HardWind (12 page)

her—but the little blue car was hemmed in behind the semi and the truck with the

trailer. She eased up on the accelerator because a minivan was riding alongside a

cement truck, blocking the inside lane.

“Come on, move it,” Star snapped. She was practically riding the minivan’s rear

bumper. “What the hell is he doing?”

“Sitting there with his thumb up his ass, trying to work things out,” Dáire replied.

“Flash him your lights.”

Star reached down to do so but the cement truck slowed down going up a slight

incline and the minivan passed it, swung into the truck’s lane almost immediately. The

blast of the truck’s horn made Star jump but Dáire just laughed.

“Where’s a smoky when you need one?” Star complained.

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Taking the FL-87S exit, Star pulled into the truck stop a few hundred yards down

the road and waited in the car for Dáire to get them both something to drink. While she

waited, she rummaged in her oversized handbag for the pills to help his headache.

“Jazzy little car there, mama,” someone said, and Star looked up. A man had come

out of the truck stop and was ogling her as he leaned his hip against the front of a

pickup truck that had seen better days.

“Ah, thanks,” she said, and continued looking through her purse.

“Bet it could get up to a hundred in a flash, huh?” the man asked. He pushed away

from the truck.

“Bet your head could too if you take one more step toward my woman,” Dáire said.

His menacing words had been spoken in a soft voice but the man to whom they were

directed instantly stopped in mid stride.

Though Dáire looked yuppified—as he and Jackson would have termed it—with

his white silk shirt, black trousers and black loafers—there was something very deadly

in the way he stood, the way his sunglass-clad vision was directed toward the man in

the frayed baseball hat, dirty T-shirt and rumpled jeans.

The trucker sniffed, ran his arm under his nose, tugged on the brim of his baseball

cap then spun around on his heel and went back into the truck stop.

“Get in the car,” Star said. She had a feeling the man had gone back inside for

reinforcements.

Dáire was hoping he had. Although his head was pounding, he would have

welcomed taking a few rednecks down a peg or two.

“Please?” Star begged, keeping an eye on the door to the truck stop.

Taking his time folding his tall body into the sports car, Dáire didn’t bother

directing his attention to the truck-stop door. If anyone were foolhardy enough to come

out to have a little dance with him, he would be glad to oblige. In the mood he found

himself, smashing his fist into a beer-puffed face might help to ease the tension.

Star didn’t give him a chance to find out. As soon as he shut the car door, she shot

out of the gravel-paved parking lot—gravel spraying under her wheels—and was back

on the highway, taking the on-ramp to the interstate before he could pop the tabs on the

cans of soda.

“Jealousy doesn’t become you, Dairy Crow,” she threw at him.

Dáire chuckled like a little boy caught with his hand in the cookie jar and took a

long swig of his soda.

“Here,” Star said, extending the bottle of analgesic toward him.

The drive to Sacred Heart where Jillian had been admitted to the Children’s

Hospital took a while. Sunday drivers seemed to be out in force and not a one of them

seemed to mind driving well under the posted speed limits and braking for no

apparently good reason, slowing down Star’s progress. Following behind an elderly

couple whose turn signal continued to flash long after they’d pulled in front of Star, was

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like residing in the first circle of hell. Dáire’s fingers were drumming on the side mirror

as though he could hurry them up with the repetitious movement.

“I hope I don’t live to be that old,” he said as they crawled along behind the aged

couple.

“Don’t worry,” Star said. “I’ll put you in a home long before you’re a menace to

fellow drivers.”

“That’s good to know,” he agreed.

They turned down Brent Lane as Ma and Pa Driver continued on their merry way,

turn signal still flashing. The parking garage of the hospital seemed overly crowded for

a weekend but, luckily, Star was able to find a good space. She turned off the engine

and twisted in her seat, unwrapping the scarf she had tied around her long hair to keep

it from blowing in her face. As she folded the gauzy material, she could not help but

notice Dáire’s left foot was bouncing on his leg nervously.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

Dáire nodded but didn’t speak.

“She doesn’t bite.”

The man who had dodged flying bullets with aplomb, who had suffered untold

agonies for months on end and who had killed more men than he could number, was

trembling when Star reached out to place her hand on his arm.

“It’s all right, Dáire.”

He turned bleak, wounded eyes to her. “What do I say to her, Star?” he asked.

“How am I supposed to—?”

“Just relax,” she told him. “That’s all you need to do.”

Nodding his assent even though he wanted to leap out of the car and run as fast

and as far as he could, he reached for the door handle, annoyed with himself that his

hand was shaking.

Star opened her door and got out. She understood his nervousness, but there really

wasn’t anything she could say or do to reassure him. This was his child he was meeting

for the first time, and nothing could prepare him. It was not going to be an easy thing

for him to see their special-needs daughter. Already she feared he blamed himself for

Jillian’s condition. He had practically said as much when he’d told Star about his aunt

with Down’s syndrome.

He joined her at back of the car, reaching out to take her hand as they started

walking. “Will she be able to understand what I say to her?” he asked.

“She’ll respond to your words, though how much she understands is anyone’s

guess. She’s only ten months old, sweetie,” Star said. “She’s been feeling pretty rotten

since they admitted her so she may not be in a good frame of mind. She was fussing like

crazy when I was here yesterday morning.”

The ride up in the elevator was done in silence. Their fingers were threaded tightly

together and when they got off the elevator, Star heard Dáire sigh deeply.

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“I have never liked hospitals,” he said in way of explanation.

“Nobody does,” she replied.

His footsteps became slower with each step he took until he came to an abrupt stop,

shaking his head. “I can’t,” he said. He met her eyes and there were tears in his. “I can’t

do this, Star.”

Star put her free hand up to his cheek and cupped it. “I understand. You want to

wait here while I go see her?”

He nodded, unable to speak. Withdrawing his hand from hers, he shoved them into

his pockets and stood there with shoulders hunched, drawn in upon himself.

“Just wait right here.”

He watched her walking down the hall and called himself a coward a thousand

times before he saw her coming back. He had paced the corridor numerous times—

feeling the sympathetic eyes of the nurses—but could not find the courage to go after

Star. He was more than willing to give their child whatever she needed in order for her

to thrive, but he was not brave enough to meet her.

Star hadn’t been gone all that long, but it felt like hours to him as she came up to

him and slipped her arm through his. “Dr. Powell will have his nurse set up a time for

you to come in and be tested in the morning. He said it might be possible to do the

donation a day or two later. Is that all right with you?”

“Yeah,” Dáire said, feeling as though a load of brick were being piled on his chest.

“He told me the procedure won’t take long and you’ll be in the hospital only a day

unless there are complications. He’ll go over all that with you tomorrow.”

“Okay.”

Star eased him into movement, ushering him back to the elevator. “Let’s go get

some lunch,” she said.

He stopped, his head down. “Star, I’m sorry. I…”

“It’s all right,” she said. “I understand.”

Lifting his eyes to her sweet face, he asked if she really did.

“Yes, baby. I do,” she replied. “The important thing is that you’re here and you’re

going to help our daughter.”

All the way back to the parking garage, Dáire hated himself more with every step.

Star was being so patient with him, so understanding, but he no more understood his

reluctance to meet Jillian than he could have taken wing and sailed across the lowering

sky.

“Looks like another storm is headed in,” Star said as she pulled out onto Ninth

Avenue.

“Do you hate me?” he asked in a soft voice.

“Of course not,” she said.

“I hate me,” he confessed.

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Pulling into a used-car parking lot, Star put the car in park and turned to face him.

“Dáire, there is no reason to feel that way. She wouldn’t have known who you were

anyway.”

“But she’s my daughter,” he said, his chin trembling. “Why couldn’t I go in there

and see her, Star?”

Before Star could answer, a few raindrops fell and she decided to put the top up. As

soon as the canopy was in place, the skies opened and a torrent of rain began to fall.

“Man, that was close,” she said with a laugh.

Dáire was sitting there with his hand across his eyes and his leg was bouncing

again. It was a habit he had whenever he was upset.

“The motel I usually stay at is over on Airport Boulevard,” she said. “How ’bout we

go check in then get lunch? Maybe the rain will have slacked off by then.”

“Whatever you want,” he answered listlessly.

“Is your head still hurting?”

“Like a big dog,” he replied.

Star reached out and put her hand on his thigh, feeling the muscles bunch beneath

her palm. “It’s tension, baby. Try to relax and it’ll go away.”

“I’m a prick,” he stated.

“I won’t argue with you there,” she said, and removed her hand. Glancing behind

her, she pulled out into traffic, the windshield wipers slapping vigorously as the rain

slammed against the glass.

Star drove down to the motel she had used many times before and Daire got out to

register them. He came back with a keycard and an annoyed look on his face.

“There’s a damned reunion of some kind in town and the only room they had left

was a double with two full-sized beds. I wasn’t going to take it but she said we’d be

lucky to find anything else.”

Star looked out over the parking lot of the motel. It was packed with cars. “She may

be right.”

“Let’s just go eat,” he said. “Maybe by the time we get back someone will have left

so we can get a decent parking place.”

There was a waiting line inside the restaurant and nowhere to sit while they waited.

Rather than leaving and running the gantlet beneath the punishing rain, they decided to

stay. Dáire leaned against the wall and drew Star back against him, gently cradling her

in his arms. An elderly couple smiled at them. A middle-aged couple frowned and a

teenage couple rolled their eyes at the public display of affection, as though they were

the only ones allowed such behavior.

Dáire stared at the teenagers for a moment then lowered his mouth to Star’s ear.

“How do you think I’d look with my eyebrow pierced?” he whispered.

Star had also been staring at the teens. Dressed in the faddish Goth style, the young

man had both eyebrows as well as his lower lip pierced and the girl had studs in both

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sides of her nose, a bar in the bridge of her nose and at least nine rings in her left ear.

“Like a fool,” she whispered back to Dáire.

“I think it looks cool,” he said.

“You would.”

He continued to stare at the teenage boy. Remembering getting his left ear pierced

right after leaving the Rangers, he recalled all too well the severe tongue-lashing he’d

received from Gentry. A smile crept across his face. Although he hadn’t worn a hoop in

his ear in over eight years and knew the hole had closed up, he decided to get it redone

and look into the eyebrow thing for good measure.

“Dude, what’s your problem?” the Goth girl asked, her kohl-lined eyes boring into

Dáire. “Like, didn’t your mother ever tell you it was rude to stare?”

Dáire grinned and just as any woman who was the recipient of that sensual smile,

the girl melted. “I like your tat,” he told her.

The girl blushed. “Yeah, like, thanks.” She reached up to touch the spider web

tattooed on her right shoulder. “You got one?”

Dáire nodded. He took his arms from around Star and stepped around her, walked

over to the couple and undid the top three buttons of his shirt, pulled the fabric back to

show them his tattoo.

“Cool!” the young man said. “You’re a Ranger!”

“Was,” Dáire said.

“Uber-bad, dude,” the girl said in an awed voice.

“Dude, that’s awesome!” the young man said. “Did you go to Iraq?”

“In 1990,” he answered. “During the first Gulf War.”

“Outstanding,” the young man pronounced, and looked annoyed that the hostess

called him and his date for their table. He reached out to shake Dáire’s hand. “Like