“Thanks again.” They walked to the elevator and Jamie pushed the call button. She had to ask the question burning in her mind. “So, in your opinion as a doctor, what are the chances that Slade will walk again?”
“That I don’t know,” Nicole said, honesty showing in her weary features, “but I’m certain he’s getting the best care available. I would trust my life and my daughters’ lives to Dr. Nimmo.” She offered Jamie a tiny, tired smile. “Besides that, Slade’s a McCafferty. If anyone was going to pull through this, it would be Slade.” She tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear. “He’s suffered worse. He was almost killed once before, just last winter in the skiing accident. You know about that, don’t you?”
Jamie nodded. “He told me.”
“I wasn’t in the family then, of course, but Thorne told me about it later. It wasn’t so much his injuries, though they were bad enough, but when Rebecca and the baby didn’t make it, he was lost. Despondent. He kind of dropped out of sight for a while. He blamed himself though no one could have talked Rebecca out of skiing that day.”
Jamie froze. Slade had been a father? His child had died? Her heart crumbled. “They took the baby skiing?” she whispered, suddenly cold to the marrow of her bones.
“No...Rebecca was pregnant, somewhere between four and five months along, I think...” Nicole winced as if she’d realized she’d given away a confidence. “I thought he told you about this.”
“I didn’t know about the baby.” Dear God, Slade had lost another unborn child? No wonder his reaction had been so violent when she’d told him about her own pregnancy. “I only knew that he’d lost someone dear to him, someone he loved.” No wonder he’d been so upset in the hayloft. Dear God, had that been just yesterday? It seemed a lifetime ago.
The elevator arrived with a soft chime. The doors slid open. Her mind spinning, Jamie stepped inside.
“I’ll keep you posted,” Nicole assured her. “I promise.” She lifted a hand as the doors whispered shut and Jamie sagged against the handrail. Another baby. He’d lost another baby. What were the odds of that? Her heart ached for him and for the child he’d never met—the two children.
The elevator stopped on the first floor and she walked on wooden legs toward the front door. As she stepped into the parking lot, she looked upward to the third floor and the windows she thought might be a part of ICU. Shivering and wrapping her coat more tightly around her, she noticed a stray piece of straw...a remnant from their lovemaking. A few flakes of snow began to fall in the early morning light. Jamie unlocked her car and slid inside. As she switched on the ignition, she prayed that Slade McCafferty would walk again.
Chapter 14
You know, cowboy, there’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you... I love you, Slade. I think... I know this sounds crazy, but I do think that a part of me has always loved you. I’ll be here, when you wake up.
Jamie? Had Jamie been here? In his room? Or...where? Where the devil was he? He moaned, felt a shooting pain in his back and opened an eye.
It all came crashing back. He was in the hospital. There had been a fire. The horses...yeah, that was it, and he’d woken up earlier... Oh, God.
No! He tried to roll over, tried to lift a leg and...nothing. His mind was instantly clear. Pain screamed from the base of his skull, down his back and then just stopped. “Get me a doctor,” he roared, his voice booming through the drapes to the station where a slim woman was bending over a chart. She looked up, her short brown hair neat, a patient smile tacked to her face. “Mr. McCafferty,” she said, rounding the desk that looked as if it belonged at the helm of something out of Star Wars. “I wondered when you’d wake up.”
“I want a doctor.”
“Dr. Nimmo will be in this morning. How’re you feeling?”
“How do you think I’m feeling?” he snarled, frustrated. “My damned legs won’t move.”
“I thought the nurse from the night shift explained that you’ve been in some trauma.”
“I know that. What I don’t know is how much damage there is. Am I going to be a cripple?”
She looked at him with kind eyes. “Let’s not think that way, okay? Positive thoughts.”
“I don’t feel very positive,” he rasped, his throat burning with the effort.
“Try.” With the efficiency of years on the job, Slade watched her as she checked his temperature, blood pressure and pulse...which seemed overkill as there were half a dozen machines monitoring every bodily function known to man.
“Get my sister-in-law. Nic—Dr. Nicole McCafferty.” God, his throat ached.
“I already paged her when I noticed you were rousing.”
“Has anyone been in here? To see me?” he asked, wanting to know if Jamie had actually been at his bedside or if he’d dreamed it. The thought of her standing over him, knowing that his spine was injured...
“Dr. McCafferty’s been in three times and your brother, Thorne, and someone Dr. McCafferty introduced as a family friend. A woman.”
So it was true. Hell. She had been standing over him, knowing that he might never use his legs again, seeing him as half the man he was. His jaw tightened. He remembered making love to her in the hayloft. No wonder she’d said what she did. That she loved him. Bull. She felt obligated, as if in being with him in the stables she’d sealed her fate and now had to tie herself to a cripple. Which was ridiculous. And downright pathetic. He didn’t want her feeling any sort of debt to him and he certainly didn’t want her pity. God, he couldn’t stand that.
The doors to ICU opened and he saw Nicole, looking as if she hadn’t slept in days, sweep into the room. “Look who woke up,” she chirped, offering him a smile that warmed her eyes. “Sleeping Beauty.”
“Yeah, right,” he grunted around the pain in his throat. “How’s Thorne?”
“Fine. No serious damage. Minor burns and cuts. He’ll live... Now, about you...”
“Yeah, about me. I can’t move my damned legs. I’ve tried. Everyone is trying to placate me and pretend that everything’s just hunky-dory and all the while they’re mentioning things like cracked vertebrae, spinal trauma or spinal distress or even spinal bruising... I’ve heard them talking when I surfaced a time or two.” He saw the darkness in his sister-in-law’s gaze and her smile slid quietly from her face. “Tell it to me straight, Nicole. Am I going to be a cripple for the rest of my life?”
“I don’t know.” She sighed and met his gaze. “I won’t lie to you. There’s always that possibility, but the extent of the damage to your spine hasn’t been established. Dr. Nimmo will be in soon. He’s been consulting with his colleagues, and he’s kept me apprised of your condition. He thinks you’ll recover, at least partially, but I think it would be best if he talked to you himself.”
“Then get him the hell in here.”
“I will...the nurse has already called him and told him you were awake, but there’s someone else who wants to see you. I promised Jamie I’d call her the minute you woke up. She’s on her way. I’m meeting her in my office in fifteen minutes.”
Slade’s heart soared for a second, then he remembered her vows of love, whispered to a man near death, a man who might never be able to love her physically, a man to whom she felt indebted. Before the accident she’d insisted that what they’d shared all those years ago was nothing more than a quick fling, a “blip,” sexual experimentation by two wild kids, nothing more. But then she made love to him and told him about the baby; he’d felt something change. Had it been love? Nah. No way. During their last conversation, they’d been standing in the snow by her car, spewing words of anger.
You’re not seriously considering marrying that pompous ass, are you? Slade had asked and her response still rang through his head. I was thinking about it, yes.
The guy was a condescending jerk.
So now Slade was supposed to believe that she loved him? Damn it all to hell, he wasn’t that much of a fool. He wouldn’t let her guilt or pity or whatever the hell damned m
isguided emotion was driving her tie to him.
Not until hell froze over.
Nicole was still observing him. Waiting.
“Tell Jamie to go home,” he muttered. “I don’t want to see her.”
* * *
Jamie wanted to scream in frustration. “What do you mean, he won’t see me?” she demanded as she plopped into the visitor’s chair in Nicole’s office. She hadn’t bothered to take off her coat and was stuffing her gloves into her pockets.
“Slade wasn’t into elaborating. In fact, he was pretty angry about what has happened to him. But he was firm. Maybe he’ll change his mind once he talks to the neurologist.”
“And if he doesn’t?”
“Then there’s nothing I can do. I have to honor his wishes. He’s a patient here at St. James. And even though he’s my brother-in-law and I think he’s making a helluva mistake, as a doctor, I have to do what he asks.”
“Damn.” Jamie leaned back in the chair and looked at the tiles in the ceiling. “He’s just being stubborn...or thinks he’s being noble...right now he needs all the support he can get.”
Or maybe he really doesn’t want to see you.
No, she wouldn’t believe that. Not after the way he’d made love to her, after the way he’d kissed her at the car in the snow despite the fact that she told him she might marry Chuck.
“I agree about the support,” Nicole said. She leaned back in her chair and nervously toyed with a pen. “But, unfortunately, he doesn’t see it that way. Let’s just give him some time to come to grips with his situation.”
“I don’t think it would help.”
“It might.”
Jamie was on her feet and it was all she could do not to rush out of the office, run up the stairs to the third floor and find a way to get through the locked doors of ICU. “I don’t care what Slade says, I want to see him, I need to see him, and whether he admits it or not, he needs me. Right now.”
Nicole looked bone-weary. And in no mood to take on an argument. “I told him I thought it was a mistake, but he was adamant. I don’t know what went on between the two of you and I really don’t need to know. It’s your business. But, for the time being, I think, you should give it a rest. After he’s talked with the neurologist and been moved to his own room and had some time to think things over, then he might change his mind, but for now, it would be best to let him have his way. He’s going through a lot.”
“He needs family around him. Friends. People who care.”
“Meaning you.”
“Yes!” She clenched her fists at the impossibility of the situation.
“That may be so,” Nicole said as her pager beeped. “But, speaking as a professional, I really do think the best way to do that is to leave him be. Let him work things out.” She leaned across the desk where a cup of coffee sat untouched, papers were piled in an overflowing In basket and a bifold picture frame displayed glossy prints of her twins. “Now, speaking as a woman, one who herself couldn’t resist the charms of a McCafferty brother, let me give you some advice. Let Slade come to you. That’s the only way it’ll work between you.”
Jamie wanted to argue, to pull out all the ammunition in her arsenal to convince Nicole that she should see him, but the honesty in the doctor’s face, the concern in the curve of her mouth, and the clearness of her eyes convinced Jamie to let it go.
“I really have to go,” Nicole said, standing as her pager bleated again. “But I’ll be in touch. I promise.” Rounding the desk, she gave Jamie a hug, as if they were sisters, part of a family.
Which was ludicrous.
Slade had rejected her once before.
And he was doing it again.
Whatever his reasons, he was letting her know that he didn’t want Jamie Parsons a part of his life. If she had any brains at all, she’d sell her grandmother’s house to the first person who was interested, wrap up the title transfer of the Flying M, turn on her high heels and head out of town, to Seattle, or to San Francisco, or even to L.A. and find herself another job. One thousands of miles away from Slade McCafferty, the one man guaranteed to break her heart over and over again.
* * *
Kurt sat in his motel room, a beer on the scarred wooden table, the television flickering at the foot of his too soft bed. Barely a week before Christmas and he was stuck in Montana trying to figure out why Randi McCafferty was holding out on him and her family. He glanced at the TV screen. The local news had moved away from the recent McCafferty family tragedy that had taken the lives of two horses and had landed one of the brothers in the hospital. Now the anchorwoman was talking about the Christmas season.
Well, fa-la-la-la-la-the damned-la. The holidays were always a pain...or had been in the past few years. He didn’t want to go there. Didn’t want to think of the time before. Right now he had to concentrate on the McCaffertys.
It had been three days since the stables had burned, and the preliminary reports were in, reports that Kelly Dillinger, through her connections with the sheriff’s department, had been able to peruse.
As was suspected, the fire had been intentionally set. Arson. Probably attempted murder. The press had had a field day with that turn of events and still the rumors around town persisted that one of the brothers was behind all the trouble at the Flying M.
Worse yet, the insurance company, Mountain Fire and Casualty, was balking at paying the claim because of the suspected arson. A claims adjuster had already been out and a private investigator, a guy Kurt knew, had been hired by the insurance company. It was Mountain Fire and Casualty’s position that the fire could have been set by anyone on the ranch, especially the owners.
All in all, it was a helluva mess.
And it had all started with Randi McCafferty and her baby. Why was she so reticent to name the kid’s father? It had crossed his mind that she didn’t know the paternity of her own child, but he’d checked her out through friends, coworkers, landlords—everyone she’d come into contact with in Seattle. Though she’d been in several relationships over the past ten years, she wasn’t into the bar scene, nor did it seem that she was likely to participate in one-night stands. He’d bet a year’s retainer that she knew damned well who the little boy’s dad was.
Amnesia, shamnesia.
She remembered.
She just wasn’t talking.
He thought before that she might open up to him, had seen the hesitation in those brown eyes of hers. But she’d held back. Why? Didn’t she trust him? What did she think would happen?
He flipped through the photographs he’d taken, snapshots of the original car accident and the ranch and the charred remains of the stables. There were other pictures, as well—photos of the men with whom she’d been involved. Kurt stacked them in a pile and studied each one.
Brodie Clanton, about five-ten, with a physique honed at a private gym, was a lawyer and connected to big money in Seattle. His grandfather had been a judge. Brodie, with dark hair, an aquiline nose, a Ferrari he only used on weekends, and multiple degrees from Stanford, had dated Randi last year. Rich, smart, running in the correct social circles, Brodie wouldn’t want the taint of any kind of scandal. He had his own political aspirations.
In Kurt’s opinion, Clanton was about as warm as the Northern Pacific. Potential Dad Number One.
Randi had also kept company with Sam Donahue, a big, blond, tough-as-nails cowpoke who was a part of the rodeo circuit. Rough and tumble in denim and leather, Donahue was the diametric opposite of Brooks Brothers’–dressed Clanton. Number Two.
The third man Randi had been romantically linked to and, in Striker’s opinion, Potential Dad Number Three, was Joe Paterno, a photojournalist who did freelance work for the Clarion and who had probably done the headshot of Randi in Striker’s file. It was a great picture of Randi looking over a bare shoulder, her mahogany curls wild, her eyebrows arched, her brown eyes shining with mischief, as if she couldn’t believe her own vampy pose. With cheekbones a runway model would kill for and a
playful intelligence that had been captured on camera, Randi McCafferty was too damned sexy for her own good.
Paterno was an intellectual, who flew all over the world to take pictures of newsworthy incidents. Kurt had seen his work, and it was impressive. Paterno had an eye for the dramatic, the tragic and the humorous. In Striker’s estimation, Paterno was the only one of those men who’d dated Randi who was good enough for her.
That thought surprised him. He’d better keep his feelings for the hot-headed McCafferty sister back where they belonged—at a level of suspicion and distrust unmixed with other, warmer emotions.
So, he wondered, tipping his bottle of Coors, had one of the men she’d been linked to held a grudge against her and the baby? Did any of these guys know about the kid? Maybe Kurt was barking up the wrong tree altogether. Maybe there was another reason someone was trying to scare Randi off. The housemaid, Juanita, had mentioned that Randi had been working on a book. Randi, under questioning, wasn’t sure. Now what the hell was that all about? Where was it?
He made a couple of mental notes. Nicole had seen someone coming out of Randi’s hospital room, someone dressed as a doctor, right before she’d stopped breathing, and they’d determined that whoever it had been—man or woman—it wasn’t anyone on the hospital staff. So the would-be killer was an imposter; that wasn’t a surprise.
As for the maroon paint on Randi’s vehicle, potential evidence of her being run off the road, there had been no leads. Kurt had nearly exhausted his list of automobile repair companies. Either the vehicle had been driven out of state and repaired, hadn’t been fixed or someone in a local auto body shop was lying.
Back to the kid’s daddy.
If Randi was being reticent about the name of Joshua’s father, there were other ways to narrow the field. The baby had been in the hospital, his blood typed. Now it was just a matter of determining if Clanton, Donahue or Paterno could have been the sperm donor.