But she wasn’t. Her color was off, her breathing coming too shallow and too fast, and, given the grimace on her face, she knew it, too. “Damn it,” she said, sagging back. “Damn it. I’m not going.” But she said this much weaker than before. “I’m not. You can’t make me.”
“Phyllis.” Zach stroked back her gray hair as he leaned on the gurney to look into her eyes. “You do this for me and I’ll take care of Cecile. Okay?”
“You’ll take care of her?”
“I promise.”
Phyllis covered her mouth with a shaking hand and nodded. “Your mother would be so proud of you. I hope you know that.”
He squeezed her hand. “Just get better.” He gestured to Dustin and Aidan, and they carried her out of the bedroom, navigating down the tight, cramped hallway.
Zach looked around Phyllis’s room with an unreadable expression. Then, with a sigh, he grabbed the unhappy cat and tucked her into the crook of his arm. Turning to leave, he found Brooke watching him.
As it had since the beginning, their odd connection caused a spark to pinball off her insides, from one erotic zone to another, and all the ones in between-but this wasn’t about their crazy physical attraction. Standing there, looking at him, she suddenly knew. It didn’t matter that she’d told herself she wouldn’t get her heart involved.
It already was.
“You okay?” she whispered.
“Yeah. It’s just that she-” Shutting his mouth, he shook his head. Brooke moved closer and put her hand on his arm.
Something went between them at the touch. Not the usual heat but something much, much more.
Yeah, her heart was involved. Big-time.
Phyllis resisted getting into the ambulance. She wanted to stay home, she wanted her cat, she wanted everyone to get the hell away from her. She even tried a diversion technique.
“There was a man in my yard,” she claimed suddenly as they loaded her inside the rig. “Did you see him? He was holding something.”
“Phyllis,” Dustin said gently. “You’re going to the hospital. If not for me and Brooke, then for yourself.”
“I recognize his face, I just can’t quite place him…”
“It’s going to be okay.” Brooke sat with her and held her hand. “You’re going to be okay. We’re just going to the hospital so your doctor can check on you-”
Phyllis shook her head, her eyes cloudy as she struggled to get up. “You people are idiots.”
Brooke sighed. “You promised Zach you’d do this, remember?”
The old lady closed her eyes. “Zachie.”
“Yes. He gave you his word that he’d take care of Cecile. And you gave him yours that you’d go get checked out.”
Phyllis’s mouth tightened, but she stopped fighting at least. Zach’s name had calmed her down.
Brooke had a feeling Zach had that control over every woman in his life, whether he realized it or not.
“There really was a man in my yard with a blowtorch, or something like one,” Phyllis grumbled, sounding more like her old self.
In the back of the unit as she was, Brooke couldn’t see out. She met Dustin’s eyes in the rearview mirror and he shook his head. He didn’t see a man.
Brooke squeezed Phyllis’s hand.
The older woman held on with surprising strength as she looked into Brooke’s eyes, her own filled with grief and fear. “I really want to stay home.”
“You’ll go back soon.”
“Promise?”
She was so scared. Brooke’s throat tightened, burned. If there was one thing she never quite got used to, it was the helplessness she felt over the things she couldn’t make better. “Yes,” she whispered. “I promise.”
After dropping Phyllis off in the ambulance bay of the E.R., Brooke and Dustin were called to another transport. The minute they were free again, Brooke tracked down a nurse to find out what she could about Phyllis’s condition.
The nurse pulled her chart. “She’s in renal and heart failure.”
Brooke’s brain refused to process that. “What?”
“Yes, the doctor was just with her.”
“Oh my God.”
“It’s been happening for quite a while. Apparently the patient has actually known for months. She’ll be staying a while this time.”
“But-I promised her she’d be back home soon.”
The nurse frowned at her over the chart. “It’s not your job to make promises of any kind.”
“I…” Brooke knew that, so she had no idea why she’d done so. “I didn’t know about her condition.”
“Of course not, because you’re not her doctor.” The nurse looked down her nose at Brooke, reigning supreme. “Do yourself and your future patients a favor and don’t make rash promises. Don’t make any promises.” Spinning on her heels, she walked away.
Brooke staggered to a chair and let her weak legs sink until she was sitting. Renal and heart failure…
“Rough day?”
She looked up at Zach, in full firefighter gear and looking a little worse for wear himself. “Yeah. Rough day.” Damn it, she could barely speak past the huge lump in her throat. “But not as rough as Phyllis’s.”
“So you know.”
When she nodded miserably, he sighed and crouched in front of her. He was in her space but in a very lovely way, his big body sort of curled around her protectively, his eyes easy and calm and full of something she hadn’t known was missing in her life.
Simple and true affection.
“I’ve got Cecile at the firehouse,” he said. “Happily scratching the furniture and terrorizing the crew.”
He’d made a promise and had followed through. For some reason, that got to her. “Zach. I screwed up.”
“We all do.”
“I promised Phyllis she could go home soon. But-” Her voice cracked and she stopped talking. Had to stop talking because she couldn’t stand the thought of breaking a promise. Her past was a virtual wasteland of promises broken by her mother, and she’d made it a rule to never, ever do the same thing.
Zach let out a long breath, then reached for her hand.
“Now’s probably not a good time to be nice to me,” she managed. Damn it, she hated this. Hated that she’d failed, much less failed a woman she cared about. “When I’m near a breakdown and someone’s nice, I tend to lose it.”
“You should know I’m not so good with tears.”
She pulled her hand free and closed her eyes. “Well, then, you’re not going to like what’s coming next.” Eyes still shut, she felt him shift his weight. When he didn’t speak, she figured that he’d left her by herself, which was definitely for the best. With a sigh, she opened her eyes, prepared to be alone.
As she always had been.
But to Brooke’s shock, he’d never left her side.
Chapter 11
