Page 94 of All I Need (Hearts of the South)
“Jim’s not the only one who’s lucky as hell.”
They took their makeshift dinner into the living area. Clark asked a handful of questions about Stringham’s arrest, and Emmett answered while he polished off a pair of sandwiches. After setting his empty plate aside, Emmett yawned and rested his head against the sofa. Savannah rubbed above his knee, thankful for his warm presence next to her.
“Someone’s ready for a bedtime story.” Clark stretched out his legs. “Tell us about the beauty queen and the surgeon, Mills. That has to be a fairy tale.”
“Excuse me?”
“Your mom and dad. There’s a story there, right?”
“Um, yeah.” She never knew what to expect with this guy.
“Tell us.” Clark lifted his beer. “You need practice for that baby of Bennett’s, right?”
“You might as well tell him the story.” Next to her, tension slowly seeped from Emmett’s body. A smile played about his mouth. “He’ll just keep nagging until you do.”
She lifted a hand and let it fall against her thigh. “Okay, so my mom was a music major at—”
“You suck at storytelling. Whatever happened to ‘once upon a time’?”
“My God, you’re obnoxious, Dempsey.” She shook her head and started over. “Once upon a time, there was a very smart boy who grew up very poor in a small Florida town. He joined the military so he could go to college and became an Air Force doctor.”
“There you go.” Clark smiled and relaxed into his chair. “This story has a dragon, right?”
“Sure. It’s called the Vietnam War, where the Air Force sent him in 1970.” She nestled deeper into Emmett’s side. “One day, a young airman was brought to him, and although he did everything he could, the surgeon couldn’t save him. In the young man’s wallet was a photo of a beautiful pageant princess, with her name and address on the back.”
Emmett’s eyes drifted closed, although she could tell he was listening. Muted music wafted around them. She stroked her fingers across his thigh, and tightened muscles loosened under her touch.
“Although the surgeon often found it difficult to connect to people around him, he felt badly about the pageant princess being without her young airman. He wrote her a letter of condolence, and to his surprise, many weeks later, he received a reply. They exchanged letters for the two years he stayed in Vietnam. He discovered she studied music, one of his great loves, although he didn’t have any musical talent. When he came home, he traveled to meet her. There was no one left of his own family, and he really had nowhere else to go.”
“Was she happy to see him?” Emmett murmured, a sleepy note in his tenor.
“To her surprise, she was. She’d mourned her airman deeply, but she was thrilled when the surgeon came to visit her. You see, although he was very brilliant, he could be very awkward with people, but over all those letters, they’d forged a friendship and found many common interests. Thus, she could see past the awkwardness that so many others perceived as distant and cold.” She dropped the fairy-tale tone. “They were married less than two weeks later.”
“And they lived happily ever after?” Clark sipped at his beer.
“For almost forty years, they have.” Savannah shrugged. “She gets him, so the things that drive other people nuts, like his extreme need for structure and order, don’t bother her. He has etiquette issues too, because he didn’t have any with his background. I’m pretty sure he memorized Emily Post, and he’s stickler about all of us following the rules of good manners.”
“That’s why you freaked out about falling asleep on the couch after the christening.” Emmett sounded half-asleep. The drowsy words rumbled through her. “It wasn’t about you—it was about him. You didn’t want him upset.”
“Yes.” She caressed his knee again. “He can handle the unpredictability of the OR and the hospital setting, but things being out of order at home distress him. His childhood was chaotic, so we have this unspoken pact to keep things smooth around the house.”
Clark snorted. “Why am I surprised that you have a hidden soft spot?”
“Shut up.” She tossed a throw pillow in his direction. He deflected it with one hand and chuckled.
A quiet snore vibrated in Emmett’s throat before his body tensed and his eyes snapped open. Stress sang in him a moment, then he relaxed next to her.
Clark slid to the edge of the chair and rose. “I’m going home. You need to get some rest.”
Once he was gone, Savannah urged Emmett toward the bedroom. “Go lie down, but we need to ice that and put the compression bandage back on before you go to sleep for real. I’ll be right there.”
She prepared a couple of ice packs from gallon storage bags, ice, and rubbing alcohol. In the bedroom, she found Emmett lying facedown on the bed, arms wrapped around a pillow. She laid a towel across his back and topped it with the ice packs. She massaged the sloping muscles in his lower back. “I hate to tell you this, but you will be awfully sore tomorrow.”
“Already am,” he mumbled, turning his head to look at her. She kissed his shoulder, then the side of his neck, and drew back to find his gaze on her face.
The gentle quality in his expression warmed her. She sifted her hand through his hair. “What?”
He didn’t smile. “Nothing.”
