“Of Rafe.”
A look of dismay crossed his face, masked quickly by contempt. “Not on your life.”
She let the topic drop but her mind was spinning. In the gym at the Lake Geneva resort Shane had wanted to know if she was seeing Billy, and when she’d said no, he’d kissed her. Hard. He was jealous. The realization sent her heart skipping. Being attracted to her was one thing. Kissing was really just a physical connection. But jealousy? That came from the gut. And the heart.
Her pulse kicked up. And in the silence between them, she asked herself, could she handle a man like Shane Maxwell? Not just sexually, but long-term? Down the line? When she figured out what was happening with her father’s will and life was back to normal? He was moody and dark and married to his job—even if that job was responsible for the perpetual scowl on his face. No, life with him would never be easy. But it also wouldn’t be dull.
Shane stopped at the rental and pulled the passenger door open for her. “I didn’t get the impression your sister was going to work with us.”
His nearness sent goose bumps over her skin. His words pulled her from her musings and reminded her she had other, more important, things to think about. “I didn’t, either.” As she climbed in and he walked around the vehicle, she tried not to think of all the little things he did that made her pulse skip, things like opening doors for her, adjusting her hat so no one would recognize her, buying her a Bon Jovi T-shirt she was probably going to save forever. His overprotective personality was irritating as hell, but if he was jealous of her relationship with Rafe, it meant this thing going on between them was more than him having to always be in control or take over a situation. It meant he felt something for her. That what kept him here wasn’t a mystery, but her.
And that thought sent her heart rate into the triple digits as he slid behind the wheel and turned on the ignition. “She’s probably at Billy’s,” he said. “You want to go talk to her?”
Hailey looked down at her hands. “I’d really rather slit my wrists.”
He glanced at her fingers. “Be a shame to put scars on those pretty arms.”
Okay, that kind of talk wasn’t helping. She looked up and out the passenger window toward a homeless man pushing a shopping cart. “That pretty much leaves my mother.”
“You don’t think we need all five sculptures after all?”
“If we can get my mother’s, I think we can probably figure it out without Nicole’s piece.”
He frowned. “Because you’ve been so successful so far? Thirty-eight, twenty-five, oh-five. You already said those numbers don’t mean anything to you.”
“Yet,” she said quickly. “But they will. We just have to get my mother’s bronze to decode the damn thing.”
He eyed her warily. “Why do I get the feeling this might not be as easy as it sounds.”
Because it wasn’t. She ignored the little trip in her heart whenever she looked at him. “What’s your mother like?”
“The glue that holds our family together.”
She sighed and glanced back at the homeless man, now rifling through a garbage can. “I bet she cooks.”
“She does. Not so much anymore that we’re all out of the house, but at least once a month she does a big family Sunday dinner with all the trimmings.”
Hailey remembered meeting Colleen Maxwell at Rafe and Lisa’s wedding. The woman had hugged Hailey, right off the bat. With a big cheesy grin that didn’t match her husband Darren’s scowl at all. Hailey imagined Colleen Maxwell was the kind of woman who would listen to you when you had a problem, hold you when you longed for support and tell you the way it was when you needed advice.
“How does she feel about your career?”
“Hates it.”
Yeah, Colleen Maxwell was the kind of mother Hailey had always wanted.
She rubbed a hand over her forehead and tried not to let the memory sting. But it did. “My mother’s not like that. In fact, we don’t get along all that well. Not that that’s a surprise. But I’m hoping she’ll help me out. She was never wild about Bryan, though that doesn’t really make a difference. What does matter is that she doesn’t want to see my father’s company fall into incapable hands.”
“Does she want it?”
“God, no. She has no interest in working.”
He tapped his finger against the steering wheel, deep in thought. “What about McIntosh? Does she have any connection to him?”
“To Paul? No way. She thinks he’s an arrogant SOB. Which he is.” Was he adding her mother to his list of suspects? He was really stretching now.
He didn’t look so convinced, but didn’t push the topic. “So you want to go see her?”
About as much as she wanted a hole in her head. But what choice did they have left? It was down to Nicole or her mother, the lesser of two evils. Neither option looked all that appealing from where she was sitting.
“I guess that’s our only—”
Her cell rang, and she flipped it open, a burst of relief rushing through her when she saw Billy’s number. “You couldn’t have picked a better time to call.”
“I need a favor, H.”
The seriousness of Billy’s tone killed the smile on Hailey’s face. “What happened?”
“I just got off the phone with Rafe.” His voice wavered. “It’s bad, Hailey. I need to get to Puerto Rico. Like, yesterday.”
Suddenly her father’s will was the last thing on her mind. “Of course. I’ll call Steve and have him get the jet ready. Can you get to Opa-locka?”
“Yeah,” he said at the mention of the executive airport. “I’m heading there now.”
“Okay.” She rubbed her throbbing temples. “Okay, I’ll meet you there. Just…stay positive, Billy.”
“Positive isn’t going to do it this time.”
The line went dead, and even though she’d been mentally preparing herself for this moment for months, she hadn’t expected to feel like a piece of her was dying, too.
“What happened?” Shane asked.
She closed the phone quickly and slipped it into her pocket. Think positive. That’s what she’d do. That’s what she always did. “Change in plans. We’re going to Puerto Rico.”
“What?”
Too late she realized a piece of her was dying. And it had been for a very long time. She’d just been ignoring it, hoping it wouldn’t ever come to pass.
“Drive, Maxwell.” She leaned back in the seat and closed her eyes to keep from bawling like a baby. “Just…drive.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Shane didn’t mind hospitals. He spent a fair of time in them, interviewing victims and witnesses, checking up on suspects. He’d gotten to know the trauma docs at Cook County Hospital pretty well, even played softball with one of the PAs who worked the ER. But he’d never had anyone he cared about die. The closest he’d come was when his ex-partner, Jack Taylor, had taken a bullet to the cheek during a random burglary call.
Funny how things worked out. Today all that was left of that rainy night was a thin scar down the left side of Jack’s face. But the experience had been enough for Jack to say sayonara to CPD. In the last three years, Jack, a self-proclaimed lazy-ass bachelor, had started his own PI firm, which was growing by leaps and bounds, gotten himself hitched, and, last Shane had heard, was expecting a kid.
A kid? Shit. Jack as a father? The apocalypse had to be in sight.
He waited while Hailey and Billy checked in at the information desk. Both were strung tight as a trapeze wire. He knew Hailey and Teresa Sullivan were close. As he watched Hailey wipe a hand over her brow and take a deep breath when she thought no one was looking, he realized just how rough this was for her.
He paid for his Tic Tacs at the gift shop and glanced through the glass wall toward the main lobby. Nicole had flopped down on a couch and was flipping through a magazine. She was wearing the same outfit she’d sported at the racetrack—tight white capris, a V-neck blouse that dipped way too low, and a pair of yello
w three-inch sandals. If she was trying to draw attention to herself, she was doing one helluva good job. The hat she’d had on at the track had done shit to conceal her identity.
Why the hell Billy had brought her, Shane didn’t know. Hailey’d been more than peeved when Billy had shown up with the girl at the airport, but she hadn’t said a word about it. Considering no one on the flight had said much of anything, he figured that was probably a good thing.
He looked toward the information desk and pocketed his Tic Tacs. Billy and Hailey exchanged a few words, then Billy headed for the elevators while Hailey walked in Shane’s direction.
He met her at the doorway and tried not to think about how tired she was, how the yellow bruises on her cheek and around her eye were finally fading to showcase her creamy skin, how soft her hair looked down around her shoulders or the fact ever since Billy had called today, she’d had a perpetual shine to her eyes that made him want to drag her close and protect her from the world.
“She’s on the fourth floor. Billy already went up.”
You can’t save her. Shane crumpled the receipt in his hand and tossed it in a wastebasket, wishing that little voice in his head would take a hike for good. “Bad?”
“Not good.” She crossed to her sister before Shane could ask what that meant. “We’re going upstairs, Nicole. Just stay here and don’t get into any trouble.”
Nicole rose quickly from the couch and dropped her magazine on the coffee table. “I’ll go with you.”
“No,” Hailey said with a quick shake of her head, turning for the elevators. “You won’t.”
“Hailey—”
She whipped back so fast, Nicole’s eyes flared. “This isn’t open for negotiation. So sit your ass back down and be quiet. A woman’s dying, Nicole. For once in your life think about someone other than yourself.”
It was a family dynamic Shane would never understand. Sure, his three sisters bugged the hell out of him at times—Keira with her constant blind-date attempts that usually required a gallon of alcohol on Shane’s part just to get through the evening, Catrine the drama queen with her bored-out-of-her-mind-housewife phone calls in the middle of the afternoon when he was working, and Lisa, his twin, the only person in the world who could read him better than himself—but he loved them just the same. This thing between Hailey and Nicole, though? There didn’t seem to be any love lost between the two, and not for the first time, Shane wondered why.
Thinking about his own family dynamics brought him around to the fact his mind-reading twin was upstairs right this minute with her new husband. And realizing that reminded him why he’d kept his distance from Lisa the last six months. Parking it on the couch with Nicole and hanging until Hailey and Billy came back down seemed like the safest alternative all around.
“You know,” he said when Hailey pressed the elevator call button, “maybe I should stay down here as well. Keep an eye on Nicole.”
“She’s not going anywhere.”
“Never know. Seems to me she’s pretty damn unpredictable.” A lot like someone else he knew.
Hailey finally looked his way, and he saw then what she’d been hiding on the flight out here. Pain. Raw and undiluted. The kind you hoped no one else ever had to go through. The kind he dealt with every day of his damn life.
She crossed her arms over her chest. “It’s fine if you don’t want to go up.”
The elevator door opened, and she stepped inside. When he followed without a word, she glanced at him with a startled expression.
The doors slid closed. He tucked his hands into the front pockets of his jeans and shrugged. “Girl in the gift shop said there’s a kick-ass coffeepot up on the fourth floor.”
Okay, that spark of relief in her shiny eyes made all this just a little too deep. So he pulled his gaze away before those stormy Caribbean blue pools of hers could suck him under and he did something really stupid. Like dug himself in deeper than he already was and reached for her. Gave her the comfort he sensed she was needing. Took some right back for himself.
They rode in silence to the fourth floor. The doors opened with a ping, and he followed her down the hall toward Teresa’s room and what Shane immediately recognized as Rafe’s deep voice coming from inside.
He’d met Teresa Sullivan at his sister’s wedding. But the lithe woman lying in the hospital bed beneath a thin layer of blankets, with wires and tubes trailing to machines behind her, looked nothing like the smiling mother he’d chatted with nearly three months before.
Rafe sat in a chair to her left, holding her hand in his big palm. Lisa was perched farther down on the edge of her bed, one hand on Teresa’s blanket-covered leg, the other holding Rafe’s other hand. On Teresa’s right was Billy, who’d obviously just come into the room. The two exchanged some sort of words in Spanish. Then Teresa glanced past Billy to where Hailey and Shane were standing in the doorway.
Her dark eyes, so much like Rafe’s, brightened ever so slightly.
“There’s my girl,” Teresa said in a raspy voice. She dropped both her boys’ hands and reached for Hailey.
Hailey went to the older woman without restraint, easing down to hug Teresa. And Shane stood rooted where he was, knowing he needed to back out of the room but unable to get his legs to work.
More quiet words were exchanged between the women. Hailey sniffled. And faintly Shane heard Teresa say, “Don’t cry.” But it wasn’t until he felt something at his elbow that he realized others were in the room and that someone was touching him.
His sister Lisa had a big ol’ What the hell are you doing here? look on her face that dragged him out from under the tidal wave pulling him down. And he was just about to guide her into the hall to try to explain before she jumped to her own conclusions when Teresa looked around Hailey and said, “I was hoping I was going to get to see you again, Detective. Come closer so I can get a better look at you. These old eyes don’t work so well anymore.”
Ah, yeah. Now if this wasn’t awkward, nothing was. Shane didn’t move. Only stumbled forward when Lisa nudged him. But he knew better than to reject a dying old woman when she reached for his hand.
“I’m very happy to see you with my girl,” Teresa said.
“It’s not what you think,” Hailey said quickly.
A knowing smile spread across Teresa’s pale face. “Yes, it is. And I’m glad.” Her smile faded. “Rafe and I were watching CNN earlier. I heard what happened to your cousin. I’m very sorry, m’ija.“
Hailey glanced sideways at Shane, still holding Teresa’s other hand, flicked a look at Rafe on Shane’s other side, then back at Teresa. “Thanks. I want you to know I didn’t—”
“I know. You couldn’t.” Teresa closed her eyes, took a deep, labored breath, then opened them again to focus on Hailey. “M’ija, I have something for you. In my jewelry box. At the house. When you and Rafe got married, your father sent me a letter to hold for you. He didn’t want me to give it to you unless something happened to him. I wanted you to have it weeks ago, when I heard about your father, but—”
“It’s okay,” Hailey said, her grip tightening on Teresa’s hand.
“Yes,” Teresa said, her eyes sliding shut once more. “It is. Your father loved you, m’ija. I know he didn’t always show it, but he had his reasons. Don’t forget that.”
Shane could tell from the look on Hailey’s face she didn’t believe that for a second, but she masked it well and smiled for Teresa’s benefit.
“Now.” Teresa’s eyes popped open, and for the first time since Shane had stepped in the room, they were clear. Crystal clear and dark as night. She pulled Hailey’s and Shane’s hands together, placed hers over the top, then focused on Shane. “Hailey is the daughter I always wanted but never had. One of the happiest days of my life was when she came into our family. Doesn’t matter what happened between her and my son, she’s still family. I know she doesn’t think she needs anyone to take care of her—”
“Mamá—” Rafe warned from the other side
of the bed.
“—but she does. I’m counting on you to make sure nothing happens to her and that those police officers you work with in Chicago figure out she had nothing to do with what went on there.”
Shane’s eyes shifted from Teresa to Hailey, who was looking up at him with a wary expression and eyes so blue he knew if he let himself he could easily dive in and never come up for air again. Beneath his hand, he felt Hailey’s skin, warm and soft and alive. So different from how he felt 90 percent of the time. And that hum in his blood, the one he was discovering wasn’t just a sexual reaction, ratcheted up another notch until every cell in his body was aware of only one thing: her.
You can’t save her. But maybe…she can save you.
“I will,” he said softly, never once looking away.
Teresa let out a long breath. Then she released both of their hands. “Good. That’s…good.”
Their eyes held even as Teresa closed her own. In the soft skin of Hailey’s hand, he felt her pulse pound in time with his. It wasn’t until Teresa sighed that Shane and Hailey both managed to tear their gazes from each other.
Teresa reached for Hailey one more time with weak arms. “Come here, m’ija.”
The two hugged. More quiet words were spoken. Then Teresa dropped her arms and turned her head to the side to look where Rafe and Billy and Lisa were standing quietly watching the whole scene. Rafe’s and Lisa’s eyes were both red-rimmed and bloodshot. Billy just looked lost.
Quietly, Shane eased out of the room to give the family privacy. And as he leaned against the wall in the middle of the corridor, his heart thumping hard against his ribs, he tried to make sense of what had just happened. For some reason he had the strangest sense the ice he’d built up inside was slowly starting to thaw and break.
The elevator door opened down the hall, and Peter Kauffman, flanked by a woman with short dark hair, headed his direction. Both were holding small paper coffee cups with steam wafting from the lids.
“Maxwell.” Surprise was evident on Kauffman’s face when he reached Shane. He didn’t ask the obvious question, but instead introduced Shane to his fiancée, Kat Meyer, and made small talk about Teresa.