by Tami Hoag
From the corner of his eye he studied Rebecca. She wore a white cotton blouse with a pattern of flowers and leaves embroidered and cut out across the bodice, revealing patches of creamy flesh. Her lavender skirt was gauzy and gathered delicately at the waist. Her profile was worthy of any antique cameo he’d ever seen.
She was lovely, much more so than she realized. One of Becca’s greatest insecurities had always been that she was all intellect and no femininity. Tenderness welled in Jace’s heart. He had never known a woman who had more claim to the description of feminine. To him she was everything a woman should be. More than anything, he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her. He understood everything about her—her strengths, her fears, her flaws—and he loved her for all of them. If he lost her…
If he lost Rebecca and Justin, it would probably be no more than he deserved, he thought as he directed her off the expressway.
Rebecca could sense the tension building in Jace with every mile. Still she asked no questions about their destination. Obviously he did not want to talk about it. Even after she had parked the car in the lot of the beautiful modern hospital in a posh Chicago suburb, Jace offered no explanation. They crossed the parking lot together in silence as the rain began.
Inside, the hospital was Saturday-quiet. There was no bustle of people waiting for appointments or arguing over accounting errors on their bills. The weekend staff, made up of nurses and bleary-eyed residents, went about their business with calm efficiency. Visitors talking in hushed tones lingered in a lobby worthy of a luxury hotel.
Jace bypassed the information desk and went directly to a bank of elevators. Tapping the toe of his black loafer impatiently against the smooth marble floor, he rammed his fists into the pockets of his pleated gray trousers and waited for the elevator doors to open.
As they rode up to the tenth floor, Rebecca watched his pallor increase. The haunted look in his eyes made her want to go to him and put her arms around him. Whether that desire was to comfort or be comforted, she wasn’t sure. Her own nerves were jangling. She’d never known Jace to be so solemn about anything. He hadn’t even cracked a smile since they’d made love the night before.
It frightened her how alone she felt now that Jace had withdrawn into himself. What was going to become of her when he left?
The elevator doors opened on a special care unit. The nurses’ station sat at the center with rooms situated around it like spokes around the hub of a wheel. Fluorescent light glowed above the wood-paneled, pentagon-shaped desk area. The nurse manning the station must have been fifty. She looked big enough and mean enough to play tackle for the Bears, but when she glanced up and saw Jace, her features melted into a motherly smile.
“Hi, stranger! We’ve missed you around here,” she said in a clear, rough voice that she automatically toned down out of deference to the patients in the rooms around her.
“Hi, Sophie,” Jace said, forcing the corners of his mouth up. “I can’t get here as often as I’d like to. I’m living in Mishawaka now.”
“So we heard.” She made a face. “Management boneheads. Smart money says you’ll be back for the stretch drive. Lindenfelder’s defense stinks up the place. He couldn’t match you at third if he was twins.”
“We’ll see,” he said, dismissing the topic as if it were as unimportant as the weather. “How’s Casey?”
The light in Sophie’s eyes immediately dimmed to a soft glow of sympathy. She couldn’t quite muster a smile for him. It was a look Rebecca had seen many times. She had been on the receiving end of it again and again as disease had slowly robbed her mother of life. She herself had given that look to patients, to families of patients, when a prognosis couldn’t meet their hopeful expectations. Her heart ached for Jace, even though she didn’t know what his connection to this patient was.
“No change,” the nurse said. “I’m sorry, Jace. He’s holding his own. That gives us something to hope for.”
With a shaky sigh, Jace nodded and turned away. His hand reached back for Rebecca’s. She latched onto it as if it were a lifeline and followed him away from the desk to one of the rooms.
Who was Casey, she wondered. A family member or a friend? A man or a woman? Why had Jace never spoken of this person before? What kind of medical problem were they about to face? Questions flew through her mind with the speed of light, but there was no time to search for answers. She caught a glimpse of the room through the window that faced the nurses’ station, but all she saw was the foot of the bed and a chair. They stepped inside and Jace closed the door behind them.
It was the room of a patient who had been there for some time, Rebecca thought as she glanced around. Get-well cards were pinned to a bulletin board on the sterile white wall. Children’s crayon drawings of animals and spaceships and baseball players were taped beneath it. There was an autographed Chicago Kings pennant above the bed. A team picture stood on the small metal cabinet against the far wall beside a thriving African violet and a photograph of someone’s parents. An afghan crocheted of blue and gold yarn was neatly folded at the foot of the bed.
“Becca,” Jace said softly, “this is Casey Mercer.”
He was a handsome man of perhaps twenty-two or twenty-three, with strong features, short dark hair cropped close to his head, and thick long eyelashes that curled boyishly along his cheek. Rebecca had a feeling his eyes would be brown, but she couldn’t see them.
Casey Mercer was in a coma. Machines monitored his vital signs as he lay unmoving on the bed. He was thin. Skin that had the shiny translucence of fine porcelain was stretched over bones that were too prominent.
Jace went to him and took Casey’s long, frail hand in his own. “Hey, Mercer,” he said in a soft, teasing voice. “Red alert. There’s a beautiful woman in the room. I brought my friend, Rebecca. Remember? I told you about her. I figured it was time I told her about you.”
The young man remained motionless, but Jace went on speaking as though it weren’t a one-sided conversation.
“I should have warned you, huh? You could have dressed up. Hell, you’re too pretty as it is. An old guy like me hardly stands a chance. Besides, you don’t need to steal my girl when you’ve got a bevy of beautiful nurses waiting on you hand and foot, right? One of these days I’m going to come up here and catch you chasing them around the bed.”
Rebecca blinked back tears as she watched Jace pause to swallow the lump in his throat. She didn’t know Casey Mercer, didn’t know what Jace’s connection to the young man was, but she didn’t need to. She could feel everything Jace was feeling—helplessness, anger, sorrow. His pain was her pain, because she loved him.
“The team needs you, kid,” Jace said thickly. “You’d better get your butt in gear and snap out of it. You know how you’re always telling me you’ll be the best damn shortstop ever to wear a jockstrap. Well, you’ve got to back up bull like that, Mercer, otherwise people will think you’re just as full of it as I am.”
Silence was the only retort Jace received.
Gently he placed Casey’s limp hand back on the bed. He tapped his friend’s cheek affectionately with his fingertips.
“Hang in there, buddy,” he whispered, rubbing a knuckle at the moisture under his eyes. “I’m so sorry I screwed up your life.”
They were the only people in the tenth-floor lounge. No one had even bothered to turn the lights on. The room was gloomy with shadows. Rain washed down the plate glass windows in silvery sheets. Jace sat on a chrome-legged table near a window, staring out at nothing, trying to gather his thoughts. He braced one foot on the seat of an orange plastic chair. Rebecca sat watching him, patiently waiting for him to speak. Thunder rumbled in the distance.
“It’s hard, you know,” Jace said softly, still focusing his gaze outside. “He’s just a kid. Nothing but guts and instinct. I never saw anything like him on the infield. Quick as a cat.”
“What happened?” Rebecca asked, speaking in the whisper hospital lounges seemed to inspire.
&n
bsp; A muscle tugged in Jace’s cheek as the pain cut through him. “Me. I was his idol. Some idol,” he said bitterly, his mouth twisting in a grimace of disgust. “Because of me, he may spend the rest of his life in that room.”
“The accident,” Rebecca deduced aloud. “He was with you?”
Jace didn’t answer her right away. He looked down and traced a finger around the edge of a cheap glass ashtray, desperately wishing he had a cigarette. When he spoke again, he started the story at the beginning.
“When I got called up to the show, I figured I had the world by the tail. I was hot, popular. Everybody wanted to know Super Cooper. I was making more money in a year than some small countries. It’s not an excuse, but you have to understand what money like that can do, how it can make you feel invincible. I threw it around like candy at a parade. You know, I always did like to play fast and loose with my cash. Easy come, easy go.” He flashed a grin that died quickly. “I liked to have a good time. I liked everybody to have a good time.
“Most of it’s gone now. What I didn’t gamble away or throw away on bad business deals went to Casey. This is an excellent hospital for the kind of care he needs. His folks couldn’t begin to afford it, and his insurance wouldn’t cover it all.
“Casey came up last season from the triple-A team in Lexington. It was like déjà vu for me. Everybody wanted to know Casey. Right off the bat he started hanging around with me. No party was complete without Jace the Ace and Casey.
“The night of the accident we’d been out ramming around in my Porsche, party hopping. He asked me if he could drive because he’d just ordered one of his own, and he wanted to practice impressing women. I let him, even though I knew he wasn’t in any shape to get behind the wheel. ’Course, I wasn’t any better off. We were doing eighty-five on the Dan Ryan Expressway, and Casey looked over at me with this big bright grin on his face and said, ‘Don’t you know, Jace, I want to be just like you. You’re my hero.’”
He could still see Casey’s handsome young face glowing with life in the lights from the instrument panel. The image of that smile was frozen for all time in his mind, just as those words would forever ring in his ears.
“That was the last thing he ever said to anybody.”
Rebecca closed her eyes against the pain she felt for Jace and for Casey Mercer. She remembered Jace at Casey’s age, brash, charming Jace who had thought his luck would never run out. Now he sat staring out the hospital window struggling under the weight of responsibility, not only for his own mistakes but for Casey Mercer’s as well.
“There’s nothing quite like nearly killing someone to make you take a good hard look at yourself,” he said sardonically. “I came out of the crash with a bum knee and some broken ribs and a second chance I didn’t deserve. I’m not going to screw it up. Something good has to come out of this, or what happened to Casey will all have been for nothing. I can’t let that happen.”
Rebecca couldn’t find it in her to condemn him; Jace had certainly done a good enough job of condemning himself. For once she didn’t try to sit in judgment. Jace had been through hell. He would go on paying for this mistake for the rest of his life. He didn’t need her to tell him he shouldn’t have let Casey Mercer get behind the wheel. In fact, she found she wanted to blame someone else. Why had the host of the party they’d been to let either one of them drive?
She was well aware of the fact that at some other point in time she would have jumped on her soapbox and harangued Jace. He was a star. He was in the public eye. He should have set a better example for the kids who looked up to him. But she had watched him struggle. She had seen him hurt. He was just a man, as vulnerable to making mistakes as any other man. Being a star didn’t make him immune or immortal. He was facing that truth now, and Rebecca’s heart ached with love for him.
Jace didn’t need her censure now. He needed her support and her love.
She reached out and took his hand, squeezing it as she gave him a game smile. “You can make it count, Jace,” she said softly.
Her strength pulled Jace’s out from under him. His face tightened as he turned more toward the window. He sniffed and swallowed hard. Strain shredded the soft fabric of his voice. “I never meant to hurt anybody. Not Casey, not you.”
“I know,” Rebecca whispered, coming out of her chair to put her arms around him. “I know.”
“Looks as though Muriel and Dad are out on the town,” Rebecca said as she glanced at the note Muriel had left on the heavy oak library table. A fat black-and-white cat pounced on the table, snatched the note from her hand, and dashed off with it. “It still surprises me, but I’m glad they’ve started seeing each other.” It was Jace’s doing, she reminded herself.
“Do you think they’re getting serious?” Jace asked as he glanced through his mail.
“I don’t know.” Like any child, small or grown, it was difficult for Rebecca to imagine her father in a romantic situation. “They have fun together.”
Jace gave her a sharp look as a thought suddenly occurred to him. “Who’s watching Justin?”
“He’s spending the weekend with a friend,” she said, trying not to feel too pleased with Jace’s concern.
Despite what she’d seen that afternoon, she still didn’t want to become too used to having Jace around. The fact remained that he wanted to return to Chicago. If his knee held up, he would be leaving, and changed or not, there was no guarantee he would come back.
“I’ve been working on a present for him,” Jace said, his expression softening into a genuine smile for the first time in nearly twenty-four hours.
Stepping over a pair of kittens wrestling in the middle of the hall, he led Rebecca back toward his rooms. She took pleasant note of the fact that the house no longer smelled musty and feline. The scent of potpourri hung in the air instead.
“It’s kind of a present for you too,” Jace said. “Wait here.”
Rebecca stopped where he instructed her, just outside the door to his sitting room. Seconds later she was confronted by a mechanical dog.
It was about the size of a beagle and ran on treads, the way Merlin the robot did. Its ears looked like miniature satellite dishes, its tail was an antenna. The thing may not have had fur or fleas, but it certainly did resemble a dog. Jace had carefully painted on big brown eyes and a happy mouth. He had even hung a collar around its neck. It stopped at Rebecca’s feet, bobbed its head, and barked at her from a little speaker set in its chest.
“Oh, Jace, it’s wonderful!” she exclaimed. She dropped down on her knees to get a closer look, but was careful not to touch it or make it go haywire. It extended a pink rubber tongue and licked her hand.
“Your father did the electrical and computer work,” Jace explained. “I designed the body and did the mechanics. It won’t make a mess on the rug or bite—not even someone who isn’t mechanical.”
Leaning against the doorjamb, automatically taking his weight off his healing knee, Jace worked the buttons and switches on the remote control panel. He put the little metal mongrel through its paces in the hall—running it backward and forward, making it bark and wag its tail. He showed her how it could retrieve a metal bone using the magnet in its nose.
Outraged, Muriel’s cats scattered in every direction, fleeing wild-eyed from the monster.
“I know it’s not as good as a real dog, but I thought it would do for a while,” Jace said. He directed the dog back into his room and turned it off, setting the remote control on an end table.
He was tempted to say his creation would do until he, Rebecca, and Justin officially became a family and moved into a house with a yard big enough to keep a dog outside. That was his dream, one he wanted very badly to realize—to be a father to Justin and a husband to Rebecca. But he held back from telling her.
After leaving the hospital neither one of them had said much. He had been deeply touched and given hope by her initial reaction to his story, but he kept telling himself that didn’t mean he was home free.
Rebecca went to kiss his cheek. She could hardly speak for the knot in her throat. How sweet of Jace to try to make a little boy’s dream come true. With everything else that was preying on his mind these days, she certainly wouldn’t have expected this. “Justin will love it. Thank you.”
Jace slipped his arms around her. “He’s a terrific kid. I’m crazy about him.”
“He thinks the world of you,” she said softly, focusing her gaze on a button on his dark blue shirt. She didn’t say it worried her that Justin had become so attached to him. What was the point? It would only hurt Jace’s feelings, and she would still have to deal with Justin’s disappointment when Jace went back to the big league.
“Becca,” Jace whispered, everything inside him going still with anticipation, “is Justin my son?”
Rebecca could feel the tension in him as he waited for her answer: it trembled in the muscles of his arms and vibrated subtly in the air around him. It seemed it was the day for revealing secrets. Jace had opened the door on his. He was asking her to do the same. She couldn’t deny him.
Actually, she found she wanted to tell him the truth, even though it hurt her to bring up that part of the past. She needed to share it with Jace. He was, as he had been so long ago, her friend…and more. Instinctively she knew he would understand in a way no one else ever had.
“Becca?”
“No,” she whispered, looking up into his indigo eyes with an expression that was akin to regret. “He’s not your son, Jace. He’s not mine either.”
Jace stared at her, confused. “What? What do you mean he’s not your son? You’re his mother.”
Rebecca moved out of his embrace to pace restlessly around the small room with its sinister-looking Victorian furniture. “No, I’m not—not biologically. My sister, Ellen, is his mother.” She laughed without a trace of humor. “That is to say, she gave birth to him.”