Gus noticed immediately that he wasn't wearing his suit. He was dressed in jeans and a dark red shirt. He looks quite good in that shade of red, was the inane thought that crossed her mind before her thigh screamed yet again in agony. The part of her dress that she'd clamped over the wound had turned the chiffon from sky blue to reddish purple. The blood was seeping through the sheer fabric and had begun to run down her leg.
"What the hell are you doing here?" Gus asked him as she trained her gun on him.
Craig was nonplussed. "I might ask the same of you."
"I'm bleeding," she replied matter-of-factly.
"I can see that," he said as he scooped her up in his arms and started walking towards the pool house.
"Put me down!" she almost squawked. That damned man had gotten through her defenses again!
"Not so loud, Gus, I can hear perfectly well," he said, squeezing her gently. "Remember, I'm a doctor. I know what I'm doing."
"Yeah, well so am I, and hear this: I swear to God if you don't put me down I'm going to pull this trigger and permanently disable you!" She brandished her gun in his face to punctuate her threat.
"Shooting me would just exacerbate the situation," he answered calmly. "You shoot me, I drop you, and both of us would be in pain."
"Personally, I can't think of a better reason to do it."
"Gus, just shut up. You've been shot and you need medical attention." His tone brooked no argument. Rejection of his assistance was not an option.
Gus' teeth snapped together with an audible click. She set her jaw and shoved her gun down the front of her dress, then wrapped both arms around Craig's neck.
"I want you to know this is totally against my will."
"Understood." He shifted her gently in his arms as he opened the pool house door.
He carried her into the kitchen and set her down on the table. Gus winced as her thigh connected with the cool wood. She saw some napkins out of the corner of her eye, grabbed a handful and pressed them against the wound. Craig, in the meantime, was rummaging around in the First Aid cabinet, looking for helpful items. He came back with a wad of cotton gauze, a roll of tape, rubbing alcohol, hydrogen peroxide, and an antibacterial gel.
"Why are you here?" Gus asked him as he deposited the stuff next to her and pulled up a chair.
"You wouldn't believe me if I told you," he said, not looking at her as he opened the bottle of peroxide and dampened a length of cotton with it. "Lift up."
Gus took her hand off of the wound. He pulled up the hem of her dress to the reveal the bullet hole and removed the already soaked napkins. He made a small wincing sound and whistled through his teeth. "Nine millimeter?"
"Yeah. How did you know?" She bit the inside of her cheek purposefully as he applied the peroxide to her thigh. Damn, that hurts!
"I've seen enough ER patients come in with gunshot wounds to be able to differentiate." He was intent on sanitizing the place where the bullet had grazed her thigh, making sure that infection would not set in. He managed to get it cleaned out and to stop most of the bleeding.
She almost giggled when he squirted some of the anti-bacterial gel onto his middle finger and spread it carefully, as if he was applying makeup. He placed a wad of gauze on the wound.
"Now, put your hand on this, put pressure on it, and lie down." She did as he ordered, slowly leaning back on the hard surface of the table until her shoulder blades made contact. Just as she was beginning to relax he stood up, gripped her leg by the ankle, and took off her sandal. Gus wanted to gasp as he then placed her left ankle on his right shoulder and took up the roll of gauze.
My God, he can see my underwear, not to mention the holster for my gun! she thought to herself as he began wrapping dressing around her thigh. She rolled her eyes as she wondered what he must be thinking.
But he didn't say anything. He just went on wrapping the gauze as if it was nothing out of the ordinary. Gus studied him in silence as he worked. He was too gorgeous, it just wasn't fair. No man should look that good. She found her eyes drawn to the little frown line that time and worrying had etched between his eyebrows. It was incredibly endearing.
And the sensation of having his hands on her as he wrapped her leg, and his eyes occasionally straying to the place where her dress rode up enough to reveal her special-issue thigh holster as well as her white satin bikini unmentionables was. . . in a word, erotic. Gus thought it was unfair that her body chose to react in that uncalled-for manner, given the amount of pain she was in.
"Craig, why are you here?" she asked, unable to stay quiet any longer and trying to keep her mind from wandering in a southerly direction.
"Promise you won't laugh?" he asked, glancing up at her face.
"Cross my heart and hope to die." She made the prerequisite motions.
"I was worried about you." Not a trace of sarcasm, not a hint of comedy was implied.
She was suspicious anyway. "For what reason?"
"When Lucas Roberts brought Will in after the car accident and you weren't there, I started wondering where you were."
"What are you talking about?!"
"Lucas and Will got into an accident," he said. He'd finished with the gauze. "Hold," he ordered. She obeyed. He started with the tape. "Lucas had been drinking and his aborted attempt to kidnap his son ended in a car accident. Will was hurt pretty bad, major trauma to the spinal cord and the brain. Mike and I managed to reduce the swelling as much as we could, but the poor kid's still in intensive care. He's in a coma as we speak. Lucas is also in the ICU; he slipped into a coma shortly after he brought the kid in. Too much booze and too much shock, not the mention the smoke from the car catching on fire."
"Oh, God, poor Sami!"
"Poor Sami is right. She's the number one suspect of the murder of Franco Kelly."
Gus bit her lip. She had to or she was certain she would blurt out what she knew. "But why did you come back for me?"
Craig tied off the tape as he answered her in a noncommittal manner, "You disappeared. Mike said that wasn't like you. He and Carrie had to talk about something important, most likely PR stuff, and I wondered where you were. So I came back to look for you."
Gus sat up with more alacrity than Craig would have expected from a person who had been recently shot. She pulled the gun out of her dress with lightning speed, grabbed a fistful of his shirt and placed the barrel between his eyes.
"Craig Wesley, I heard enough about you in med school to know that you've never cared about anyone but yourself. Mike has told me stories about you and your schemes that make my skin crawl to this day. Yet here you are, bandaging me up and not asking me any questions about why or how I was shot, or why I have a gun in the first place. What gives?!"
"You said you wanted to see me?" Mike asked as he knocked softly on Carrie's open door.
Carrie looked up from Claire's artwork and as her eyes met his she felt that shock go through her again, like when she was little and stuck her tongue on the business end of a battery. Jennifer and she used to dare each other to do stupid things like that.
She pushed her hair behind her ear. She was still dressed in the dress she'd worn to the wedding. Mike was in scrubs. He'd just come out of surgery. Carrie remembered in her dream, Mike had been wearing. It was criminal for a man to look so good. . .
"How's Lucas?" she asked, attempting to distract herself.
"He'll pull through," Mike replied. He went over to the desk and stood beside Carrie as he tried to get a better look at Claire's drawings. "How are you, sunshine?"
"Uncle Mike!" Claire exclaimed as she put down her crayon. She held out her arms to him and he picked her up and hugged her tight. "It's good to see you."
"Good to see you, too, sunshine," he replied as he hugged her and kissed her cheek. "So, when are you going to marry me?"
Carrie raised an eyebrow. "Mike, is there something you need to tell me?"
Mike squeezed Claire and proudly announced, "We're engaged. She asked me to marry her when she was six years old."
Carrie stifled her mirth. Claire pouted adorably as she rolled her eyes in a perfect imitation of Gus.
"No, don't be silly," Claire said as she messed Mike's hair. "I'm not marrying you!"
"You sound just like your mother, young lady," Carrie said, shaking her finger at her cousin.
Mike smirked as Claire lifted her nose in the air. "Well, marry someone else, break my heart, and stomp on the pieces why don't you!" he teased her.
Claire yawned and closed her eyes sleepily. Mike and Carrie both noticed and the look that passed between them was a mixture of concern and relief. Each of them could sense that the other wanted to talk. With Claire being the precocious little 10 year-old that she was, privacy was a non-issue unless she was asleep.
"Sweetie, would you like to lie down for awhile until Mommy gets here?" Carrie asked her, pushing Claire's hair out of her eyes.
"Okay. Does Daddy know where I am?" Claire inquired as Mike and Carrie silently agreed the couch was the most comfortable place for her to take a nap.
"I'll make sure to tell him," Mike said as he lay her down on the cushy sofa that sat along the wall. Claire curled up on her side and yawned again as Mike placed his lab coat over her.
They stood back and watched as her breathing slowed and her eyelids fluttered close. Mike put his arm around Carrie and briefly wondered if maybe, someday, it could ever be their daughter who they could watch going to sleep. Carrie leaned her head against his shoulder and closed her eyes as she slipped her arm around his waist. The fabric of his scrubs was soft, well-worn. If she'd been halfway around the world she could have recognized them as Mike's. No one else smelled quite that good.
It was a very intimate moment for the two of them. They could feel each other's bodies relaxing, conforming to fit together. It was a melting sensation that went from their shoulders to their stomachs. It was all the more illicit because there was a third person in the room, and even though she was sleeping, she could wake up at any moment.
"Carrie," he whispered into her ear, "Can we go somewhere to talk?"
"Sure," she answered softly, taking a deep breath and turning fully into his arms. He held her for a moment as she rested her forehead against his neck. "Where should we go?"
"Someplace private. I don't feel partial to fielding phone calls right now."
"I think I have an idea."
Sami was in the chapel, kneeling in one of the middle pews. If there was ever a time for her to try to pray, it was now.
God, please, I love my baby boy. Please, don't take him away from me. I know I've done things that are wrong, I know that I've broken just about every commandment you've set before me, but I'm turning to you now. My son, my firstborn, my baby, he needs your help. He's not even three years old and it seems like he's slipping away from me minute by minute. Please, let him live, let him grow up to be the man that I always hoped he would be. If I did anything right in this lifetime, I know that you know that I love my son. God, please don't let him die. I don't care about jail, I don't care about prison. The only thing that matters is my son. Please, let him live and let him be all right.
"Sami?"
She looked up, her face streaked with tears. Lexie was standing there next to her, holding a medical chart, a concerned look in her eyes.
"What is it, Lexie?" Sami asked, "Is it Will? Is he worse? Will he be all right?"
Lexie sat down in the pew next to her. "Sami, I just got the results back from the battery of tests we ran on you. There's something I think you need to know."
"What? Did they find gunpowder residue on my clothing or something? Do I have some rare tropical disease that will kill me before another week passes? What?!"
"Sami, please calm down," Lexie said, placing a hand on her shoulder. Sami was dressed in hospital scrubs. Her wedding gown had been taken away for further testing. She looked sick, washed out, and very, very tired.
"Abe said I could come in, am I interrupting anything?" Austin asked as he stepped into the chapel.
"No," Sami replied. Lexie watched in amazement as Austin walked over to the other side of the pew and took Sami in his arms. They embraced for a brief moment, a mother and a father-figure in anguish over the plight of a child they had shared.
Sami pulled away first. She ran a hand through her hair. "How is he?"
"He's stabilizing, but it's taking a long time. Mike and Craig took good care of him," Austin replied. He turned to Lexie. "So, what kind of news do you have for us?"
"Us?" Lexie asked, confused and upset. Since when have Austin and Sami been "us"?!
Seeing Lexie's bewilderment, she replied, "Austin is going to have custody of Will while I'm in jail."
"What about Lucas?" Lexie asked softly. "He is Will's father."
"Lucas will never come near Will again," Austin said in a venomous voice as Sami broke down, sobbing into his shoulder. "I won't let that drunk near him!"
"I can't believe he tried to take my baby from me!" Sami whispered brokenly through her tears. "And he'd been drinking. He could have killed Will!"
"Sami, it's all right," Austin assured her as he turned her so that she could rest her head on his chest while he held her. "It's all right. Will is going to be okay."
"I just hope that nothing else horrible happens today," Sami said after her sobs subsided. "I can't take anymore of this."
Lexie made a decision. It had to be said and it had to be said now. "Sami, there is something you need to know before you go anywhere or do anything else."
"What?" she asked, her voice thick and slurred. Her shoulders drooped and her eyes were red from crying. Lexie almost felt sorry for her.
"You're pregnant."
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