Quiet Walks the Tiger - By Heather Graham Page 0,78
“answer me.”
Bleak, liquid eyes lifted to his; the indifferent tone was back in her voice. “What do I say?” she asked. “You’re flying out tonight; you’ll be gone two weeks. It’s settled.”
Yes, it was settled. Her opinion didn’t matter. He had apologized, but he hadn’t changed a thing. Even his apology, she was sure, had been issued because he had seen her wince with the sudden tension in her lower back. It was frightfully apparent that he didn’t want her upset. But then that, of course, was because of the baby. And it didn’t seem to occur to him that she could tolerate the plane—even happily board it—if only he wanted her with him...
He exhaled a long sigh. “Go on back to bed, Sloan; you’re shivering, and you need to get to sleep. I have a few things to get together down here, and I won’t need to pack much, so I shouldn’t disturb you.”
That was it—a dismissal. He was leaving. Sloan nodded dispiritedly and turned away as he released her. “Sloan.” She heard a slight catch in his voice and turned back. “It might be nice if you kissed me good-bye.”
He took her in his arms before she could have a chance to refuse him, and his mouth claimed hers with a bittersweet combination of persuasiveness and demand. Unable to resist him, Sloan felt herself melt to his touch, knowing it would be denied her for what would seem an eternity. She arched herself against the warm strength of his frame, hungrily met his thrusting tongue with her own. And then she felt the salt of tears on her cheek and disentangled herself, turning away before he could see them. Saying nothing else, she quit the room.
The encounter had left her absurdly weak. Returning to the bedroom with her thoughts in a turmoil, she at first ignored-the pain in her back that was proving to be persistent. Wesley didn’t want her in his home. He was leaving for two weeks, but she had no guarantee that he meant to return at that time. He could leave, and find himself busy, and not care if he hurried back to a wife he didn’t trust.
Of course, he would be back eventually. He wanted to see his child...
The next stab of pain she felt was so shocking that it ripped her cruelly from her mental dilemma and sent her staggering to the bedpost for support. Stunned, she held on as the pain continued to rack through her. In disbelief she thought she had felt nothing so horrendously unbearable since Terry’s birth.
It was then that she started to scream Wesley’s name in a long low wail of agony and terror.
Her cry jolted him with panic as nothing ever had before in his life. Wes bolted from the den and made it to the bedroom as if jet-propelled. At first he couldn’t ferret out what had happened. Sloan was doubled over on the floor, her slender hands losing their grip on the bedpost. He took a step nearer, and it felt as if his heart sank cleanly from him; he held his breath. She was saturated in blood. So much blood. How could it possibly have come from such a wraithlike figure? How could she possibly have any left to pulse through her veins, to keep her heart beating...?
He was galvanized into desperate action, knowing even as he shook as if palsied that he had to move quickly. He was shouting as he scooped her into his arms, loud enough to raise even Florence, and then he was issuing curt commands to the frightened but alert housekeeper. She was dialing the hospital even as he was slipping Sloan into the car, loath to take a chance on wasting the precious minutes to wait for the ambulance. She opened her eyes once; a weak, pained smile touched just the corners of her lips. “Wesley,” she whispered, and then her sapphire eyes closed once again, and all color was gone from her ashen face.
My wife, he thought desperately. No, my life, my existence...
And then he was careening toward the hospital, her cheek resting against his knee...
In actuality, he wasn’t shut out long. But every second was an eternity. He paced the empty, sterile halls, praying.
And his mind would return to the nightmare. The grim look of her obstetrician—the man who had delivered not only her three children, but Sloan herself. A man who had made it to the hospital after Florence’s call almost as quickly as