“He wasn't worth it. Besides, the only time I ever saw him after I left was in court at your trial. It wouldn't have been too cool to attempt assault and battery in front of a courtroom full of judges and attorneys, most of them golf buddies of his.”
Adrian grunted acknowledgment of that as he caught the packing and eased it through the vase neck. “Sure you didn't pack your diamond necklace in here while you were at it? This thing is hard.”
Faith's eyes widened as she stared at the crushed yellow legal paper he produced from the vase. “I didn't do that. I used packing paper from the movers.”
A mockingbird sang into the silence as they stared at the wad of crumpled paper. Adrian couldn't bear the tension. He handed the package to her to do the honors. Still holding the smooth surface of the porcelain vase, he tried not to hope. He'd lived on hope and determination for four years. He couldn't believe anything would come of it now.
“Keys,” she whispered as she folded back the paper. “Tony's keys.” The yellow wad dropped to the ground as she produced a silver trophy key ring from a golf tournament. On it dangled half a dozen small keys—bank box size.
“Why the hell would he put them in a vase?” Adrian growled, refusing to believe that his prayers had been answered this easily. “It's a wonder you hadn't filled it with flowers and water and rusted them.”
“I don't think keys rust.” She turned them thoughtfully, measuring one against the other. They were all different.
“Let's pack up and get out of here. You taking the vase with you?”
She emerged from the fog she'd lost herself in. “If the deposit boxes are in the corporation name …”
“We'll clean up and start looking as soon as we leave here,” he said, his heartbeat finally returning to normal. He didn't know what he'd done to deserve this break in fate, but he wasn't one to be ungrateful. He'd make the most of it.
She looked at him as if she'd just discovered his existence. “If you're right and Tony really did abscond with those funds—”
“What do you mean, ‘if’?” he asked angrily. “He damned well took every penny. Or what he could without those keys,” he amended, his mind taking another giant leap forward. “Do you think they'd be the only set?”
She looked from him to the keys. He ought to be annoyed that she still didn't believe him. But he was still having a hard time shaking his own entrenched convictions that she'd profited from Tony's embezzlement. So, neither of them had a reason to trust. They'd figure it out somehow.
As if reading his mind, she held out the key ring. “I don't know if safe deposit boxes have two keys, but if they don't, it's a miracle Tony didn't kill me when he discovered I'd packed these up and moved.”
That was a thought to ponder. He was grateful Tony was dead. Adrian traded her the vase for the keys and shoved the ring in his pocket. Tony would probably have strangled her with his bare hands if he could have found her back then, but he probably had too many other problems to juggle after the trial, and before he could search properly, he'd died.
“Maybe we'd better think this thing through a little more,” Adrian said thoughtfully, heaving the last of the boxes back into the building. He took her silence for agreement.
Lost in their separate thoughts, they passed the pickup on the way out of the exit lane, and neither noticed as the truck followed them through the gate.
“I can't go into a bank and act like a corporate officer in these clothes.” Faith tugged at the soft flannel of Adrian's shirt as they drove down the highway.
“You're about the same height as Belinda. We can borrow something of hers. I just don't know her work schedule and don't have her phone number. She lives in one of these anthill apartments out here. I'll try finding it.” He eased into the slow lane to look for the next ramp.
“I don't know if these corporate papers are enough. What if they don't believe me?” She'd wrapped the precious vase in cotton batting and packed it in a sturdy box, but she held it securely in her lap for extra protection. The vase was a treasure she understood. The keys worried her. And the old corporate papers she'd retrieved from one of the boxes should have been things left in the past.
“You've got the seal and the corporate resolution. That should be enough. You're an authorized officer—”
Adrian shouted a curse and slammed an arm across Faith's chest as a truck swerved from the left lane onto the ramp in front of them. Fenders collided with a grinding crunch, and the VW tires skidded off the pavement.
Faith screamed and clutched her box as the lightweight car careened off the banked ramp, into the air. Before she even realized they were tumbling, the roof crunched. Glass shattered. Pain shot through her head and neck. Somewhere, she heard Adrian screaming her name, just before she blacked out.
Crawling out of the wreckage, Adrian heard cars screeching to a halt on the road above him, but he had no problem focusing on the situation at hand. Faith was still strapped in her seat, and she wasn't answering him.
The car lay on the passenger side. He couldn't pull her out without righting it, or possibly hurting her worse.
Debris lay scattered across the field. The photos she'd so carefully chosen, books, everything that had been under the hood, now blew in the breeze. The vase box rested on the shattered and bent window beside her.
Blood poured from a gash on her forehead. The impact must have thrown her against the window. He tried to think, take one step at a time as panic shrieked through his veins. He needed to stop the bleeding.
He took off his shirt and ripped a sleeve from the seam. Folding it into a pad, he leaned into the car to hold it over the gash. What should he do next?
“I've called 911,” a good Samaritan called, sliding down the embankment toward them. “They should be here soon.”
“Help me right the car. I have to get her out of there.”
The minutes blurred into a haze of hot sun and sweat and blinding panic. People appeared out of nowhere. He couldn't have said if they were white, black, or yellow. The turquoise VW blazed across his eyeballs, its trunk hood crushed, its roof flattened, with Faith lying quiet against the blood-soaked seat.
Ambulance sirens wailed as he and the others righted the vehicle and eased Faith from the interior. Someone shouted not to move her, but Adrian saw her eyelids flutter, and nothing could have prevented him from lifting her into his arms.
She was frail and light. Choking on a lump in his throat, he eased her out of her bent position and sat with her across his lap. He'd tied his other shirtsleeve around her forehead to hold the bandage in place, but blood still seeped beneath it, matting in her hair.
His fault. He should never have brought her here, never involved her. He should have understood that she'd made a new life, risen above the ashes, and he should have followed her example. Why had he insisted on dragging her down into the cesspool with him?
She was everything he couldn't have, and he'd destroyed her in childish revenge.
Faith's eyelids flickered again. As the paramedics scrambled down the hill carrying a stretcher, she blinked and stared straight into Adrian's soul.
“The vase?”
He wanted to laugh and scream and throttle her. He was holding her life in his hands, and she worried about that shitty vase? The woman was crazier than he was.
“It's fine. I've got it. But I smashed the bug.”
She closed her eyes and smiled. “Now I can get a Miata.”
Oh, hell. Oh, triple hell. A vast emptiness yawned within him as he hugged her close while the paramedics set up the stretcher. He thought maybe he'd wrecked more than the car. He didn't want to let her go. Her heart beat steadily next to his, pouring life from her into him. He had been dead inside longer than he'd realized, and she was so very much alive. He had to see that she stayed that way.
A police car arrived, giving him something new to worry about. He still hadn't renewed his license. He couldn't let Faith out of his sight, and they'd want a report. They'd probably ha
ul him away in chains.
Ignoring the cop still sitting in his car, talking into his radio, Adrian clutched the box with the vase under his arm and held Faith's hand as they carried her up on a stretcher. Let them track him down at the hospital. They could lock him up after he saw that Faith was safe.
Adrian called Cesar from the emergency room. His brother arrived as the police completed their report and admonished him to renew his license. Adrian half listened while he paced the waiting room floor. He nodded at his brother but didn't involve him as the cop handed him a ticket.
Some jackass had sideswiped the car he was driving, rammed them off the road, injured Faith, and he was the one who got the ticket. Fate had a funny way of laughing at him.
“You okay?” Cesar asked as the policeman departed.
“I'll ache all over in the morning, but yeah, I'm fine. Faith's not. She's down in X ray.”
Cesar whistled and shoved his hands in his pockets. “How bad does it look?”
“She was awake when we brought her in, that's all I know.”
She'd treated him like a human being, a desirable male, and soothed all the wounds these last years had knifed into him. And what had he given her in return?
Mistrust and a broken head.
He wasn't in any humor for talking. One thing about Cesar, he knew when to keep his mouth shut. Pity he couldn't say the same about the women in his family. They'd be all over his case when they found out. And they'd find out. He had nowhere else to take Faith but to his mother's house.
Eons later a nurse emerged from the forbidding depths of the interior to assure them Faith was lucky. She had a badly bruised knee, pulled ligaments, and maybe a minor concussion. She was groggy from painkillers and needed bed rest, but she'd be all right.
They rolled her out in a wheelchair with a crutch across her lap. She looked pale and almost ethereal beneath the white dressing on her forehead. A huge elastic bandage encompassed her bare knee. She wouldn't be dancing anytime soon. From beneath the hideous white gauze she offered a shaky smile.
Adrian's heart plunged to his stomach, but it had already shattered into a million pieces anyway and wasn't worth much. Wordlessly, he helped her from the chair, tried to help her balance on the crutch, and then, cursing, simply swung her into his arms.
“This is ridiculous,” she whispered against his throat as he carried her out. “I have to walk.”
“Yeah, well, I have to hold you, and I'm bigger, so I win.” He sounded gruff, even to himself.
“Sexist pig,” she murmured into his collar. “I'm feeling really good right now. You ought to let me go while it lasts.”
“Like hell I will. I'm taking you home to my bed where you can feel even better.”
She couldn't reply to that without embarrassing Cesar as he opened the door to his rusty van. Faith let Adrian slide her across the bench seat. She was too groggy to think of a good reply anyway. Happily, she embraced the vase Cesar handed her and said nothing.
“How much of those drugs did they give you anyway?” Adrian grumbled as she leaned against him while the truck took off.
“Lots and lots of tiny little pills.” She didn't have any idea.
“Bet you're one of those high-metabolism twits who skyrocket on a cup of caffeine. Fool doctors, haven't figured that out yet.” He circled her shoulders with his arm and she snuggled happily against his ribs. She was injured and drugged and beyond worrying about how this looked.
She was nearly asleep by the time they reached their destination. These Raphael men were hardly the talkative type, she mused drowsily as she tried to ease out of the truck after Adrian. They hadn't exchanged two words the entire trip. Maybe they were making evil plots that involved her.
“I'll run in and ask Mama which bed to use,” Cesar offered, as if she wasn't there.
She ought to say something in protest, but Adrian picked her up again, and her breath departed from her lungs and her brain took leave from her head. Gad, he was strong. She felt like a helpless Scarlett o'Hara as he carried her into the house. She wasn't the Scarlett type, but she didn't have the presence of mind to protest.
She should be telling him she had to go home. She rested her head on his shoulder instead. Adrian's arms tightened around her, and she wished she had two heads so she could lay the other one against him, too.
She wasn't quite right in the head she had.
“It's just my luck I have a sexy woman helpless in my arms, and the only place I have to take her is my mother's,” Adrian griped from somewhere above her.
“The credit card is probably good for another night.” She yawned.
“I'll take you up on that when you're awake. Want to play nurse and doctor?”
She heard the grin in his voice, but her eyes were closed and she couldn't see it. He had such a lovely grin, when he used it. “Doctors have cold hands,” she grumbled. “Might as well do space aliens.”
He chuckled as he laid her on a bed to which someone had directed him. He had a lovely chuckle, too, she decided. And a lovely chest. A nice, broad chest she could snuggle against. She didn't like it when he lay her down and backed away.
“Sleep it off while you can. The cops were easier than the interrogation I'm about to endure about you.”
The door closed and she was alone. She wondered about a thirty-something lawyer who was afraid of his mother, but she kind of liked the idea that she'd discovered his weak spot.
Much longer in his company, and she might even like the man.
That had to be the drugs talking, she thought as she slipped into sleep.
“Wake up, wake up, we have to make certain you're not a vegetable,” a cheery voice sang as someone shook Faith's shoulder.
She blinked and looked up into long-lashed dark eyes identical to Adrian's.
“Good. You're awake. I've brought you some gazpacho, much tastier than the dishwater the hospital would have given you.”
Faith obediently struggled to sit up against the pillows being plumped behind her. Belinda, she decided. Adrian had a sister named Belinda who was a nurse. The B child, second in birth. So, she wasn't brain dead. She remembered that much.
The dark eyes and equally dark hair were the only similarities between brother and sister. Belinda was shorter than Faith, and rounder. She wore her hair chopped in a breezy cut and exuded good cheer instead of Adrian's taciturn grimness. And there didn't seem to be a mistrustful bone in her body.
“Cesar told us how you sold Juan's little animals. Isabel is furnishing the nursery with the money. We have to get you all better so you can go back and sell his next consignment. The baby will need linens and car seats and all manner of things.”
Through her pounding headache, Faith smiled at the slight accent. Apparently, Adrian's parents retained enough of their Spanish accents that their children still possessed some of the flavor. Adrian hid his well, but lawyers learned clear enunciation and practiced their speech.
“I will raise Juan's prices so the baby can have its own car.” Faith tasted the delicious soup before testing the movement of her knee. She definitely preferred the soup. Hiding her grimace, she resolved not to move that leg again soon.
“How is your head? Are you seeing two of everything?” Belinda asked with concern.
Obviously, she hadn't hid the grimace well. “My head hurts, but there's only one spoon in my hand, and the soup is heavenly. Thank you.” She wanted to ask about Adrian but was afraid that would open a can of worms her aching head couldn't handle yet.
“I brought you clean clothes, and took yours to the cleaners. Adrian thought we were the same size, but he hasn't seen me in a while.” Belinda wrinkled her nose. “Don't tell him, but I'm pregnant, not just fat.”
“Why haven't you told him?” Faith asked in amazement at this revelation. “That's wonderful news. And you're not fat. We're just different shapes. I have none and you do.” She didn't know why she was feeling so cheerful. It had to be the drugs. This was definitely better than t
he hospital, and her personal nurse seemed to be a fountain of information.
“Oooh, I like your attitude, but I won't have a shape much longer. Adrian told me I shouldn't have kids until Jim and I can afford a house, but the price of houses …” She rolled her eyes expressively. “Adrian thinks kids are a money drain. He doesn't understand what it's like to want one. I can understand that he's spent his whole life raising us and doesn't see the benefits, but we're not him,” she ended rebelliously.
“Well, I'd say you're old enough to run your own life, and he's not a sterling example to follow. Feel free to tell him I said so.” Faith finished her soup and sighed in pleasure. She needed to worry about going home. How could she work if she could barely stand?
Belinda ran her hand anxiously through her thick, short hair. “I'll need all the ammunition I can find when he starts yelling. He's much better at arguing than I am.” She brightened. “But he is good for some things. He's gone to find your car and look for all the things he said you had in it. He says I should find out if you have disability insurance. He'll help you file a claim.”
Faith's smile broadened. “A lawyer, through and through. Sometimes, they're handy to have around.”
Belinda shrugged. “A man, anyway. Sometimes, they're handy. Other times, you want to smack them.” She removed the tray to the side table and readjusted the pillows so Faith could lie down. “Mama is dying to meet you, but I told her you couldn't get out of bed for at least a day, so she'll have to wait.”
“I can't vegetate here that long. I need a toilet and a shower, in that order. Then, if I'm still standing, I can meet your mother.”
“I'd use any excuse I could to avoid that fate,” a whiskey-smooth voice rumbled from the doorway.
“Adrian!” Belinda nearly dropped the tray she'd just picked up. “You still walk like a cat.”
All lean grace concealed behind too-loose black shirt and jeans, Adrian sauntered into the room. Faith wanted to pull the sheet over her head. She must look like hell, and he looked as if he'd just walked off the cover of a Western novel. His eyes lit with some hidden amusement as he towered over her.
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