"Can you tell me what medications he's on?"
JJ produced a card from her wallet. "Here's the list with dosages and schedules. On the other side are con tacts for his family doctors and his cardiologist."
The doctor's eyes lit with respect. "This is great. I wish everyone came in with something like this."
"Lucas has a card just like it in his wallet."
"He was a little disoriented when he came in. He prob ably didn't remember it." She glanced at the chart again. "We'll run some more blood work," she added, "but I re ally think his symptoms were caused by dehydration."
"Dehydration?"
"It's one of the commonest reasons for admission of elderly patients. Sometimes there's an underlying problem, but sometimes it's just that they don't drink enough water. Older people don't always feel thirst the way younger people do."
JJ wondered if Lucas had faked his symptoms to get her to come to him, but she abandoned that theory when she saw how pale his papery cheeks were. The thin hos pital gown revealed only jutting bones and deep hollows where his strong shoulders used to be.
Anger and betrayal, pity for the loss of his power, fear that she would have to face life without him some day, relief that he wasn't going to die today, and love— spine-softening love—all clashed together under her breastbone. She had the disorienting sensation that the floor beneath her feet was sinking.
"Sit down, JJ." Davy's strong arm supported her back.
JJ stiffened her back. "I'm fine."
"Gotta hang tough, huh?" His clear brown eyes twin kled. "Okay. Sit down please—as a favor to me."
He was maneuvering and manipulating her, charm ingly. He had her number, no doubt about it, and it felt so comforting to be understood that she couldn't object. She allowed him to push her gently onto a rolling stool. He stood beside her, one hand resting on her shoulder, while he questioned the doctor about Lucas's condition.
"If there's someone who can stay with him, he'll be better off at home," the doctor finished. "Then you could take him to his regular doctor in the morning for follow-up."
If there was one thing in the world JJ didn't want to do, it was take Lucas home and care for him. The anger burning in her chest made her long to fling Lucas's words back at him and tell him he was on his own. She calculated how many hours she would have to stay before the home nursing agency they had used for her grandmother would be able to send someone.
"No problem," she heard Davy say, as if from a long distance. "We've got it covered."
Chapter 25
DAVY KNEW JJ WAS RICH. HE HADN'T GIVEN A LOT OF thought to her lifestyle, though, until they had followed the Lexus 460L carrying Mr. Caruthers and Ham to a floodlit house built of yellowish stone. Through a sil very curtain of rain, he had the impression of soaring two-story columns at least six feet in diameter across the front of a central section, flanked on either side by single-story wings. The place was a frigging mansion.
They had gone in through a rear entrance, with JJ leading the way and turning on lights, as he and Ham had helped Mr. Caruthers to the master suite, which contained, beyond the predictable bedroom and bath, an office and a short hallway that led to an indoor pool. In a bathroom larger than his mother's dining room and tiled in travertine marble, he had helped Mr. Caruthers brush his teeth and use the toilet.
The old man's urine was clear and pale yellow, a good sign that he was no longer dehydrated. After David saw that the old man was managing fairly well on his own, with no signs of dizziness or disorientation, he moved to the doorway—close enough to be at hand if he was needed but far enough away so that Mr. Caruthers wouldn't feel hovered over.
When David was growing up, his stepfather, a CPA, had provided a comfortable living. His mother, a nurse practitioner, had worked mainly because she wanted to. As David had told Lon, he had never thought much about money. What he had wanted was to test himself outside the safe boundaries of middle-class normality. And that seemed to have nothing to do with a world in which you got good grades so you could get into a good college which would allow you to get a good job that would provide enough money to send your kids to a good school so they could get good jobs—and so on to infinity.
For the first time, he was looking at the difference between a three-hundred-thousand-dollar house—the absolute most he could hope to sell his mother's house for—and one that would never change hands for less than a couple of million. And that was just the house. He didn't know what you called the simple yet sumptu ous style of the king-size four-poster bed and dressers. The greens, yellows, and blues in the rug and upholstery fabrics on the small grouping of sofa and chairs around a marble fireplace gave the room the feel of a magically secluded springtime garden. Even by his inexperienced calculations, it was obvious you couldn't furnish a room like this for double what he made in a year.
When she had said that she didn't want to be married for her money, he'd had no clue how much money was in the equation. He had been salving his conscience with the thought that since he was taking nothing for himself, he was clean.
SEALs were sometimes accused of not respecting authority, and in a way, it was true. SEALs were a meri tocracy. Officer or enlisted, nothing—not money, not background, not skin color, not even size (there were SEALs who were 5'2" and SEALs who were 6'7") would make a man a SEAL except his intelligence, abil ity, and indefatigable spirit. SEALs respected character and competence.
Right now, recovering from traumatic brain injury, his competence might be in doubt, but he still had his character. He had never done anything only to make money. It didn't set well with him that the first time he did, he was starting with marriage.
It was ironic. He couldn't have taken on a wife at this point in his life—not with Riley, Harris, and Eleanor to take care of until they were independent. Marriage would be out of the question for him if his bride didn't have money.
He was more determined than ever not to accept any money for himself.
For himself, he wanted only her. And want her, he did. That much had become clear to him as they drove to the hospital.
He wasn't going sign a few papers, call himself mar ried, and walk away.
Back in the bedroom, David poured Caruthers a glass of water and handed it to him. "Have you been hav ing trouble with peeing too frequently? Is that why you haven't been drinking enough? So you wouldn't have to get up so often at night?"
The old man ignored the question. "Where'd my granddaughter find a male nurse this time of night?" he demanded as he dried his hands on a monogrammed, sea-foam green towel.
"I'm not a nurse. I'm a hospital corpsman."
"Navy medic?"
"Yes, sir."
"My brother was in the Army. He joined because he had flunked out of college, and it was that or be drafted, but I think he took a notion he wanted to be a Green Beret, and that's why he flunked out. Our daddy would have had a fit if he'd known that's what Clive was up to."
As soon as he told older people he was in the Navy, they had to tell him about some family member who had served. Like he had to know they, too, had stood up for their country. It was good the old man wanted to chat. David had some things he wanted to bring up himself. To keep Mr. Caruthers talking while he looked for an opening, David asked, "Did he make it—become a Green Beret?"
"Oh, yeah. He got to go to Vietnam, just like he wanted to. Three tours. They took him to Japan when he was wounded the last time. Couldn't save him. Where did they take you—when you got that?" He waved to ward David's face.
"Germany."
"We got on a plane, my brother's fiancée and I. We were there when he died. Did any of your family come to Germany?"
"My mother. Where do you keep your pajamas? I'll get them for you."
"Can't stand the damn things, but since JJ is in the house and will probably come in here to check on me, I reckon I better put on something. Get me a T-shirt from that top dresser drawer. I'll keep on my shorts."
David extracted a shir
t from the drawer while Mr. Caruthers sat down to untie his shoes. "While you have your shirt off, I need to listen to your chest. JJ said you have a stethoscope and blood-pressure cuff here."
"I don't know where the damn things are. You'll have to ask JJ. What did you say your name was?"
"David Graziano." He glanced around the room for a likely storage place for medical equipment. "She said they were in here. Mind if I look?" He opened another dresser drawer.
"Graziano. That's Italian. Are you Catholic?"
Nothing but clothes in the dresser. He moved to the armoire. "My father was," he answered Mr. Caruthers.
"He's dead?"
"He died when I was three. My stepfather was Congregational or something. We didn't go much." David shut the doors of the armoire. Nothing there.
"Look in the credenza."
"What's that?" These people didn't just have fancy furniture. They had fancynamed furniture.
"That cabinet over against the wall."
David went to the piece of furniture he pointed out—a long, tallish thing with doors, made of swirly grained wood.
The pressure cuff and stethoscope were behind the first door he opened. That did it.
He extracted them and turned to face his patient. "You manipulative old coot. You knew where these were all the time, didn't you? You were looking for an excuse to call JJ in here."
The old man shot him a wily look and snorted. David figured that was a yes. Mr. Caruthers' green eyes, the color of JJ's, were shrewd as he continued questioning David. "The Episcopal church recognizes Catholic baptism. Would you be willing to have your kids raised Episcopal?"
"I never thought about it." David suddenly under stood where the idle-seeming inquisition was headed. He leaned against the credenza and folded his arms across his chest. "Why do you ask?"
Chapter 26
"YOU MARRIED?"
"Not yet. Hope to be soon."
"That's too bad. I hoped to fix you up with my granddaughter."
"She told me about your husband list. Your grand daughter is who I hope to marry."
The wily look in Lucas's eyes was supplanted by surprise. "You want to marry my granddaughter?" David could see the wheels turning in the old man's head. "Don't you be put off by that prenup she'll insist on. Tell you what, I'll give you a hundred thou sand now, a hundred thousand after the birth of my first great-grandbaby."
Now he understood where JJ got some of her cold blooded ideas about marriage. "As a matter of curiosity, is two hundred grand all you think it will take to buy me or all you think she's worth?"
"What?"
"What the hell is the matter with you?" David let his voice go dangerous and low. "Offering a bribe to a man you don't know, like JJ is some kind of excess baggage you need to unload."
"No! That's not it."
"It's not? Then how about treating her with some respect."
"Respect? What are you talking about? I love JJ!"
"Then why aren't you willing to let her live life her own way? Why did you threaten to sell Caruthers if she didn't get married?"
A stubborn look dug the wrinkles around Lucas's mouth deeper. "Had to."
"Come on. If I'm going to talk her into marrying me on my terms, I need more to work with than that."
"Year by year, I was watching her disappear into the business—like she was slowly being eaten by it. It wasn't what I wanted for her."
"You never intended her to inherit the business?"
"What the hell is the matter with everybody I try to explain this to? You've got it all wrong. I raised her to know it would come to her—wanted it to stay in the family. But if I'd known what was going to happen, I would have sold it ten years ago. You know what they say about twenty-twenty hindsight? I thought I had years before she would have to take it over. She'd be settled by then, maybe have a nice husband who could help her with it. I never meant for her to have to manage everything before she was out of her twenties. Not what I meant."
The old man suddenly looked frail. The sparse hair on his chest gleamed silver in the lamplight. The skin on his arms, mottled with large brown sunspots, hung in crepey swags. He had the height and bone structure to weigh a good thirty pounds more than he did.
"She's had too much responsibility," Lucas went on. "First her grandmother had cancer. We kept her at home—it's what she wanted. JJ would say, 'Granddaddy, I know you want to stay home with Grammy today. Why don't you?' So I did."
He raised his eyes—the same shade of green as JJ's—as if he was imploring David's understanding. "Every hour with her was precious. I was a fool. I didn't understand what she meant to me until it was almost too late."
His eyes took on a thousand-yard stare—a look David had seen many times on the faces of men who had been through a trial that had forever changed them and could never be put into words. Then Lucas visibly returned to the present. He straightened his shoulders.
"After my wife died, I went to pieces—I admit it. Then I had my heart attack. By the time I recovered and got my head back on straight enough to see that JJ didn't have a life, the economy tanked and the car business took a direct hit. She was working harder than ever and too caught up in keeping Caruthers going to hear me when I told her she needed more out of life, deserved more."
He aimlessly picked up his water glass and moved it to a different spot on the nightstand. "You want to know the worst part? It's my fault. I'm the one who taught her that Caruthers was the be-all, end-all of existence—who told her anything that didn't affect the Caruthers bottom line wasn't important. I thought it was great that she wanted to spend all her time there, even when she was a teenager. Beth, her grandmother, tried to tell me I was wrong."
David didn't want to, but he felt a little sympathy for the old man. Even when they know they're wrong, people always have a reason that convinces them that in this case what they're doing is the right thing.
He picked up the cuff and stethoscope from where he'd laid them on top of the credenza. "Let's go ahead and check your vitals now."
Chapter 27
"YOU HAVEN'T EATEN MUCH. CAN I GET YOU SOMETHING else?"
David surveyed JJ's plate. "You haven't eaten much either. Are you too tired to eat?"
For a moment her gaze was blank, her eyes dull, as if she didn't know what he was talking about. David recog nized the exhaustion of unremitting stress, but she didn't admit it. She pushed away from the table. "I'm not as hungry as I thought I was." She picked up a plate of half eaten lasagna. "I guess I need to put this food away."
Outside, the wind tossed fistfuls of rain against the windows that half encircled the table in what JJ called the breakfast nook. On the table were the remains of the lasagna, salad, and breadsticks she had ordered deliv ered after she ordered the hospital equipment from the rental agency.
David had wondered how she was going to pro cure the equipment after closing hours. Simple. She had called the owner at home, told him who she was, told him what was needed, and said, "Pay your driver as much overtime as it takes, and don't worry about whether insurance will cover it."
In fact, the owner himself was driving the delivery truck that pulled into the drive minutes after they arrived.
To the restaurant she had said, "I understand it's out side your delivery radius. There will be a very nice tip for the driver, and if you'd like to add a tip for yourself, that will be fine."
Money was her weapon, her power, and her insula tion. Anything she asked for, she got, speedily. The hospital staff had offered coffee, water, a private room in which to wait. They had assured her they were doing everything for her grandfather. But at least ten people— nurses, orderlies, techs, security—people who should have been doing their jobs—had stopped her to ask if she was JJ Caruthers and to tell her how they watched her commercials. Others had grown silent when she ap proached. Watched her.
She was unfailingly courteous, smiling, and warm as she responded to their intrusion.
Only one person, a brown-s
kinned woman in peach scrubs, David couldn't make out what her badge said, had squeezed JJ's fingers, offering comfort.
After observing her in the hospital, he could almost see why she preferred to buy a husband so she wouldn't have to care, wouldn't have to wonder what he really wanted.
David gathered the utensils and their glasses and fol lowed her to the sink.
"Thanks," she told him. "I'll take it from here."
He ignored her. While she rinsed the dishes and put them in the dishwasher, he retrieved the aluminum containers the food had come in and covered them with foil. He located the foil and tucked the pans in the refrigerator as if he had worked in this kitchen a hundred times before.
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