Paradise County (20 page)

“Let’s get you fixed up,” he said, getting out of the car. By the time he reached her door, she had it open and was swinging her legs out. Disdaining her efforts to try one more time to make it on her own two feet, he gathered her up in his arms and strode into the emergency room with her.

Sixteen

T
he next morning, Alex awoke slowly, stretching and turning over in bed without opening her eyes. For those first few seconds she felt vaguely anxious—she had been sitting in the library at Whistledown talking to her father over the telephone, and he had been trying to tell her something important. But static had kept her from hearing him clearly, and then the line had gone dead. Even as she frowned at the recollection, meaning to call him back as soon as she was up, reality came crashing in. The now familiar sorrow settled atop her like a thick eiderdown quilt, smothering her, weighing her down. Her father was dead. Her interrupted conversation with him had been nothing more than a dream. She would never talk to her father in life again.

Yesterday, Paul had married another woman.

Oh, God, it was too much. How was she going to survive?

She lay there for a moment, wishing vainly that she could just go back to sleep. Getting up and facing the world required too much effort: her limbs felt too heavy to move. Emotional pain paralyzed her, as it had for the past five weeks. But she knew now, knew from bitter experience, that she
could
move,
could
function. Could survive. Just breathe, she told herself as a first step. Breathe: In, out. In, out.

Just as someone had been breathing in her bedroom last night. The same someone she’d seen standing on the upstairs porch later? A real someone, an imagined someone, or—a ghost?

At the memory her eyes popped open, and she rolled onto her back. The sudden movement caused her head to brush the headboard, and brought pain of the physical variety with it. Arggh, that hurt! She winced, gingerly probing the place where three stitches held her scalp together.

At least, according to the doctor who had examined her X-ray, she hadn’t suffered a concussion.

Sunlight filtered in through the lightly curtained window at the far end of the room. Obviously it had quit raining, and from the angle of the light she had slept a long time. She was lying in Joe’s bed. At the realization, a small tingle started in her loins and radiated out along her nerve endings. Too bad he wasn’t in it with her, she thought, toes curling at the prospect. As a cure for what ailed her, sleeping with Joe probably wouldn’t do the trick. But it was good to know that her sex drive was becoming functional again. Maybe she would get over this heartbreak one day after all.

Joe had promised her that she would. The trick, he’d told her as they’d waited together for the doctor to put stitches in her head, was to just keep putting one foot in front of the other until she discovered that she had walked right out of the shadows into the sunlight again.

It would happen, he said.

Thinking of Joe, Alex smiled to herself. Yesterday’s rude, impossible man had morphed overnight into a sexy shoulder to lean on. He’d taken care of her with brisk efficiency even over her protests, listened to her talk about ghosts without laughing (Paul would have called the nearest psychiatrist), stayed with her through the ordeal in the hospital, and even carried her upstairs when they got back and tucked her into his bed.

All without asking for a thing in return.

Paul would never have taken care of her like that. Paul never did anything without expecting a return. Every thoughtful gesture he’d ever made toward her, from the first time he’d taken her to dinner, had been with an eye toward a payoff, usually sex. Anyway, he certainly wouldn’t
have been able to lug her around all night like Joe had. He didn’t have Joe’s physical strength.

So take that, Alex said to her mental image of Paul, and sat up, moving cautiously to see how her head reacted to being vertical. The stitches tugged at her scalp and she had a slight headache, but besides that she felt relatively normal. Certainly far better than she had last night.

The question was, could she stand up without falling on her face? The matter was becoming increasingly urgent. Swinging her legs over the side of the bed, she put her feet on the floor and, holding on to the night-stand for support, maneuvered herself upright. For a moment she stood still, testing to see if her knees would support her. Then she took one cautious step followed by another, until she made it all the way into the bathroom. When she flipped the light switch, it failed to work. From that she deduced that either the electricity was still out, or the bulb needed replacing.

The clothes and towels that had been on the floor the night before were gone, and the floor had been wiped clean. Only a pair of the oversized towels that Joe had tucked by their corners into the towel rack was left. Remembering what Joe had looked like clad in just such a towel brought on another of those sexy little tingles, and Alex reveled in the feeling.

Slowly, slowly, she was coming back alive.

Stripping off the T-shirt she’d slept in—it was Joe’s, given to her by him after they’d gotten back from the hospital, and it reached halfway down her thighs—she took a quick shower, taking care not to get her hair wet. Finishing, wrapping herself in a towel, Alex overcame her qualms about respecting Joe’s privacy and opened the medicine cabinet to look for, at the bare minimum, aspirin and moisturizer. She came up empty on both counts. Shaving cream, a razor and blades, deodorant, toothpaste, mouthwash, dental floss: that was the sum total of the contents of his medicine cabinet. In the ceramic holder built into the wall above the sink hung a green toothbrush. A cheap plastic hairbrush lay on the back of the toilet.

Clearly, Alex thought, surveying her meager choices, a man occupied
the premises alone. Picking up the hairbrush, she gingerly started to brush out her tangled hair.

“Alex?” It was Neely. Alex stuck her head out of the bathroom door, surprised to discover that her sister was dressed in jeans and a clingy pink turtleneck sweater, both of which were clearly hers.

“Here. Where’d you get the clothes?”

“Joe drove me up to Whistledown. I brought you some, too.” She held up a bulging plastic grocery bag as evidence, then put it on the foot of the bed and perched beside it as Alex walked into the bedroom.

“Great. Thanks.” Alex started rummaging through the bag.

“How are you feeling?” Neely looked her over critically. She and both of Joe’s sons had been awake when they’d gotten back from the hospital, sitting on the floor around the living-room coffee table playing cards by lamplight, apparently on the best of terms. The little girl, Jenny, had been curled up on the couch fast asleep. Neely and the boys had heard a quick outline of Joe’s search of the house and seen and exclaimed over Alex’s stitches before Joe herded all of them off to bed.

Alex had said nothing to Neely about the figure she had seen on Whistledown’s porch. Although she was still convinced that she had seen
something,
she was no longer sure exactly what: man, ghost, or figment of a grief-stricken mind. Whatever the truth of the matter was, she saw no point in worrying Neely with it.

“Better. You don’t have any aspirin on you, do you?”

Neely shook her head regretfully. “’Fraid not. I could go ask Joe for some.”

“I’ll ask him myself when I go downstairs.” The bag yielded slim khaki slacks, a black cashmere twin set, undergarments, her black high-heeled boots, and her purse, with its travel-wise stash of cosmetic necessities—including a small tin of aspirin. “Blessings on you, sister,” Alex said, retrieving and holding up the tin, then turned back to the bathroom to swallow the pills with a handful of water.

“So, what do you think about the Welches?” Neely asked in an elaborately casual tone as Alex returned to the bedroom and started to dress.

Alex’s antenna immediately went up. “Are we talking about one in particular?”

Her sister made a face at her. “Eli.”

“Cute.” Alex’s voice was muffled as she pulled the crewneck over her head with special care so as not to hit her stitches. Emerging, she picked up the khakis. “What do you think?”

“I think he’s even more of a hottie than Joe. Eli’s kind of shy, which I think is sweet. I wonder if he’s a virgin?”

Zipping up her slacks, Alex shot her sister a look. “Too bad we’re not going to be here long enough for you to find out.”

Neely grinned tantalizingly at her. “Oh, I don’t know… .”

“Lunch,” a boy’s voice yelled up the stairs.

“That’s Josh,” Neely said, jumping up. “Since the electricity’s out, Joe went to Kentucky Fried Chicken. Come on, I’m starved.” She headed out the door, then stopped and looked back. “Oh. Do you need help getting down the stairs? I can wait. Or I can go get Joe.”

Alex shook her head. The idea of having Joe carry her again was tempting, but … “I’m fine.”

Flashing her a naughty grin that told Alex that her sister had at least an inkling of what she was thinking, Neely disappeared.

Except for a headache, which the aspirin should take care of once it kicked in, and a rather generalized feeling of lethargy, she
was
fine, Alex discovered as she quickly applied cosmetics and brushed her hair into a smooth ponytail, which she secured with a silver barrette at her nape. Then, taking care to hold on to the handrail, she headed downstairs. The scent of food greeted her. As Alex inhaled, she was surprised to find that it actually smelled—good. She hadn’t enjoyed the taste or smell of food since her father’s death. She ate because she knew she had to, and for no other reason. Her sleep had been affected the same way: she forced herself to do it because she knew she needed to. Ergo, the sleeping pills.

“Hey. Good morning.” Joe appeared when she was halfway down the stairs, pausing at the foot to look up at her. A quick glance told her that he was dressed in sneakers, jeans, and a navy-and-gray plaid flannel shirt
that hung with the ease of well-loved old clothes from his broad shoulders. He had shaved, she saw, and without stubble to obscure the clean lines of his jaw and chin he was handsome enough to make her eyes widen. He grinned at her, and the effect was dazzling. “Or rather, good afternoon. I thought you might need some help.”

She returned his smile with one of her own. It was amazing what the sight of him did to her, she thought. This time yesterday, he had been the enemy. Now, he was a friend; no, she corrected herself, not a friend exactly. She had lots of friends, and none of them affected her quite the way he did. “Thanks, but I’m much better. At least I can stand up. What time is it, anyway?”

“Almost one o’clock. You hungry?”

“A little.” She was surprised to find that she wasn’t lying. Reaching the bottom stair, she found her head on a level with his, and was reminded once again of how tall he was. “Thanks for all you did last night, by the way.”

“My pleasure.” He met her gaze, and for a moment Alex thought she saw a flicker of her own awareness in his eyes.

“Hey, Dad, if you don’t hurry up we’re going to start without you,” a boy’s voice called from the kitchen.

“Coming,” Joe called back. Then, to Alex, “Come on, or there won’t be anything left.”

At his gesture, Alex preceded him down the hall to the kitchen. She was conscious of him behind her every step of the way. At first glance the kitchen seemed to be packed with people. A sixty-something man with solid white hair, tall and wiry in build and dressed in well-pressed khakis with a blue dress shirt tucked into them, carried two platters loaded with chicken pieces toward the table. Behind him came Jenny in yellow oven mitts bearing a big bowl of mashed potatoes. Josh followed with a casserole dish loaded with ears of corn. Neely—her sister Neely, whose aversion to any kind of domestic chore was legendary—was standing at the counter filling tall glasses with ice from a large plastic bag of commercial cubes that someone had put in the sink. Ferrying the ice-filled glasses to the table was Eli, which explained a lot. Like Neely, all of Joe’s kids wore jeans. Eli wore a football jersey over a white T-shirt, and with his long
black hair pulled back into a ponytail looked studly enough to enrapture any teenage girl, much less one as susceptible to the opposite sex as Neely. Josh wore a flannel shirt and a frown. Jenny’s oversized sweater had clearly once belonged to either or both of her brothers.

“Well, what do you know! Looks like she’s up!” The older man was the first to see Alex as she paused in the doorway, and his eyes ran over her in quick appraisal even as he smiled a welcome at her. Neely acknowledged her with a glance and the Welch kids all murmured some version of
hi.
Behind her, Joe put a gentle hand on the small of her back, urging her on into the kitchen. The older man put the platters on the table and came toward her. “Good to meet you, Miss Haywood. I’ve heard a lot about you this morning. I’m Cary Welch.”

“My dad,” Joe put in, and out of the corner of her eye Alex saw him give his father a quelling look. Alex wondered just what Cary Welch had heard—and if Joe had been his source.