Tribute

by Nora Roberts

  it? She let her breath out slowly, stared down at the fingers she held in hers. “Don’t make me yell at you again. You know if I cut loose I can out-bitch your mother. Who’s going to come back here pretty soon, so . . .”

  The fingers twitched, curled. The lightest of pressure on hers.

  “Okay, okay, stay there, don’t go anywhere.” She reached for the call button, held her finger down on it. “Steve, come on, Steve, do it again.” She lifted his hand, pressed her lips to it. Then, narrowing her eyes, bit. And laughed when his fingers twitched and curled again.

  “He squeezed my hand,” she called out as Mike came in. “He squeezed it twice. Is he waking up? Is he?”

  “Talk to him.” Mike moved to the side of the bed, lifted one of Mike’s eyelids. “Let him hear your voice.”

  “Come on, Steve. It’s Cill. Wake up, you lazy bastard. I’ve got better things to do than stand around here and watch you sleep.”

  On the other side of the bed, Mike checked pulse, pupils, BP. Then pinched Steve hard on the forearm. The arm jerked.

  “He felt that. He moved. Steve, you’re killing me. Open your eyes.” Cilla grabbed his face, put her nose nearly to his. “Open your eyes.”

  They fluttered, and she felt another flutter on her chin. More than his breath, she realized. A word.

  “What? What? Say it again.”

  She leaned down, her ear at his lips. She caught his slow, indrawn breath, and heard the hoarse, raw whisper of a single word. He said, “Shit.”

  Cilla let out a sob that choked into a laugh. “Shit. He said shit!”

  “Can’t blame him.” Quickly, Mike strode to the door to signal another nurse. “Page Dr. North. His patient’s waking up.”

  “Can you see me?” Cilla demanded when his eyes opened. “Steve? Can you see me?”

  He let out a weary sigh. “Hi, doll.”

  SHE SPOKE to the doctor, even managed to smile genuinely at Steve’s mother before she locked herself in a bathroom stall for a jag of weeping relief. After she’d washed her face, slapped on makeup and sunglasses to hide the damage, she went back to the nurses’ station.

  “He’s sleeping,” Mike told her. “Natural sleep. He’s weak, and he’s still got a lot of healing to do. You should go home, Cilla. Get a good night’s sleep yourself.”

  “I will. If he asks for me—”

  “We’ll call you.”

  For the first time Cilla stepped into the elevator with an easy heart. As she crossed the lobby, she pulled out her phone and called Ford.

  “Hey, beautiful blond girl.”

  “He woke up.” She moved down the sidewalk toward the parking lot with a bounce in every step. “He woke up, Ford. He talked to me.”

  “What’d he say?”

  “‘Shit’ came first.”

  “As it should.”

  “He knew me, his name and all that. His left side’s a little weaker than his right, just now. But the doctor says he’s looking good. They have to do tests, and—”

  “Looking good works. Do you want me to come by, bring you some dinner?”

  “No, I’m heading home now. He’s sleeping. Just sleeping. I wanted to tell you. I just wanted to say that I saw your sketch, and I was teasing him about it right before . . . I think it might have done the trick.”

  “Nothing stops Con the Immortal for long.”

  “You are so—Oh God! Son of a bitch!”

  “What? What was that?”

  She stared down at the door of her truck. “I’ll be home in a few minutes. I’ll come by.”

  She clicked off before Ford could respond. And read what someone had written on the driver’s-side door in black marker.

  WHORES BEGET WHORES!

  THIRTEEN

  Ford watched Cilla take digitals of the pickup’s door. His rage wanted to bubble up, but he couldn’t figure out what he’d do with it if he spewed.

  Kick the tires? Punch a couple of trees? Stalk around and froth at the mouth? None of the options seemed particularly helpful or satisfying. Instead he stood with his hands jammed in his pockets, and the rage at a low, simmering boil.

  “The cops’ll take pictures,” he pointed out.

  “I want my own. Besides, I don’t think Wilson and Urick are going to make this a priority.”

  “It could be connected. They’ll be here in the morning.”

  She shrugged, then turned the camera off, stuck it in her pocket. “That’s not coming off. The sun baked that marker on so it might as well be paint. I’ll have to have the whole damn door done. I haven’t had this truck three months.”

  While he watched, she kicked a tire. He decided he’d been right. She didn’t look satisfied. “You can use my car until it’s fixed.”

  “I’ll drive this.” Both the defiance and the temper glared out of her eyes. “I know I’m not a whore. I saw Hennessy’s van in the parking lot before I went in to visit Steve. He could’ve done this. He could’ve hurt Steve. He’s capable.”

  “Did Steve say anything about it?”

  “We didn’t ask him. He was still so weak and disoriented. Probably tomorrow, the doctor said. He’d be up to talking to the police tomorrow. Damn it!”

  She stalked for a few minutes but, he noted, didn’t froth at the mouth or punch a tree. Then she stopped, heaved out a breath. “Okay. Okay. I’m not going to let some asshole spoil this really excellent day. Does the liquor store in town have any champagne in stock?”

  “Couldn’t say. But I do.”

  “How come you have everything?”

  “I was a Boy Scout. Seriously,” he said when she laughed. “I have the merit badges to prove it.” She was right, he decided, no asshole should be allowed to spoil an excellent day. “How about we heat up a frozen pizza and pop the cork?”

  From his perch on the veranda, Spock leaped up and danced.

  “Sounds good to me, too.” As she moved in to kiss him, a horn beeped cheerfully.

  “Well,” Ford said when a Mustang convertible in fire-engine red pulled in behind Cilla’s car, and Spock tore down the steps to spin in delirious circles, “it had to happen sometime.”

  The vivid color of the car had nothing on the windswept red mop of the woman who waved from the passenger seat, who tipped down her big, Jackie O sunglasses to peer at Cilla over the top as she stepped out onto peep-toe wedges to greet the bouncing, spinning dog.

  The driver unfolded himself. It was the height and the build that alerted Cilla, even before she got a good look at the shape of the jaw.

  Her palms automatically went damp. This was definitely meet-the-parents. An audition she invariably failed.

  “Hello, my cutie-pie!” Penny Sawyer clamped her hands on Ford’s cheeks once he’d walked down the slope to her. She kissed him noisily. Her laugh was like gravel soaked in whiskey.

  “Hey, Mama. Daddy.” He got a one-armed bear hug from the man with hair of Cary Grant silver. “What are y’all doing?”

  “Heading out to Susie and Bill’s. Texas Hold ’Em tournament.” Penny poked Ford in the chest while Ford’s father squatted to shake hands with Spock. “We had to drive right by, so we stopped in case you wanted in.”

  “I always lose at poker.”

  “You don’t have gambling blood.” Penny turned her avid eyes on Cilla. “But you do have company. You don’t have to tell me who this is. You look just like your grandmama.” Penny moved forward, hands outstretched. “The most beautiful woman I ever saw.”

  “Thank you.” Left with no choice, Cilla wiped her hands hurriedly on her pants before taking Penny’s. “It’s nice to meet you.”

  “Cilla McGowan, my parents, Penny and Rod Sawyer.”

  “I know your daddy very well.” Penny shot a sly glance at her husband.

  “Now you cut that out,” Rod told her. “Always trying to make me jealous. Heard a lot of good things about you,” he said to Cilla.

  “Heard hardly a syllable out of this one.” Penny poked Ford again.

&n
bsp; “I am the soul of discretion.”

  Penny let out her quick, rumbling laugh again, then dug into her purse. She pulled out an enormous Milk Bone that sent Spock into a medley of happy growls, grunts and groans while his body quivered and his bulging eyes shone.

  “Be a man,” she said to the dog, and Spock rose up on his hind legs to dance in place. “That’s my sweetheart,” she crooned and held the biscuit out. Spock nipped it and, with a full-body wag, ran off to chomp and chew. “I have to spoil him,” she said to Cilla. “He’s the closest thing resembling a grandchild I’ve gotten out of this one.”

  “You have two of the human variety from Alice,” Ford reminded her.

  “And they get cookies when they visit.” She gestured to the house across the road. “It’s a good thing you’re doing, bringing that place back to life. It deserves it. Your grandfather’s going to be at the game tonight, Ford. My daddy was madly in love with your grandmother.”

  Cilla blinked. “Is that so?”

  “Head over. He has scores of pictures she let him take over the years. He wouldn’t sell them for any price, even when I had a notion to frame a few and display them at the bookstore.”

  “Mama owns Book Ends in the Village,” Ford told Cilla.

  “Really? I’ve been there. I bought some landscaping and design books from you. It’s a nice store.”

  “Our little hole in the wall,” Penny said. “Oh now, look, we’re going to be late. Why do you let me talk so much, Rod?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Y’all change your mind about the game, we’ll make sure you get a seat at a table. Cilla, they’d just love to have you, too,” Penny called out as Rod pulled her down to the car. “I’m going to have Daddy bring those pictures over for you to look at.”

  “Thank you. Nice to meet you.”

  “Ford! You bring Cilla over for dinner sometime.”

  “In the car, Penny.”

  “I’m getting, I’m getting. You hear?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Ford called back. “Win a bundle.”

  “I’m feeling lucky!” Penny shouted as Rod zipped into reverse, then zoomed on down the road.

  Cilla said, “Wow.”

  “I know. It’s like being lightly brushed by the edge of a hurricane. Leaves you a little surprised and dazed, and sure that much more and you’d be flat on your ass.”

  “You look a lot like your father, who is very handsome, by the way. But your mother? She’s dazzling.”

  “She is, as her own father likes to say, a corker.”

  “Corker.” Cilla laughed as they walked into the house. With a polite burp, Spock trotted in with them. “Well, I like her, and I tend to eye mothers suspiciously. Speaking of corks. Where’s the champagne?”

  “Spare fridge, mudroom.”

  “I’ll get that, you get the pizza.”

  Moments later, she came back into the kitchen with a bottle of Veuve Clicquot and a puzzled frown. “Ford, what are you doing with all that paint?”

  “The what?” He looked over from setting the oven. “Oh that. There’s a zillion gallons of primer, a zillion of exterior red, and a slightly lesser amount of exterior white, for trim.”

  As her heart did a slow somersault, she set the bottle on the counter. “You bought the barn paint.”

  “I don’t believe in jinxes. I do believe in positive thinking, which is just really hope anyway.”

  Everything inside her shifted, settled. Opened. She stepped to him, laid a hand on his cheek, laid her lips on his. Warm as velvet, tender as a wish, the kiss flowed. Even when he shifted so she pressed back against the counter, it stayed slow and silky, deep and dreamy.

  When their lips parted, she sighed, then rested her cheek against his in a gesture of simple affection she gave to very few. “Ford.” She drew back, sighed again. “My head’s too full of Steve to meet your requirements for sex tonight.”

  “Ah. Well.” He trailed a fingertip up her arm. “Realistically, they’re more loose guidelines than strict requirements.”

  She laughed, caressed his cheek once more. “They’re good requirements. I’d like to stick to them.”

  “Got no one to blame but myself.” He stepped around her to slide the pizza into the oven.

  “So we’ll eat bad pizza, get a little buzzed on champagne and not have sex.”

  Ford shook his head as he removed the foil and the cage on the bottle. “Almost my favorite thing to do with a beautiful woman.”

  “I don’t fall for guys. It’s a policy,” she said when he paused and glanced over at her. “Considering the influence of inherited traits—and the track record of my grandmother and mother in that area—I’ve taken a pass. Steve was an exception, and that just showed how it can go. So I don’t fall for guys. But I seem to be falling for you.”

  The cork exploded out of the bottle as he stared at her. “Does that scare you?”

  “No.” He cleared his throat. “A little. A moderate amount.”

  “I thought it might because it’s got me jumpy. So I figured heads-up.”

  “I appreciate it. Do you have, like, a definition for the term ‘fall for’?”

  God, she thought as she looked at him. Oh my God, she was a goner. “Why don’t you get the glasses? I think we could both use a drink.”

  SHE HIRED PAINTERS, and had some of the crew haul the paint to the barn. She talked to the cops, and made a deal with a local body shop to paint the door of her truck. Whenever she caught sight of the white van, she had no qualms about shooting up her middle finger.

  No evidence, the cops said. Nothing to place Hennessy at the scene on the night Steve was attacked. No way to prove he decorated her truck with hate.

  So she’d wait him out, Cilla decided. And if he made another move, she’d be ready.

  Meanwhile, Steve had been bumped down to a regular room, and his mother had hopped back on her broomstick to head west.

  Dripping sweat from working in the attic, Cilla stood studying the skeleton of the master bath. “It’s looking good, Buddy. It’s looking good for tomorrow’s inspection.”

  “I don’t know why in God’s world anybody needs all these showerheads.”

  “Body jets. It’s not just a shower, it’s an experience. Did you see the fixtures? They came in this morning.”

  “I saw. They’re good-looking,” he said, grudgingly enough to make her smile.

  “How are you coming with Mister Steam?”

  “I’ll get it, I’ll get it. Don’t breathe down my neck.”

  She made faces at his back. “Well, speaking of showers, I need one before I go in to see Steve.”

  “Water’s turned off. You want this done, water’s got to stay off.”

  “Right. Shit. I’ll grab one over at Ford’s.”