Knowing that the sum total of his work wasn’t anywhere near enough to bring charges against the people involved in the trafficking ring, much less garner a conviction, was just one more weight of failure.
“Krager has resurfaced outside of Prague.”
Ryan flinched. He didn’t even want to hear the name of the elusive man who’d headed the ring. “Not my problem.”
“You knew him better than anyone.”
He glared at Coleman. “And look how far that got us. For every auction house that closes down, three more up in its place.” Not to mention the casualties they’d racked up in the process. The lives that had been lost.
He walked around Cole, heading toward the fenced corrals situated near the barn. J.D. was still laid up with her shoulder and Ryan had promised her new fiancé, Jake, that he’d get the horses exercised before J.D. got it into her head that she felt good enough to do it herself.
Which, knowing J.D., was pretty likely.
“I want you to come back to the agency,” Cole’s voice followed him.
Ryan shook his head. He snatched the halter and lead off a fence post where he’d left it earlier and opened the corral gate enough to get inside. He gave a sharp whistle and three of the five horses he’d let out earlier came trotting over. “No.”
“You belong there.”
He gave Cole an incredulous look. “You must be desperate for agents.”
“I don’t want you just as an agent,” Cole returned evenly. “I want to put you in charge of our international cases.”
Ryan took his time sliding the halter over one of the horse’s heads. He’d chosen Bonneville, one of J.D.’s more recalcitrant boarders, but the ornery buckskin was surprisingly docile for once. “No.” He clipped the lead rope in place.
“It’d be a similar position to your uncle’s,” Cole continued, as if Ryan hadn’t spoken. “Only instead of domestic cases they’d be international.”
“Is that supposed to be tempting?” He pushed open the gate again, leading the horse out, then circling him around again so he could reach the gate to close it. “You handle international.” And oversaw everything else.
“Maybe I’m thinking about retiring.”
Ryan snorted. Coleman had been running the agency for so long he was synonymous with it. He’d die running the place. “Right.” He tied off the horse and went back into the barn. Cole was still standing there waiting when he came out again with the blanket and saddle.
“I need people like you,” Cole continued.
Ryan settled the blanket on Bonneville’s back, staring blindly at the soft red-and-black check. “I walked out on a case,” he said needlessly, since no one knew that better than his boss. More than that, though, Ryan had walked out on his life.
If he went back, he was pretty sure whatever was left of his humanity would die. And then he’d have no life at all.
Bonneville’s head craned around, his teeth snapping.
“Cut it out,” he snapped back, and the horse heaved out a breath, shifting. He shook his head, his black mane swishing. But the beast didn’t attempt another nip and Ryan reached for the saddle, sliding it on Bonneville’s back.
“Looks like a horse who doesn’t want to be bugged.”
Ryan smiled grimly, deftly working the straps and pulling down the stirrup that had been folded up. “Maybe Bonneville and I have more in common than I thought,” he said pointedly. “Go back to Connecticut, Cole,” he advised. He picked up the bridle and the metal bit jangled softly as he carefully directed it toward the horse. But Bonneville let him slip the bit between his teeth without complaint. “I’m done.”
“Even though you can do something about Krager and people like him.”
Ryan gathered the reins in his hand and swung up in the saddle. “Krager’s untouchable.” He’d had to face that unpalatable truth more than once. “He buys his protection from all the right people and he keeps his head down better than anyone I’ve ever seen.”
“Scum like that are never untouchable.”
“Then find someone who believes that and put him on the case.” He clucked softly and Bonneville bolted past Cole.
With the cold air blasting over Ryan’s face, he let the horse run as far and as fast as he wanted, and when they finally returned to J.D.’s place, a light snow had begun to fall.
And Cole was gone.
He unsaddled the horse, turned him into his stall in the barn and was brushing him down when J.D. came to find him. “You got a message,” she told him.
He had no trouble imagining what Cole might have said in it.
“From Dr. Keegan.”
He stopped brushing and looked over at his cousin. Confusion warred with curiosity in her green eyes. “What did she want?”
“Don’t know. She just asked that you call her.” J.D. handed over a scrap of paper. “There’s the number.”
He glanced at the number on the paper and slid it into his pocket, though he could have just as easily thrown it away. Once he saw a number, he never forgot it.
“So…” J.D. rubbed her chin with the knitted shawl she had wrapped around her shoulders. “I’m pretty sure you’re not pregnant, so why is my O.B. calling you?”
He lifted his eyebrow. The rest of the family would know soon enough about Chloe, if they weren’t already whispering about it behind his back. “Why do you think?”
She looked slightly amused. “Have anything to do with the two of you kissing in the hospital parking lot last night?”
He grimaced. Even in an empty parking lot, there was no privacy in this town. “Don’t you have a fiancé to bug?”
Her faint smile widened and, evidently satisfied at the reaction she’d gotten out of him, she strolled from the barn.
The second she was out of sight, Ryan went into the tack room, yanked up the receiver on the old-fashioned rotary-style phone that hung on the wall there and dialed the number Mallory had left.
She answered on the second ring. “Ryan?”
“What’s wrong?” Her voice sounded muffled. “Are you all right?”
She made a soft sound. “I’m not even going to wonder how you know something’s wrong.”
His grip tightened on the hard plastic receiver. “What is it?”
“I wasn’t even sure if I should call you, but—”
“Mallory.”
“Right.” She sounded unaccountably rattled. “It’s Chloe, actually. She had an accident on the playground. We’re in the emergency room and—”
The world stopped.
“I’m on my way.” He barely heard her start to speak again when he dropped the phone in its cradle.
Less than a minute later, he was in his truck aiming toward town and was soon pulling to a stop near the emergency room entrance.
Mallory was standing at the desk, her waving hair falling over her cheek as she focused on the papers she was completing. The silvery-gray suit she wore was perfectly tailored and only hinted at the curves beneath, and he had the out-of-place realization that he’d never seen her dressed so formally.
Obviously the sound of the automatic doors at his entrance alerted her and she looked over her shoulder.
He wasn’t sure which was redder—her nose or her eyes—and the core inside him that had gone tight and stayed tight from the second he’d heard her voice on the phone went even tighter.
He crossed to her side, taking her shoulders, trying to read her face before she could deliver whatever awful news she had. “Is she alive?”
Alarm flashed through her eyes. Her forehead knitted. “God, Ryan. Yes. She only has a fracture. Not that a fracture is only an only.” She pressed her lips together as if to stop the words gurgling out of her.
His knees nearly went out from beneath him and only when he saw the wrinkles in the smooth fabric of her suit did he realize just how deeply his fingers were digging into her shoulders. He deliberately loosened his grip. “What the hell happened? What did Chloe break?”
&nbs
p; She swallowed. “Her arm. The, um, the kids were outside for lunch recess and she fell off the—” she gestured with her hand and seemed to realize she was still holding the pen at the same time “—the bar things.”
“Monkey bars,” another voice provided beside them.
Ryan looked at the young nurse. She had long, honey-blond hair and brown eyes that were the same color as her mother’s.
His mother’s.
She was his baby sister. She’d been a laughingly scattered college student when he’d left Weaver. Now, she was a very beautiful, very composed young woman. “Courtney.”
“Ryan.” Her smile was painfully cool and he knew he’d earned it because, in the months he’d been back in Weaver, he’d gone out of his way to avoid her. Even more than being around his folks, his sister’s company was an edge that was that much sharper.
It was young women just like his sister who’d been the most prized on the auction block. A block he should have been able to crumble. But he hadn’t. And a girl who’d needed him just as much as Courtney ever had, had died as a result of that failure.
Courtney didn’t look at him now as she picked up the clipboard holding the sheaf of papers that Mallory was in the process of completing. “You can finish these back there, Dr. Keegan,” she offered. “They’ll be bringing Chloe back from radiology any minute.”
“Thanks, Courtney.” Mallory looked back at Ryan again. “Do…do you want to come with me?”
His sister’s face was full of questions about what was going on between him and Mallory, but she didn’t voice a single one. And if she knew about him kissing Mallory the way that J.D. had known—which she probably did, considering the effective grapevine—he was glad she didn’t feel compelled to comment.
She simply thumped the button on the wall that automatically opened the double doors that closed off the waiting room from the action, and preceded them through. Her white shoes squeaked softly on the tile floor as she pushed through yet another door and disappeared from sight.
Mallory headed for the first bed that was only partially shielded by the curtain hanging from the ceiling track. She moved a puffy purple coat and an equally purple backpack from one of the molded-plastic chairs situated near the bed and set them on the floor, then gestured to the seat. “Might as well get comfortable if you’re going to stay.”
“If?”
“I wasn’t sure what you’d want to do.” She didn’t look at him. Nor did she take the second empty chair, or the round, rolling metal stool, but remained standing next to the high counter alongside the bed. “After what happened last night, I mean.”
“After I kissed you, you mean,” he corrected bluntly.
Her pale cheeks flushed. “And after what you said.”
He hadn’t said a word on the short drive to her rented house after they’d left the hospital. But then, neither had she.
Instead, she’d bolted from the truck when his wheels had barely stopped turning in front of her house, and ran up the front walk as if she couldn’t wait to get away from him.
“Yet you called me now, anyway.”
Her lips parted softly, but it was a moment before any words emerged. “You had a right to know.” Then she set the clipboard on the counter that was complete with a small stainless sink and bent her attention over the forms again.
But as he watched, she didn’t seem to do anything but click at the end of the ballpoint pen.
He ignored the chair and slid the pen out of her restless grip and tossed it onto the counter. Her eyes flew up to his.
“When did you get here?”
“Almost an hour ago.” She grimaced. “She was already here, I’m afraid. The ambulance brought her from school when they didn’t reach me directly.”
“You were at your office?”
“I was with a patient.” Her wan face tightened. “Nina didn’t give me the message until after Mrs. Baker left.”
“And Nina is…?”
“Nina VanSlyke. The office manager who makes every day spent with her a delight.” She visibly gathered herself. “When I left there, she was in the process of canceling the rest of my appointments for the day. She wasn’t particularly happy about it.”
From what he could tell, Nina sounded like a bitch. “Finish telling me what happened. Chloe was playing on the monkey bars, and…?”
Mallory was wearing a thin, off-white blouse that peeked above the narrow V of her fastened jacket and he could see the fine shimmer of her pulse beating at the base of her throat against the unadorned neckline. He had a fleeting thought of a hummingbird in flight.
“She was hanging by her arms and doing some sort of flip to the ground.” Her voice was shaking. “You know how kids do.”
He didn’t, but wasn’t going to stop her.
“Anyway—” she brushed her hair behind her ear “—she landed badly and…and here we are.” Her smile was weak and devoid of humor and her gaze suddenly shifted away, but not before he saw the glisten of fresh tears. She dashed her fingers over her cheeks. “Sorry,” she mumbled. “I’m not very good with this sort of thing.”
He peeled off his jacket and dumped it on the chair. “You handle medical emergencies pretty often.”
“Not ones concerning the people I love.” She snatched a tissue out of the box on top of the counter, blew her nose and then washed her hands.
She didn’t pick up the pen again, or even look at the paperwork, but paced over to the door that Courtney had gone through and pushed it open. She looked up and down the corridor there and paced back again, the door swinging slowly shut behind her.
The more she paced, the more his own clawing need to do so seemed to lessen. “Why do they send the kids outside for recess when it’s snowing?”
She’d folded her arms across her chest, but even from where he stood, he could see how white her knuckles were.
“I think they try not to keep them inside unless it’s really inclement weather. What’s a few snowflakes to a child?”
“Aren’t there playground monitors or teachers or somebody to keep the kids from doing anything dangerous?”
“Yes.” She was gnawing at her lower lip. “But the kids aren’t supposed to be jumping off the playground equipment like that, anyway. Which Chloe was well aware of. They had the same rule at her school in New York. One of the rules that she broke pretty frequently, I’m afraid.”
He was well aware of the accidents that could happen on a playground, and had broken more than a few school rules when he was a kid, too, though his infractions had generally been more along the line of smoking or ditching classes.
Something told him, however, that Mallory had been one of those students who’d always followed the straight and narrow.
“I thought she’d be done doing that sort of thing once we came here, though.” She paced across the silent emergency room floor again. When she got to the end, she pulled up her cuff to look at the slender black watch on her wrist, then turned on her heel and paced back again. “I don’t know what’s taking them so long.”
“It’s definitely broken?”
“Definitely.” She paled all over again. “It’s closed—no broken skin—but…” She broke off, looking more than a little ill.
“She’ll have a cast?”
“Probably. But hopefully they’ll just be able to set it and she won’t need surgery.” She folded her arms again, looking as if she was barely managing not to fly apart. “I’m not good at this,” she whispered again.
She was killing him.
He went over to her and pulled her into his arms. She resisted for a moment but, after a shuddering breath, almost seemed to collapse into him. The top of her head rested beneath his chin and he gathered her even closer.
He tried not to notice that amid the sterile, antiseptic hospital smell surrounding them, her hair smelled like fresh lilacs and that the silky soft suit she wore skimmed over curves that fit painfully well against him.
“Nobody likes hospita
ls,” he said gruffly.
Mallory laughed brokenly. “Not like this,” she agreed.
She still felt shaky and, against her, Ryan’s chest felt wonderfully steady. His arms around her wonderfully strong. He smelled of hay and leather and a vague tinge of tobacco, and even though she knew she shouldn’t let herself lean on him in any way—much less emotionally—she couldn’t make herself move away.
Her eyes closed and she let out a breath.
She hadn’t lied when she’d told him why she’d phoned him. But she hadn’t told the entire truth, either.
That her immediate reaction had been to call for him even before she’d qualified his right—as Chloe’s father—to know what had happened.
“Did you call your grandmother?”
Once again, Ryan seemed to be eerily attuned to her thought processes. She was afraid she was beginning to get used to it. “Yes. It’s better that she not come to the hospital, though. She had a bad bout with the flu last year and has been susceptible to viruses since.” It was the closest she’d gotten to losing her precious grandmother and it wasn’t anything she wanted to repeat.
“No place better than a hospital to pick up a germ. Why’d you decide to be a doctor?”
“I was good in maths and sciences.” His hand swept slowly down her spine, then back up again and she felt herself sinking even more into his chest. “My mother died of breast cancer when I was fifteen,” she found herself admitting without forethought.
“That’s right.” His voice rumbled through his chest against her ear. “I remember Cassie mentioning that.”
At the reminder of her sister, Mallory unearthed some willpower from some reserve she didn’t even know she possessed, and straightened away from Ryan.
His arms immediately fell away.
He clearly had no problems letting go.
She brushed back her hair as well as the unwelcome observation.
“What was she like?”
The question was unexpected. “My mother? She was…hardworking.” Overworked. “Independent.” Lonely.
Mallory shut off the mental editing that had only come into play once she’d been old enough to recognize the other side of the coin that had been her mother’s life. And recognize, too, the similarity to her own life. “She left Ireland against Gram’s wishes when she was a college student. They didn’t speak for years.”
A Weaver Holiday Homecoming Page 7
