The Thunderbolt Read online

  Bennett stared glumly at the clouds. Breaking things off with Lacy was the right thing to do.

  In fact, he needed to take it one step further. He had to put as much distance between them as possible before his pheromones got the better of him again. He needed to leave Texas for good. After the transplant surgery, he was going to tell Dr. Laramie he wanted to cut his study fellowship short by a week.

  With any luck, by this time tomorrow he’d be on his way home to Boston.

  13

  “It’s over between us.” Lacy lay across her bed in her apartment, sobbing into her hands. CeeCee and Janet sat on either side of her.

  Dylan had driven her from West in her car two days after Bennett had departed. She’d been unable to tell her family that the thunderbolt had failed.

  “What do you mean, it’s over?” CeeCee asked. “When two people love each other there’s always hope.”

  Fat chance for that. Damn CeeCee and her eternal optimism. “Bennett doesn’t love me,” she countered.

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “I found out from Pam that Bennett went back to Boston on the first plane out of George Bush on Monday morning.”

  CeeCee’s mouth dropped. “He ran away?”

  “Fast as a scalded dog.” Lacy echoed one of Great-Gramma’s sayings, then she burst into fresh tears.

  “There, there,” Janet soothed, gently patting Lacy on the shoulder. “All men are scum.”

  “No.” Lacy wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “Bennett’s not scum. This was my fault.” She told her friends about the thunderbolt. “I never told him about the thunderbolt or about Great-Gramma faking her illness until it was too late. Who can blame him for feeling duped?”

  “I can blame him,” CeeCee said. “He hurt my friend. If he were here right now, I’d kick him in the fanny and ask him what on earth he was doing dumping the best thing that ever happened to him.”

  “Thanks for your support.” Lacy sat up, took the tissue CeeCee offered her, and delicately blew her nose. “But really, this is my responsibility. I’m the one who bought into that thunderbolt nonsense. You’d think I would have stopped believing in fairy tales a long time ago.”

  “It’s hard to fight a family legend,” Janet sympathized.

  “I can’t believe I wasted so many years waiting for the thunderbolt to strike.” Lacy shook her head. “I was a fool. I should have been dating and having fun. I should have bought a house and planted a garden. I don’t need some mythical knight in shining armor to change my life.”

  “You go, girl,” CeeCee sang.

  “I took a gamble. You’ve got to give me credit for that. For once I went after what I wanted. So what if it blew up in my face?” Lacy spoke firmly, trying to convince herself as much as her friends that she was going to be all right.

  But the hole in her soul whispered that she was kidding herself. Yes, she had learned a lot, and yes, she would survive, but without her other half, would she ever be completely whole?

  For so long she’d waited for the thunderbolt. Now that it had struck and left her charred to a crisp, she didn’t know how to proceed. For twenty-seven years she’d believed that true love would solve everything. She had to face reality.

  Bennett didn’t want her and honestly, she couldn’t blame him.

  “How are you this morning, Mr. Osborn?” Bennett consulted the chart in his hand, then glanced at the spry octogenarian sitting up in the hospital bed at Boston General. His wife sat in a chair beside him, their hands clasped together.

  Will I ever have that kind of closeness with anyone? Bennett wondered, then immediately thought of Lacy.

  It seemed he couldn’t stop thinking about her no matter how hard he tried. He’d had such intimacy for the briefest of moments, and his feelings had scared him so much that he had chickened out.

  The elderly man laid his free hand over his chest and smiled. “Thanks for fixin’ my ticker, Doc.” Henry Osborn was a native Texan, and his friendly drawl reminded Bennett too much of where he’d just been. Why did fate seem to keep reminding him of what he’d left behind?

  “I’ve had sixty years with my darlin’ bride here, and to tell you the truth, it’s not near long enough,” Henry Osborn continued.

  “I bet you two had a long courtship before you got married”—Bennett nodded— “for your relationship to still be so strong after all these years.”

  Mrs. Osborn giggled like a schoolgirl and peered at her husband with adoring eyes. “Oh, no,” she said. “We had a whirlwind courtship. Henry had come to Boston on business, and we both attended a company party. Our gazes met across a crowded room, and in that instant we both just knew.”

  Henry nodded and his eyes misted. “I remember like it was yesterday. I walked right up to her and said, ‘You’re the gal I aim to marry.’”

  Bennett’s chest tightened. “Really?”

  “We were married three weeks later. When it’s right, it’s right, young man.”

  “But how did you know for sure?” His mind whirled with thoughts of Lacy, her wacky family, and the legendary thunderbolt.

  Then he thought of his parents. Two sides of the coin. The pros and cons of love at first sight. What made the Osborns different than his parents? Why did one marriage work and the other disintegrate?

  Henry touched the left side of his chest again. “You’ll know deep down in here, son. All you’ve got to do is follow your heart. It will never lead you astray.”

  Bennett moistened his lips with his tongue. “But how do you keep it going? What happens when things get rough? What keeps you from giving up?”

  Mrs. Osborn smiled. “Oh, that one is easy, young man. You remember everything you love about the other person, and you never let anything get in the way of that love. Not your job or your in-laws or money problems. You put the other person first. Their needs. Their wants. Their desires. Not yours. Love isn’t selfish, young man. If you take care of her and she takes care of you, then I promise, everything will work out fine.”

  It sounded so wonderful. How he wanted to believe it.

  Could Mrs. Osborn be right? He thought of his parents and how they’d put their own needs above each other. Single-minded selfishness had ruined their marriage, not passion. Not love at first sight.

  He reached a hand into his pocket and fingered the thunderbolt cuff links he’d been carrying around ever since Lacy’s great gramma had given them to him.

  Bennett drew in a deep breath as his fingers contacted the warm metal. He held them in his palm, the gold winking in the light from the window.

  And then it happened.

  He felt something.

  Like a zap of lightning zinging through his whole body from his head to his toes, raising the hairs on his arms. In that moment he knew.

  He’d been struck by the thunderbolt. Not here. Not now. But eight weeks ago, in a hospital in Houston. And he’d been doing his best to suppress it ever since. Fear had hampered him from speaking his mind. Fear had kept him from admitting the truth to himself.

  His heart throbbed. His body tingled. His soul ached to be fulfilled.

  He was in love with Lacy Calder.

  And there was no doubt about it.

  Three weeks after Bennett left Texas, Lacy was spreading autoclaved instruments across the sterile field when she glanced up and saw him standing in the doorway. He wore green scrubs, a matching scrub cap, blue shoe covers, and a mask.

  Bennett?

  She blinked. Nah.

  Surely this must be a mirage. Bennett was far away in Boston, doing an important service, saving people’s lives. She’d been seeing his face an awful lot in her imagination. Maybe she wasn’t at work at all, but at home in her bed, dreaming a dream that was going to make her cry when she awoke and found it all a fantasy. She bit her bottom lip to see if she was indeed awake.

  Ouch.

  Okay, that was painful. Not dreaming, then. She was wide awake.

  His eyes drilled into hers
like laser beams melting metal. That crazy, illogical feeling leaped inside her. The thunderbolt. Striking again.

  How could it be?

  If she wasn’t asleep, then she must be having a doozy of a hallucination.

  “Lacy,” he said, his voice strangely heavy.

  Auditory hallucinations. That was bad, wasn’t it?

  She shook her head and returned her attention to the sterile field, determined to ignore this very realistic figment of her overactive imagination.

  His shoe covers whispered against the floor. He was coming closer.

  Dear heavens. Her heart scampered into her throat. Her hand, wrapped around a retractor, began to tremble.

  “Lacy,” he said again. This time he was standing right behind her. “Look at me.”

  She turned on her step stool. Her ankle, healing but still weak, started to give way beneath her.

  “Oh.” She dropped the retractor and struggled to regain her balance.

  But she didn’t have anything to worry about. Bennett was there. His arms were around her.

  She looked at him. Time hung suspended.

  “Is it really you?” she murmured.

  “It’s really me.” He righted her on the stool but kept his hands spanned around her waist. They stood eye to eye.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked.

  “I work here.”

  “Since when?” She sucked in her breath and got a mouthful of mask.

  “I transferred from Boston General. I’m going to finish my residency at Saint Madeleine’s under Dr. Laramie.”

  “But how?” She scarcely dared believe that this was true. “And why?”

  “How?” He reached behind him and untied the top string of his mask, so it fell around his neck. “Dr. Laramie agreed to sponsor me.”

  “You’ve just broken scrub,” she whispered.

  “I know.”

  “You’ll have to scrub in again.”

  “No.” He lifted a hand to undo her scrub mask as well, his arm brushing against her cheek in the process. “We’ll have to scrub in again.”

  “Why did you do that?”

  “To show you the reason I came back.”

  She frowned. “I don’t get it.”

  “Do you get this?” He hauled her against his chest and kissed her with a passion that made her pant.

  “Oh, Bennett,” she murmured.

  “Hey, you two! Stop that and get scrubbed in again. Plus, you’ve contaminated your sterile field, Lacy,” Pam barked from the doorway. She clapped her hands. “Come on, we don’t have all day.”

  Bennett took Lacy’s hand and led her from the surgical suite to the scrub sinks.

  “What’s happened?” she asked him.

  “I do love you, Lacy. I was just too scared to admit it. I didn’t want to repeat my parents’ mistake.”

  “What made you change your mind?” Her eyes searched his face. She wanted so much to believe him.

  “I didn’t want to live the rest of my life regretting not having taken a chance on us. You’re the best thing that ever happened to me, Lacy Calder.”

  “Oh, Bennett.”

  “And I’m sorry if I’ve caused you one moment of pain. All these years I thought love was about passion and that passion eventually cooled and left you nothing but hurt. But I was wrong, Lacy, so wrong.”

  “How were you wrong?”

  “I now understand that love is about sacrificing your own selfish desires for the good of another. I learned that if I want to have love, I must first give it. Lacy, I want to spend my life pleasing you. Loving you.”

  She reached up and traced his lips with her fingers. “I want to please you too. Love you. That’s how it should be.”

  He hitched in a breath and paused for a long moment. “You showed me love was about sharing, caring, and accepting. It might be rough on us for the first couple of years until I finish my residency and get my practice started, but we’ll work it out.”

  “Do you really mean it?” She trembled all over. Did she dare hope? “You’re not afraid our relationship will end up like your parents?’”

  “I finally realized something. I’m not my father, and you’re not my mother. My parents both have the same tempestuous personality. Both are pretty selfish. Neither of us are like that. We’re good together. And there’s no rush. No hurry. We don’t have to get married as my parents did. When we get married, it’ll be because we’re ready.”

  “Are you certain?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “I knew you were the one.” She grinned.

  “And I knew it was you from the beginning. I’m just a slow learner.”

  “Great-Gramma says the thunderbolt is never wrong and that it can’t be denied.”

  “Great-Gramma is very wise.”

  “She’s going to be so happy.”

  “Not a quarter as happy as I am. Will you marry me, Lacy? For better or worse, I never want to be without you again.”

  Lacy beamed at him, her heart filled to bursting. “As if I could say no.”

  He bent to kiss her again.

  Endorphins collided with adrenaline. Testosterone jumped like the lords of the dance in his lower abdomen. Sheer joy sprinted through his nerve endings.

  He drew her closer to him, tasting every delicious inch of her lips. He knew without a hint of doubt that she was meant to be his, forever and always.

  The thunderbolt had struck again. Claiming two more hearts, melding them together for all time.

  Epilogue

  The preacher stood at the front of the elaborately constructed altar erected in the Calders’ backyard. Bible in hand, he gave the crowd a welcoming smile.

  “Friends and neighbors,” the preacher began. “We are gathered here today to unite this man and this woman in holy matrimony.”

  Lacy peeked at Bennett. He winked at her. She smiled shyly into the pink roses and baby’s breath bouquet clutched in her hand.

  “Do you, Kermit Kahonachek, renewing your vows with your bride of seventy-five years, take this woman, Katrina Kahonachek, to be your lawfully wedded wife?”

  “I do!” Lacy’s great-grandfather’s voice rang out loud and clear as he gazed at the woman who’d been his lifelong soul mate.

  “And do you, Katrina, take this man, Kermit, to be your lawfully wedded husband, until death do you part?”

  Great-Gramma reached over and took her husband’s hand. “You bet I do. I’m not going another seventy-five years without him in my life.”

  “Then I now pronounce your vows renewed. Kermit, you may kiss your bride.”

  Lacy’s heart swelled with emotion as she watched her great-grandfather draw her great-grandmother to him and kiss her soundly on the lips. Pride, joy, happiness, and hope pressed against her chest.

  A cheer went up from the crowd.

  Lacy gazed at Bennett to find his eyes fixed on her face. Eyes brimming with love. Her breath ceased in that fine moment. She saw them together many years down the road with their own family clustered around them as they celebrated their own seventieth anniversary by renewing their wedding vows.

  “I’m ready to throw the bouquet,” Great-Gramma announced several minutes later. “All you single ladies gather around.” She winked at Lacy and nodded.

  Lacy’s unmarried cousins and sisters assembled in a clump along with CeeCee and Janet. They all grinned and waved.

  Great-Gramma turned her back to the crowd and launched the bouquet over her head.

  It spiraled into the air.

  A dozen pairs of arms reached upward, scrambling for the prize. Despite being disadvantaged by her small stature, Lacy was determined to grab that bouquet. She leaped up.

  Gotta catch it, gotta catch it.

  If anything, the thunderbolt had taught her a valuable lesson. Never take tradition lightly. Come hell or high water, she and Bennett were going to be the next ones married in this clan.

  Then, from the corner of her eye, she saw a streak of whi
te. Someone or something moving faster than greased lightning dashed forward.

  And snatched the bouquet.

  With a bleat of triumph, Frank Sinatra trotted away, the bouquet firmly between his teeth.

  The crowd roared with laughter.

  “Hey!” Lacy shouted. “You come back here! That’s my bouquet, you ornery critter.”

  Old Blue Eyes trotted faster, ribbon streams breaking loose from the bouquet and flying behind him.

  “Faint, you son of a billy goat.” Lacy fisted her taffeta bridesmaid gown in her hand to keep from tripping over the long skirt and launched herself after him.

  “Hang on, there.” Bennett took her elbow as she passed him.

  “Let go. I’m getting that bouquet one way or the other.”

  He peered at her, laughter illuminating his face. “You don’t need the bouquet, Lacy. Let Frank Sinatra have his lunch.”

  “But I want to be the next one married,” she insisted.

  “You will be.”

  She blinked at him. “Is this a commitment to a wedding date?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Oh?” She melted against him and placed a hand on his chest. “Do tell.”

  “A year from today. Same time, same place, same guest list, with a few additions.”

  “Like your parents?”

  “Yes.”

  “Will you be ready? Are you sure?”

  “Cupcake, I’ve been struck by the thunderbolt. As you well know, there’s no denying it. My residency will be finished. We can start looking for a place to set up my clinic. However, I do have one requirement.”

  “And what is that?” Lacy asked, gazing into the eyes of her intended.

  “Frank Sinatra is to be banned from our wedding.”

  “Or served up as cabrito pate.”

  “Either, or.” His grin widened. “Have I ever told you how beautiful you are?”

  “Not in the last five minutes.”

  “Or how much I love you?”

  “Hmm, you might have mentioned it.”

  “Well, it’s time to make sure you thoroughly understand.” He squeezed her tighter, and his eyes misted with unshed tears of joy. “Without you, Lacy Calder, nothing in my life has meaning. You’re the whipped cream on my strawberry shortcake; you’re the morning star in my sky; you’re the tomato plants on my balcony.”