“A couple of hours and we’re there,” Carmen promised. “How’s PawPaw?”
“In surgery, which is going to take at least three hours from what the surgeon said. When you get here, they’ll still be operating on him.”
“Anything you need?”
She longed for a toothbrush. And she still needed to find someone to take care of Moose and the horses back at the ranch. But she could call her neighbors herself. And she didn’t want her sister wasting her time stopping at a drugstore. “Just you. Just get here as fast as you can.” Carmen promised she would do exactly that and they said goodbye.
Addie got to work trying to find someone to look after the livestock. But the Fitzgeralds, who had twenty acres bordering Red Hill, were off visiting relatives in Southern California. And Grant Newsome, Levi’s longtime friend, had put his house and acreage up for sale and gone to Florida to live near his oldest daughter and her family.
She was trying to figure out who else she might try when James suggested, “How about Walker McKellan? He and his wife, my cousin Rory, would be happy to help. They’re not that far from Red Hill.” Walker and Rory lived at Walker’s guest ranch, the Bar N, which was maybe eight miles from the Red Hill ranch house.
Addie knew Walker, but not that well. He’d been more than a decade ahead of her in school. And Rory was an actual princess from some tiny country in Europe. Addie had met her just once and been impressed with how friendly and down-to-earth she was. “I hardly know them and I’m sure they’re busy and don’t have time to—”
“Stop,” James said again, in the same flat, dismissive tone he’d used on her when she tried to tell him to go. “I know them. And I know they’ll want to help. I’m calling them.” He had his phone out and ready.
“You stop,” she insisted, strongly enough that he quit scrolling through his contacts and looked at her with great patience. She added, “I said that I hardly know them and it doesn’t seem right to take advantage of them.”
“It’s not taking advantage. It’s just asking for help. And there’s nothing wrong with asking for help now and then, Addie.”
She didn’t really have a comeback ready for that one, so she settled for glaring daggers at him.
He gentled his tone. “Look. You’d do the same for them in a heartbeat, wouldn’t you?”
“Of course I would, but—”
“So someday they’ll need you. And you’ll be there. And that’s good.”
By then, she didn’t know why she’d even tried to argue with him. “I bet you could sell an Eskimo a refrigerator,” she grumbled.
He shrugged. “Hey, with the way weather patterns are changing, an Eskimo might need one. Ah. Here we go.” He punched in the call.
Ten minutes later, she’d talked to both Walker and Rory and they were set to tend to the animals for as long as she needed them to. Walker said he’d take Moose back to the Bar-N. He even insisted she give him the phone numbers of the owners of the horses she boarded. He said he would call them personally and let them know what was happening, reassure them that their animals were being cared for and that if they needed anything, he would see that they got it.
Addie thanked Walker profusely.
He said essentially what James had said. “We should have joined forces years ago for times like this.”
When she hung up, she handed James back his phone. “I think I’m running out of ways to thank you.”
He didn’t miss a beat. “You can thank me by eating the soup I’m going to go get for you now. They have chicken noodle or New England clam chowder.”
“No clams. Please.”
“Chicken noodle it is, then.”
She dug in her purse for her wallet. But he was already up and headed for the elevators.
When he returned with the soup, he also brought sandwiches. Two of them—one roast beef, one ham, both with chips.
She took the soup and tried to give him a ten. He waved it away. She should insist he take the money, but so far, insisting wasn’t getting her anywhere with him.
So fine, then. She ate every last drop of that soup and half of his ham sandwich, too. Unfortunately, once the food was gone, there was nothing else to do but sit there and try to read the magazines strewn about the waiting room tables, try not to watch the second hand crawling around the face of the clock on the far wall, try not to think too hard about what might be happening down the long hallway beyond the automatic double doors.
Carmen and Devin arrived at a little after nine. Addie ran to her sister. Carmen grabbed her and they hugged each other tight. Then Carmen took her by the shoulders and held her a little away. Carmen was taller and thinner than Addie and her hair was dark brown, her eyes a warm hazel.
“Any news?” her sister asked.
Addie pressed her lips together and shook her head. “We’re still waiting to hear. I’m hoping it won’t be too long now.”
Devin, tall and lean with light blond hair, said, “Levi’s tough as old boots. He’ll pull through and be driving us all crazy again in no time.”
Addie turned to her brother-in-law. “I know you’re right.” He hugged her, too. “I can’t even tell you how glad I am you’re both here.” She wrapped an arm around each of them and turned for the row of chairs several feet away where James, on his feet now, was waiting.
Carmen leaned close and whispered, “Isn’t that one of the Bravo brothers?”
Addie stifled a tired sigh. “It’s James.”
“The lawyer, right, second of Sondra’s two sons?”
Addie nodded. “He was, um, there when PawPaw had the heart attack. He’s been wonderful,” she whispered back grimly, reminded again of all the news she needed to share with her sister. “I can’t get him to leave.”
“I heard that,” James said wryly. “Carmen, Devin. How have you been?” He held out his big hand.
Devin took it first, and then Carmen. Carmen said how grateful she was for his help. She assured him he could go now.
He just shook his head. “I can’t go now. I wouldn’t feel right. At least not until Levi’s through surgery.”
Carmen shot Addie a look and then turned to him again. “You and our grandfather are...friends?”
“Well, we’ve kind of formed a bond, I think you might say.”
Now Carmen glanced at Devin, who shrugged, then back to James and finally at Addie. “Okay. What is going on?”
Addie groaned. “Got a month, I’ll tell you everything.”
“I’m here and I’m listening,” Carmen replied.
Addie hardly knew where to start.
James got up. “I could use some coffee. Anybody else?”
Carmen piped right up. “I’ll take some.” She elbowed her husband. “Dev will go with you.”
“Uh. I will?” When Carmen elbowed him again, Devin caught on. “Sure. Great idea.”
“Tea?” Addie asked James, and then got uncomfortable all over again thinking how easily she’d started to depend on him.
“You got it—and maybe Devin and I will hang around the cafeteria for a while.” He gave her a look—one thick, dark eyebrow raised.
And she took his meaning. “Go ahead. Tell him,” she said. “Tell him everything you know. Believe me, he won’t be surprised.”
“My God,” murmured Carmen. “What is going on?” For that, she got another bewildered shrug from her husband.
James asked, “You sure?”
Addie nodded. “He has to know eventually anyway.”
So the men left. And Carmen said, “Okay. Tell me everything.”
Addie told all—from how she’d agreed to have Brandon’s baby, to the fact that she was now pregnant with said baby, to Levi snooping in her trash and finding the test stick and then kidnapping James just the way he’d done to Devin
eight years ago. Carmen sat there with her mouth hanging open, as Addie went on to describe finding James and Levi in the basement and the shotgun going off, blowing a hole in the ceiling while Levi had a heart attack.
Finally, when the totally out-there story was told, Carmen hugged her again and told her she loved her and could hardly believe she was going to be an auntie.
Then came the questions. “If Brandon’s the father, why did PawPaw kidnap James?”
“He won’t believe it’s Brandon. He claims he’s seen the way James and I look at each other and he just knows there’s been a lot more than looking going on.”
Carmen was silent. Too silent.
Addie was forced to demand, “What is all this silence about, Carm?”
“Well, now, honey. I did see the way you and James looked at each other just now...”
“What are you talking about? I swear to you, James Bravo has never done more than shake my hand—at least not until today, when he put his arm around me to comfort me, held my hair while I threw up and then made me sit down when I tried to get him to leave.”
“But that’s just it, see?”
“No, I don’t see.”
“He seems very devoted. And I saw the blood on his collar.”
“I told you, PawPaw knocked him out, tied him to a chair in the basement and put a shotgun to his head. Because you know PawPaw. He thinks we live in some Wild West romance novel where it’s perfectly okay to hold a man at gunpoint in order to convince him to ‘do the right thing.’” She said that with air quotes.
Carm snickered and then quickly switched to a more sober expression. “And yet, even after all the abuse PawPaw heaped on the poor guy, James drives you to Denver and holds your hair while you hurl? He knows you’re having another man’s baby, but he brings you food and tea and insists he has to stay with you to make sure that your crazy old grandpa makes it through surgery?”
“Carm, it’s not like that. It’s just that he’s a good guy.”
“Beyond stellar, apparently.”
“Really, I hardly know him. We...well, we talk now and then.”
A sideways look from Carmen. “You talk.”
“Yeah. He’s bought land that borders Red Hill and he’s building a house there. I go by there a lot, working with the horses, you know?”
“Right...”
“Quit looking at me like that. Sometimes I stop is all. We visit. We talk about life and stuff—in general, I mean. Nothing all that personal.” Well, okay. Once, James had told her about his ex-wife. But as a rule, they kept it casual. She added, “And now and then, he drops by the ranch house. We sit out under the stars and chat.”
“Chat,” Carmen repeated, as though the simple word held a bunch of other meanings that Addie wasn’t admitting to.
“Yeah.” Addie straightened her shoulders. “Chat. Just chat. And that’s it. That’s all. I’ve never gone out with him. It’s casual and it’s only conversation and you couldn’t even really call us friends.”
Carmen patted her hand. “I’m only saying I’m not surprised that PawPaw jumped to conclusions.”
Addie batted off her sister’s touch. “It is Brandon’s baby. I have never even kissed James Bravo.”
Carmen put up both hands. “Okay, okay. I believe you.”
“Oh, gee. Thanks a bunch.” Addie pressed a hand to her stomach, which had started churning again.
Carmen hooked an arm around her shoulders and drew her close. “And I don’t want you upset.” She stroked Addie’s hair. It felt really good. Carmen was only two years older, but Addie had always looked up to her. When you grow up without a mom, a good big sister really helps. Carmen chided, “It’s bad for the baby, for you to get so upset.”
“No kidding.” Grudgingly, Addie leaned her head on her big sister’s shoulder.
“Just breathe and relax. We’re going to get through this. PawPaw is going to be fine—and here come the guys.”
Addie glanced up and saw that James and Devin had just come around the corner from the elevators. “I don’t like the way you say the guys. Like James is suddenly part of the family.”
“Honey, stop overreacting. It’s only going to make you want to throw up.”
Well, okay. That was true. And Carmen was right. They just needed to stay calm and support each other. There’d been more than enough drama today to last Addie a lifetime.
So she focused on speaking softly, on being grateful—for her sister and Devin. And yes, for James, too. He’d made a horrible time a lot less awful and she needed to remember how much she owed him.
She drank her tea and ate the toast James had brought her. Strangely enough, she’d kept more food down in the past few hours than she had in days. Yet another reason to be grateful to James.
When she finished her tea and toast, she realized she was completely exhausted. She leaned her head back against the wall behind her and closed her eyes just for a minute.
* * *
The next thing she knew, James was rubbing her arm, stroking her hair, whispering in her ear, “Addie, wake up. The doctor’s coming...”
With a sharp cry she sat bolt upright—and realized she’d been sound asleep, her head on James’s broad shoulder. The big clock on the far wall showed that over an hour had passed since she leaned back and closed her eyes.
And James was right.
Levi’s surgeon had emerged from the long hallway between the double doors and was coming right for them.
Chapter Three
They all popped to their feet at once—James, Addie, Carmen and Devin. And then they waited in a horrible, breath-held silence until the doctor, still in surgical scrubs with a matching cap on his head and a mask hanging around his neck, reached them and started speaking.
Addie watched his mouth move and tried to listen to what he was saying, but her heart was beating so damn loud and her blood made a whooshing sound as it spurted through her body and the words were really hard to understand.
But then Carm said, “Oh, thank God.”
And Addie put it together: he’d made it. PawPaw had survived the surgery.
* * *
Forty-five minutes later, they all proceeded to a new waiting room, this one adjacent to the Cardiac Surgery Intensive Care Unit, which was five floors up from surgery and in another wing.
A nurse came out and led Addie and Carmen through automatic doors and down a hall to one of those rooms full of curtained cubicles. In this room, all the curtains were drawn back. There were twenty beds, two rows of ten, half of them with patients in them. Nurses, doctors and technicians moved between the beds and back and forth from the group of desks that formed a command center in the middle of the room. The nurse led them to the left side of the room, the third bed from the door. Addie clutched for Carm’s hand and when she got it, she held on tight.
Levi lay on the hospital bed with a tube down his throat and another in his nose. There were tubes and wires hooked to his chest, and more of them disappearing under the blankets. And there was an IV in the back of his hand and another in the crook of his arm. Both arms were strapped to the bed; Addie assumed that was to keep him from pulling out any of the complicated apparatus that hooked him up to the various machines. There was a ventilator by the bed. It wheezed softly as it pushed air in through the tube in his mouth.
He looked terrible, every line in his craggy face dug in deeper than before. But he did open his eyes briefly. It seemed he saw them, recognized them. But then a second later, his eyelids drooped shut. Together, still clutching each other’s hands, Addie and Carm moved closer, up to the head of the bed. Gently, so lightly, Addie dared to touch his pale forehead below the blue cap that covered his hair.
He groaned and opened his eyes again.
Carm touched his wiry upper arm at a rare sp
ot where no tube or needle was stuck. “I’m here, PawPaw. We’re both here. You made it through your surgery and you’re going to get well.”
“We love you,” said Addie, biting back tears. “We love you so much.”
His red-rimmed blue eyes tracked—from Addie, to Carmen, back to Addie again. And then he tried to speak. “Aiff. Air aiff?”
Carm said, “Shh, don’t try to talk now. The tube’s in the way.”
But he wouldn’t shush. “Aiff? Ear? Aiff?” He tried to lift an arm, found it pinned to the bed and groaned in frustration.
Addie stroked his brow. “Shh, PawPaw. Don’t. You’ll only hurt your throat.”
The nurse who’d brought them in approached again. Addie and Carmen stepped back and the nurse bent close to Levi. “Easy, now, Levi. It’s okay. We’ll find out what you want and get it for you. I’ve got a pencil and a paper...” She pulled a small tablet and a pencil out of her pocket.
He nodded, making a harsh gargling sound around the tube.
“Is he left-handed?” she asked.
Carm said, “No, right-handed.”
The nurse eased the tablet under his right hand and wrapped his scarred, knotted old fingers around the pencil. He gripped it and scratched at the paper.
When he stopped, the nurse asked, “Is that it?”
Levi grunted a yes.
The nurse took the tablet and read, “Jane? You want to see Jane?”
Another grunt accompanied by a head shake.
Addie knew. “James,” she said bleakly. “You want James.”
More grunting, but this time with a nod. Her grandpa stared right at her, daring her to produce the man he demanded to see.
She turned away—and there was Carm, looking all innocent, giving a little “what can you do about it?” shrug.
“Fine,” Addie said and tried not to sound as fed up as she felt. “I’ll get him.”
Levi grunted again. To Addie, the sound was way too triumphant.
The nurse took her out and waited by the double doors.
Devin and James jumped to their feet again at the sight of her. She marched up to James, blew out a breath of pure frustration and said, “I’m sorry. He’s asking to see you.”
James Bravo's Shotgun Bride Page 4