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He shouldn’t have been in a position of realizing.
She was his partner, his friend, his colleague. He’d had sex with her. Now what? What would she expect of him? She’d acted as if sex between them was no big deal, but he’d seen the hurt in her eyes, felt that hurt rip into his gut. What did that mean? What did he want it to mean?
What he wanted to do was go back to the point where she’d asked him to come with her this weekend and take his answer back. Surely he could have come up with a few thousand reasons why he couldn’t go to Alabama this weekend?
Darby honked the horn at the car in front of them. Despite the solid yellow line, she swerved into the other lane to pass the car.
He braced himself by holding onto the dashboard. “You’re not going to do anyone any good if you run off the road.”
“I’m not going to run off the road.” She didn’t bother looking at him, just continued to fly down the highway.
He stared at her pale features, fighting the need to reach out and touch her, to offer comfort. “You’re trembling.”
“So?” she asked, leaving part of his tires on the pavement when she rounded the turn to take them up the long drive to her parents’ farm.
So he wanted to comfort her. But knew he wouldn’t. After last night, this morning, he needed to put distance between them, to steadfastly work on restoring their former relationship.
Maybe if they cooled things down, pretended nothing had happened, eventually they’d get back to where they’d been, back to what Blake knew had been the happiest time of his life. Why had he ruined everything by taking her to bed?
Last night had been amazing, the best sex of his life, but no sex was worth losing Darby. Deep in his gut, he knew he’d lose her before all was said and done, and he wanted to howl in frustration at his stupidity.
The SUV came to a jarring stop as Darby braked hard in front of the house. Without waiting for him, she jumped out of the vehicle and ran up the steps, across the wide porch, and into the house.
Blake got out, opened the rear of the SUV, and pulled a black doctor’s bag from beneath the back seat.
What met him when he entered the house had his heart dropping to the soles of his shoes.
Nellie Phillips lay on the living room floor, her family huddled around her. Darby was straddling her, doing CPR on her chest, tears streaming down her ashen cheeks.
Oh, hell.
Please don’t die, Momma. Please don’t die.
Darby begged over and over as she used all her strength to compress her mother’s chest, as she blew life-saving breath into her mother’s mouth.
Vaguely, she was aware of Blake dropping down next to her, rummaging in his bag, and withdrawing a syringe to inject her mother with adrenaline.
“Let me do the compressions.”
Although her arms had turned to jelly she didn’t stop, couldn’t break her rhythm.
Don’t die, Momma. I’m here.
She couldn’t stop for even the briefest of seconds to let him take over. But when she bent to give her mother a breath Blake replaced her hands with his, compressing her mother’s chest.
Wanting to collapse from the mental and physical strain, Darby gave her mother a breath every fifth compression Blake made.
As if in a dream, she heard her brothers talking, heard Rosy crying, heard her father’s fearful voice. Her gaze went to Blake, watched him compress her mother’s chest, his muscles flexing with each attempt to restart her mother’s heart.
In a haze, she breathed into her mother’s lifeless mouth. Praying. Wanting to cry. Wanting to be the daughter. Not the doctor trying to save a life.
Breathe, Momma, please breathe.
“See how far away the emergency services are,” Blake ordered. “Tell them we need them here stat. We need a damned defibrillator.”
“They’ve sent a helicopter,” Jim said, holding a crying Rosy to his side even as he talked into his cellula
r phone.
