Chance Meeting (9 page)
The three men hovered near her still body, battered and hidden yet somehow perversely emphasized by the sterile white hospital sheet covering her. Her head was hidden, too, enveloped in layers of gauze bandages, so that she resembled an inexpertly wrapped mummy. The only part of her that was exposed to their collective gazes was her arm, stretched out awkwardly, the clear plastic tubing of the IV sticking into her vein.
Her eyes were shut, her lashes dark and thick against the paleness of her skin. Since the moment she’d crashed into the fence, those gray eyes of hers had been closed. It felt as if an eternity had passed since that awful, terrifying moment, Sam Brody alternately willing, concentrating all his energy in a silent command,
Ty, open your eyes,
and then helplessly praying. She hadn’t responded to either. The doctors, however, were optimistic. The broken collarbone would heal quickly in someone so young and healthy. And though the force of the crash had dislodged Ty’s hunt cap and she’d bled copiously from the deep cut on the side of her head, fortunately there’d been no serious damage. The barrage of tests the hospital performed revealed no sign of brain trauma, and the doctors were confident she’d regain consciousness any time.
As for the large gash Ty had received a mere inch away from her eye, which had covered her face with blood, a single telephone call from Tyler Stannard’s office had the best plastic surgeon in the country flying in on Mr. Stannard’s private jet to tend to it. An hour and change later, he’d finished his handiwork, thirty-nine minute stitches forming a neat crescent-shaped line of black thread holding Ty’s lacerated skin together.
One look from Ty’s father had quelled any protests the hospital staff might have voiced in an attempt to enforce the rules concerning the number of visitors allowed in a patient’s room. They’d scurried off, leaving him, his personal assistant, Michael Smythe, and Sam Brody to their vigil. Within an hour of Sam’s urgent call, the helicopter had landed, depositing Ty’s father and Smythe at the local airport. They were met by a driver who rushed them to the hospital, where they arrived to find Ty still undergoing surgery, the plastic surgeon himself having arrived only twenty minutes earlier. The phone line in Ty’s private room had been connected immediately for Smythe’s use, the calls continuing uninterrupted as Ty was later wheeled into the room on the hospital gurney. Each telephone conversation was punctuated by rapid-fire instructions from Tyler Stannard.
“Smythe, call London. Reschedule the teleconference planned for this afternoon. Have them set it up for tomorrow morning instead, seven o’clock, our time. Then call the office and tell them to push back the meeting at Hilton Head until tomorrow afternoon. Oh, and make sure the jet’s ready to fly us all out of here this afternoon.”
“All of us, Mr. Stannard?” repeated Smythe blankly. “Will Miss Tyler be ready to leave the hospital so soon?”
From his position near Ty’s bandaged face, Sam lifted his head, momentarily distracted from his vigil. This was as close as he’d ever heard Michael Smythe come to questioning an order from his employer. Possessing the efficiency of a well-oiled machine, Smythe was also a typical yes man. Sam had never heard him say so much as boo to the billionaire before. Of course,
boo
might not be in Smythe’s refined vocabulary. Stannard’s personal assistant spoke with a snotty British accent, which was utter bullshit since he’d been born in Indiana, as Sam knew from his files. In Sam’s opinion, two years spent at a London secretarial school didn’t erase the Hoosier from an Indiana boy. But, hey, he wasn’t footing the guy’s salary, and Stannard didn’t seem to care as long as his personal assistant was effective. And from what Sam could tell, Smythe’s phony accent and hoity-toity manners worked wonders. People fell all over themselves, so eager to please, as if they’d been granted an interview with the Prince of Wales. But the phony accent, combined with Smythe’s obsequious attitude, rubbed Sam Brody the wrong way. He was still too much of a New York City cop at heart. It was a constant temptation to grab Smythe by the neck and shake him the way a terrier would a rat. So it was interesting to hear kiss-ass Smythe even hinting that Tyler Stannard might have misspoken.
Stannard glanced at his watch. “My daughter as well. If she’s not awake by three, I want you to have a private nursing staff in place, ready to fly back with us. They can monitor her while we’re in the air. Tell them we’ll arrange immediate transportation for their return once we’ve landed. No need for them to stay; we can hire some local nurses if my daughter needs it. But I want her out of here. I’ve got to close that deal on the property in South Carolina soon, or someone else might stumble across it. I don’t want Tyler in this place while I’m down south.”
“Yes, sir.” Smythe’s head bobbed up and down as he turned to the phone, punching numbers that would make Stannard’s wishes a reality. So much for Smythe’s show of backbone, Brody thought acidly. Tyler Stannard was pacing the floor, refusing to look at the bed in the center of the room. He hated seeing his daughter there, lying pale and lifeless. It brought memories of Catherine rushing back. He’d lost his wife. He was
not
going to lose his daughter. It terrified him how easily she could have died. That damned horse.
“Brody, I need you to go back to the show grounds. Tell Meghan Grimshaw to find a buyer for Charisma. I’m selling the mare.”
Sam felt his jaw drop. “Mr. Stannard, Ty loves Charisma. You’ll break her heart if you take away her horse.”
“I didn’t buy the horse to have it kill my daughter. She could have been crippled or killed by that fall.”
God, this situation was screwed up beyond belief. Sam racked his brains, trying to find a way to make Stannard understand how important Charisma was to Ty. Perhaps if he simply and calmly explained what had happened. “Mr. Stannard, I know how worried you must be, seeing Ty hurt like this, but what happened was a freak accident. The wind was something wicked out there today. It dislodged the judge’s umbrella from its stand and blew it spinning across the show ground. Once she comes to, Ty’ll know it wasn’t the horse’s fault. She’s a kid with a lot of grit, Mr. Stannard. I’d be willing to bet she’ll want to be back in the saddle as soon as she possibly can.”
“Which is precisely why you’re going to make sure that horse is sold by tomorrow morning at the latest,”
Stannard interrupted smoothly, his cold glare the only sign of how furious he was at Sam’s show of resistance. “Tyler’s riding career is finished. She’d have had to stop soon, anyway. I’ve had Smythe looking into a school in Switzerland. Its reputation is excellent academically. Furthermore, it will attend to the social graces she’s going to need as she goes into society. Something I’ve begun to notice she’s sadly lacking. It’s past time Tyler put away her childish hobbies and acquired a little sophistication.”
So the bastard was going to send his daughter packing, separating her from the school she’d gone to since third grade, the one real friend she’d managed to acquire, and dump her in some fancy finishing school in Europe. To top it off, he was planning to sell the horse that she’d loved more than anything for the past four years? Without even giving her a chance to say goodbye? Just thinking about how it would hurt Ty made Sam want to break something. Tyler Stannard’s face.
Unable to contain himself, Sam blurted out, “Just what is it you want from the poor kid? Christ, I’ve seen children from the projects who have nothing, but at least their parents give them love. Ty should be so lucky.”
Long, slow seconds ticked by as the two men stood on opposite sides of the hospital bed, staring hostilely at each other. “I believe you’ve overstepped the boundaries of your job description, Brody,”
Stannard said softly. “You’d do well to remember that I hired you as a bodyguard. I hardly believe that qualifies you to tell me how to raise my daughter. Now, do I need to repeat myself? I want the mare sold by tomorrow.”
“Yeah, you can repeat that one till you’re blue in the face, Stannard, ’cause you’ll have to find someone else to do it. I sure as hell won’t. Like you just said, I was hired to protect her. You want to hurt Ty, then do it yourself. I quit.”
“You say you wouldn’t hurt her, yet here you are walking out on her. A rather glaring contradiction, don’t you think?”
Brody’s eyes cut like daggers as he looked at his former employer. “Yeah, I’m hurting her, too. But Ty’s a smart girl. It won’t take her long to figure out who the real son of a bitch is.”
Holding his fury in check, Sam Brody reached out his large hand and lightly stroked Ty’s bandaged head, bidding her a silent farewell. He only wished he could have done more to help when she needed backup the most, feeling a cold, impotent rage settle over him knowing that he’d failed her. Sam turned and walked out the door, closing the book on this chapter in his life.
A single tear slipped from the corner of Ty’s closed eye, leaving a transparent trail against her pale skin.
1999
Manhattan
T
y’s cell phone was pealing a three-note ring from the depths of her gym bag. She ignored it. By the time she’d rooted through the jumble of sweaty workout clothes, the voice mail would have picked up. Whoever or whatever it was could wait until she’d reached her apartment. She glanced at the elevator’s other occupant. Balding, in his mid-fifties, several inches shorter than Ty, and a good forty pounds heavier, the elevator man was dressed in the apartment building’s navy blue uniform, the jacket decorated with gold-braided epaulettes and brass buttons. At the moment, the man, whose principal job was to press the illuminated numbers on the large gleaming panel, was staring at them as if in rapt fascination, pretending to be oblivious to the persistent rings emanating from the depths of Ty’s bag. The obnoxious noise ceased just as the elevator reached sixteen.
“Have a good day, Miss Stannard,” the elevator man offered as Ty stepped forward.
“Thank you, John,” she replied gravely, even though she and John had enjoyed this exact conversation numerous times today, and stepped into the private foyer that led to her apartment. The elevator door slid silently shut behind her, cutting off the need for further polite conversation. With a sigh of relief, Ty slipped the bag from her shoulder, letting it fall to the marble floor. She picked up the stack of mail piled neatly on top of the small entry table and fished her keys from her suede leather jacket. The phone was already ringing as she pushed her door open.
“All right already, I’m coming, I’m coming!” she muttered, walking over to the end table by her sofa and picking up the phone. “Hello?”
“Where have you been? I’ve been calling all over the place!”
“The gym, errands. Hi, Lizzie, what’s up?” Ty sank into the plump, cream-colored sofa cushions and kicked off her leather flats. Tucking her legs underneath her, she winced slightly at the unexpected soreness. It occurred to her that she’d been a little too enthusiastic with the weights.
“Oh, nothing, just trying to arrange a wonderful, delightful celebration with the two people I love most in the world, but of course, whenever I try to reach
you,
I might as well be trying to get through to the president. Honestly, Ty, don’t you know cell phones were invented for a reason?”
Ty tamped down the guilt that immediately welled up inside her at the memory of the last time Lizzie had been unable to reach Ty. But Ty knew how much Lizzie hated discussing that period in her life. Furthermore, Lizzie’d be appalled if Ty revealed how much guilt she still harbored. So she kept her voice light, teasing. “Sorry, Liz, I’m not sure I’ll ever figure out why these bloody gadgets are so essential to modern man. In fact,” she quipped, “I spend hours fantasizing about what I’d do if I ever got my hands around the throat of the so-called genius who invented them! Just the sight of all those people walking down Madison Ave, talking into little plastic rectangles or, worse, looking like badly trained secret service agents, is enough to make me break out in hives.”
“Yeah, well, I’m all for fantasizing, but let me tell you, your disdain for modern technology makes you a very difficult person to track down. I’ve thought of everything—including carrier pigeons. I hate to admit it, but it sure was easier when you had a secretary, like when you worked for Stannard Limited.”