The Thunderbolt Read online

  “Lacy, it’s Mama.”

  Immediately her heart sank. Mama never called after nine o’clock at night. Something must be wrong.

  “What is it?” Lacy asked, instantly alert. She placed her palm on the arm of the sofa to brace herself.

  “Honey, I’ve got some bad news.”

  She felt the color drain from her face and suddenly tasted her own fear. “What?”

  “It’s Great-Gramma Kahonachek.”

  Lacy’s hands trembled uncontrollably, and she almost dropped the phone. “What’s wrong?”

  “We were up late tending to last-minute details for our booth at the farm exposition when your great-grandmother started having another spell with her heart like she did last spring. She’s asking for you. Can you come home right away?”

  “I’ll be right there,” Lacy said.

  Instantly, her nurse’s objectivity kicked in. The family needed her expertise. She switched off the phone and started to bring her feet up, but the pain in her ankle stopped her instantly.

  “Something’s wrong. You’re pale as a ghost.” Bennett took her hand. “And you’re ice cold. What’s happened?”

  “It’s my great-gramma. She’s having chest pains.”

  “A heart attack?”

  Lacy shook her head. “I don’t know. She’s ninety-two and she takes nitroglycerin tablets for angina. Bennett, she’s asking for me.”

  The look of concern on his face was so touching that Lacy burst into tears. He gathered her to his chest and allowed her to sob. She soaked his shirt, but he didn’t seem to care.

  “I lo-love her so much,” Lacy stammered when she was finally controlled enough to speak.

  “I understand.” He squeezed her hand and hugged her tighter. After what he’d told her about his grandmother, she knew that he did truly understand.

  “I’ve got to go home. Right away.”

  “Where is home?”

  “West, Texas.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “About three hours north.”

  “You can’t drive.” He shook his head. “Not with that ankle.”

  She worried her lip with her teeth. “The closest airport to West is in Waco, almost thirty miles away. I probably won’t even be able to get a flight out before mid-morning.”

  “I’ll drive you.”

  His offer touched her more deeply than she could express. “But I looked at the call sheet before I left work, and I thought you were on call for the transplant team in case a heart comes in for your patient, Mr. Marshall.”

  “I’m on backup call, and the chances of getting called in are slim. Besides, I can hop a plane back here if necessary. What is it? A thirty-minute flight?”

  Lacy nodded.

  “I’ll call Laramie and tell him what’s going on.”

  “If you’re certain.” She hated to put him to any trouble, but without him, she couldn’t get to West before noon, and Great-Gramma needed her now.

  “Consider me your personal chauffeur.”

  Three hours later, Bennett guided Lacy’s Toyota toward West, Texas. When Lacy told him that her great-grandmother was suffering chest pains, one thought held his mind—help Lacy get home as soon as possible.

  He remembered his own nanna and how grief-stricken he’d been when she had died. The thought of what Lacy was going through prompted Bennett to drive her.

  But the farther they traveled, the more he questioned the wisdom of his impulsive offer. Not that he minded going with Lacy. Not in the least.

  The fact of the matter was, Bennett had a knack for rallying in a crisis. His calm head in the face of adversity had earned him the nickname Dr. Cool at Boston General.

  No, what bothered him was the instant closeness he felt to Lacy. Sharing a tragedy could create a special bond between two people. An unintentional sense of connection.

  If he wasn’t careful, he could get sucked into the emotionalism of the moment, and he might start believing the strange tugging in the general region of his heart had more to do with Lacy and not the situation at hand.

  He had called Dr. Laramie and cleared his absence with the chief surgeon who’d taken him off the back up call list, but still, he would try his best to return to Houston if Mr. Marshall was fortunate enough to get a heart.

  Outside, the moon had slipped behind a covering of clouds, leaving the highway bathed in darkness illuminated only by their headlights. At four thirty in the morning, there weren’t many cars on the road. Bennett’s window was cracked half an inch, and the earthy smell of fresh loam seeped inside the car.

  As they’d driven, Lacy chattered anxiously, telling him that she’d been raised on a farm in West, a predominantly Czech community, and that most of her family still lived there.

  Her grandfather, father, and brothers were farmers, she’d said. Her mother and sisters ran a general store in downtown West and her great-grandmother Kahonachek ruled the roost.

  He sent a quick glance in Lacy’s direction. His emotions were in a peculiar scramble. He felt confused, worried, and worst of all, desperately attached to this woman. She lay against the headrest, her hair spilling over the seat in a golden cascade.

  Bennett’s fingers itched to glide through those silken threads, and the urge to inhale the flowery fragrance of her hair overwhelmed him. Did she have any idea how beautiful she was? Did she possess a single clue how sharply his body responded to hers?

  Before they had left her apartment, he had helped her pull a casual floral jumper the color of banana custard over the Cinderella-pink satin teddy. The playful outfit suited her much better than the racy dress she had worn to the Recovery Room, making her appear softer, more inviting, more fun.

  He’d also wrapped her swollen ankle, cradling that delicate foot in the palm of his hand had almost been his undoing. He’d had the strangest urge to plant kisses all the way up that shapely leg to her thigh and beyond.

  Now, every time he glanced over to check on that sexy little foot, he saw her cute toenails painted a provocative pink peeking over the bandage at him, reminding him of that moment in her apartment.

  Her eyes were closed, but Bennett knew she wasn’t asleep. Lacy rested, taking long, slow, deep breaths, fortifying herself for what lay ahead. Mesmerized, he watched the rise and fall of her well-rounded breasts, then realized his own breath was coming in short, ragged spurts.

  Compelled to comfort her, Bennett reached over and gently patted Lacy’s hand. The touch was like an electrical shock—intense, energized, startling. It was all he could do to keep from sucking in his breath.

  Her eyes fluttered open. “Thank you for driving me,” she murmured, her downy voice breaking the silence that had endured for the past several minutes.

  “What are friends for?” he asked.

  “Is that what we are?” Her tone teased, but the look in her eyes was serious. “I thought we were just co-workers.”

  Bennett didn’t reply. They were just co-workers. They hadn’t known each other long enough to become friends, although not seven hours ago he’d seriously been considering becoming her lover.

  He was very glad they hadn’t done anything more than kiss. Sexual relationships had a way of escalating in the flare of a crisis, even if neither party was looking to get deeply involved. The drama of sudden illness spotlighted the tenuous link between life and death and sometimes led to impulsive actions. At least, in his mind.

  “You’re certainly acting like a friend,” Lacy added.

  Friends. That was good, wasn’t it? Far better to settle for friendship than to make love to her and leave in a week. Long distance relationships just didn’t work. Been there, had the losses to prove it.

  His common sense knew it was true, but his anatomy balked. His body wanted hers the way it carved water, food and oxygen. But sexual need and love were two very different things.

  “How much farther?” he asked, hoping to distract himself.

  “Almost there.” Lacy sat up straighter and stared out
the window. “Follow the main road until you come to the third traffic light. Then go three miles out of town. Our farm is on the right.”

  They would be arriving at the house soon, and he’d be meeting Lacy’s family. Bennett winced at the full impact of what he’d gotten himself into. A total stranger amidst a close-knit group. What would her parents make of him and his relationship to their daughter? Did Lacy bring men home often? Were they accustomed to boyfriends popping in and out of her life?

  Damn. This was going to be awkward.

  When he had started out last evening with Grant Tennison, Bennett had wanted nothing more than to relax, have fun, and reduce stress.

  How, then, had he ended up in rural Texas town, escorting a young woman he couldn’t quite figure out? Lacy Calder was a paradox.

  “This is it,” she said.

  Bennett turned down the graveled driveway leading to an apple-butter-yellow, two-story frame farmhouse with a big wraparound porch. A bevy of cars were scattered across the lawn. Lots of family had shown up for the emergency, he guessed. Pink fingers of dawn reddened the eastern horizon.

  He pulled to a stop beside a weathered pickup truck stocked with farming supplies and Lacy unbuckled her seat belt and opened her door.

  “Hang tight until I can get over there to help you.”

  He got out and from the corner of his eye noticed a clot of people forming on the front porch. Trying his best not to let the audience unnerve him, Bennett scurried to the passenger side.

  “If you give me your arm, I think I can hobble up the steps,” Lacy said.

  “I’m carrying you,” Bennett insisted. “I’m the doctor, so don’t argue.”

  “Yes, sir.” She grinned.

  His heart lurched. What was it about her smile that affected him more strongly than the high of completing a successful heart operation? The notion that a woman’s smile could be as fulfilling as his career was a new and startling concept.

  Cautiously, he maneuvered her free of the car seat, hoisted her high against his chest, and started up the walkway to the house.

  Amid cheers and applause, he stepped onto the porch, packed with what he could only assume were Lacy’s numerous relatives. Over two dozen people were talking at once, flinging rapid-fire questions at them. Before he could put Lacy down, Bennett found himself introduced to brothers, father, mother, sisters, grandparents, cousins, aunts, uncles and neighbors.

  The crowd ushered them into the house.

  Dazed, Bennett merely nodded to everything. He, an only child, had never experienced the like. He remembered Nanna’s deathbed vigil, with only him, his father and the medical staff in attendance. So different from this supportive gathering.

  “Everyone, hold on,” Lacy laughed, making the time-out sign with the fingertips of one hand pressed into the palm of the other hand. “Time-out. How’s Great-Gramma?”

  “She’s in bed, resting,” Lacy’s mother answered.

  She was a very attractive woman, no taller than Lacy, with short blond hair barely turning gray at the temples and a welcoming smile. She’d asked Bennett to call her Geneva and gently kissed his cheek. In another twenty years, Lacy would look like her.

  “Wait, what? Why didn’t you take her to the hospital?” Lacy demanded.

  “She refused to go,” said Great-Grandpa Kahonachek as he popped his suspenders with workworn thumbs “She wanted us to go ahead with the farm expo. You know how stubborn my Katrina can be.”

  The whole clan bobbed their heads in agreement.

  “She insisted she’d be fine as soon as Lacy got here,” Geneva Calder said.

  “I’ll talk to her.” Lacy nodded. “You can put me down now, Bennett.”

  “I’ll take you in to see her,” Bennett said, not terribly keen to be left alone with complete strangers. While they seemed friendly enough, they were eyeing him as if he was an exotic zoo animal.

  Lacy must have sensed his uneasiness because she didn’t argue, thank God.

  “Okay. Up the stairs, down the first hall.” She pointed to the stairway ahead.

  Bennett carted her to her great-grandmother’s room, careful to turn and step sideways down the hallway so as not to bump Lacy’s ankle. Her head rested just below his chin and he could smell her sweet perfume.

  For no good reason whatsoever, his chest tightened, thick with an unnamed emotion. He wasn’t comfortable with this intimacy, and yet she felt so good in his arms, he never wanted to set her down.

  He looked down at her.

  Lacy stared up at him as if he were a gallant knight who’d slain a hundred dragons on her behalf. Her admiration both unnerved him and filled him with an odd sense of pride. No woman had ever looked at him in quite that way.

  As if he was the most special person in the world.

  What was he thinking? Bennett ripped his gaze from her face and stared at the door standing open a crack.

  In unison, Bennett and Lacy peeked inside.

  A bright-eyed elderly lady sat propped up in bed, a cat-that-chowed-down-on-Tweety-bird expression on her face. She looked quite healthy for someone suffering from an attack of acute angina and not unlike a queen holding court.

  “Drahy,” she exclaimed and motioned them forward. “Come in, come in.”

  “Drahy?” Bennett murmured under his breath.

  “It means ‘dear one’ in Czech,” Lacy whispered. “She calls us all that, so she doesn’t have to remember names.”

  “Good ploy considering the amount of progeny she’s produced.”

  “Seven children, twenty-five grandchildren, forty-two great-grandchildren. But I’m her favorite.”

  “I can see why,” he whispered, his breath fanning the teeny hairs around her ears.

  Lacy turned her head and flashed him a smile.

  “Don’t stand there whispering. Bring your young man over here.”

  Bennett walked across the room and deposited Lacy on the edge of the bed beside her great-grandmother. This wizened matriarch had mistaken him for Lacy’s boyfriend, but correcting her felt awkward, so he said nothing.

  The elderly woman picked up a pair of glasses resting on the bed next to her and put them on. She eyed Bennett speculatively, then looked at Lacy.

  “Yes,” was all she said.

  Lacy seemed to understand the code, for she nodded in return, then introduced him.

  “Very nice to meet you,” Great-Gramma said. “You’re good to my Lacy, no?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Bennett reverted to the old-school manners Nanna had taught him to use when addressing his elders.

  Lacy reached out and took the elderly lady’s hand in hers. “How are you, Great-Gramma?”

  The woman pressed a dramatic hand to her chest. “Not so good at first, but I’m much better now.”

  “Why don’t you let us take you to the hospital?” Lacy asked.

  “No reason for a hospital. You’re here. You can help me. You and your young man.”

  “Mrs. Kahonachek,” Bennett said, “I’d advise you to seek professional advice.”

  “But you’re a doctor, no? And Lacy is a nurse. That is professional.”

  “Well, yes, ma’am, but we don’t have the equipment here to examine you properly or to make a correct diagnosis.”

  The woman’s color was good, her respirations were even, and her droll smile mischievous. Bennett was beginning to suspect she’d experienced nothing worse than a bad case of indigestion. His own nanna had been known to exaggerate her symptoms when she wanted extra attention.

  Still, with a heart patient one should never assume anything, and he wasn’t doing to let down his guard.

  “I’ll get my medical kit from the car,” he said. “And be right back to examine you.”

  “That would be good.” She nodded.

  “Be right back.” Bennett hurried from the house, relieved that Lacy’s great-grandmother appeared not to be seriously ill.

  “Oh, drahy.” Great-Gramma squeezed Lacy’s hand once Bennett had gone. �
��Your thunderbolt is so handsome.”

  “He is cute, isn’t he?”

  “I knew for sure if he drove you to see me if I was sick that he was the one.”

  “You’re faking?”

  Great-Gramma cocked her head and placed a palm over her heart. “Not faking…exaggerating.”

  “Great-Gramma! We drove three hours. He was on call and had to arrange for someone else to take his spot on the roster in case something happened.”

  “All for you.” Great-Gramma gave a romantic sigh. “And he even carried you with your poor hurt ankle. What a hero!”

  “Don’t worry about my ankle. Tell me more about your chest pain. Even if you are exaggerating, at your age it could be serious.”

  Great-Gramma made a wry face. “If I tell you something, will you promise not to get mad?”

  Lacy studied her great-grandmother’s face, and a sinking feeling hit the pit of her stomach. She narrowed her eyes. “What did you do?”

  Great-Gramma looked to the door. “I’m not really having chest pains,” she whispered. “I just need to burp.”

  “What? That’s not exaggerating, that’s lying!”

  “Shh. A little white lie. Nobody knows but your grandmother Nony.”

  “But why would you fib?” Lacy laid a hand over her own heart. “You scared me to death.”

  “I’m sorry about that. It was a necessary lie. You told me the thunderbolt was going to walk out of your life forever and I couldn’t very well let that happen, could I?”

  “So you pretended to have chest pain?” Lacy sank her hands on her hips. “I’m not pleased with you right now.

  “He won’t leave you after this. You are in his blood, drahy. I can see it in his eyes.”

  “This isn’t right, Great-Gramma, and you know it. If Bennett doesn’t fall in love with me on his own, you can’t force him.”

  “Pah. No one is forcing him to do anything. We’re just getting him in position for the thunderbolt to smack him too.”

  Lacy stared at her great-grandmother in disbelief. “For years you’ve been telling me that the thunderbolt cannot be denied. That it is infallible.”

  “It is.”

  “This doesn’t sound infallible to me. In fact, this is beginning to feel more and more like unrequited love on my part and manipulation on your end.”