"I ... never told her. Never said, I love you, Lace. I ... held it away from her. I feared the power it

would give her, to know how I felt. I let her wonder ... if I still lovedyou ." "Logan-" "No. Please. That's not all. I tried to take her painting away from her. I ... I tried to keep her just to myself. She wanted me here, with her, when she came toL.A.She asked me to come any number of times. I should have been with her, when that b.a.s.t.a.r.d attacked her. But I wouldn't come. And now, if I've lost her. If I've-"

"Shh," Jenna pulled him closer. "Listen. Listen to me..."

He took her by the arms, looked into her eyes. "Did you hear me? Did you hear what I said?"

She nodded. "I heard. And if you've tried to keep her from her painting, well, shame on you. But about the other.Logan, I think she knows that you love her."

"No. I wouldn't let her know. Wouldn't let her be certain. Even the last time we talked, when I knew how wrong I'd been about so many things, I still couldn't get the d.a.m.n words out of my mouth. I held back. I said, 'we'll talk, when you get home.' The last thing she said to me was 'I love you.' And all I said in return was 'Good night, Lace.'"

"Logan, she did know."

"No, I-"

"Logan, I told her."

That made no sense. "You...?"

"Yes. I told her. When you were both still inWyoming. She called and asked my advice about marrying you and I said, 'Do it. He loves you. He's always loved you. He just doesn't know it yet.'"

He gripped her arms harder, his fingers digging in. "Don't tell me good-hearted lies. I need the truth now."

Jenna neither flinched nor wavered. "I'm giving you the truth. My sister knows what love is. And she knows that you love her."

He let go of Jenna's arms and sucked in a breath through a chest that felt as if bands of steel constricted it. "That's something, at least." He turned to Lacey again, took her limp hand. "Do you know?" he asked in a broken voice. "G.o.d, let that at least be so. It won't make what I did any more acceptable. But it's better than nothing." He reached up, smoothed the translucent skin of her pale brow.

Jenna took the chair on the other side of the bed. They settled in. To wait some more.

Two hours later, Lacey opened her eyes.

Loganwhispered her name.

She turned her head, seeking-and finding him. "Lo-gan," she said, her voice ragged, dry, very low, each syllable an effort-and a triumph. "Logan." And she smiled.

Chapter 18.

The next day, they moved her out of ICU.

She got a nice, private room in a medical/ surgery wing. After a battery of tests and a lot of poking and prodding by an astonishingly large number of nurses and neurologists, they removed all of the tubes from her arm.

Her prognosis was excellent. She had scored a solid "eight" on the Rancho Los Amigos scale, which measures recovery in brain injured patients. An eight meant her responses were "purposeful-appropriate," that she was alert, conscious of who she was and where she was, as well as able to recall past and recent events-well, most of them anyway. In twenty-four hours, if no complications arose, she would be released.

In the early afternoon, soon after they'd moved her to her new room and given her lunch, Detective Cruz came to speak with her. Lacey shook her head in apology and told the detective she recalled almost nothing about the day she'd been attacked.

"I remember sitting at the breakfast table in my friend AdeleLevenson's kitchen. And drinking orange juice. Adele agreed to watch my baby while I went downtown to see my friend, Barnaby Cole, at his loft. I know I went there. I know I was mugged there, because I've heard everyone talking about it. But actuallyremember it? I'm sorry. I don't."

Detective Cruz rea.s.sured her that her attacker was in custody. And a pipe wrench had been discovered in the alley behind her friend's building. The wrench had bits of Lacey's blood and hair on it and also a very clear thumbprint matching that of the man they had apprehended in possession of her shoulder bag.

"I think he'll be going away for quite a while," the detective predicted.

"I have only one question for you, Detective."

"Hit me with it, Ms. Severance."

"When can I get my purse back?"

"I suppose we don't need to hold it much longer, since we're no longer dealing with the possibility of a homicide."

"You mean I'm going to live?"

"It would appear so," the detective said dryly. She gave Lacey a card. "Drop by the precinct when they let you out of here. You can pick it up then-or have your husband do it today, if you'd like. And be sure to give me a call if anything else about the incident comes back to you."

Lacey promised that she would.

Not long after the detective left, the nurse brought Rosie in for a feeding. A few minutes later, Jenna and Mack arrived with Ian. Lacey got to take her nephew in her arms for the first time, while Jenna held Rosie. The sisters agreed that their children were the best, the most attractive and the brightest in the world.

"I can't believe you're really here." Lacey held out her hand and Jenna took it. "It's almost worth getting beat on the head with a pipe wrench, just to look at your face and hold this little boy."

"Hey," Mack complained teasingly, "what about me?"

"You know I'malways grateful to see you," Lacey told him.

"We'll stay for as long as you need us," Jenna vowed.

"Watch what you promise me. I may never let you go."

As the sisters admired their babies, Adele and Barnaby appeared. Adele carried a huge bunch of daisies in a big crystal vase. "These are from Xavier and Sophia."

Barnaby presented an arrangement of yellow daylilies. "Belinda Goldstone sent these."

Lacey beamed at the flowers. "Daylilies. They're beautiful. And Xavier knows how I love daisies. Put them all on that ledge up there by the TV, where I can see them."

The flowers were duly set on the ledge. There was no s.p.a.ce anywhere else. The room had begun to look like a florist shop. Jenna, Adele and Barnaby had each brought in their own offerings earlier. About an hour before, a lovely creation of birds of paradise andantheriums had arrived from Dan and Fiona. And a bouquet of white roses had come from the Wyoming Bravos.

For a few minutes, Jenna and Mack and Adele and Barnaby all gathered around Lacey's bed. They talked in hushed, happy tones of how good it was to be here, with Lacey awake now, on the road to full recovery.

Too soon, Jenna handed Rosie to Adele. She turned back to Lacey. "Better give me that baby and get some rest."

Lacey rubbed her nose against her nephew's sweet wrinkled neck. "I just don't want to let him go..."

"Come on."

"Oh, all right." She pa.s.sed the warm bundle into her sister's arms and lay back with a sigh, smiling drowsily, thinking that the lump on the back of her head could still ache like the devil and wondering where her husband had wandered off to. From that first time she woke up yesterday, he had been there whenever she opened her eyes-attentive and so gentle. And a little bit ... what? Subdued, maybe. Or even sad.

They needed to talk. They just hadn't had the chance.

And where was he now?

"Where'sLogan?" she asked. "I haven't seen him since they wheeled me out of ICU."

"I believe he mentioned some errand he had to run," Jenna said. She sounded just a little too mysterious.

"All right." Lacey looked from her sister, to her brother-in-law, to her friends. "What's up?"

Mack advised, "Take a nap, Lace. He'll be here when you wake up."

One by one, they all tiptoed out. Lacey was asleep before the door shut behind them.

* * * Sometime later, Lacey heard whispering. Very familiar whispering. She opened one eye and then the other. And then she blinked. "Mira? Maud?" Giggling in delight, one on one side of the bed and one on the other, the twins grabbed her in a three-way hug. Lacey hugged back as hard as she could. "Oh, I can't believe it. Tell me I'm not dreaming..." "You're not dreaming," Maud promised, hugging tighter. "How did you get here?" "Logansent for us," Mira declared. "Got us plane tickets," added Maud. Mira pulled away and winked, "First cla.s.s,doncha know." The dimples on either side of Maud's mouth twinkled merrily. "The only way to go..." Mira giggled some more, kissed Lacey wetly on the cheek, and then dropped with a grunt to the chair next to the bed. "I sang for him, on the ride here from the airport. 'When a Man Loves a Woman.' He was duly impressed." "You bet he was," agreed Maud. "He says he's bringing you to hear us play, the first Friday you guys get back home."

Mira said, "The man is transformed. It's a miracle. What did youdo to him?" Lacey lay back on her pillow and grinned. "If I told you, I'd have to kill you." The sisters groaned in unison, then demanded to know everything that had happened since Lacey came to L.A. Lacey obliged them, filling them in on all the details of her visit with Adele and her meetings with Belinda. She told what she knew of the attack that had landed her atTwinPalmsHospital.

"But you're coming home soon," Mira said hopefully, once the story was told.

"In the next few days, I think."

The twins fell on her for more hugs. Lacey surrendered to their lavish affection. They stayed for an hour.

But then they decided they were hungry.Loganhad given them a rental car. They wanted to check out

L.A.a little and get a sandwich-or maybe two. And they'd be back around again to see how she was doing in a few hours.

They strutted to the door, pausing long enough to blow her more kisses, and then they were gone.

A nurse poked her head in and asked if Lacey needed a Tylenol. "No, thanks. I'm okay."

She closed her eyes and settled back, a contented smile curving her lips.

She didn't even hear him enter.

But she knew he was there when his lips brushed hers.

With her eyes closed and her mouth still pressed to his, she lifted her arms to encircle his neck.

"Umm..."

He deepened the kiss, but not too much, his tongue entering just enough to caress the moistness beyond her parted lips. Then he pulled back. She let him go with reluctance, sighing a little, her eyelids fluttering open.

"Oh, look at you. You shaved."

"And showered, too. I needed it," he said gruffly. "Any way you come to me, you are a sight for sore eyes."

He kissed the tip of her nose, then pulled back again. "I have something to say."

She looked at him sideways. "This sounds ominous."

"It's not. It's ... d.a.m.n hard, that's all. For a man like me."

"A man like you?"

He nodded-and lightly ran his index finger down the curve of her cheek. "An arrogant man. A proud man. A man who always knows he's in the right."

"Surely you're speaking of someone else."

"No, I'm not. And you know I'm not. Lacey. I-"

She reached up once more, this time to put her fingers to his lips. "Oh,Logan. I know."

He caught her hand, kissed it,then folded their fingers together. "Your sister told me you knew. But you do want to hear it." A hit of a smile came and went on that wonderful mouth of his. "Don't you?"

She couldn't seem to keep from sighing. "Yes. It's true. The words do mean something. They mean ... a lot."

He said it, very slowly, with just the right blend of tenderness and pa.s.sion. "I love you, Lacey Severance. I love you with all of my heart. I ... thought I knew it all. I thought I knew how to love. I believed that I loved your sister. Because I had decided she was the right woman for me. But I didn't even know what it was, to love. I ... h.e.l.l. Maybe I just never learned."

She thought of his cold, distant father. Of the mother he had never known.

He said, "I don't know how long I've loved you. I don't think it matters. Maybe forever. Maybe I've been fighting it for years. But when I finally had you, when you married me and were my wife, I ... didn't want to admit to myself how important you had become. And more than that, most of all, I didn't want to lose you. I've been so afraid of losing you...

"Sometimes it seems to me that I was never really alive, until that day in September when you first came to me. And during those months after you broke it off, I was so d.a.m.n miserable. You can't know what it felt like when I got your letter about the baby. And I knew I wouldhave to marry you. That what I wanted with every beat of my heart was also my duty. G.o.d, I was happy. I was in heaven."

"But you-"

He kissed her hand again. "Let me say the rest. Please."

She nodded. "Yes. All right."

"I saw your painting as a threat, to me, to what we had together. And the twins-they scared me, too. Anything you loved and wanted, anything you cared pa.s.sionately for that wasn't me or Rosie. Those things seemed to only be ways I could lose you. And visiting Jenna, the idea of that scared the h.e.l.l out of me. I knew that as soon as I saw your sister's face again, the truth would no longer be something I could avoid. I would recognize her for what she is. My longtime friend. And my wife's sister. And that's all."

"Oh,Logan. I just... I want to kiss you."

"Wait. In a minute. I have to finish this. To say that I never told you I loved you because I felt a little less scared of what losing you could do to me, as long as I thought you didn't know. As long as I kept it from you, as long as I didn't give you that power. And I hate myself, for not coming to you the other day after we talked on the phone and you asked me for the last time. If I had come, you wouldn't have been alone when you went downtown, you wouldn't have-"