Had Cobb been there gloating over his kill—or hoping for a chance to take another of the Texas Justice Project team out? April wondered, could she have died that day, if he’d only caught her alone?
Some forgotten detail buzzed in the back of her brain like a rattler in the tall grass, a detail that slithered away when the elevator doors hissed closed behind them.
“Hope we beat my mom here,” Nate said. “Joe promised he’d take her to get something to eat before he had to head home, but you could sooner shoehorn a mule inside a minicar than get my mother to do anything she doesn’t want to.”
“I’m sure she’s anxious to see your father,” April said, remembering how only days ago, the kindhearted Ella Wheeler—a woman famous around Rusted Spur for delivering a homemade apple-pecan cake and King Ranch casserole after every blessed event or family loss—had taken April aside and told her how proud she was to welcome her into the family. I can never replace your own mother. I know that, but I hope in time you’ll come to think of me—that you’ll allow me to claim you as the daughter I never had.
April’s eyes slid closed, her heart twisting at the thought of another victim of her own wretched timing. If she’d mustered her courage and called things off last week, or even an hour before the ceremony, none of this would have ever happened. “I only hope she can forgive me.”
“There’s nothing to forgive,” Nate said, as gallant now as he’d been exasperating earlier.
April only wished that that were true.
When they reached the room, they found his mother standing with her back to them, holding her husband’s hand. With a fresh blond hairdo she’d gotten especially for the wedding, she wore one of her usual Western-styled blouses and a calf-skimming skirt with hand-tooled boots. But there was nothing usual about the quaver in her voice as she murmured what April recognized as a prayer. Here and there she caught a few words in the spaces between the ventilator’s breaths.
Her heart twisted as she saw that Nate’s father looked the same as when she and Nate had left him, the chalky pallor of his face so different from the vibrant, robust rancher she’d known for so many years.
Nate went to his mother and wrapped his arms around her shoulders. A tall woman of generous proportions, she had never looked so small. “I’m sorry, Mom, so sorry. But the doctors say there’s still hope.”
The moment was so raw, so laden with emotion, that April wished she could back out of the room and give the family privacy.
But Ella Wheeler put her grieving aside the moment she spotted April just inside the door. Pushing herself away from her son, she straightened her spine to glare down with her blazing blue eyes.
“What on earth would make you think you’re welcome within a mile of my family?” The anguish in Mrs. Wheeler’s voice brought tears to April’s eyes. “After what you did, I couldn’t believe it when I heard you had the nerve to climb into the truck with my son, but this—you in the same room with us. I can’t—”
“Please, Mom,” Nate started. “Not now. They’ll make us leave, and Dad needs us.”
“I can’t have this. I won’t have her here. Not after she destroyed what should have been the happiest day of all our lives.”
April started to speak, to apologize for the unforgivable, but Mrs. Wheeler was having none of it.
“You humiliated my Nathaniel, made a mockery of us in front of all our friends.” Trembling with anger, she moved to wag a finger in April’s face. “This, after you went and got yourself pregnant out of wedlock.”
Heart pounding, April shrank back, speechless in the face of the wrath of a woman who had never before spoken a harsh word to her.
But Nate was quick to step in. “Now, come on, Mom. April did have a little help in that department,” he said with one of his most charming smiles. “Let’s not do this. Dad would want all of us to pull together—”
Tears flowing, Mrs. Wheeler turned on her son. “Don’t you stand there grinning like a fool, like your behavior is something to be proud of. And don’t you dare try to tell me what your f-father needs. It was supposed to be his day, too, George’s day to—to share with everyone that he...”
“To share what?” Nate asked her, passing her a clean bandanna from his pocket.
She looked back toward her husband before blotting the fresh tears in her blue eyes. “Your father was—he was going to—the governor’s called on him to...”
After many false starts, many more tears, and much more prompting from Nate, she finally got across that Nate’s father had been asked to fill the remaining term of a US Senator from Texas who’d resigned in disgrace after an embarrassing sex scandal.
“He—we’ve thought about it for weeks,” Mrs. Wheeler said. “About moving to Washington, giving up our retirement to embark in politics, a world neither of us knows a thing about.”
“I’m not so sure about that part,” Nate said. “You know how Dad loves running down to Austin for all those party fund-raisers, how he comes alive whenever he’s helping the bigwigs plan strategy. And heaven only knows how much money he’s donated to political campaigns over the years. Everyone there loves him.”
April shook her head, her thoughts skipping like stones across the crests of troubled waters. What if—was it possible that things weren’t as they assumed?
“Not quite everyone,” she put in, thinking back to her own years in Austin. “There are people who won’t be so pleased. People who might question Mr. Wheeler’s connection to the private prison industry, especially with the proposed federal legislation on the minors crossing the—”
Two steps and Mrs. Wheeler was on her, the loud crack of her slap registering before the sting. April cried out, backpedaling as Nate yelled, “No, Mom, please, don’t do this.”
He grabbed his mother, physically restraining her as the hair-helmeted nurse ordered all three of them out.
“You ruin everything, and now you blame him?” Nate’s mother kept screaming at April as Nate did everything he could to protect her.
While the nurse rushed away, shouting that she was calling security, Mrs. Wheeler sobbed. “He could die now, die, and you still won’t be satisfied. George told me about that—those people you worked with, how they thought he was some monster, responsible for those poor men cooking in their cells.”
“Not Mr. Wheeler, no.” Tears running down her face, April shook her head empathically, not believing for a moment that the man she’d known all her life had been the person responsible for the cost-cutting efforts that had led to last summer’s deaths of four prisoners in a metal building where temperatures had been measured at more than one hundred thirty degrees. Not that law-abiding taxpayers had been inclined to care much about the fate of the convicted, no matter how much noise advocates like Martin Villareal made about the conditions within for-profit prisons, but there had been lawsuits filed and could be more to come. “I defended him, even when my boss said he should’ve been one of the players named in—”
“Enough,” Nate said, hauling his mother toward the exit when she struggled to break free.
“George had his misgivings about your—your priorities,” she said, “but I told him you’ve always been a good girl, the kind of girl we’d want for the mother of our grandchild. But how do we really even know that baby’s my son’s? How can we— Stop pulling on me, Nathaniel!”
Mrs. Wheeler jerked her arm free, making a break for the restroom a few steps down the hallway. Hearing her echoing sobs, April started after him, but Nate put out an arm to block her way.
“Let’s give her a little time to calm herself down,” he suggested.
Adrenaline coursing through her body, April couldn’t control her shaking. “But I have to explain to her—I have to make her understand—”
“No, April. You’ve done enough.”
“I have?” His tone had her shaking her head in bewilderment. “You didn’t see her hit me?”
Nate nodded, the muscle in his jaw twitching as the sobs of weep
ing echoed from the restroom. “I’m sorry, April. So damned sorry, and I hope she didn’t hurt you.”
“She hates me, Nate.”
“She’s—she’s not herself right now. I’ve never in my life seen her like this.”
“I understand she’s upset. But she can’t—the things she said to me.”
He shook his head. “Yeah, but did you really have to mention those idiots who blame my father for things he never did? Did you have to mention it while he’s lying in there, fighting for his life?”
April knew that her timing had been horrendous, but Nate was missing the entire point. “Don’t you understand? This political appointment could mean it wasn’t me the shooter was really gunning for.”
“I know you’re feeling guilty, but don’t try to shift the blame from yourself, April. Not when my mother’s facing—when for all we know, she’ll be widowed before the day is over.”
Her jaw dropping, April jerked back as if she’d been struck again. How could he think for a moment that she’d only been trying to make herself feel better? How could he pretend that he knew her at all? “I thought you were my friend, Nate. Or at least that you could be again, for our child’s sake. Or do you need a DNA test now, too, to prove I didn’t lie to—”
She jerked her head to the left, catching sight of a pair of uniformed guards hurrying their way. But Nate’s eyes were boring into her. Wounding her with the anger burning in them.
“This whole damned thing’s nothing but a train wreck,” he said, with the sobbing from the restroom louder than ever. “I wish to hell I’d never touched you in the first place.”
She stiffened. “And you wonder why I backed out? Why I never trusted for a minute that you could ever love me?”
Turning away, she ran toward the elevator, thinking of nothing but escaping the unbearable pain.
Chapter 5
The words were scarcely out of Nate’s mouth before the wrongness of them sank in. But like bullets that had already left the chamber, there was no calling them back.
I wish to hell I’d never touched you...shouted at the mother of his child.
Other than that first stunned moment, when he’d babbled some pig-stupid comment regarding a boyfriend he’d known full well had been history for the past year, he’d accepted that April wasn’t lying. That the life she carried—his kid—belonged to no one else.
So when she turned and ran from him, he tried to follow her, to tell her. To beg her to forgive the emotional insanity he’d been caught up in in that moment.
“Freeze!” a deep voice shouted. “One step, and I swear I’m gonna Tase you, Cowboy!”
Looking from April’s retreating form to a pair of uniformed security guys who both looked more than ready to make good on their corn-fed blond leader’s threat, he tried to explain, “I have to stop her. She’s in danger.”
“What’d you do? You hit that woman?” His spotty, toad-faced partner nodded toward the ladies’ room door, his lip curling back into an ugly sneer and what looked like some sort of tactical flashlight pointed Nate’s way. “’Cause if there’s any danger, bro, I’m guessing it was you.”
“No!” Nate argued, realizing they’d misread the entire situation. Pointing in the direction April had taken, he said, “My fiancée? Didn’t you see her? Only yesterday, someone tried to kill her. I have to—”
“I said freeze,” roared Corn-fed, his voice closer than Nate would have imagined possible.
Desperate not to lose track of April, Nate tried to make a break for it. But pain shot through his damaged back, telling him he’d moved wrong. And slowing him enough that what he’d taken for a flashlight sent enough amperage coursing through his body to drop him to the floor.
* * *
By the time she took a cab back to the hotel, April was still shaking, so upset over the confrontation that she’d walked straight past two different people who’d stopped to ask her if she needed help.
She didn’t want anybody’s help. She needed to escape this. To jump into her car and drive a thousand miles from the mess she’d made of her life. Except her car was hours away, parked back at the house where she had left it. The house that—because of the trusting, vulnerable brother who came with it—anchored her to a community where everyone would blame her for the hell she’d put the well-liked Wheelers through. Especially once word got out that the bullet that had struck Nate’s father had been meant for her.
In a town the size of Rusted Spur, it was likely that such talk had spread far and wide already. Even if April was no longer completely certain that it was really true. But she couldn’t think about that now, not with her head pounding and her cheek still stinging. Checking the mirror in the bathroom, she was surprised to see no trace of what she’d half expected would prove to be a glowing handprint.
Still, it hurt, that shocking blow, the crack of it echoing in her ears as loudly as the sniper’s gunshots. Yet, upsetting as the slap was, it was Nate’s anger that had drawn blood.
I wish to hell I’d never touched you... Gritting her teeth, she found a phone book and called a rental car company to arrange a ride. It would take an hour, the agent told her, long enough for her to try to pull herself together.
She was nearly finished tossing assorted clothes and toiletries back into her suitcase when she felt the fluttering again, a flurry of what she felt more certain than ever was the movement of her son. Distracted, she went still, a hand over her middle. As the wonder of it blossomed, she thought of Nate’s words from the lobby as the cheery Christmas music struggled to convince them they were happy. There’s way too much at stake to mess this up.
Was she acting like a child now, running from her troubles? Or did she owe it not only to herself but to the tiny life in her womb to try to fight her way through the storm of emotion to some semblance of sanity?
Sitting on the bed’s edge, she took a shaky breath and glanced toward the room’s door. After settling his mother, would he come after her to talk or at least call the room’s telephone to try to reach her? To beg her to forgive him for lashing out as he had? She should apologize as well, she thought, realizing that she could have at least given his mother time to adjust to the distressing sight of her poor husband, lying there with all those tubes and bandages and wires, before blurting something that seemed to denigrate the man.
Awful as April’s timing had been, she couldn’t yet stop thinking that her idea had had merit. She kept up with her former coworkers well enough to know how troubled many were about a movement for the government to privatize the care of unaccompanied minors who’d crossed the country’s southern border. They’d be horrified to learn that someone with George Wheeler’s prison industry connections could be put into the position to funnel the warehousing of children to his former cronies.
Horrified enough for one of them to end Wheeler’s future in politics with a well-timed bullet? Though April couldn’t imagine anyone she knew resorting to murder, every movement had its extremists, and extremism attracted crazies. Could Dennis Cobb have been sent by one such unbalanced individual?
She kept running it through her mind, but it was almost impossible to focus with the telephone sitting there, so stubbornly silent that her nerves frayed. Should she try calling Nate instead to extend an olive branch by checking on his mother? Or would doing so only throw more fuel on the flames?
When she heard a rattle from the room’s door, April was so relieved she leaped to her feet as it began to open. “I’m so sorry, Nate. I’m sorry,” she cried.
But her apology turned into a panicked scream, for the tall man bearing down on her wasn’t Nate at all.
* * *
In a tiny room attached to the office of hospital security, Nate sat rubbing at his bruised elbow, frowning at the police officer who’d just come back in. “Are we done here? I need to head upstairs and check on my mother.” But Nate’s real concern was April. Was she safe back in their hotel room, or off somewhere where Dennis Cobb might find her? Or may
be it wouldn’t be Cobb at all but a different paid assassin sent by whatever head case was behind this. Nate would never be able to live with himself if his cruel words got her hurt—or worse.
An older cop who smelled of cigarettes and the minty gum that he was chewing in an effort to disguise it pushed a sheet of paper toward him. “Here’s what we worked out. In light of this being an emotional time for your family, the hospital brass wants you to sign this, saying you won’t sue their pants off for their security guys getting a ‘little overzealous’—that was the administrator’s spin on it, not mine. Then, they’ll let you back in with your father, as long as there are no more disturbances upstairs.”
“So, no charges, then?” Nate asked, uncapping the pen left on the small table.
“No charges,” the cop told him, “even if I think you ought to get a free chance at leaving those two knuckleheads twitching on the floor.”
Pleasant as the thought was, Nate signed off on the agreement without bothering to read it. For a moment, he considered asking the officer to help him with the search for April but quickly discarded the idea, figuring it would take far too long to explain. He had wasted too much time already, trapped in this airless room.
“I’ve got something for you here, too,” the officer remembered, pulling out a phone Nate recognized as his and handing it over. “One of the guards picked this up for you. You’re lucky the shock didn’t fry it, or it didn’t break when you hit the floor.”
“Funny,” Nate said as he took it, “I’m not feeling all that lucky today.”
Once he was free to go, Nate hurried out, not even taking the time to glare at the guard with the itchy stun gun finger. He had to head next door fast, to bring April back where she belonged. His mother, who’d been mortified by her own behavior, had tearfully sworn she would beg April’s forgiveness the moment he brought her back. He told himself they’d sort it all out, as soon as he could find her.
He hurried through the lobby, his throat tightening as he caught the sound of a female singer belting out “All I Want for Christmas Is You” over the speakers. The moment he reached the exit, he ran for his truck, ignoring the pain of every old injury reawakened by the jolting his body had taken. As if to compound his discomfort, snow flurries were coming down, too, falling from low, gray clouds.
Cowboy Christmas Rescue Page 17
