“Just someone I met recently. He’s not important.” I see Jared’s jaw go a bit more rigid at my jab, but he says nothing. I paste a comforting smile on my face as I meet my niece’s worried look. “Why don’t you go back to the waiting room and read some more from your magazine?”
She frowns. “But you just said not to go where you can’t see me.”
“I know, and thank you for reminding me. I need just a minute with Jared, okay? I’ll be right behind you.”
“She’s cute,” Jared says as we both watch Katie skip back to the waiting room.
“She is,” I admit softly. “She looks just like my sister.”
“Your sister’s not here with you?”
“Jen’s dead. She died when Katie was two years old.” I level a flat stare at him and find him watching me with a soberness in his gaze.
“I’m sorry.”
I fold my arms over my chest. “Why are you here, Jared? If you’ve come to tell me I’m in breach of my contract with you, don’t bother. If my mom wasn’t in the hospital, I was going to tell you I want out of the agreement. I can’t be around you, Jared. After what happened at the studio on Friday, I won’t be around you anymore.”
“That’s more than understandable,” he says, no inflection in his voice. “I’m here now only because I wanted to make sure you were all right.”
“You didn’t have to do that. You shouldn’t have.”
“Probably not, but here I am.”
His stare is unnerving. Not for the usual reasons, the ones that send my heart into a gallop and make everything female in me unfurl with anticipation. No, right now his gaze knocks me off kilter because it’s full of compassion and concern. I swallow, feeling my outrage fizzle under the unexpected warmth of his caring regard.
“How are you holding up, Melanie?”
It’s the tenderness in his voice that unravels me the most. “I’m okay.”
“And your mom?”
“Better now, thank God. She collapsed after we came home from a day in the park yesterday. The surgeon put in two stents, one of them to clear an eighty-six percent blockage in the left anterior artery. He said that one’s the worst kind of blockage to have.”
Jared nods grimly. “The widow-maker.”
“That’s what Mom’s doctor called it. How do you know so much about heart issues?”
“My mother had similar problems. She wasn’t as lucky as yours. If the heart disease hadn’t killed her, the alcoholism and smoking eventually would have.”
He’s mentioned his family had hardships when he was young, including the financial mistakes of his father that cost the family their horse farm in Kentucky, but this is the first he’s shared any of the details of his past. Having come so close to losing my mother now, I can understand some of the pain he must have felt in losing his. “I’m sorry, Jared. I truly am.”
He grunts. “Ancient history.”
And yet the way he says it, the way the tenderness in his gaze seems to harden, tells me his history isn’t as ancient as he’d like me to believe.
“What’s the plan with your mom?” he asks, deftly attempting to shift my focus away from him. “How long are they keeping her here?”
“Another day or two for tests and follow-ups. I’m going to have my work cut out for me after she comes home. I swear, sometimes I feel like I’m raising two six-year-olds.”
“Your father’s not in the picture?”
“No. Just me.”
He nods, studying me in that way he has of cleaving through all of my defenses and protective walls. My simple answer gives away nothing of the trauma of my past, yet I sense him waiting for me to tell him more. I glance away, reminding myself that this is Jared Rush, the artist who thrives on dissecting people, peeling them apart to expose every vulnerability. I don’t want him to see mine, not now. Not here, in the middle of the hospital corridor.
“I should’ve seen this coming with her,” I admit under my breath. “I knew she looked tired yesterday. I knew her color wasn’t good. She had a heart attack last year. I should’ve known a blood clot was more than a possibility. I should’ve taken her to the emergency room myself as soon as I noticed how fatigued she looked—”
“Hey,” he says gently, as the words tumble out of me in rapid fire. His hand comes up between us but instead of touching me, he lets it slowly fall back down to his side.
“What about you?” he asks, his brows furrowed. “Have you gotten any sleep since yesterday? Gabe said you’ve been here the whole time.”
“I’m fine. I’m tired, but I’m fine. I shouldn’t have brought Katie with me, but I had no other choice.”
“What about Hathaway? He isn’t willing to help out?”
“I didn’t ask him to,” I murmur, unwilling to tell Jared that we broke up. I’ve got enough to deal with at the moment without seeing him gloat over my bad choices or the fact that he warned me not to put my trust—or my heart—in Daniel. “I should go look in on my niece.”
Jared nods solemnly. “Come on, I’ll walk you back to the waiting room.”
I know I should refuse. I don’t want his comforting any more than I want his charity. But my body is too exhausted to resist when he moves his hand to my back and lets it hover just above my spine, not touching me, yet offering a warm support—a soothing strength—I can’t deny.
We walk to the waiting room in silence, and while it should feel awkward, even uncomfortable, after the way we left things between us at his studio a few days ago, all I feel is gratitude for his presence. No, that’s not all. I feel a strange sense of calm, too.
God, I must be a fool.
Jared Rush should not be my safe harbor, yet right now, in this moment, that’s exactly what he feels like.
We arrive
