by Soraya Lane
He let go of Lauren as she slid away, and his eyes found Mia’s. “No,” he ground out. “You do not bring our mom into this.”
“Why not? How is our mom any different than Lexi’s? She’s just trying to look after her, only she doesn’t have the money for a private nurse and jets at her disposal to fly her around the country to see every available specialist!”
“Enough, Mia,” Angelina interrupted.
“Yeah, enough,” Cody said, turning to head for the door. “You don’t bring Mom into this, okay? That was different and you know it.”
“So it’s not okay for Lexi to fight for her mom in her hometown?” Mia called after him. “This was your home too, Cody.”
“Mia!” Angelina scolded, her high-pitched tone cutting through the air.
Cody spun around, but Mia was standing now, not about to be stopped. He’d never seen her so angry, so vivid about anything.
“You act like you’re not even from here anymore, but you can’t just forget what’s in your blood, Cody. You’re as much a part of River Ranch as I am. You just don’t like to admit it sometimes.”
Cody didn’t know what to say. He stared, his mouth opening as he saw the pain in his little sister’s face, the anguish as she finally, after all these years, spoke the truth. Why had she never said anything before? Why had they always just pretended everything was fine when it wasn’t?
“I know that,” he finally said, rooted to the spot even though he knew he should go to her. “I know that.” Softer this time, as he took a big breath and stared back at her. “It’s just, well, it’s complicated. I’m sorry.”
“It’s a bit late for sorry,” Mia said, shaking her head and turning away from him.
“Funny, that’s exactly what I said.”
Cody turned to see Lexi standing in the doorway, her hands wrapped around her body as she stared at him.
He fought the urge to groan and instead squared his shoulders and faced her straight on. “How long have you been standing there?” he asked.
The women behind him were silent, and even though he could feel them there, the way Lexi was staring at him made it feel like they were the only two people in the room.
She shook her head, her gaze sad as she looked into his eyes then turned away. “Long enough.”
* * *
Lexi stared at Cody, wondering how he could be the same person she’d gone head-to-head with only hours earlier. Gone were the expensive threads, replaced with worn jeans and a plaid shirt that looked like it had been a favorite of his for years. She could almost recall the way it would smell, the way it would feel, just by looking at it.
“About before,” he started, and she waited, thinking he was going to apologize but realizing he was just uncomfortable and didn’t know what to say.
“When you belittled me on live television?” she asked, glancing behind him and seeing that both his sisters and Lauren were all watching her. Did they think the same of her? That she shouldn’t be standing up for what she believed in? She wished she’d heard more of the conversation, wished she knew where she stood with the family.
But no one said a thing, so she didn’t find out.
“Are you here for the rest of the afternoon?” Cody finally asked.
“Yes,” she said, clearing her throat. “Unless you’d prefer me to leave?”
Cody opened his mouth, but it was Mia who leapt toward her, sheltering her in a big hug and speaking before anyone else could.
“Don’t you ever say that,” Mia said, holding her tight. “You have been the brightest of lights when none of us knew what to do or how to even go about dealing with Dad. Some members of this family run away when the going gets tough, so we need you more than ever, Lexi. You will always be welcome in this house, no matter what.”
Lexi hugged her back, trying to disconnect from Mia’s words so she didn’t start crying. She wasn’t allowed to crack, her moment earlier today was the only break in her resolve that she was giving herself.
“Thanks,” she managed to mumble against Mia. Lexi didn’t look at the others to see their responses; Mia’s words were enough to tell her to keep going. Besides, she doubted Walter would let her go anyway, but she was still dreading what he was going to say about her having a temporary nurse assist him while she was gone that morning.
“Go after her,” she heard Mia order.
Lexi shook her head as she walked. Cody had to be told by his little sister to go after a woman he was hurting. The irony wasn’t lost on her—if only Mia had been older when she’d been dating Cody.
She was about to touch the handle on Walter’s door when a hand settled over her shoulder instead. A heavy, big, masculine hand. A touch she’d have recognized anywhere. But instead of leaning into it, sighing into the warmth of another human connecting with her, she shrugged it away as she turned.
“Lexi, we need to talk.”
She laughed. She couldn’t help it, the laughter just bubbled out of her, and if she hadn’t laughed she probably would have just burst out crying—and she sure as hell wasn’t going to let that happen.
“Now you want to talk?” She folded her arms tightly across her chest. “Because Mia told you to come after me?”
Cody’s face changed. The strong, confident mask slipped away, replaced with a look she hadn’t seen for a long time. “No, because I care about you and I don’t like the way this has played out between us.”
“I don’t want to go back into the past, Cody. I’ve held on to all that for so many years, and it was stupid and immature.” She leaned back against the wall, wishing she had more space so she could move farther away from him. “We’ve already said all that though. It’s over as far as I’m concerned.”
“The way we both behaved today, like enemies, it—”
“We are enemies, Cody. We’re on opposite sides of a very big void with very different opinions, so if that doesn’t make us enemies, or adversaries at least, then I’m not sure what would.”
“I never meant to hurt you, Lexi. Not back then and certainly not now.”
“Well, you did, both times.” She paused. “Cody, if you’d known this was going to affect me, or anyone else you knew personally, would you still have done it?”
He didn’t say anything for a moment, but then he let out an audible breath and nodded, his mouth turned down.
“I’m not going to lie to you, Lexi. The answer is yes; I still would have done it. Because I only look at figures and returns, at whether something is a good deal or not. It’s never personal and it’s how I’ve grown my wealth and accelerated the growth of my company.”
“Yeah, it’s just business. You’ve told me that already.”
She went to turn again, wanting to get away from him, needing to put some space between them before she flew off the handle and started screaming at him or launched at him like a wild cat wanting to claw at his skin. She’d never hated anyone in her life as much as she hated him right now.
“This is my mom, Cody. My mom,” she finally said, grinding out the words. “You may not have fought for your mom, but I refuse to turn my back on mine.”
“What did you say?” Cody’s body language changed, his relaxed demeanor replaced by something more visceral as his eyes widened.
“You heard me. You ran away from yours, but I’ll never turn my back on mine.”
“Don’t you dare,” he said, his hand viciously running through his hair. “You don’t, just don’t talk about my mother.”
“I always thought you were running from me, even though I couldn’t figure out why. I just couldn’t work out what the hell I’d done after that summer we’d had together, but then when I was listening to Mia, and something Angelina said the other night, it all clicked into place.” Cody’s hands were fisted now, his anger palpable, but she wasn’t about to stop. Now that she’d started, the emotion was literally pulsing from her. “I won’t turn my back, Cody.”
“You don’t get to talk about my mom,” he said. �
�You know nothing about what I went through, what it was like for me seeing her wither away, knowing she was going to die and not wanting that to be my memory of her.” Cody’s jaw tightened; she could see the tick of him grinding it before he spoke again. “So yeah, I left, because it was the only way I could deal with that, and I’ve had to live the rest of my life knowing that when the going got tough, I disappeared. I turned my back on everyone I loved, and that includes you. Don’t think it didn’t hurt me, because it did. It damn well hurt but I was trying to save myself even worse heartache down the line.”
She stared at him, almost pitying him now that he was finally being honest with her. But it hurt too, because he’d gone from the strongest man she’d ever known to one who’d been too scared to stay for fear of being hurt.
“I was there, you know,” Lexi said, keeping her voice low, not wanting Walter to hear. “You left me like I meant nothing to you, but I was still there. I would have done anything for you, you could have talked to me, we could have figured it out together.”
“You were where? Here?” he asked, looking confused.
“I was there,” she ground out. “At the service for your mom when she passed.”
“You were at the service?” he asked, not hiding the surprise in his voice.
“Your mom was kind to me, she always made me feel welcome, and whenever I saw her, after you left, I half expected her to cross the road or turn away so she didn’t have to speak to me. But she never did.” Lexi sucked back a breath. “She cared about me, she cared about what I was doing, and the last time I saw her alive, she gave me a hug and apologized for the way you’d just dismissed me, as if I was nothing more than a toy that you’d become sick of playing with. I think maybe I saw more of her in that last year of her life than you did.”
She watched as Cody grit his teeth together, as he wrestled with what she told him. She may as well have stuck a knife into his side, she knew how painful the words were, but she wasn’t about to stop, not now. If he wanted the truth, well, he was going to get it—every dirty, raw, unforgettable inch of it.
“I sat at the back of the church and grieved for her, Cody. I sat there and watched you walk past, carrying her coffin, and I felt your pain.”
He blinked, nodding slowly. “I didn’t know.”
They stared at each other, before Lexi took a deep breath. “I have to go.” And with that she opened the door and disappeared into Walter’s study, not about to waste another breath on Cody goddamn Ford.
What the hell?
Lexi stared for half a second, paralyzed as she stared at the body on the floor. And then her training took over and she didn’t hesitate.
“Cody!” she yelled. “Help!”
Chapter 13
LEXI’s panicked call cut through the air like a hot knife through butter. One second Cody was walking down the hall, pissed as hell and about to storm back into the kitchen and give his sister a piece of his mind, and the next he was sprinting back down the hall as fast as his legs had ever carried him before.
Cody shoulder slammed the door at the same time as he turned the handle, about to ask why she was yelling like someone had been murdered when he saw his father on the ground and Lexi bent over him.
“Oxygen!” she ordered, and he didn’t ask why or what, he just did as he was told.
Lexi put the mask over Walter’s face, and breathed a guttural sigh of relief as she saw condensation forming on the mask and then a movement.
“What the hell happened?” Cody muttered.
She glanced up at him, her eyes filled with concern. “I don’t know. I just found him like this.”
“Has it happened before?”
She nodded and went back to checking him over. “Yeah, it has. I do my best to get him to rest, but the medication—not to mention his cancer—means that he needs to sleep more.”
“And the old bastard won’t stop working, am I right?”
Before she answered, his dad made a groaning sound and Cody reached out to touch Lexi, his hand on her arm as her big, beautiful brown eyes met his.
“Is it safe to lift him?” he asked.
She looked at his hand before answering, and just like that he felt something change between them. Everything else faded away as he felt her warm skin beneath his hand, her other hand on his father. If Lexi hadn’t been there, hadn’t found his dad and known what to do, it could have ended up being the worst Christmas any of them had ever had.
“Yes, let’s get him to the sofa,” she said quietly. “We need to work out if he fainted, had a medical event, or…”
Walter raised a shaking hand, his eyes open now as he attempted to take the mask off his face. Cody quickly helped him, lifting it below his dad’s chin so he could speak.
“Fall,” he croaked. “I was trying to hear what you two were arguing about and I slipped and fell.”
Cody silently put the mask back over his father’s face and then bent to lift him, surprised at how light he was. It wouldn’t have been a year ago that it would have taken effort to lift Walter’s big frame—but now it was easy.
“Cody, could you check in with Tanner and make sure Harry’s okay?” Lexi asked. “I don’t want to leave your dad, so I might need Tanner to keep minding him a little bit more. I’m so sorry.”
“It’s fine, you stay here,” he said. “Are you even supposed to work nights?”
She smiled, her hand on Walter’s shoulder as she looked down at him. “I’ll sleep the night on the floor to make sure my favorite patient’s okay, whether I’m supposed to be or not.”
Cody watched her, amazed at her kindness. He knew his dad was paying her well, but he could see it ran deeper than that. Lexi was something special, and he would have volunteered to look after Harry all day if it meant she could look after his father.
“I’ll go down and check on the little guy myself,” he said. “But I can tell you that earlier today he fell in love with a pony, and I’ll bet he hasn’t let her out of his sight.”
“Really? He spent the day with a pony?” Her smile put a small crack in his hardened heart.
“Yeah, he did.”
“Thanks, Cody. And please thank Tanner too. This will go down as one of his favorite days, I just know it.”
Cody pulled his phone from his pocket to call Tanner, quietly leaving the room so Lexi could get to work. There was no signal. He went to the front door and opened it, surprised to see a heavy blanket of snow had started to cover the ground again. He shut the door and jogged into the kitchen, surprising Mia, Lauren, and Angelina.
“Dad had a fall,” he said. “Lexi’s looking after him and he’s fine but—”
Mia and Angelina were gone before he could even finish his sentence. He looked up at Lauren, who had a glass of wine half raised to her lips.
“I see it wasn’t too early for drinking after all,” he muttered.
“What should I do?” Lauren asked.
He felt for her, no doubt feeling like she was on the fringe of the family in a crisis. “Try to get hold of Tanner for me. I can’t get a connection, but if he’s got the two-way radio on you should be able to get him.”
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“Down to find him. I’ll take a radio so you can call me if you need to.” He grabbed the coat he’d left over the back of a chair along with his scarf and put it on. “Lexi needs to focus on Dad, and Tanner still has Harry. If she realizes the snow is closing in, she’ll start worrying about him, and I want her focused on the old man.”
Lauren nodded, touching his arm as she passed. “It’ll be fine, Cody. She’s a great nurse and your dad’s a strong old bastard.”
He gave her a kiss on the cheek, squeezing her arm in return, before disappearing out into the cold to find his brother. He knew he had the easy job—he got to leave the house and keep busy doing something else—but what else could he do for his father than what he’d already done?
* * *
Lexi’s heart was fin
ally slowing to its normal speed as she watched Walter take a sip of water. Even though his hand was shaking, she could see the normal color coming back into his cheeks. She knew it could have ended badly, that if she hadn’t been close, if she hadn’t walked into the room at that exact moment, that she could be looking into the eyes of two very heartbroken women right now. Lexi took a deep breath.
“Something stronger would help,” he said, avoiding eye contact with her as he looked at his daughters.
“Absolutely not,” Mia said, shuffling closer to him on the sofa. A cry echoed out from upstairs, the noises from the house filtering through the open door, and she saw Mia torn between staying with her dad and going to her children.
“I can go to them if you want to stay?” Lexi asked, knowing how it felt to be pulled between a child and something else that demanded attention.
“No, it’s fine, you’re the one I’d rather have with him,” Mia said as she rose. “They’ve both had a long afternoon nap, they’ll want cuddles with Mama when they wake up, and I need to get going soon anyway. Sam will be wondering where I am.”
Lexi was starting to panic about her own child. Harry had been gone for hours now, and although she trusted Tanner with him, a quick glance outside at the darkening sky showed the snow starting to fall heavily.
“You’ll stay with him?” Mia asked. “Is that too much to ask or—”
“Of course I’ll stay,” Lexi said without missing a beat. “You can count on me, Mia. I promise.”
Mia nodded and gave her a warm hug, holding on tight before she left the room. Lexi turned all her attention to her patient then, deciding to act as normal rather than talk about what had happened. His own daughters had already scolded him enough.
“It looks like we’re going to have a white Christmas after all,” she said, smiling at Walter as she took his temperature again, pleased to see it wasn’t too bad. She decided to do his blood pressure as well, not wanting to miss anything in case they had to get him to a hospital. Although she knew it’d be almost impossible to convince him about that being a good idea.