Roxanne’s quiet hinted at the depth of her despair. The fact that she was considering this after so little convincing...
She ran a hand over the hair of his forearm. “You sitting at the side of a hospital bed with me wasn’t in our contract,” she said softly.
“Neither was you helping to convince my people to trust me again.”
She turned her face up to look at him and Mateo met her eyes, considered her as intently as she was studying him. They were strangers at the beginning of the year, enemies three months ago. Now they were stumbling into something neither of them had planned or wanted. The decisions they were making now wouldn’t make their eventual separation any easier. It certainly wouldn’t help them maintain a “distant but cordial” relationship as they shared a child.
She was the first to break their silence. “Kiss me,” she whispered.
“Happily,” Mateo said as he began to lower his lips.
“And then we’ve got to pack,” she breathed against his mouth.
Mateo kissed her with the knowledge that even if she’d denied him access to her plane, he would have made his own way to that hospital bed to support her. And he kissed her glorying in the knowledge that, even as she considered not letting him come, she’d never let go of her tight grip on his arms.
May: Day One
When Roxanne pulled out of the parking lot of her hometown’s tiny airstrip, the only thing waving behind her was wheat. There were no cheering crowds like there had been when she’d arrived in the Monte. The dusty, two-lane highway in front of her was empty, and farmland stretched out endlessly with only a couple of silos and some barbed-wire fence to interrupt its flat expanse.
Freedom, Kansas. She’d made sure her hometown greeted her with all the hostile unwelcome she was accustomed to.
She’d chartered a noisy, two-propeller plane out of Kansas City so no one could identify her sleek air jet, and William had met her on the Freedom airstrip with a big hug, a motel keycard, and the keys to a 1996 Ford Bronco that was in good condition but banged up enough to keep them under the radar. Word would eventually get out that Roxanne Medina was back in town, at least among the locals. She’d pumped too much money into the local economy for anyone to contact the media; it had been the bribe she and the town of Freedom had agreed on long ago to keep her secrets hidden.
Roxanne loosened her grip on the tape-wrapped steering wheel and leaned back in her seat, checked the speedometer and let the pressure off the gas until the Bronco was chugging along at a comfortable 60 mph, hot wind pouring through the open windows. William had assured her, on the runway and during the many phone calls as her plane had rocketed across the Atlantic, that Father Juan was stable. He wouldn’t die in the twenty minutes it took Roxanne to drive from the airstrip to the Freedom Medical Center.
She let the speed creep back up to 64 mph.
She glanced at Mateo, feeling his eyes on her like a finger sweep down her neck. “What?”
“I’ve never seen you drive before,” he said, grinning ruefully. “I’ve never seen you dressed...like that.” He made a motion at her clothes. “My libido hasn’t gotten the message that lusting after you right now is inappropriate.”
Roxanne was doing everything in her power to control her panic; she’d spent the last twelve hours meandering from anxiety to tears to not-all-there disbelief. That Mateo could still crave her after seeing her in such a weakened state, after he spent their long flight alternating between holding her, urging her to get some rest, and giving her the space she needed, pushed back the panic a bit. Even in this life and death struggle, he made her feel like she still had power.
Roxanne gave him a small smile before she looked back on the road. “I can hide behind a baseball cap, too.” They’d changed on the plane into clothes that would stand out less in a small Kansas town, and Roxanne had put on Levi’s, a black tank top, sandals, and a baseball cap pulled down low, her long braid trailing down her back. “Though I don’t look as good in it as you do.” She glanced at him again, let herself store up the look of him in the afternoon sun, the hot wind whipping his white t-shirt against his muscles and ruffling the golden waves peeking out of the back of his faded Yankees cap.
It was ironic that her princely husband naturally wore the same uniform of every male in Kansas.
He put a big hand on her jeans-covered thigh, more comfort than pleasure. “I don’t know how we’re going to stay undercover with that following behind us,” he said.
Roxanne huffed as she looked in her rearview mirror, caught William in the bright red ’60s-era classic Cadillac roaring behind them. “He’s going to break off before we get to the hospital. He’ll let us in through a side door. But he couldn’t miss an opportunity to drive his baby.”
“That’s his?” Mateo asked.
Roxanne nodded. “It’s his retirement plan. He’s going to move to Freedom and rebuild classic cars. He’s already got a house on Main Street and everything.”
“A wealthy African-American West Coast lawyer is going to retire in Kansas? Is he from here?”
“Nope, born and bred in Oakland,” she said. “He started traveling to Freedom to take care of some personal issues for me and he says he loves the place.” As she raced past an abandoned diner with boarded-over windows, Roxanne heard the snarkiness in her voice.
“But you don’t,” Mateo said.
Roxanne adjusted in her seat, pressed the gas a little harder. “The man lying in the hospital who barely missed being pancaked on these fucking farm roads is the only reason I give a shit about this town,” she said. “Without him, I would have buried it years ago.”
Father Juan Daniels had been traveling from Freedom to the nearby town of Cherrydale when an oncoming eighteen-wheeler, trying to pass other cars, had stayed in his lane too long. Father Juan missed the head-on collision but careened off the road into a tree. The rescue crew needed hydraulics to extract him from his car.
Doctors had already taken care of the two broken ribs, his broken leg, and his other cuts and contusions, but they were waiting for the swelling of the fifty-five-year-old man’s brain to go down before they attempted surgery. There had already been discussion of cracking his skull to relieve the intracranial pressure.
Mateo stroked Roxanne’s thigh. “You said that Father Juan had ‘helped you out’ when things were bad with your mom?”
Roxanne restrained herself from grabbing the folder of lies, obfuscations, and subject changers she’d pulled out her whole life when someone crept close to the story of her origins. This was Mateo. Mateo had left the code-red state of his kingdom to stay with her. He’d been pulled through his own emotional wringer over the last few days, and yet he’d offered only comfort, no questions, on that endless jail-like flight from Spain to Kansas City. This proud, intelligent, and noble man who’d looked to her and leaned on her and trusted her was now asking her to trust him.
With the hot wild wind whipping a loose lank of hair against her cheek, Roxanne took a deep breath, knowing her next words would have her inching toward another first with her príncipe.
“Yes, he...” Roxanne tucked the hair behind her ear. “He runs a... I guess, for lack of a better word, he runs a youth shelter? An orphanage?” She shrugged. “I don’t know, it’s a place for the kids of Freedom to go and stay, no questions asked. He runs it under the auspices of the church, St. Paul’s, but really it’s just him and volunteers.”
She squeezed the steering wheel when she saw a hauling truck on the horizon, coming toward them in the opposite lane. “I guess he first found me when I was about...four? Five? I was sleeping in Hansel and Gretel’s house at the park... Freedom’s municipal park has a Fairy Tale Land...anyway...” She waved off those truly unimportant facts. “He convinced me to come back to the shelter and got me enrolled in kindergarten at St. Paul’s school—so I guess I was five...”
The tr
uck was barreling closer. “My mom always came for me eventually—she kept saying she was going to sue him or call the cops for ‘stealing’ her daughter—but...” There was a pain in her chest. “But he made sure I got to continue at the Catholic school, regardless of whether I was living with him or with her or...wherever I was sleeping...and, you know, little things—like making sure I had a winter coat, or had somewhere to spend Christmas—and when I got older, I helped with the other kids, especially the little girls who needed me, and I’d help him with his rounds, taking care of people who couldn’t get to church, and he wrote a really nice recommendation for Princeton...”
The truck tore past them, rattling the Bronco and battering them with sulfurous exhaust, and for a second, Roxanne was afraid she was going to be sick.
“Hey.” Mateo took off his seat belt and slid close, gripped her thigh with one hand and her white-knuckled fist on the steering wheel with the other. “Hey, mi hermosa, mi vida, it’s okay. It’s okay, I got you.” His beautiful, rich voice soothed like satin against her skin.
She breathed deeply, working to calm her racing heart, and glanced at the speedometer. She was approaching 80 mph. She eased her straining thigh under Mateo’s comforting hand, lessened the pressure on the gas.
Mateo’s hand slipped from her fist to her tummy, his spread hand covering her from the bottom of her bra to her waistband.
“It was bad,” he said succinctly.
Roxanne swallowed, couldn’t look at him. “It was real bad.”
“And Father Juan saved you.”
Tears popped into Roxanne’s eyes; she blinked against them. She couldn’t talk so she just nodded as the first buildings of Freedom appeared in the distance.
Mateo belted his arm across her waist and gripped her like she was precious. “Then I’m not leaving his side until I get to tell him thank you.”
Roxanne looked out her driver’s side window and bit her lip. Mateo had just obliterated her wall of denial. She’d been resisting the knowledge, but now there was no doubt. She was in love with Mateo.
It was as stupidly Oedipal as it could be. As a little girl, she’d actually fantasized that her father was a prince, a man on a giant white steed who was going to pull her off whatever torn sleeping bag or paper-thin mattress in a corner she was sleeping on and gallop her away to a kingdom of security and safety. The reality of the Golden Prince burned away all childish daydreams. Her perfect prince, her Mateo, was kind and funny, idealistic and wicked smart, driven and loyal to the point of misery. Falling in love with him, needing him, was the most reckless and irresponsible thing she’d ever done. But there was nothing she could do to stop her runaway-truck-of-a-heart.
“I...” She hesitated, terrified. “You now know more than anyone else.” She glanced at him, hoping he understood.
His eyes shone like the sun from under his baseball cap as he looked unhesitatingly back. Still pressed against her, he nodded. “Your secrets, whatever you want to share, they’re safe with me. Me lo prometo.”
She relaxed against him, giving in to her idiot heart just the tiniest bit, as she tapped the brake in honor of the speed limit drop from forty-five to twenty-five as they crossed the Freedom city limit.
She was home.
* * *
Freedom, Kansas, current population 9,456, was the county seat and was proud of its pretty Main Street, its nine stoplights, its annual Halloween festival, and its newly renovated hospital. Roxanne didn’t demand that the good works she funded use her name, but if she had, the Freedom Medical Center could easily have been called the Medina Medical Center. They’d certainly used more of her money than taxpayers’ to pay for the expanded hospital with its updated equipment. It had occurred to her, even when she’d been authorizing checks, that one day Father Juan would depend on its services.
But as she looked down at the man in his hospital bed, encased in tubes and braces and casts, she realized she’d never imagined that the fit-and-healthy man would need the hospital’s services so soon. She gripped her small gold cross in two fingers and gave a silent prayer of thanks that the hospital was properly equipped to care for him.
As promised, William had snuck Roxanne and Mateo in through a little-used staff entrance. Acting as Roxanne’s intermediary, he’d made sure that Father Juan was set up in the best room in the hospital. Now, he was off fetching the doctor as Roxanne stared down at the only father she’d ever known.
“He’s really a very handsome man,” Roxanne said absently. Right now, Father Juan’s face was a mass of bruises and cuts, his eyes swollen shut and bulging.
“I look forward to squaring off with him,” Mateo said. He stood just behind her, supporting her without touching her. “We’ll see who wins your affections.”
“You know he’s half Mexican like me?”
“I see,” Mateo said. “He’s already won.”
“Probably,” Roxanne said, reaching down to stroke Father Juan’s lax, dark-hued hand. Two of his fingers were wrapped in a bulky splint. “He’s the one who taught me Spanish.”
“Okay, well now I just feel pathetic.” Mateo’s soft words, comforting silliness like pink cotton candy, drifted away when the door to the room opened. William walked in with two doctors.
The neurosurgeon who’d flown in from Kansas City on another plane chartered by Roxanne explained that they’d seen some minor reduction in swelling, but it was still too soon to perform a surgery, too soon to determine whether a surgery would even be possible. His condition was stable, but still critical. The concern was that his swollen brain, inhibited by his skull, would stop performing the functions necessary to keep his body alive. Cracking his skull could relieve the pressure, but could also make a bad situation worse in his fragile state.
Freedom’s lead surgeon stepped in. “I want you to think positively,” the middle-aged woman said. “We are. But as Father Juan’s healthcare proxy, you need to be aware that there could be a variety of outcomes. I want you to be prepared if you have to make some end-of-life decisions.”
Mateo fit his big hand against her waist. The surgeon’s voice wah-wahed in Roxanne’s ears. She’d had that talk with Father Juan, had everything written up and notarized by William. But for the life of her, she couldn’t remember what Father Juan wanted if he could no longer make decisions for himself.
William’s deep voice sounded like it was coming out of a cavern. “Father Juan provided clear direction on his wishes. We’ll have no problem getting those to you if needed.”
“Wonderful.” The surgeon took a look at Roxanne’s face and seemed to decide she’d had about all she could handle for now. “We’ll be closely monitoring him, and we’ll let you know immediately of any changes. It’s going to be a long haul; make sure to rest when you can.”
Roxanne dully watched the doctors as they left the room and closed the door behind them. Rest would be a good idea. She hadn’t slept in...well, she didn’t know how long. She’d calmed her fear that he was going to die before she saw him again, and Father Juan wasn’t going to wake up soon. She believed the doctors’ assurances that they would call her if anything changed. Their jobs essentially depended on it.
She went to the side of the room and began wrestling a heavy hospital chair to the side of Father Juan’s bed, the cumbersome thing squeaking and groaning against the tile. Mateo touched her arm. She looked up and willed him to argue with her and give her something to swing at. Instead, he picked up the chair and placed it near Father Juan’s head. Then he grabbed another chair, placed it as close as the armrests would allow, and sat down. He took off his baseball cap, tossed it to a side table, and stretched his arm across the back of Roxanne’s chair.
Roxanne smoothed down her hair as she took off her cap and placed it next to Mateo’s. Then she took a seat and rested her head against Mateo’s shoulder.
William came up behind them and patted her head. “I’m
going to grab a nap. I’ll be back in a few hours.”
“Take your time,” Mateo said, soft and deep. “We’re not going anywhere.”
May: Night Five
Part One
Over the next five days, the initial boil of panic, fear, and activity settled down into a simmer of anxious tedium as they waited for Father Juan’s swelling to go down. His condition didn’t deteriorate, for which Roxanne was grateful, but his swelling declined at an incremental rate.
As a woman of action, control, and power, Roxanne felt she was crawling the hospital’s rose-colored walls. Left to her own devices, she probably would have been crawling them and making life a living hell for herself, William, and every staff member in shouting range. But after eight hours on their first night, when William returned after a good nap and a shower, Mateo had physically manhandled her out of the hospital, into the Bronco, and through the door of their cheap-but-clean motel room, although Roxanne had stubbornly refused to tell him where the motel was located and he’d had to call William for directions. When she’d woken up alone sprawled across the king-sized mattress sixteen hours later, it was with a note from Mateo that he was already back at the hospital and an understanding that, maybe, to survive all this, she needed to let her capable husband carry a bit of the load.
One of them was always by Father Juan’s side. It was a demand Mateo and William had agreed to without Roxanne asking. The staff was wonderful and St. Paul’s many parishioners wanted to help, but the doctors recommended minimizing Father Juan’s exposure to possible infections and overexcited stimuli, and Roxanne couldn’t stomach the idea of him waking up or slipping away without herself or someone she trusted by his side. Father Juan had been the one person who’d wanted her around before she was rich; she wasn’t going to abandon him now when he needed her most.
Lush Money (Filthy Rich) Page 21