Hawk's Way Grooms by Joan Johnston

Author:Joan Johnston
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2008-11-15T05:00:00+00:00

ALL THE BLOOD LEFT JENNY’S head in a whoosh, and she swayed. She heard broken glass crunch under Colt’s boots as he stepped close enough to catch her before her knees gave way and lifted her into his arms. She clung to his neck in a daze as he carried her into the bedroom and sat her on her four-poster bed.

He tried to stand up, to move away, but she clutched at him and wouldn’t let go. “Stay here,” she rasped past a throat that had swollen closed. “Explain.”

She felt the tension in his shoulders. Felt the shudder that racked his frame as he settled down beside her. It took a long time for him to speak. She noticed the dust motes in the sunlight streaming through her bedroom window, the country tune about “friends in low places” on the radio that always played in the kitchen, the screech of a windmill that needed repair.

Everything was just as it had been a moment before. And nothing was the same.

Colt cleared his throat. “I knew Huck had been sick with some kind of flu bug the night before we were scheduled for a training flight. He said he was fine, but I should have known better and grounded him. Whatever illness he had affected his equilibrium.”

She felt the slight shrug in Colt’s shoulders before he said, “His wingtip brushed mine and…” He swallowed hard. “I bailed out. Huck didn’t.”

This isn’t real. I’m dreaming. Colt isn’t really sitting here beside me. He’s with Huck, training jet pilots in Egypt.

She brushed a hand across the short dark hair at Colt’s nape. So soft. She laid her cheek against his and felt the night’s growth of beard. So prickly.

I can feel. So this must be real, she thought. As real as the tight band of pain that bound her chest and made it so hard to breathe.

Colt leaned back and looked into her face. She had never seen such agony in a human being’s eyes. “I’m so sorry, Jenny. So very sorry. I should have done something. I should have—”

“I doubt you could’ve kept him on the ground,” she said in a shaky voice. “Huck was as crazy about flying as you are.”

“I outranked him. I could’ve made it an order.”

“You loved him too much to deny him anything he wanted,” Jenny said simply. Even me.

Jenny didn’t know where that last thought had come from, but she pushed it back into whatever dark hole it lived in. When they were kids, she’d known Colt Whitelaw had a crush on her. She’d even thought she might like to go out with him, if he asked. But Huck had liked her, too, and once Colt found out his best friend wanted her, he’d kept his distance. She had become—would always be—Huck’s girl.

Only, now Huck was dead.

“Oh, God, Colt. I don’t think I can bear it!” Jenny cried. “I don’t think I can live without him!”

Many times over the past ten years she’d wondered what she would do if something happened to Huck, and he didn’t come back to her.

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