Claiming Amelia

by Jessica Blake

  “I’m good, Pop, thanks,” I said, glancing up from my reading. It was a project file I’d lifted off of my brother’s disaster of a desk, which I’d found odd because Pop was pretty particular about the way he kept his files. At least he used to be. Glancing over to the desk he currently sat at, happily chewing on what was left of his donut, I noticed that I’d been right. His own desk was immaculate. No project files, no receipts, no anything scattered about. The fact that JJ would be so careless had given me pause.

  “Where’s my brother this morning?” I asked between sips of my own latte.

  Pop shrugged.

  “Couldn’t tell ya,” he said, stuffing the last bit of the donut into his mouth. “He keeps his own hours lately.”

  I lifted a single eyebrow, but he pointedly ignored the silent question. He was being cagey, and it motivated my internal bloodhound to follow whatever trail I’d just picked up on and find out for myself.

  “What time do we have to be at the doctor’s this afternoon?”

  I was going with him to see his physician today, something he’d earlier begged me to keep quiet.

  “Your mother doesn’t need to worry,” he’d told me. “She does enough of that already, you know?”

  Yeah, I knew. But it still didn’t feel right sneaking behind Mom’s back like this. She kept fairly regular hours over at Aunt Emma’s floral shop a few blocks from Pop’s office. She always complained that she could never get the time off, but it was a lie. Her older sister was perfectly capable of running her own store and probably just kept Mom around out of pity for my father. Mom had a way of getting herself into trouble if she hung around the office too much. There were horror stories about how her efforts to “clean the place up” resulted in missing invoices and destroyed permit applications.

  No, Pop had plenty of boundaries when it came to Mom, even after more than thirty years of marriage. And it seemed that worrying her any more than she already was about his health was one of those boundaries.

  I’d told him I would go but made him promise to tell Mom the results before dinner, no matter what they were. He’d reluctantly agreed, and the brief flash of emotion that passed over his expression had given me pause. If I was being perfectly honest, Pop had looked scared.

  How long had it been like this?

  “We’ll leave after a quick lunch,” Pop replied, wiggling his mouse across the desk to wake his computer up.

  I glanced over to JJ’s computer, and I was half tempted to sit in his chair, pop open his files and look through what he kept in digital storage. Clamping down on the itch to snoop in my older brother’s business, I flipped through a few more pages of the file I’d pilfered off his desk.

  “Are project files supposed to have estimates notarized?” I asked, glancing over at my father.

  He raised a gray, unkempt eyebrow at me. “Of course.”

  I swallowed, wondering if I should draw his attention to my brother’s inability to keep orderly files. He deserved to know, but I decided to do a little due diligence first and search for the missing pieces before accusing JJ.

  Not that my brother wasn’t a prime candidate for cutting corners — God knew he was — I just didn’t want to pull my dad into some stupid sibling bullshit unnecessarily.

  Pop was back into his email before long, and I had tucked the file folder into my bag without my father noticing. Mom had hinted that things at work were stressing Pop out more than usual, but she hadn’t come right out and said she believed it had something to do with JJ. No, that had been my own insertion, but when it came to things like that, I was usually spot-on.

  Later in the morning, when my father had stepped outside to meet a business contact at a jobsite, I used the time to myself to open the drawers and really poke around the crap in my brother’s desk. I found a few more project files and a couple half-crumpled deposit slips. I tucked it all into my bag before making a quick peek into Pop’s bank ledger, always kept in the second drawer on the right side of his desk.

  What I found confirmed my doubt when I discovered the bank slips in JJ’s desk — different banks. It wasn’t anything concrete, and for all I knew, JJ could do his banking at a completely different institution. It was just… interesting.

  Feeling a tiny bit guilty for all my snooping, I returned to the spare desk I’d been temporarily assigned and got back to the work of alphabetizing recently paid invoices. It was one of the areas Pop had let slide since he started feeling sicker and sicker, and one of the first little jobs he assigned me.

  It was grunt work, for sure, but my dad was doing his best not to overload me on my first few days on the job. It was cute, really, to have him worrying about me. After all, I’d come all the way to Boston because Mom had been worried about him.

  A few minutes later, he returned, his cheeks pink from the brisk air outside, and beckoned me to join him for lunch at his favorite café down the block.

  “Then we’ll get that appointment out of the way and pick your mother up on the way home. It’ll all be fine.”

  He sounded so confident when he said it that I almost believed him. Maybe it was true. Maybe everything was fine, and the appointment was nothing more than a formality.

  ***

  “Would you repeat that, Dr. Stevens?” My father’s voice was tight and clipped, and I could tell without looking that his arms were across his chest in a defensive posture.

  Poor Dr. Stevens. He’d been Pop’s primary doctor for the past twenty years and had been the one quick thinking enough to recommend a chest scan when Pop developed a cough that wouldn’t go away last year. They’d initially diagnosed him with bronchitis. Then asthma. But nothing they prescribed worked. When my dad’s shortness of breath got worse, Dr. Stevens had sent Pop over to the Lung Center at Brigham and Women’s University Hospital.

  “Your father grumbled the whole time about deductibles and co-pays,” I remembered my mother telling me a few months back. Pop hated spending money on himself.

  The first round of tests had triggered the need for a second round of scans — the results of which Dr. Stevens had been sent and were resting in the older man’s hands.

  “Non-small cell lung cancer,” Dr. Stevens said, his voice unwavering.

  My eyes were open now, the initial rush of nerves and adrenaline having passed through me, leaving me queasy and sick to my stomach. I put my hands on my knees and drew in a sharp breath.

  “Easy now, Amelia,” Pop said, feeling the need to comfort me. My eyes pricked with tears that I was fighting to keep back. I wouldn’t cry in front of him — I refused to.

  “I’m good,” I said, more for my own assurance than for his. Just like always, Pop was stoic and unmoved by the doctor’s results.

  “Initial detection puts you at stage 1B,” Dr. Stevens went on. “And I—”

  I held up a hand. “But he’s never smoked a day in his life,” I argued, desperate to find a hole in the damned diagnosis.

  The doctor just shook his head and pursed his lips, sighing.

  “Ten to fifteen percent of lung cancer patients never smoked a day in their lives,” he said, his eyes going over to my father. “And there’s mounting evidence that excavation sites exposed plenty of people in the construction industry with varying levels of radon.”

  He droned on, explaining the risk factors involved with radon exposure, but my brain had tuned out. I was somewhere else, fighting the rising panic in my chest that my father was dying. That he’d been dying and nobody had taken it seriously — least of all him.

  “You said 1B,” I interjected, jumping right over what Dr. Stevens was saying. “Out of how many? Is that a good level or a bad level?”

  Some part of my brain knew that I was being obnoxious and that this was Pop’s appointment. If he wanted answers, he should be the one peppering his medical professional with questions. But my brain wouldn’t stop. It was like the words “positive screen” and “lung cancer” were a weight around my feet, dragging me underwater, and
I was doing everything I could to get back to the surface.

  Damn the tears, but they started to fall without me being able to stop them. My father must have known from the telltale sniffling sound I was miserably trying to cover up, because he wouldn’t look over at me.

  Swallowing hard, I braced for Dr. Stevens’s answer.

  “Stages,” he said patiently as I mauled a tissue he handed me. “There are four stages, and for the most part, we caught your father’s mass early. It’s over three centimeters, the size of which would have put him at stage 1A. Since it wasn’t over seven centimeters, nor has it spread yet to his lymph nodes or surrounding tissue, he’s at stage 1B.”

  I took a deep breath in and held it a moment as my brain slowed. Okay. This was going to be okay. Pop wasn’t panicking, so I shouldn’t either.

  I wouldn’t. He deserved someone at his side who wasn’t a flake like my brother or an emotional wreck like my poor mother was bound to be when he told her the news tonight. Pop needed a rock, and that was what I would be.

  “So, what’s next… chemo?” Pop asked, the last word sounding bitter on his tongue.

  Dr. Stevens looked at the paper in front of him and shook his head. “I’m referring you to a pulmonologist, naturally, and they’ll work with you to get a treatment plan in place. But generally, from what my colleague at Brigham and Women’s said, they like to start with surgery first to remove the cancer and hope that removes all the cells from the body. It’s got a fairly decent success rate that goes up even higher if you’re able to get the surgery done at a specialized cancer center. It’s what they do there, day in and day out, and I’m sure they’ll suggest that to you.”

  Pop let out a long sigh and frowned. Knowing him, he had dollar signs clanging around in that brain of his, wondering just how much it was all going to cost them. He’d try to scrimp and pinch pennies on his own healthcare, I just knew it.

  Dr. Stevens was scribbling on a notepad and pounding in a few messages on his keyboard before he looked up.

  “I just put in the request for you to get an appointment with the pulmonologist back at the hospital. She should get you in within a few days, and from there, your only focus should be on recovering and beating this, Jack.” The doctor gave Pop a strong, confident nod. “And you can beat it. The odds are good, and you’re fit as a fiddle. I expect you to bounce back from this fully.”

  The words were nice to hear, but the layer of heaviness that the word cancer had just dumped on us was unmistakable. This was bad, even if it wasn’t as bad as a higher stage of cancer.

  Ten minutes later, we were slowly walking through the fancy medical center Dr. Stevens moved to a few years back, when Pop stopped short.

  “Gimme a minute, yeah?” he asked, nodding toward the men’s room.

  “Of course,” I murmured. “I’ll go grab a coffee in the cafeteria if you don’t mind.”

  He shook his head. “I might be a couple minutes,” he said, and I noticed the shaking in his voice. I opened my mouth to say something that I hoped was reassuring, but he put his hand up to stop me. “I have to go home and tell your mother, and I’ll need to be strong for her. Just give me a couple minutes to get myself together, that’s all. I’m fine, Amelia, I swear.”

  He needed a minute to get his emotions in check. I got it. Not trusting myself to do anything more than nod, I turned and made my way past the frosted glass doors that led into various waiting rooms. There were primary care physicians nestled in among dermatologists and plastic surgery day clinics. After a few twists and turns, I finally found the cafeteria, which was honestly more like a chic little café. It even had a little barista bar with a five-dollar latte that wasn’t half bad.

  Sitting with my coffee, I pulled my phone out and looked at the screen, considering if I should call JJ and give him advanced warning. I knew I’d want him to call me with news like that as soon as he had it, so I gave him a ring. I sighed. Voicemail. It figured.

  “Jay, it’s Amelia. Give me a call back as soon as you get this, please,” I said and dropped my face in my hands.

  With my head down, I hadn’t noticed anyone appear in front of my table. When I glanced up, I gasped, my heart immediately jumping to my throat, making it hard to breathe. Hard to swallow. Hard to do anything but gape.

  That face was so familiar. So beautiful. And those lips…

  Something deep and low inside me squeezed.

  “Hello, Amelia,” Declan Casey practically purred, his full, delicious lips pulled up in a smug smile. It was like he’d caught me doing something naughty. What the hell was that about?

  Declan was just as gorgeous as the last time I was this close to him. The very same night I’d thrown myself at him and was soundly rejected. His hair was still that golden, sun-kissed brown that caught every ray of sun in just the right way, and his golden-green hazel eyes still twinkled with mischief, even if he was pushing thirty-three. Not that I was counting or anything. Because I wasn’t.

  “Casey.” My voice sounded clipped because I was worried it might crack if I tried to string too many words together. “Long time no see.”

  Uninvited, he sat down beside me. I saw another kid I remembered from the block in the corner of the room, obviously standing guard.

  “Is that Brennan?” I said with a laugh, losing a little of my jumpiness. “You don’t mingle with the help?”

  Declan didn’t take the bait, keeping his intense gaze on me. He didn’t say anything right away, and I scooted back a bit to give us a little space. He was staring at me like he was trying to memorize my face. Or maybe recognize it? Connect the now me to the me he’d known years before.

  “I knew you were back in Boston, and surprise, I’ve found you,” he finally said, breaking the awkward silence that was building around us.

  “Lucky you.” I hadn’t meant to sound so sharp, so bitchy, so… hurt. Or maybe just surprised. I still didn’t understand why he was sitting at my table invading my space with his handsome face and spicy, intoxicating scent. Not that I noticed or anything.

  He lifted one of those damn perfect eyebrows. “Back for good, I hope?”

  I immediately shook my head. “Hell no,” I shot back. “I’m here to help my dad a little, but I’ll be gone before winter. I actually plan to move to California as soon as I can.”

  In the space of a single heartbeat, disappointment flashed across his face, but it was gone so quickly I could have imagined it.

  I lifted my chin, my hands wrapping around the cooling coffee. “Why are you here? Don’t you have an office somewhere you can work from?” I was trying to be snarky for a reason. The less kind I was to him, the quicker I hoped he’d go away.

  He rolled his eyes, breaking the intensity for the first time since sitting. “My mother is having day surgery.” He air quoted the last words, and I guessed it was an elective kind of surgery. And if I remembered his mother correctly, it was probably something she did on a weekly basis.

  “Oh,” I said with a shrug. “Good for her.”

  He leaned forward, and the hair raised on my arms. “Why are you here?”

  I frowned and leaned back, needing the space. “I just told you, I’m helping my father for a little while.” As gorgeous as he was, like most men, he didn’t listen.

  “No, Amelia.” My name was a purr on his lips, and I blinked hard to clear the spell. “Why are you in the medical center? Are you sick?”

  Shaking my head, I grabbed my cup and stood, remembering my dad was probably waiting for me outside the bathrooms. “No, I’m good. It’s been… interesting seeing you again, Casey. Have a nice life.”

  I didn’t wait for a response as I walked away. Had my mother been here, she would have been appalled by my manners. But Mom also didn’t know how hard I threw myself at the man all those years ago or how soundly and humiliatingly I’d been rejected. It was amazing how bad it still stung all this time later.

  And it was still amazing how attractive I found him. How pulled to him I was.
It had always been that way.

  I shook my head. I couldn’t be thinking that way. I needed to remember that it was a good thing Declan had rejected me so completely. People like the Casey clan weren’t interested in my welfare or anyone around me. They took what they needed from life and the people in it and used it all for their own gains. That’s how his father, Patrick, had been. It was how his entire extended family had operated in Dorchester during the years I was growing up, and the fewer interactions I had with him and his kind, the better.

  I just needed to keep telling myself that.

  My days in Boston were limited, and I didn’t need to complicate anything by getting caught up in the complex web of the Casey family.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Declan

  A few days had passed since my confrontation with Amelia, and I still couldn’t get the woman out of my head.

  Drumming my fingertips on the smooth surface of my mahogany desk, I was loath to admit just how much time I’d spent thinking about the woman. Mostly, I’d been pissed off that she cast me off so easily. She basically dismissed me and had been cagey when answering simple questions.

  But there was a part of me that liked the fight she had in her. I always had. Amelia would not be bullied into talking about anything she wasn’t ready to talk about, that much was clear. If I wasn’t mistaken, there was also more than a hint of hurt in her voice and in her wary expression when she recognized me.

  I wondered if she remembered as clearly as I did, the last time we’d spoken. I had always assumed that she’d been too drunk to remember the things she said, the promises she made me about a “night I would never forget.” She’d been totally hammered, and even now I smiled at the memory. I never regretted taking her home and dropping her off there, despite the massive erection I had to contend with later that night. Hell, I’d had a hard-on for her ever since, even though I’d refused to admit it.