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“Royce? How are you?”
“Still among the living.”
“What the hell happened out there, man? I couldn’t believe it when Tammy called.”
Everything in Royce went on alert. “Tammy called you?”
“Yeah, right after she called 911. She probably saved your life, man.”
Emotion swamped Royce. He closed his eyes, tears welling behind them. Poor Tammy, caught between warring parents, not knowing whom to trust, what was betrayal and what was not. Her mother had undoubtedly wanted him to die, yet, Tammy had saved him. The great love that he felt for his nine-year-old momentarily choked him. He cleared his throat and said as smoothly as he could manage, “She’s a good girl, always has been.”
“Yeah. Must take after you,” which meant that they should all feel grateful that she didn’t take after her mother, Pamela.
What his ex had put those two kids through was enough to break Royce’s heart. He’d been fighting her for full custody since he’d filed for divorce two years ago, and the case was finally coming to court soon, though Pamela had used every trick in the book to block it. If he’d believed for an instant that she really wanted, needed her kids with her, he’d have relented, but to Pamela those kids were nothing more than a weapon to use against him. She’d told them hideous lies in an attempt to make them hate him, even that the only reason he wanted custody was so he wouldn’t have to pay child support. He hadn’t realized just how far she was willing to go, though. Until now.
“I’ve gotta see you, Dale. How quick can you get over here?”
“How’s an hour sound? I’ve got a conference call on hold. Give me thirty minutes to wrap it up, and I’ll head over your way.”
Weary to the bone, Royce figured he’d need that hour to regain his strength. “Thanks. I appreciate it, bud.”
“No problem. Can I bring you anything?”
“Just get over here.”
“Sure thing. And, Royce?”
“Yeah?”
“You don’t know how good it is to hear your voice.”
“Ditto.” He knew he didn’t have to say that he’d never expected to hear or speak to anyone ever again.
As Merrily took the telephone receiver from his hand to replace it in its cradle, she noted that he did not wear a wedding ring. The fact that she couldn’t resist looking for one disturbed her. Only the conclusion that he obviously didn’t remember that kiss he’d planted on her earlier enabled her to do her job.
“Your extremities look good. Full color, warm to the touch. Have you tried to move your toes?”
The question seemed to surprise him. “No.” He looked down at the bare toes poking up at the end of the bed. The faint twinge was not what Merrily had hoped for, but she put a good face on it.
“Don’t worry about it. The doctor will undoubtedly want to take a few more X rays, but given your condition they’ll probably bring the portable unit here.”
“What is my condition exactly?”
She looked straight into his eyes, noting the size of his pupils. “Good. The concussion worried them at first, but the CT scan was normal.”
“I’ve had a CT scan?”
“And an MRI, about a dozen X rays and surgery to set bones in your leg. They also put your shoulder back into its socket and set your arm.”
His eyes widened. A surreal blue, they were easily the most beautiful eyes she’d ever seen, as beautiful as his face. Handsome seemed a lame term for such male perfection. Four shades of blond, from brass to platinum, streaked the thick, straight hair that flopped over one brow. The face itself was that of an archangel or a superhero straight out of the pages of a comic book, especially with that tortured look hovering just beneath the toasted gold of his skin. Tiny lines fanned out from the corners of his eyes, another testament to the time this man spent out of doors.
“Anything else?”
“Bruises and contusions. The miracle is that you didn’t break a rib and puncture a lung.”
“No internal injuries then?”
“Nothing serious, but don’t be surprised if you pass a little blood.”
He nodded, forehead creasing with a frown. “Guess I can be thankful for that.”
“I know it hurts,” she said. “I can back off the morphine dose if you like. It might give you some relief without putting you to sleep.” That boxy jaw set stubbornly, spurring her to explain. “It’s better to stay on top of the pain if you can. If you let it get too bad, your mind won’t be any clearer and it’ll take more meds to control it.”
Grimly he closed his eyes and nodded. She made the adjustment and depressed the pump herself before switching the pulse monitor on the end of his left index finger to his right hand. “That ought to give you a little more dexterity.”
“Thanks.”
“You don’t happen to be left-handed, do you?”
“No such luck.” He sent her a wry, lazy look that sped up her heart.
“Too bad.” She bent to pick up the plastic urinal, only to knock it under the bed. What was wrong with her? She hadn’t been this clumsy since Donald Popof had asked her to the prom. Disgustedly she got down on her knees and fished the large plastic jar from beneath the bed. Rising, she hooked the handle over the bed rail and asked, “Think you can manage by yourself?” His gaze met hers blandly, and she knew by his demeanor that the drugs were beginning to take effect.
“Yeah. Thanks.”
“You can lie on your left hip if you keep your body aligned with the traction bar,” she advised matter-of-factly, “but don’t let the container get too full or we’ll wind up having to change your bed. Okay?”
He looked away. “Okay.”
She went to the sink and dampened a washcloth with antibacterial fluid, then draped it wordlessly over the bed rail within easy reach.
“I’ll be back in a few minutes. Can I get you anything?”
Those blue eyes settled on her again, and a small, appreciative smile flitted across his face. “Food.”
A good sign. She checked her watch. “Dinner trays will be up in about an hour. Meanwhile, I’ve got crackers, ice cream and popsicles, if you’re interested.”
“Forget the popsicles,” he said wryly, meaning that she should bring everything else.
Chuckling, she headed for the door, allowing him the privacy necessary to relieve himself.
Royce eased onto his back, more comfortable than he had been since he’d awakened nearly an hour earlier, and let his mind wander where it would. Not surprisingly, it went straight to Nurse Gage. She had displayed unusual sensitivity, first by refraining from scolding him for putting down the bed rail and trying to get to the phone on his own and then by allowing him to tend to his personal needs in privacy. He felt better just knowing that he wasn’t completely helpless, and he couldn’t help feeling grateful that she hadn’t mentioned that kiss.
He wondered if he ought to apologize for it, then upon reflection decided that it was best to let her think he didn’t remember kissing her, though in fact it was one of the first things he had remembered. At the time he’d assumed it was all a dream, and that was how he was going to treat it, like a freaky dream that had brought him a moment of pleasure in the midst of physical anguish. He suspected it would be easier for both of them that way, especially her.
What a strange little creature she was, his Nurse Gage, alternately clumsy and efficient, small but strong, brisk and professional but with a gentle sympathy warming the muted green of her eyes. He wondered what she would look like with that long braid unbound. Would it lie sleek and straight across her shoulders or wave and curl?
She either wasn’t married or didn’t wear a wedding ring while working. Somehow he figured it was the former. Youth aside, she just didn’t have the look of a settled, married woman.
He frowned disgustedly at the train of his thoughts. For one thing he had much more important matters to ponder. For another, he was in no position to pursue a woman, even if his health weren’t an issue, which it clearly was.
Deliberately he turned his mind to other things. When could he speak to his daughter?
He wasn’t married. The thought circled through her brain all the while she stuffed her pockets with saltines and plucked ice cream bars from the freezer. It was only at his door, however, that Merrily confronted the rise of enthusiasm inside her with a stern rebuke.
“Don’t be an idiot, Merrily,” she scolded under her breath. “He may not have a ring on his finger, but there’s a woman around somewhere.” No doubt she would ascend at any moment, miniskirt flapping and kohl-darkened eyes sparkling with tears of concern. Shoot, a man like that probably had them lined up to hold his hand and stroke his fevered brow.
That kiss had been nothing more than a drug-induced fluke. He wouldn’t be seriously interested in a woman who looked so much like a kid that, at twenty-six, she still had to buy her clothes in the junior department, which was pretty much why she stuck to uniforms, jeans and simple shirts. Nope, Royce Lawler was not for the likes of her, and to think otherwise would be, in the immortal words of her eldest brother, Jody, cruising for a bruising.
Hiding her own interest behind her nurse’s demeanor, she went in to play her chosen role of angel of mercy armed with crackers and rapidly softening ice cream.
Chapter Two
“So apparently she found you right away,” Dale said, speaking of Royce’s nine-year-old daughter Tammy.
Royce nodded and attempted a smile. “Lucky.”
“I’ll say. She called 911 and me, then tossed a blanket over you and sat with you until the paramedics arrived.”
Royce frowned. “I don’t remember any of that.”
“Pretty gutsy, if you ask me,” Dale commented. “She was terrified you were dead. I told her to stay with her little brother, but she said Cory was asleep and she didn’t want you to be alone. She was sobbing, poor kid. I tell you, I flew. Got there right after the ambulance. Guess she called her mom, too, ’cause Pam was there when I arrived. Pretty odd, since she lives farther from your place than I do.” He eyed Royce and added, “She said something about being at a restaurant on the south side of town. I asked her twice which one, but she never did say.”
Royce kept his expression carefully impassive. “Tammy knows I’m going to be okay, doesn’t she?”
“Yeah, the doctors told us so before Pamela sent her and Cory back to her house with that nanny she hired, but Pam stayed here until you were out of surgery and came around in ICU.”
I’ll bet she did, Royce thought cryptically, recalling the moment he’d opened his eyes in ICU to find three disembodied heads bending over him. He hadn’t known to whom they belonged or where he was, but when he’d been asked to cough, he’d done so. He’d grunted answers to questions he couldn’t remember now, but he clearly recollected when one unfamiliar voice had said, “You took a bad fall, Mr. Lawler. Do you remember anything about it?”
He’d known even then what he had to say, and if asked today, he would say the same thing. “No.”
“Huh?” The tall, lanky attorney with the dark-brown hair and eyes looked at Royce as if wondering whether or not he should call the nurse. He and Royce had been friends since high school, despite having attended different colleges. He was the one person in Royce’s life with whom Royce could be completely honest—until now.
Royce cleared his throat. “I mean, um, no doubt she was hoping I’d broken my neck.”
“She did ask what provisions you’d made in your will for her and the children,” Dale said wryly.
Royce sighed, guessing, “And she was some ticked off when you told her that as my ex-wife, emphasis on the ex, she was not entitled to be provided for.”
Dale chuckled. “She really went ballistic when I informed her that Mark Cherry and I are to be coexecutors of the trust you’ve established for the kids. Come to think of it, your parents weren’t best pleased, either.”
“You mean they were here?” Royce asked dryly.
Dale’s face went carefully blank. “Yeah, sure, till we knew you were going to be okay.”
“Meaning they didn’t stick around to be sure I came out of surgery all right,” Royce surmised correctly.
It was nothing more than he’d expected. He’d been at odds with his parents for as long as he could remember. Even as a kid he’d felt that he must’ve been switched at birth. He just didn’t seem to have anything in common with his socially prominent, appearance-driven parents. They’d never forgiven him for preferring to work with his hands rather than a calculator, and when his younger brother had eagerly embraced the family banking business, Royce’s fate as “the disappointment” had been sealed.
Dale, bless him, quickly changed the subject. “I want to ask for a postponement of the custody hearing. You’re in no shape to take on two kids by yourself now, anyway, and you know perfectly well that our position’s been iffy from the start.”
Royce nodded in reluctant agreement and rubbed his left hand over his face. His shoulder ached, his head felt heavy, and his leg throbbed above the knee. Shifting in a futile effort to find a more comfortable position on the narrow, lumpy mattress, he said what they both knew. “We’re no closer to proving she’s a threat to the children than we were when we started.”
“She’s crazy smart, that woman,” Dale said with a sigh. “She’s been real careful to make her threats in private to no one but you. The only thing we’ve ever had in our favor is the fact that she’s a proven adulteress.”
“Which means nothing when it comes to custody issues,” Royce said.
“Listen,” Dale said, shifting his chair closer to the bed, “if we could just get one of the kids to testify that Pamela has repeatedly lost her temper with them…”
Royce was shaking his head. Now he stated his position emphatically. “No. Absolutely not. I won’t have my children pressured to testify against their own mother.”
Dale sighed. “Well, Cory’s too young to be believable, and Tammy wouldn’t, anyway.”
“You don’t understand the pressure she lives under, Dale. No one can unless they’ve lived with Pamela. Everything that displeases her, no matter how slight, is a major betrayal to her. That means one emotional, irrational scene after another until your whole life becomes nothing more than a fruitless exercise in trying to please her, to stop the tirade. Eventually you realize that it’s impossible, but you can’t get out and you don’t dare give up. I know. I’m an adult, and after two years I’m still trying to fight my way free. Imagine what it must be like for a child. I tell you the truth, Dale, if Mark and I hadn’t walked in on her and Campo in the act, I’d still be married to that vampire.”
Dale knotted his hands into fists. “I still want to clobber that guy every time I think of him. You built his house, for pity’s sake, and not only does he try to cheat you out of your earnings, he sleeps with your wife—on the living room sofa, no less!”
“And I keep telling you,” Royce said, aware that he was beginning to slur his words, “it was the only way out for me. I can’t be anything but grateful to the creep.”
“Yeah, but if he hadn’t dumped Pamela,” Dale pointed out, “she’d have left the kids with you and beat a path with him to the Mediterranean.”
Royce closed his eyes, a smile quirking one corner of his mouth. “So Claude Campo is smarter than me. He sure wised up faster than I did. Can’t blame the fellow for that.”
“You were a senior in college when you married Pamela,” Dale argued. “You thought you’d nabbed a hot redhead to spend the rest of your life with. How were you to know she was a basket case that was slowly unraveling?”
Royce smiled. Trust Dale to defend him. “Anyway,” Royce said, getting the conversation back on track, “about Tammy. I don’t want anyone pressuring her, not about her mother and not about my fall. You got that?”
Dale nodded. “Sure, sure. Her animosity toward you is nothing more than an attempt to placate and please her mother. That’s what you’ve always said, and seems to me that her recent behavior reinforces it. I mean, she saved your life. If she hadn’t found you and called an ambulance, shock would have….”
“Finished what her mother started,” Royce muttered. To his chagrin, Dale pounced on that unwise statement.
“I knew it!” He came up out of his chair. “You’d never fall down your own deck stairs. She pushed you. The witch pushed you!” He punctuated the air with the jab of one forefinger, then dropped his hands to his waist. “We need a private investigator.”
“No.”
“We’ll punch holes in her alibi, sink her for good.”
Royce struggled up onto his left elbow to make himself understood. “No.”
“But you said—”
“You misunderstood.” Collapsing back onto his pillow, Royce massaged his temples with thumb and forefinger. “I only meant that Pam’s been punishing me for everything that has ever gone wrong in her life. No doubt she believes that if I died it would serve me right. That’s what she’s been teaching my kids ever since the divorce.”
Deflated, Dale turned the armless, molded plastic chair and straddled it. “And they’re too young to know that you divorced their mother because you caught her naked, humping a client in your own home.”
Royce cut his gaze sideways. “Succinctly put.”
Dale sighed and hunched forward, hanging his sharp chin on the edge of the chair back. “So that leaves us right where we’ve always been. Square one.”
