His little girl loved him. He closed his eyes and absorbed the pure pleasure of that for a few minutes.
Then his memory cleared and he remembered first waking up, hearing Jessica’s voice and then seeing her. He glanced up at the IV bag. Morphine. He wondered if they’d already been pumping the stuff into him then, and he’d been hallucinating under its influence. The memory was vague and faded; he must have imagined Jessica by his bedside.
Did it take a near-death experience to drive home the fact that he still loved Jessica? Even so, there wasn’t anything he could do about it. She’d made her choice, and it didn’t include him.
Whether it was real or a hallucination, he distinctly remembered telling Jessica to leave him alone.
* * *
THEY KEPT CAL in the hospital for several days. He drifted in and out of consciousness for the first few. During his waking moments, he had visits from Logan, Rick, Shannon, Hal Robinson and several of the other guys from the unit. Drew spent a lot of time with him, sat by his bedside so that when Cal had his lucid moments, he was there waiting. Cal even received a call from Anna. After ascertaining that he was up to it, she put Haley on the phone. Getting to speak to his daughter did him a world of good.
When they were ready to discharge him, his doctor cautioned that the pain would continue to be severe for a while, and he prescribed oral pain meds that he could take as needed.
Drew drove Cal home, but they swung by Drew’s place to pick up Scout, who’d stayed there the entire time Cal had been in the hospital. The unit had brought Scout back to the division after the ambulance had whisked Cal away; Cal had been speechless to learn that despite his brother’s strained relationship with Scout, he’d made arrangements to take the dog home, knowing how much it would mean to him.
Maybe the drugs were making Cal emotional, but he felt inordinately grateful for what his brother had done.
When Drew offered to stay, Cal thanked him and sent him home, explaining he needed rest. What he really wanted was just to be alone.
He settled with a cold can of Coke on his back deck, Scout curled up at his feet.
Cal’s head was so crowded with thoughts, he was surprised it didn’t simply explode.
He sipped his soda and stared down the length of beach. The sky was an ominous, dense gray. The forceful wind swirled small eddies of sand and propelled waves to batter the shore. The sound of the breakers mimicked his turbulent emotions.
Cops lived with the risk of being killed every single day. He thought of his colleague and friend, Todd, who’d been fatally stabbed in the domestic dispute so many years ago, and considered himself lucky that this was the first time he’d been shot and that he was alive to tell the tale.
He thanked the powers that be that Haley was back in his life. He could, if not entirely understand, at least forgive Anna for how she’d gone about ending their marriage and ensuring she got sole legal custody of Haley.
During a recent conversation, she’d seemed receptive to updating the terms of their agreement to give him joint custody. He’d worried that this incident might have made her rethink that, since she’d claimed it was the dangers of his job that had caused her to leave him. But when they’d spoken a couple of days earlier, he was relieved to discover that she hadn’t backtracked. When he’d hesitantly raised the possibility of Haley’s visiting him in California, she hadn’t ruled out the idea. He got the sense she might be feeling some remorse now.
Added to that, there was a message on his voice mail from Stephanie Lindquist when he arrived home. She was the lawyer who’d been working on his attempt to adopt Kayla. Things seemed more optimistic. Stephanie thought they only had one hurdle left to clear, and that was the fact that he was a single male.
The irony was he no longer wanted to be single. He was finally able to put what Anna had done behind him, and realized he wanted to spend his life with Jessica. Hallucinations aside, she was half a world away and lost to him.
He drained the rest of his soda.
He would’ve expected the drugs they’d given him at the hospital to dull his mind. And yet, he felt he’d never thought about things more clearly.
The beach was nearly deserted because of the late hour and the menacing storm. Neither deterred him. He reached for Scout’s Kong and whistled for the dog to follow him. Cal walked along the boardwalk, the sharp wind plucking at his light coat. He threw the Kong repeatedly for Scout.
Suddenly Scout ignored the Kong in favor of sprinting off. Cal whistled to him, but with the howling of the wind, Scout must not have heard it. When Cal realized the dog was running toward a person in the distance, he mumbled an expletive. He took off at an awkward jog toward the dog’s intended target, knowing he didn’t have a hope of beating him there.
He was relieved to see no indication of aggression when Scout reached his target. Just the opposite—the dog seemed to be offering an ecstatic greeting. Once Cal got close enough to see the person as more than a wavering form, he stopped. With his hands on his knees, he bent over to catch his breath and make sure his eyes weren’t deceiving him.
He hadn’t been hallucinating in the hospital. Her hand resting on Scout’s back, Jessica walked slowly toward him.
She wore faded jeans, sneakers, a yellow knit sweater and a navy blue windbreaker. Her hair was braided, but the strands the wind had tugged free danced around her face.
“I didn’t realize you’d be discharged already,” she said.
He’d felt a sense of elation that she’d come to see him, but her comment dispelled that misguided notion. “Then what are you doing here?”
She lifted a shoulder, turned toward the ocean and brushed at the hair whipping in her face. “I felt like taking a walk.”
He couldn’t help smiling, despite the emotions churning inside him as violently as the water pounding the shore. “There are lots of places you could have walked. The beach isn’t the most hospitable on a night like this.”
Her only response was another jerk of her shoulder. At her silence, he faced the ocean, too.
“You came to see me in the hospital.”
“I did, yes. And you sent me away.”
Cal nodded slowly. “Yeah, I did.” He turned to her. “I’m sorry.”
She looked at him but he couldn’t read her expression in the muted light. He searched his memory for what exactly she’d said to him in the hospital. That she’d moved back? “What made you come home?”
“You,” she said simply.
“I don’t understand.” He dared not hope for more, only to have his heart torn to shreds again.
“I knew it was the truth but didn’t want to admit it to myself. I tried to rationalize that it was because of a job they offered me back here, to be the executive director of Care Across Continents. That it was because I needed to stop treating patients, and this job would let me do that, while letting me use my training. But none of that was completely honest. None of it matters as much as you do. I came home because of you. I missed you and I was miserable without you. The job offer may have been serendipitous, but like it or not, I came back because I love you.”
As the first pinpricks of rain began to sting them, Cal took Jessica in his arms, to tell her he loved her, too. He needed that physical contact to assure him he wasn’t hallucinating or fantasizing. That she really, truly was here and that she was his, now and forever.
EPILOGUE
“OH, NO. YOU CAN’T open the drapes, sweetie!” Marcia rushed over to Haley and grabbed the curtain before she could yank it all the way back.
“But my daddy’s out there.”
“Really? Let me see. He’s my daddy now, too!” Kayla joined Haley at the window.
Jessica was standing by the full-length mirror that had been set up in Cal’s bedroom, her mother fussing with her veil. She smiled at the
two little girls in identical white dresses, but with different color sashes around their waists. Haley’s was a deep rich brown, Kayla’s a bright yellow. The sashes had been the girls’ idea. Since they were now sisters, they wanted something to symbolize that. They’d been fascinated by each other’s hair from the day they’d met, and decided wearing sashes representing the other’s hair color would be a nice connection between them.
“Let them have a look, Marcia. Girls, open the curtains just wide enough for you to take a peek. We don’t want your father seeing us in our wedding dresses before the ceremony.”
When her mother was finally satisfied with how the veil fell over her long French lace gown, Jessica hugged her before joining the girls at the window so she, too, could take a peek at her fiancé. Not used to wearing heels quite this high, she wobbled slightly as she stepped on the edge of the carpet. She made a mental note to walk carefully down the makeshift aisle to the wooden platform on the beach, which was where they’d exchange their vows.
Fortunately, it was a clear, calm day, and the red flower petals the girls had scattered over the white runner along the aisle were mostly still in place.
“Ohhh, look how handsome Daddy is in his suit!” Kayla exclaimed.
“That’s a tuxedo,” Haley corrected her. “I think it’s the handsomest I’ve ever seen him!” The girl beamed with pride and pleasure.
“I have to agree with you both,” Jessica added. “That’s the ‘handsomest’ I’ve seen him, as well.”
“Look at Uncle Drew! He looks nice, too.”
Both girls giggled.
At a knock on the door, all three of them turned. Marcia let Rick Vasquez into the bedroom. He, too, wore a tuxedo and was grinning from ear to ear. “We’re ready to start when you are, ladies. And it’d better be soon,” he said to Jessica. “Your father’s as nervous as if he was the bride getting married today.”
“All right, everyone. Let’s get this show on the road,” Marcia announced.
Jessica waited until the others had left the room, and only she and Rick remained. “Thank you,” she said softly, and placed a kiss on his cheek.
“For what?”
“This wouldn’t be happening if you hadn’t told me Cal had been shot and where I could find him.” She brushed a kiss across his other cheek.
“What’s that one for?” Rick asked.
“It’s from both of us...”
Rick held up a hand. “Whoa, there, pretty lady. Tracker and I are good friends, but I’m not accepting any kisses from him.”
Jessica laughed. “Okay. Then it’s just from me, thanking you on our behalf. Thank you for what you did to bring us together. That also helped make it possible for Kayla to be part of our family. The adoption went through quickly enough that Kayla could be with us to watch her new father and mother get married. So, thank you from the whole Palmer family.”
“My pleasure, Dr. Hansen, soon to be Palmer,” Rick said as he slipped her arm into the crook of his elbow. “Your father and your groom await you. As Marcia said, let’s get this show on the road.”
* * *
CAL’S HEART ALMOST stopped as he watched Jessica walk toward him in a gorgeous white dress. She was on her father’s arm, his two little girls preceding her, scattering more rose petals from small wicker baskets.
When her father took Jessica’s hand and offered it to Cal with murmured words of encouragement, Cal smiled directly into her eyes and couldn’t help saying the first three things that came to mind. “You’re absolutely stunning. And you’re remarkably tall!” She was nearly eye level with him in her heels. “And I love you very much.”
As Jessica laughed, Cal clasped her hand in his, and with Haley and Kayla standing on either side of them, they each took the solemn vow that would join them together as a family, forever.
* * * * *
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ISBN-13: 9781460389416
When the Right One Comes Along
Copyright © 2015 by Kate James
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
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Kate James, When the Right One Comes Along
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