Just one kiss (The Ashcrofts Book 1)

by Anderson, Poppy J.

  An angry knot tied up his vocal cords, and he pondered Amy’s nerve, to call him just like that, after he hadn’t heard from her in six long years. And yet here she was, talking about his secretary and sister in a tone reserved for discussing the weather.

  He saw her clearly in his mind’s eye: young, pretty, charming, intelligent. But Patrick knew better than anyone else that she could also be completely different. Nobody else had ever managed to hurt him like Amy had.

  “Patrick?”

  And suddenly his anger superseded the puzzlement of her unexpected call. His voice was cold as he demanded, “What do you want? I need to go.”

  “Wait, I need to talk to you. Please.”

  “About what?”

  “P-Patrick,” she stammered, sounding insecure. “It’s … It’s very … important.”

  “Important?” He ground his teeth. “Then make an appointment with my lawyer!”

  “No,” she cried, shocked. “I need to talk to you!”

  “About what, goddammit?” He snorted, overwhelmed by her sheer nerve. “What on earth could we talk about after six years? There is nothing to talk about, Amy.”

  “Please,” she whispered hoarsely. “I know you are angry, but—”

  “Angry?” He uttered a mirthless, disdainful laugh. “Angry?”

  “Patrick, I … I’m sorry.”

  “Listen, Amy,” he barked into the receiver. “I have no clue what you want from me after all this time, and frankly, I don’t care. Whatever you need to tell me, you can tell my lawyer.”

  “But I need to talk to you. In person.”

  “It’s a little too late for that,” he said dryly. “Maybe you should have talked to me in person before you packed your things in the middle of the night and disappeared.”

  “I—”

  “We should have talked then,” he cut her off roughly once again, “but now I’m no longer interested.”

  “Patrick,” she pleaded in an almost despairing tone, “I know my call must come as a real shock, and I also know I made a mistake all those years ago, but what I need to tell you is really important. Please listen.”

  His grip on the receiver tightened. He stuck out his chin and scowled. After she’d disappeared overnight, it was months before he left the house again. In the beginning, he hadn’t been able to sleep, had been a nervous wreck, gulping down copious amounts of alcohol, despairing because his wife had left him. All of his thoughts had revolved around her.

  It had taken him what felt like forever to get through a day without alcohol once again, and without racking his brain for the reason for Amy’s disappearance.

  After that breakdown, he’d vowed to himself that he would never give anyone that much power over him again.

  He wasn’t interested in anything she claimed was important. There had been a time when he’d jumped at her slightest request, but he wouldn’t let anyone manipulate him anymore.

  Not even her.

  Therefore, he inhaled deeply and frigidly asked, “There is nothing that could be important enough for you to call me.”

  “Patrick, listen … God, I don’t know where to start.”

  “I have an idea,” he declared. “If you can’t find the words, you could hang up and not call back for another six years. That would serve us both just fine, I think.”

  “Patrick,” she whispered unhappily, causing his stomach to lurch with yearning, anger, and shame. Even after all this time.

  “I don’t know what you want from me,” he snapped, registering that his emotions were fighting a vicious battle with each other. “Six years ago, you made it quite clear that you want nothing to do with me anymore.”

  “I never meant to hurt you, Patrick. You must know that,” she murmured in a voice choked with tears.

  But he scoffed. “Is that so?” He tried but failed to suppress the scornful tone in his voice. “It was obviously a misunderstanding on my part, then, coming home to find my wife had run away.” He took another deep breath. “Without giving me a single word!”

  “We had an argument,” she croaked. “We had a lot of arguments. I thought it would be better if—”

  He slammed his fist on the desk. “An argument is not a reason to leave your husband without warning!” he yelled into the receiver. “Without giving him a chance to apologize for what he said! That’s not how conflicts are resolved!”

  “I don’t think conflicts are resolved by leaving the country after a fight either,” she hissed right back. “Leaving for two weeks without thinking to notify one’s wife.”

  “I had a business appointment—”

  “That I didn’t know about,” she interrupted angrily. “Your damn secretary had to inform me that you had flown to Japan!”

  “I was angry,” he said defensively.

  “You demonstrated that I was not important enough, Patrick.” Her voice sounded hollow. “I had more interactions with Mrs. McDough than with you.”

  “Bullshit!” Patrick growled into the receiver.

  “It is not bullshit,” she replied gloomily. “Do you really think I didn’t notice how tedious you thought I was?”

  “Tedious?” His head jerked back at the word. “I think you’re trying to blame me for your own mistakes right now! Am I wrong, or were you the one who up and left? And now, six years later, you want to warp the facts to suit your story—”

  “There you go again,” she countered. “After six years, you’re still unable to even acknowledge the validity of my feelings! I told you I could feel that you were bothered by me, that I was an encumbrance, but instead of addressing that, you tried to sweep it under the rug.”

  He felt a vein start to pulse at his temple. He could hardly rein in his rancor as he growled, “Why should I want to acknowledge your feelings after six years, Amy?”

  She was about to answer when there was a knock on his door and his brother stuck his head in, scowling.

  “Patrick! Damn it, you were supposed to be upstairs ten minutes ago. The helicopter is waiting for you, and I’m really not ready to stand in for—”

  “Stuart,” he interrupted, shaking his head. “Get out!”

  “Do you know what time it is?” Stuart demanded.

  Patrick put his hand over the receiver and gave his brother a warning glare. “Can’t you see I’m busy? Get out.”

  His younger brother didn’t seem to be bothered by the threatening glare. He came in and closed the door. “You have a meeting.”

  “A meeting that is none of your business,” Patrick insisted, nodding at the door, his heart hammering in his chest.

  He didn’t know what to think, to feel, to do. He still couldn’t believe Amy was really on the other end of the line, arguing with him. Confused, stunned, and furious all at the same time, he couldn’t focus on anything right then, nothing but the woman he’d married six years ago.

  The woman who’d been missing. Lost. Gone forever. Or so he’d thought. Until ten minutes ago.

  His brother managed to pull him back into the present, into reality. “Of course it’s my business! I was responsible for this deal!”

  “I’ll be there presently,” he hissed, hoping his brother would finally get the hint. “Tell the pilot I’ll be there in five minutes, goddammit!”

  He could see Stuart wasn’t satisfied, but the threatening, dismissive tone of Patrick’s voice finally seemed to have convinced the younger man he couldn’t do anything but comply. He left the room and slammed the door shut.

  After taking another deep breath, Patrick replaced the receiver against his ear again. “Amy, I have a pressing appointment,” he said, all business, “and—”

  “Patrick,” she interjected firmly, “we need to talk. There’s something you have to know.”

  “I don’t know what that might be.”

  “You and I … I mean, the two of us …” She broke off, exhaling a sigh.

  He still had no clue what her strange phone call was about, but now he was getting impatient.
“Wrong. The two of us have nothing to talk about anymore.”

  “But—”

  “It was your decision to leave, or did you forget that somewhere along the way?”

  “Will you just listen to me?” she snapped, suddenly desperate. “I’m in Chicago, and I need your help. I need it urgently.”

  “Excuse me?” His voice became sharper. “Chicago? You’re in Chicago?”

  “Yes.”

  He snorted disdainfully. “I pictured you somewhere in the Italian countryside, or maybe in a Chinese mountain village.”

  “China?” she repeated, confused.

  “It would be far away from where I was!”

  Stricken, she forced out his name again, but he interrupted her.

  “Chicago? But that’s practically around the corner!” He balled his hand into a fist, lowered his head, and exhaled forcefully. “So you’re calling me after six years because you need my help?”

  “Yes,” she said quietly. “I … I had an accident. I was in a car accident.”

  Despite everything, he couldn’t stop the worry that threaded itself through him. He didn’t want to reveal that, however, so he cleared his throat and attempted to sound businesslike. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m okay, yes, but … but I need money. For a surgical procedure. Not for me,” she added hastily. “My health insurance won’t pay for it, because it costs too much. The money is … it’s not for me.”

  “Not for you,” he echoed hollowly, pushing away any emotion near care or worry. “How nice to learn that you remember me when you need money! I don’t believe it. What a pleasant call!”

  The blood was rushing so loudly in his ears that he didn’t understand what she was trying to explain in a trembling, small voice.

  “You, of all people!” Patrick took a shaky breath, no longer able to hold his fury in check. It made him shake and laugh scornfully. “You always pretended that money didn’t matter to you! You always refused to accept my money! And now you’re calling me for a handout?”

  “Patrick!” Amy cried out his name to stop his tirade. “This is important!”

  “Oh, splendid! That changes everything. If it’s important—”

  “Since when are you such a soulless jerk?” she asked over a suppressed sob.

  “Since my wife left me without a care for how I felt about that.”

  “That isn’t true!” she protested promptly.

  “Damn it, Amy! Can you imagine how I felt? I was beside myself with worry! I came home, and you had vanished!”

  “I sent you a letter …”

  “Oh, yes, the letter!” He narrowed his eyes. “Your fucking letter didn’t tell me whether you were okay. And your stupid letter didn’t tell me where I could find you either, didn’t give me a chance to contact you and talk. So now there’s no reason to expect me to—”

  “Will you please just listen to me for a second?” she spluttered at him, finally just as angry as he was. “I need to tell you something that … that’s … It’s important!”

  “What is it?” he growled.

  Her shaking voice told him that it really was something serious. And it probably wasn’t going to be good news.

  “Could you come to Chicago? Today?”

  “What?” He shook his head automatically. “Why on earth would I come to Chicago?”

  “Because I need you here,” she whispered desperately. “Because it’s … I mean, I … Patrick, I never told you about Audrey.”

  “Audrey? Who … is Audrey?” Patrick stood and went to the large window of his corner office. Leaning against the glass with a frown, he looked down at the hectic bustle of the metropolis below. His stomach felt as if he were riding an awful roller coaster, because for some unfathomable reason, he knew what Amy was about to say.

  “I’m s-so sorry, Patrick,” she stammered, her voice choked with tears again. “I should have … told you about her much earlier. Please—”

  “Amy,” he cut her off, his breath heaving.

  “Audrey … She’s severely injured, and she needs this operation. Without that … the doctors are saying that … she’s going to die. She’s only five! How can she …” Her voice gave way to sobs.

  Patrick squeezed his eyes shut. He would have fallen if he hadn’t been leaning heavily against the window. “Amy, who is Audrey?”

  After what felt like an eternity, Amy whispered, “She’s our daughter, Patrick.”

  Daughter.

  Daughter?

  It took him several long minutes to find his voice again. And then, when he did, it took everything in him not to hit the wall with his fist or start screaming uncontrollably.

  Then, brokenly, he whispered, “What hospital are you in?”

  After she had given him the name in her small, trembling voice, he cleared his throat. “Amy?”

  “Yes?”

  “I’ll never forgive you for this.”

  Then he hung up.

  Chapter 3

  Amy hated to admit that money made the world go ’round, but it was undeniably true.

  She had no idea what Patrick had initiated after their phone call, but when she returned to the ICU, Audrey had already been transferred to a different room. Gone was the young doctor who had told her how critical Audrey’s condition was. Instead, an imposing, gray-haired physician introduced himself, led her into a separate room, and explained in great detail what they were going to do to help her daughter.

  Amy was heartened a little by the conversation, and the modern equipment Audrey was now hooked up to. She didn’t care that doctors and nurses were suddenly bending over backwards to satisfy her questions, that she was offered a private room, or that the hospital director visited her in person to apologize for their earlier reluctance to treat Audrey. She didn’t care about any of it, because all she wanted was for Audrey to be well again.

  Still, even a truckload of money couldn’t guarantee her daughter would make it. The thought was unbearable.

  Instead of retreating into her private room to get some rest—as not only Dr. Fairhaven, Audrey’s physician and the surgical director, had suggested, but also the rest of the hospital staff—she remained in the hall outside Audrey’s room, staring through the glass partition and ignoring the thought that kept battering at her brain.

  It was the uncomfortable fact that her own mother had died in a car crash when she was six—only one year older than Audrey was now.

  The aseptic hospital smell invaded her nostrils in such a way that she couldn’t shake the memory of how she and her father had rushed into a hospital just like this one, only to learn that her mother was dead.

  Once this memory had billowed up from her subconscious, it was impossible to suppress. The terrible images whirled through her brain. Should anything happen to Audrey, or should she …

  Amy swallowed hard.

  She couldn’t finish that thought. All she knew was that she would reproach herself for the rest of her life for driving that cursed car. For heaven’s sake! She was Audrey’s mother. It was her job to protect her and make sure she came to no harm. Now her child was lying in that room, critically injured. She didn’t know how to deal with the emotions that wracked her.

  There was one more thought she kept pushing away after Patrick had hung up on her.

  Now he knew, and he would be coming to Chicago as soon as he could, which, in turn, meant that she would see him soon. The thought made her break into a cold sweat, her limbs trembling violently. She didn’t even pretend to herself that this was an unfamiliar presence in her imagination. For Patrick had been ever-present in her thoughts for those long six years. Just because she had left him didn’t mean she had forgotten him. How could she, when a miniature version of him was constantly at her side?

  Amy peeked through the window and studied her daughter. The similarities were obvious. Audrey was the spitting image of her father, even down to the same smile and the expressions she wore. Whenever she was miffed about something, she wrinkled
her nose in the same way Patrick did. And when the little rascal was up to no good, her eyes glittered in the same way of father’s had.

  The longer Amy considered how similar Audrey was to her dad, the more nervous she became.

  Patrick would show up here today and demand an explanation, while Amy had no idea how to handle it. Over the past few years, she had repeatedly told herself that she needed to tell Patrick about Amy, but she had chickened out every time, too scared of the confrontation. That had been wrong. It had even been cruel, but the memory of her marriage, which had only known highs and lows, but no consistency or reliability, had been stronger than her feelings of guilt.

  But now it was all coming to a head, and the shock of having been embroiled in a severe car accident, and the strain of calling Patrick after six years of silence, had brought her to the brink of what she could bear.

  The longer she sat in the hall, the more she lost track of time. Amy was so exhausted and desperate that she didn’t know whether she’d been sitting there ten minutes or ten hours.

  To fight off her sleepiness, she armed herself with a cup of coffee, and she stared at the floor, looking up every five seconds to glance at Audrey. She didn’t even notice that the coffee from the vending machine tasted horrible, or that the plastic cup leaked, burning her index finger. All her thoughts were focused on her daughter.

  And that was how Patrick found her.

  When she heard the clacking steps of smart shoes, she lifted her eyes, only to freeze at the sight of his approaching figure. She almost dropped the plastic cup.

  He scowled at her with an expression that suggested he was close to strangling her on the spot. Though he’d grown older, he had barely changed—if you didn’t count that she had never, ever seen him this furious. He was still tall, strongly built, with broad shoulders. His black hair was cut a little shorter than she remembered it, but she couldn’t spy a single strand of gray. His cheeks were covered in dark stubble, and his green eyes were shooting daggers at her, as she could easily discern from several yards away. His entire body was upset, seething, ready to blow.