But it was too soon to discuss all that.
That he knew.
“So,” he said, turning the conversation back to something they could discuss. “No more British nannies?”
Hope lifted one hand. “I have to find some sort of child care because I have to work to support us. But I also need an arrangement that has very flexible work hours.” She shook her head miserably. “You’ve seen how crazy it can be when I’m in the midst of trying to manage a crisis.”
Hers was a demanding profession, for sure. He searched for a solution, and finally pointed out, “You get paid well enough to take fewer jobs.”
Her delicate brows knit together. “It doesn’t really work that way. You’re either available at a moment’s notice or you’re not. Clients in the midst of a breaking scandal have very little time. They’re not going to waste it calling someone who has a reputation for possibly not being available due to child-care issues.”
He shrugged. “You could hire someone to assist you at Winslow Strategies.”
“I’d have to train them, bring them up to speed. Again, something I don’t have time to do right now. And care for Max. Plus...” Her lower lip trembled and her voice trailed off in distress. “What happens if I’m at work when Max turns over for the very first time and I miss it? Or takes his first step? Or says Momma instead of meh-meh-meh when he wants to eat?”
Able to understand that—it was something he had ruminated over, too—Garrett tucked Hope into the curve of his arm. “It could still happen, anyway.”
Scowling, Hope shifted so her breast pressed into his chest. “Whose side are you on, anyway?”
“Yours. And Max’s. Always.”
She sighed, slightly calmer.
He loved the way she felt cuddled against him. Tenderness flowed through him. Daring her wrath, he pressed another light kiss to the top of her head. “Sure you don’t want to go back to bed?”
Hope rolled her eyes. “We have a house full of family, in case you’ve forgotten.”
He liked the sound of that. We. Who would have thought? A week ago, all he’d wanted to do was avoid family. Now having everyone nearby felt really good.
He turned to Hope. “I meant you—alone—sweetheart. You could get another hour or two of sleep. The camera crews won’t be here until the afternoon.”
Her slender shoulders squared in fierce defiance. “No. I need to shower and get into work clothes, so as soon as Max goes to sleep, I’ll be doing that.”
Okay, then. “How about I watch him for you while you do all that?”
Gratitude shone in her eyes. “There are times like now when I don’t know how I’m ever going to repay you.”
Resisting the urge to really kiss her, he offered a wicked smile instead. “Not to worry,” he whispered in her ear. “I’ll collect.”
This time she smiled back, just as mischievously. “I am sure you will.”
* * *
HOPE CLIMBED INTO the shower and let the hot water pour over her. She knew she had been moody lately—that Garrett had attributed it to lack of sleep and hormones, when, in fact, what she was really worried and sad about was the fact that the job with the Lockharts was coming to a close. She and Max would be leaving, and she might never see Garrett again. Or she would see him, from time to time, but it wouldn’t be the same. Hadn’t she promised herself she wasn’t going to do this again? Launch herself into a love affair that was only destined to end?
She had told Garrett—and herself—she could handle it. That this fling was all she wanted. Or needed. Now she was beginning to see it wasn’t true. She did want to get married. She wanted a husband to share the good and bad times with. She wanted Max to have a daddy. And she wanted that daddy to be...Garrett?
Not because he was so good with Max.
Or because he seemed to genuinely like having kids around.
But because Garrett just fit into their lives. And their hearts.
Worse, her body tingled with need for him every time she was near him. It had been thirty hours since they had last made love, yet it felt like forever. Of course that was probably just her hormones. It had to be, Hope told herself, as she toweled off and dressed for work, then went out to the main living area of the bunkhouse. Max was on the counter in his infant seat, watching Garrett and Sage alternately cook breakfast together and jockey for space.
“I keep telling Max that the kitchen is mine,” Sage joked, looking every bit as enthralled with Hope’s son as her brothers and mother. “And Garrett should just go put his feet up somewhere.”
“Hey,” Garrett claimed, with an elbow to his sister’s side, “I’m quite the chef in my own right.”
Hope found herself leaping in to defend him. “He really is.”
Sage scoffed. “You say that now, but you haven’t tasted my food yet.”
Lucille walked out, still looking wrung out and exhausted, despite over twelve hours of sleep. “It’s true.” The older woman flashed a wan smile. “Although both Sage and Garrett are excellent chefs.”
Curious, Hope asked, “Did you teach them?”
Lucille, who—like Hope—had already dressed for the interview to come at noon that day, adjusted her pearls. “Oh, no, I can’t cook at all.”
“Gladys, our cook, taught us when Mom and Dad were out evenings,” Sage explained.
Lucille reached for the coffee pot. Her hand was trembling slightly. “There was a serious lack of family dinners when our children were growing up.”
Garrett had said as much. Hope found that sad. So did the Lockhart matriarch.
Sage and Garrett hugged Lucille simultaneously. Garrett soothed, “Not to worry, Mom. We’re making up for it now.”
Lucille’s smile faltered.
“Lucille?” Hope asked, not sure what the sudden pale shift in the sixty-eight-year-old woman’s color meant. “Are you feeling okay?”
Lucille gasped. “I...don’t know...” She put her hand to her chest, winced, as if in horrendous pain.
“Oh, my God, Mom!” Sage rushed toward her mother.
Lucille staggered slightly. “I think I’m having a heart attack!” she said.
Garrett caught his mother as she fell.
* * *
“EXHAUSTION. DEHYDRATION. HYPERVENTILATION. All of which led to one heck of an episode of tachycardia,” Laramie Community Hospital emergency room doctor Gavin Monroe pronounced, after examining Lucille. Her children gathered round.
“So it wasn’t a heart attack?” Hope blurted out before she could stop herself.
She knew she wasn’t family, but at this moment she felt like it.
“No. It just mimicked one,” Dr. Monroe explained. “Given what Mrs. Lockhart has been through the last few weeks, it’s not surprising she is at her limit.”
“What’s the treatment plan?” Garrett asked, still cradling Max in his arms.
Dr. Monroe said, “Sleep is the most important thing. We’re giving your mother a sedative and admitting her for at least twenty-four...maybe forty-eight hours, depending on how she does. That will help enormously. So will getting her out of the previous stressful environment. Try to see that she follows a healthy diet and has lots of family support. Exercise. We’ll also have her evaluated to make sure she’s not suffering from anxiety or depression. If she is, those can both be treated medically.”
A mixture of guilt and worry filled Hope. This was partly her fault for not being able to take enough of the burden off the shoulders of the Lockhart matriarch. And not listening to Garrett when he tried to convince her and his mother to get more sleep. She couldn’t do anything about that now, but she could take extra strides to protect her from this point forward. “Should Lucille be admitted under a fictitious name?”
Brows lifted, all around.
Hope
staved off interruption with a lift of her hand. “I know there are medical privacy laws to protect patients.”
Sternly, Dr. Monroe said, “And we take them very seriously.”
“I’m sure you do,” Hope countered, “but Mrs. Lockhart has been in the news a lot lately, and not in a positive way. When there is an ongoing crisis of this nature, things like a ‘nervous collapse’ or ‘sudden hospitalization’ have a way of leaking to the press.”
Gavin Monroe gave Hope a censoring look. “In Laramie, Texas, we take care of our own. And anyone who happens to be just passing through, as well. But,” he continued kindly, “if you-all like, I’ll speak to the staff. See that Mrs. Lockhart is listed in the hospital visitor register under her maiden name, Henderson.”
“We’d appreciate that,” Garrett said.
Dr. Monroe nodded. “In the meantime, you all need to go home and let Lucille get some much-needed rest.”
Reluctantly, they all returned to the ranch.
They’d barely gotten out of their vehicles when two news vans with satellite hookups attached to the roofs caravanned down the drive.
Sage gasped. “Oh, no. I almost forgot!”
Hope hadn’t.
Sage swung around. “What are we going to tell the reporter about Mom?”
Garrett looked at Hope. “Why don’t we let Hope tell us?” he suggested quietly.
Chapter Thirteen
It meant a lot to Hope, that Garrett—and his siblings—trusted her to protect their mother to the best of her ability.
“The goal here is to preserve Lucille’s privacy. Keep what should be confidential out of the public domain.”
Garrett kept his eyes locked with hers. “You’re asking us to parse the truth?”
Hope did her best to contain the protective emotion welling up inside her. She’d come to care for Lucille, too. “I’m asking you to reveal only what you think would be okay with your mom. Right now, if we were to let the press know she had been hospitalized for exhaustion—”
“They’d be camped outside the county medical center. Trying to get shots of us coming in and out,” Chance predicted grimly.
“Right,” Wyatt chimed in. He placed an arm around his younger sister’s shoulders. “And none of us want that.”
Hope searched Garrett’s face. Although his expression remained implacable, she could only imagine the conflict this was causing him, deep inside. “Look, I know you agreed to take the lead here, as the eldest son and the male head of the family, but if you’re not comfortable with this, I can prepare a statement. We can cancel the interview and go with that.”
He regarded her for a long, thoughtful moment. “Won’t that stir up more interest, instead of less, since we’ve already agreed to do the interview?”
Hope sighed. “Probably.”
“Then we really need to follow through as promised,” he decided.
“Besides,” Sage told Garrett, “you are a doctor. You’re used to protecting a patient’s privacy. This is no different than that, really.”
It shouldn’t have been, Hope thought. But she could tell he was uncomfortable with the whole idea of trying to hide things from the press. Nevertheless, he was first in line to meet the TV reporter, Nikki Lowell, who’d had the camera crew filming from the moment she stepped out of the news van.
Looking as handsome as ever, Garrett strode forward to shake Nikki’s hand. Grinning widely, his sea-blue eyes crinkling at the corners, he turned on the full Lockhart charm.
Enough to make Hope feel a twinge of relief. She knew in that instant that Garrett was going to put his own personal feelings aside and step up to master the task at hand. Even if it wasn’t anything he would have ever chosen to do.
Once all the introductions had been made, Nikki asked, “Where’s Lucille?”
Garrett explained Lucille had been unavoidably detained, but sent her apologies. “The truth is, my mother is worn out from the events of the last week and a half. I’m sure you can understand how hectic a schedule she has kept, personally meeting with all the directors of the charities who were let down, making good on their long-delayed fiscal gifts.”
“Why did she do that?” Nikki asked, signaling for the camera crew to zoom in on Garrett’s handsome face. “I mean, she could have left it to anyone else, even the lawyers.”
Not Lucille’s style, Hope thought proudly.
“As CEO, she felt personally responsible,” Garrett said.
“Do you think Lucille should have known what was going on a whole lot sooner?” Nikki asked.
“I don’t deal in what-ifs,” he said quietly.
Hope knew that to be all too true.
As much as she might wish otherwise, Garrett wasn’t the kind of man who would spend time wishing that he and she had met and become involved under wildly different circumstances.
As far as he was concerned, their affair was what it was. Just as this confrontation with Nikki and the TV network news could not be avoided. They would battle their way through it, even if doing so meant uncomfortably parsing every word.
Nikki tilted her head, as if trying to figure out how to get under Garrett’s skin and uncover what she suspected was being kept from her and the rest of the media. “Do you think your mom should have skipped out on the scheduled interview today, whether she felt up to being here or not?” Nikki asked.
Sage, Wyatt and Chance moved in close to the eldest Lockhart. United, they were an impressive front. Garrett folded his arms in front of him and stared down Nikki Lowell with a warrior’s ease. “My siblings and I all agree our mother’s health comes first.” His brothers and sister nodded in support.
Nikki turned to Hope.
“When this family bands together there is no stopping them,” Hope informed her. “I did discuss the possibility of rescheduling so we could have the interview conducted as originally planned, but they were anxious to let people know what’s been discovered about the fraud.”
“I can understand that,” Nikki said.
Hope sighed in commiseration. “And with the Dallas Police Department now actively beginning an investigation into the embezzlement, as of late last evening, it’s only a matter of time before some other news outlet discovers the scoop we’re giving you, so...”
Reminded that she and Hope had worked with each other on previous scandals, and Hope had always been as straightforward as possible with her, Nikki regarded Hope, one professional to another. “You’re right. We can always add to the story later. Let’s do it.”
Everyone sat down in the Adirondack chairs in the backyard. With the breathtaking view of the ranch behind them, Nikki started with a few easy questions, then asked, “How was it possible to have twenty-five million dollars stolen without anyone noticing?”
“My parents wanted to avoid spending a lot of money on overhead for the foundation, so the Lockhart Foundation had very little staff.” Garrett went on to explain how the CFO had handled all the financial activities. “My mother signed all the checks, but she trusted Paul Smythe—who was also an old family friend—to handle the rest.”
“In other words, your parents’ noble intentions and generosity made fraud possible.”
All four Lockhart siblings nodded.
“What now?” Nikki continued. “Are you going to close the foundation?”
“No,” Garrett said firmly. “Absolutely not.”
“But if the bank accounts have been emptied...”
The siblings exchanged looks. It seemed, Hope noted happily, they were all of one opinion.
“We’ll find a way to keep it going,” Garrett promised.
* * *
THE REST OF the afternoon was spent showing Nikki and her film crew the Circle H ranch. When evening came, the news crew departed and the family enjoyed a brief
dinner together, then Sage went to the hospital to check on her mother. Wyatt and Chance left for their own ranches to tend to their herds. Only Hope, Garrett and Max remained at the Circle H.
“Did you mean that—about finding a way to keep the foundation going, as a family?” Hope asked, after putting a sleeping Max to bed. “And not just leaving it to your mother?”
“Yes.” Garrett continued loading the dishwasher.
Seeing the opportunity to finally check this off her To Do list, she went to lend a hand. “Because there is something your mother hoped I would be able to talk you into doing,” she continued bluntly, knowing it was a risk to even try and broach this subject.
She waited until his steady blue gaze met hers.
“Becoming CEO in Lucille’s stead.”
He studied her in a weighted, awkward silence, looking anything but pleased. Then he scoffed and shook his head. “You really expect us to ask my mother to be the scapegoat in this mess and resign? After all she’s been through? After how hard she’s fought the last couple of weeks to make things right?”
Ignoring the temper in his tone, Hope worked to keep her cool. “She made the decision days ago.” She paused, to let that sink in. “Lucille’s reputation as a manager is tainted, most likely irreparably. She understands she can still be a member of the board and she can help out behind the scenes. But the reality is that unless someone like you—a doctor with a distinguished military background—takes over and becomes the public face of the foundation, gets everything back on track, the organization’s chances of survival are not good. Particularly if, in order to continue, you-all are going to have to rely on fund-raising instead of family money.”
Grimacing he picked up the recycling container and headed outside. “A couple of problems with that. I’m lousy at soliciting money.”
She could see that. Garrett wasn’t the kind of guy to go cap in hand to anyone.
She also noticed that he hadn’t said he wasn’t interested in the job at all.
She followed with a bag of regular trash. “You can hire professionals for that.”
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