CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The nurses' station on the oncology floor was a pool of brightness in contrast to the dim, nighttime lighting of the hospital corridors. Emily and Jordan followed one of the nurses to Maria Vasquez's room, the tap of Emily's high-heeled evening sandals sounding loud and intrusive as they passed rows of closed doors.
The nurse paused outside a door near the end of the corridor. "This is Maria's room. I'll have to ask you to wait outside for a few minutes. I need to check with her one more time to confirm that she still wants to see you."
"I understand," Emily said. Her voice sounded almost normal, which was amazing since the rest of her body was in turmoil and she had the disorienting impression that she was viewing everything through the wrong end of a powerful telescope.
The nurse opened the door and slipped inside, closing it behind her.
Jordan put his arms around her. Feeling the sleeve of his dinner jacket brush against her bare skin, Emily realized the dress she was wearing had almost no back and that she'd forgotten to bring her pashmina evening shawl from the car. No wonder she was shivering in the chilly temperatures of the air-conditioned hospital.
Kissing her lightly on the forehead, Jordan pulled her against him, wrapping his arms around her so that her head was resting against his chest. Warmth gradually replaced the bone-deep chill as she listened to the comforting sound of his heart beating beneath her cheek.
"Maria will see you," Jordan said, stroking her hair. "This is just a formality."
"I know. It shouldn't be so hard to be patient. I've waited twenty-seven years, so a few minutes more shouldn't matter."
The sound of coughing came from inside Maria's room. Not ordinary coughing, but harsh, rattling coughs, followed by shuddering gasps, as if she fought to drag in every breath.
Emily didn't realize she'd started to shake until Jordan's arms tightened around her. "Do you want me to come into Maria's room with you, or wait outside?" he asked, distracting her from the frightening sounds coming from the other side of the door.
Through the tumble of her emotions, Emily identified a flicker of surprise. It had never crossed her mind to exclude Jordan from this first meeting with her biological mother. She'd simply assumed he would be there.
"I want you to come in with me," she said. Dimly, she recognized that there was something significant about wanting to have Jordan with her, but she was too mentally numb to work out what.
The horrible coughing finally stopped and the nurse emerged into the corridor, leaving the door ajar behind her. "You can go in," she said, her voice a low murmur. "Maria is anxious to see you. Don't let all the equipment alarm you. It's really not much more than an IV and an oxygen supply to help with her breathing, and some electronic monitors that are mostly for our benefit in keeping track of her status. Today has actually been a good day for her. We've made some headway with the infection."
"Does that mean there's new hope?" Emily asked quickly.
The nurse shook her head. "I'm sorry," she said. "It just means we've delayed the inevitable for a little while. Anyway, why don't you go on in?" She gave an unexpected smile, and patted Emily on the arm. "Maria will be pleased you're all dressed up. She just loves fashion and pretty things."
Jordan held the door open for her and Emily walked past him. The only light came from a fixture on the wall, dimmed so that the room was scarcely brighter than the corridor outside. Even that low light couldn't conceal the ravages that disease had wrought on the petite, wasted woman lying against the cranked-up hospital bed.
Emily took a long, shaky breath, and then another. Her feet felt weighted to the floor, like one of those plastic dolls that never moved however hard you punched them. After twenty-seven years of waiting to meet her mother, she could find no words. Her voice had disappeared, drowned under the flood of emotions pouring through her body.
Maria found her voice first. It was harsh and breathless from her ruined lungs, but softened by a note of awe. "I have been waiting so long, and now you are here. The nice detective who visited this afternoon told me your name is Emily."
"Yes. My parents named me Emily Rose in honor of my two grandmothers."
Maria's gaze was riveted on her daughter's face. "You are so beautiful. I always knew you would be." A tiny smile tugged at her dry, cracked lips. "Your papa, he was one handsome fellow. I can see you have taken his eyes. They are warm, like golden Mexican honey, not plain old brown, like mine."
Shock wiped all thought of tactfulness from Emily's brain. "You know who my father is?"
Maria frowned. "Of course I know who was your papa."
Emily pressed her hands to her stomach. "I didn't realize. They told me— I thought—"
"You thought your father was some man—some John I never spoke to except to ask him for money." There was no bitterness in Maria's voice, only a wealth of sadness.
"No…yes…it doesn't matter—"
"It matters," Maria said hoarsely. "Later, I will tell you about your papa and you will tell me your whole life. But first I will tell you all that is most bad that I have done. Did you know I went to jail for prostitution? I see from your face that you did not. That was twelve years ago. The judge who sentenced me, he said I was a hopeless case."
"I didn't know. I'm so sorry."
"Don't look so sad, Emily Rose. You know, in the end, jail was a good thing for me." Again the quick flash of a smile. "That judge pissed me off, you know? I decided I would show him just who he was calling hopeless. I spent three months in jail. When I came out, I was lucky because my old pimp, he was in jail on drug charges, so there was nobody to order me around. I found a job waiting tables, and then a friend got me a job in the shoe factory. Now I am shift leader, and this Christmas, it will be ten years that I have worked a steady job. Decent pay, retirement benefits, health care, the works."
Maria gave a wry chuckle that turned into a painful cough. "Since they will never pay me those retirement benefits I worked so hard for, I guess the boss will pay for me to die in style, no?"
Emily moved closer to her mother's bedside. Suddenly it seemed entirely natural to bend and kiss her mother's pain-wrinkled forehead. "I just found you, Maria. Please don't talk about dying."
Maria flushed with pleasure at the kiss, then her frail shoulders shrugged beneath the hospital gown. "Not to talk about it will change nothing. The past is what it is, you know? I smoked three packs of cigarettes a day and never quit until last year. I started when I was fifteen, and kept right on going." Again the fugitive smile. "Enjoyed every damn pack I smoked, too. Do you smoke, Emily Rose?"
"No, I never did."
"That's very good. Your papa never smoked, either. He was always nagging me to quit. But then, when we were together, he was crazy about health and fitness. He was quarterback of the football team at the University of Texas, and he was determined to become a famous pro football player. If he wasn't eating wheat germ or some other disgusting food, he was doing push-ups."
"Did you and my father live together?" Emily asked.
"For a little while. Until I told him I was pregnant."
"And then he left you?" Emily said.
"You are angry, but he wasn't a bad person. He was only young and selfish, and one of those faults, time takes care of for everyone."
"He abandoned you and the child he'd helped to create," Emily said fiercely. "How can you make excuses for him?"
"I have had twenty-seven years to learn forgiveness." Maria shook her head. "Not long after you were born, he injured his knee, and his career in football was ended. In those days, I was like you. I was angry with him and glad for his pain. I thanked God because He had punished your father. Now I am dying, I regret that I showed your father no kindness in my thoughts. As for God, I believe He has better things to do than destroy a young man's dreams. Of course Robert's bad knee wasn't a punishment from God."
Emily exchanged glances with Jordan, who so far had remained completely silent. Maria sounded entirely c
oherent, but Emily couldn't help wondering how much of the story about her football hero father was fact, and how much was wishful fantasy. "Do you know where my father is living nowadays? Could you…would you tell me his name?"
"I can tell you his name, and he lives right here in San Antonio." Maria smiled. "Your papa, he is a famous man, Emily Rose. His name is Robert Pardoe."
"Robert Pardoe?" Emily exclaimed. "The television news anchor?"
Maria nodded her agreement. "He is your father," she said.
"But I've met him." Emily swallowed hard. She turned to Jordan, unable to grasp the fact that she had already met her biological father. "He's a volunteer at the Texas Fund for Children." She suppressed a gasp of laughter that was too close to hysteria for comfort. "We worked together last year on raising funds for a preschool on the west side. I worked side by side with my own biological father and never knew it."
Maria's eyes, large and poignant in the skeletal thinness of her face, brightened. "If you have spent time with him, then you should know that you look a lot like him. You have the same tall body, the same eyes, the same shape of hands…"
Maria's recital of the similarities trailed off into a bout of coughing that left her gasping for breath. "Jordan, you'd better call the nurse," Emily said, trying to help her mother, her heart in her throat.
"No!" Maria's command was whispered, but absolutely firm. "I talked too much, that's all. Now it's your turn. Tell me first, who is the handsome man you have brought with you?"
"This is Jordan Chambers, my husband." Emily linked her arm through Jordan's and drew him up to the bed. "We've been married less than two weeks."
"It's a very great pleasure to meet you, Maria." Jordan took her hand, with its trailing IV tubes, and held it within his own. If he was shocked by the paper-thin skin, and weightless bones, he gave no sign of it.
Maria looked from Jordan to Emily and gave a sly wink. "Great body," she croaked. "Handsome, too."
Emily smiled. "He is, isn't he? I must have good taste in men."
"Does he look as good out of his tux as he does in it?"
"Better," Emily said. "Definitely better."
Maria sighed, but it was a contented sound. "You will make beautiful babies, you two. Lots of them."
"Well, at least two, anyway." Emily's eyes met Jordan's across the bed, and the look he gave her was hot enough to scorch all the way to her toes.
We'll start working on it tonight, he mouthed.
Emily blushed, and Maria nodded with approval. "You are in love with him," Maria said. "That is very good."
"Yes, it is," Emily said, holding Jordan's gaze. "I love my husband very much." She thought how strange and somehow fitting it was that the first time she acknowledged her true feelings for Jordan should be in her mother's presence. Maria had been cut off from all the important events in her daughter's life. Except for this one.
"And you love my little girl?" There was a note of anxiety in Maria's voice when she turned her head toward Jordan, as if no man could be entirely trusted to do right by the woman who loved him.
"I'm crazy about your daughter," he said softly. "In fact, I fell in love with her the very first time I ever saw her, which was months before she realized she was in love with me. I had to work damn hard to persuade her to have me, you know."
"It never hurts a man to do the chasing. He appreciates the prize more if he runs hard to catch it." Maria's eyes closed.
"Are you tired?" Emily asked. "Do you want us to leave?"
"I'm tired, but I don't want you to leave. I wish to hear everything about your life. Tell your fine husband here to pull up a chair, and you can tell me the story of Emily Rose."
Emily sat down on one side of the bed, Jordan on the other. He held one of Maria's hands; she took the other. Starting with the puppy the Suttons had bought for her fifth birthday, Emily recounted some of the happiest moments from her life, realizing all over again how incredibly lucky she'd been to have such wonderful parents. Maria never opened her eyes, but whenever Emily stopped talking, she would move one of her hands and utter a quick plea for more stories.
It was over an hour before the nurse came into the room and glanced in surprise at Maria's peacefully sleeping form. She beckoned, silently indicating that Jordan and Emily should leave the room, and this time Maria slept on, making no protest.
The nurse looked tired, but she gave them both a warm smile. "Well, the pair of you seem to have worked a minor miracle. This is the most restful sleep Maria's had since she was admitted. Her blood pressure's good, her pulse rate has stabilized. We thought the monitors must be malfunctioning."
"That is good news," Emily said.
"We'd like to come back tomorrow," Jordan said.
"Of course. Here's a card with visiting hours, phone numbers, everything you need to know. And I have your phone number if we might need it in an emergency."
The nurse left unspoken what they all understood. That restful sleep was not going to cure Maria's cancer, and the emergency the nurse referred to was Maria's death.
"Thank you for being so kind," Emily said. "And thank you for bending the rules tonight so that I could meet my mother."
"You're welcome. To be honest, this isn't a place with a lot of happy endings. It's great to know that you and Maria managed to find each other before it was too late. She's convinced she has psychic powers, you know. She told me when she was in here back in June that she was sending out messages to you and that you'd get here soon."
She had to be punch-drunk, Emily decided, because it no longer seemed even a little bit difficult to accept that Maria had sent out a psychic call, and she had responded. Hadn't she known in her heart of hearts that her dreams came straight from her mother?
Jordan walked with Emily to the elevator. Once they were inside, she slumped against the side, her legs suddenly too shaky to support her.
Jordan leaned close, framing her face with his hands. "Are you okay? I was afraid the nurse telling you about Maria's summons might put you over the top."
"I'm still standing. Under the circumstances, I think anything more would be aiming high."
"You're amazing, Em. On an emotional trauma scale of one to ten, the past couple of months have to be registering about a hundred for you."
"A thousand is more like it." The elevator doors glided open to reveal the main floor of the hospital, but Emily didn't move. "I think my body's gone on strike. I've forgotten how to walk."
Without speaking, Jordan lifted her up into his arms and carried her across the lobby, indifferent to the interested gaze of the man polishing the floor and the security guard at the inquiry desk. He didn't put her down again until they were in the parking lot, next to his car.
He always knew just what she needed, Emily reflected. When to push, and when to cosset. When to tease her out of the blues, when to leave her to brood in peace. She wondered if there were any words to tell him how grateful she was that he'd come into her life. And then she realized how easy it was going to be.
"I meant what I said just now, Jordan. I love you. That wasn't just something I said to make my mother happy. I really do love you." Overwhelmed with the truth of it, she lifted a hand to his cheek.
He laid his hand over hers. "I told the truth, too. I've loved you ever since my brother escorted you into the San Antonio Federal Club, looking as if he didn't have the faintest idea what an extraordinary woman he had on his arm."
She smiled, feeling only amused tolerance for Michael's stupidity. "I think your brother appreciated my potential as arm decoration. It was all the other parts of me that he was indifferent to."
"Poor, foolish man."
Emily met his eyes, her gaze steady. "For what it's worth, if it matters to you at all, your brother and I never slept together. Our relationship wasn't intimate in any way."
"It shouldn't matter, but it does. Some leftover primitive male gene, I guess." He lifted her hand and kissed it in a gesture that made her pulses race. "I'm glad t
hat Michael has absolutely no idea what a fantastic, creative lover you are, Em."
She laughed, but her breath caught in her throat. "I think my partner had something to do with my startling expertise last night."
Jordan grinned. "I sure as hell hope so." He took her other hand, linking fingers. "Let's go home, Em. I want to make love to you again and then fall asleep with you lying next to me. You know, the old married couple thing."
"The old married couple thing?" Emily repeated, then smiled as she climbed into the car. "That sounds like a wonderful idea. Take me home, Jordan."
Home. She realized that the word had slipped out so easily because when she was with Jordan, she felt a glow deep inside that sprang from an emotion even more profound than happiness. Last night she had not only learned that she could be a passionate and sensuous woman. She had also experienced a bone-deep contentment that sprang from the knowledge that this man was her soul mate—the creative, unconventional and supremely sexy man she never guessed she craved as her life partner. She'd married for all the wrong reasons, but she'd been rewarded by finding her true self. Jordan had given her the courage to drop the protective disguise she'd worn for most of her adult life, and the sensation of freedom was intoxicating. Emily discovered she was looking forward to making the acquaintance of the vulnerable, passionate woman who had been hiding beneath those suffocating layers of prim conformity.
She was so overwhelmed by the meeting with Maria that she couldn't talk much during the drive home. Her thoughts were full of her birth mother and the precious few days or weeks they might still have together, but the silence inside the car was companionable rather than heavy, and every time they stopped at a traffic light, Jordan reached over to rest his hand on her knee and give her a little pat.
The gesture started off by being gentle and comforting. By the time they reached the building that housed their loft, Emily's nerve-endings were alive, and each touch of Jordan's hand brought shimmering sexual tension in its wake. She marveled at the ease and speed with which he'd brought her out of exhaustion and into a state of desire. The longing to make love to Jordan was like an underground river, rushing unseen beneath everything else that they did together, strengthening the bonds between them because they were both swept along by the same current.
His Brother's Fiancée Page 21