by Joanne Rock
“What’s the matter?” She must’ve knotted the napkin on her lap before she realized she was doing it because suddenly it was all balled up. “Did I do something wrong?”
“No.” Gabriella didn’t have a face for lies, her blue eyes sincere and kind. But then again, she’d never told Mia about her real name. And right now the woman bit her lip like her foster sister Nicole used to when she was worried about something.
“Then what’s going on?” she prompted, hating the sick feeling of not knowing.
“It’s your father.” Gabriella’s voice scratched with something like regret. “He’s being taken to the hospital.”
The floor seemed to open up, swallowing her whole. Mia had to grab the edge of the table for balance, her stomach in sudden revolt.
“Is he—?” She couldn’t say it, even though she’d asked herself the question a hundred times as she tiptoed past his bed while he lay very still. “Will he...?” Shaking her head, she gave up asking the question yet again. She stood, the knotted napkin falling off her lap while she reached for her windbreaker. “I have to go.”
“Please.” Gabriella threw some bills on the table and stood, too. “Let me drive you. You shouldn’t be alone right now.”
“That’s fine, but can we hurry?” Mia was already heading for the door, not caring that heads were turning in the fancy restaurant. She knew that it wouldn’t make Pete live longer if she got to the hospital faster. But then again...what if knowing she was there made the old man fight harder to live another day?
She needed him more than he knew.
Vaguely, Mia heard the hostess call after her—or maybe she just said goodbye. But she was already shoving open the main entrance and heading into the downpour that hadn’t let up.
“I’m parked over here!” Gabriella shouted from nearby, hitting the key fob to make the brake lights flash on a white sedan.
Mia ran to Gabriella’s car, her heart thundering harder than the rumble of the storm. The door was unlocked when she reached it and she let herself in a moment ahead of Gabriella.
Pete was taken to the hospital. She’d been having a fun day while her father might already be dead.
She hated to think about him that way—his death was on her mind as often as anything else about him. But from the moment they’d met, she’d known his days were numbered. She had been surprised he’d gotten custody of her when his health was so obviously bad, but Pete said it didn’t matter since they were blood relatives and he had a right to spend time with his daughter.
Now, as Gabriella started up the car and backed out of her parking spot, Mia willed her racing thoughts to quiet so she could figure out what to do next. How soon would the foster system know Pete died and demand she enter a new home? How fast would child protective services show up at her door to take her away?
Her skin crawled with a clamminess that didn’t have anything to do with the weather. How could she find out more about his condition?
“I wonder if I should call the hospital.” Mia dried her hands on her shirt under the hoodie before she retrieved her phone and started searching for the number to the local emergency room. “Who called you? Was it the home health care worker who found him?”
As soon as she asked the question, Mia realized it didn’t make any sense. Glancing at Gabriella, she noticed her friend’s forehead was scrunched with worry.
Again.
“Wait a minute.” Mia set down the phone. She swiped away a rivulet of water running down her cheek. “Why would anyone call you and not me?”
“I dropped off a friend at your father’s house on my way over to see you today,” Gabriella rushed to explain, her eyes trained on the road. “I had no idea of his connection to you since I hadn’t seen Clayton Travers since I was your age.”
“I don’t know anyone named Clayton.” Mia hoped that sixth sense of hers was mistaken. That Gabriella was every bit as cool of a friend as she had thought. “I have no ties to him, and Pete never mentioned him, either.”
How did this Clayton guy know her father? And why hadn’t Gabriella mentioned that she’d just been over at Pete’s house? One more factoid that her so-called friend had hidden from her.
Gabriella drove through a deep puddle, spraying dirty water up one side of the windows. Everyone was driving slowly, their taillights glowing red in front of Gabriella’s car. The day had gone dark earlier than normal due to the weather. Mia’s mood was turning darker by the second, too.
“Did you know Pete has several other grown children?” Gabriella asked, fingers gripping the steering wheel like her life depended on her driving.
“Several? I know about one. Some lady who was supposedly his daughter stopped by once asking him to sign papers that would change his will or something.” Mia struggled to remember that day, but she’d been knee-deep in her own drama since it was soon after she had moved into the house. “Pete almost laughed himself into a stroke when he introduced us to each other as sisters. I wasn’t even sure if he was serious.”
The woman stormed out in a huff that day, and Mia had gone back to deleting all the nastygrams her former foster brother, Connor, had sent her when he somehow found out her new phone number. Pete had let her change it twice since then.
“Pete has at least eight kids besides you,” Gabriella announced, flipping on the blinker to get around a slow-moving tractor trailer. “My friend Clayton Travers is one of them.”
Mia blinked. Processed the information.
Her brain worked to find the takeaway, churning through news that she did not welcome.
“I have eight half siblings.” She said it aloud to try and get her head around it. “And you happen to be good friends with one of them. But you never mentioned this to me.” She examined her feelings about this and discovered she didn’t like it one bit. “You also never told me you were using an alias the whole time I’ve known you.”
That last fact seemed to tip the scales away from Gabriella completely. Had Mia ever known this woman at all?
“Mia, I haven’t seen Clayton in years. We only met again yesterday and—”
“You were at my father’s house right before you met me at the Peachtree.” Mia ticked through everything she knew, ignoring whatever Gabriella rattled on about now since she had the important facts already in front of her. “You dropped off my half brother at my father’s but you never told me you know my father, let alone some half brother.”
Anger fired fast and hot, and Mia was only too glad to let it burn away the fear for her dad. For herself.
“Mia—” Gabriella tried to interrupt.
Mia would have none of it.
“You, of all people, should understand I have trust issues. I basically poured out my whole freaking life story to you over the past year and a half.”
“Ellie” had been her rock. The one person she could call who wouldn’t judge her. But it turned out “Ellie” had been lying the whole time. “Yet you lied to me the same way everyone else does, not giving a rat’s ass about anyone but yourself.”
Cold fury iced her insides. She retreated to her side of the car and yanked her hood over her head, not wanting to hear another word from the most false friend and so-called support group leader ever.
“I couldn’t have told you until today, and I was hoping maybe after we met—”
“You found out yesterday,” Mia reminded her, never lowering the hood as she stared out at the fat drops of water dancing in the hard wind just outside the window. “I called you last night. You could have told me then instead of letting me rattle on for half an hour about grabbing Davis Reed’s penis by mistake.”
“I should have,” Gabriella admitted, her voice a raw whisper. “You’re right, but I—”
“You know what, Ellie?” She used the fake name on purpose, pissed off and not caring how much
it showed. She would get out of the car right now except that would only delay her getting to the hospital. “Give me the Davis Reeds of the world any day. At least he was honest about what he wanted from me. With you? I don’t have a flipping clue. And I’ve gotta tell you I have no use for people who lie to me.”
* * *
CLAYTON WAITED.
The industrial clock on the wall sounded in need of repair as it ticked off the seconds with slow, sustained clicks. Or maybe Clayton simply felt time dragging, each tick a reminder of all he’d left unfinished with his father. His half sister.
And Gabriella.
Holding his head in his hands, he propped his elbows on sprawled knees where he sat on a crappy vinyl padded bench against the wall covered in pencil sketches of Tennessee wildflowers. He’d already cataloged all of them, as well as the benign seascapes on the wall opposite in his dove-gray-painted hell outside the CT scan rooms.
The quiet was worse than the noise of the ER when they’d first rushed inside the Franklin medical facility, where Pete’s records alerted the staff to the seriousness of his case, and he’d been admitted right away.
In theory, Clay knew how bad off the old man was. But seeing him struggle to breathe—knowing that those eyes might not open again—had been a one-two punch to his conscience. He should have come sooner. Should have checked in on the guy if only to make sure his affairs were in order. He didn’t have a responsibility because Pete was such a great guy. He had a responsibility because he liked to think he—Clay—was a halfway decent person.
Now, after delaying the trip and delaying the visit both, he might very well have missed the chance to clear some things up with his father. Although Pete had stopped seizing by the time the ambulance reached the hospital, his blood pressure was dangerously low. Clay overheard the admitting doctors talk about “neurological complications of end-stage cirrhosis,” but when he’d tried to quiz a passing nurse about it, the man had insisted Clay wait for the doctor’s prognosis.
In the meantime, Clay did searches online with his phone, and all of the news was damn dire.
Straightening on the bench, he debated grabbing a coffee when the doors to the CT waiting room flung open, admitting a dark-haired young woman followed by Gabriella.
Gabby’s gaze went to his immediately and he knew right away her conversation with his half sister must not have gone well. Pale and rain-streaked, both women were visibly upset.
“I want to see my father.” The brunette—it could only be Mia—rushed to the laminate counter where an attendant worked at her computer behind a bouquet of silk sunflowers.
Already on his feet, Clay strode over to Gabriella. The urge to fold her in his arms was strong, but something about her posture told him this wasn’t the time.
“You okay?” he asked quietly, unable to keep his hands off her. He settled for rubbing his palm along the back of her too-tense shoulders.
And damn, he really needed to hold her for his own sake if not for hers. Today had damn near sucked the life out of him.
Gabriella’s stiff nod said plenty about her day. “Fine. How’s your father?”
“Stable enough for a CT scan, but he hasn’t regained consciousness as far as I know.” As he filled her in briefly, he could hear Mia’s demands to see her father grow louder.
“Maybe you should try talking to her,” Gabby urged, her eyes still on the teen. “She asked me how I knew about Pete on the way over here—wanting to know why I’d been contacted and not her. I had to tell her about you. She didn’t speak to me for the last fifteen miles of the trip, accusing me of lying to her.”
No wonder Gabriella looked so upset.
His gut sank. This was his fault. He should have introduced himself to the girl sooner. Reached out to her. He’d buried his head in the sand for too long where his father’s life was concerned, and the innocent teen at the nurses’ station was the one paying the price.
Reluctantly he let go of Gabriella and moved closer to his half sister, knowing how much she had to be hurting. And scared.
And feeling betrayed.
“Mia?” He gave her plenty of space. He had experience dealing with teens on the edge from his own days in the foster system and, since then, in his work as a private investigator.
Damned ironic that he specialized in reuniting families when he’d turned his back on his own.
“Are you my father’s doctor?” the teen demanded, swinging around to face him. Dark eye makeup had streaked down both cheeks, her damp hair clinging to her neck.
She didn’t resemble their father, but Clay could see hints of his grandmother in her—the dark hair and eyes. He wondered if she’d ever seen photos of the woman.
“No. I’m—”
“Then I don’t want to hear it.” Mia turned back to the nurse in purple scrubs. “I need to see my father before he dies, okay? I’m his daughter and he’ll want to see me. He needs me.”
Clay weighed his options, understanding her urgency. Their conversation could wait until she got some peace of mind about their father.
The attendant’s gray eyes traveled from him to Mia and back again. “If it’s okay with the rest of your family, I can take you in for a minute.”
Clay nodded quickly, approving the plan.
“They are not my family,” Mia retorted, already moving toward the door marked Authorized Personnel Only.
The nurse lifted a section of her counter to join the girl. “It might ease her mind if she can see him,” she confided. “I’ve done this before. We’ll be behind the glass partition anyway.”
“Thank you.” Clay sincerely hoped it helped. He could identify with how rattled the girl felt.
As the two of them disappeared behind the swinging door, Clay took Gabriella’s hands in his. Turned her to him while the industrial clock ticked its slow seconds.
“Remember how you asked me to hold your hand today before the trial?” He stroked over the backs of her fingers with his thumb, needing to memorize the feel of her.
She gave a clipped nod, almost as though she didn’t trust herself to speak. Her fair hair was darker than normal from the rain, clinging damply to her head.
“I’m going to ask for a return favor even though I don’t deserve it.” He tipped his forehead to hers, and some of the stress inside him eased a fraction. He breathed in the scent of her skin, something soft and floral that made him think of a spring garden.
“Your day has been worse than mine.” She didn’t move away while they remained alone in the small waiting area. Bland easy-listening music played from invisible speakers, piped in along with the antiseptic-smelling air from a nearby duct.
“Seeing Pete like that made me realize how wrong I’ve been to resist seeing him for this long. I should have reached out to Mia as soon as he told me about her.” Actually, he should have found out about the girl long ago without having to be told. But he was done burying his head in the sand.
“She thinks I lied to her.” The stark words didn’t begin to hide the pain that came with them.
“I’m so damn sorry, Gabby.” He let go of her hands, but only so he could trail a touch up her arms to round her shoulders and then span her upper back through her damp trench coat. “And I know it’s not fair of me to ask, but I really need to hold you.”
He tucked her against him even before he’d given her time to answer. But damn.
Damn.
He needed her in a way that caught him off guard, kind of like a Pete Yancy backhand when Clay hadn’t done a damn thing wrong. One second he’d been walking alone through life just fine. And then he’d seen Gabby again and it had shifted his whole world without him knowing until right now.
But in the time they’d spent together since he had spotted her outside the Owl’s Roost, he realized that his life had been missing somethi
ng all the years without her. Like she’d left a hole in him when she’d gone away ten years ago, and he hadn’t noticed it was there until she returned and fit back into that spot. She’d never expected less of him because he came from a difficult background. She’d seen the best in him as a teen, and still did all these years later, and it made him want to be a better man.
It was probably a good thing the door marked Authorized Personnel swung open again just then, forcing them apart. Because the realization that he needed someone as much as he needed Gabriella right now threatened to take his feet right out from under him.
But as Mia stalked toward them with a jut to her jaw and an angry gleam in her dark eyes, Clay understood he had to be ready to deal with his half sister sooner rather than later. It was his fault that Mia was so angry with Gabriella and it was up to him to make that right.
“Clayton Travers is your friend?” Mia directed the question to Gabriella as she tucked a few pamphlets under her arm. She clutched a wadded-up tissue in one hand. “Looks a little more than friendly to me.” Her dark eyes skimmed over Clay.
He reminded himself to be patient. That the girl had had a tough day and she was just a kid.
Still. He wasn’t about to let her hurt the kindest woman he’d ever met.
“That’s not even remotely your business.” Clayton stepped squarely in front of the teen and extended his hand. “But as your older brother, I’m more than happy to give you all the unwanted advice you need. Nice to meet you, Mia. I’m Clayton. Gabriella’s friend.”
CHAPTER TEN
TWO HOURS LATER Gabriella sat between Clayton and Mia in the Family Life Services coordinator’s office at the hospital and wished the half siblings could have started their relationship on a happier note. The tension in the Family Life office was thick, although Mia seemed to be listening to her options now that she understood the hospital wouldn’t allow a sixteen-year-old to return to Pete Yancy’s home without some kind of trustworthy supervision.
