Uncertainty flickered across her face and her eyes went dim. He could tell she didn’t entirely trust him and he couldn’t blame her. Not after what had happened last time.
“You could come with me,” he said. He was grasping at straws, anything to allay her fears. “We wouldn’t have to be gone long. A few days at most. I know you don’t like to be away from…here.”
She reached for him, her hands clutching at his arms as she looked up at him, her eyes so earnest. “I don’t like to be away from you, Rafe. You. Not here. Or there. Or anywhere.”
“Then come with me. I won’t lie to you, Bryony. I don’t know if I can fix this. All I can do is promise to try.”
She let her hands slide down to grip his, so tight that her knuckles went white. “I believe in you.”
He crushed her to him and buried his face in her hair. She made him want to be the man she was so convinced he already was.
“You’ll come with me?”
“Yes, Rafe. I’ll come with you.”
She pulled away and he laced their fingers together, holding their hands between them.
“No matter what happens, Bryony, I love you and I want this to work out between us. I need for you to trust in that.”
“I do trust you. You’ll fix this, Rafe. I know you will.”
He smiled then, feeling some of the anxiety lift away. He could breathe easier. The idea of expressing his feelings had given him a sense of uneasiness, but now that he’d done it, he realized it had been harder not to tell her what was in his heart even if his head still screamed that this was all wrong.
He’d spent a lifetime of listening to his head and being ultra-practical. Maybe it was time he threw a little caution to the wind and let his heart lead for once.
Eighteen
Bryony’s phone rang in the middle of the night. She pried herself from Rafael’s arms and reached blindly for the phone on her bedside table.
“Hello?”
“Bry, it’s Silas. You need to come to the hospital. It’s your grandmother.”
Bryony scrambled up, shaking the fuzz of sleep from her eyes. “Mamaw? What happened?”
“She had one of her spells. Blood sugar dropped. She called me and I couldn’t understand a word she was saying so I rushed over and took her to the hospital.”
Dear Lord, and she and Rafael had slept through it all.
“Why didn’t someone come over and tell me?” she demanded.
“There wasn’t a need to alarm you if it turned out to be nothing. I still think it’s nothing but the nurse insisted I contact you so you could come down and sign some paperwork. They just want the insurance stuff squared away. You know these damn hospitals. Always wanting their money,” Silas grumbled.
“Of course, I’ll be right there.”
Bryony hung up to see Rafael sitting up in bed, a look of concern on his face.
“Is Laura all right?”
Bryony grimaced. “I don’t know. She’s a diabetic and she doesn’t always take care of herself. Sometimes she doesn’t always take her insulin and at other times she doesn’t eat when she should. I never know if she’s in insulin shock or on the verge of diabetic coma.”
“I’ll go with you,” he said as he hurried from the bed.
Twenty minutes later, they strode into the small community hospital. Silas met them in the main hallway.
“How is she?” Bryony asked anxiously.
“Oh, you know your grandmother. She’s as mad as a wet hen at having to stay overnight. She didn’t even want to go to the hospital. I made her drink some orange juice at the house and she came right around but I thought she ought to be checked out anyway. She’s not speaking to me as a result.”
Bryony sighed. “Where is she now?”
“They moved her out of the emergency room to observation. They won’t release her until they know for sure they have someone to watch over her for the next twenty-four hours.”
“Take us to her,” Bryony said.
As Silas predicted, Mamaw was in a fit of temper and ready to go home. The doctor was attempting to lecture her on the importance of not missing a meal and Mamaw’s lips were stretched tight in irritation.
She brightened considerably when Bryony and Rafael walked through the door but glowered in Silas’s direction.
Bryony went to the bed and kissed her grandmother’s cheek. “Mamaw, you scared me.”
Mamaw rolled her eyes. “I’m fine. Any fool can see that. I’m ready to go home. Now that you’re here, they should let me go. They seem to think I need a babysitter for the next little while.”
“Glad to see you’re all right, Laura,” Rafael said as he bent to kiss her cheek.