Good Guy Heroes Boxed Set

by Julie Ortolon

  With a patient smile, her mother brushed the hair from Kate’s face. “The frailty of our children isn’t an easy thing for a body to accept. For some, it’s easier not to see. But I think Anne realized what she’d done when she got here.”

  The phrase “too little, too late” sprang to Kate’s tongue, but she swallowed it down. Lashing out at Anne Bradshaw wouldn’t solve anything, no matter how badly she needed to lash out at something or someone.

  Her mother and Linda settled in the chairs on the other side of Dylan’s bed, and her father perched on the window seat. Kate gave her mother a list of things she’d need: some juice and animal crackers for Dylan, a few storybooks, paper and a fresh box of crayons. Linda agreed to drive back out to the lake and get Kate a change of clothes, her makeup, and the magazine off her nightstand. At the moment, Kate doubted she could concentrate enough to read, but she also knew how slowly the hours passed while watching Dylan sleep.

  After another gentle hug from her mother and a gruff one from her father, Kate watched her parents leave.

  “Oh, Kate,” Linda said as they settled back down to either side of Dylan’s bed. “I feel so awful.”

  “What on earth for?” Kate frowned. “This wasn’t your fault.”

  “No, but I see now that I never took Dylan’s condition seriously enough.”

  “Until you’ve lived through it, it’s hard to believe something like this can happen so quickly.” Kate gave in to the need to take Dylan’s hand in hers. Whether from the medicine or exhaustion, he lay completely still except for the rapid rise and fall of his diaphragm. His air passages had constricted to the point where he had to use his stomach muscles to pull every breath into his lungs. The sound of the effort tore her apart.

  She remembered the time, years ago, when a nurse had told her to breathe through a straw for ten minutes so she’d better understand how Dylan felt during an attack. She barely lasted the full time, had felt panicked and helpless by the end. Yet Dylan had been like that for hours, and faced hours more.

  “I swear,” Linda said, leaning forward, “I’ll never give you grief for being overprotective again.”

  Kate managed a smile at her friend’s earnest expression. “No, but I can see I might be the one giving you grief instead.”

  “Maybe so.” They both smiled in a moment of perfect understanding and support.

  “What the hell is going on here?” a voice demanded from the doorway.

  All warmth drained from Kate’s face as she turned to face her ex-husband. “Well, hello, Edward. So good of you to join us.”

  He flushed a bit when he saw Linda. After a quick glance toward the bed, he stepped toward Kate and lowered his voice. “My mother just called, all upset about Dylan being sick and her not being able to reach you. Just where the hell were you at the crack of dawn?”

  “Where was I?” She stared at him in disbelief. How like Edward to instantly blame anyone but himself. “I should think the question is, where the hell were you?”

  “Home, where I should have been,” he tossed back.

  “Except you were there without Dylan.”

  “I had a dinner meeting come up. It ran longer that I expected, so I knew Dylan would already be asleep. I saw no reason to wake him just so I could move him from one bed to another.”

  “You were supposed to be spending the weekend with your son, not dumping him on your parents so you could have dinner with a client. But, since you did, I can’t believe you forgot to unpack his nebulizer.”

  “I didn’t realize I’d be leaving him all night.”

  “That’s no excuse, Edward!” She raked her hands through her hair in an effort to control her temper. “Do you realize your son could have died because of your negligence?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Look at him.” She pointed toward the bed. “Take a good hard look at what you’ve done to our son.”

  For the first time, he turned his full attention to the bed. His eyes widened a fraction at the sight of Dylan lying there with an oxygen tube anchored to his face and an IV snaking upward from his arm. Dylan’s face appeared nearly as white as the hospital sheets.

  “I don’t understand.” Confusion filled Edward’s eyes. “He was fine when I left him.”

  “Somehow I doubt that,” Kate snapped. “An attack this bad has warning signs. As usual, you were too preoccupied with yourself to pay attention.” To her satisfaction, she saw a glimmer of understanding register on Edward’s face.

  “If y’all will excuse me,” Linda said, rising, “I’ll be on my way.” She caught Kate’s eye and nodded toward the bed. Dylan’s eyes had fluttered open. Linda came around the bed and squeezed Kate’s hand. “I’ll go get your things, then be back as soon as I can.”

  “Thank you,” Kate nodded. When Linda had gone, she turned and found Edward still studying his son.

  “Hey, Dill-man, you’re going to be okay, right?” Edward asked, concern softening his voice.

  Dylan managed a weak nod.

  Kate bent forward and kissed Dylan’s brow. “You rest here a minute, sweetie. Your father and I need to talk, but I’ll be right back. I promise.”

  His frightened look brought the tightness back to her chest. Still, she had things to say to Edward that were best said out of Dylan’s hearing range. Without a word, she walked through the door, knowing Edward would follow.

  “Mike?” She came up short the minute she passed into the bright hallway.

  Mike came instantly to his feet. “How’s Dylan?”

  “Better. Though not out of the woods yet.” She shook her head. “What are you doing here?”

  “You rode in with me, remember?” He offered her a half-teasing smile.

  “Yes, but—” She glanced over her shoulder and saw Edward’s gaze dart from Mike to the yellow sundress she’d worn yesterday, then up to her lack of makeup and disheveled curls. The two men locked gazes and both of them straightened. Edward’s stance turned wary, Mike’s subtly aggressive. She immediately rejected any thought of introducing them.

  “It’s thoughtful of you to wait, but you really didn’t need to,” she said to Mike.

  “Of course I did.” He turned his attention back to her and the intimacy of his smile made her blush. “You rode in with me, you’ll ride home with me.”

  Her blush grew warmer. “Mike, I’ll be here overnight.”

  Worry flashed across his face. “He’s that bad, then?”

  “They want to keep him on the IV and oxygen for a while. We’ll know better tomorrow when he’ll get to go home.” She glanced again at Edward, wondering how she’d get the privacy she needed.

  “I see,” Mike said, and to her surprise, he seemed to understand her distress. He nodded toward the door. “Maybe I could, you know, wait for you… inside.”

  “Yes, please,” she answered gratefully. “And Mike,” she added as he moved past her, “I don’t know how to thank you.” Tears flooded her eyes. “If you hadn’t—”

  “We’ll talk later.” He gave her arm a casual squeeze before turning away.

  Once inside the darkened room, Mike closed the door enough to block out most of the sounds in the hall, yet still let some light through. Beyond the turmoil of guilt and relief he felt over his broken promise, one thought rang through: So that was Dylan’s father. The fool who’d lost Kate. White-collar wimp. He couldn’t see why someone as vibrant and lively as Kate had married a stuffed shirt like that in the first place. Unless he’d appealed to her need to nurture and champion the underdog. In which case, the man should have thanked his lucky stars and treated her like a goddess. Idiot.

  “Mom?” a weak voice called from the bed.

  “No.” He stepped around the corner of the bathroom so Dylan could see him. “It’s me, Mike.”

  “Oh.” Dylan slumped back into his pillow.

  God, the kid looked pale, and every breath sounded like a hard-won gasp. He moved closer to the bed. “Can I get you anything?”
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  The boy just closed his eyes, as if slipping into sleep. “They’re going to… fight about me… aren’t they?”

  Mike shifted uneasily, not sure what to say. He knew how to talk to boys about Power Rangers and spaceships, or how he’d helped make the latest action-adventure movie. But how the hell was he supposed to answer a question like that?

  Looking at the boy lying in the bed, he remembered Dylan was roughly the same age as his youngest nephew, even if Dylan was much smaller. The thought of how he’d feel if this was one of his sisters’ kids lying there reached inside his chest and squeezed tight.

  “Well, yeah,” Mike said, “it did look like they were about to light into each other, but I don’t know that they were going to fight about you.”

  He watched the boy struggle to draw enough breath to talk. “They always fight… about me.” Another hard breath. “Or Dad… working… too much.”

  “I see.” Mike took a seat in the chair by the bed. From out in the hall, he heard a masculine voice rise in anger, then drop quickly to a tightly controlled rumble. Kate’s voice fired back.

  “So,” Mike said, loud enough to cover up the sounds from the hall. “I hear they’re going to keep you here a while, eh, kid?”

  “I want… to go home.” Though Dylan’s eyes remained closed, Mike saw tears wet the lashes.

  “What, and miss out on all this great attention?” The voices in the hall rose and fell. The words were muffled but the fury came through all too clear. “Hey, you play your cards right, you could have these nurses eating out of your hand.”

  Dylan just shrugged, too weak or disinterested to respond. Mike watched him, mentally searching for a way to bridge the awkwardness between them.

  “Hey, you like movies?” he asked.

  Dylan opened his eyes enough to give him a wary look.

  Mike leaned forward to brace his forearms on his thighs. “How would you like to see one being made?”

  The boy’s eyes widened a bit but remained guarded. “Maybe.”

  “Oh, well, if you’re not interested…” Mike sat back.

  “I didn’t… say that.”

  “Then you are interested?”

  Dylan frowned, refusing to utter a word.

  “I mean, because if you are, I could get passes for you and your mom to come watch one of the location shoots. They’re filming a really big stunt next Sunday.”

  “What kind… of stunt?”

  “A man on horseback is going to jump from a train into a river.”

  Dylan closed his eyes. “That doesn’t… sound so… big.”

  “It would if you were the guy on the back of that horse. So, you wanna go?” He hid a smile as the boy tried not to give away his interest.

  “I guess,” Dylan finally admitted. “If Mom… says okay.”

  “Hey, no sweat. You just work on getting well. I’ll handle your mom.”

  ***

  KATE PRESSED HER fingertips to her temples to ease the pounding in her head. “I am not going to argue with you all day about fault, Edward. Dylan being in the hospital isn’t the only issue here. You dumped him on your mother when this was supposed to be his weekend with you.”

  “I told you, an important dinner meeting came up.”

  “Something important always comes up!”

  “You don’t understand. You never understand.” His eyes filled with condemnation. “If I land this client, the portfolio is worth millions. You want me to brush that off to spend one evening with Dylan?”

  “You’re right. I don’t know what I was thinking.” She lifted her hands in agitation. “Of course you should break a promise to your son, let him down for the thousandth time, in order to land a new client. After all, as long as you have money, who needs anything else?”

  He gave her a condescending smirk. “I find it ironic the way you always harp on me about working too much, when you’re just as bad. When we were married, you were so wrapped up in that mindless drivel of a column, the house could have fallen down and you wouldn’t have noticed.”

  “Mindless drivel of a column?” She straightened, waiting for her Irish temper to ignite. She’d taken an increasing level of insults from him over the years, for Dylan’s sake, but she’d never taken them without standing up and fighting back. To her surprise, the temper didn’t come.

  Because what he thought, what he said, no longer mattered. He’d stopped mattering to her a long time ago, but suddenly, he no longer mattered for Dylan’s sake either. Her son didn’t need this in his life.

  A strange calm settled over her. “You know what? I give up. You win, Edward.” She shrugged, almost happily. “You win.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” His frown turned suspicious.

  “It means I’ll stop bothering you. I’m tired of putting Dylan through hell in hopes that someday you’ll realize you have a wonderful, bright son who is a sheer joy to be around. So, no more calling to remind you when it’s your weekend to take him. No more calling you, period. From now on, whether or not you have a relationship with Dylan is up to you. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to see how my son is resting.” She turned toward the door.

  “Kate, wait a second.”

  “No, Edward. I’m through waiting. The ball’s in your court. You can either serve or throw in the towel. Frankly, at this point, I don’t even care.”

  She stepped into the darkened room and stopped for a moment to close her eyes and compose herself. Every encounter with Edward left her utterly drained.

  An odd sound caught her ears, like someone imitating a space-age laser being fired. She stepped around the corner and found Mike sitting beside her son’s bed.

  “And then… what happened?” Dylan asked, so enthralled with Mike’s story, he hadn’t even heard her come in.

  She watched in fascination as Mike, who was moving his hand like a spaceship over the bed, explained how some special effect had fallen flat, and what he had done to fix it.

  Awe washed over Dylan’s face, sending a jolt of alarm through her. She could easily see her son, who loved computer games, falling victim to a case of hero worship over a special effects master. How would he feel, though, when his new hero had no time to spare for a seven-year-old kid?

  Sensing her presence at last, Dylan turned to her. “Hi, Mom.”

  “Hi, yourself.” She forced a smile as she stepped closer.

  “Mike says… we can come watch… him make a movie.”

  “Oh, he did, did he?” Frowning as much at the idea as the weedy sound of her son’s voice, she tucked the sheets around him.

  “Well, it won’t actually be me working on the set,” Mike clarified. “I just thought you and Dylan might enjoy watching the crew film one of the horseback-riding stunts.”

  “Can we, Mom?” Dylan begged. “Can we?”

  She raised her gaze from her son to the man who sat at his side. Those clear blue eyes caught and held hers as a hopeful smile spread slowly over his face.

  “Come on, Kate,” Mike coaxed. “I promised the boy I’d talk you into it, if he promised to get well.”

  Promises. The word tore Kate in conflicting directions. Mike had already broken one promise. Yet if he hadn’t, her son would likely be dead.

  Shades of grey, she realized. There was no black and white in this situation. Only shades of grey.

  “Please, Mom?” Dylan begged, his face earnest.

  Her shoulders slumped in defeat even as she made herself a promise of her own: To minimize contact between Dylan and Mike before somebody got hurt. “All right, we’ll go.”

  “See, kid?” Mike winked at Dylan. “Like I told you, no sweat.”

  Chapter 20

  *

  ONE WEEK LATER, Kate found herself driving down the winding Hill Country roads known as Devil’s Backbone and Purgatory on her way to Hope, Texas. True to his word, Mike had gotten them passes, and her excitement rose at the thought of seeing him again. They’d barely done more than talk on the phone for t
he past week since Jim’s crew had wrapped up the remodeling project in the kitchen.

  While Mike had been eager for her to start furnishing the living and dining rooms, demands from the movie had taken up an increasing amount of his time, forcing him to cancel several appointments. Instead of getting irritated, she took full advantage of the time for herself.

  Now that she’d decided to at least investigate syndicating her column, she spent every minute of Dylan’s school day online, researching and emailing with other writers. Their generosity and encouragement overwhelmed her. She sailed through her days, eager to put their advice to use.

  Then tossed and turned through each night, gripped with fear.

  What if all she did was prove Edward right? Maybe Dear Cupid was mindless drivel.

  A part of her couldn’t believe how often that thought popped into her head. She hated it. Hated even more that she let it hold her back. The fear nagged at her even now as she steered the car through a series of turns. Cresting a rise, she caught her breath at the stunning views of rolling hills, then dipped back into a wide valley where deer and cattle grazed in pastures dotted by sprawling oak trees.

  “Mom?” Dylan asked from the backseat, breaking into her thoughts. “Are we really gonna see a horse jump out of a train into a river?”

  “That’s what Mike says,” she answered absently as she checked the directions Mike had emailed.

  “Yeah, but do you think the horse is really gonna do it?”

  She glanced at her son in the rearview mirror and noticed the disbelieving smirk that hovered at the corners of his mouth. No one would ever guess from looking at him now that he’d been in the hospital a mere week ago. They’d discharged him late Monday, and by Wednesday he’d already returned to school. “Why do you keep asking that?”

  “I don’t know.” He shrugged, trying to look bored, except she could see the longing that lurked in the back of his eyes. “People promise kids neat stuff all the time. But when you get there, it’s just some dorky thing to keep you busy while they go do something else.”

  People meaning his father , she assumed. “Well, I don’t think Mike’s the type to intentionally lie, but I’m with you. I say we reserve judgment till we get there, okay?”