Tangled Web

by Cathy Gillen Thacker

  “Sure you can. You know how to cooperate.” He leaned closer. She could smell the faint odor of whiskey on his breath. “Don’t you remember how you cooperated?”

  Without warning, Hope felt the bile rise in her throat. It was all she could do to swallow. Her limbs felt like ice; she turned away from Russell. If there had been anyone else in the garage, any chance of gaining help, she would’ve screamed.

  Intending only to buy herself a little time to figure out what to do, she said hoarsely, “All right. I’ll think about it.”

  “I’ll give you until Monday to come up with a way to join forces with me. Or then I go to Rosemary,” he threatened maliciously. “This time with the whole truth.”

  Hope knew whatever he said would not be the truth. She doubted he even knew what the truth was. Pushing him aside, she inserted her key in the lock. Despite her best efforts, her hand was trembling slightly.

  He touched a hand to her shoulder and she recoiled. “Don’t let me down, Hope baby,” he said, his hand tightening on her shoulder like a vicious clamp. “I’m counting on you. And you know how unhappy I get when I’m thwarted. Monday morning, 9:00 a.m. I’ll be waiting for your call.”

  He walked away. And for the second time in her life, Hope’s life took on an unrelenting, nightmarish quality.

  Chapter Five

  Chase stood in the open doorway to Hope’s darkened bedroom several hours later, feeling both uncomfortable and anxious. He didn’t want to be there, searching her out. It was too intimate a place. And yet when he’d heard she was ill, he’d wasted no time in getting there. Part of it was obligation. She was Joey’s mother, after all. He was here under the same roof, courtesy of her generosity. The other part was more complex and not something he could easily think about when she was lying there so still, like an angel, with her hair spread over the pillow in a halo of dark silk.

  At first glance, he thought she was asleep and hence was loath to wake her. Sometimes sleep was the best remedy for the headache Carmelita had told him Hope had. But as he neared, she stirred slightly. She opened her eyes, and sent him a brief but dismissing look. He felt his muscles tighten protectively as he moved to her side and saw how fragile and truly ill she looked at close range.

  Carmelita had been right to get him. Hope might want to throw him out of her boudoir—he couldn’t blame her if she did—but dammit, she wasn’t going to manage it until he had tended to her and made sure she was all right.

  “Chase,” Hope moaned softly, inhaling the rich familiar scent of his after-shave. His shape seemed blurry to her. “Go away.” She didn’t want him to see her like this. She didn’t want anyone to see her. “I can’t talk to you now.”

  Chase grinned knowingly. Another sign she was ill. Newly sick patients were notoriously cranky and often overemotional. “Then don’t talk,” he advised softly, already slipping automatically into his physician’s mode.

  Methodically he let his glance scan over her from head to toe, taking in everything about her. Obviously she felt really sick, for Hope was still in the clothes she had worn to work. The short navy skirt brought out the blue of her eyes and the white silk blouse only served to enhance the creaminess of her fair skin. Her only effort to get comfortable, it seemed, had been to kick off her shoes; they were lying helter-skelter at the bottom of the bed. She’d also removed her longish navy suit jacket and tossed it down next to her on the enormous antique canopy bed. She was lying on top of the ruffled white coverlet rather than beneath it, and a soft white afghan was drawn up to her waist. She looked as pure and untouched as the new-fallen snow against all that white, but up close he could see her full mouth was bare and soft, but drawn taut. It appeared that even the slightest movement caused her an inordinate amount of pain and stress. Realizing this, a surge of compassion flowed through him. He hated seeing her so physically miserable. He kept his voice low and professionally pragmatic as he began to take a routine history of her illness so that he could assess her condition. “Carmelita said you sent her to pick up Joey at school,” he remarked casually. She had to have felt very ill to have delegated that, a chore she usually relished.

  Hope wet her lips and looked supremely irritated that he hadn’t left. Slowly she released a long, exasperated breath, then apparently realizing she wasn’t going to get rid of him until she cooperated, answered his question, “Yes,” she said, her voice laced with unexpressed pain. “I asked her to do that. Is that a crime?”

  No, Chase thought, but looking so beautiful was. Ignoring Hope’s grumpy manner, Chase set his medical bag down on the chair next to the bed. Although he didn’t often treat patients one-to-one anymore, he was licensed to do so. Carmelita had summoned him to discover if a call to Hope’s private physician was in order. Seeing the amount of distress Hope was in, evidenced as much by her immobility as her attitude, he wondered if maybe they should be considering the emergency room instead.

  “Has this ever happened before?” he asked gently. He was aware Hope was trying not to cry now that help had arrived and it was okay to surrender to the inevitable and admit that she was sick.

  “Yes. I have a tendency to get migraines, but never this bad.” Her whispered admission ended on a groan. “And I really don’t feel like talking, Chase.”

  Again he refused to take the hint. “Double vision?”

  Hope pressed the heel of her hand between her eyes. “Yes,” she said, furious she couldn’t get rid of him as easily as she wished. Her voice shook emotionally as she responded, “It’s very blurred, almost black.”

  Looking at her, Chase bet she’d have a hell of a time trying to do anything right now but lie in bed.

  “Is it better when you keep your eyes closed?” Chase asked, aware that his own pulse had picked up as rapidly and unconscionably as his thoughts. And that neither should have. Fighting for control of his own spiraling emotions, he reached out to touch a hand to her forehead. Her skin was cool, signifying a reassuring absence of fever. He felt a whisper of relief.

  Hope swallowed listlessly and another tear rolled down her cheek. She responded to his question about keeping her eyes closed. “It’s a little better when I do close my eyes, yes.”

  Chase studied her, determined not to overlook anything. “Any other symptoms? A stiff neck? Sore throat? Pain anywhere else?”

  They went down a whole list of possibilities. To Chase’s unexpressed relief, Hope denied having those symptoms, and a number of others. She hadn’t fainted recently. Nor did she have a history of food allergies or anything else that could explain her current disabled state, just a history of migraines and no more. “When was the last one?” he asked, the diagnostician in him already looking for a pattern. He hoped to help her avoid such pain-racked episodes in future, if indeed her headache was stress-related, as Hope seemed to think.

  Hope lifted a hand, and let it fall limply across her abdomen. “I don’t know. After Edmond’s funeral, I think.”

  Chase wasn’t surprised; he knew how emotionally grueling that period had been for them all. “Before that?”

  She started to shake her head dismissively, then stopped abruptly, uttering a small despairing moan that made him want to drop down beside her and cradle her in his arms. “It had been years,” she murmured hoarsely, fighting not to cry again.

  For once, he was glad her eyes were closed. He didn’t think he could stand to look into their dark blue depths or get any closer to her bare, trembling mouth.

  With supreme effort, Chase forced his attention back to the medical issues at hand. “When did you have them?” he asked gruffly, feeling all the more impatient with himself for his unprecedented lack of concentrated professionalism. It wasn’t like him to think about the gender of a patient he was examining in anything but the most clinical way, yet with Hope, as inexcusable as it was, that was exactly what was happening.

  “I had my first when I was in my late teens,” Hope admitted, then grimaced blindly at the renewed burst of pain inside her skull.


  Her attacks had started when she was still living on Morris land, and occurred again, during the first months she had lived in Houston, before her marriage to Edmond. Only later, after Joey was born and she was happily settled into her new life, had they stopped for any length of time. But they had stopped before, and they would stop again, Hope reassured herself firmly as a new flood of helpless tears rolled down her cheeks.

  And though it was unnerving, having Chase here in her bedroom, letting him see her like this, it was also reassuring. She knew she could lean on him and trust him to help her for just a little while. She had been independent for so long. It was nice to have a man to lean on again, even briefly.

  Oblivious to her thoughts, Chase asked with an efficiency that was so brisk it was almost cutting, “What do you usually do for them?”

  “I take aspirin. Lie down in a dark room. Wait it out.” As she spoke each word, Hope felt a renewed thundering in her skull. It was all she could do not to cry out. She tried not to think about the emotional trauma that had precipitated this attack. It had been being threatened by Russell again that had brought it on. She couldn’t tell Chase that, not without telling him the rest, and she wouldn’t risk him loathing her for the past anymore than he already did.

  Able to tell how miserable she was as she wiped the tears from her cheeks, Chase’s heart went out to her. He had always hated to see anyone in pain, and although he could alleviate her suffering easily enough, he wondered curiously what specific stress had brought the attack on this afternoon. Was it the accumulated effect of his renewed presence in her life? His mother’s attack on Hope earlier in the day? Or just Hope’s own guilt about the past catching up with her? God knew if everything Rosemary asserted about Hope was true, Hope should feel guilty about what she’d done, but somehow Chase didn’t feel that alone was it. Had something else happened? Something he should know about? he wondered, his mind moving ahead to a more plausible scenario. Had Rosemary and Hope had it out again, and if they had, was it even something he wanted to know about? He thought not. He’d already been dragged too far into the middle of this tangled mess as it was. If the women were fighting again, and if that was the reason for Hope’s migraine, they would just have to sort it out by themselves, without his intervention. That was the only way the situation would ever be resolved.

  Forcing himself back to the medical aspects of her dilemma, Chase asked pragmatically, “Do you have anything stronger on hand than aspirin, Hope? Something prescription?” If she did, it was past time to take it.

  She grimaced in regret, looking even more fragile and pale. “Nothing.”

  “Do you want me to give you something?” he asked gently, knowing a shot would provide the quickest relief.

  “Will it help?” she asked in a trembling whisper. At that moment she looked as though she needed more than any physician could offer. She needed to be held, loved and taken care of. Not as his father had taken care of her, like a child bride who needed only to be coddled and protected, but as a flesh-and-blood adult woman, with adult needs and feelings and desires. Knowing, however, that he couldn’t and shouldn’t do that for her, even if she were to give her permission, he once again turned his thoughts back to his duties as a physician.

  “I promise it’ll help,” Chase said softly. He reached out to touch her hand in silent sympathy, letting his touch reassure her that he cared and that relief was on its way. At the moment, he didn’t care what she’d done in the past; no one deserved to suffer like this. He didn’t care what Rosemary said or thought. He was going to help Hope as much as he was humanly able. If his mother felt he was a traitor to the family for doing so, so be it.

  Hope sighed and permission was wrenched from her trembling lips. And in that instant, the die was cast. To her surprise, Chase insisted on staying with her while the medicine took effect. Extremely uncomfortable having him there in the intimacy of her bedroom with her, but in too much pain to get up and move elsewhere, she closed her eyes against his steady presence. Sometime in the next few minutes she fell asleep. When she awakened again, the disabling pain had disappeared, her vision was restored to normal and the blurring and darkness were gone. This should have been a reassuring thing, and it would have been, had Chase not been there with her, looking so handsome and empathetic and concerned about her all at once.

  He had been reading, but he put his book down when he saw her stir. He sat forward in the chair he had drawn up beside her bed. “How are you feeling?” His voice was gentle and tender. He was everything a patient would want a doctor to be. But he wasn’t her doctor, she reminded herself, or even, really, a friend. He was her stepson. She couldn’t take this as anything more than a professional courtesy on his part, especially when she knew how involved Chase got with his patients. He’d gone so far as to get engaged to one during his medical school days.

  “I’m much better.” Hope shifted slightly. Feeling no resurgence of pain, she sat up slowly, wondering all the while just how long she had been asleep and how closely he had been watching her. She was aware her clothes were rumpled. Her silk blouse was twisted slightly over her breasts and beneath the cover of the soft white afghan, her skirt had slipped high on her thighs. She straightened her clothing self-consciously, deciding for the moment that it might be best just to let her skirt be. He couldn’t see much, just an occasional glimpse of stocking-covered leg beneath the open weave of the afghan.

  “Still okay?” Chase asked.

  She braced her hands behind her, sat up a little bit more, and gave a tentative nod. Again, she felt no pain. Chase leaned forward, to help her prop an additional pillow behind her back. Hope sighed her relief, saying a silent prayer of thanks that the worst of the episode had passed. She waited until Chase had moved free of her, then leaned back against the pillows. “Yes, I am fine, much better as a matter of fact,” Hope said self-consciously. “Thanks.”

  She swallowed as unobtrusively as possible, feeling the heat of an embarrassed flush spread across her face now that she was on the mend. Of all the places she never would have wanted to be with Chase, number one on her list was her bedroom. “You can go now. Thanks.”

  Chase started to rise, then evidently thought better of it and stayed where he was. “What brought on the attack?” he asked.

  Had he been thinking about that the whole time she was asleep? Hope wondered. Or had he been wondering about something…something more intensely private?

  “All the pressure lately,” she finally said.

  “Maybe that should tell you something then,” Chase said gently. “Maybe you should consider giving up the presidency of Barrister’s. Nothing is worth the ruin of your health, Hope.”

  She knew he was being kind, not self-serving, but she couldn’t help feeling a little insulted that he had so little faith in her in a business sense. She had worked long and hard for the opportunity to run Barrister’s in her husband’s place. Edmond had wanted her to be at the helm. He had believed in her. She knew in her heart she could not only do her work but manage to make Barrister’s thrive again, given half a chance.

  She pushed away the afghan, not caring now that her skirt had ridden halfway up her thighs, and swung her legs over the bed, tugging her skirt down as she moved. Impatiently she got to her feet. “I’m fine, Chase,” she reassured him tersely, unable to keep the angst completely out of her voice.

  She had been weak when she couldn’t afford to be weak. She’d been vulnerable around a man who’d seen far too much of what she was thinking and feeling already. “This won’t happen again,” she announced stubbornly, drawing on every bit of pride and determination she had. I won’t let it. She couldn’t afford to be weak now, not with Russell back in her life.

  Chase followed her to the vanity. He watched while she tugged a brush through her hair and fastened it severely at her nape. “How can you be so sure?” he asked, folding his arms. “The pressure hasn’t exactly gone away.”

  No kidding, Hope thought dryly, and then was unable to
suppress a small shiver. I’ll give you until Monday, Russell had said. Her hands tightened into fists. Hope braced herself for a return of the pain, but blessedly it didn’t come. The migraine-blocking medicine Chase had given her was still doing the trick. She realized she might have to take more of it before this was said and done. Unless she figured out a way to get rid of Russell once and for all. And she couldn’t do that while talking to Chase. Deciding a change of subject was in order, she said, “Is Joey home from school yet?”

  Chase nodded. “He got home hours ago. Carmelita told him not to disturb you.”

  “I’d better go see him. He’s probably worried.”

  Thankfully, Chase made no move to stop her. But Hope was aware of his thoughtful gaze, and the questions he still undoubtedly harbored.

  HOPE SPENT the next hour eating dinner with Joey and reading the paper. Then she closeted herself in her office for the next half hour, with her mail. Finished with her bills, she realized it was getting late and went in search of her son. If she knew him, he’d lost track of the time, too.

  “Joey, isn’t it about time for your—” Hope stopped when she confronted his empty bedroom. He had left his computer on, and she could see he was in the middle of one of his games, but he was nowhere in sight.

  Figuring he had gone downstairs for a snack, she headed for the kitchen. Again, no Joey. Heart pounding, she retraced her steps, going all the way through the house. Again, she called out Joey’s name and got no answer. Joey knew he was supposed to ask permission before he left. That had to mean he was somewhere on the grounds, she reasoned securely.

  Still, it was dark now, after eight-thirty. And she was beginning to get scared. Under normal circumstances, Joey would have turned off his computer and put his game away if he were planning to begin another activity, and he would never go out after dark alone. Not even in the yard. Not without clearing it with her first.