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“I know,” he said, grinning broadly. “Just call me your teddy bear. Everyone needs one. I will bring you hearty, strong, good-tasting soups for the next several weeks until you tell me to stop. Mace will thrive on them. We can also cook foryouif you would like?”
“No, I can cook. Jack’s letting me work from home, which is nice, so I can be there for Mace.”
“He needs you,” Alex agreed somberly. “He is a man who has been alone for too long, he has thick walls he has hidden behind for far too long. But you will draw him out because you love him. And he will respond, Sierra. You are the best medicine he could have whether he knows it or not right now.”
“I’m not so sure he loves me, Alex.” Sierra gave them a sorrowful look. “It’s the elephant in the room. Neither of us has said it to one another.” She pressed her hand against her aching heart. “I just feel so much pain, so much unsureness.”
Lauren nodded. “Listen, when Alex tried to get me to understand he loved me, I ran from him, Sierra. I was afraid of him for so many reasons. But he just kept being there for me in small, unthreatening ways. He was so patient with me.” She looked over at her husband, love in her eyes for him. “Alex just tolerated my snarly moods, my harshness toward him and just took it.”
“Because,” Alex said, reaching across Sierra to caress his wife’s cheek, “I loved you. I knew you were the woman I had been dreaming of all my life. You were the one.” He smiled a little. “And when I finally realized why you were frightened of me, why you did not want me around, then I loved you even more. Because I knew I could love you as you deserved.”
Lauren smiled softly at Alex. She looked at Sierra and held her tear-filled eyes. “Don’t give up on Mace. Just be there for him. Even if he pushes you away, or gets snarly, or withdraws, just be there for him. Alex can be your sounding board on this. He went through it with me.”
Sierra gave Alex a warm, grateful look. “I can use all the help I can get. I just feel like I’m on such thin ice with Mace. He’s so locked-up. He won’t talk to me. Won’t tell me what’s in his heart, how he really feels about me. I don’t know how to get him to talk with me, Alex.”
“It will take time,” he soothed, patting her shoulder. “And I will tell you, as bad as his foot is, he is not going anywhere for six months. He is pretty much housebound. So, you will have him beneath your roof for a long time. And once he gets used to you being in his life on a daily basis, he will know what he has, Sierra. He will know the good feelings, your care, your love in large and small ways. Over time, you will dissolve those walls he has built. And the person it will be hard on is you.” He patted her shoulder again. “But you have Lauren and I. We will be your witnesses. We will hold you when you want to cry. We will listen with our hearts. You will get through this. I know Mace might be locked up, but he is no fool. There is no man who can walk away from a woman he loves.”
Miserably, Sierra whispered, “I hope you’re right. I really do, Alex.”
Lauren stood. “Come on, you two. Let’s go home. Alex? You need to start making those fortifying soups for Mace. And I need to get a load of laundry in the washer.”
Sierra rose and threw her arms around Lauren. “Thank you,” she whispered. “For everything.”
Alex came over and smiled down at them. “It is a beautiful summer day. We need to celebrate the good of what has happened.” He rubbed his hands together and grinned. “Let us go home. I need to get that soup made for Mace. Borscht first. He needs all the iron from plants he can get so he can once more urge his body to build strong, healthy red blood cells.”
Sierra followed them to the bank of elevators across from the nurses’ desk. She paused, and then went over to thank the women behind it. They would be the ones caring for Mace. They knew she was his POA and seemed grateful when she gave them the two phone numbers she could be reached at if anything came up.
Outside, the sun was warm, the sky a deep blue with fluffy white clouds drifting across it above the city of Arlington. Hope filled her heart as she walked to the parking lot in back of the hospital. Mace was alive. He’d survived. Sierra was pretty sure she was still a bit in shock over the events that had tumbled wildly out of her control over the last five days.
Alex had his arm around his wife, kissing the top of her head. Sierra wanted so badly that Mace would have that same look of love in his face that Alex had in that moment for Lauren. They were so deeply in love with one another. Every time she saw them together, their love seemed even more profound than before. How Sierra wanted that same thing between Mace and herself.
But would he finally be honest with her? Would he let down, let her into his head? His thoughts? How he really felt toward her? Alex’s words and calm buoyed her. She knew that he and Lauren had also endured a long haul with one another. Yet, he’d allowed his love for her to fuel his patience long enough to wait until she could realize his true feelings.
Would Mace be able to do that? Or not?
CHAPTER 19
Sierra saw thediscomfort in Mace’s eyes as Cal Sinclaire ratchetted him in his wheelchair side to side up the steps to her cabin door. The June morning was warming up, the sky a pale blue above her as she waited patiently on the porch while Cal did the heavy lifting. He had visited Mace last week in the hospital, along with Sky. And today, because he was only slated to sit in on a mission planning at Shield Security later in the afternoon, Cal had volunteered to help her bring Mace out of the hospital. He’d stabilized enough and Sierra wasn’t sure who was happier about it: her or Mace. Over the last seven days he’d been getting more and more restless as his strength had begun to return. He’d turned grumpy and short with her, but she understood he’d felt like a caged jaguar in that sterile hospital room, unable to get out and stalk around.
Now, his foot had healed sufficiently to be put in a soft cast up to just below his knee. What he didn’t like at all was the fact he was going to have to rely on a walker for a vague number of weeks, depending upon how fast he healed. A man like him, a Special Forces operator, just did not want to be seen hobbling around with the help of a walker. Sierra was glad Alex would be coming by later today to check on Mace’s foot. She had been diligently schooled by a nurse on how to clean his foot three times daily, the main worry being that the open fang wounds would invite in bacteria or virus, either of which could gain a foothold and prove deadly to Mace.
For the last two days, she’d been the one cleaning out his wounds beneath the nurse’s guidance. She felt comfortable enough with the task but having Alex’s eyes on the wound once a day for the next week, made her feel some relief, too. She didn’t want to accidentally make Mace’s injury worse.
Stepping inside, Sierra pointed back to the right side of the hall where the guest bedroom was located. The room was fully decorated, although she had no curtains up on the two windows yet, wanting lace of some sort, but hadn’t had the time to look for just the right type. Luckily, they had venetian blinds over them. She carried Mace’s new walker which folded up nicely for transport. Her heart opened as she saw his reaction upon entering her cabin. Maybe a little bit of wonder? It was very mid-1800s. And she thought she sensed some appreciation in Mace’s roaming gaze as Cal wheeled him through the living room and down the hall.
Shutting the front door, Sierra put her purse and car keys on a desk nearby. She took off her baseball cap and hung it on a wooden peg above. Taking off her lightweight denim jacket, she smoothed out the sleeveless red muscle shirt she wore beneath. Jeans clad her legs. They were the daily wardrobe in the house because she was still doing so much work outside, getting the garden fence installed.
Walking into the guest bedroom, she watched as Mace hobbled out of the wheelchair on his good foot, keeping the other one in the air as he sat down on the edge of the queen-sized bed. Cal pushed the lightweight wheelchair over to an empty corner.
“Here’s your new wheels,” Sierra said, opening the walker and placing it where Mace could get a hold of it.
“Thanks,” Mace grumped, glaring over at the wheelchair. “If I don’t ever have to use that thing in the corner again, I’ll be happy.”
Cal Sinclaire wandered over, nodding. “Yeah, kinda hurts an operator’s feelings to be reduced to a set of wheels and not his own two feet.” He touched Mace on the shoulder of his dark blue t-shirt. “Give yourself some slack and keep pampering that foot. You’ll get mobile sooner if you do, partner.”
Sierra came over, bringing several pillows with her, placing a couple so that Mace could lean comfortably against the headboard, and sliding two more in beneath his knees. She stacked the last two at the end of the bed where he could prop up the injured foot so that it wasn’t resting lower than his heart. Gravity always drew bodily fluids to the lowest point. Unless his foot were elevated, his blood would pool in it and it would swell up once more and Mace would go back through a hell of throbbing pain as a result. Getting the foot propped up was important. “Feel like resting a bit?” she asked him, keeping her voice light.
“Not really,” Mace said, looking around. “I need to move.”
