by Docter, K. L
“I was not drunk. Much.” Jack shrugged. “Anyway, you could have made an effort this morning.”
“Holiday or not, I work. If I hadn’t inspected the sites this morning, I wouldn’t have discovered the condo destruction until tomorrow.” He stared at his brother. “Why are you pushing this woman on me?”
“I’m not push—” Jack paused. Then his eyebrows rose. “For God’s sake, Patrick, I just thought you should meet her before you start making assumptions about her. No one’s asking you to marry this one!”
Air lodged in Patrick’s lungs under the onslaught of harsh emotions that welled up with the breach of the forbidden subject. Pain. Torment. Anger. They cut through him with all the speed of a buzz saw.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—” Jack stopped in mid-apology. “No. I’m not sorry! I don’t care what everyone says. I’m tired of pussyfooting around Karly’s memory and what she did. It wasn’t your fault. She’s dead. You’re not. It’s been almost two years, Patrick. Two. When are you going to stop punishing yourself?”
“This has nothing to do with Karly.” Except his hands, clenched on the arms of his office chair, called him a liar.
“Tell that to someone who didn’t spend four days putting you back together last year.” Jack studied him a moment too long. “Should I arrange a short vacation soon? The anniversary of her death is coming up again in, what, a few weeks?”
Three weeks, five days, and six hours, give or take a few numb minutes. But who was counting?
“Save your heroic impulses for your fiancée, Jack.” Patrick forced his hands to relax against the arms of the chair. Jack had dragged him from the black hole he’d crawled into last year without a word about it after it was done. He’d earned the right to probe the one topic Patrick refused to discuss with the rest of his family. That didn’t mean he intended to talk about it now. “I won’t be drowning my sorrows this year,” he said with studied calm.
This year, he was avoiding the family homestead in the mountains where Karly was buried. With the rigid construction schedule he’d laid out, he had no time to battle his personal demons. He’d come to terms with the circumstances of Karly’s death, and his part in it, set that part of his life in concrete where it would remain undisturbed. “I plan to be chin deep in Spanish tile and mural painters for the rest of the summer.”
“Well, I’ll be! Sam was right. Joe was positive—”
His eyes narrowed at the mention of two of his other foster brothers. “Sounds like I missed a family meeting while I was in Cheyenne. Was I the only topic under consideration or did you take turns psychoanalyzing each other?”
“Just you.” A familiar, crooked grin spread over Jack’s face. “Our time was limited, and we do try to do a thorough job.”
“And your conclusions?”
Jack opened his mouth, but Patrick stopped him. “No, don’t bother. Let me guess.”
He considered his family members. “Cole’s prepared to take me on one of his bachelor excursions so he can drown me in wine, women and song. Sam thinks I should do what he does, bury all the emotional baggage under a clinical façade and hours of work. Joe, the only one of you with psychiatric training, believes I should wallow in my misery until I come out the other side of the pit whole and happy. And you, Mom and Dad agree I should get married again and lose the rest of my sanity in the arms of another woman.”
With a long whistle, Jack confirmed his evaluation. “You must have been that fly on the wall Mom shooed outside, although you’re wrong about a couple of things. Cole wasn’t there. He’s kayaking somewhere in South America again. Ben called from San Francisco, though, and said pretty much what Cole would have said. I didn’t say you should get married either. I just said you should get laid.” He looked down briefly before he spoke again, all traces of humor erased from his expression. “Patrick, we’re family. We’re…concerned.
As much as he loved his brothers, when they ganged up on him like this he sometimes wished he’d remained an only child. Patrick could see his mother’s nudging hand behind them. She probably wrote down a list of instructions for everyone before she left the country as she’d done for him. Trash cans on curb for Monday pickup. Speak to your stubborn brother, Patrick, on Tuesday. Help Rachel deliver seven flower baskets to Sunset Pines on Saturday.
At the thought of whom he was supposed to help with his mother’s flower deliveries, he stiffened in his chair. “Tell me you didn’t dissect my sex life in front of that woman!”
“That woman has a name, Patrick. Rachel and her daughter ate breakfast with us before going to mass.” Jack snorted. “And don’t get your shorts in a wad. You know how Mom is about manners, especially on Sunday. We didn’t talk about your limp dick until they’d left.”
“I don’t have—” He stopped, making a mental note not to miss any more of his family’s Sunday morning breakfast powwows. “There’s no reason to march me off to the psychiatric ward, on vacation, or into some strange woman’s arms. I’ve got a business to run. I don’t have time for anything else.”
“Fine, I’ll leave you alone.” Jack stood and walked toward the office doorway before turning back to face him with a crooked smile. “But I still think you should get laid.”
Despite his irritation, Patrick smiled. “So speaks the man who’s getting married next month. If there were more women out there like Maggie, I’d consider it.” If Karly had been half as strong-minded as Jack’s fiancée, he’d not only still have a wife but a toddling son playing at his feet.
Don’t go there or someone will have to clean you off the floor again this year. Patrick never wanted his family to learn all that was lost when Karly jumped in front of that bus. It was bad enough he knew how miserably he’d failed her and their unborn son.
“They broke the mold when they made my Maggie,” Jack said, effectively sidetracked from Patrick’s inner turmoil. “I just wish we’d run off to Vegas like I wanted. Between the hormones from her pregnancy, her old man’s reservations and her mother’s expectations, this high society wedding is giving me an ulcer. I’m surprised Mom didn’t go nuts sooner about being left out of all of the arrangements. I’m glad Dad dragged her off to the islands. One less thing to worry about.”
“They should have stayed and taken care of their house guests,” Patrick said. There was no hiding his irritation with the situation he’d found upon his return from Cheyenne. “Why can’t one of the others do it? I don’t have time to babysit.”
“We’re all checking on Rachel when we can, so you’ll just have to make time in that busy schedule of yours. You’re right next door. Her daughter, Amanda, is already running in and out of your office all day with Suze so Jane can keep an eye on both of them.” Jack pinned him under a baleful eye. “Stop being a pain in the ass. I can’t be here ’round the clock, and you promised Mom.”
Patrick shifted in his seat. “I remember what I promised.” The trick was to figure out how to keep that promise without spending every spare moment hanging out his office window with his tongue brushing the ground while he waited for a glimpse of the ethereal blond, as he’d done since he spotted her last night.
On his return from Cheyenne around midnight, he’d walked out his back door to dump the garbage. He would have missed her sitting on the lounge in the shadows of his parents’ side porch if she hadn’t sighed, something low and wistful, sounding so lost. There was enough moonlight to capture the curve of her face, a riot of short honey blond curls, and the lean lines of long legs and thighs barely covered by a pair of cutoffs, stretched out to rest on the wicker ottoman.
The moment she spotted him, he knew. She stilled. Gasped. He’d felt the heat of her gaze on him. For an eternity, he kept still, afraid to scare her off. Then she slipped off the lounge and disappeared inside the house. He was left with a raging hard-on and the wild thought he’d imagined the woman, that he’d inadvertently caught sight of one of the magical fairy queens his office manager’s granddaughter insisted lived in hi
s mother’s gardens.
A brief glimpse this morning through his mother’s kitchen window revealed Rachel James was real, and there was no question he’d keep an eye on her. Not because he’d made any rash promises to do so, but because he couldn’t seem to not watch the blasted woman. He just planned to do it from his side of the property line that separated his parents’ home from his own.
He could handle lust…from afar. If that made him a craven coward, so be it. The last thing he wanted was another needy woman in his life. He didn’t do relationships, didn’t dare step over that line again.
Whatever Rachel James’ problems might be, he’d only make them worse. He’d learned a hard lesson trying to help Karly. Broken women can’t be fixed, not by him at least. He didn’t rescue damsels in distress anymore. There was nothing—no one—who could induce him to stick his neck out again. Two deaths on his conscience were enough.
Chapter Three
Hills near Sausalito, California.
Greg Bishop made no attempt to cover the sound of his footsteps once he broke into the Pointeview Clinic for Reproductive Sciences. The muted gray carpet was plush and no one but his quarry remained in the rambling single-story building at this hour. He’d watched to make certain.
Why Simon Vanhouten was working late on Memorial Day despite his successful fertility practice Greg would never know. However, in this case, the doctor’s propensity for burning the midnight oil worked in his favor. Interruptions weren’t acceptable. Greg had important business with the good doctor, and he didn’t have any more time to waste.
He faltered in the middle of the trendy waiting room decorated with bold colors and modern furniture, rage searing a hole in his gut. Two days he’d wasted attempting to access the money and IDs he’d ferreted away for emergencies. Two fucking days! What did he find? Two of his three safe deposit boxes had somehow been accessed and closed leaving him nothing. Chasing down suppliers for replacement IDs swallowed another day. He’d spent most of today sweltering in his car, then in the bushes like an animal, where no one could see him as both clinic parking lots emptied.
All the while, his real prey had scurried away.
Like all of his plans, though—with the exception of the one she would soon pay for—this one was coming together. If there was one thing he’d learned over the years, it was to take his time and wait for the right moment.
Forcing himself to concentrate on a stylized bronze sculpture of a mother with her newborn infant that stood in one corner he blew off his residual tension and anger. Only when he was once again centered solely on his immediate purpose did he resume his path through the building.
He followed a wedge of fluorescent light that spread down the wide corridor from the suite of support offices in the front of the clinic toward the examination rooms at the back. The next time he paused, he stood in the open doorway of one of the two large operating rooms where hundreds of women received the benefit of Vanhouten’s expertise over the years. As Greg’s wife had benefited.
It was his turn to reap the rewards of the biggest con of his life. But, first things first.
His quarry within his sights, he watched the lean, balding man with his back to the door manhandle a large oxygen tank along the far wall where several other tanks were housed. It escaped his grasp, falling to the floor on its side with a reverberating clang.
When the man bent down to examine the crack he’d made in the floor tile and uttered an ineffectual curse, Greg smirked. “With the obscene amount of money you charge seeding the upper echelon, Simon,” he drawled, “you should consider hiring someone to do your grunt work.”
Vanhouten straightened, whirled around on one loafer-shod heel, and gaped. “Bishop! When did they, how did you…?”
He enjoyed the flash of alarm he saw in Simon’s blue-gray eyes. No matter how long it had been since their last meeting, fear kept the man under Greg’s thumb where he could be squeezed. Hard. “I was released from jail Friday, thanks for asking,” he said conversationally. “As for how I got in here? Breaking into this ornamental boutique for the childless was a piece of cake thanks to Tank, the bad-ass burglar and murderer in the cell next to mine.”
Although Greg smiled at the sick expression on the doctor’s patrician face, deep inside he felt the same horror at what he’d been forced to endure these past six months. “Something else my loving wife will pay for,” he murmured.
Mentioning his wife had a visible effect on Simon. “Felicia’s not here. In the Bay area, I mean. I-I haven’t seen or heard from her since the day you—”
His lips thinned before he finished in a rush, “Since the day I treated her for what you’d done to her. Even if I knew where she went, I wouldn’t tell you.”
Greg now knew who’d helped his wife to flee California, to escape him. He’d suspected Simon’s complicity from the beginning. The holier-than-thou prick had taken it upon himself years ago to step in as her knight in shining armor. Her protector against him, her own husband. Greg resented it. It reminded him she and Vanhouten were of a kind, blue-bloods through and through. While he, born in a Los Angeles tenement he’d barely escaped at the age of twelve, wasn’t good enough to spit shine their shoes.
It gave him immense pleasure to have them both shaking in those fancy-ass shoes. “I know exactly where my wife is,” he said his voice calm. “She’s taken her mother’s family name back. So it looks like I’m one up on you…as always. That’s not why I’m here.”
Greg saw trepidation return to Simon’s expression, though he tried to disguise it as disinterest. He turned his back on Greg, struggled to lift the fallen tank upright, and began to examine the connections and fittings. After several long moments, Simon looked over his shoulder. “So why are you here?”
Entering the room, Greg wandered aimlessly, relaxed. He was in his element now. This was a game he’d mastered. “I need money for a project.” He stopped to peer into a boxy machine that looked like a microwave but probably cost several hundred thousand dollars. Money he would have put to better use.
“Don’t touch that!” Simon rushed toward him but stopped abruptly four feet away.
Pleased the man was more worried about getting too close to him than the possible loss of his equipment Greg picked up a large bottle of ethyl alcohol from a corner shelf and scanned the flammable warning label. Looking up, he repeated his demand. “I want money.”
“I’m not a freaking bank, Bishop!” He shook his head. “I won’t fund any more of your cons. Return to a life of crime on your own dime.”
“Ah! I see the gloves are off.” Hefting the alcohol bottle absently in one hand, he set it on the counter and studied Simon like he was an odd new specimen that defied logic. The man had grown a set of balls since he last saw him. An interesting development. Not that it made a bit of difference. “Who said this is for a con?”
It didn’t take long for enlightenment to hit. “I won’t give you money to go chasing after Felicia either. Leave her alone. Haven’t you done enough damage?”
“I’ll say when it’s enough!” Rage rose like a tsunami inside him again. Huge. Uncontrolled. He picked up a metal tray and threw it at a nearby wall so hard it dug a chunk out of the plaster before it fell to the floor, scuttled partway under a piece of equipment, and lay still.
“For God’s sake, Bishop!”
The shock on Simon’s face was just what Greg needed to calm down. Get the money. Stick to the plan.
He eyed the large bottle of alcohol on the counter with renewed interest. One of the first things he’d learned growing up was that intimidation went a long way when opponents were unevenly matched. Simon Forrester Vanhouten the Third had never faced anything more traumatic than arriving unfashionably late to one of his wife’s political dinners. He had no idea what a man was capable of when it came to survival.
Picking up the bottle, Greg broke the seal. He tossed the cap onto the empty counter beside him and poured a ragged line of colorless liquid the length of it. The
room immediately filled with an astringent smell strong enough to make his eyes water.
“What’s wrong with you?” Simon lunged at him.
Greg shoved him away. He splashed alcohol over a five-foot area of corner shelving stacked with linens, hospital gowns, and miscellaneous supplies that bisected two peach-colored walls. Then he tossed the open bottle on the floor where the liquid spread in a widening arc in the direction of a wall of storage cupboards.
Incensed, Simon came at him again. “If that alcohol gets into any of my equipment–”
He grabbed the doctor’s Armani polo shirt in his fist, and dragged the man close enough to smell the cinnamon candies Simon favored. “You’re not getting the message, Simon,” he growled in the man’s face. “I don’t give a rat’s ass about your opinions, your objections, or your equipment.”
The doctor scraped ineffectually at Greg’s grip. “You will if you spark a fire and blow us to kingdom come, you idiot! There’s enough O2 and nitrous oxide in the tanks behind us to level this building.”
“Then give me what I want!” Blinking furiously against the noxious fumes, he yanked Simon out of the examination room down the hallway to the brightly-lit room two doors down. “Let’s not pretend you have a choice here.” He thrust the man into his office. “You will give me every last dime tucked away in that safe behind your desk.”
“Or what? We won’t be friends anymore?” Simon snorted with derision, straightened his shirt with a tug, and quickly put the desk between them. “In case it’s escaped your notice, Bishop,” he continued harshly, “we were never friends. The only reason you were allowed in our inner circle at college was because–”
