* * *
Gabby’s visit with her father at the hospital was relatively brief, but still fairly upsetting. He’d regained consciousness but he hadn’t changed his mind concerning his future. He was just as staunchly determined not to have any treatment for his condition as he had been before he’d relapsed into a coma.
When she’d tried to reason with him and tried to get him to tell her just
why
he was refusing to seek treatment, her father had said something that she thought wasn’t like him at all. He’d told her that maybe he didn’t deserve to go on living and that it was time he “checked out.”
Gabby tried to get him to be more specific and explain why he felt he deserved a death sentence. He refused to say any more on the subject other than it was his life to do with as he wished and that she and her sisters had absolutely no say in the matter.
Since she couldn’t get him to change his mind and arguing with him was not only frustrating but emotionally taxing, Gabby left the hospital before she broke down in tears. She knew that her father had no use for tears, that he thought women who cried were emotional lightweights and that tears were meant to be manipulative. He’d made it abundantly clear that he was
not
about to be manipulated by her or anyone.
Desperation had Gabby making a detour before returning to the ranch. She went to seek help from a doctor.
Specifically, she went to see Levi.
Levi was her older half brother, a product of an affair her father had had when he was still married to his first wife, Brittany. Jethro had never married Levi’s mother, but that didn’t change the fact that he was her half brother and she considered him family—at times, hostile family due to the way her father had treated him, but still family.
Her father certainly had got around in years past, Gabby thought as she pulled her car up before the hospital where Levi was currently doing his residency. Unlike her ne’er-do-well ex-stepsiblings, her half brother had made something of himself despite the disadvantages that faced him and the fact that his birth father felt his obligation to the child he’d sired was limited to a specified sum of money that was sent at regular intervals while Levi was an adolescent.
Levi and she, along with her sisters, knew one another and enjoyed a cordial, if somewhat distant, relationship.
Right now, however, Gabby was determined to get Levi to be something other than distant. Her father needed to receive treatment for his condition if he wanted to prolong his life. She couldn’t accept that he wouldn’t want to live longer. She was pinning all her hopes of getting her father to come around and act sensibly on Levi. Maybe if a physician who was also his son pointed out how foolish he was being, her father would finally listen and change his mind.
What she hadn’t counted on was the fact that her father wasn’t the only one who needed convincing when it came to this matter.
“You want me to do what?” Levi asked after she’d all but burst her way into the office he shared with several other doctors. His hazel eyes narrowed beneath a wayward thatch of dirty-blond hair. Was she serious?
“I want you to talk to Dad and make him get those chemo treatments. Convince him that if he doesn’t, he’s going to die. I don’t think he
really
understands that or how serious the situation is. I
know
the disease has progressed, but at least this way, there might be some tiny bit of hope that maybe he can live longer than the doctor he’d consulted had predicted. If Dad refuses to get any treatment, then there is no hope at all.”
Gabby was all but pleading with the man sitting at the desk before her. But even though every fiber of her being was involved in this supplication, she had a feeling that her words were falling on fairly deaf ears, just the way they did when she tried to reason with her father. Levi’s expression hadn’t changed any since she’d begun talking. If anything, it looked as if it had actually hardened.
“You’re not going to talk to him and convince him to get the treatment, are you?” she wanted to know, experiencing a sinking feeling in her stomach.
“Jethro’s a big boy, Gabby,” Levi reminded her mildly. He’d never been able to refer to the man with any kind of affection. The small boy within him who had desperately wanted a father had long since died. He’d made the best of life, his philosophy being it was what it was and there was no use fighting it.
He found it rather ironic that she had come to him to try to convince Jethro. After all, they had less than no relationship between them. There wasn’t a single fond memory to be had that involved the blunt, driven patriarch. And he knew damn well that at this point in their lives, there never would be. “Look, Gabby, Jethro is more than capable of making up his own mind.”
“Obviously, he’s not,” she insisted, “because if he
was
capable of making an intelligent decision, he’d be agreeing to the treatments.”
“The treatments don’t come with any sort of written guarantee,” Levi pointed out matter-of-factly. “About the only thing that is certain is that he’s going to be sick to his stomach while he’s receiving treatment. It’s his right to choose not to live that way.”
“But it’s not his right to choose
not
to live,” Gabby insisted.
Levi watched her with what she felt were her father’s eyes. “He might have a different opinion on that.”
Frustrated, she blew out a breath. “Then it’s no?” The expression on his face told her she was right—and that there was no budging him on this. “You know, whether you like it or not, Levi, you’re a lot like Dad. Stubborn to the end.”
“I’m nothing like him,” he informed her, doing his best to bank down his annoyance.
“You go right on thinking that,” she said, walking out of his office.
She was out of hearing range when he muttered a few choice words to himself. She didn’t stop to ask him to repeat himself. In her present mood, that was definitely not advisable.
* * *
Hanging around Jethro Colton’s hospital suite was
not
the way either of Darla’s children wanted to spend their time. Neither thought matters could get worse—until their mother made her next “request” of them.
“No!” Trip told his mother before she could even finish her sentence.
“Not only no,” Tawny chimed in, “but
hell no!
”
But Tawny and Trip’s rather loud, disgruntled protests notwithstanding, Darla restated her demand that both of them return to Dead River for the late nanny’s wake.
“I need you two to represent me at that old biddy’s wake,” Darla insisted, angry that she had to explain anything to her children. They should know by now that they needed to do her bidding and that was that.
“Why aren’t
you
going?” Tawny, always the first to challenge her, wanted to know.
“Because I have to do something else first,” Darla told her.
“So do it,” Trip told her, adding his two cents to the verbal tug-of-war. “We’ll wait.”
“No, you’ll go,” Darla informed her son in no uncertain terms.
Tawny thrust out her chin, spoiling for yet another confrontation with the mother she so closely resembled. “Why?”
“Because I said so,” Darla told her between tightly clenched teeth. “And if you two are partial to that allowance I’ve been giving you while you just sit on those no-account butts of yours, you’ll do as you’re told.” She looked from one to the other, thinking what a disappointment to her they both were. She couldn’t depend on either of them to come through for her. “Do I make myself clear?”
“Clear,” Tawny muttered.
“Yeah,” Trip mumbled. “Clear.”
They trooped out of their former stepfather’s hospital suite, clearing out the way some of the family already had.
Little by little, Jethro’s room became less crowded. Everyone was headed to the wake.
Darla watched Tawny and Trip leave. Satisfied that they were on their way back to Dead River, she took herself downstairs to the hospital basement where the cafeteria was located.
There she bided her time, eating what she viewed as wretched hospital food while she waited. Waited until she was certain that everyone who’d been keeping vigil in Jethro’s suite was gone. Tonight was that creature’s wake, which meant that both family and staff would be there, leaving the comatose Jethro quite alone.
She didn’t want anyone suddenly turning up to overhear her or, by their very presence, keep her from being able to say what she felt she needed to say.
Not that Jethro could actually hear her, but there were still things she wanted to tell him. Things that she needed to get off her chest even if the bastard couldn’t hear her.
Darla smiled to herself, rather grateful that that holier-than-thou nanny had been in the wrong place at the wrong time and finally got hers.
She certainly wasn’t going to be shedding any tears over
that,
Darla thought smugly.
Moving like the model she’d always thought she could have become if opportunity had been on her side, Darla entered Jethro’s room and crossed over to the hospital bed where he’d been lying, unresponsive, for the past few days.
Darla always took meticulous care of her appearance, but tonight she’d taken particular care to make certain that she was even more attractive than usual. Before entering his room again, she’d paused in the restroom to freshen up her makeup—just in case there was some minute part of Jethro that could be reached within the coma.
A tantalizing, subtle scent surrounded her like the embrace of a warm cloud.
She leaned over Jethro, lightly playing her manicured fingertips over his chest and delighting in the fact that the man hadn’t regained consciousness in days.
He didn’t now, either.
That he didn’t respond to the way her hand languidly moved along his still torso told her he was still in the grips of the coma.
A wide smile touched her blazing red lips as she whispered into his ear, “Looks like I get my wish, you old bastard. Christmas comes early this year. You’re really dying. And I must say, it couldn’t be happening to a more deserving man.”
She straightened up, still looking at him.
“I am surprised, though, that you’re not grasping at every straw, trying to bribe and claw your way back to good health like the pathetic creature you are. Refraining just isn’t like you. But it goes without saying that I
am
very pleased that you’re refusing treatment. The faster you go, the faster I get my money. And believe me, I fully intend to get what’s mine.” She patted her chest for emphasis. “Because I’ve
earned
it.
“Every time you made love to me, every time I had to endure the sight of those spindly little legs of yours and that thin, pathetic naked body, I’d placate myself by fantasizing about your death, about spreading out my share of the money all over your dead body.” She smirked with glee.
“I just can’t
wait
to see you in the ground. The very thought of it makes me feel all hot and excited with anticipation.”
She glanced at her watch and then the Cheshire-cat grin returned. “Well, what do you know, the stores aren’t closing for another hour. I think I’ll go shopping for my ‘mourning dress.’ Something bright and colorful seems appropriate, don’t you think? It’ll be perfect for when I dance on your grave.”
She leaned in close to his ear one final time and whispered, “Nobody’s going to miss you, you wasted piece of flesh. Least of all, me.”
With a laugh that lingered, along with her scent, long after she left her ex-husband’s hospital suite, Darla walked out of the room.
* * *
He’d heard her.
Heard every mean-spirited word Darla had uttered.
Locked in the grasp of a dusky netherworld that forbade and restrained any sort of movement, he’d still been able to hear her.
Jethro had always thought that it would end this way. There were many who thought he deserved an ignoble ending and he was among them. Never a particularly good man, he’d only grown less so as the years went by.
The sins he was guilty of were many.
At times, he would have been hard-pressed to say which of those sins was the most grievous. The women he’d bedded and abandoned?
The children he’d fathered and turned his back on?
The son he had lost?
His connection to organized crime, which had stretched out over not years but decades?
There were other sins, a score or so more, sins he couldn’t even recall, but that had blackened his already-black soul.
Yes, he had this coming; there was no doubt about that.
The only thing that truly irked him about his departing this world was that his pending demise gladdened the heart of the harpy who had just been hovering over him. But then, she would get hers in the end. The money she was expecting to receive would never materialize. It would vanish like so much dust in the wind—just as he was destined to do.
Despite the reckless life he’d led, he’d always known that in the end there would be justice—dispensed by a judge who presided over them all.
A judge to whom there was no appeal because he had witnessed it all and meted out punishment that fit the crime or, as in his case, the crimes.
He wasn’t ready to die—who ever was?—but he accepted it as his fate and refused to prolong the agony, neither his own, nor his family’s, by seeking out treatment that came with no guarantees and put forth no promises.
He deserved what was coming to him and he would take it like a man.
There was a first time for everything.
Chapter 13
T
he
moment the medical examiner completed his autopsy and released Faye’s body, Dylan immediately had his mother’s remains transported to the town’s only funeral home. Though it was hard for him, he carefully went through his mother’s things and chose her favorite dress so that she could be buried in it.
Rather than having the funeral home hold a wake for his mother that extended over three days, Dylan requested that the wake be only for one evening. Contacting the minister of the church Faye had attended on occasion, he made arrangements for her funeral to be held the next morning. She was his mother, and even in death, he was protective of her. He wanted her away from prying, curious eyes as soon as respectfully possible.
“Guess I’m not as grown up as I thought, Ma,” Dylan Frick whispered to the woman within the coffin. His throat threatened to close up on him.
He’d deliberately hung back, waiting in the rear of the funeral home’s dimly lit viewing room for everyone who wanted to pay their last respects to come, say their piece or their fragmented prayers and then leave.
She was being buried tomorrow morning.
He wanted to spend these last few moments alone with her.
Or what there was of his mother now that she was dead.
He’d thought that he could hold it together. That though he felt bereft at her abrupt, violent and utterly untimely passing, he could successfully deal with the emptiness that he was attempting to ignore, the emptiness that was eating away at him, giving no indication that it could be vanquished anytime within the foreseeable future.
He’d thought—until now—that he was strong enough not to allow tears to gather in his eyes. Certainly strong enough not to allow them to fall.
But apparently it seemed that he had no control over that, no matter how much he tried. Hence his whispered comment about his not being grown up enough.
But, he’d come to learn, within each grown man was a child aching to be comforted. A child who realized that he never would be comforted again.
“I should have taken the time to tell you how much you meant to me, how good a mother I thought you were,” he murmured to the still face, berating himself.
Dylan thought of the parade of wives and mistresses that Jethro Colton had gone through, not to mention the one who still lived on the premises like some unexorcised evil spirit.
“God knows there were enough bad ones around us for me to be able to see the difference, to realize how very special you are—were,” he corrected himself, hating the fact that he had to.
Dylan sighed and it came out sounding more like a shudder.
Maybe it was a little bit of both.
“But I always thought there’d be more time, that I could say what I knew I should say to you later. I was supposed to have later,” he said in almost an accusing tone, even though he knew it wasn’t her fault. That if there
was
a fault, it was his.
“It wasn’t supposed to be over yet.” The tears were back, and this time, he didn’t even bother trying to hold them back. “You were supposed to be around so I could give you those grandkids I knew you wanted. Now those kids, if I ever have them, will never get to know you, will never be able to brag to other kids that they’ve got the best grandmother in the state of Montana.”
Just then, his voice cracked. Filled with emotion, he couldn’t speak. All he could do was feel as if he’d just been robbed. Robbed of a mother, robbed of the years he’d thought they still had.
“I’ll get him, Ma. Whoever did this to you, I swear I’ll get him and I’ll make him pay for it. He can’t get away with it, can’t get away with just cutting you down like that.”
Dylan pressed his lips together, really afraid that at any second, he was going to break down.
Because of the rug, he didn’t hear the footsteps approaching until the person was directly behind him.
And then next to him.
“She looks like she’s sleeping, doesn’t she?” Mathilda Perkins asked, coming up behind him.
His back to the woman, Dylan quickly dried the tearstains on his face with the back of his hand. “No, ma’am,” he replied stoically. “She doesn’t. Ma used to toss and turn, like something was after her when she slept.”
He remembered how that used to worry him when he was a little boy. That he used to think she entered another world when she slept and that someday, she just wouldn’t come back. Years later, when he shared that with her, she just laughed and said she slept fitfully because, as the head nanny on the ranch, she always had a great deal on her mind.
“She never looked this peaceful,” he told the other woman.
His hat in his hand as he stood before her casket, Dylan absently ran the edge of the brim through his fingers. His eyes narrowed ever so slightly as he studied the housekeeper.
“I thought you came by earlier,” he said to the woman.
“I did.” She wondered how he knew that, since when she was here, she hadn’t seen him. “But I wanted to talk to you and I thought I’d eventually find you here, so I came back.”
“Talk to me?” he repeated. Other than words of condolences, the woman had hardly spared ten words on him in the past twenty years. “About what?”
“About all this.” Mathilda gestured about the funeral parlor. “About the funeral.”
He had no idea where this was going or what the woman was trying to say. There was something about Mathilda Perkins that made him uneasy, although for the life of him, he couldn’t have said what—or if it was actually because he felt so ripped up inside.
“What about the funeral?” he asked her.
Mathilda paused, as if she were searching for just the right words to use. After several beats, she continued.
“Well, all this costs money, as you well know, the high cost of dying and all that,” the woman elaborated, referring to an old cliché, “and I know that since you’re still struggling to establish yourself, money is undoubtedly more than a little tight.”
Mathilda stopped and then started again, hoping to sound more coherent this time around.
“So I wanted to tell you that I’d like to help pay for the casket and the service.” She offered him a compassionate smile, as if responding to some mental cue card that was suddenly being held up. “Your mother was my friend and this is the least I can do for her.”
Did the woman really think he was poor or was something else at work here? “No disrespect intended, Ms. Perkins, but I can pay for Ma’s funeral.”
“Please—” Mathilda lightly placed her hand on his wrist, silently supplicating Dylan. “I feel as if I owe it to her,” the housekeeper insisted.
“I feel the same way, Ms. Perkins,” Dylan told her, “and blood comes first.”
Mathilda looked at him for a long moment. He didn’t know, she realized. Faye obviously had never told him, taking her secret to the grave.
“Yes,” she murmured. “Blood comes first,” she agreed. And then she squeezed his hand quickly. “All right, I won’t press this. But if you ever need anything, or I can help you in some small way, you know where you can find me.”
With that, she retreated, leaving him alone with his mother again.
Dylan waited until the housekeeper’s footsteps echoed down the corridor, away from the viewing room where his mother was laid out.
He shook his head, thinking of the housekeeper and the rather eerie feeling she’d created in her own wake. “I always thought you had better taste in friends, Ma.”
Moving to the first row of chairs before the casket, Dylan picked a seat and sat down. He stayed there, watching over his mother’s casket and mentally reviewing his memories for a very long time.
Wishing with all his heart that he’d had just a little more time with his mother before her end had come.
But even a world of time wouldn’t have been enough. All it would have done, Dylan thought, was make him want even more.
* * *
There was no reason for Gabby to stop by the hospital. Her father continued to be comatose and her sisters had promised to call her if there was the slightest change in his condition.
Amanda and Catherine were taking turns staying at his bedside, but the urgency of keeping vigil was lessening as it appeared that their father was not about to suddenly come out of his coma. Besides, Gabby knew for a fact that all the doctors had been notified to immediately call the family should there be no one at Jethro’s bedside when and if he
did
emerge from his coma, the way he’d done once before.
Gabby supposed that in the absolute sense, she’d be of more use to Trevor than coming here, because the more people actively looking for his daughter, the better the chances were of finding the three-month-old. But for the sake of her conscience, she’d told Trevor that she wanted to swing by the hospital for a few minutes to see for herself how her father was doing.
She got no argument from Trevor, who still maintained that he really didn’t
need
her help, despite the fact that he seemed to welcome it—or, more accurately, he wasn’t rejecting her help with nearly as much verve as he had been.
Victories, Gabby thought as the hospital elevator stopped on her father’s floor and she got out, came in all sorts of various shapes and sizes.
Because of the late hour, the hospital corridors were eerily empty. There was less of a staff on duty after nine in the evening. The lights had been dimmed in order to enable the patients along that floor to fall asleep more easily.
Her father’s room was amid the suites reserved for the most affluent of patients, the ones who preferred their rooms to resemble hotel suites with all the amenities that went along with that sort of a high price tag.
Wealth,
Gabby thought,
has its privileges.
Although it couldn’t buy you health at any price, it could most certainly buy you comfort. Not that comfort meant all that much to her father in his present state.
Opening the door to her father’s suite, Gabby silently slipped in. She knew it was Catherine’s turn to take the shift, and since her sister wasn’t in the room, Gabby assumed that she had probably gone to get herself some coffee.
Just as well,
Gabby thought. She wanted to have her father to herself for the few minutes that she had to spare before going back to the ranch.
Gabby crossed to her father’s bedside. He looked, for all the world, as if he were just in a deep sleep—except for the tubes and monitors that formed a semicircle around him, keeping track of his vital signs and his breathing and making certain that his fluid needs were met.
Very gently, Gabby took his hand in hers and laced her fingers with his. It still felt like such a powerful hand, but perhaps, on closer look, it was just a tad less so.
Gabby sighed.
“Still playing possum, I see. Not that I can blame you, considering how many bad feelings you touched off, saying you wouldn’t ransom Trevor’s daughter. That’s not how you’re supposed to respond to a situation like that, Dad,” she reminded him reprovingly. “Trevor’s one of your people. You’re supposed to help your people, or didn’t anyone ever teach you that?” she asked.
“No, I guess not,” she decided a moment later. “But then, things like that shouldn’t have to be taught—you should just instinctively know them.” She pressed her lips together as she looked at the ashen-faced man in the hospital bed. There was a time when she’d thought of him as being such an indestructible giant. She’d been certain back then that nothing could ever harm him. But now she knew better.
And he wasn’t her hero anymore, the way he had been when she was a child.
“I love you, Dad. There are times—like now—when I don’t much like you, but I do love you. I always will, you know. All the same, I sure wish you hadn’t behaved so shamefully about ransoming Trevor’s baby. Avery was kidnapped because they thought she was your granddaughter, so, you see, you do have sort of a responsibility to do what you can to bring her back.”
Gabby squared her shoulders, wondering if she were crazy, or at the very least, wasting her breath talking to a comatose person as if he could hear every word. But saying it made her feel better, not deceitful.
“I just want you to know that if we do get a ransom note, I intend to use my trust-fund money. I know you have the final say in this, but right now, you can’t say anything, so I’m going ahead as if you’d given your permission. Being ornery, knowing what I’m about to do will probably make you come out of your coma, but I figure either way, I win. And if this does make you come out of your coma and you still veto giving any money to bring that baby home, I’ll find another way to raise the money. Coltons always live up to their responsibilities—you taught me that. And bringing Avery home safely is
my
responsibility.”
Gabby stood over her father for another long moment, a jumble of words crowding her head, myriad emotions crowding her heart. But there wasn’t enough time to say and act on everything she was feeling right now.
“I know you, old man,” she whispered in his ear so that no one could overhear her just in case her sister suddenly returned. Her throat felt thick with tears she couldn’t take the time to shed right how. Tears that filled her soul. “You’re too cantankerous to die. You’ll be back. I know you’ll be back. Just don’t make us wait too long.”
Gabby pressed a kiss to her father’s forehead. She thought she felt him stir just the slightest bit, but when she drew back to look, he appeared to be just as he had been when she’d walked in.
Just my imagination,
she told herself. Wishful thinking.
The door to the suite opened just then and Catherine walked in, a half-consumed container of coffee in her hand. Obviously not expecting anyone to be in the room, her sister looked surprised to see her.
“Gabby, what are you doing here?” she asked. Her eyes widened in the next moment. “Did they find Avery?”
Gabby shook her head. “Not yet. I just wanted to stop by and see how Dad was doing.”
It wasn’t as if the hospital was a quick hop, skip and a jump away from the house. It took a while to get here. Catherine shook her head. “I promised to call if there was any change,” she reminded Gabby.