment. She doesn’t need you with her for the tests, but she will need you after. It’s the waiting that’s agonizing. She needs all the support she can get then.” She dug in her purse and handed him a key. “Thank goodness I still have this from the first time I watered her plants, while she was back East. You know the address, right?”
“Yes. Thanks, Carolanne. I owe you.”
“No. If you can make Jenny happy, that’s all that matters. No one deserves a little happiness more than she does.”
“I’m going to try like hell.”
“You’d better. Otherwise, she’ll kill me for giving out her key.”
His first stop wasn’t a florist, though that had been his first instinct. He’d dismissed the idea of filling the apartment with flowers as both too ordinary and too funereal. Frank opted instead for balloons, dozens of them in every color imaginable. Filled with helium, they floated in Jenny’s living room like a rainbow sky. He ordered dinner from the finest restaurant in San Francisco and wine from the best Napa Valley vineyard. And, after determining that the test results would take days, he called a travel agent and ordered tickets for Hawaii to be delivered immediately by messenger. The impulsive, expensive vacation would dent his savings, but he couldn’t imagine any gesture that would be a better use of his money. This was no time for caution. A little extravagance was called for.
With the tickets ordered, he sat back to wait, fully aware that his nervous anticipation was nothing compared to the dread that was likely to occupy Jenny’s mind unless he could distract her. It was nearly five o’clock when he finally heard her key turning in the lock.
As the door swung open, setting a wave of balloons bobbing, an expression of delighted surprise spread across her face, wiping away the most obvious signs of weariness.
“Welcome home,” he said softly, hiding his dismay at the shadows under her eyes, the slump of her shoulders that she couldn’t hide.
“You did all this?”
Otis stood behind her, nodding in satisfaction. He gave Frank an approving thumbs-up gesture, then said, “Guess I’m not needed around here anymore. I’ll just be on my way.” When Jenny didn’t even turn to look at him, his grin widened. “Tell her I said goodbye,” he told Frank, feigning irritation. “If she happens to notice I’m gone.”
“Bye,” she murmured distractedly, apparently having caught just enough of Otis’s words to realize he was leaving. Her gaze was riveted on Frank. “Why?”
“Because it’s time you and I came to an understanding,” he said matter-of-factly.
She stared at him in obvious confusion. “About what?”
“About the way things are going to be from now on. You were there for me when I needed help, when I was facing the toughest days of my life. From now on I’m going to be here for you. That’s just the way it is. Like sunrise and birds singing and tides changing. Don’t fight it, Jenny. I can’t let you win this one.”
There was a spark of fire in her eyes, then a flicker of acceptance. She sighed heavily and sank onto the sofa. Her whole body seemed to slump with exhaustion. “I’m so tired. I don’t think I could battle a feather and come out on top right now.”
Sensing victory, though not especially happy about the cause of her token protest, Frank pressed. “Does that mean you accept this as a done deal? You and me? Together, always?”
“We’ll see,” she said weakly, her eyes drifting shut as she curled into a more comfortable position.
It wasn’t the commitment he’d hoped for, but at least she wasn’t fighting him. Worried by her lack of energy, by her pale complexion, Frank settled beside her and pulled her into his arms. With a quiet sigh, she rested against him. “Oh, Jenny,” he whispered as he listened to the even rise and fall of her breath. “Don’t you dare leave me.”
She murmured something in her sleep, then was quiet. Holding her in his arms filled Frank with the greatest contentment he’d ever known, even as his heart ached with the uncertainty of the future.
* * *
Jenny only dimly remembered coming home from the day of medical tests. Nerves, rather than the tests themselves, always took everything out of her. By the time she got home she felt limp as a dishrag. She remembered coming in. She remembered collapsing onto the sofa. She remembered… A puzzled frown knit her brow. Had Frank been there? Had he issued some sort of crazy ultimatum or had that been a lovely dream? She drew in a deep breath and slowly opened her eyes. Then she blinked and blinked again. One part of the dream at least had been real.
Jenny had never seen so many balloons before in her life. Laughter bubbled up as she stared at the reds and greens, blues and yellows bobbing above her, trailing curls of matching ribbon. She reached for one and drew it down, then caught another and another until she held an entire bouquet of vibrant colors.
“Careful or you’ll float away,” Frank teased from somewhere just beyond the balloons. He ducked beneath them to sit beside her. So it hadn’t been a dream at all. He was here. She was glad enough to see him not to ask how he’d gotten in. She could guess anyway. Carolanne had the only other key to her apartment, and Carolanne thought she’d been wrong to cut herself off from Frank, from a chance at love.
“How do you feel, sleepyhead?” he asked.
“Better. What time is it?”
“Nearly eight. Are you hungry?”
“Starved, but there’s nothing in the house for dinner.”
He grinned. “Ah, but there is. Veal piccata, pasta and a chocolate mousse cake that will make you weep.”
Her mouth watered at the tempting descriptions. “If you prepared all that, maybe we do have something to talk about after all.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning that I will reconsider on the spot marrying a man who can make a chocolate mousse cake.”
Frank didn’t seem especially pleased by the concession. Either he hadn’t made the cake or she was missing something. “You’re going to marry me, cake or no cake,” he reminded her. “That’s been decided.”
Her gaze narrowed. “Since when?”
“Since three hours ago, when you swore to stop fighting me.”
“I don’t remember that conversation.”
“Then let me remind you. You and me. Together, always. Those were the exact words.”
“Yours or mine?”
“Mine, but you agreed. How can I take you on a honeymoon to Hawaii if you don’t say yes?”
“Honeymoon?” she repeated weakly. “Did I agree to that, too? I must have been more out of it than I thought.”
“Just sensible, for a change.”
“Frank, I can’t get married and I can’t go to Hawaii. I have to wait here.”
“For the test results,” he said matter-of-factly. “No problem. They can call us in Hawaii. I hear the phone lines are very modern. No more tin cans or drums.”
“No,” she said, feeling the pressure build in her chest. “I will not marry you. Not until I know for sure.”
He waved the tickets under her nose. “Nonrefundable. For tomorrow. We’re going, Jenny Michaels, if I have to sling you across my shoulder and carry you onto that plane. You deserve a break, you need a rest and I’m going to see that you get it. If you want to wait to get married until after the honeymoon, that’s a little weird, but it’s something we can talk about.”
She stared at him. “You want to take the honeymoon first?”
“I don’t want to do it that way, but I’m willing to compromise. Just to prove what an agreeable sort of guy I am, what a catch.”
She touched a hand to his cheek. “You are a catch. Any woman would be proud to marry you.”
“I don’t want any woman. I want you and I mean to have you.”
“By bullying me into it?”
He grinned and taunted, “I learned from a master.”
Jenny saw her own tactics coming back to haunt her. But even as she fought the idea of marrying Frank or even taking this idiotic trip he’d planned without consulting her, she couldn’t deny that Hawaii with Frank sounded like heaven. Would it be selfish of her to go? Would it be cruel to start something they might not be able to finish?
As if he’d read her mind, Frank said, “We are going to live every single day as if it’s the only one we’ve got. We are not going to put our lives on hold for ‘what ifs.’I won’t have either one of us waking up one day with regrets.”
He kissed her then, stealing away her breath, teasing her senses until her spirits were soaring every bit as high as the balloons she’d allowed to drift away. “I’ll go,” she said, when she could finally catch her breath. It might be wrong, it might be selfish, but oh how she longed for a few more days of magic.
A triumphant smile broke across his rugged face. “The wedding?”
“One step at a time,” she pleaded. “I can’t take any more than that.”
He nodded slowly. “One step at a time. We start with the honeymoon of a lifetime.”
Less than twenty-four hours later they were on the beach in Maui where the breezes smelled of frangipani and the sun caressed almost as seductively as Frank. For three days they rested and swam and made sweet and tender love. There was no forbidden talk of the future, only the here and now and the delicious thrill of Frank’s most persuasive touches, the joy of being together. Jenny felt healthier, more alive and more desperately in love than she ever had before.
On the fourth day when they came back to their cottage, there was a message on her cell phone to call her doctor’s office. The brisk voice of the assistant was like a punch in her midsection. All of the energy and hope seemed to drain out of Jenny in the scant thirty seconds it took her to cross the room and to the phone.
As she dialed the number of her doctor in San Francisco, Jenny reached instinctively for Frank’s hand. Instead of taking her outstretched hand, though, he came up behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist. He pressed a kiss to the back of her neck, sending shivers down her spine, reminding her of all that was at stake. It was no longer simply her own existence that hung in the balance, but their future.
“I love you,” he said urgently. “Marry me, Jenny. Say yes.”
She stopped dialing and turned in his arms, meeting his gaze. Her heart thundered in her chest, nearly breaking with despair. Oh, how she wanted to say yes, wanted to believe in the future, but she couldn’t. It wouldn’t be fair. “I can’t answer you now,” she said, but the words were an uncertain, breathless tremble.
He shook his head. “I want it settled before you make the call. I don’t want there to be a single doubt that I’m asking because I love you or you’re answering because of what’s in your heart. Tell me now, Jenny. Do you love me?”
She wanted to do the right thing, the fair thing and deny it, but she couldn’t. “More than life itself.”
“Then that’s our answer, isn’t it?”
With a wobbly smile, she touched his lips. “Frank, are you sure? Really sure?”
“Absolutely. In sickness or in health.”
She read the certainty in his eyes, heard the conviction in his voice, felt the love in his touch. “Then I guess that’s our answer. I’ll marry you.”
Holding her tighter, giving her his strength, he said, “Now make the call.”
When the nurse answered, Jenny had trouble even getting her name out. Her voice shook, but she took courage from Frank’s embrace, from the commitment they had made only seconds before.
“Jenny,” Dr. Hadley said in that low, soothing, bedside voice he had. “We have your results.”
“And?”
“Everything looks good.”
Hope, radiant and joyous, spilled over her like sunshine. “Everything?” she repeated.
“Not a sign of a recurrence. I’ll want you in here a year from now, but I think there’s every reason to be optimistic.”
“Thank you,” she whispered, her eyes locked with Frank’s. Only one more year until that fateful fifth anniversary. One more. “You can’t know how much this means to me.”
“To both of us,” Frank murmured huskily.
He took the phone from her grasp and replaced it in its cradle. With a sigh, he slanted his mouth over hers, filling her with an incredible sense of euphoria.
They had a chance, a real chance at a future, she thought as he tugged at the buttons on her beach coverup. When the gauzy material caught and tangled, he ripped it away with a fierce urgency that matched the rising tide of her own need. His hands were rough as he stripped her of her bathing suit, but the heated look in his eyes had her body shivering with the need for speed far more than finesse.
At the first daring touch of his tongue to her breast, excitement streaked through her like lightning. The last shred of self-consciousness between them shimmered, then disintegrated in a hot whirlwind of magical feelings. When he lifted his head to look in her eyes, cautiously seeking her reaction, she arched her back and drew him to her, wanting that exquisite, all-but-forgotten tug of need to go on forever. As pleasure built deep inside, she savored the bold strokes that told her again and again that she was woman enough for him. When his fingers sought the scar on her chest and his gaze locked with hers, she closed her hand over his and showed him the gentle caresses that inflamed and delighted.
There was no time to revel in each delicious sensation, because there were always more. Her body demanded and Frank gave, his lovemaking totally selfless. He reaffirmed the depth of his commitment again and again, building the aching hunger inside her.
With his kisses, slow, deep, passionate kisses that set her senses spinning.
With his caresses, the tenderest of touches, the boldest of claimings.
With his heart, his enduring love evident in his eyes, with the way he responded to her needs time and time again.
In moments, naked and filled with a wicked hunger, they tumbled together on the bed, a tangle of arms and legs, slick with perspiration, alive with desire.
“I love you,” Frank said as he stilled above her, fulfillment an anxious heartbeat away. “I love you, Jenny.”
“No more than I love you,” she said fervently as their bodies at last joined together in a chaotic rhythm as old as time.
Never had Jenny been more aware of the rough and satin textures of his body, of the scent of saltwater and sweet air that surrounded them, of the way he tasted against her tongue or the way her body ached with need until the moment he slid inside her, making her whole, mending her dreams, reaffirming the sheer joy of living.
They were married on the beach a day later. She wore a white Hawaiian wedding dress, and he wore an impossibly loud shirt. She had a bright yellow flower tucked behind her ear and orchids for a bouquet. When they said their vows, Jenny stumbled over the words, but the commitment was etched forever in her heart.
When the brief ceremony was over and they were alone again, giddy on champagne and passion, Frank said, “You realize we’re going to have to do this all over again in San Francisco?”
“Your family?”
“You bet. And it’s our family now. Don’t ever forget that.”
“Don’t you think with all those sons, your mother wouldn’t mind missing this one wedding? My parents will be satisfied with a phone call.”
“Not Ma. She’ll be convinced we’re living in sin unless she hears the vows for herself.”
Jenny snuggled closer. “Could be fun,” she teased. “It would add an element of danger, when things get too predictable.”
“Things won’t have a chance of getting predictable,” Frank warned. “She’s liable to move in with us until she’s certain we’ve done the right thing.”
“In that case, call ahead and line up the church. I am not going to give this up for a single night.”
“I promise you, Jennifer Michaels Chambers, we will never be separated again. Never.”
* * * * *