Killing Secrets (29 page)

Was she crying?
“You’re scaring me. What’s wrong? Tell me you aren’t in the hospital again!” She’d only found out a couple of days ago the older woman wasn’t in Austin with her brother at his dude ranch. Rachel should never have left the stubborn woman behind in Dallas.

“Of course not. I’m fit as a fiddle,” she replied firmly. There was another pause. “I do need to tell you something though.”

Alarm squeezed off Rachel’s air. Her friend didn’t prevaricate like this unless she had bad news. “Just spit it out, Katy.”

“Your dad’s in the hospital.”

Her heart stuttered. “What?”

“Your dad. He went into ICU a couple of weeks ago. Pneumonia. But then he fell and broke his hip and—”

Intensive Care Unit? Two weeks?
Rachel’s knees buckled. She sat down hard in the pile of wood chips at her feet. When Carl Sprang headed toward her, she waved him off. “Are you saying he’s,” she hesitated, “dying?”

“I-I don’t know. He wouldn’t let me tell you before.” Katy sniffed. “I know how you feel about what he did, but he’s asked to see you and Amanda. Please don’t miss this chance to mend your fences.”

It was a struggle to get the words past the lump lodged in her throat. “Where?” She swallowed. “Where is he, Katy?”

“Denver Central.”

“He’s here?” When he’d hired guards to protect her and Amanda, it had never occurred to her he was this close. She also hadn’t questioned how he knew where she was or that she was in trouble. Just hearing his name had lit her anger and shut down her brain.

Her pulse galloped. With dismay. Anxiety. Eagerness. Confusion. Rachel knew Katy and her mother were friends in college. Katy had never mentioned her father. Did Katy know where he was when she sent Rachel and Amanda here? Of course, she did. He’d been in the hospital for two weeks! What else hadn’t Katy told her? The questions swirled through Rachel’s head, each one leading to yet another.

“Rachel?” Katy’s voice broke through her bewilderment. “I’ll never ask anything again, but you have to do this. Go see him, if only for me? Please? Don’t let him…I can’t stand it if you two don’t make up before…just go, girl.”

For several long moments, she couldn’t speak. “I-I’ll call you.” Clicking the off button, she tried to stuff the phone back into her pocket but couldn’t quite get the device secured while sitting on the ground.

A strong, masculine hand came out of nowhere and Patrick helped her to her feet. He eased the phone from her nerveless fingers and tucked it into his shirt pocket. When she swayed, he pulled her into his arms. “Tell me what I can do,” he said his voice gentle.

Getting lost in his dark eyes, she didn’t question why he was there at the exact moment she needed him. “I—”

Her forehead fell down to his sun warmed work shirt as she fought for composure. She filled her lungs with Patrick’s scent, the mix of sweat, sawdust and man that made her pulse race. Then settle. Drawing on his strength, she lifted her head and told him what she had to do.

~~~

The smell of antiseptic easily overpowered the aroma of half-eaten patient lunches stacked on a rolling rack several feet away, ready for removal, but did little to subdue the air of illness that had saturated the hospital walls over time. Of course, Rachel knew that notion was all in her imagination. The Pulmonary ICU at Denver Central was modern and clean, and one of the best chances a patient had of beating the odds. And, from the sounds of it, her father required the best.

Was she finally to see her dad after all of these years only to lose him? After spending the past fifteen minutes with his doctors, that possibility felt all too real. If they were dealing only with the pneumonia that had put him in the hospital, it was one thing. But, thanks to the degenerative disease that was a byproduct of her father’s rodeo career and his fall that broke his hip the day after his admission, his doctors hadn’t been able to agree on the best treatment.

His orthopedist wanted to replace his fractured hip, saying it would be harder to fix the longer they waited. The anesthesiologist was concerned he might not survive the surgery because of the risk of intubation with a pneumonia patient. The pulmonologist didn’t want to risk affecting his respiration so pain meds for the hip were out of the question while he battled pneumonia. He could O.D. on narcotics and stop breathing altogether.

The pneumonia had finally responded to treatment so the doctors decided it was time to address his hip fracture. Her dad’s surgery was scheduled first thing in the morning, which is why he wanted to see her and Amanda.

She could refuse—she wasn’t sure she was ready to put all of the pain behind her, not under these conditions—but could she live with herself if she ignored his request and he didn’t come out of surgery? Memories of sitting in the hospital with her mother, watching her die one small piece at a time, swept over her.

Her step faltered.

“You don’t have to do this, Rach.” The rumble of Patrick’s words steadied her as much as the warm knuckle that traced down her cheek.

She looked down at Amanda, her small hands enveloped by Patrick’s on one side and her own on the other. The way they stood together, they were almost a closed circle and that calmed her further. She glanced down the hall toward the waiting room where they’d left the bodyguard her father hired to protect her. “Yes, I do,” she whispered. “I can’t run anymore.”

Patrick gave her a reassuring smile. “I’m right here if you need me.”

That’s why she’d be okay. The man hadn’t left her side since he suddenly appeared on the heels of Katy’s phone call. She’d warned him she was calling Rachel about her father before actually doing it, and he’d dropped everything to protect her. As he’d done since the day they met. No matter what took place once she walked into Room 5, she knew she could trust Patrick to be there to pick up the pieces.

God, don’t let there be too many pieces!

She gently squeezed Amanda’s hand and wondered if she was making a mistake exposing her child to the man her mama knew.

She smiled tremulously. “Let’s go meet your grandpa, baby,” she said and started walking again until she reached his room. Without pause, her back straight, she opened the door and crossed the threshold.

The overhead lights were turned low and what seeped into the room around the closed blinds on the window were dim thanks to the dark storm clouds racing across the Colorado skies. Rachel hesitated. Was her father really expecting her?
Maybe Katy was simply meddling, and he hadn’t really asked to see her.
Her friend knew how Rachel felt about their break…and didn’t approve. She’d said as much more than once. Was this her way of forcing the issue?

Her free hand clammy on her skirt, she peered at the figure lying on the bed. “Dad?”

“Get in here, chickadee. I’m decent.” Her father chuckled, the sonorous sound from his twice broken nose so familiar it hurt. “At least, I’m covered up. I haven’t been decent since, um, well, you know me and dates and figures. Guess St. Peter’s going to have that date when it comes down to it.”

If he hadn’t spoken, called her by that ridiculous nickname she’d hated growing up, she would have turned right around thinking she’d entered a stranger’s room. Rachel didn’t want to think too much about her father facing St. Peter either, so she walked into the unit. The closer she got to the bed, the more shaken she became by her father’s condition.

From what the doctors told her about the infection he’d been fighting, she’d been prepared for the tubes and equipment, his pallor. But the affable teddy bear of a man who’d dragged her all over the country and made her life positively miserable—her words in one of her journals—had been reduced to a shadowy figure of a man she barely recognized.

A lifetime of anger and hurt simply melted away. She leaned down to kiss him on the cheek. “Hi, Daddy.”

The brightness of his dark chocolate eyes hadn’t dimmed, yet the last ten years hadn’t been kind. Deep lines, caused by pain and too many years in the sun, bracketed his mouth. She remembered her mother saying, with all of the bones he’d broken riding the rodeo circuit, he was likely to be in a world of hurt as an old man. It was clear the price had come due.

He ran a hand over his graying hair and grinned at her like they’d never been separated by angry words and ten years of bitter silence. “Had hoped to gussy myself up a bit before you arrived, but guess I fell asleep.”

“You’re still the handsomest man in the room.”

“Not anymore, chickadee,” he said, looking over her shoulder where Patrick hung back.

He lifted a tremulous hand. “Dixon Grey,” he said. “We talked on the phone. It’s good to finally meet you, Patrick. Thanks for taking care of my girls for me.”

Patrick leaned in past Rachel, their shoulders touching, and shook her father’s hand. “Mom and Dad have talked about you over the years, Mr. Grey. Glad to meet you, too.”

“Dixon,” he said, his gaze watchful. “Mr. Grey is too formal if you’re planning to marry my girl. I know your people are Catholic, so that’s one thing in your favor. Though a practicing Catholic man doesn’t play around with his woman without a couple of wedding rings between them.”

“Dad!” Rachel flushed as she thought about Patrick’s lovemaking. Where had her father learned such intimate details? Cook? Sprang? Or was her dad just fishing?

“What?” He raised a hand covered with tubes. “It’s not like I have a whole lot of time to dilly-dally around playing twenty questions, chickadee. Either the man’s intentions are good ones or they ain’t. My time may be short. It may not. But I’m making sure you don’t mess up with this one.” He fixed a stern eye on Patrick. “So answer the questions, son.”

Rachel was startled when Patrick responded. “I have nothing but good intentions, Dixon. Yes, I’m a practicing Catholic. And I’ll only marry Rachel when she’s good and ready.”

“That’s all I wanted to know.” Her father grinned. “Can’t blame a man for making sure our girls are taken care of properly when I’m gone. You can take care of them, right? You putting your troubles behind you at that construction firm of yours? “

“Yes, sir,” Patrick said. “We’re working on that problem.”

Her father knew an awful lot about what was going on outside his hospital room, Rachel decided. Memories rose up from when she was younger, the number of times he managed to dig out secrets she didn’t want him to know, like when she was fifteen and fell in love with a nineteen-year-old drover named Carson. She’d followed that blue-eyed cowboy everywhere, until her dad caught her and warned him off. It’s when she started to buck his control over her life.

She didn’t like that he believed she was going to marry the good Catholic boy he’d made her promise to find after the incident with Carson—maybe, if she’d listened, she wouldn’t have messed up her first marriage so badly—but the old man suddenly had color in his cheeks. She didn’t have the heart to naysay any of it and watch it all drain away.

Patrick had played into her father’s hands, but she had a feeling it was because he was trying not to upset him either. He’d been seated next to her when the doctors explained the necessity of keeping her father calm before he went into surgery. Thankfully, the way Patrick phrased his response, he hadn’t really lied about anything. He wasn’t going to marry anyone again, certainly not Rachel. She might have “kicked in his protective instincts” as Jack claimed, but that didn’t mean the man loved her.

Her father turned to Amanda, who was peeking at him from behind Rachel’s left hip. “Seems to me your mama’s lost her manners altogether, pumpkin. I’m your grandpa.” He held out his hand, but he was obviously already tiring because it fell to the bed an instant later.

Rachel was astounded to see Amanda step closer to the bed. The little girl covered his motionless hand with hers, right over his IV. “No, baby! You can’t touch—”

“The hell she can’t,” her father croaked. He rearranged the tubes a bit, rolled to his side, and enveloped her hand in his palm. “Let me look at you, sweet pea.”

Amanda silently gazed up at her grandpa and he stared down at her like she was the Seventh Wonder of the World. “You’re the spitting image of your mama and grandma. All moonstruck hair and baby-doe eyes,” he said, a tear trailing down his pain-lined face. “Wish you could have met your grandma. She would have loved you.”

Rachel’s eyes filled at the love she saw in his eyes. Her heart ached at the thought that love might disappear if he knew Amanda wasn’t really her own. Remembering how much it hurt when he’d walked away when she was seventeen, she stiffened and took a protective step nearer her daughter’s back.

“Amanda, honey,” Patrick spoke up beside them, “why don’t we find your grandpa some fresh water to drink, maybe have an apple juice ourselves?”

Her gaze moved from adult to adult. Then, she nodded and pulled out of her grandfather’s grasp.

Taking the little girl’s hand, Patrick smiled at Rachel. “We may be gone a bit. We’re heading to the cafeteria to grab a snack.”

Rachel knew what he was trying to do, but she suddenly wasn’t ready to be alone with her dad. How did one recapture ten lost years? There was so much anger between them. “You don’t have to go all the way—”

“Take your time, Rach.” He wrapped his hand around the back of her neck and pulled her close to settle his mouth over hers, like it was the most natural thing in the world for him to kiss her in front of her father. “We’ll be back,” he murmured.