from Jessica, but he was so aware that the small physical distance between them was nothing compared with the emotional one. It could not be crossed. That was what hissed right below the surface of her voice. There was a minefield of memory between them, and to try to negotiate it felt as if it would be risking having them both being blown to smithereens.
“I think her arm is fractured or broken,” the medic said to Kade, and then returned his attention to Jessica. “We’re going to transport you. They’ll do X-rays at the hospital. I’m going to call ahead so they’ll be ready for you in the emergency department.”
“Which hospital?” Kade asked.
“You don’t need to come,” Jessica said, and there was that tone again, her apology apparently forgotten. She glared at Kade in warning when he frowned at her.
She was right. He did not need to go with her. And he could not have stopped himself if he tried.
“Nonetheless,” he said, “I’d be more at ease making sure you were okay.”
“No.”
Kade knew that tone: she had made up her mind and there would be no getting her to change it.
No matter how stupidly unreasonable she was being.
“I thought he was your husband,” the woman police officer said, confused.
“You don’t need to come to the hospital,” Jessica said. She tried to fold her arms over her chest. The splint on her right arm made it awkward enough that after three attempts she gave up. She glared at her arm accusingly, and when that brought her no relief, she switched her glare to him.
To what he could tell was her chagrin, he accomplished what she had not been able to. He folded his arms firmly over his chest.
Battle stations.
What did this mean that he was insisting on accompanying Jessica to the hospital? That he was accepting responsibility for her?
Had he ever stopped feeling responsible for her?
“I thought he was your husband,” the police officer said again.
“I am,” Kade said, and heard the same firmness in his voice as that day that felt as if it was so long ago when he had said, “I do.”
* * *
Jessica felt a shiver travel up and down her spine.
Her husband.
She watched Kade standing there, so close she could smell the familiar heady scent of him, his arms folded firmly over the deepness of that chest. He looked grim and formidable when he took that stance.
And even with that intimidating scowl drawing his dark brows down and pulling the edges of his mouth? Kade was the most magnificently made man Jessica had ever encountered. And she was pretty sure the female police officer wasn’t immune to that fact, either.
Jessica had never tired of looking at him, not even when their relationship had become so troubled. Sometimes it had made her anger even more complicated that she still liked to look at him when he was so aggravating!
But gazing at him now, she felt resignation. This morning Kade had on a beautifully cut summer suit that she was certain was custom made. With it he had on a plain white shirt, possibly Egyptian cotton, and a subdued, expertly knotted tie, the slight luster of it screaming both silk and expense.
The ensemble made him look every inch the president and CEO of one of Calgary’s most successful companies. Despite a rather mundane name, Oilfield Supplies did just that. It supplied the frantic oilfield activity of Alberta and beyond. With Kade’s work ethic, ambition and smarts, the company’s rise, in the past few years, had been mercurial.
And yet there was nothing soft looking about the man. There was none of the slender build or office pallor of a desk worker about him. He had learned his business from the bottom up, working on rigs to put himself through university. Despite the beautiful clothing, that rugged toughness was still in the air around him. Kade Brennan, with those long legs and those broad shoulders, and that deep chest, radiated pure power.
He had mink-dark hair. It managed, somehow, to look faintly unruly, no matter how short he cut it. And right now, that was very short.
He was clean shaven—Jessica had never known him not to be—and the close shave showed off the masculine perfection of his face: great skin, high cheekbones, straight nose, full lips, faintly jutting chin.
And his damn eyes, sexy and smoldering, were the deep sapphire of the ocean water. It was a color she had seen replicated only once, off the southernmost tip of the Big Island of Hawaii, where they had gone for their honeymoon.
But well before she’d had that reference point, from practically the moment she had met him, Jessica had spent an inordinate amount of time dreaming what their baby would look like. Would it have his eyes or hers, or some incredible combination of both?
The knife edge of that familiar pain was worse than the pain that throbbed along the length of her arm, despite the ice packs splinted in with her limb that were supposed to be giving her relief from pain.
Her husband.
She could feel her heart begin a familiar and hard tattoo at all that had once meant, and at all she knew about this man, the delicious intimacies that only a wife could know.
That he had ticklish toes, and loved the smell of lemons, and that if you kissed that little groove behind his ear, he was putty—
Jessica made herself stop, annoyed that she had gone there so swiftly. With everything between them, how was it she could feel this when she saw him? As if she had made the slow, chugging climb up the roller coaster and was now poised at the very summit, waiting to plunge down?
With everything between them, it felt like a betrayal of herself that she could feel such a deep and abiding hunger for the familiar feeling of his arms around her, for the scrape of his cheek across her own, for his breath in her ear, for the gentle savagery of his lips claiming her lips and his body claiming her body.
Her husband.
She felt weak. Where was her newfound sense of herself when she needed it most? Where was her fledgling self-respect? Where was her feeling that her life was working, and that she could have dreams she had set aside when Kade had walked away from her?
Jessica had discovered she could be responsible for her own dreams. It was really much easier without the complications of a man! In fact, she had decided the things she was dreaming would be so much more attainable without a man, especially one like him, who was just a little too sure that he knew the right answers for everybody.
Jessica was certain Kade would not approve of the secret she held inside herself. It was a secret that gave her pure joy, just as once an ultrasound picture tucked in a pocket close to her heart had. She had made a decision to adopt a baby.
It was at the very initial stages, little more than a thought, but she wanted things between her and Kade finalized before she even started the application process. She reminded herself that she needed to be strong for this meeting with Kade, and she despised the unexpected weakness of desire.
She’d
