by Docter, K. L
The man exchanged a look with his partner. “Ma’am,” he said in a reasonable tone, “you should go to the hospital for x-rays. You lost consciousness for several minutes. With that contusion behind your ear, a concussion is not out of the question.”
“I’ll sign whatever waivers you—”
“What are you doing?” Patrick’s sharp question hit a second before Rachel registered that he and his brother had rejoined them on the porch. Jack hung back, while Patrick loomed over her like some kind of dark avenging warrior.
Over six feet tall, he easily had thirty pounds on her ex-husband so the man’s sheer size should have intimidated her. Yet all she could think about was how safe she’d felt tucked under his arm when he confronted Greg on her behalf. Another, saner voice in her head reminded her she’d thought to find safe haven with Greg at one time, too. She didn’t give in to such self-delusions anymore. “I’m leaving.”
“You mean you’re going to the hospital to get checked out.”
“No,” she said. “I mean, just as soon as I’m packed I’ll come get Amanda and we’re gone.”
“Ma’am, please reconsider,” the paramedic tried again. “A head injury’s nothing to play around with.”
“I know you’re only trying to do your job.” Her voice rose alongside her growing anxiety. “But you don’t understand. There’s no time!”
“Shh, Rachel, I’m sure we can work this out,” Jack said before addressing the paramedic. “Just tell my brother what to do, what to watch for and, if she decides later to go to the hospital for x-rays, he’ll take her.”
“I don’t think—” Patrick began.
“I don’t want—” she sputtered at the same time.
“If you’re dead set against going to the hospital, Rachel, they need to make sure someone’s taking care of you.” Jack scowled at his brother. “And Patrick’s not going anywhere.”
Patrick’s jaw flexed. He clearly wasn’t any happier than she was to have decisions made for him. However, he didn’t argue and, in a matter of minutes, the two paramedics shot a flurry of instructions at him, packed their equipment and left the scene.
The moment she was left alone with the two brothers, Rachel summoned a weak smile she was afraid conned no one. “I want to thank you both for your help, but I’ve got to go. You can’t keep me here.”
“No one’s keeping you against your will—” Patrick started.
Jack quelled him with a look. “I get that you’re scared,” he said to Rachel. “But you can’t keep running. You and Amanda are better off here than anywhere else.”
Her heart skipped a beat. “You…know everything?”
He nodded, then glanced at his brother. “Well, I do. No matter how generous Mom is with her assistance, neither Dad nor I could allow her to invite a complete stranger into their home unless we’d confirmed your story with Katy Kolthern and the authorities in San Francisco.”
Rachel hated to think about what they’d learned. She relaxed when she realized they couldn’t possibly know everything.
They didn’t know about Amanda.
God help her if Greg used his ace card and demanded his child back. These people could simply wrest Amanda from her, and Rachel would be helpless to stop them. Only one thing kept her ex-husband from doing just that. He needed Rachel, too. She and Amanda really were a package deal…more so today than he knew.
She refused to look the detective in the eye, afraid he’d uncover the one secret only she and two others knew. “Greg’s here in Denver. We’re leaving.”
In the quiet after her definitive statement, the ring of a cell phone sounded loud and strident. Excusing himself, Jack pulled the phone out of his suit jacket pocket and walked out of earshot to a corner of the yard. She forced herself not to look at Patrick propped against a porch pillar, still silently watching the proceedings. Still looking tense with some strong emotion she couldn’t decipher.
A sliver of uneasiness crawled up Rachel’s spine as she watched a myriad of expressions chase across Jack’s face at whatever the caller was telling him. When he hung up, he stared across the yard at her. He dragged a hand across the back of his neck, turned away and made a phone call with a single push of a button. Evidently, the call didn’t go through to whomever he wanted because he hung up quickly after speaking to someone. Then he squared his shoulders and strode across the yard to the porch.
Uh-oh. Something was terribly wrong. The man’s official demeanor scared the daylights out of her, but it was the authoritative words that made the blood rush from her head.
“I can’t let you leave, Rachel,” he said.
“You can’t force me to stay here!” she retorted. She winced at the pain in her head, her next words quieter. “I’ve done nothing wrong.”
Patrick, silent until then, stepped away from the pillar and inserted himself into the discussion. “What’s going on?”
Jack studied his brother for a long moment. Then, he heaved a heavy sigh and motioned him to one of the wicker chairs before he took the one closest to where she sat on the couch. He leaned toward her, his expression grave. “I can’t let you leave, Rachel. It’s too dangerous,” he waved his hand toward the street, “out there. In fact, we must get you and Amanda under a 24-hour watch until we can locate your ex-husband.”
He thought it was dangerous out there? She bit back a hysterical laugh. “I told Patrick he didn’t hit me. I’m not pressing charges so—” Jack didn’t want to find Greg for what he’d just done. Her eyes widened. “What’s wrong?”
Jack answered her question with one of his own. “Do you know a man by the name of Vanhouten?”
She leaned back on the couch, bewildered by the abrupt change of subject. “Simon?”
The detective’s head tilted, reminiscent of a predator that just caught the scent of its prey. “Dr. Simon Vanhouten. You do know him then.”
Of course, she knew Simon. He’d given her Amanda.
Dear God, he wouldn’t, didn’t—
Her heart a chunk of ice, she fought for calm. “Yes. He’s a friend of the family.”
An exaggeration. He’d been one of Greg’s cronies. Yet, after all Simon had done for her, she owed him so much. Their friendship was forged the day he planted the seed of her child in her womb. Greg’s child, with another woman’s ovum, but still her child. At least, in her mind. Simon had been the only person she could call, the only one she could trust to help her that awful night….
“Look, I don’t know what all of this has to do with Simon. I haven’t talked to him in months. But—” She lunged to her feet despite the fact the motion made her stomach flip-flop like a dying carp. A mistake. “But,” she gulped the bile rising in her throat and tried again, “if I-I don’t…put a hundred miles between me and, and….” Her head spun. She swayed under the onslaught.
“Whoa there, sweetheart!” Patrick’s voice sounded urgent, hollow, in her ear when he wrapped his arms around her. “Better sit down before you fall down.”
She locked her knees, wondering how he’d gotten to her so fast. “I-I can’t—I won’t—” She could hardly think with Patrick this close. “Please,” her hand, trapped between them, pushed at his warm bulk, “let me go.”
He stared down at her a long moment, the concern in his eyes making her feel dizzier. Then he allowed her to sink back to the cushions on the couch. “Rachel,” he said, his hands slowly releasing her upper arms, “Jack wouldn’t say you can’t leave unless there was a very good reason.” He looked over his shoulder. “Jack?”
His brother nodded.
When Patrick took a step back and resumed his seat a couple feet away, she settled back in her chair to clear her head. She might as well listen to what the detective had to say. “What does any of this have to do with Simon?”
“Your friend’s in the hospital.” Jack frowned. “He’s in a coma. It doesn’t look good.”
“How—I mean, God, what happened?”
“Someone tried to kill him on Monday.”
She could barely process what the man was saying. Simon, dear Simon with his cold hands, dry wit, and warm heart might die?
Jack cursed. “Rachel, listen. Can you think of a reason why your ex-husband might want to murder Vanhouten and burn his clinic to the ground, almost before the ink is dry on his prison release papers?”
Could she think of a reason? Even dazed and confused, she could think of several hundred million reasons. And they all led to little Amanda.
A band of terror tightened around her lungs and squeezed. She shook her head. The buzzing noise grew ever louder in her ears until the rush of blood in her veins dragged her down into blessed darkness.
Chapter Seven
He should have stayed on his own side of the fence, not run straight into the dangerous territory he instinctively knew surrounded Rachel James.
Thunk! Patrick punched the nail home with a satisfying bang, having ditched the nail gun more than an hour ago in favor of a good, old-fashioned hammer. He had to hit something to beat yesterday’s confrontation out of his head.
Patrick’s my boyfriend, Greg.
Thunk, thunk!
I have to tell you, pal, Felicia’s quite a con artist.
Thunk. Thunk. Thunk!
The woman certainly hadn’t felt like a con artist. Patrick still remembered the way her full breasts felt grazing his chest, the tremble of her slender fingertips buried in the folds of his work shirt, the heady scent of lilacs on her sun-warmed hair weaving through his senses. He groaned at the memory of her silky skin beneath his calloused fingertips. Was she that silky smooth all over? She’d felt like pure sin in his arms.
No. She’d felt like trouble.
Why hadn’t he heeded his own advice? When he’d agreed to keep an eye on Rachel and her daughter, the plan was simple. Watch. From a distance. It hadn’t seemed much of a challenge with Amanda trailing in and out of his home and office as Suze’s shadow. The little blond cutie from next door was so quiet, he hardly noticed she was there unless she inadvertently got close enough for him to get sucked into her wary brown-eyed gaze.
Just as he’d gotten sucked in by the little girl’s mother. From his office window Rachel James was a delectable temptation Patrick could resist, had resisted for two entire days. He’d been unaware of the haunted look in her soft brown eyes, the smudges beneath her lashes that spoke of too many anxious days and sleepless nights. He hadn’t realized her willowy frame would feel so fragile and so right, beneath his big hands.
One minute, he was maintaining his distance from a woman in trouble. The next he’d stepped, no, he’d run between Rachel and her ex-husband, crossing a line he’d promised never to bridge again. He could hardly stand by and allow Rachel to be abused. Yet it wasn’t until he’d gotten up close and personal he realized her pull on his protective instincts might actually be as strong as his physical desire for the woman. He could fight the latter, maybe the former, but both at the same time? He didn’t rescue needy women anymore!
He couldn’t retreat back to his side of the cranberry hedge fast enough last night after driving her to the emergency room and leaving her in the hands of his capable brother, Sam. Yet he’d dragged her dilemma home with him, unable to forget the way she trembled when her ex-husband threatened to take Amanda. The look of devastation on her face when Jack hit her with the news about the attack on her doctor friend. How agitated she’d become when Sam admitted her to the hospital so he could monitor her concussion and the altitude sickness no one knew she’d been fighting since her arrival in Denver.
All Patrick could think about was that he would see her again in less than two hours when she was released from the hospital and he picked her up to bring her home.
Home?
Thwack.
Listening to the sharp tap-tap-tap of the nail gun in use one floor above him, he wiped the sweat off his forehead before he examined the hole he’d inadvertently hammered into the new sheet rock he’d been hanging since dawn. Between yesterday’s incident with Rachel, all of the gouged drywall he had to replace, and a shade temperature hovering in the upper nineties, he was ready to tear a strip off someone.
He didn’t have time for this unwelcome barrage of self-analysis.
Rather than taking out his frustration on the drywall he should be making phone calls to locate a new source for the bathroom sink fixtures for the Mortenson condos, mistakenly shipped to Ohio. He had no time to wait for the supplier to straighten out the shipping mess, and he had an entire crew to replace damaged walls here at Southgate.
He glared at what was left of the bedroom he was working on. It wasn’t enough to spray paint obscenities this time, something a fresh overcoat would quickly fix. No, his saboteur punched vicious holes through eight units on the second floor. The loss to Thorne Enterprises, both in time and money, was substantial. This was his third major claim this year, and the year wasn’t half over. His insurance agent was having kittens.
Patrick pulled a bottle from a nearby cooler. The icy water did nothing to cool his anger for his unseen nemesis. “Okay. I get the message you’re pissed,” he muttered. “Just face me like a man when you rip my guts out, you miserable coward.”
“There you are!” John Branson, the Southgate foreman entered the room with an odd expression on his face that set off Patrick’s internal alarms.
“What’s wrong?”
The man grinned. “I hear you’re having slumber parties at your house, and I didn’t rate an invitation? What’s up with that?”
He almost groaned out loud. Was it too much to hope Jane hadn’t broadcast to the world she and Suze had stayed overnight at his house after Jack insisted he keep an eye on Amanda so Rachel would stay in the hospital? “Tell me Jane only shared details with you,” he growled, “so I don’t have to fire her.”
“Well, as long as everyone’s radios were like yours, off,” John said pointedly, “I’m the only one who heard you had a pizza party with Suze’s teddies and dollies.” He grinned. “There was also something about building Barbie a ski chalet with Popsicle sticks?”
Patrick did groan, then. Every Thorne employee carried a radio to ease communications among the crew, which meant more than fifty men and women could have heard about his impromptu slumber party for Amanda. He hadn’t known what to do with a four-year-old, especially a girl who didn’t communicate. Asking Jane and Suze to stay overnight in one of the five spare bedrooms had been his only line of defense.
He hadn’t expected to be drawn into their game plan for the evening, though, so now he was in for it. He’d be finding dolls, bears, and Popsicle sticks stuffed into the crevices of his truck for the rest of the summer. A few of his crew could be evil pranksters when inspired. Nothing inspired them more than a show of alpha-male slippage.
With a shake of his head, he glanced down at the radio clipped to his belt. The yellow battery light blinked back at him. “Sorry you were pulled off the job, John. I forgot to charge my radio yesterday after returning from the hospital. Did Jane say what she wanted…beyond ruining my macho image?”
John chuckled. “She wanted me to give you a message. Guess Amanda’s mama checked out of the hospital already. Jane said to tell you she picked her up so you don’t have to cut out early. Said she’d stay with her and the girls at your folks’ house with the security alarm set until you get home tonight.”
Patrick told himself he was relieved to have that chore off his plate. Between the sabotage, a construction schedule in danger of imploding, and his dinner tonight with the Landers to go over spec changes on their dream home he didn’t have a minute to spare today.
Why, then, did a pang of disappointment wrench through him?
It didn’t. That was heartburn from the roast beef, fried onion, and hot pepper sandwich he’d slammed down when the roving food truck stopped at ten o’clock. He didn’t want to spend any more time with Rachel of the luscious brown eyes and fragrant skin. That way was a pipeline to disaster.
“Thanks, John.” He for
ced himself to turn to other, more pressing concerns. “How did inspections go this morning?”
The man grimaced. “I understand why it’s necessary to kick in new security procedures after this latest,” he waved at the remaining damaged wall in the bedroom Patrick was working on, “but conducting detailed inspections of all of the sites before the crew clocks in every day is cutting deep into our schedule. Took me an hour and a half just to check Southgate. Chavez wasn’t able to do much better with the Mortenson condos. I hate to think how long it will take once we break ground on the villas next week. Add in all of the time it takes to travel between sites and we’ve got us a mess of hurt.”
“I know.” The saboteur hadn’t seriously damaged the integrity of any of Patrick’s structures. Yet. It didn’t mean he couldn’t. “But crew safety comes first. So, until I say otherwise, no one walks onto a Thorne site until it’s thoroughly checked out.”
Patrick rubbed a hand over the back of his neck like the gesture would wring out another solution to his dwindling options. “If it will speed things up, team yourself and the other foremen with supervisors. I’ll okay overtime for two man inspection teams to come in an hour before regular shift. Concentrate your efforts only on whatever sites are active that day.” Problem was, most of the sites were active and they both knew it.
John nodded his approval. “Teams and an earlier start might help keep our noses above water for a while longer.”
“I’ll tell Skip to radio the other foremen. Have you seen—”
“Here, boss!” Skip Davis poked his head around the doorjamb like a jack-in-the-box.
Patrick shook his head, amused by how often his lanky brother-in-law showed up exactly when needed, just like Radar on the old M.A.S.H. reruns. Skip had come aboard Thorne Enterprises almost two years ago after he was discharged from the army on the heels of Karly’s death. Skip was so devastated to have lost his sister, felt so guilty at not being there to save her from herself that Patrick found a comrade in arms. It was easier to deal with Skip’s grief, rather than his own.
