Chapter Five
Sophie stood at the hospital bedside, a soggy tissue clenched in her fist. She reached down, careful not to bump Daniel’s left leg. It was in a cast from ankle to hip, and was raised into the air, thanks to traction. Brushing a lock of damp hair from his forehead, she gazed anxiously at his pale face. Dark lashes shadowed his cheeks, and his breathing was quiet. Leaning closer, she whispered, “Dear heart? Danny? Can you hear me?”
Daniel moaned and opened his eyes a crack. He reached up and weakly grasped her hand, bringing it to his lips for a kiss. “These drugs are awesome,” he murmured.
Smiling, Sophie kissed his forehead and perched on the side of the bed. “Well, don’t get used to them, Mister. That’s all I need, a brand new baby and an addict on my hands.”
His eyes opened wider and he clenched her hand. “Baby? My God, Soph, did you have the baby?” He lifted his hand to her face.
She laughed and moved it to her belly. “No, silly. Feel. He — or she — is still in there. For three more weeks or so. You’ll be home by then, and I’ll be where you are.”
Daniel exhaled and looked around the room. His eyes found the television and went wide. “This is awesome.”
Sophie raised an eyebrow. “What is, dearest?”
“I can watch cable,” he exclaimed, grinning.
Sophie shook her head and squeezed his hand. “I thought you said you didn’t miss cable when we moved up to Ruby Spring,” she said.
He snorted matter-of-factly. “I lied.”
They both turned their heads at the soft knock on the door. Carly opened it and poked her head in. “Hey, Boss,” she whispered.
Daniel grinned and motioned her in. “What’s up, Carly? Hey, I can’t feel a thing.” He reached down and rapped on his cast. Sophie snatched his hand away and stood up.
“Daniel Henry Day. What do you think you’re doing?”
“Drugs,” he promptly replied.
Sophie rolled her eyes and walked to the door. “Carly, keep him out of trouble for a few minutes. I need to stretch my legs.” Shaking a finger in his direction, she admonished, “Danny, I want you to be asleep in one hour.”
He made little effort to remove the smile from his face. “Yes, ma’am.”
Carly flopped down in the chair next to his hospital bed. “So how long are you in for?” she asked, careful to keep her tone light.
“I dunno. Probably a few days at least. Hey, could you hand me the remote?” he replied.
Carly rose and crossed her arms. “Sophie said you have to rest, Daniel.”
He sighed and folded his hands across his middle. “Fine.” He turned his face toward her and pressed his lips together. “If I can’t watch TV, maybe you could tell me something, then.”
Carly sat back down and took his hand. “What is it?”
“I want to know how that ladder came to be broken.”
Carly frowned and crossed her legs. “I don’t know if now is the best time, really,” she began.
“Now is a great time. If anyone has the right to know, it’s me,” he pushed. She pressed her lips together.
“OK, but you’re not going to like it. Not one little bit.”
“Try me.”
Carly nervously laced her fingers together. “Well, here’s the thing. After they put you on the stretcher and managed to get you upstairs, Ross made Wheeler stay and take a statement. Wheeler didn’t want to. Go figure,” she said with a snort. “Anyway, after Wheeler left, Ross and I looked more closely at that ladder. There was dried glue on the center of the rungs that broke, Daniel.” She glanced at him, but he was looking at the ceiling, his face expressionless.
“Go on,” he replied.
She got up and began to pace. “We went back up to the stage and started looking around. Ross noticed that the stage door had been jimmied open. There was also a bottle of wood glue in the dumpster,” she continued. “And boot prints all over the dirt behind the theater. Whoever this jerk was, he was pretty damned stupid about leaving evidence behind.”
Daniel rubbed his eyes and groaned. “Great,” he muttered.
Carly looked at him with sympathy and walked to the door. “Well, now you know. If it makes you feel any better, I have this feeling … and it may be paranoid … but I think that ladder was meant for me.”
Daniel frowned. “Why would that make me feel better?”
Carly sucked in a breath. “No, no, that’s not how I meant it. It’s just that the ladder was probably not meant to hurt you. I’m pretty much the only person at the theater who’s been climbing on a ladder in the last couple of days.” She pushed her hair out of her face and continued. “I almost hate to say it out loud, but … I’m pretty sure … Wheeler did it.”
Daniel’s face was grave and he stared at her for a few seconds. A lump formed in her throat. Carly looked away, blinking up at the ceiling, willing the tears to stay put. “Carly,” he said in a soft voice, “I want you to be very, very careful.”
Squeezing her arms about her middle, she could only nod.
“Get better soon,” she whispered, not trusting her voice. Thank God the room was dark. That’s all she needed; her boss seeing her as an emotionally unstable crybaby. Reaching for the door, Carly slipped outside into the empty hallway and then on to the elevator.
Once in the parking lot, she took a deep breath of the cool evening air. Better now. Reaching for her car keys, she glanced over her shoulder. Although the lot was well-lit, it was also pretty well deserted. There was no reason to be freaked out. None at all. It’s not like she was back in Chicago.
Carly squared her shoulders and shook off the prickly feeling at the back of her neck. Jogging to her car, though, she couldn’t help but scan the edges of the parking lot for a tall, well-built blond man with blue eyes in a cop uniform. And she couldn’t help but wonder if a tall, thin dark-haired man with brown eyes would show up, too. Dammit! This was ridiculous. Wheeler was not going to materialize out of nowhere and try to hurt her. And Asher was not going to appear like magic to save the day, either.
Wrenching open her car door, she scrambled in and slammed it behind her, locked it and turned to check the back seat to make sure it was empty. Of course it was. Carly leaned her forehead against the steering wheel and exhaled, trying to calm her galloping heart. What was wrong with her? Almost wishing for Wheeler to show up so that Asher could come and save her? What kind of sick fantasy was that?
She sat up and slumped in the seat for a few minutes. OK. OK, she had to be honest with herself. On some well … elemental level, she found Asher extremely … compelling. And mysterious. And … magnetic. But why? He was just the brother of the guy who had hired her to do a job. And the job was what was important here.
There were tons of men in Chicago who were equally as handsome as Asher, she reasoned. And some of them were artists, too. Moody artists, who were completely self-involved. And that was the catch. Asher didn’t seem to be selfish. He seemed decent. That was it; that was the attraction. Carly sighed in frustration and pulled on her seatbelt.
She couldn’t obsess. Not this summer. There had to be something about Asher that would make him unappealing. Carly wracked her brain as she pulled out of the parking lot. A few drops of rain hit her windshield, and she turned on the wipers. Merging onto the interstate, and then onto the two-lane state highway, she still thought. And as she turned into the bumpy road leading to Ruby Spring, she came up with it.
What kind of person moved back home and then took off again almost right away? Especially if he had a responsibility to a family business? Now, that was selfish. And it was even more selfish to make himself completely unreachable, too. Carly doubted if Asher even knew that Daniel was lying flat on his back in a hospital bed, his leg in traction.
Bouncing up the rutted, muddy road, she peered out th
e windshield through the drizzle. Maybe Asher was a decent guy in some respects, but he was also irresponsible and unpredictable. She should be disgusted with him. She should be completely unimpressed by him. She shouldn’t give him a second thought. But God help her, she just couldn’t help herself.
• • •
Asher sat disconsolately next to the window, watching rivulets of rain run down the pane. He shivered at the chill in the cabin and got up wearily to stoke the fire. Wrapping a quilt around his bare shoulders, he carefully placed the cell phone back in its charger. Sophie’s call had unnerved him, it was true.
He’d felt … well, infuriated since coming back to Ruby Spring. An oppressive, panicky feeling that had nothing to do with being here. And had everything to do with New York. Escaping to the cabin up the trail from Ruby Spring had helped some, but didn’t take the sting completely away. And now this. His brother was hurt, and he, Asher, was sitting on his ass licking his wounds. Like a little boy.
Most annoying of all was that his thoughts kept straying back to Carly Foster and her laughing eyes and pretty caramel-colored hair. What the hell was wrong with him? He wasn’t a masochist. Not a month ago, a similarly pretty girl had taken his heart and his trust, and stomped all over them while she laughed all the way to Europe. His paintings and his girl were gone in the blink of an eye. So how in the world could he be finding another female attractive so soon after being crushed so completely?
It must be pure physical attraction, he reassured himself. Nothing more. Just his body reminding him after all, that he was a healthy heterosexual man.
He ran a hand through his wavy hair and glared over at the pristinely white, empty canvas sitting on the easel. The box of paints next to it had actually gathered dust in the week he had been up at the cabin. Abruptly, he made a decision. No more big baby crap. Daniel needed him, and so did Sophie. And flirting with little Miss Carly would certainly take his mind off of things.
He wandered to the window again and was surprised to see the sun peeking over the horizon. The rain had stopped and steam was rising up from the damp earth. Soon, the sun would burn it off and turn it back to crumbly dirt. The single street in Ruby Spring would quickly be blowing with dust. All of a sudden, Daniel wanted to get back home. He threw off the quilt and started to pack.
• • •
The afternoon sunlight streamed through the open stage door in the back of the theater. Carly, sitting in the front row, shaded her eyes and peered up at the stage, apprehension growing in her stomach. Next to her, Sophie sighed and shifted uncomfortably.
“Why is Ross so tense?” Carly whispered.
Sophie covered her mouth and leaned toward Carly’s ear. “We have to get a replacement for our leading lady,” she whispered back, “Soon. Having Nancy stand in is just making everything so … well … awful.” She leaned back and massaged her giant middle.
Carly glanced at her. Sophie was exhausted, and rightly so. Two weeks away from her due date, and she was managing the theater and shuttling back and forth to the hospital for the past couple of nights to visit Daniel. And where was that jerk brother of his, Asher? Nowhere to be found.
Carly pressed her lips together and focused on the stage. Ross was pacing in one corner, a script and pencil in hand, his eyes daggers. They were focused on Nancy, who perched on a stool, her face frozen in a comical expression of shock. She waved a pudgy arm in the air.
“Oh, no! Save me! Save me!” Nancy shrieked in a fake, high-pitched voice. Looking at Ross, she giggled and batted her eyes. He slammed his script shut and stared helplessly at Buddy, the leading man, who was sitting on an upstage platform.
With flowing shoulder length hair and an impressive physique, Buddy looked like a hero from a melodrama, but certainly didn’t act like one. He had his legs folded into a pretzel, his hands in a praying position. His script was clasped between them, and he hummed in a monotone.
“Buddy,” Ross hissed. Buddy cracked one eye open.
“Yeah?” he answered.
Ross raked a hand through his dark hair. “Buddy, you idiot, that’s your cue,” yelled Ross, unable to control his frustration.
Carly grimaced. She knew today was one of those days that Ross regretted giving up smoking. Good thing the nearest pack of cigarettes was at a convenience store at the end of the highway, because if there’d been any in Ruby Spring, Ross would have lit one up by now.
Buddy unfolded his legs and stood up, stretching. He scratched his chest and ambled over to Ross. “Relax man. It’s all good. I know my lines already.” He tapped the side of his head. “That’s the power of concentration. You should try yoga sometime, dude. It would really make you a lot less uptight.”
Ross stared at him for a few seconds, and then broke his pencil in two. “Ten minutes! That’s a ten-minute break, everybody,” he shouted, “Parker. What’s the time?”
The gangly acne-prone stage manager jumped up from a desk placed in the center aisle. A college theater student from Albuquerque, he hung on Ross’s every word. A pile of papers slipped to the floor as his fingers scrambled on the desk for the stopwatch. Patting his chest, he exhaled as he found it hanging around his neck. “Hold on a sec … uh … I got it.”
Ross raised an eyebrow and crossed his arms.
“3:32, everyone,” Parker exclaimed, “We’re back at … hold on … ” He carefully pushed a button on the watch. “We’re back at 3:42.”
Rolling his eyes, Ross jumped from the stage and stretched out on his back at Carly’s feet. He threw an arm over his eyes and exhaled.
“Sophie?” he said in a weary voice.
“I know. I know,” she replied, “I’m looking, Ross, really I am. It’s hard to get a decent actress at the beginning of the summer, you know.”
“It’s just that Buddy is great when he has someone to keep him focused up there,” Ross said, sitting up. “We are getting nowhere fast, and Nancy, as much as she loves being actress-for-a-day … or more like … a week … really needs to get back to the costume shop.”
“I KNOW!” Sophie repeated, her fists balling in her enormous lap.
Carly reached out her foot and nudged Ross in the ribs. Placing a soothing hand on Sophie’s arm, she said, “Look, we both have a friend we worked with about five years ago. He’s an actor, but has moved to L.A. and is working in an agent’s office. Maybe he knows a good actress who is available. You want me give him a call?”
Sophie reached her hands out to Ross, who jumped up and heaved her out of the seat. Groaning, she leaned against the edge of the stage.
“Yes. Do that. I absolutely have to take a nap. Right NOW.” She smiled feebly at them and waddled up the aisle.
Ross and Carly shrugged at each other. He grabbed her by the arms and dropped his head to her shoulder. “Oh no. Save me, save me,” he mimicked Nancy.
Carly chuckled and pushed him away. “You’ll be OK.”
The theater doors at the back of the house creaked open and they heard Sophie’s voice faintly from outside. “Hey, Asher, where have you been? Well, I know, but I haven’t seen you since yesterday … Yeah, she’s in there. Daniel said what? Well it’s about time … OK … See you later tonight.”
Carly’s heart plummeted to the pit of her stomach. Asher was back! And had been, apparently. She hadn’t seen him in well over a week, although it seemed like much longer. But why should she want to see him? He didn’t care about anyone but himself. He kept creeping into her mind, all the same. Maddening. She heard his muffled deep laugh outside and her stomach dropped to her knees. Suddenly, she knew she couldn’t handle it. Trying to maintain a calm expression, she turned to Ross.
“Hey, I forgot … something. I’m just going to go back up to the hotel and grab it, okay?”
She wheeled around and scrambled up on the stage, running to the backstage door. Poking her head out
, she glanced around and stepped out into the sunlight, deciding to sneak back to the hotel behind the buildings. She turned the corner of the theater and stopped short. Too late.
Asher was strolling toward her, a hint of a smile playing around his fantastic lips. He was so much more handsome than she remembered. His wavy hair was pulled back into a small ponytail at the base of his neck; loose strands floated around his lean face. His hands were shoved into the pockets of stained painter’s overalls, and his white T-shirt was ripped at the neck. He could have been in a thousand dollar tux as far as Carly was concerned. Stopping in front of her, he gestured toward the theater with a shoulder, looking at the side of the building.
“So, when do you want to get started?”
Carly’s gaze followed his. It was easier than getting lost in his hypnotic eyes. She wanted to be mad at him. Wanted to ask him where the hell he had been while his brother was suffering in extreme pain. But that’s not what came out of her mouth.
“Oh, any time. Mornings are good. They don’t start rehearsals until eleven. You know actors, late night people,” she gushed, kicking herself all the while for sounding like a dimwit.
Asher laughed. “Well it doesn’t really matter when we paint, Carly,” he said, drawing out her name, caressing it.
She shivered and clenched her fists, willing her stomach to calm down. Looking at him, she flashed what she hoped was a warm, friendly, and completely professional smile.
“Why is that? Do you have all of your time free just for me?” she bantered.
Asher gently clasped her shoulder. “As a matter of fact, I do. And will. Hasn’t Daniel talked to you?”
Carly’s eyes widened. “No, I haven’t spoken with him since I visited at the hospital. What are you talking about?”
He cleared his throat and grinned at her. “Carly Foster, meet your new bodyguard.”
Her mouth opened and she stumbled backward. What was he talking about? She didn’t need a bodyguard, dammit. Jamming her fists on her hips, she recovered her composure. “That’s nice and all, but I can take care of myself, thanks.”
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