“What about your, uh, boyfriend?” She hadn’t missed how Mr. Al-Shennawi never left her mother’s side—except for now.
Annie smiled, as if reading her thoughts. “He’s just outside the door. We’ve talked about taking teaching jobs at the same school, maybe lead a beautifully boring life together.”
Stella reached a hand out to her mom, knowing all too well how much courage it took to hope for a happy ending. “I hope your dreams play out for you, Mom, I really do.”
Her mother looked at her extended arm, an olive branch, and her eyes filled with tears. Annie squeezed her daughter’s hand. A sense of peace filled Stella, a lot more soothing than any painkiller dripping from that bag on the IV pole. She and her mother still had plenty to talk through and fences to mend, but they’d made a good start.
“Hey, Mom? Could you do me a favor?”
“Anything. Just ask.”
“Could you find Jose? I really need to talk to him.”
Reaching out to her mother had been a good first step in putting her life back together. But nothing would be okay again until she made things right with Jose. The love she’d seen in his eyes when he’d treated her back at the festival gave her hope. She just prayed she hadn’t been hallucinating from blood loss.
Because the pain in her brutalized leg was nothing compared to the agony she would feel if she lost Jose for good.
***
Jose stared into the steaming cup of coffee his buddy Bubbles kept refilling. The big lug sat beside him on the cracked leather sofa, offering silent support.
The night had been the longest of his life. Hands down. Once he’d stabilized Stella at the scene, he’d been left with no choice but to turn her over to paramedics. Fang had held him back as he’d tried to force his way into the ambulance. Only Mr. Smith’s promise to keep him in the loop had managed to calm him down enough to keep him from getting arrested.
The bastard Brown had survived and was under guard on a different floor of the hospital. Jose had ditched his bloodied ABU jacket, but refused to leave the hospital. He waited, in his camo pants, boots, and T-shirt. The doctor sounded knowledgeable, but trusting Stella’s care to someone he didn’t know in a third world country hospital was tough, to say the least.
Normally he would have flipped his sobriety coin. God knows the painful crawl of hours waiting for word on Stella had been beyond stressful. He glanced at Bubbles. “Thanks for hanging out here with me.”
“No problem. It’s what we do for each other.”
The words resonated, reminding him of how he’d said the same thing to his teammates in the past. They all said it. His team had been like a family to him, helping him keep his head above water, just as he liked to think he helped them.
How much better would it be in a rock solid family? With Stella? Because he knew now. He was in for the long haul. He was a marathon man, after all.
Soft footsteps whispered down the hall, coming closer, around the corner. Stella’s mother walked into the waiting room.
Jose stood, fast, sloshing hot coffee onto his finger. “Stella?”
Exhaustion stamped its mark on her face, her clothes wrinkled from sleeping in a chair. She looked like… a worried mother. “She’s awake and asking to see you. The doctor’s checking her over now.”
Thank God.
The knowledge that she was out of the woods damn near took his knees out. Annie must have known because she reached for him, giving his arm a simple squeeze.
Then it hit him. If he married Stella, he got a family along with her. And what do you know? The thought didn’t scare him. It felt… kind of right.
“Thank you.” He offered her his coffee. “I haven’t even touched this yet.”
“Thanks.” She smiled her gratitude.
Her eyes shifted from him to across the hall where her Egyptian friend stood at the nurse’s station. She patted Jose’s hand, leaving him to go to Stella.
Ten steps past the nurse’s station and a rolling cart with lunch trays, he reached Stella’s door as the doctor walked out.
“She is a lucky woman,” the doctor said in broken English before moving on to the next patient.
Right now, he felt like the lucky one.
Jose pushed open her door and God, she was beautiful. But so damn pale her freckles stood out all the more. At least the heart monitor beeped a steady reassurance, even if the bandages on her head and her leg struck a fresh bolt of fear through him.