Cry Love Read online

  Praise for Cry Love

  “Deftly handling past and present, weaving together storylines that will haunt you, Eve Gaddy has written a sensitive, emotional love story spiced with danger and an ugly evil. CRY LOVE will leave you both moved and satisfied. A book you will not quickly forget!”

  —Justine Davis, Hall of Fame RITA Award-winning author. She’s also a USA Today bestseller and has 4 RITAs.

  Other Eve Gaddy Titles from Bell Bridge Books

  Fully Engaged

  Cowboy Come Home

  Uncertain Future

  Just One Night

  Amazing Grace

  Midnight Remedy

  Too Close for Comfort

  On Thin Ice

  Cry Love

  by

  Eve Gaddy

  Bell Bridge Books

  Copyright

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons (living or dead), events or locations is entirely coincidental.

  Bell Bridge Books

  PO BOX 300921

  Memphis, TN 38130

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-61194-525-6

  Print ISBN: 978-1-61194-543-0

  Bell Bridge Books is an Imprint of BelleBooks, Inc.

  Copyright © 2014 by Eve Gaddy

  Printed and bound in the United States of America.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

  We at BelleBooks enjoy hearing from readers.

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  Cover design: Debra Dixon

  Interior design: Hank Smith

  Photo/Art credits:

  Woman (manipulated) © Vojtech Vlk | Dreamstime.com

  Man (manipulated) © Peter Kim | Dreamstime.com

  Tree (manipulated) © Brent Flint | Dreamstime.com

  :Elcv:01:

  Dedication

  This book is for every writer who has quit and struggled back, for every writer with a book of the heart who despaired of ever publishing it, or even writing it. Keep the faith. It can happen.

  Author’s Note

  When this book first started forming in my mind, I decided it would make sense if there was another Underground Railroad, but this one originating in Texas and going west or south. To my complete surprise, when I began researching Cry Love, I discovered that there had indeed been an Underground Railroad in Texas. It ran primarily south to Mexico, where slavery had been outlawed long before. There isn’t a lot of information about the Texas-Mexico Underground Railroad to be found, but it definitely existed. Today there are still towns in northern Mexico where many of the descendants of those who came to Mexico via the Underground Railroad live. It seems in keeping with this book that a coincidence like this would happen.

  Chapter One

  THEY LYNCHED HIM at dawn.

  He struggled, kicking out, then digging his worn boots into the ground as they dragged him toward the tree, the huge live oak standing sentinel on the front lawn. But he could do nothing against five men.

  Oh, God, no. No, please, she pled silently, knowing it was a futile prayer. They had tied his hands, beaten him until she could see the blood dripping from his face and body in the eerie fog of the emerging dawn. Despairing, she put her hand to the window, choked out a cry as they threw him up on the horse and placed the noose around his neck.

  My love. My only love.

  CLAIRE GASPED, choked, and sat up in bed, struggling awake through a thick fog of sorrow. She raised a hand to her cheek, felt the moisture of tears.

  “What the hell is going on?”

  Claire Westbrook had never been a fanciful woman, not even when young and naive. Certainly not since she’d become a physician. As a trauma surgeon she dealt in gritty reality. Too damn much of it.

  Yet she’d awakened in tears from a dream so real she could have sworn she still heard the screams.

  Hers.

  His.

  Unsettling, and frankly, annoying. She didn’t have the luxury of a sleepless night. She needed her rest, not to awaken breathless, heart hammering after some bizarre dream.

  Her sleep had been growing progressively more restless, but it wasn’t until waking up this morning that she actually remembered one of the dreams. And thank God she couldn’t if they’d all been like that dream. The only good thing that had come from her restless nights was they had given her a good excuse to move out of the bedroom she shared with her husband. Glenn hadn’t seemed upset to have her move, either. She wondered what was keeping them together. Not sex and not companionship, that was for sure.

  Determined to get a grip, she swore not to think about the dream again. She got out of bed and lurched into the shower, turning the water on as hot as she could stand it.

  It was that damned journal. The one she’d found yesterday morning, when she was cleaning out her mother’s house for her upcoming move. With her father gone now for two years, Claire had finally convinced her mother she had to move to a smaller house. And Lord, was it a production downsizing her. The woman had kept stuff going back to the seventeen hundreds. Every time a family house had been cleaned out—and her mother had a lot of family—the junk had all migrated to Evangeline’s. Some of it was interesting, letters from World War I, guns from the late eighteenth century, a postcard collection dating from the late eighteen hundreds. But a lot of it was junk, plain and simple.

  Then yesterday morning, Claire had found a journal, obviously antique and stuffed in among a bunch of ancient receipts, though not of the same time period. Her mother thought it had belonged to Claire’s great-great-great-great-grandmother, Rachel Adams, who had lived during the Civil War.

  The journal was certainly old. Claire had glanced at it long enough to read a sentence or two, and sure enough, it was dated 1859, just prior to the Civil War. Claire had never been a Civil War buff. In fact, she’d avoided the whole era, other than what she’d been forced to read in school. In the past, she’d found reading about it painful, so whenever possible, she didn’t.

  Despite her embargo of the Civil War era, the journal piqued her curiosity. If she were an imaginative person, she’d say it called to her. Since she was a pragmatist at heart, she merely acknowledged it was interesting. Still, she hadn’t read enough of it to warrant a dream like the one she’d had. Good God, that was crazy.

  Damn it, she was doing it again. Obsessing over that stupid dream was getting her nowhere. And if she didn’t get her ass in gear she’d have to skip her skinny white chocolate mocha from Java Joe’s. She stopped there religiously every morning before work, and some days when she was off.

  Yet on the way to the coffee shop she found bits of the dream replaying itself in her head. Out of the confusing fog-like wisps, one certainty emerged.

  She had no idea who he was. And he had died because of her.

  THANK GOD FOR coffee, Jonas Clark thought on his way to work. And thank God there was a decent coffee shop across from the hospital. His coffee pot had broken during the move a week ago, and he’d yet to replace it.

  He’d never imagined living in Texas again. Certainly not in Fort Worth, his hometown. He’d left Texas behind a long time ago and hadn’t missed it a bit. But his mother had developed health problems,
and she needed help. Jonas was an only child so he didn’t have a choice. He couldn’t do her much good from fifteen hundred miles away in Boston. Moving his mother to him was not an option, either. First of all, she hadn’t completely given up hope of going back to work, though Jonas thought there was a slim chance of that happening. Still, she was settled in Fort Worth, with many friends as well as her church. She’d always said she’d been born a Texan and intended to die one.

  So Jonas had started looking for jobs in the Metroplex. He’d thought he could tolerate Dallas, but instead he’d ended up in Fort Worth. An old buddy of his from medical school was a partner in a neurosurgery group looking to expand. They worked out of Shady Grove Memorial Hospital, a fairly new level-one trauma center that had opened a few years ago. The hospital, and consequently, their practice, had been steadily growing, and they were desperately in need of more neurosurgeons. Having a new one as well-trained as Jonas was a definite plus.

  Jonas stood in line behind a woman who seemed vaguely familiar. Blonde, pretty, dressed in scrubs, she could easily be someone else who worked at the hospital. Probably was.

  God, he needed the caffeine. His sleep had been restless since coming to town, which was unusual for him. He put it down to the move, and maybe the stress of a new job. Except the job was fine and not particularly stressful to someone accustomed to a busy pace. But something was waking him in the night. Normally, he slept like a log when he wasn’t working.

  “What can I get you?” the clerk asked, pulling him out of his reverie.

  He ordered a skim latte with a double shot, then followed the blonde to the take-out counter. He stepped up to get his latte just as the blonde turned around and crashed into him, sending scalding coffee cascading over his arm. “Shit,” he said, and stepped back.

  “Oh, God, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you were there.” She looked at him a moment with the oddest expression, then put her cup down on a nearby table and ran to the counter, bringing napkins with her.

  He fended her off, saying, “Just let me get my coffee.”

  She ignored him, dabbing at him ineffectually as he determinedly made his way back to the counter and picked up his latte. “Don’t worry about it. I’m fine.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, you’re burned. And pretty badly too.” She looked up from his injured arm to stare at him a moment, clearly taking in his attire, which was the same as hers. She had the oddest eyes. One green, one half-green and half-blue. He’d seen those eyes before, but he couldn’t remember when or where.

  “You’re new at the hospital, aren’t you?” she asked. “Didn’t I see you earlier this week? From a distance, anyway. I’m Claire Westbrook, one of the trauma surgeons at Shady Grove.”

  Because it was there, he started to shake her hand, but found himself strangely reluctant to touch her. Why, he couldn’t have said. She seemed like a perfectly nice woman, if clumsy. Still, he almost had to force himself to take her hand. Their palms met, and he felt a subtle pop. The sounds around them faded, and he was mired in quicksand. Sorrow, grief, pain flashed in his mind, and then they were gone, and he was left staring at the woman who had paled to sheet white. They dropped hands, she with as much alacrity as he did.

  “Jonas Clark. Neurosurgery.” Jesus, he needed more sleep. He took a big gulp of coffee and burned his tongue. What was with the Twilight Zone moment?

  “I’d heard we were getting a new neurosurgeon. I guess that would be you.”

  “Guilty. I started a week ago.”

  “You came from Massachusetts General, right?”

  He sipped, more cautiously this time. “That’s right.”

  “How are you adjusting to Texas? It’s a lot different from Boston.” She laughed when she said it.

  “I’m originally from the area.”

  “Really?” She looked surprised. “I wouldn’t have guessed that. You’ve lost your accent.”

  He made a noncommittal sound. He’d worked hard to lose his Texas accent, but somehow he didn’t think that appropriate to say to a woman whose Southern Comfort drawl reminded him of hot summer nights and fast women.

  She started to touch his arm, then seemed to think better of it. Maybe she’d felt that weird little tug too.

  “Look, I’m really sorry about the coffee. Maybe I can buy you a latte sometime.”

  “Forget it.” He knew it had been an accident, but something warned him this woman was trouble with a capital T.

  “OKAY, WHO IS Dr. Awesome?” Lanie Avery asked Claire while they were scanning charts.

  “Dr. Awesome?”

  “Tall, black, and awesome gorgeous.” Lanie was an orthopedist Claire worked with often, as well as a friend.

  Claire laughed, glancing up from the chart she was perusing to look in the direction Lanie indicated. Seeing who it was, she frowned. “Oh, that’s Jonas Clark. He’s the new neurosurgeon. You know, the one from Mass Gen.”

  “Mass Gen? Wow. He’s a long way from Boston. I wonder what made him move to Texas?”

  “I asked him that. He said he was from the area originally.” Claire went back to the chart.

  “So you’ve met him already. Some people have all the luck.”

  Claire had to laugh at that. “I bet he didn’t think so.”

  “Why, did you have a run-in with him?”

  “I don’t have a run-in with every man I meet.”

  “Just most of them,” Lanie said with a smirk. “What happened?”

  Claire closed the chart and waved a hand. “It’s nothing. I spilled my coffee on him this morning at Java Joe’s, and he seemed a bit . . . annoyed. Not that I blame him,” she added hastily. “I’m sure it hurt like hell.”

  “Aha, do I detect some interest?” Lanie asked.

  “Hardly. I’m married, remember?”

  “Married women have eyes too. Besides, Glenn’s such a jerk.”

  “Don’t start, Lanie,” Claire said wearily. Her friend had no use for her husband, just as he had no use for Lanie. Part of it was Claire’s fault for talking about her troubled marriage, but she had to talk to someone, and Lanie was totally loyal to her. Of course, her friend hadn’t liked Glenn to begin with, and now she detested him. Claire wondered if something had happened between them, something they didn’t want to tell her. If so, neither would admit to it. “And don’t make something out of nothing.”

  Jonas Clark was gorgeous. But no doubt he knew that. He looked more like an athlete than a doctor. Broad shoulders, trim waist, perfect white teeth in a darkly handsome face. And what in the hell was she doing salivating over the man? That was so not like her. She hadn’t done that even when she was single.

  “Dr. Westbrook,” one of the ER nurses called from across the room, “EMS wants to talk to you.”

  She crossed the room to the big central desk, where among other things was the telephone EMS used. Picking up, she said, “This is Dr. Westbrook.”

  “We have a victim involved in a head-on collision. Two cars, one driver is dead and the other severely injured. Also a passenger with possible broken leg and ribs. The worst is the driver, though, a middle-aged male with head injuries and blunt injuries to the chest and abdomen.”

  “Is he coming by helicopter or ambulance?”

  “Passenger by ambulance. Driver by helicopter. We’re en route now as is the ambulance. After we got him out of the car, we stabilized his spine, intubated him, and started IVs. He’s unconscious, possibly due to the head injuries. Estimate arrival time in five minutes.”

  “We’ll be ready.” Claire relayed the information to the ER staff and let neurosurgery and orthopedics know they would likely be needed.

  Twenty-five minutes later, after ordering a trauma panel CAT scan, Claire talked to the radiologist. “What have we got, Turner?”

  “Hey, Westbrook, your trauma
, Peter Moore, has got a left temporal skull fracture with an acute epidural hematoma causing mass effect and midline shift.”

  She frowned at the scan on the computer. “Okay, neurosurgery is on the way.”

  “That’s great, but your other big problem is that he’s got a contained rupture of his aortic arch.”

  “Wonderful. That’s two immediately life-threatening injuries I’ve got to deal with. Thanks, Turner.” To her mind, of the two, the aorta was the first injury to take care of.

  She turned and found Jonas Clark at her elbow. “What can I do for you, Doctor?”

  “Other way around. You called neurosurgery. Is this for me?” He was looking at the head scan as he spoke.

  Sure she had, but she hadn’t expected him to show up until she confirmed he’d be needed. Most of the neurosurgeons didn’t. He was new, though. No doubt he’d change once he’d been there a while. “My patient has a hematoma you need to drain as soon as I’ve repaired his ruptured aorta.”

  He glanced at her briefly before turning back to the scan. “Bullshit.”

  She stared at him a moment. “Excuse me?”

  He smiled and repeated pleasantly, “Bullshit. You need to fix your aorta after I’ve drained his hematoma.” He motioned to the scan as if that settled it.

  She clamped down on her temper. “If his aorta goes, he’ll bleed out.”

  “Or he could be brain dead if I don’t operate now. If the aorta is contained it can wait.”

  They glared at each other, and Claire opened her mouth to argue some more.

  “Doctor! Doctor Westbrook! We need you in exam one.” One of the ER nurses rushed up to them. “Mr. Moore’s blood pressure is steadily dropping and his heart rate is going up.”

  Claire gave Clark a prim smile. “It looks like that aortic rupture is no longer contained. Let’s get him to the OR,” she told the nurse and left, well satisfied with her parting shot.