She slipped under and took in water. A tight, airless pounding began in her head. She struggled back to the surface, fighting to breathe. Oh, God—oh, God. Once again, she slipped under. Searing pain in her windpipe. A horrible burning shot up the back of her throat and into her nose.
Drowning. She was drowning.
Chapter Twenty
Hank turned off the faucet and cocked his head. Glancing at Shorty, sitting on a milk stool outside the stall, he said, “Did you hear something?”
The sixty-five-year-old wrangler glanced up from the bridle he was repairing and cupped a hand behind his ear. “Come again?”
Hank stepped out into the center aisle. “I thought I heard someone yelling.”
“Could be. We got nigh onto twenty men workin’ here.”
Hank had an eerie feeling. He strode to the open doorway. Nothing, not even a hired hand. Even so, he felt uneasy. Glancing back at Shorty, he said, “I’m going over to the cabin to check on Carly.”
“See ya this afternoon sometime,” Shorty said with a toothless grin.
Hank snorted with disgust and headed for home. By the time he reached the house, he was smiling. Maybe, he thought lasciviously, he wouldn’t return to the stable until afternoon. Let Shorty put that in his pipe and smoke it.
“Carly?” he called as he let himself in. “Yo, sweetheart. You awake?”
He covered the distance to the bedroom in four long strides and peeked in the doorway. No Carly. He checked in the bathroom. Not there, either. That was strange. Normally she didn’t venture from the house alone unless she came to the stable.
He stepped back out on the porch. “Carly! You out here, honey?”
No answer.
He stood there for a moment, searching the terrain with growing alarm. Shit. If she’d wandered off, could she still see well enough to find her way home? He rubbed the back of his neck, panning the landscape.
And then he saw it—something white in the pond. His heart damned near stuttered to a stop. He leaped off the porch and hit the dirt at a dead run. Sweet Jesus. Something white—in the pond. No. Please God, no.
His boots pounded the dirt, each impact jarring his body. As he ran, Hank kept his gaze fixed on the spot of white in the water, and he knew long before he finally reached the bank that it was his wife, floating facedown, her slender arms flung out from her body.
He didn’t stop to take off his boots or hat when he reached the bank. He hit the water in a running dive, the momentum of his thrust carrying him halfway to her before he ever took a stroke. “Carly!” he cried as he covered the remaining distance. “Oh, Jesus!”
He caught her in his arms. She was limp. When he rolled her over, he saw that her lips were purple and her face had an awful, bluish cast to it. Frantic, he swam to shore with her caught in the circle of one arm.
Once on the bank, he went to work, shoving on her chest, breathing into her mouth, and praying mindlessly. Please, God—please, God—please, God. It seemed to him that hours passed. Dead. She’d tried to tell him. Oh, God. She’d tried to make him understand how dangerous it was for her here.
Hank sobbed and grabbed her shoulders. “Breathe!” He lifted her halfway to a sitting position, shouting her name. Please, God. He couldn’t live without her. “Breathe, Carly. Don’t you dare die on me! Breathe, damn it.”
He lowered her back to the ground to share his breath with her again. Then he pumped her heart. Nothing. He hadn’t checked his watch. He had no idea how long he’d been trying to resuscitate her. One minute, ten? It didn’t matter. He couldn’t stop.
To stop meant the unthinkable—that she was gone.
Suddenly, her body jerked, and a huge gush of water shot from her mouth. Hank reared back, expecting her to suddenly open her eyes and start breathing like drowning victims always did in the movies. Instead she went absolutely motionless again and still looked dead. He was about to resume resuscitation when water spewed from her lips again.
Then she choked and began struggling to breathe, her lungs making horrible, rasping sounds. Hank rolled her onto her side. “Thank God. Thank God.”
Shorty appeared at Hank’s side.
“Bring my truck around! I have to get her to the hospital. Hurry, Shorty!”
As the old man raced away, Carly drew her knees to her chest. One arm hugging her waist, she coughed up more water. Then she began breathing easier. Hank stroked her wet hair with shaking hands.
“Oh, God, Carly. Oh, God.”
She stirred to look up at him. “Hank?” she croaked.
He leaned closer, touching her sweet face, which was finally getting some color back. Her lips were still blue, but even as he watched, he saw pink rising to the surface.
“Don’t try to talk, honey. I’ll get you to the hospital. You’ll be all right.”
She closed her eyes. “My baby. Oh, Hank, my baby.”
Until that moment, Hank hadn’t even thought of the baby. “It’ll be okay,” he said. “The baby will be fine.”
Even as he said the words, Hank wondered if it might be dead. He had no idea what a near drowning might do to a first-trimester fetus.
“Your wife and baby are fine,” an ER physician told Hank a little over an hour later. “Carly’s lungs are clear. She’s lucid. And the baby’s heartbeat is strong.”
“Thank God,” Mary Coulter whispered.
Hank was dimly aware of his parents sitting nearby. Everyone in his family, except for Jake and Molly, who were out of town, had rushed to the hospital to be with him, and they’d waited in an agony of suspense for word of his wife and child’s condition.
“Thank God,” Hank echoed. He dropped onto a waiting-room chair, his legs suddenly so weak they wouldn’t hold him up. He sat forward, resting his head on the heels of his hands. “Thank God,” he whispered raggedly. “My fault, all my fault.” He realized he was talking to himself and glanced up. “Thank you, doctor.”
The physician, a wiry little man in a white jacket, warm-up pants, and golf shoes, patted Hank’s shoulder. “They’re both ready to go home, Mr. Coulter, and you can thank God and yourself for that, not me. You’re the one who kept your head and did what needed doing.”
“That’s right,” Hank’s father seconded. “You kept your head and saved her life.”
Hank didn’t see it that way. If not for his stupidity, Carly never would have fallen in the pond to start with.
When Carly emerged from the ER, she smiled wanly at him. Her clothes were still slightly damp, and her hair hung in kinky ropes over her shoulders, reminding him of drizzled honey, but he’d never seen anyone on earth more beautiful.
“Hey,” he said, pushing unsteadily to his feet.
She walked straight into his arms. Hank locked her in his embrace and buried his face in her hair. Chilling terror sluiced down his spine every time he thought of how she’d looked after he pulled her from the water. Dead. He’d come so close to losing her.
Hank was glad of the fact that his family had come. They all rushed forward to hug her and say how glad they were that she was all right. It gave him a chance to back away, collect himself, and paste on a smile. She’d felt so fragile when he held her in his arms.
All the way home, Hank kept remembering how she’d looked, her body so lifeless, her face so blue. Guilt squeezed his chest, making it difficult to breathe. “I’ll fix things somehow. No worries. I’ll build fences and stuff. I’ll fix it so you never get lost out there again.”
She just nodded and said nothing.
When they got back to the ranch, Hank needed some time by himself. After getting her into dry clothes and safely put to bed, he crept from the cabin and went to the stable, where he sat on a hay bale and agonized over how close he’d come to losing her. Jake came out and sat with him.
“It wasn’t your fault, Hank. Would you stop beating up on yourself?”
“It was my fault. She tried to tell me she’d have special needs. I was so cocksure I could handle everything and take
care of her. Now I’m scared to death I’ll overlook something else, that she’ll get hurt and I’ll lose her.”
“Have you talked to her about this?”
“No,” Hank said hollowly. “But I will.”
When Hank got back to the house, he thought Carly was asleep. She wasn’t. She heard him sit down in the living room. After several minutes of silence, he emitted a broken, masculine sob—the sound so soft she might have imagined it. Then she heard him whisper, “Oh, God, oh, God. I had no idea. No idea. What if I can’t do this?”
Carly huddled on her side. Scalding tears filled her eyes. She’d told Hank a dozen times that he had no clue what he was getting into with her. Now reality had finally been driven home.
He came to her later. After taking her into his arms, he promised over and over that he’d make the ranch safe for her. “I’ll start on it first thing tomorrow, and I won’t rest until everything is absolutely safe, I swear.”
Despite all his reassurances, he failed to do the one thing that might have eased Carly’s aching heart. He didn’t make love to her. When she tried to encourage him, he caught her hand and drew it to his lips. “Not tonight, sweetheart. I’m sorry. I just—can’t.”
It was the first time since the night at the lake that he’d turned away from her. Carly huddled on her side, her heart splintering into a hundred lacerating pieces.
True to his word, Hank was at The Works, the Coulter ranch supply store, when Zeke opened the doors the next morning.
“Hey, little brother,” Zeke said with a smile. “You’re in town early today.”
“I need wire and posts,” Hank told him. “A shit load. Carly’s scared to death. And who can blame her? I’ve got to make it safe for her out there, Zeke.”
“Her vision is getting that bad already?”
Hank nodded. “Seems a little worse with each passing day. She can still see up close, but I think even that’s getting blurry.”
When Hank returned to the ranch an hour later, Levi met him just outside the stable. The older man scratched his head and shuffled his feet, clearly at a loss for words. When he finally found his voice, Hank could barely credit what he said.
“Carly left,” Levi said flatly. “With that friend of hers. Bess, I think’s her name. Looked to me like she took most of her things with her.”
Hank rushed to the cabin. Irrational though he knew it was, he hoped to see Carly at the kitchen table, devouring her morning sickness cure. She wasn’t there. As he closed the door, an eerie feeling of emptiness assailed him. The cabin never felt this way when she was there.
Not wanting to believe that Levi was correct about Carly leaving him, he moved quickly through the house. A glance into the front closet told him her clothes were missing. In the back bedroom, he discovered that most of the baby clothes and blankets had been removed from the bureau.
En route back to the kitchen, he saw a letter lying on the table. Feeling drained and strangely detached, he sank onto a chair to read it. Her lines were hopelessly crooked, but the writing was legible.
Dear Hank: It’s difficult for me to write, so I’ll make this short. I need to live in the city where there are sidewalks and crosswalks and public transportation systems. You need to live where you are, close to the land, working with your horses. I’ll always remember you here, in your element, my handsome prince in riding boots with a Stetson tipped low to shade his eyes. For a while, you made all my dreams come true. Unfortunately, you were only on loan. Just know that for a time, I was happier than I ever thought I could be, and that I’ll treasure my memories of you forever.
She had tried to draw a happy face, which was lopsided, with one eye outside the circle. I’ll be in touch. In time, when we’ve both distanced ourselves from this a bit, maybe we can see our way clear to being good friends. For the baby’s sake, we should aim for that.
She ended with a flourish. Yours always, Carly.
Hank tossed the letter onto the table and just sat there, staring through tears at nothing. Gone. She was gone. No matter how he tried, he couldn’t wrap his mind around that. Even worse, he couldn’t contemplate a future without her.
Late that afternoon, Bess answered her phone on the fourth ring. “Hello?”
Hank swallowed to steady his voice. “Hey, Bess. It’s Hank.”
Long silence. Then she finally said, “Hey, Hank. What a surprise.”
He smiled sadly. “I know you came out and picked her up, Bess. She told me so in her letter.”
“Okay. So you know. End of subject.”
Hank sank onto a chair. “You have to tell me where she is.”
“No,” she replied. “I don’t have to tell you that.”
He sighed and closed his eyes. “Let me put it another way. I’ll find her, one way or another. Be a friend. Save me a lot of trouble and money.”
“I can’t. I promised her. I betrayed her once. I won’t again. I can’t help but think that maybe she’s right this time.”
“How the hell can you say that? I love her, damn it, and she loves me. We belong together. I’ll also remind you that she’s carrying my child.”
“Calm down, Hank.”
“I won’t calm down. My wife left me! She went to her father’s, didn’t she?”
Silence.
“I’ll take that as a yes.” Hank tightened his grip on the receiver. “Damn it, Bess. Don’t play these games. Is she going to be happy away from me? Ask yourself that.”
“No, she won’t be happy,” Bess admitted, “but at least she’ll be safe, and so will you. Sometimes you have to love someone enough to walk away. Wouldn’t you do whatever it took to stop her from throwing away everything that mattered to her?”
“She is what matters to me, Bess. She hasn’t saved me, she’s destroyed me.”
“You know what I mean. We’re talking thousands, maybe over a hundred grand to make that place safe for her. How in the hell can you cough that up?”
Hank laughed bitterly. “Oh, come on. It won’t cost that much.”
“Want to bet? You can’t just drive some stakes and string some rope. You’ll have to network the place with concrete paths, bordered with metal rails. There should be intercom systems everywhere so she can call the stable, the cabin, or the main house in case of an emergency. And you need hurricane fencing around the pastures, not barbed wire. I could go on and on, and that’s just improvements to the land. She also needs handrails on all the porches, and the inside of the house has to be arranged just for her. A hundred grand isn’t really a stretch. It could cost a hell of a lot more than that.”
Hank hadn’t realized so many things needed to be done. “I’ll handle it.”
“How? You tell me that, and maybe I’ll give you her father’s address.”
Bingo. Hank relaxed on the chair. Now that he knew for sure where Carly had gone, he was that much closer to bringing her home. “Thanks, Bess.”
“For what?”
“Telling me where she went.”
“Shit.”
He chuckled humorlessly. “You want to save me the trouble of sniffing out his phone number and address?”
“No. Oh, all right. But I’m warning you, Hank. She won’t come back with you. Not unless you perform miracles out there. She and the baby almost died.”
“It’ll never happen again. I’ll see to it. She wants miracles, I’ll give her miracles, I love her, bottom line. She belongs here with me.”
“Then call in experts.”
“Experts?”
“Yes, professionals—people who can look at the ranch, the house, and all the outbuildings, then draw up plans that will work for her.”
“That will cost a bloody fortune.”
“Exactly.”
“Okay. Fine. Experts. I can do that.”
Bess reluctantly gave him Carly’s father’s address and phone number. “Don’t go get her until you’re positive, absolutely positive, that you can make it work. Promise me. She’s already bleeding, and so a
re you. If you bring her home, and things don’t work out, you’ll only be prolonging the inevitable.”
Hank had seen Ryan and Bethany make their marriage work. Everything had been against them, but they’d somehow managed to beat all the odds and create a workable solution, a life that accommodated both of them. Love and a determination to overcome every obstacle had seen them through the difficulties.
Hank loved Carly, and he was damned sure determined.
Bethany and Ryan were eating dinner when Hank rapped on their door and let himself in. Bethany beamed a smile when she saw him. “Hey, big guy. How’s Carly feeling today?”
Hank started to reply, but his nephew cut him short.
“Unko Hank!” Sly chortled as he squirmed to get out of his high chair. “Unko Hank!”
Forcing a smile, Hank circled the table to hug the child. “Hey, partner.” He pretended to snitch some of the child’s food. “Yum! Green beans.”
Sly clearly didn’t share the sentiment. He promptly tried to shove a fistful of the beans into Hank’s mouth. Bethany laughed as she wheeled into the kitchen for an extra place setting. “Have a seat!” she called over her shoulder.
Ryan stood to shake Hank’s hand. “What brings you out this way?”
“I have a problem I need to discuss with you,” Hank replied.
His sister returned to the table, arranged a place setting, and then patted the seat of a chair. “Problems are always easier to solve while breaking bread together. Sit down, you big lug.”
Hank took the chair. “I’m really not hungry.” He wasn’t sure he’d ever feel hungry again. “Carly’s left me.”
Bethany froze. “Oh no,” she whispered.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Ryan commiserated.
Both Ryan and Bethany stopped eating while Hank filled them in on Carly’s flight that morning. Bethany’s expression conveyed her understanding. “It had to have been pretty scary for her Hank,” she said softly. “Carly almost died in that pond, and it’s a miracle she didn’t lose the baby.”
Hank nodded, his throat so tight it was difficult to speak. “I need to make a lot of changes on the Lazy J, fix it so she’ll never be in danger there again. Only I’m not sure how to start.”