Drake Sisters 05 - Safe Harbor

bandages over most of her body. Her face was swollen and bluish from bruising. A single sheet covered her body. Beneath it she looked so thin and small, not at all the tall, imposing woman who was Hannah Drake. Her impossibly long lashes lay in twin crescents above her classic cheekbones, looking incongruous beside the bloodstained gauze.
    His heart clenched so hard it felt like it was in a vise—an actual physical pain—and he pressed his hand hard against his chest as he lifted the sheet to inspect her body.
    She was wrapped like a mummy, from her neck down. He swallowed the bile rising as he noted she'd been slashed in the throat as well as her face, chest and abdomen.
    Her attacker had been every bit as vicious as he'd appeared on television. Jonas had hoped it had been the camera angle, but it was obvious the man had been determined to kill her.
    His gut knotted into tight lumps and his throat burned raw. He sank into the chair that had been placed beside the bed and looked her over, looked for a place he could touch her skin—not the hideous thick gauze that seemed to be everywhere. Her hands and arms were bandaged right along with everything else. He knew she would have defensive wounds, he'd seen them enough times on victims, but for some reason he was unprepared for seeing them on Hannah.
    Jonas swallowed several times as he carefully slid his hand under her bandaged one.
    Only the tips of her fingers protruded. He lifted her hand with great care and brought her fingers to his mouth. He had to kiss her, touch her, find a way to caress her. He needed skin-to-skin contact because he had to have tangible proof she was alive and would stay that way. Her breath seemed too shallow, her chest barely rising and falling beneath the thin sheet even with the ventilator.
    "Hannah, baby, you're breaking my heart." Just looking at her hurt. He couldn't imagine anyone hurting her this way. What had she done that was such a crime? She was too beautiful with her flawless skin and her unusual hair and tall, elegant, so very classy figure, and her looks had drawn attention to her. Would someone really want to kill her because she was too beautiful? "Nothing makes sense," he murmured, listening to the machines doing her breathing for her.
    He put his head down on the bed as the smells and sounds assailed his senses. His stomach lurched, protested. Hannah was hooked up to machines. His beloved Hannah with her laughter and her temper and her silly trick of knocking his hats off his head with the wind. He had a closet full of hats, and he provoked her on purpose sometimes, just to feel the touch of the wind. Her touch. Feminine and soft with her particular fragrance attached. Sometimes he imagined he felt her fingers caressing his face, tracing his jaw, and then the slap of the wind would remove his hat—but it was well worth that single heart-stopping moment.
    "You know you have to live for me, Hannah," he said aloud, sitting back up. He kissed her fingertips, drew them one by one into the warmth of his mouth. He ached for her—for him. "I can't imagine my life without you in it," he whispered. "There'd be no purpose for me." He wasn't a poetic man, but he had to find a way to make her understand. It seemed so important to him that she understand what she meant to him.
    Everything good in his world was lying in that bed with a machine breathing for her.
    He leaned closer. "Hannah? Can you hear me?" Her face was partially covered by the bandages and the sight of her lashes lying so thick against her pale skin made his eyes burn. "I should have told you a long time ago." He raked a hand through his hair and pressed several kisses into the mass of hair at the top of her head.
    There were so many things he should have said—should have done. Time wasted. He couldn't think why now, only that he hadn't told her how much she meant to him. If he'd been so worried about her because of the things he'd done—and did—in his life, he should have quit. She was more important. He didn't have answers or questions. He could only pray because, in the end, she was all that really mattered.
    Jonas. I knew you'd come. Too hard to talk out loud.
    Her voice in his head shook him. He leaned closer to her, touching her hair, kissing her fingers, trying to let her know he was there and wouldn't leave. "I'm here, sweetheart. Right here with you. Can you hear me? I'm not going anywhere." She had a tube down her throat, a good reason why she