Healing Beau (The Brothers of Beauford Bend Book 6) Read Free Page B

deep breath. “Jackson, if Beau wanted to leave town, my refusing to take him to the airport wouldn’t stop him.”
    “That’s what Dirk says about the night Beau ran away the first time.”
    “And that’s true.” Though the pain of that night was still with her, too. That had been a rough spring. It was hard to say if that graduation night or prom night was worse.
    Probably prom night. Back in the winter when Beau and Mary Charles McAnnally had broken up, he and Christian had shared a bottle of Boone’s Farm strawberry wine. Near the bottom of the bottle, Beau had sworn he was done with women and proposed that he and Christian go to the prom together in April. She hadn’t even been put off by the backdoor invitation, but in an effort not to seem too eager, she had agreed, but only with the stipulation that if either of them found someone else to go with, they were welcome to back out. Not that she was looking. In fact, she was over the moon. Unfortunately, she had stressed the stipulation so rigorously and so often that when Beau and Mary Charles made up two weeks before prom, he did, indeed, feel welcome to back out.
    She still had the dress. It had never been worn.
    But back to the matter at hand. “Jackson, why did you think Beau wanted to leave town?”
    He looked at the ceiling. “We might have had a little disagreement last night. I might have said some things I shouldn’t have.”
    “Oh? Was it over the Porsche, the physical therapist, or the career plans?”
    “Huh?” Jackson looked puzzled. “No. Emory said I was coming on too strong, but I don’t think so.”
    “You wife is a wise woman. But never mind. Why did you argue, if not over that?”
    “He didn’t tell you?”
    “Obviously not.”
    “So you don’t know he was in a military hospital in Germany from before Thanksgiving until last week? And that he didn’t see fit to tell any of us?”
    Christian’s scalp prickled. “No. No. He didn’t tell me that. To have been in the hospital all that time, he must have been hurt worse than we thought.”
    Jackson nodded. “He was paralyzed, Christian. They didn’t know if he would ever walk again. It took weeks for the swelling in his spine to go down. Thankfully, the worst didn’t happen, but he just lay there that whole time alone.”
    Christian folded her hands and bowed her head. Beau alone, hurt, with no assurance that he would ever walk. And afraid. He must have been afraid. Or maybe he hadn’t been alone. He’d never wanted for female companionship. Maybe some exquisite, blond, blue-eyed Fräulein had been by his side every second, feeding him schnitzel and red cabbage. Or maybe it was a four-star general’s daughter, petite, polished, and Ivy League educated. Or perhaps—
    Stop it!
she admonished herself. Beau had been through this harrowing experience, and here she sat fantasizing about the phantom women who were her competition. And, aside from the self-centeredness of it, how absurd was all that anyway? First, there was no need for phantom women, because there had been plenty of flesh and blood ones. Second, there was no contest, and if there had been, she wouldn’t have even been entered. What were the lines of that old Eagles song? She couldn’t remember exactly, but something about the women on his mind. Some who want to own him, some who want to stone him, and one says she’s a friend of his. Yep. She was the women in that song—all of them.
    “Why would he do that, Jackson? Stay there alone? Why didn’t he call you?” Christian asked
. Or me? I would have gone to him, would have been there for him, like I’ve always been, without expecting anything.
    “He said—” Jackson stopped and closed his eyes. “He said that I would have flown to Germany in my private plane and had him at Vanderbilt Hospital in some fancy VIP suite before he could sneeze. I asked him how he knew Vandy had VIP suites, and he said he didn’t know, but if they didn’t, I’d call them up