by Lisa Childs
He dragged in a bracing breath and pushed open the door to Bart’s room. Machines beeped, and from the bed wheezed the man’s dying breaths. A doctor stood near his side, monitoring the assorted lines zigzagging across the monitors.
“Sir, only two people allowed…”
Royce gestured toward the frail body connected to the machines. “Is it going to keep him alive to have only two of us in here?” He shook his head. “But meeting his family might.”
The doctor stared at Royce for a moment then nodded. “It doesn’t matter, I guess. He’s unconscious. It won’t be long now.”
Making a liar of the doctor, the dying man’s eyes flickered and opened. “Royce…”
Relief flooded him, bringing tears to his eyes. His instincts hadn’t been wrong. Sarah had brought him out of the coma. “I brought her, Bart. Sarah Mars. And her son.”
Tears swam in the misty-green eyes. His thin fingers curled, beckoning them closer.
Sarah stepped from under Royce’s arm and approached the bed with a willingness that surprised him. “Mr. McCarthy…”
“Maggie…you look like my Maggie.” His hand pawed the air between them.
Royce swallowed hard when Sarah cradled his godfather’s wrinkled hand between both of hers. “Bart, she’s here. Tell us why.”
Sarah swallowed, her pretty throat moving with the effort. Did she hold in sobs? “Why did you want to see me, Mr. McCarthy?”
“Sarah…” The old man’s ragged breath hitched. “You’re…my son Bart’s daughter. So beautiful, just like my Maggie…”
Sarah lifted her head, her gaze questioning. Royce shrugged. “Bart junior died when I was pretty young. I don’t remember much about him but that he was in the service.”
“Maggie…” Bart whispered.
Royce pinned the doctor with a hard stare. “Is he…”
The doctor nodded again. “Heart’s failing now. The gunshot wound was too much for him to recover from.”
“His mind?”
The white-coated shoulders lifted and fell in a shrug. “Could be the painkillers have affected him, but he sounded pretty lucid.”
Sarah leaned over the bed. “Mr. McCarthy?”
The misty eyes fluttered open again, the man’s will struggling for survival. “Loved Bart so much…so sad how he died. Training accident…. His fiancée, your mother, she didn’t want a dead man’s baby.”
But that hadn’t bothered Sarah. Had she loved Jeremy’s father? Jealousy knotted Royce’s stomach, but concern for Bart pushed it away when coughs wracked the fragile body.
Tears ran from the old man’s eyes even as the coughing subsided. “I would have taken you…but my Maggie was gone.” He closed his eyes again, his breath shuddering.
Royce jumped forward. “Bart!”
The misty eyes fluttered open. “My great-grandson…let me see him.”
Jeremy glanced up at Royce then stepped closer to the bed. Sarah removed one hand from the frail one she clutched and settled it on her son’s shoulder. “He’s twelve but tall for his age.”
“Handsome boy…”
Sarah’s gaze caught Royce’s again. Questions swam in her smoky eyes.
The old man peered beyond his lost family. “Royce?”
Royce moved closer to Sarah, her warmth a small comfort to his frustration. “Bart, you have to hang in there. Get to know Sarah and Jeremy. Come on, you old dragon. You’re a fighter.” Tears burned the back of his eyes and choked his voice.
“Royce…knew you would do it…do anything…. Good boy, Royce…smart. Strong…” His breaths grew weaker.
Royce glanced to the doctor. “What about a respirator?”
The doctor shook his head. “He doesn’t want it. And it won’t help his heart.”
Sarah turned Jeremy around and had him step away. “Wait over there for me on this side of the door.” Then the fingers of her free hand wove through Royce’s.
“There has to be something you can do…” But he didn’t speak solely to the doctor now. Sarah knew medicine.
Bart McCarthy had been a constant in his life, a steady source of support in a world where Royce had found little. He didn’t want to lose him.
A weak smile slid across the old man’s face. “Gotta see my Maggie now… And your father, Sarah…”
“Come on, Bart, you gotta stick around. Get to know your granddaughter and great-grandson. You can fight this.” Royce wasn’t speaking on the validity of his instincts but on his own desperation.
Royce’s name sighed on Bart’s weak breath. Royce leaned closer, Sarah clutched tight to his side.
“Royce…”
“I’m here, Bart. Let me help you.”
“Too late for me…”
“But it’s not too late for justice. I’ll find out who shot you, Bart.” Anger coursed through him now.
He’d spent the time since the shooting trying to fulfill Bart’s request by bringing this woman to him. And all that time a killer had run free, threatening Sarah and Jeremy.
A weak smile played across Bart’s mouth. “Always the lawman…Royce…”
“I won’t let him get away with this, Bart. I’ll track him down. That’s what I do.”
Sarah shivered against him.
Bart’s head moved a fraction back and forth as if he meant to shake his head. “I trust you, Royce, to…” He coughed and sputtered.
“Bart!” Fear chased the anger away, leaving Royce shaking with helplessness. He leaned closer to the old man. “To do what?”
The misty gaze focused on Royce, intent. “Protect Sarah.” Then the eyes closed as Bart McCarthy’s last breath died away.
Next to the bed a series of noises rang out to the accompaniment of flat lines on the monitors.
“He’s gone.” The doctor’s pronouncement dropped into the silent room.
Unnecessary.
Royce’s stomach clenched, and he pushed his fist against it. Bart had died, leaving no clue behind to the identity of his killer but confirming what Royce had already guessed.
Sarah was the next target.
SARAH’S THROAT burned with unshed tears…for Royce. For his pain. She wasn’t entitled to any of her own. She had never met this man before. He meant nothing to her, not like her parents had. What did it matter that his blood flowed in her veins, in Jeremy’s? She blinked moisture from her eyes and squeezed Royce’s hand.
His frustration flowed into her.
“Why would he think I need protection? Did he know about the threats?” She peered through the moisture at him, his handsome face a blur.
Royce shook his head, the dark-gold hair brushing over the collar of the jean jacket he’d pulled over his cotton shirt. This side of the lake was cool, too.
She glanced at Jeremy and wondered whether he was warm enough in his sweatshirt. “Jeremy, are you all right?”
He nodded and glanced around her to the bed. “He’s dead?”
A ragged sigh slipped from Royce. “Yeah. We better tell the others.”
Jeremy opened the door at his back and stepped into the hall. But Sarah’s gaze stayed on Royce, on the streak of tears he brushed from each unshaven cheek.
“He was a good man, Sarah. You would have liked him.”
She nodded, her throat choked with emotion.
Alan McCarthy leaned against the doorjamb as if he’d been eavesdropping. “He’s gone?”
“I’m sorry.” Sarah’s head ached with the inadequacy of her statement. She knew the agony of losing a beloved parent. “You should have been in here, not me.”
The man shook his head and ran a hand through his hair, silvered at the temples. “He wanted you, Sarah. He waited for you. You must be my dead brother’s child?”
Sarah shivered despite her sweater and the warmth of Royce’s closeness. Did she detect resentment in her uncle’s statement? “I’m…sorry…”
Alan McCarthy nodded, staring at the bed. But he didn’t enter the room. Even in death a distance existed between
this father and son. She suspected Bart had lost the son he’d loved the most. Her father.
“You shouldn’t be sorry,” Alan said.
Royce’s voice rumbled from deep in his chest. “No, the bastard who shot him should be. If he isn’t now, he will be once I track him down.”
Donald Graham pushed past Alan and strode to the bed. “Strong words, Royce. Sure you can follow through?”
Royce stiffened and dropped Sarah’s hand. His shoulder nearly brushed his father’s when he leaned close. “I promise you I will find who did this.”
The man’s face paled, and he stared after his son’s broad back as Royce strode from the room, taking Jeremy with him. “I don’t know how well you know my son, Ms. Mars, but he doesn’t make promises.” He swallowed hard. “He can’t keep them.”
Sarah’s teeth ground together, but she couldn’t contain her irritation. “I think he proved that wrong when he found me. He kept his promise to Bart. I believe he’ll keep this one, too.”
Alan followed her from the room, his shiny dress shoes echoing the click of her heels. “Sarah…”
After zeroing in on Royce standing close to Jeremy near the waiting-room vending machines, she turned back to her uncle. “Yes?”
He looked beyond her, toward the end of the hall, too. Perhaps judging whether Royce could hear. The facade of politeness vanished, and the resentment burned bright in his green eyes. “I don’t know what you intend to get out of this, but whatever my father promised you in there, forget about it. I’ll have it thrown out in court. He was incapacitated.”
She lifted her chin and straightened her shoulders. “Mr. McCarthy, your father didn’t promise me a thing. He just wanted to see me. That’s all this was about.” She turned to walk away.
His hand snaked out and grasped her elbow, his strong fingers pinching the aching muscle above it. “Don’t play me for a fool, Ms. Mars. I’m not some sentimental old man. You know he must have included you in his will. You think you’re going to collect big from this touching little five minutes of your time. Think again. You will never see any of the McCarthy money. Nor will you use the McCarthy name.”
She leaned close to his face, staring into the hatred swimming in his eyes. Could he be the one? The one who had threatened Jeremy to keep her from his father’s deathbed? Her pride wouldn’t allow him to think he’d scared her. She laughed at his resentment.
A red wave rose from under his silk tie and collar and flushed his face. “You little bitch, don’t think you can beat me.”
“I already have. Keep your money. Keep your name. I want nothing from you.”
“Then why did you come here?”
She glanced down the corridor to Royce again, to his dark-golden head bent close to her son’s lighter one. “I came with Royce.”
Now Alan McCarthy laughed. “Hedging your bets, eh? If you can’t get your greedy clutches on the McCarthy money, you’ll go after the Graham money. What Royce must not have bothered to tell you, but what you may have guessed from the scene between him and his father, is that they’re estranged. I doubt Donald Graham will give his son any money whether he’s alive or dead. And Donald’s too damned mean to fall victim to anyone’s wiles, Ms. Mars, so don’t even try.”
She struggled to free her arm, but his fingers dug deeper. She bit back a whimper and forced another laugh. She would not lose control over her temper or her fear. “You must lead a sheltered life, Mr. McCarthy. Or you’d know who I am. I need no one’s name or money. I take care of myself. Now release me before I call Royce over here.”
His fingers fell away from her arm. Before she could compel her trembling legs to carry her toward Royce and her son, another laugh rang out. This one rusty and bitter.
Royce’s father stood behind Alan, his hard face creased with a grin. “Oh, Alan, you really are an ass. I knew who she was the minute she stepped off the elevator. She could buy and sell us both, you fool.”
Her uncle’s mouth fell open, and his flush deepened to crimson. “I didn’t…”
“And what’s even more foolish, boy, is fighting over money you’re never going to see.”
“What?”
The rusty laugh rang out again as grating as a teenager’s stereo in the adjacent car in a traffic jam. “Before he died, your father needed cash. He already sold out the business…to me.”
“You bastard! You killed him. You might not have pulled the trigger. But you killed him.” Alan whirled on his shiny heel and headed toward the elevator bank.
She held Donald Graham’s stern gaze. Would he have killed his partner for the business? What kind of man was he? She shivered.
“Cold, Mrs. Hutchins?”
The ding of the elevator doors drew her gaze back to her uncle. A younger man stepped from the elevator and embraced him.
“More of your family.”
She sighed. “No, more strangers. I buried my family some years ago, Mr. Graham. All I have left is my son.” She braved the stare of those pale-blue eyes. “Like you.”
He exhaled a long breath. “Then may you not be as disappointed in your son as I am in mine.”
“Mr. Graham—” Before she could protest his snide comment and defend a man she had just met and he’d known since birth, the stranger from the elevator rushed up.
“Donald, terrible tragedy this…” The young man turned to Sarah and raised his dark brows.
“Sarah Mars-Hutchins, your cousin, Donny.”
A smile spread across Donny’s face, lightening his dark-gray eyes and dimpling his smoothly shaven cheeks. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Sarah. Terrible that it’s under these circumstances though.”
She nodded and scanned his handsome face for resentment and anger. Or grief. She detected nothing, but perhaps she was just too tired to be perceptive anymore. “I’m sorry for your loss, Mr. McCarthy.”
“Your loss, as well. My father just filled me in. Bart was your grandfather, too.”
“But I never met him until today. You’ve known him your whole life.” Was that a flare of resentment smoldering in her heart? She had no right to it. She’d had a wonderful family, one she would never have known had this one not given her up. She’d not been cheated at all. She was the big winner.
“You talked to him before he…”
“Briefly. He talked of his wife and my father. That was it.”
“Sad. Very sad.” He shook his head and scrubbed a hand through his black hair.
“Yes, that some coward killed him.” A deep voice rumbled from behind her. Warmth from Royce’s body enveloped her, chasing away her chill. “I’ll find who did it.”
Donny nodded. “Of course. Thank you, Royce. Thank you for finding my cousin. You’re a good man.”
A breath expelled through Donald Graham’s nose. Not a snort, but close.
Anger tightened Sarah’s neck muscles as she clenched her jaw. But Royce’s rough fingertips pushed aside her hair and slid over her nape.
“You’d know a good man, Donny?” Sarcasm dripped from Royce’s words, and a sneer twisted his hard looking mouth.
She’d never seen Royce so cold. But what did she really know of him?
“Donny!” A female voice pierced the subdued atmosphere of the ICU floor. A young woman rushed off the elevator, a profusion of bright orange curls jostling around as she rushed down the hall toward them.
Sarah fingered a tress of her red hair. She had stopped muting the color with a dark rinse. Under the fluorescent lights did her hair glow like that?
The woman’s painted lips thinned as she ranted. “You bastard! I’ve been trying to find you. Your daughter’s in this hospital, but you don’t come to see her. You come to see an old man you hate. Trying to get his money. Whatever you get, it’s mine. You owe me. You owe your child!”
Sarah’s heart softened, and she was ashamed of her snobbishness. A sick child. A mother’s worst nightmare.
Donny’s handsome mask slid away. “Pamela, not now. My grandfather just died.”<
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“Just what you wanted. You gonna go buy some drugs to celebrate?”
“Pamela, I’m over that. You know that. Come on…” His voice lowered as he dragged the mother of his child down the hall, his hand wrapped around her thin arm as tightly as his father’s had wound around Sarah’s.
Sarah winced and glanced at her son’s stunned face. “Royce, Jeremy’s exhausted.” What kind of mother had she become? She’d dragged him into the middle of an emotional mess she didn’t understand herself. And he had last eaten aboard the SS Wolverine.
Pamela’s shrill voice drifted from the end of the hall. “I need money!”
Someone had threatened the safety of Sarah’s son. Was that only about money or something more?
Royce sighed. “I’m sorry, Sarah.”
“Did you already break a promise, Royce?” His father’s taunt registered a direct hit in the clenching of Royce’s tensed jaw.
His gaze slid over Sarah’s head, locking with his father’s. His brow furrowed, and his mouth twisted. “Father, I need to ask a favor.”
Donald crossed his arms over his broad chest. He chuckled.
Royce’s chest swelled as he dragged in a long breath through his nose. “Sarah and her son are in danger. They need to stay in a secure place. My condo in the city is not.”
“You want to stay with me?”
Royce cleared his throat. “You have top-of-the-line security. They’ll be safest staying at the estate.”
Sarah’s pulse pounded. Royce didn’t speak of his father’s house as home. How much was he compromising his pride to ensure their safety? No one had ever sacrificed so much for her. Her hand clutched Royce’s forearm through his worn jean jacket. She offered comfort and more.
“We don’t have to, Royce.” She swallowed hard. Could she sacrifice as much? “If you can charter a plane now…”
He shook his head. “No, I won’t put you or Jeremy through that. It’s late. We’re all exhausted. What’s your decision, Father?”
Something passed through the pale blue eyes as Donald Graham stared at his son. “You’ll be staying, too?”
Royce nodded. “I’m not letting them out of my sight.”