Heroes in Uniform: Soldiers, SEALs, Spies, Rangers and Cops: Sexy Hot Contemporary Alpha Heroes From NY Times and USA Today Bestselling Authors

by Sharon Hamilton

  “I’m sorry, Katelyn. At first, none of us knew it was so bad. Once we figured it out, well, there didn’t seem to be any way of stopping him, and honestly, we never thought things would get so bad so quickly. The doctor thinks he may have had an underlying medical condition that caused the cirrhosis to advance faster than it would have otherwise, but they just don’t know for sure, yet.”

  His voice trailed off as though he didn’t know what else to say, and Katelyn knew John didn’t have any answers for her. Her father had been forced out of office six years ago when his opponent in the election for sheriff ran a malicious campaign in a bid to win. He had claimed her father was too old to perform his duties any longer, harping on his age again and again. The campaign had gotten downright ugly and her father had eventually stepped down rather than lose. He asked John to run in his place, believing it was the better thing to do for his constituents. John was young enough and had plenty of respect in the community to win the election without breaking a sweat, but retirement had turned out to be way too hard on her father. Retiring without finding her mother’s killer…well, that had been more than he could handle. At least without turning to drinking, apparently. And, drinking heavily, it seemed.

  “Fine,” Katelyn said, mirroring what John had said only a moment before. She didn’t have much fight in her right now.

  “There’s more, Kate,” John said quietly. He moved closer to her in the hallway and looked around them before speaking. “I didn’t want to mention this on the phone, but your dad’s been confused lately.”

  She stared at him, not understanding. “What do you mean, confused?”

  “He’s experiencing some dementia. They’re not sure yet if it’s a result of the liver disease or if it’s something entirely separate like Alzheimer's, but he’s having episodes.”

  “Episodes?” She frowned. She was so used to her father being sure of himself. Confident that he was right all the time. Much like the man standing in front of her now. John was always in control, always in charge.

  Katelyn shut her eyes for a moment, trying to rein in her emotions. She would not cry in front of this man. She took a deep breath before opening her eyes.

  “I don’t understand, John.” She couldn’t picture her father confused or unsure, despite what John said. “What kind of episodes?”

  “He doesn’t always know who I am when I visit. Or he knows who I am, but he forgets the year. The other day, he thought he was still sheriff and I was his deputy. He thought he’d been injured and that’s why he was in the hospital. He gets frustrated, angry, when he can’t remember things,” John said.

  She nodded, feeling like she was losing the last piece of her family. Wait, she was losing the last piece of her family. Her mother was gone. Her aunt, too. Now, her father.

  “You need to be prepared, Katelyn. Some days, he may not know you,” John said, his voice low and almost apologetic.

  She cleared her throat and raised her chin to deflect the too-sympathetic look in his eyes and ward off the hot tears that threatened to fall. “Anything else?”

  John shook his head. “No, that’s it. The doctor said he’d tell us tomorrow whether they’ll recommend discharging him or whether they want to keep him here longer. He said we could talk then about hospice options.”

  She had the bizarre realization that everyone here probably thought nothing of John Davies being involved in her father’s care and any decisions that had to be made. It was clear the doctors and nurses had no problem giving him information and asking him to make decisions, federal privacy regulations be damned. Apparently, small town tradition could override even the most stringent of laws. Did they even think twice about the fact that she was Alan Bowden’s flesh and blood while John was just someone...?

  What was John? Surely not just someone her father worked with. But, he wasn’t family either. She wouldn’t accept that. And she wouldn’t let the nurses and doctors act as if he were family. She’d tell them tomorrow that John did not have authority to make decisions or even receive private information, for that matter.

  “I’ll speak to them tomorrow.”

  John eyed her with an expression she couldn’t quite read. “He’ll need twenty-four-hour care if he comes home. I can help, Katelyn.”

  “No need. Thank you for calling me, John. I can take it from here.” Katelyn turned and shoved open the door to her father’s room. Time to face the man who’d sent her away twenty-four years ago and certainly wasn’t happy to see her back.

  * * *

  John saw the flash of anger in her eyes and watched as Katelyn pushed open the door to her father’s hospital room, her face set and resolute. She’d always been strong. There was determination and strength evident in everything Katelyn did. But he’d never seen her quite so angry, quite so stubborn.

  He had suspected she would resist his help. He wasn’t exactly high up on Katelyn’s list of favorite people. But, Alan Bowden had saved him years before. He’d somehow taken a man who had no reason to live, who had demons chasing him clear from New York City to Texas, and he’d brought him back to life. John owed Alan for that. He owed him everything. And he’d be damned if he’d let Katelyn shove him aside when the man who’d saved him from himself years ago lay dying in a hospital bed. She may not like him—even more now that she blamed him for letting her father drink—but she was going to have to deal with him.

  He turned and walked down the long hallway toward the parking lot. The hospital was ten minutes outside of Evers, on the highway leading to Livingston Falls. He’d spent the whole day at the hospital, so he planned to swing by his office and check in with his deputies before heading home for the night. As John pushed through the exit door, the radio that lay on the left shoulder of his tan uniform crackled.

  “Sheriff, you there?” Berta Silvers, the craggy-voiced dispatcher asked.

  Roberta Silvers was most likely in her late sixties, although there was some dispute as to her actual age since she’d been celebrating her fifty-fifth birthday for at least the past ten years. Years of smoking left her sounding like a bullfrog trying to sing an opera. Berta was an indispensable member of his staff, and one of a team of people who helped him run the local sheriff’s office in Evers. As sheriff, John had a whole host of duties, including overseeing the county correctional facility and prisoner transfers within the county. Together, everything often left him running on nothing more than fumes.

  On top of it all, since Evers had always been too small to have its own police force, John was contracted to provide local law enforcement services for the town. Berta was not only his dispatcher; she was also largely responsible for keeping the local office running smoothly.

  John keyed the large button on the side of his radio. “Yeah, Berta. What is it?” he asked.

  “Danny wants to know if you’re coming back into the station. He picked up Trent Everman again. Boy is looped out of his gourd. Danny wants to know if he should hold him or call his father.”

  John uttered a curse under his breath, but by the sound of Berta’s croaking laughter, she’d heard it. He settled into his cruiser before answering her. “Was he driving?”

  “Nope. Walking down Lilac Street, headed toward the bar to see if they’d serve him,” she said with a laugh. She and John both knew no one at Pies and Pints would serve anyone underage. The owner, Manny, wasn’t a stickler about much, but he didn’t serve anyone without legal ID.

  “Let him sleep it off in one of the holding cells. No reason to call his dad.” That wasn’t entirely true. At eighteen, Trent might no longer be a minor, but he was under the legal age for consumption of alcohol. Calling his dad wasn’t an option, though.

  Not only was calling a parent on an eighteen year old not an option, Trent’s dad would beat him senseless for drinking again. John wanted the kid to quit, but not enough to let his dad go after him with his brand of parenting. It was probably that parenting style that had started the kid drinking in the first place. John would figure ou
t another way to handle this situation.

  He steered his car out of the hospital parking lot and onto Route 190, heading into the station to see if he could sober Trent up and talk some sense into him. Then he’d come up with a way to get the kid in to see a counselor or to join a support group or something. John sighed. He hated no-win situations, especially ones like this that had him turning his back on something illegal.

  When he got there, it was clear Trent wouldn’t be in any shape to talk with anyone for several hours—likely more. John left instructions with Danny to call him when the kid was sober and awake then left the station house for the night. Despite telling himself to go straight home, he pulled his patrol car to the side of the road across the street from Alan Bowden’s house.

  Katelyn’s little car was in the driveway and the kitchen and living room lights were on. She’d made it home. John wasn’t quite sure what he was doing there. He wanted to know how things had gone with her father at the hospital. He wanted to ask her how she was holding up after seeing her father lying almost unrecognizable in the cold, impersonal hospital room. It had shocked the heck out of John to see the effects of the cirrhosis, the swelling of his face and legs, the discoloration of his skin. He could only imagine what that must have done to Katelyn.

  He wanted to comfort her, just as much now as he had when he’d seen her face at the hospital today. His fingers had itched, wanting to reach out and cradle her, hold her tight so her father’s words wouldn’t cut her so deeply. He’d known, though, she would never accept that from him. Katelyn would never allow him to comfort her.

  She’d made it perfectly clear she didn’t want to have much to do with John. But they would have to see each other if he was to be any help to her and her father. Which he would be, whether she liked it or not.

  John scrubbed a hand over his forehead, trying to squeeze out the headache that had settled in behind his eyes. If today had been any indication, dealing with Kate would give him a lot of headaches over the months to come. And yet, here he sat like an idiot, wanting to go inside and make sure she was okay.

  John shook his head and forced his gaze off the house as he threw the car in gear and pulled away from the curb. The last thing he should be doing is sitting in his car wondering how Katelyn was doing and if she would slam the door in his face if he approached.

  Probably.

  Well, Katelyn could slam all the doors she wanted. Alan needed him now. That was all that mattered.

  Everlasting: Chapter Two

  The sun shone in through the light, gauzy window curtains of Katelyn’s room, stirring her from sleep much earlier than she would have liked. Her eyes felt puffy and swollen, no doubt from the good cry she’d allowed herself the night before. Katelyn wasn’t one to cry at the drop of a hat, but seeing her father last night had really thrown her. She knew John had tried to prepare her, but there’d been no preparing for the condition her father was in.

  She took in the room around her as she awoke, not used to the pale pink walls of her room in Evers. Her room. It wasn’t really. She hadn’t stayed here longer than one night at a time since she was four years old, and the times she had done that could be counted on one hand. Well, maybe a few more than that, but not many.

  The room looked very much the way it had when she was young. The eyelet lace curtains had been changed out for plain white, and the princess border had been removed. The pink walls, rose-colored carpet, and white curtains now made it an acceptable guest room instead of a little girl’s room.

  She wondered who had made the changes. She doubted it would have occurred to her father to update it. Maybe her Aunt Bea at some point? Katelyn’s heart pinched at the thought of her. What she wouldn’t give to have her aunt by her side right now, holding her as she’d held her all her life. Bea’d been like a mother to her, and Katelyn missed her more than she could ever say.

  The nightstand still held the framed picture of Katelyn and her mother, identical to the picture that sat next to her bed in her Austin condo. Katelyn had added a picture of her and her aunt in a frame next to it when she’d unpacked last night. She rolled over and burrowed under the covers, planning to sleep a bit longer, when she heard a not-so-melodious female voice in the house.

  “Katelyn, are you up there? Just letting you know it’s me down here making noise! I know you artist-types are used to sleeping the day away, but I have errands to run. I can’t wait on you all day long, so I’ll just start down here.”

  Katelyn sat up in bed. Who on earth? Katelyn fell back in the bed and pulled a pillow firmly over her head. Mrs. J. must have let herself in.

  This “artist-type” was usually out of bed early, but she’d had a long day yesterday, reorganizing her life in a hurry to get here for her father and escape the fallout of her relationship with Devan. She wanted to burrow deeper into the covers and ignore the noise of Mrs. J. moving through the house, cleaning as she went.

  When the vacuum cleaner came on a few minutes later, Katelyn had to admit defeat. She crawled from the bed, threw a sweatshirt on over the cami and shorts she was sleeping in and started for the stairs. She didn’t dislike Mrs. Jenkins—she just didn’t feel like she knew her very well. She’d been Katelyn’s babysitter when she was little and she now cleaned her father’s house for him. She always acted like she knew Katelyn so well, but Katelyn had very little memory of her as a child. She rarely saw her as an adult, so the familiarity made her a little uneasy.

  Katelyn walked into the kitchen to get some breakfast but stopped short at the scene that greeted her on the kitchen counter. Every inch of the counter was covered. There were casseroles, plates of cookies, and more than one barbequed brisket. The vacuum cleaner shut off and she heard Mrs. J.’s voice behind her.

  “We’ll have to clean out the refrigerator for some of this and put most of it in the freezer. I’ll tell people to slow it down until you get through a bit of it,” Mrs. J. was saying, but Katelyn didn’t understand.

  She turned to face the plump, smiling face of her father’s neighbor. “I don’t understand. What is all of this?”

  “The town’s feeding you, of course,” Mrs. J. said with a tinge of impatience. Apparently she thought this was something that should be obvious to Katelyn. “Your father’s sick, dear. When someone is sick, the town feeds the family for as long as they need.”

  Katelyn laughed. “That’s really sweet, but I don’t need anyone to feed me. I’m quite used to feeding myself.”

  “But you’ll be running back and forth to the hospital. And when your father comes home, he’ll require a lot of care. This way, you don’t have to worry about cooking meals or getting to the grocery store while you’re here. You just tell me when you’re running low and I’ll coordinate restocking things. I come in to clean up once a week for your dad, but if you need more than that while you’re in town, just let me know,” Mrs. J. said as she started packing casseroles into the freezer.

  Katelyn didn’t know what to say, so she just smiled and began passing covered dishes over to be stacked with the rest. She couldn’t get over the amount of food. Or the thought that she was likely to have a heart attack if she ate the rich casseroles for too long. Everything looked to be covered in cream, butter or gravy. She didn’t know why, but the idea of people taking care of her made her squirm.

  Mrs. J. talked as they put the food away, not seeming to care very much whether Katelyn answered or not. Actually, she spoke so quickly, it was hard for Katelyn to say much of anything, so she simply didn’t. Until it dawned on her that Mrs. J. thought her stay was temporary.

  Of course, she would assume that, wouldn’t she?

  “We’ll get your father all settled in back here at home and get you back to your life in Austin. Helen Jensen said she can come to the house a few times a week to check on things. You remember her, dear? Tom Jensen’s wife. They own the feed store in town?” She peered at Katelyn over oval-shaped eyeglasses before continuing on. “She took care of her ailing father for year
s before he passed. Between her and me, we’ll stay on top of things, make sure the nurses or whatever are doing their jobs, taking good care of him.”

  “Oh…I’m not going back,” Katelyn said, shaking her head.

  Mrs. J. barely looked up from where she was wiping the countertop with a dishtowel. “Well, not right away, of course. I suppose this will be your longest stay in Evers, yet? Hmmm?”

  Longest yet.

  “I’m staying, Mrs. J. I’m not going back to Austin.”

  Now Mrs. J. looked up, her expression a mixture of shock and disbelief. “But you never stay, dear. And your work is there. Your father told me you need to be in Austin near your gallery.” This was accompanied with a nod of her head, as though the topic were finished, the issue decided. This sounded so like her father, Katelyn thought she’d stepped into a creepy episode of The Twilight Zone where everyone was able to channel him, despite the fact that he lay in a hospital bed.

  “No. I don’t need to be near the galleries that represent me. As long as I go for openings and to install any of my larger pieces, I can work anywhere. I’ll be looking for studio space in town,” she said, drawing a concerned look from Mrs. J.

  “But your whole life is in Austin. That’s where you live,” Mrs. J. said.

  Katelyn crossed to the coffee maker, trying to buy time while she figured out how to handle her extraordinarily insistent neighbor. You would think her father would have prepped Mrs. J. on exactly what to say. Either that or Mrs. J. had heard it so often from her father, she could easily mimic his words without any effort or thought.

  Katelyn took a sip of coffee and faced Mrs. J. with a smile firmly in place. “Not anymore. I’m selling my condo, well, my aunt’s condo really. She left it to me when she passed away. I’m selling it and opening a studio here.” This time it was Katelyn who nodded in finality and ended the conversation. She was finished trying to defend her decisions to anyone else.