“Not necessarily just girls. And your sister is a girl.” Nikkie Jean sent him a grin. “I’m a girl, too. I like ribbons and nail polish and toe rings.”
“That’s yuck.” He shot her another look; one that was one hundred percent identical to his uncle’s at his most curmudgeonly. “I guess you can stay. If you promise to be nice to all of us. Including Keller.”
“I promise to always be nice to all of you. You have my word. But be forewarned; I like frogs, but I don’t kiss them. Snakes, I’m reasonably ok with as long as they don’t rattle. And…I have pet snails in my locker at work.”
He stole her heart when he gave her a shy smile.
Dalton stole the show when he crawled up next to her and sat—directly on her chest. Nikkie Jean let out an oomph and laughed.
Caine’s eyes widened, and he snatched his youngest up quickly. “He didn’t hurt you?”
Dalton’s lower lip wobbled, no doubt from his father’s quick movement. Nikkie Jean’s heart melted.
Every bit of fear that had clung to the back of her mind dissipated and just flew away. Right there, looking at them. She reached for the toddler again. She wanted snuggles. If she could get away with it, she’d snuggle the twins, too.
And definitely, their daddy.
“I’m perfectly fine, Caine. Exactly where I want to be.”
82
NIKKIE JEAN HAD HER work cut out for her—getting both Caine and his clone to approve her returning to work took more finagling than she’d expected.
Well, Rafe was the only one with the true power to stop her and they all knew that. But Caine was hovering. Being an overprotective expectant father, Henry had told her.
Henry had told her that Caine had tried to coddle and pamper April when she’d been pregnant with the twins—and the other woman had sliced him up and ridiculed his concern.
She’d been a fiercely independent woman who hadn’t wanted to rely on—or be responsible for—anyone other than herself.
Caine was the exact opposite; he thrived having people to care about. She was starting to see evidence of that for herself. At home, the man was far more relaxed than she ever would have expected. At home, he was comfortable fixing things with his hands, playing with Barbies and Duplo blocks and Hot Wheels, and wearing worn T-shirts with Yoda and Bart Simpson printed on them. Caine had a nerd side that she found absolutely beautiful.
He was a far cry from the man who ran a hospital and made hard decisions every single day.
He seemed to love being with her just as much as she was being with him.
She spent one week at Caine’s and knew she never wanted to leave.
Henry was almost as bad about coddling her. Talk about overwhelming. But she finally felt like she’d found a place to belong with the Alvaro men and Keller.
But a week off was long enough to sit around doing nothing. Nikkie Jean hadn’t sat down that long for thirteen years.
Since the storm, Lacy and Virat and the others had been pulling double duty. She had to do her part. It was time to go back to Finley Creek.
She just had to get her super-hot, super-sexy, super-good-at-sneaking-in-kisses-after-his-children-went-to-sleep jailer to give her a clean bill of health. Without it, his evil twin wasn’t letting her return to the hospital.
Rafe had actually told her via text that she could only return to work when Caine gave her the one hundred percent A-OK. They’d double-teamed her. Perfectly.
“Well, I’m going back. And you aren’t going to stop me,” she finally told him. She waited for him to explode, to tell her that wasn’t happening.
That if she left, she wasn’t welcome to come back.
“I will drive you in and pick you up when you’re ready. I’m off for the next two days—other than some meetings with Rafe concerning some billing issues the audit revealed.”
Well, that fizzled. “It’s a deal.”
“Want to seal it with a kiss?”
“I’d like that very much, thank you. Now, lean down here.” It was so easy to play with this man. Like she never had the opportunity to do before. Nikkie Jean was finally learning how to enjoy that.
She was also getting tired of the constant petting. It was time the man started delivering on the promises those hands and lips kept giving.
But just how to get him in to her bed was proving more difficult than Nikkie Jean wanted to admit. It wasn’t like she had a lot of practice seducing hot COMs, after all. Maybe she needed to ask Jillian for some pointers. Because Nikkie Jean was determined.
Caine Alvaro was going to be hers. As soon as she could figure out how to make it work.
83
WALLACE KNEW IT WAS coming to a head. He was due in Rafe Holden-Deane’s office at five p.m.—in fifteen minutes. To enumerate his sins, no doubt. Wallace knew what was going to happen.
He’d met the two investigators from the FBI that morning. They’d asked him so many questions he knew they were on to him.
It was just a matter of time before they arrested him. Before they ruined everything.
Took his world from him.
But no; he’d done that. By not doing what Jennifer had asked of him.
Clean up your own messes, she’d asked. And he couldn’t even do that.
They’d released a sketch of the man last seen with Connie over the news that morning.
Combine that with him working at the hospital, the matching vehicle, and he was most likely going to prison soon. All Nikkie Jean had to do was see the sketch and put it together.
There were friends of Connie’s in all the hospitals; they were crying and making a show of caring about her—more than they had while she’d been alive—and passing that flyer out to whoever would look at it.
It was just a matter of time.
Nikkie Jean was as smart as a whip, after all.
They would come for him soon. It was just a matter of time. And not just for billing fraud.
He was a murderer. He had been for fifteen years.
It was time he admitted that to himself. He was a murderer. And that knowledge was going to ruin the world for his wife and son.
Tears built in his eyes as he thought of Raymond.
The boy was gone, victim of the storm.
While Wallace had been treating Nikkie Jean, Raymond had been dying from being crushed by debris in the back parking lot. He’d died with coworkers around him, not family.
He…Wallace had tortured himself all night, thinking of Raymond calling out for his uncle to at least be with him in his final moments.
Stupid. Raymond had been hit in the head. He hadn’t known what was happening. He had just been…gone.
Wallace shoved the grief away ruthlessly. Jennifer had barely looked at him at the funeral that morning. Like he should have been able to do something to fight against Mother Nature.
Ray…he was supposed to be in the security office. Not out in the storm. He wasn’t supposed to be out in the storm.
Wallace sat in his sedan and watched people crossing the parking lot as first shift came to a close.
There were nurses everywhere, of course. Like there always was.
The little fireball who had always reminded him of Jennifer crossed in front of his parking space.
There was a small woman in purple scrubs walking next to her.
Wallace studied Nikkie Jean as his hand fiddled with the small gun he’d carried in his glove box for years.
It had been Jordan Carrington’s gun once.
Wallace had won it off of him in a card game when Nikkie Jean was probably all of five years old.
The irony wasn’t lost to him.
That gun was going to end it all. Because he couldn’t stand to see the shame in Jennifer’s eyes when she looked at him.
He would not expect her to associate herself with him any longer. Not with her plans for her future. Reggie’s plans for his.
They didn’t need Wallace.
He’d royally screwed everything up. He had t
o do something to end this. Without putting a stain on Jennifer’s good name.
He had to think of something.
Nikkie Jean was laughing, looking beautiful and happy—and healthy. Wallace said a quick thanks to the man upstairs for that.
He had never meant to hurt that girl.
Wallace climbed out of his sedan. Before he left this world, he had some explaining to do.
Some forgiveness to ask for. And then…then he would make it all end. For all of them. Jennifer deserved that much.
Clean up his own messes. That’s what she’d said.
And that was what Wallace was going to do.
84
HE’D PASSED THE GOVERNOR’S wife and her gaggle of bodyguards as he’d crossed the parking lot toward the women’s charity that Nikkie Jean was always talking about. Wallace didn’t pay the Texas first lady any mind. He had one thought only.
He needed to talk to Nikkie Jean and make things right. Make her understand that he’d just wanted answers during the storm. He hadn’t meant to leave her out in it.
And he wanted to make things right for Connie.
It was the least he could do.
He opened the door to the building. From what he knew, the charity took up the bottom two floors. Allen Jacobson and Cage Ralstone rented office space on the third now. There were a handful of other offices on Jacobson’s floor that were still available for rent, since the recent fire and rebuild.
There weren’t a lot of people in the lobby of the charity. Wallace waited until they went about their business in various other directions.
He had no business with them, after all.
Just Nikkie Jean.
He put the gun in his pocket. No sense scaring anyone. Not with as many problems as the women in this charity reputedly had.
Nikkie Jean’s little firebrand of a friend was working the counter. She looked up at him, surprise on her delicate Tinkerbell face.
She really did remind him of Jennifer thirty years ago.
Jennifer.
Who wanted to leave him.
Before Wallace realized he was doing it, he pulled the gun free and fired. Twice.
Nikkie Jean’s little friend hit the ground and didn’t get up again.
He just stood and stared at her. She looked so much like Jennifer there. In pain. Because of him.
Nikkie Jean screamed from behind him. Wallace spun, the gun rising toward her instinctively. He hadn’t even realized she was in the room.
“I didn’t mean to do that.” He started to tell her. But she wasn’t listening.
She’d fallen to the floor next to her friend.
Who opened her eyes and stared at Wallace with all the accusations he couldn’t make against himself. Dark eyes.
Eyes just like Jennifer’s.
How was he supposed to clean up his mess now?
But she didn’t say a word to him. “Run, Nik. Get out of here.”
“No! Don’t move. Just don’t move. Nikkie Jean, we…need to clean up this mess. We have to clean up our own messes.”
85
WALLACE HENEDY HAD LOST IT. Nikkie Jean fought the panic. They were trapped. And Dr. Henedy wasn’t about to let them out.
Her hands went to work, trying to determine whether the bullets were still inside. Izzie just kept staring at Dr. Henedy.
Blood welled. Rapidly. But not as much as could well. “I don’t think it hit the brachial.”
She hoped. If it had, Izzie only had a handful of minutes before she bled out. “I need something to tie off the wound.”
“There’s a string on that sweatshirt hanging there,” Izzie said, steadily.
She wasn’t panicking.
But then again, Izzie didn’t panic over much of anything.
“Why did you do this?” Nikkie Jean asked, grabbing for the sweatshirt. Dr. Henedy was pacing in front of them. Between them and the only way out besides the windows.
They were trapped. And he still held the gun.
“For Jennifer. I love her.”
“Your wife told you to do this?” She yanked the sweatshirt off the nearby hook and used the string to tighten a tourniquet around Izzie’s shoulder. As best she could. “To shoot Izzie?”
There was another entrance wound. And that meant there were two exit wounds on the back.
Izzie required immediate attention. She needed a surgeon. One with an operating room and a team of assistants and nurses. She needed the best. That meant Allen or Virat or even Rafe, who had dual specialties in surgery and pediatrics.
“I need to get her across the street.” Somehow. Even if she had to strap Izzie to the desk chair and roll her across the parking lot. “Wallace, you have to help me help her. Please.”
“You’re a damned surgeon. Stop the blood.” He shot her a wild look. “We have to clean up our own messes, Nikkie Jean. That’s what we’ve got to do. You know what to do here. Now do it.”
86
WALLACE HAD MADE A SERIOUS miscalculation. He had never meant to shoot anyone. Especially that little nurse there. She just sat, watching him from tear-dampened eyes. Watching him like he was a monster or something, as he locked the double doors that led to the women’s charity.
“Nurse…how old are you?”
“Twenty-five.” She almost breathed the answer. Hadn’t he heard somewhere she was asthmatic or something? Just like Raymond had been as a boy.
Grief welled again.
“The same age I was when I meant Jenny.”
“Your wife,” Nikkie Jean said flatly. “What is she going to think about this?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think she’s going to care any longer. She asked me for a separation an hour ago.”
“I’m sorry,” Nikkie Jean said. “That must have hurt.”
“It did.” Wallace watched her for a moment. Such an odd little cross between Jordan and Darla, but so pretty. “You’ll need to pull it tighter than that. Clamp it off a bit better.”
If the bullet had hit the brachial, that girl was as good as dead. He looked at her again. “I’m sorry. I never meant to involve you.”
“Well, you did.” The little fireball shot him a glare. “What are you going to do to make it right?”
“There’s not a whole lot I can do. You’re probably going to die. I hit you twice.” And that was a shame. She was such a pretty little thing, too. Should have had her entire future ahead of her. He told her that. “You and Nikkie Jean both. But Nikkie Jean always was. As pretty as her mother.”
Nikkie Jean didn’t even look at him. She was too focused on finding bandages in the first aid kit. It looked like it was a well-stocked one. No surprise, considering that Nikkie Jean, Lacy Deane, and that little dynamo Fin Coulter spent so much time in this building.
Wallace had never been inside. It was a charity for women, after all. Word had it all who went there had been hurt in the past.
That was such a shame. These were sweet girls, after all. Well, the fireball wasn’t exactly sweet. But she was a pretty thing like all the others.
She looked like a kid sitting there.
Wallace just studied her as Nikkie Jean did her best to stop the bleeding.
If he and Jennifer had had a daughter, she might have very well looked like Nurse Izzie, with the short-cropped dark hair and the big brown eyes.
Jennifer’s eyes had always stared straight through his soul. But at Raymond’s funeral, they had been absolutely blank.
She’d looked right through him.
Wallace’s hand clenched on the gun. He had four bullets left.
He should just shoot them both and then himself. Just end it all.
Make it better for all of them.
87
CAINE WAS HALFWAY ACROSS the hospital parking lot after his meeting with Rafe and Thor. It had gone about as poorly as he’d expected. Cage Ralstone had vehemently denied any wrongdoing.
Said there had to be a mistake, that he’d followed HIPAA’s laws to the absolute best of his
ability. There was no way he’d ever do anything to jeopardize his patients.
Caine had to admit—he had believed the man. And so had Rafe.
Rafe had mentioned that there had been doctored records in his hospital before. Records that had had his own sister-in-law’s signature on them. During a time when she’d been on medical leave—with Rafe and Caine’s biological brother Luc in St. Louis. Hard for Rafe to argue that. And he hadn’t been fully satisfied with the explanations all those months ago.
Rafe admitted he could have missed something. That there was so much going on back then that the hospital had taken a second place behind basic survival.
Whoever was responsible for the billing errors, they were involved with both Finley Creek Gen and Barratt County.
That only left four names.
Three of those names were in Nikkie Jean’s department. Rafe wasn’t any more thrilled than Caine was.
As he’d pointed out, he had a sister-in-law in that department. And Nikkie Jean, who was as good as a sister-in-law already.
Caine had agreed with that point.
They needed to get the snake out of Nikkie Jean’s playhouse, before someone else got hurt.
He texted her; she was supposed to be across the street while he met with Rafe. Then the two of them together were going to retrieve Dalton from the drop-in hospital day care on the lowest floor. Dalton had started day care at Finley Creek Gen two days ago; and was loving it. The twins had finally agreed to do the back-to-school shopping with Caine and Nikkie Jean the next morning; then they had back-to-school teacher conferences. Both the twins had invited Nikkie Jean to attend with them.
Just like Caine had planned. They’d already started building the routine that everyone had needed.
Caine wanted Nikkie Jean.
He started out of the building, intent on finding her.
He could see W4HAV with its familiar apple-green logo right there across the street; the destroyed ER was between them.
Lost in the Wind Page 30
