For all Intents and Purposes (MidKnight Blue Book 6)

by Sherryl Hancock

  “Joe, babe,” she said softly as she touched his cheek.

  It took him a long time to even respond, and when he did, it was obvious he wasn’t all there. She had him sit up and got him to take the pills. Randy put the glass on the nightstand and then pulled him down against her again, stroking his hair and holding him.

  She spent most of the night listening to his breathing, and she knew something wasn’t right. That was when she was sure he had pneumonia again. He’d only had it one other time since they’d been married; she’d always been careful to make him slow down when his health seemed bad or he started to cough. She’d finally gotten him to quit smoking altogether when she’d been pregnant with Kat, citing that it was bad for her and their unborn child to have smoke anywhere near them. Not that he’d ever smoked around her anyway; anytime he’d started up again, always during very stressful times, he’d smoke on the deck outside. Now, having him sick again worried her; she knew he’d been overdoing it, but she’d been so busy with school and the kids she hadn’t kept after him as she had before. She felt guilty that she hadn’t taken care of him the way she should. Lying there all night, she had a good opportunity to thoroughly berate herself. By morning she was exhausted.

  When Christian arrived back at the house he stopped at Joe and Randy’s door, knocking softly. Again, it was Randy’s voice that told him to come in. He opened the door and saw that Randy was lying still, holding her husband. It was obvious she’d been awake a lot during the night.

  “How is he?” Christian whispered, walking over to the bed.

  “He’s not real good. I think he’s already got pneumonia. I’m going to take him to the hospital first thing this morning. And don’t look like that, Christian—he’s real susceptible to it, and it may not have had anything to do with your cold. He’ll be fine, they just need to treat him for it, okay?”

  Christian nodded. “If there’s anything I can do…”

  “You just getting home?” she asked, though she already knew the answer.

  “Yeah,” Christian replied, not bothering to look embarrassed—because he wasn’t.

  “Then you need to go to sleep, ’cause I know you didn’t wherever you were this morning,” she said, smiling at him. She knew from what Joe had said that she was basically seeing what Joe had been like in his much younger days, before his parents had been killed. Christian was young, handsome, and free from any entanglements of the heart, and enjoying it to the fullest.

  “All the same,” Christian said, undaunted, “if you need me for anything, let me know.”

  Randy nodded. “Okay.”

  Christian left the room and went down the hall, intent on checking everything out before he went off to bed. When he got closer to the children’s rooms, he noted that Kat’s door was open. He saw her lying on the floor with her pillow and blanket. Kat heard him approach and sat up, smiling and holding up her arms. Christian couldn’t resist stepping over the gate in her doorway and picking her up. Since the day he had set foot in the house, Kat had taken to him. She had never treated him like a stranger. It tugged at Christian’s heart, even if he didn’t want it to. He’d always had a weakness for children anyway, seeing them as innocents. Since this little girl also happened to be related to him, it made her extra special to him. JT liked him too, but it was Kat that climbed up into his lap every chance she got. Even now, she rested her head on his shoulder and reached up to touch his black hair.

  “Kissgin,” she said, trying to say his name but, as always, not quite getting it right.

  “What?” He craned his neck to look down at her, smiling in spite of himself.

  “Out?” she said, pointing past her door and the gate that kept her in the room when she got up before her nanny.

  Christian thought about it for a minute, but knew he didn’t have the heart to put her down, knowing she’d cry if he did. “Yes, out, little love,” he said, turning and stepping carefully back over the gate.

  Susan found him three hours later, sitting in the living room with both Kat and JT putting together blocks. He still wore the outfit he’d had on the night before, so she was able to surmise that he hadn’t been to bed as of yet. “I’m sorry,” she said, aghast that it was so late and that he was in essence doing what would normally be her job. In actuality it was normally her day off, but Randy had asked her to take care of the children that morning because of Joe’s illness. “I guess I overslept—I never heard them wake up. They didn’t make the usual amount of noise they do when they get up.”

  “That’s my fault,” Christian said. “Kat was lying on her floor when I walked by this morning, and I picked her up and brought her out here. She decided to wake her brother, so I brought him out here too.” He shrugged, not realizing how much he was surprising Susan at that moment.

  “And that’s been since when?” Susan asked, surprise evident in her voice.

  “’Bout five this morning.”

  “You went out last night, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So you haven’t slept yet, have you?”

  Christian just shrugged, shaking his head.

  “Well, I’m up now, so you can go ahead and go to bed,” she said, her voice friendly.

  “No, I want to wait and see if Randy’s gonna need help with Joe.”

  “He’s not better then?”

  “No, Randy says she thinks he’s got pneumonia.”

  Susan nodded. She knew about Joe’s history of being really susceptible to it since his youth. “He had scarlet fever when he was really young,” she explained. “It weakened his lungs just enough to make it easier for him to get things like pneumonia.”

  “Yeah, Randy told me something about that.”

  “Well, why don’t you go lie down and I’ll wake you if she needs you,” she said, suddenly seeing how tired he was.

  “I’m alright,” he said, his voice surprisingly easygoing.

  “Yeah, death warmed over, but alright,” she said critically as she lifted her eyebrow at him. “Look, go to my room and lie down. I swear, I’ll wake you if we need you.”

  Christian looked at her for a long moment. Finally he nodded and got to his feet.

  He walked down the hall to her room. He kicked off his boots and pulled his shirttails out of his trousers, then lay down on the bed. It bothered him to note that the bed smelled like her and that his body responded even to that. Get a grip, he thought. You just got done sleeping with a very hot blonde—why’re you thinkin’ of this one already?

  It took him a while to clamp down on his churning thoughts, to allow himself to relax enough to actually sleep, and he found himself looking around the room. It was very plain, except for a few personal things. There was a picture of Susan, her sister Elizabeth, Deborah, and Wilson. Christian saw that Susan definitely—fortunately—favored her mother; her father looked a lot like the guy Susan was engaged to. Classic pasty-faced Englishman type, was how Christian classified them. He scanned over the other pictures and saw what must have been a real “family” portrait; it contained a fairly decent-sized group, including Robert and Anabelle with all five of their children. Just in front of Rick sat Midnight and Mikeyla, and Deborah had Wilson in front of her with Susan and Elizabeth. Next there was Allison and her husband, as well as Mandy and Katherine, who were still unmarried.

  Christian looked at the picture for a long time. He wondered what it was like, being part of a big family that kept growing. His just stayed him and his mother. He looked at Midnight and her daughter in the picture. Midnight and Rick’s daughter was a good mixture of both parents, with Midnight’s copper-blond hair and petite body and Rick’s deep blue eyes and finely boned face. She was a beauty, and it was clear she was going to be a handful for her parents in the very near future. Then he looked at Susan and her sister. It was obvious that Susan had gotten her father’s stoic gene, but her sister hadn’t. Elizabeth, at the age of eighteen, was a looker. She looked like her mother too, but she actually made herself up. He
r hair was done, she wore makeup, she dressed fairly nicely. Where the hell’s that one? Christian thought wryly as he turned over, trying to shut out all the thoughts whirling in his head. Eventually he succeeded and fell asleep.

  He was awakened by movement in the room. Turning over, he opened his eyes. Susan turned from her dresser and saw that he was awake.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you,” she said.

  “It’s alright,” he said tiredly. “It is your room.” He rubbed his eyes. “What time is it, anyway?”

  “About noon.”

  “Randy take Joe yet?”

  “Yes, two hours ago.”

  Christian nodded. “I guess I could head for my own room then.”

  “Don’t worry about it. If you’re comfortable you can stay in here.”

  Christian grinned. “Always tryin’ to get me in your bed, aren’t you?” He was joking, but Susan’s eyes instantly flashed angrily.

  “You always have to do that, don’t you?” she said, hands on her hips.

  “And you have to learn to lighten up.” Christian glanced behind her, to the pictures on her dresser. “So how come you didn’t tell me you’re marrying your father?”

  “What?”

  “Your father,” he said, gesturing to the pictures. “He looks just like ol’ Warren.” He said her fiancé’s name as if it in itself were an insult.

  “He does not!”

  Christian looked at her for a long moment, a lopsided grin on his face. “Describe Warren. You know, the regular character traits, hair, eyes, all that.”

  Susan looked back at him for a long moment. “Brown hair, brown eyes…” she began, but trailed off as she realized his description did fit her father’s. “It’s not the same thing.”

  “What’s your father do for a livin’?” Christian asked mildly.

  “He’s a banker.”

  He raised a black eyebrow. “And what’s Warren studyin’ at school?”

  Susan smiled triumphantly. “Economics.”

  Christian laughed. “Same fuckin’ thing! It’s all about money.”

  “What’s wrong with that?”

  “Nothin’, except it’s really boring. And what about your mum?”

  “What about her?”

  “Well, she’s one hell of a looker. Why’d she marry a guy like your father?”

  “Well, I’d imagine that she loved him—that is why people get married, you know,” she said condescendingly.

  “Yeah, but didn’t I hear that they were gettin’ a divorce?” Christian said, knowing he would shock her this time.

  “How do you know that?” she snapped. She had only found out herself the day before, when her mother called to tell her she was coming to town to talk to her about it.

  “I have my ways.” He’d heard about it the day before in the office, when Rick and Midnight had been talking about it. “Point is, she made a mistake, and you’re making one too.”

  “You don’t know that,” she said haughtily.

  “Let me ask you this.” The change in his tone should have warned her, but she stood fast. He moved to stand directly in front of her, bringing his lips to a fraction of an inch from her ear. “Do you react to him like you reacted to me?”

  “That’s none of your business!” Susan stepped back to get away from him, coming up against her dresser.

  Christian stepped forward, closing the slight distance between their bodies, pressing against her ever so slightly. Susan’s breath caught in her throat as her entire body started to tingle, as if in response to the question.

  “In other words,” he said, his lips extremely close to hers, “no.”

  He then stunned her by turning and walking out of the room. Susan was surprised to feel disappointed that he’d left without doing anything more, much like a couple of nights before. She didn’t like the direction of her thoughts lately.

  That night Christian went up to the main part of the house again to check on Joe and make sure Randy didn’t need anything. He knocked on their door and heard Randy tell him to come in. He opened the door and was surprised to see that Joe was awake. Randy had just come out of their bathroom with a glass of water and pills in her hand.

  “Hey, man, how ya doin’?” Christian said, looking down at his cousin.

  “Better,” Joe said hoarsely as he moved to sit up, groaning.

  “Glad to hear it.”

  “Takes a lot more than a little bug to knock me down for long,” Joe said as he lay back down.

  Randy quirked her eyebrow at him. “Little bug? Joe, it’s pneumonia—it rates higher than little on the bug scale.” But she was smiling, and it was obvious to Christian that she was extremely relieved that Joe was doing better.

  “Well, look,” Christian said, “I’m stayin’ in tonight, so if you need anything, I’ll be about.”

  Joe nodded. “Yeah, I heard you’ve been helpful about all this. I appreciate it, man. It’s nice to know that I have backup in the house now.” He sounded very earnest, and Christian once again felt warmed. It was nice to have some family. He’d talked to his mother often since he’d been in the States, checking on her progress, and she’d told him what Joe had done in terms of getting her a job with benefits and providing everything else she could possibly need. Christian couldn’t even begin to express his gratitude for this new generosity. So he planned to make it up to him by being as helpful as possible when it came to Joe or what was important to him, including his family.

  When Christian left a little while later, Randy walked out with him.

  “Christian,” she said confidentially. “I wanted to talk to you when Joe wasn’t around, or awake. I need to ask you a favor.”

  “Okay,” Christian said, leaning against the hallway wall.

  “I think part of why Joe got sick is that he’s been overdoing it lately. He’s been trying to take Susan to school two days a week and get up with me before I go to school two more days a week. Most nights he doesn’t get to bed till after midnight, so it doesn’t really give him enough sleep. Well, what I was hoping is that you could take over taking Susan to school and picking her up in the afternoons after you get off. Do you think you could?”

  Christian nodded. “Yeah, no problem.”

  Randy smiled. “Great, thanks. You know, I really appreciate everything you’re doing too. I know adjusting to all of us hasn’t exactly been easy for you. I know that you’re used to a kind of solitary life, and all of this is pretty hectic. But I am glad you’re here, and I know Joe is too, and my children adore you.” The last was said with a grin.

  “Well, they are kind of easy to get attached to,” Christian said, trying to sound casual, but it was obvious to Randy that he really did care about all of them. She said nothing, allowing him to think he was coming across the way he wanted to.

  “Well, anyway, thanks,” Randy said. She surprised him by moving forward and hugging him. His arms went around her, even as his face indicated his surprise. He hugged her close, thinking it felt nice to be part of something for a change.

  He knew for all intents and purposes he was becoming part of a family, even if he hadn’t wanted any of this.

  You can find more information about the author and series here:

  www.sherrylhancock.com

  www.facebook.com/SherrylDHancock

  www.vulpine-press.com/midknight-blue-series

  Also by Sherryl D. Hancock:

  The WeHo series follows a group of women from Los Angeles as they navigate the ups and downs of love, life, work, and everything in between.

  www.vulpine-press.com/we-ho

  The Wild Irish Silence series. Escape into the world of BJ Sparks and discover how he went from the small-town boy to the world-famous rock star.

  www.vulpine-press.com/wild-irish-silence-series

 

 

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