In Flight (Up in the Air #1)(88)

“They’re beautiful. Thank you.”

“My pleasure,” he murmured, watching me like a hawk.

Stephan came in then, and rushed to my other side. Tears ran down his face as he grabbed my other hand.

“How do you feel?” he asked, sitting in what was obviously his chair at my other side..

I grimaced. “Alive.”

“I should go get the nurse,” Stephan said, starting to stand.

“I buzzed her. She’s usually prompt, so she’ll be here any time now,” James told him.

Stephan sat again. He stroked my hand comfortingly. “I was just speaking to the police. They want to talk to you when you feel up to it. I told them that I thought it was your father, but I didn’t see him, so they won’t take my word for it. It was your father, right?”

I just nodded, wincing. “Later. I’m definitely not feeling up to it right now. What day is it?”

“Thursday,” Stephan told me.

My eyes widened, my mind automatically going to work. “We fly out tonight?” I asked him.

He patted my hand. “I talked to the director of inflight. He had no problem letting us switch our vacation time, with you being hospitalized. He was actually really great about it, knowing we couldn’t take that much time off unpaid, and that I couldn’t work with you hurt like this. We’ve got two weeks off, so don’t worry about work.”

I shut my eyes in relief. “Thanks, Stephan. You’re the best.”

James’s hand tightened on mine. “That’s not enough time. And if you’re that worried about money-”

“Don’t,” I told him, my eyes still closed.

His mention of money opened the floodgate, and I suddenly remembered, quite vividly, why he had no reason to be by my side. I started to withdraw my hand.

He clutched it, and my eyes snapped open, glaring at him. The look in his eyes stopped my hand, and I just didn’t have the heart to glare at someone who looked so…desperate.

“Okay, I won’t. I’m sorry. I just wanted to help,” he reassured me in a way that seemed foreign to him. No one could say he wasn’t trying…

The nurse arrived, checking on me. She asked me about the pain, and I saw her pushing the painkiller button several times. I drifted off.

Both men were seemingly unmoved when I roused again. I could see from the slightly opened shades that it was dark outside. Both of my hands were still warmly enveloped.

“How long was I out that time?” I asked.

Stephan seemed to be dozing, but James had his eyes open. He looked like he was praying over my hand.

“Fourteen hours,” James said, and kissed my hand. “I think you’ve taken ten years off my life this week.” He reached to punch a button, and I knew he was calling for the nurse again.

It was a different nurse this time, I absently noted, as she left after checking and medding me. They had both been pleasant and quick. I wondered if the hospital always had such good service, or if this was the James Cavendish effect.

“You don’t have to stay here,” I told him, as I began to drift off again. He sent me such a hurt look that I tried to take it back even as I sank into a drugged sleep.

Days went by like that, floating in and out of consciousness while my body healed. It was five days before I was up and about. And even then it was a limited amount of activity.

I had a severe concussion, some internal bleeding, and some badly bruised ribs. From the way they felt, I found it hard to believe they weren’t broken. I hated to imagine what they would feel like if they were actually broken, if this was what bruised felt like.

I found out from the doctor that I would be in the hospital for several more days, under observation. All of my injuries were painful, but survivable. I was lucky, I knew. It could have been so much worse.

I had several visitors. The rest of our crew even visited once, pilots included. They wished me well, and chatted pleasantly about nothing important. Neither of the men at my side even offered their spots to the other visitors. I wasn’t surprised.

James’s hand tightened on mine once, when Damien reached down to pat my leg. I knew Damien was just being friendly. He would have patted my hand, probably, if they weren’t both already taken.

James and Stephan never wandered far from their seats at my side, day or night. Occasionally, they took turns sleeping on a tiny bed that folded out from the wall in the far corner of the room. I couldn’t imagine either man was getting much sleep on the uncomfortably hard looking bed. It was both heartwarming and baffling to me, these two amazing men that insisted on watching over me, completely unconcerned for their own comforts.

A neat, business-like blond woman kept coming in and out of the room, silently handing James his phone, or his laptop, or even the occasional stack of papers. I supposed that was how he was able to spend so much time at my side.

“You don’t have to stay here,” I told him. “I understand that you have work to do.”

He just gave me a dismissive glance, working on his laptop.

I was nearly recovered enough to be discharged before Stephan brought up the attack again. “Why did he come after you again, after all these years?” he asked in a hushed voice. James was dozing in his bedside chair.

“He mentioned something about people asking questions about him, people that he didn’t know. He saw me in the tabloids, I suppose, and blamed me. He also seemed to think that dating a rich man would make me more likely to get brave and go to the police about him.”