Her skin was soft and warm and soothingly familiar. Oh, how he’d missed her!
Before he could say a word, before he could do anything but entwine his fingers with hers, she flung herself against him and buried her face in his shoulder.
His crutch clattered to the concrete and his ribs protested, but having her in his arms where she belonged was worth the pain. When his plane had landed and Leah hadn’t been standing with Jack’s and Theresa’s elated families on the tarmac, he’d been so afraid … but this was the response he’d dreamed of and hoped for every night they’d been lost in the jungle.
The coldness of despair, the survivor’s guilt, and the soul-racking regret that he’d labored under for weeks now began to diminish until he slowly felt warm from the inside out.
His wife’s fresh, clean scent filled his nostrils and reminded him of how desperately he needed soap and water. If he’d been thinking properly, he might have asked Sheldon to detour to his corporate offices where he could have made use of the executive washroom, but he’d been too eager to see Leah to consider it. Quite frankly, though, with his stiff shoulder and the slow-healing gash on his leg, he wasn’t sure he could manage the feat on his own, anyway.
He gripped her with his good arm, feeling her slight frame shake beneath his hand. As her tears soaked his shirt, his throat tightened and his eyes burned with more emotion than he could begin to describe.
“Oh, honey. Don’t cry,” he said hoarsely, relieved by her reception and grateful the paramedics and ER staff were giving them a few minutes before they whisked him away.
“I’m not,” she sniffed, swiping at the moisture on her cheeks as she stared at him. “Oh, Gabe. I can’t believe it.”
As he gazed at her, one thought ran through his mind. She was beautiful—more beautiful than the picture he’d slipped out of his wallet and stuck in his shirt pocket shortly after they’d crashed. The photo was now dog-eared and a little dirty, but her image had given him the incentive to keep going when he’d sworn he couldn’t hobble another step.
“I can’t quite believe it, either,” he said ruefully. As far as he was concerned, this was a dream come true. A bona fide miracle.
More importantly, it was a miracle he wasn’t going to let slip through his fingers.
“What happened?” she asked.
“It’s a long story.” Rather than dwell on that fateful day and the events leading up to it, he drank in everything about her, from her acorn-colored hair and eyes that reminded him of the Grand Canyon’s various shades of brown to her retroussé nose and sensual mouth. She’d lost weight, too, if his hands hadn’t deceived him.
The paramedic stepped close to interrupt. “I don’t mean to cut short your reunion, Dr. Montgomery, but let’s get you inside before you fall.”
Whether she suddenly realized how heavily he was leaning against her or the paramedic’s statement had reminded her of his injuries, his prim and proper wife—and she still was his wife, even if they’d lived apart for the last twelve months—unwrapped herself from him and took his good arm. Although he missed her embrace, he was glad she hadn’t completely turned him loose. Granted, she’d fallen back into nurse mode, but he wanted to believe she needed the contact as much as he did to reassure herself that he was, indeed, alive and well.
Maybe not “well”, he corrected as he lowered himself into a hastily provided wheelchair, but his aches and pains now seemed inconsequential. For the past month he’d fought his fears of failure—fears that the feelings she’d once had for him were gone—but he took heart that she hadn’t rejected him. In the nightmares that had often startled him awake, he’d dreamt she’d take one look at him and walk away. Thankfully, none of those painfully vivid dreams had come true.
They still had issues to resolve but he was cautiously optimistic about success. If he played his cards right—and he intended to because he’d had a month to plan a strategy—there wouldn’t be any more talk of a divorce. Fate had given him a second chance to correct his mistakes and undo the past. He would not fail.
Leah wanted to ask a hundred questions, but Gabe’s slumped shoulders as she walked beside his wheelchair told her how exhausted he was. In all the years she’d known him, she’d never seen him so drained, even during his residency when forty-eight-hour shifts had been the norm. There would be plenty of time to hear his story after his medical needs were addressed—starting with how he’d survived a supposedly fatal accident.
It wasn’t until he’d gingerly moved from his wheelchair to the bed with her help and that of a paramedic that she realized the awkwardness of the situation. As a nurse she belonged in the room, but as his estranged wife she certainly didn’t. Unfortunately, by the time she’d come to that conclusion, the other nurses had already disappeared into their respective patients’ rooms, leaving her no choice but to continue. Asking for a reassignment now would only draw unwanted and unnecessary attention. As soon as word leaked of Gabe’s return, speculation would run rampant anyway.
In spite of resigning herself to her temporary fate, her awkwardness grew exponentially as Jeff Warren took that moment to walk into the room. The normally implacable blond physician stopped abruptly in his tracks, as if he hadn’t realized the identity of his patient until now. Immediately, he glanced back at Leah and she shrugged helplessly, realizing that this moment was as uncomfortable for him as it was for her. The only difference was Jeff seemed to recover more quickly from his surprise than she had.
“Gabe,” he said, reaching out to shake his hand. “Welcome back.”
“Thanks. It’s great to be home.”
“I’ll do my best to get you there,” Jeff promised. “Let’s have a look at what you’ve done to yourself, shall we?”
Leah had planned to act as usual, giving Gabe the same objective care she’d give any other patient. However, that was easier said than done. The minute he shrugged off his tattered shirt, she saw the physical evidence of what he’d endured. His bones stood out in stark relief to the scabbed-over scrapes and large, brilliantly colored patches of purple, yellow and green that dotted his skin, while other areas were rubbed raw.
“Oh, Gabe,” she breathed.
“It looks worse than it is,” he assured her.
Objectively speaking, he was probably right, but through the eyes of someone who’d once carefully and lovingly mapped every inch of his six-foot body, she wasn’t as certain. It became far too easy to imagine how he’d earned each scrape and each bruise and then marvel at how he’d endured the trauma and still returned home. His obvious weight loss made her wonder what he’d eaten, if anything, which was another facet of his ordeal she hadn’t considered until now.
Part of her wanted to hug him again, to erase those physical hurts with a soft and gentle touch. The other part of her wanted to rail at him, ask if his injuries had been worth those extra duties he’d assumed and the additional trips he’d taken on behalf of his family’s charitable organization.
More importantly, though, she wanted to lock herself in the restroom so she could cry because, however illogical it seemed, she somehow felt responsible—not for the crash itself, or even for this particularly fateful international jaunt, but for sending him into the ever-eager arms of the Montgomery Medical Foundation. Had she not rejected his comfort after their adoption had fallen through, he wouldn’t have
