by Ava Miles
“Cora,” Nancy said softly. “I’d like you to meet Chase. He works for Evan Michaels and heard about your troubles. He wants to help you guys.”
The woman finally turned her head, and Chase noted she hadn’t had a shower yet. There was a streak of ash in her brown hair and another across her neck. He gulped. His mother had looked like that after wading into the wreckage to see if anything was recoverable.
“Hello, Cora,” Chase said. “I’m sorry I’m not more presentable, but I had a small accident myself. Nothing like what you and your family have been through. What is your son’s name, and how is he?”
Chase didn’t see any burns, but clearly things were serious if he was in the hospital.
“I’ll just leave you,” Nancy said quietly and stepped out before Chase could ask her to stay.
“His name is Alfie,” Cora said, tears filling her red-rimmed eyes. “He got smoke inhalation. I couldn’t get to him fast enough. The fire…”
“Spreads so fast,” he said, remembering how it had seemed to flash through their house and then the outbuildings with the speed of wild mustangs. “I’m sorry for your loss. I saw the fire yesterday, and I wanted to help you and your family recover. I know it’s an incredibly difficult time.”
The boy made a sound when his mother put her face in her hands and started to sob. Chase sat there in his wheelchair, feeling helpless.
“Hi, Alfie,” he decided to say to the boy. “Your mom is okay. She’s just sad about your house. I’ll bet you are too, huh?”
There was the slightest of a nod from Alfie, and Chase heard Cora sniff repeatedly, trying to pull herself together.
“I was a little older than you when my house burned down,” he found himself saying. “We’re going to make sure you’re okay. You’re going to have another beautiful house, and all your toys and then some will be returned to you. Okay?”
Tears were pouring down Cora’s face, and Chase found his throat growing thick.
“Thank you,” she whispered and reached for his hand, squeezing it like he was a lifeline.
He understood. How different might his life had been if someone had been his family’s lifeline? Would his dad have had the will to rebuild if he’d had the necessary funds? Well, they’d never know.
“Can you tell me how to get something to you? I’m going to call my financial manager now and have him send you a check to get you up and going.”
He didn’t know about their personal circumstances or whether her husband would accept it, but he was going to give them a million dollars, he decided. That should be enough. He would ask Nancy to give him their temporary address if they had one. Either that or he’d have the check sent to the hospital.
“You’re…you’re…”
He waited while she let out another sob. “It will be fine,” he said. “I’m happy to help, Cora. Truly.”
“I’ll…tell…tell…Roger,” she said, fiddling with her pocket and pulling out a tissue to wipe her runny nose. “He’s off doing… God, there are so many people to meet with. Things to see to. It’s…”
“I know,” he said when she couldn’t finish the sentence. “The next few months are going to be hard, but you’re going to get through this. You have support, Cora, you and Roger. You just focus on your little boy.”
Her face crumbled again. “We’re lucky, really. Alfie is going to be okay. It could have been so much worse.”
He gripped her hand, not wanting to utter any pathetic clichés. He’d said what he wanted to say. That was all he could offer beyond helping financially. The rest would be up to them.
When Nancy came back for him, Cora let go of Alfie’s hand—a monumental move, Chase knew—and turned to face him. She leaned in and gently kissed him on the cheek. He found his throat growing tight again.
“Mister, I don’t know how we got so lucky to have you as our guardian angel, but I’m really grateful. You can’t know how much. I’ll have Roger come to your room when he gets back to say thank you.”
Chase didn’t want to see the man, didn’t want him to have to suffer any of the indignities that had broken his own father. “No need. Roger has plenty to do right now, and so do you. Plus, I’ll be out of the hospital soon and focused on my own recovery. You don’t have to say thank you beyond what we’ve said today, Cora. And I’m not your guardian angel. I’m just someone who understands what you’re going through and is in a position to help. My privacy is important to me, though, so please don’t tell anyone. Make up a story that works for you.”
She wiped her nose again and nodded. “Of course. Thank you, Chase.”
He took one last look at the boy. “Hang in there, Alfie. You’re lucky to have a mom who loves you so much. All right, Nancy. Let’s go.”
Turning him around, his nurse wheeled him back to his room and helped him into his infernal hospital bed, smiling the whole time. Once she’d fluffed the pillows behind his back and under his casts, he settled back with a sigh.
“Would you be able to dial this number for me?” he asked, frustrated that the phone was out of reach. “I want to arrange things for Cora and her family.”
“This is so kind of you,” Nancy said, her hand on her heart. “It’s a miracle.”
He’d had enough of all this miracle and guardian angel nonsense. “No, it’s just one person helping a family who needs it right now.”
Taking the receiver she gave him, he suffered through his wealth manager’s initial concerns about his condition—apparently Evan had already spread the news—and then he shared his plan to help Roger and Cora and their son. Victor assured him he would handle everything.
When Chase hung up, he looked over at Nancy. “All right, since I’m on a roll, I’d like to donate some money to a few organizations that support people with disabilities. Being impaired like this has given me a new outlook on what they go through daily.” Plus, he needed to do something rather than lie here all day. God!
“You’re invoking a lot of good karma today,” Nancy said.
That was the last thing on his mind. “Can you help me with that? Do you have a laptop handy?”
Her grin was conspiratorial. “Be right back.”
Chase looked out the window. The trail of black smoke that had haunted him all day could no longer be seen. Granted, his vision was a little blurry, so he couldn’t trust that his reprieve would be permanent.
He settled back deeper against the pillows, suddenly exhausted. Must have been the exertion of getting in and out of the wheelchair. Then he thought about Cora and her sorrow and that little boy lying in the hospital bed, lucky to be alive.
Chase realized that maybe he was a little lucky too. If he hadn’t seen the fire yesterday or been in this hospital, he might never have found out about the Drepes’ troubles. He wouldn’t have known to help them.
Chapter 7
Working in a temporary office situated in the heart of a university campus sometimes made Moira feel old.
She passed baby-faced students on the quad on her way to Emmits Merriam’s Department of Physics. Since they’d only broken ground on Artemis’ future building three months ago, Evan had worked with the university to find them a place to hang their hat until the facility was complete, hopefully by summer. The various science departments had offered up temporary space, and after looking over both their lab space and security, Evan had selected the third floor, west corner in the physics building. For now, it served their purposes.
They had six offices, a conference room, a break room, and a high-tech lab, one Evan could use for his projects while his own private offsite lab was being finished. Moira knew they had a long way to go until they reached Artemis’ full potential, but she was fully committed. Sure, it was a little frustrating sometimes to be in the start-up phase, but she reminded herself daily they were building Artemis from the ground up.
She only had one part-time employee helping her right now, but she was finalizing additional positions to hire along with the organizational c
hart.
Said part-timer was waiting for her when she opened the door, an ever-eager smile on his face. Honestly, it was hard to miss Gary Frehlich. He was six foot seven—one of his favorite jokes was about being too clumsy and gangly to play basketball—with blond hair that practically glowed. Being a PhD student in electrical engineering, he totally geeked out on all things technology.
“Hey, Moira,” he said. “How’s it hanging today? I heard about Evan’s friend, Chase. Man, that’s rough.”
While Gary was prone to say awkward or inappropriate things like “how’s it hanging?,” he was one of the most easygoing people to work with, had an incredible attention to detail, and would do anything to help Artemis. One, because Evan Michaels was his hero. Two, because he’d rented a room from Evan’s wife before she and Evan had gotten married. And three, because Gary was graduating in the spring and hoping to apply and gain acceptance into Artemis’ first inventors’ class—or get a real job, as he liked to joke, if that didn’t work out.
“In time, he’s going to be all right,” she told him.
“Are we working on invites today? I have a couple of hours before I meet with my advisor.”
Gary never seemed to let her take coat off before he asked for his marching orders. “I’m going to finalize the design for the invitation, but we’re waiting on Evan’s approval for the guest list.” She made sure not to frown. Gary would only get anxious and ask about it.
“Okay, I’ll work on drawing that org chart you gave me for the institute,” Gary said. “I know you and Evan don’t have all of the positions finalized yet, but we can always add them in later.”
She wanted to sigh. Evan had a vision, all right, but he was short on details most of the time. Like how many people they would need to run the center full-time besides her and what their annual budget would be. He always told her they’d have enough. Not exactly helpful.
They were still learning their rhythm with each other—and while she’d realized there were many things she could handle on her own, without running them by the perpetually busy Evan, some of her ideas and plans required his feedback. Like the organizational chart. They’d already met to discuss it, but he’d grown fidgety after about thirty minutes and told her she needed to talk to Chase. She’d decided to put her ideas on paper first—with Gary’s tech help, of course. Chase struck her as the kind of man who responded better to ideas on paper. But Chase wouldn’t be in a position to comment on her org chart for some time.
“Maybe you should finish up the budget for the fundraiser instead,” she said.
“Do we have a final count yet?” Gary asked, his right leg bouncing, an ongoing sign of his hyperactive personality.
She mentally tallied up the competitors Chase was opposed to inviting with their plus ones. There were fourteen invites in question, more or less. She did the math. “Let’s run one budget for one fifty and one for one sixty-four.”
“Sweet!” Gary exclaimed. “Can I get you a coffee?”
He asked her every day, and while she knew he was happy to do it, she didn’t feel comfortable with it. “I told you you’re not an assistant like that, Gary.”
His shoulder lifted in a shrug. “I know, but you look like you had a tough night.”
She and Caroline had consumed a bottle and half of wine, snickered like school girls over Channing Tatum and his stripper moves, and then fallen asleep on the couch. If it hadn’t been so fun, so needed, she might have been embarrassed.
“I’m fine,” she said, making a shooing motion. “Go work on the budget.”
He saluted her and darted off. She chuckled all the way down the hall to her office. As she was taking off her coat, she heard, “Hey,” and jumped a foot.
Turning around, she gaped at Evan. “You scared me. I didn’t hear you come in.”
He made a face. “Sorry. It’s these Italian shoes—I could be a cat burglar. Thought I’d pop by before I headed to the hospital. I was up there late with Chase, and then I spent the rest of the night breaking the news to everybody at Quid-Atch and redistributing his work for the next couple of months. It’s…a lot.”
She finished taking off her coat and hung it over her chair. “What can I do to help?” she asked.
“Whew! I was hoping you’d ask. Can you look into finding him a furnished rental house? I’ve got back-to-back calls and emails up the wazoo. I knew Chase did a lot, but Jesus… Sorry. It’s a little overwhelming, trying to figure out how everything is going to work without him. But we’re going to do it. Somehow.”
She knew he was saying it more for himself than for her benefit. “Do you have any suggestions for a style of home he might like?”
He scratched his jaw. “Yeah, I’ve been thinking about that. I’d like to find him something that looks like a mountain cabin minus the Lincoln-Logs look. You know. Rustic. One story with wide windows and a large front porch. Open floor plan. Big hearth. Homey.”
Her brow rose. “That doesn’t sound like something Chase would want. He strikes me as more of a modern—”
“That’s what we’re going with,” Evan said quickly. “Assuming you can find one on short notice. Margie assured me it’s a common style of home in the West.”
“It is,” she said, guarded. “Are you sure, though? Chase—”
“May complain about it,” Evan said, “but he doesn’t like anything right now. Ignore his negativity. When you find the house, give me a holler. This is my main priority. I convinced your brother to keep him in the hospital for another night, perhaps two, to give us time to secure a house. If we put him up at The Grand, he’ll refuse to leave. I know him.”
She bit the inside of her cheek. He’d convinced her brother to keep Chase longer? Wow. That must have been an interesting conversation. She wasn’t going to ask.
“I’ll call the real estate broker my siblings and I used to find our houses,” Moira said. “She knows all the properties up here like no other.”
“If Margie and I weren’t so keen on building a new house, I’d ask for her name and number,” Evan said. “Okay, enough of that. I’m off. Make your call and let me know what you find. You have full power to rent the place in my name. If we find something today, I can tinker with the house to make it more Chase-able. He won’t be able to do things normally for a while in that wheelchair.”
Which was going to annoy the crap out of him. “I’m on it.”
The smile he gave her was probably intended to be encouraging, but his own worry showed through. “Trust me, Chase is going to be a hard case for a while, but he’ll grit his teeth and rise to the occasion. He always does.”
Chapter 8
Moira was the one gritting her teeth as she wheeled Chase into the rental she had found for him. As Evan had predicted, he was being difficult about it.
If you asked her, he was lucky. The one-story cedar plank house was situated at the end of the valley, and it boasted a marvelous view of mountains and water from its wide front porch. There was a snow-covered dock where the mostly frozen-over Black Lake touched the edge of the property line. The property management crew had gone to considerable effort to clear all the snow and salt the sidewalk and porch.
Chase was in such a mood, he was even bitching about the sleek, automated wheelchair Evan had bought him. Moira didn’t consider it a normal wheelchair—it was equipped with all-terrain tires for the winter season, for goodness’ sake—but he had just about bitten her head off for saying so. Only the constant visual reminder of his injuries gave her the patience to put up with his attitude. His arm cast lay on the metal rest while his leg was extended out in front of him on the corresponding leg rest. Evan had offered to write on Chase’s cast, something Chase hadn’t found funny. His former good humor was a thing of the past.
“I don’t like this house,” Chase growled again, awkwardly tinkering with the automatic controls on his wheelchair to turn and face her. “Take me to The Grand. Dammit, I need to get back to work.”
She was suppo
sed to ignore him when he talked about work, Evan had told her. Since he kept beating the same drum, she’d gotten pretty good at tuning him out. It only seemed to piss him off more. She felt a little guilty about it, but as Evan said, it was for his own good.
“This is a lovely house,” she repeated for the umpteenth time.
“This one is too homey, and I hate homey. I want something modern, with lots of glass and metal. Or marble. Anything but this.”
Hadn’t she thought that? But Evan had been emphatic about which kind of house she should rent. She’d followed orders. This wasn’t the time to show weakness.
“It’s going to be a long few weeks if you keep fighting Evan and me, Chase.”
He harrumphed as good as Uncle Arthur as she unlocked the door and gestured for him to go inside. When he didn’t budge, she crossed her arms.
“We can wait out here all day. I don’t mind the cold.” Had a man ever had his head so far up his ass?
“No, you’re a regular firecracker, breathing up my ass.”
He didn’t say it in a way that was nasty, so she didn’t take offense. “I was just thinking about your ass,” she said with a tight smile, making him bark out a laugh.
“Best news I’ve had in days.”
“Not like that,” she quipped, but since she had thought about his ass like that in the past, she couldn’t protest too much. Sue her. He had a nice one.
“And here I was thinking that if I finally asked you out, you’d say yes.”
Every hair on her body rose straight up. He was going to ask her out. Now? The air in her lungs froze, and she found herself waiting for him to continue.
