скачать книгу бесплатно
She personally saw to settling Noah in a room, and after getting him to eat a little chicken noodle soup and drink some apple juice, she tucked him into bed. Drowsy from the mild painkillers she’d given him, his eyes drooped closed almost immediately, and Lia, straightening, looked directly into Duran’s frown.
“I need to make a call,” he said, fixing his attention on Noah. “I’ve missed an appointment I had here and I should let him know where I am.” He patted his shirt pocket, came up empty, and his scowl deepened. “Damn, I left the number in the car.”
Lia considered telling him she’d stay with Noah while he retrieved the number and made his call, but figured, as protective he was of his son, he wouldn’t agree. “Where were you headed? This is a small enough town, I might be able to help you.”
“Rancho Piñtada. I was supposed to meet with a Rafe Garrett at five.”
Whatever she expected, it wasn’t that. “Are you a rancher as well as a filmmaker?” she asked lightly, curious, but not wanting to probe.
“No. My business is personal.” He didn’t volunteer anything else and she heeded the clear message to back off.
“I know Rafe and Jule. I’m their pediatrician, too.” She grabbed up a brochure from beside the bed and scrawled down the number. “Rafe should be at home by now, especially if you were supposed to meet with him.” Hesitating, she reconsidered her unspoken offer and then said, “I’ll sit with Noah while you make your call, if you like. I don’t mind. Technically I’m off duty and there’s nowhere else I need to be. And he shouldn’t wake up in the few minutes it’ll take to make your call.”
Again, she got silence and that look and then finally, he unbent a little. “Thanks,” he said gruffly. “I’ll make it quick.”
He pushed his way out of the room, leaving Lia to drop into the chair beside Noah’s bed. She watched him as he slept, wondering at Duran Forrester, who he was and why he was here, what personal business he could have with Rafe. It was none of her business, but she couldn’t help but be curious, partly because Rafe’s family was famous for their dramas, but mostly because of the air of secrecy Duran insisted on keeping close around himself and his son. She recalled the paperwork and the deliberate empty space under mother’s name, as if Noah’s mother had never existed. Questions, and more questions, and she wasn’t likely ever to get any answers.
Duran didn’t leave her much time to speculate. He came back less than ten minutes later, his expression blanked, as if he’d gotten news that had blindsided him. Mindful of his emotional privacy, she pretended not to notice. “Were you able to reach Rafe?”
Nodding, he moved to stand by Noah, staring down at his son. Very gently, he brushed his fingertips over the sleeping boy’s cheek. The love in his face was clear and strong, and yet there was grieving in it, too. Lia had to stop herself from reaching out to him, the desire to comfort was that powerful even though she knew any reassurance she could offer would be hollow and unwelcome, coming from a stranger.
For some reason—though she knew it what was she should do—she couldn’t simply detach herself from the situation, walk away, go home and leave Duran Forrester to face the long night ahead, with only his fears for Noah as company. It wasn’t her job to stay; she’d already done far more for the two of them than usual. Yet she had the impression, without having any real basis for knowing, that Duran was alone in more than just the sense of being a stranger in town and that kept her in the room, giving herself excuses to stay.
“I know Noah wasn’t very hungry earlier,” she ventured, a poor outlet for her feelings but the best she could do, “but you didn’t get any dinner at all. How about I bring us both something? I don’t know about you, but lunch was a long time ago for me.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“No, but you’re alone in a strange town with a sick little boy and you’re going to be spending the night in a very uncomfortable chair. The least I can do is treat you to some of our gourmet hospital cuisine. Besides, like I said, I’m hungry, too.” Not giving him an opportunity to refuse, she got up and moved quickly to the door. “I’ll be back.”
Calling the cafeteria from the nurses’ desk, she asked for the meals to be delivered to Noah’s room. Then she checked in with the night staff and her service, telling them she was off duty but intended to stay for a while to monitor Noah. By the time she was done, the food had arrived and she slipped back inside the room. Duran had dimmed the lights and was sitting in the chair facing the bed, his forehead propped on his fist, weariness evident in the slump of his body.
“It’s not the best,” she said, indicating the trays when he glanced up, “but at least it’s dinner.”
He pushed himself up in the chair, nodded in reply and they ate in silence for a few minutes, the air in the room thick with things they left unsaid. Finally, he pushed the tray aside and, speaking quietly so as to not disturb Noah, asked, “Is everyone in town as nice as you?”
She laughed, inexplicably self-conscious at his compliment. “I don’t think I can answer that without sounding as if I’m bragging or dissing someone else. There are a lot of good people here. It’s why I’ve stayed for so long. I like being in a smaller town. I’m sure it’s considerably different from L.A., though,” she added, risking a comment on his personal life, even if it was of the most innocuous kind.
“Night and day,” he agreed, seeming not to mind. “But I’ve only lived there since college. I grew up not far from here, just outside Rio Rancho. This is not that different.” Leaning back, he tilted his head against the wall, briefly closing his eyes. “I’m thinking about moving back, at least to New Mexico—work permitting, that is. I’ve arranged things so I’m between projects and I can have some time to decide. But, ultimately, L.A. isn’t the best place to raise a child.”
“I can only imagine living in a place like L.A. Even so, you seem to have done a good job with Noah. I know it’s not easy raising a child on your own.”
“Personal experience?”
“Hardly,” she said, the laugh this time sounding more like a harsh exclamation. “But I am a pediatrician. I see lots of different kinds of families.”
He raised his head to look at her, with that intense, disconcerting way of his that gave her the sensation he was dissecting her soul. “I always wanted the same kind of family I had growing up for Noah. I really did have the two great parents, the faithful dog and the New Mexico version of a white picket fence.”
“But?”
“But my ex-wife didn’t see it that way. She walked out before Noah turned one, got a quick divorce, gave me full custody and I haven’t seen her since. So Noah’s had to get by with just me.”
“He doesn’t appear to have suffered for it,” Lia said softly. “And things could change.”
“Not for me,” he said in a tone that put a full stop to any ideas he would ever contemplate another serious relationship. “I won’t risk putting Noah through that, loving someone and then losing them. He’s been through enough already. He was too young when his mother left to realize she didn’t want him. He sometimes asked why he doesn’t have a mother and I still don’t know what to tell him.”
She could understand and yet there was sadness in the finality of his words, his certainty that love would never touch his life again with enough strength to make him want to take another chance. But then again, didn’t she, better than anyone, know that the odds were he was right, that it was as likely to turn out badly as well? Any parent who loved his child as much as he did would consider the risks not worth it—unlike her own parents, to whom children were apparently incidental to disposable relationships.
A light knock on the door interrupted them and Lia, thinking it was the night nurse, got up to answer it. Instead, she found herself face-to-face with Cort Morente, a friend, but one of the last people she would have guessed she’d be seeing here and tonight.
“Cort—how did you know…?” She stared at him, completely confused. Duran had said he was in Luna Hermosa to meet with Rafe and now Rafe’s younger brother showed up here, out of the blue. “Is something wrong with one of the kids?” she asked, although she couldn’t imagine why Cort wouldn’t have just called her if there was a problem with one of his four children, even if it had been an emergency.
“No, they’re all fine. I wasn’t looking for you.” Cort looked behind her to where Duran had gotten to his feet and Lia instinctively stepped aside. The two men faced each other, Duran tense, already on the defensive, and Cort cautious, as if weighing his options before making a move. When he finally did, it easily qualified as something she’d never expected him to say.
“I came to see my brother.”
Duran’s first reaction was the completely irrelevant thought that maybe meeting unknown relations got easier after the first one. If so, by the time he’d gotten through all the relatives he seemed to have acquired, it should be simple, no struggling with mixed feelings or debating whether he was doing the right thing for Noah and himself.
Rafe Garrett had at least warned him, when Duran had called to postpone their meeting, that he and Ry Kincaid weren’t Duran’s only brothers. Five of Jed Garrett’s sons were living in Luna Hermosa and for some reason Rafe didn’t make clear, none of them wanted him to meet Jed first. He supposed this one had been elected to come here and determine what exactly it was that Duran wanted. From the steady, calculating gaze he got, Duran guessed Cort Morente’s business depended on him being a quick and accurate judge of character and that Cort was deciding the truth of his claim to being Jed’s son and what his motives were for showing up in Luna Hermosa.
Duran glanced back at Noah. His son slept on soundly, oblivious to the drama around him. Leaving Noah’s bedside wasn’t Duran’s first choice, but Noah would likely be asleep for hours yet and he didn’t want this first meeting with his Luna Hermosa relations constrained by the need for quiet and the concern Noah might wake up and overhear.
Lia must have sensed his hesitation because she took a step closer to the bed and told him, “I’ll stay with him.”
The rush of gratitude at her understanding seemed too intense, out of place for her simple gesture. But for an odd moment, Duran felt they were allies.
“If you wouldn’t mind—” he flicked a hand toward the door “—I think you could help explain. You understand…”
Without a pause, she nodded and after checking Noah once more, followed him and Cort outside the room.
Duran turned to Cort, not sure where to start.
Cort spoke up first. “This is not how we intended this meeting to happen. But when Rafe called and told us about your son, we wanted to see if there was anything we could do.” He made the offer and it sounded sincere. But there was a certain reservation in his manner—not quite suspicion, but a withholding of trust, an unwillingness to take Duran’s claim of kinship at face value.
He couldn’t blame the man; he hadn’t brought any proof of his blood tie to Jed Garrett. He had none for himself, except the word of the stranger who had given birth to him. But he had to convince Cort Morente to make good on that offer because he couldn’t afford to fail the way he had with his birth mother.
“Don’t take this wrong, but I’m finding it hard right now to get my head around going from being an only child to having six brothers,” Duran said slowly. “To be honest, though, it’s more than I could have hoped for under the circumstances, especially if you meant it when you said you wanted to help.”
“Mr. Forrester—” Lia began. “Duran,” she amended when he looked at her. “If it makes it any easier—” She stopped, and he could see in her eyes she wanted to intervene, maybe spare him having to say it, but knew it was his to tell.
“I’m not trying to make it harder,” Cort said, “but I can’t say I’m not curious about those circumstances. Jed doesn’t know you and your brother exist or, believe me, the rest of us would have heard about it by now. I have to wonder why you decided to track him down after all this time.”
“I never knew he existed, either. My—” he couldn’t call the woman his mother “—she didn’t put his name on my birth certificate. I had to find her first to get it.”
“Are you sure Jed’s your father then?”
“She is. She gave me his name and the name of his ranch and the town it was in. It’s all she gave me,” he added, unable to keep the anger that still lingered from his meeting with the woman out of his voice, “except to tell me about Ry—Ry Kincaid, my twin. I didn’t know about him until a few weeks ago. We were split up after we were born.” Drawing in a long breath, he tried to let it out slowly, to ease some of the tension crawling up his back and neck, stiffening his muscles. “I never cared about whether or not I had any other relatives, it didn’t matter.”
Cort assessed him and Duran understood that Cort, too, was protecting someone—his brothers, his family, maybe even Jed Garrett. “And it matters now,” Cort said flatly, a statement of fact rather than a question.
“More than anything. I’ve been trying to track down as many blood relatives as I can. I’m running out of time.” He steeled himself to say what he hadn’t dared acknowledge in his head, yet battled daily in his nightmares. “My son is dying.”
Chapter Two
He’d succeeded in shaking Cort’s composure and it brought a surge of what almost felt like triumph because he knew, without having any basis for his certainty except gut instinct, that this time, he wouldn’t be turned away.
“I’m sorry,” Cort said, a husky note in his voice replacing his earlier coolness. “I’ve got four kids and I can’t imagine…” He scrubbed a hand over his face and when he looked back this time the sympathy in his eyes was clear. “There has to be something we can do to help or you wouldn’t be here.”
“There is. Noah needs a bone marrow transplant, but they haven’t been able to find a match.”
“Noah has a rare immune-system illness,” Lia explained for him. “There’s been a lot of success in treating it with bone marrow transplants. But without it—” She looked at Duran, an apology in her eyes. “Without it, the prognosis isn’t good. Noah probably won’t survive past his late teens. The sooner he gets a transplant, the better his chances, and the odds of finding a match among blood relations are much higher.”
“Which is why I went searching for my birth parents when neither I, my ex-wife nor any of her family turned out to be a match,” Duran added. “I was hoping one of my birth parents would be a match, or if not, that maybe I had other relatives that would be. That’s why I said discovering I had five brothers here is a better outcome than I could have wished for.”
Cort nodded. “Then neither your twin nor your birth mother was a match, either.”
“Ry wasn’t. The only thing the tests proved was that we were brothers. And she refused to be tested.” Anger flared up in him again and he pushed it down. There was nothing he could do to change the past or her mind and it wouldn’t aid his appeal now. “She said she didn’t want her family to know how badly she’d screwed up over thirty years ago. According to her, admitting to having sex once when she was twenty-two with a stranger she’d met in a bar would ruin her life.”
“Jed won’t give a damn. His family already knows the worst of his sins and a one-night stand hardly ranks.” Cort hesitated and Duran readied himself for another disappointment. “He’s sick though, dying. He couldn’t be a donor even if he wanted to be. But I’m sure I can speak for my brothers and say we’d all be willing to be tested as soon as you can arrange it.” He turned to Lia. “Is there anything you can do to expedite things?”
“I’ll do whatever I can,” she assured him. “I can’t get anything done over the weekend, but I’ll see what I can do about setting things up for early next week.”
Duran found himself holding his breath, waiting to be told it was a mistake; that it wasn’t going to happen the way he wanted. When that didn’t come the sense of relief hit him hard, as if all the air had left the room and rushed back, and with it, a little of his faith in the future.
He searched for words to convey his feelings, but the thankfulness he felt was so tangled up with other, less defined and more uneasy emotions connected with finding brothers, a twin, discovering parts of himself he never knew—emotions that he hadn’t given himself time to process—that it left him floundering for what to say to the stranger who could end up saving his son’s life.
But Cort spared him from having to say anything by moving the conversation to practicalities. “I’m guessing you’re staying the night here with Noah. But when he gets out of the hospital, you and he can stay with one of us.” He forestalled any protest Duran would have made by holding up a hand. “A hotel’s no place for a sick kid. The ranch would be best. There’s plenty of room at the big house and Rafe and Josh are only a few minutes away. But that means telling Jed, and soon.” He pinched the bridge of his nose, wincing. “I don’t see any way around it.”
“I get the feeling he’s not going to be happy to find out he has two more sons,” Duran said. If that was the case, he was glad that Jed Garrett had sons who, if not happy to learn of his existence, were at least willing to accept him as a brother and do what they could for Noah.
“No, it’ll probably be just the opposite,” Cort said grimly. Apparently he saw Duran was starting to get frustrated with the veiled hints about Jed’s character and offered a rueful smile. “Sorry, I’m not deliberately trying to keep you in the dark. But it’s going to take some time to explain and I’d rather not do it here.”
“Later then, or not,” he said. “My concern right now is Noah.”
“I understand. Why don’t you give me or Rafe a call tomorrow, when you figure out what’s going on with Noah and one of us can run by and help you two get settled somewhere else?”
“About that—” Duran began. He felt uncomfortable accepting hospitality from strangers, even if he was related to them.
It was Lia who resolved the matter for him. “Say yes. Otherwise I’ll have to call security because Cort never takes no for an answer and that’s the only other way we’ll get rid of him.”
“Thanks for the character reference,” Cort retorted.
“Thanks for the warning,” Duran muttered and both Cort and Lia laughed, drawing a reluctant smile from him. “Fine, leave me a number and I’ll let you know when Noah’s released.”
Cort handed over a cell and home number and as it seemed to finish anything else they could say for now, an awkward silence intruded.
With a shift of his shoulders that telegraphed their shared uncertainty about where they should take this next, Cort finally spoke. “I should be going. You need to get back to your son and I need to get home to my family. I’ll talk to you, both of you—” he glanced at Lia “—soon.”
Duran waited until he’d gone and then by tacit agreement, he and Lia went back inside the room to check on Noah. He stood to one side while she bent over his sleeping son, not liking her frown when she finished taking his temperature again.
“It hasn’t come down much,” she said in answer to his pointed look. “We’ll monitor it for the next several hours, and if it doesn’t improve, then I’m going to start him on intravenous antibiotics. He may have had those before, if he’s had other infections.”
His eyes on Noah, Duran nodded. More hospital time, more treatments that would only buy a temporary respite, not the permanent answer Noah needed. “I should never have brought him along.”
“It wouldn’t have made any difference. The infection’s been going on for a couple of days, at least, probably since before you left L.A., and it would have been worse for him if he’d been sick while you were gone. At least here you and Noah are together and you’ve got—” she looked lost for an appropriate word, settling on “—family you can rely on to help.”
“I’m not quite ready to consider them family and whether or not I can rely on them remains to be seen.”
“You can—rely on them, I mean. I’ve known four of them for years, and they’re all good guys.”
He noticed she deliberately avoided referring to them as his brothers, perhaps because of his comment wary of acknowledging a blood link between him and the others. “You don’t seem surprised to find out Garrett’s got two more sons.”
“Not really,” she said. “Jed’s five sons here were by four different women, and the oldest one he didn’t even acknowledge until a few months ago. I’d have been more surprised if it had turned out the five of them were the only children he fathered.”
Duran shook his head, not yet ready to learn any more about what was obviously a convoluted family tree. “Noah wants to meet them all. When I explained to him why I was coming here, that I had found out I had more family than just his grandparents, that’s all he could talk about.” He lightly stroked his hand over his son’s tousled hair. “He’s lonely, with just him and me, and because he’s been sick for so long. My ex-wife’s family decided that he and I didn’t exist after Amber left me. So the idea of having more family is exciting—to him. But he doesn’t have to think about the consequences.”
“That one of them might not be a match?”
“That they might not care about knowing him, or that it’s all temporary. We stay here for a while and then he never sees them again.”
Suddenly, Duran felt tired, drained by the emotional roller-coaster ride he’d been on for what seemed like years now. He heard himself, a damning echo in his head, admitting Noah was dying and all the fear, grief and worry he’d been shouldering alone for so many months welled up in him, tearing at his control.
Turning away from the sympathy in Lia’s eyes, he leaned his hands on the back of a chair, head bowed, struggling to regain his composure. There was a pause, a whisper of sound and then a gentle hand touched his shoulder.
“You’re doing everything you can,” she said softly.
“It hasn’t been enough so far, what if it isn’t enough now?”
“Then you keep trying. Because even if it isn’t enough, that’s all you can do.”
If it wasn’t enough, it would break him. There would be no compromises with his emotions, no comfort in telling himself he’d done his best. “I can’t let that happen,” he said, but instead of coming out as clear, hard resolve, it sounded desperate, already cracked with sorrow.
“Duran—” Lia reached around and laid her hand against his jaw, turning him to face her. Whatever she saw in his expression prompted her to abandon what she intended to say and before he understood, he was in her arms, she was holding him or he was holding her, and it didn’t matter because it had been so long since he shared the burden, that giving even a little of it up, for however short a time, was like being able to breathe again.
The moment stretched into many, into time he couldn’t measure, before the comfort she offered and he grasped at became too much to accept and he very carefully pulled out of her embrace. Still within touching distance, they stood looking at each other and for the first time, he saw her as a woman and not the doctor who’d stepped in to help a stranger in need. She was barely to his shoulder, on the thin side of slender, and there was a delicacy about her, as if she were finely made and vulnerable to the rigors of life. Her dark red hair was gilded with copper and gold in the dim light, her eyes an unusual shade of light brown. He might have, at first glance, dismissed her as merely decorative, with little substance, except he had felt the strength in her hands, seen the intelligence and empathy in her eyes, been touched by her warmth even when he thought himself immune.
She accepted his study for a minute or two and then dropped her eyes and took an uncertain step back. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—”
“Don’t be.” Duran resisted the urge to reach out to her, to reassure her that she’d misinterpreted his moving away from her; he’d been alone for so long it had become habit to throw up his defenses when he was most vulnerable. “I appreciate everything you’ve done so far. You’ve gone way out of your way to help us.”
“Yes, well, that is my job,” she said briskly. She avoided eye contact with him and busied herself taking Noah’s temperature again. “I’ll have the nurse check him again in a couple of hours. If there’s no change, then we’ll start the IV. But we’ll keep our fingers crossed he won’t need it this time. I’ll be back first thing in the morning, unless there’s a problem before then.”
For some reason, her determined return to professional detachment irritated him. It felt jarringly out of place, though by all rights, it shouldn’t have. “Does this mean I have to start calling you Dr. Kerrigan again?”
“You haven’t called me anything,” she said. A slight smile touched her mouth, bringing back a whisper of the warmth. “At least out loud.”
“Okay, Lia,” he said deliberately. “Then we’ll see you in the morning.”
This time the smile blossomed. “Count on it.”
