Prince Charming Wears a Badge

by Lisa Dyson

  The last thing he heard Mrs. James yell as she was put into the car was aimed at him. “You’ll pay for this, Tyler Garrett, you son of a bitch!”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  EVEN THOUGH SHE’D halfheartedly resisted, one of Tyler’s officers drove Callie to the hospital. She remained silent during the ten-minute drive and the officer—Gary, she thought he said his name was—didn’t push her to speak. She vaguely registered that she was probably in shock. She’d never been in the middle of anything as dangerous as what had transpired in her dad’s house.

  “I’m Bartholomew James’s daughter,” she said to the young woman behind the desk in the emergency room. “He was just brought in by ambulance.”

  “He’s in Curtain 2,” she told Callie after checking the computer. “Have a seat in the waiting room and I’ll have someone come out to update you.”

  “Thank you.” Callie headed in the direction the woman had pointed. There was one other person in the seating area, a middle-aged woman concentrating on her cell phone while a television on the wall presented a twenty-four-hour news station. Callie took a seat off by herself. She wasn’t in a talkative mood.

  She’d only been sitting for a few minutes when she heard Ellen’s distinct yelling and carrying on as the EMTs rolled her into the emergency room. Callie crossed her arms over her chest and hunched over. She’d thought being tormented by Ellen had ended years ago.

  She’d been dead wrong.

  “How are you doing?” Tyler appeared in front of her with no warning.

  She must have been deep in her own nightmares to have missed him coming into the ER.

  “I’m okay I guess.” She cleared her throat, embarrassed that her voice came out so weak. She was a capable woman, had made a career and a good life for herself. She needed to snap out of this weak persona.

  “How’s your dad?” Tyler settled into the seat next to her.

  “They haven’t told me anything yet. They’re sending someone out to fill me in.”

  Tyler took her hand. “I’m sure he’ll be fine.”

  Callie nodded then asked, “Where are your daughters? Shouldn’t you be with them?”

  “I was on my way home when I heard what was happening at your dad’s house on the radio. I called Aunt Poppy and she had nowhere she needed to be tonight.”

  “You can go home now if you want,” Callie told him.

  He squeezed her hand. “I’m not going anywhere until you’re ready to leave.”

  That was exactly the answer she’d hoped for but never would have asked. “Thank you.”

  He squeezed her hand again, just as a medical professional in scrubs came toward her.

  “Ms. James?” he asked.

  “Yes.” She and Tyler stood.

  “I’m Dr. Martin.” He shook her hand. “The cuts on your father’s head and arm have been cleaned and sutured, and I’ve sent him to have a CT scan since he lost consciousness. From his evaluation, I suspect he has a slight concussion, but the scan will tell us if there’s hemorrhaging. Either way, because of his age, we’ll keep him overnight for observation.” He paused. “Do you have any questions?”

  “He’ll be okay?”

  “That would be my best guess. I’ll have someone come get you when he returns.”

  “Thank you.”

  The doctor turned to go.

  “Wait. What about my stepmother? She was brought in, too. What’s going to happen to her?” Ellen’s yelling from her bed somewhere down the corridor had finally stopped.

  “I don’t know anything about her case, but I can check for you.”

  “She’ll probably need a psych eval,” Tyler told the doctor. Then he turned to Callie. “She’ll be facing charges if they find her competent to stand trial.”

  The doctor left them and they sat back down.

  “Sounds like good news about your dad,” Tyler said.

  She nodded. “I was terrified,” she blurted out. “I thought she’d killed him.”

  Tyler put his arm around her shoulders. She allowed him to comfort her. She’d always stood on her own, but right now it felt unbelievably good to lean on him.

  Although it seemed like hours before she was able to see her dad, in reality it was much less than that.

  “We’re going to admit your father,” the doctor told her when he got her dad’s test results. “Like I said earlier, he has a slight concussion, but the CT scan shows no bleeding. He’ll be taken to the second floor when his room is ready. You can go in and talk to him for a few minutes.”

  “Thank you,” she murmured.

  “Where’s Ellen?” was the first thing her dad asked when she reached his side. “What happened to her?”

  Callie tried to not feel hurt that concerned questions about her stepmother were the first things out of his mouth.

  “She’s well cared for.” Callie didn’t have much more information than that.

  He seemed to accept that answer. “I’m sorry our dinner was ruined.” He was pale, lying in the bed, hooked to an IV. A machine next to his bed blinked numbers.

  Her legs became shaky as she remembered how close he’d been to not making it to this hospital bed. “Don’t worry about it, Dad. It’s not your fault.”

  “But I ought to have known it might happen again. You and I should have gone out for dinner, but I don’t like leaving her alone for very long.” He ran a hand through his shaggy gray hair.

  Callie honed in on the word again.

  “So this has happened with her before?”

  “A few times. Nothing quite this bad. I’m usually able to calm her down before she gets out of control.”

  This was not the time or place to insist her dad get help for Ellen. Hopefully, Callie wouldn’t have to get in the middle of this now that Ellen was being evaluated by professionals. But first she would speak to Ellen’s doctor to relay the message that this was not the first time Ellen had been uncontrollable.

  And that didn’t even include the way Ellen had behaved while Callie was growing up.

  *

  SHORTLY AFTER SPENDING a few minutes with her father, Callie met Tyler in the waiting room. He’d planned to take her to get her car. She hadn’t wanted him to, at first, preferring to make sure her dad was settled in his room, but Tyler had insisted. He was worried about her. “There’s nothing more you can do for him. The staff will take good care of him.”

  She nodded. “I know. I guess I feel guilty for not being able to prevent this.”

  They were walking out the door to head to the parking lot where he’d left his truck. “How could you have prevented it?”

  She shrugged. “I should have been prepared.”

  “But how could you have known she’d become violent?” He thought back to earlier when Callie’s stepmother was ranting about Callie.

  She didn’t answer right away. “I just know how she is.” Her words were barely audible.

  They reached his truck and he turned the key in the ignition. “You can’t blame yourself, Callie,” he said as he pulled out of the parking space. “You’re not psychic.”

  She didn’t say anything more and he didn’t push her on the drive to her dad’s house to pick up her car.

  “Thank you for the ride.” She exited his truck.

  He expected her to get into her car and pull away, but instead she headed to her dad’s front door. She must have grabbed a house key on her way out earlier because she unlocked the door and entered. Thinking she must have forgotten something, he waited for several minutes but she never exited the house.

  He shut off his truck and went to make sure she was okay. “Callie?” he called as he entered the house. “Are you all right?”

  There was no answer, so he walked around to investigate. He heard a noise in the kitchen and found her on her hands and knees, scrubbing the kitchen floor with a brush. A bucket of soapy water was nearby.

  “Let me do that,” he offered and then tried to help her to her feet.

  “No, I
need to do it.” She shouldered him away and continued to scrub at the darkened bloodstain on the yellowed vinyl flooring. “It’s my job. I have to do it.”

  “Your job?”

  She nodded vigorously. “I’ll pay for it later if this floor isn’t clean.”

  He was confused. “Why would you think that?”

  She rubbed the brush furiously on the stain. “Because I know what happens when I don’t do my chores the way she expects.”

  “She?” As soon as he spoke, he knew the answer. “Are you talking about your stepmother?”

  Callie nodded, intent on her job. “Of course. She demands perfection.”

  He was beginning to think Callie was having a break from reality and wasn’t sure what to do about it. She obviously wasn’t going to snap out of it at least until after the house was back in order. So he went in search of a broom and trash bags to clean up the broken dishes and food.

  When Callie deemed the house clean, he asked, “Are you ready to go?” He followed her around as she made sure everything was in order.

  She finally said, “Yes, we can go now.”

  “Not yet.” He needed to make sure she was okay before she drove herself to Poppy’s, even if it was only a short trip. He guided her to the living room sofa. “Sit down a minute.” He sat across from her.

  “I thought you wanted to go home,” she said.

  “I do. But there are things we need to talk about first.”

  She stared at him without speaking.

  “Where were you when you were scrubbing that floor?”

  She cocked her head. “What do you mean? I was in the kitchen. Where else would I be? That’s where the mess was.”

  “I mean where were you in your head? You talked about doing your chores correctly. Were you worried about getting in trouble with Ellen?”

  Callie went pale, covering her mouth with a shaky hand. She nodded.

  He reached out and put a hand on Callie’s knee. He needed to know the whole story after he’d heard her stepmother’s comments. “Did Ellen punish you when you were growing up here?”

  Callie nodded, her eyes huge and glassy. “I—I don’t want to talk about it.”

  He debated not pushing further, but he couldn’t help her if he didn’t know what happened. He repeated what he heard Ellen say. “Did she lock you up?”

  Callie gasped. “How…how did you know that?”

  He took her question as an affirmative and moved to sit next to her on the sofa. He reached out and she willingly came into his embrace. “I heard Ellen talking to herself when she was locked up in the neighbor’s house,” he said softly into her hair. “She talked about punishing you and locking you up.”

  Callie’s head moved in the affirmative.

  “She threw the chair that night I overheard you two fighting when we were teenagers, didn’t she?” The revelation nearly knocked him over. “She was blaming you for making her mad enough to throw the chair.”

  Callie nodded. “Uh-huh.” She spoke quietly.

  “I’d just walked you home. What was she upset about?”

  Silence. He waited, not willing to push her this time.

  Finally she said, “She was mad that you walked me home that night.”

  Not the answer he expected. Not even close. “Why is that?” He listened closely to catch every word.

  “Because I wasn’t allowed to be around you.”

  He was confused. “But she didn’t even know me. What did I do that made me off-limits?”

  “It wasn’t what you did.” Callie paused. “Wendy had an enormous crush on you all through high school and she and Ellen warned me to stay away from you. Or bad things would happen to me.”

  He put together everything he’d heard from people over the past few days. “So that’s why you wouldn’t go out with me?”

  She nodded.

  “But I never would have gone out with Wendy. She was just my sister’s friend. I wasn’t interested in her like that.”

  “She and her mother didn’t care. They thought you’d come around, and I was warned to stay out of the way.”

  “You never told me this before. I could have straightened them out about my feelings.”

  “They never would have listened to you. They always thought they knew best and no one was right except for them.” She brushed her hair back from her face. “Besides, if you had talked to them, then they would have known that I’d told you about Wendy’s feelings and I would have been punished.”

  He didn’t like the sound of that. “You were punished a lot?”

  She nodded.

  “Physically?”

  She nodded again.

  “Would you call it abuse if it was done to one of my girls?”

  She nodded vigorously. “Definitely,” she whispered, her voice cracking.

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  This time she shook her head. “No.”

  He paused, considered her answer, but asked anyway. “One last question. Did your dad approve of the way she punished you?”

  Callie straightened and pushed away from him. Her eyes were red when she said, “Not exactly.”

  “What does that mean? Did he know how you were being treated?”

  She laced her fingers, placed them on her lap, and became quiet.

  He sensed she didn’t want to talk anymore. “Let’s get you home. If you’re not okay to drive, we can leave your car here and pick it up tomorrow.”

  Her head moved slightly. “I can drive.” She rose, grabbed her purse where she’d left it by the front door and exited the house. He followed her outside. She locked the front door with mechanical precision.

  He waited for her to pull away in her car before following her to Aunt Poppy’s. And he made a decision on the way. Tomorrow he would contact Callie’s therapist. He was worried about Callie after what she’d been through today and the awful memories it had dredged up.

  And, knowing Callie, he was pretty sure she wouldn’t say a word to her therapist about tonight’s events.

  On second thought, he decided to stay out of it. He’d give her a chance to relate the entire story to her therapist. But he wouldn’t hesitate to interfere if she didn’t tell the therapist everything.

  *

  CALLIE HAD NO APPETITE, even though Tyler tried to get her to eat at least a little something. She finally appeased him by having a piece of toast.

  By nine-thirty she was in bed, trying to keep images from ruining her sleep. She wasn’t successful. Her bedside clock read a little after one and she decided she had to do something. So she slipped a bathrobe on over her sleeveless tank and padded down the hall to Tyler’s room. Before she reached his door, it opened, startling her.

  “Are you okay?” Tyler whispered.

  She shook her head.

  “That’s what I thought,” he said. “I was just coming to check on you.”

  She swallowed, unused to asking anyone for anything. “I was hoping—”

  He reached out and pulled her into his room, closing the door behind them. He drew her into his strong arms and she went willingly. This was what she’d needed. The safety of his embrace.

  “Don’t get the wrong idea,” she said into his neck. “I just couldn’t sleep.”

  Without saying a word he released her and pulled the covers on his bed down so she could climb in. He got into bed and pulled her close. “I’ll just hold you until you fall asleep.”

  In that moment she went from liking him a lot to falling a little bit in love with him.

  Comfortable in his arms, she fell almost immediately to sleep. She had no idea how much later it was when she woke because of mumbled voices. The covers were over her head. Trying to orient herself, she remembered that she was in Tyler’s bed. Listening carefully, she realized Tyler was out of bed and speaking to one of the girls. Madison, she thought.

  “Let’s get you some water and then it’s back to bed,” he said.

  Callie lay perfectly still,
hoping the room was still dark and Madison didn’t notice a human-shaped lump in her daddy’s bed.

  “I want to sleep in your bed,” Madison said sleepily.

  “And I told you that you have a bed of your own to sleep in.” Their voices seemed to be moving farther away, perhaps out to the hall. “You know I like to take up most of my bed and you don’t want to get hurt when I roll over, do you?” Madison giggled, making Callie smile for the first time in what felt like a lifetime.

  A few minutes later Tyler returned. The door closed and the lock clicked. The bed moved as he got back in.

  “I should go,” she whispered, even while allowing him to draw her into his arms. “What time is it?”

  “Almost four. Don’t go yet,” he whispered. “Let Maddie have a chance to fall back to sleep first.” He adjusted his position to hold her more intimately. He kissed her temple.

  “Whatever you say.” Thinking she could luxuriate in his embrace, it wasn’t long before her hands began wandering over his body and she was begging him to make her forget everything but making love.

  *

  THE NEXT MORNING Callie awoke in her own bed to the sound of her alarm. Clearing the cobwebs from her brain, she vaguely remembered Tyler carrying her to her room while it was still dark out.

  Wanting to crawl back under the covers so she didn’t have to deal with anything unpleasant, she knew she couldn’t.

  Tyler was long gone by the time Callie made it downstairs for breakfast, but he’d texted her while she’d showered to say he’d stop by to see her at the Lincoln when he could get away.

  She called the hospital before leaving Poppy’s and found out her dad had a restful night and could go home anytime. Callie realized her dad was now her responsibility.

  After getting Tyler’s okay, she told her dad’s RN that she would pick him up during her lunch break. She never asked about Ellen because Callie was afraid she’d be told that her stepmother had been released already. Although maybe she should have inquired about her since the last thing Callie wanted was to run into her, especially unawares. Tyler had said Ellen would face charges, but what if a mistake had been made and she’d been allowed to return home? She refused to consider that possibility.