Do Not Forsake Me(45)

“I’m all right now, Lloyd.” More kisses. “I understand.”

“I just thought…” He kissed her with a deep groan.

She grasped his face. “Lloyd, look at me.”

He hesitated, meeting her eyes.

“I understand.”

His eyes teared. “I ran off on Beth,” he told her, “never knowing she was carrying my son. And I ran off on my mother, my father, my sister…all at a time when they needed me most. I won’t ever do that again—not to them—and definitely not to you.”

“I know you won’t.”

He met her mouth again, then moved to kiss her ear, her neck. “Thank you for taking a chance with me, Katie.”

“You’re a good man, a good father, and a devoted son. I know you’ll be a good husband.”

He devoured her mouth once more, relishing the taste of her, the feel of her, fighting the lingering feeling that he was somehow cheating on Beth. She’d understand. She would want him to be happy, would want Stephen to have a mother. And he wanted to make Katie happy in return.

It was done now. He’d taken a wife and he’d do right by her. Maybe he didn’t love her the same as Beth, but he cared for her, and he knew it could become more. He would learn to put the past behind him, and he needed to stop thinking about today’s horror and tend to his new wife.

In moments his long johns and her nightgown were all the way off, and he was moving inside of her again, this time both of them wildly satisfying long-buried needs. This time was closer to purely physical, but he knew the rest would come…the union   of hearts…the burning touch of souls.

They had time.





Twelve


Evie quietly entered the house and approached the bedroom. It was the evening of the third day since the shooting, and during all her other visits, Jake had been unconscious. The bedroom door was open and she walked in to find Randy carefully shaving Jake.

“Mother, Brian says Daddy finally woke up.”

“Oh, he woke up, all right. I’m trying to convince him he has to lie flat for a good two weeks. I’m almost done shaving him. I was scared to death he’d lapse into some kind of fit and I’d accidentally slit his throat.”

“You’d be better off,” Jake joked lazily.

“I probably would,” Randy answered. “You have no idea how tempted I was to let this razor slip. I swear, Jake, sometimes you’re like a cur dog, friendly and eating out of someone’s hand one minute and biting that hand off the next. I should put you on a leash.”

Jake sighed and shifted, grimacing with pain as he did so. “Just so you come to my doghouse…once in a while.”

Randy set the razor on a table next to a pan and a cup of shaving soap. She took a wet towel from where she’d hung it over the brass rail of the bed and washed his face.

Evie loved watching the intimate moments between her mother and father, the rare moments when no one would ever think Jake Harkner could harm anyone.

“Daddy, I’ve been here several times, but you were never awake.” She stepped closer. “I’m so sorry. This is all my fault for not keeping track of Little Jake. You could have died.”

Jake rubbed at his forehead. “Evie, none of it was your fault.” He reached out. “Come over here. I’m so damned sorry for yelling at you like I did. I was hardly aware of anything except protecting Little Jake.”

“I know.”

Randy got up and carried the pan of water and shaving supplies out to the kitchen, leaving Evie alone with her father. Evie cautiously sat down on the edge of the bed, fighting tears. “Does it hurt bad?”

Jake grasped her hand. “Not all that bad. Your husband probably cut deeper than he needed to just to get back at me for the way I yelled at you. I swear Brian has a secret desire to slug me or something, so he takes it out on how he treats my wounds. Feels like I have about a hundred stitches in my leg.”

“Daddy, you know Brian wouldn’t do that.”

Jake managed a smile. “Well, I wouldn’t…blame him if he did.”

Evie studied his hand, solid, strong. His right hand had been partially crippled for a while…from hitting the prison wall over and over after a visit from Lloyd. That was when Lloyd thought he hated his father and had said cruel things to him before running off. Desperate at the thought that his son would take the wrong path, Jake had hit Lloyd in an attempt to stop him. He was so upset with himself for striking his son that he’d pounded the prison wall in frustration and self-loathing until he broke several bones in his hand. He’d worked with the hand ever since, managed to get it back to almost full use—certainly enough to draw and fire those famous guns.