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“It’s better than letting her die.”
“Amen.” He looked at Simon, who was torn between puzzlement and fury. “Simon, she’s been in love with you for years,” Dr. Gaines said in a hushed, reluctant tone. “I tried to get her to give up the ranch and all that fundraising mania years ago, because they were only a way for her to keep near you. She wore herself out at it, hoping against hope that if you were in close contact, you might begin to feel something for her, but I knew that wasn’t going to happen. All I had to do was see you together to realize she didn’t have a chance. Am I right?” he asked Corrigan, who nodded.
Simon leaned back against the wall. He felt as if someone had put a knife right through him. He couldn’t even speak.
“What you said to her was a kindness, although I don’t imagine you see it that way now,” Dr. Gaines continued doggedly. “She had to be made to see that she couldn’t go on living a lie, and the changes in her life recently are proof that she’s realized how you feel about her. She’ll accept it, in time, and get on with her life. It will be the very best thing for her. She’s trying to be all things to all people, until she was worn to a nub. She’s been headed for a nervous breakdown for weeks, the way she’s pushed herself, with this one-woman art show added to the load she was already carrying. But she’ll be all right.” He put a sympathetic hand on Simon’s good arm. “It’s not your fault. She’s levelheaded about everything except you. But if you want to help her, for old time’s sake, stay away from her. She’s got enough on her plate right now.”
He nodded politely to Corrigan and went on down the hall.
Simon still hadn’t moved, or spoken. He was pale and drawn, half crazy from the doctor’s revelation.
Corrigan got on the other side of him and took his arm, drawing him along. “We’ll get a cup of coffee somewhere on the way back to your office,” he told his older brother.
Simon allowed himself to be pulled out the door. He wasn’t sure he remembered how to walk. He felt shattered.
Minutes later, he was sitting in a small café with his brother, drinking strong coffee.
“She tried to kill herself over me,” Simon said finally.
“She missed. She won’t try again. They’ll make sure of it.” He leaned forward. “Simon, she’s been overextending for years, you know that. No one woman could have done as much as she has without risking her health, if not her sanity. If it hadn’t been what you said to her, it would have been something else…maybe even this showing at the gallery that she was working night and day to get ready for.”
Simon forced himself to breathe normally. He still couldn’t quite believe it all. He sipped his coffee and stared into space.
“Did you know how she felt?” he asked Corrigan.
“She didn’t tell me, if that’s what you mean,” his brother said. “But it was fairly obvious, the way she talked about you. I felt sorry for her. We all knew how much you loved Melia, that you’ve never let yourself get close to another woman since the wreck. Tira had to know that there was no hope in that direction.”
The coffee in Simon’s cup sloshed a little as he put it down. “It seems so clear now,” he remarked absently. “She was always around, even when there didn’t seem a reason for it. She worked on committees for organizations I belonged to, she did charity work for businesses where I was a trustee.” He shook his head. “But I never noticed.”
“I know.”
He looked up. “John knew,” he said suddenly.
Corrigan hesitated. Then he nodded.
Simon sucked in a harsh breath. “Good God, I broke up their marriage!”
“Maybe. I don’t know. Tira never talks about John.” His eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “But haven’t you ever noticed that she and John’s father are still friends? He doesn’t blame her for his son’s death. Shouldn’t he, if it was all Tira’s fault?”
Simon didn’t want to think about it. He was sick to his stomach. “I pushed her at John,” he recalled.
“I remember. They seemed to have a lot in common.”
“They had me in common.” Simon laughed bitterly. “She loved me…” He took a long sip of coffee and burned his mouth. The pain was welcome; it took his mind off his conscience.
“She can’t ever know that we told you that,” Corrigan said firmly, looking as formidable as his brother. “She’s entitled to salvage a little of her pride. The newspapers got hold of the story, Simon. It’s in the morning edition. The headline’s really something—local socialite in suicide attempt. She’s going to have hell living it down. I don’t imagine they’ll let her see a newspaper, but someone will tell her, just the same.” His voice was harsh. “Some people love rubbing salt in wounds.”
Simon rested his forehead against his one hand. He was so drained that he could barely function. It had been the worst day of his life; in some ways, worse than the wreck that had cost him everything.
For years, Tira’s eyes had warmed at his approach, her mouth had smiled her welcome. She’d become radiant just because he was near her, and he hadn’t known how she felt, with all those blatant signs.
Now, this morning, she’d looked at him with such hatred that he still felt sick from the violence of it. Her eyes had flashed fire, her face had burned with rage. He’d never seen her like that.
Corrigan searched his brother’s worn face. “Don’t take it so hard, Simon. None of this is your fault. She put too much pressure on herself and now she’s paying the consequences. She’ll be all right.”
“She loved me,” he said again, speaking the words harshly, as if he still couldn’t believe them.
“You can’t make people love you back,” his brother replied. “Funny, Dorie and I saw her in the grocery store a few weeks ago, and she said that same thing. She had no illusions about the way you felt, regardless of how it looks.”
Simon’s eyes burned with anguish. “You don’t know what I said to her, though. I accused her of killing John, of being so unconcerned about his happiness that she let him go into a dangerous job that he didn’t have the experience to handle.” His face twisted. “I said that she was shallow and cold and selfish, that I had nothing but contempt for her and that I’d never let a woman like her get close to me….” His eyes closed. “Dear God, how it must have hurt her to hear that from me.”
Corrigan let out a savage breath. “Why didn’t you just load the gun for her?”
“Didn’t I?” the older man asked with tortured eyes.
Corrigan backed off. “Well, it’s water under the bridge now. She’s safely out of your life and she’ll learn to get along on her own, with a little help. You can go back to your law practice and consider yourself off the endangered species list.”
Simon didn’t say another word. He stared into his coffee with sightless eyes until it grew cold.
Tira slept for the rest of the day. When she opened her eyes, the room was empty. There was a faint light from the wall and she felt pleasantly drowsy.
The night nurse came in, smiling, to check her vital signs. She was given another dose of medicine. Minutes later, without having dared remember the state she was in that morning, she went back to sleep.
When she woke up, a tall, blond, handsome man with dark eyes was sitting by the bed, looking quite devastating in white slacks and a red pullover knit shirt.
“Charles,” she mumbled, and smiled. “How nice of you to come!”
“Who’ll I talk to if you kill yourself, you idiot?” he muttered, glowering at her. “What a stupid thing to do.”
She pushed herself up on an elbow, and pushed the mass of red-gold hair out of her eyes. She made a rough sound in her throat. “I wasn’t trying to commit suicide!” she grumbled. “I got drunk and Mrs. Lester found an old empty prescription bottle and went ballistic.” She shifted sleepily and yawned. “Well, I can’t blame her, I guess. I still had the pistol in my hand and there was a hole in the wall…”
“Pistol!?”
“Calm down,” she said, grimacing. “My head hurts. Yes, a pistol.” She grinned at him a little sheepishly. “I was going to shoot the mouse.”
His eyes widened. “Excuse me?”
“There’s a mouse,” she said. “I’ve set traps and put out bait, and he just keeps coming back into my kitchen. After a couple of drinks, I remembered a scene in True Grit, where John Wayne shot a rat, and when I got halfway through the whiskey bottle, it seemed perfectly logical that I should do that to my mouse.” She chuckled a little weakly. “You had to be there,” she added helplessly.
“I suppose so.” He searched her bloodshot eyes. “All those charity events, anybody calls and asks you to help, and you work day and night to organize things. You’re everybody’s helper. Now you’re working on a collection of sculpture and still trying to keep up with your social obligations. I’m surprised you didn’t fall out weeks ago. I tried to tell you. You know I did.”
She nodded and sighed. “I know. I just didn’t realize how hard I was working.”
“You never do. You need to get married and have kids. That would keep you busy.”
She lifted both eyebrows. “Are you offering to sacrifice yourself?”
He chuckled. “Maybe it would be the best thing for both of us,” he said wistfully. “We’re in love with people who don’t want us. At least we like each other.”
“Yes. But marriage should be more than that.”
He shrugged. “Just a thought.” He leaned over and patted her hand. “Get well. There’s a society ball next week and you have to go with me. She’s going to be there.”
Tira knew who she was—his sister-in-law, the woman that Percy would have died to marry. She’d never noticed him, despite his blazing good looks, before she married his half brother. In fact, she seemed to actually dislike him, and Charles’s half brother was twenty years her senior, a stiff-necked stuffed shirt whom nobody in their circle had any use for. The marriage was a complete mystery.
“I don’t have a dress.”
“Buy one,” he instructed. She hesitated.
“I’ll protect you from him,” he said after a minute, having realized that Simon would most likely be in attendance. “I swear on my glorious red Mark VIII that I won’t leave your side for an instant all evening.”
She gave him a wary glance. His mania about that car was well-known. He wouldn’t even entrust it to a car wash. He washed and waxed it lovingly, inch by inch, and called it “Big Red.”
“Well, if you’re willing to swear on your car,” she agreed.
He grinned. “You can ride in it.”
“I’m honored!”
“I brought you some flowers,” he added. “One of the nurses volunteered to put them in a vase for you.”
She gave him a cursory appraisal and smiled. “The way you look, I’m not surprised. Women fall over each other to get to you.”
“Not the one I wanted,” he said sadly. “And now it’s too late.”
She slid her hand into his and pressed it gently. “I’m sorry.”
“So am I.” He shrugged. “Isn’t it a damned shame? I mean, look what they’re missing!”
She knew he was talking about Simon and the woman Charles wanted, and she grinned in spite of herself. “It’s their loss. I’d love to go to the ball with you. He’ll let me out of here today. Like to take me home?”
“Sure!”
But when the doctor came into the room, he was reluctant to let her leave.
She was sitting on the side of the bed. She gave him a long, wise look. “I wasn’t lying,” she said. “Suicide was the very last thing on my mind.”
“With a loaded pistol, which had been fired.”
She pursed her lips. “Didn’t anyone notice where the shot landed? At a round hole in the baseboard?”
He frowned.
“The mouse!” she said. “I’ve been after him for weeks! Don’t you watch old John Wayne movies? It was in True Grit!”
All at once, realization dawned in his eyes. “The rat writ.”
“Exactly!”
He burst out laughing. “You were going to shoot the mouse?”
“I’m a good shot,” she protested. “Well, when I’m sober. I won’t miss him next time!”
“Get a trap.”
“He’s too wily,” she protested. “I’ve tried traps and baits.”
“Buy a cat.”
“I’m allergic to fur,” she confessed miserably.
“How about those electronic things you plug into the wall?”
She shook her head. “Tried it. He bit the electrical cord in half.”
“Didn’t it kill him?”
Her eyebrows arched. “No. Actually he seemed even healthier afterward. I’ll bet he’d enjoy arsenic. Nope, I have to shoot him.”
The doctor and Charles looked at each other. Then they both chuckled.
The doctor did see her alone later, for a few minutes while Charles was bringing the car around to the hospital entrance. “Just one more thing,” he said gently. “Regardless of what Simon said, you didn’t kill John. Nobody, no woman, could have stopped what happened. He should never have married you in the first place.”
“Simon kept throwing us together,” she said. “He thought we made the perfect couple,” she added bitterly.
“Simon never knew,” he said. “I’m sure John didn’t tell him, and you kept your own silence.”
She averted her eyes. “John was the best friend Simon had in the world. If he’d wanted Simon to know, he’d have told him. That being the case, I never felt that I had the right.” She looked at him. “I still don’t. And you’re not to tell him, either. He deserves to have a few unshattered illusions. His life hasn’t been a bed of roses so far. He’s missing an arm, and he’s still mourning Melia.”
“God knows why,” Dr. Gaines added, because he’d known all about the elegant Mrs. Hart, things that even Tira didn’t know.
“He loved her,” she said simply. “There’s no accounting for taste, is there?”
He smiled gently. “I guess not.”
“You know, you really are a nice man, Dr. Gaines,” she added.
He chuckled. “That’s what my wife says all the time.”
“She’s right,” she agreed.
“Don’t you have family?”
She shook her head. “My father died of a heart attack, and my mother died even before he did. She had cancer. It was hard to watch, especially for Dad. He loved her too much.”
“You can’t love people too much.”
She looked up at him with such sadness that her face seemed to radiate it. “Yes, you can,” she said solemnly. “But I’m going to learn how to stop.”
