Chapter Sixteen
He shouldn’t have come to Lily’s funeral. Nick knew Heather didn’t want him there. She’d made her feelings, or lack of them, perfectly clear by ignoring his requests to see her when they were both in the hospital.
But he couldn’t stay away. Part of it, a very large part of it, was guilt. Which was why he was standing here, against doctor’s orders, beside some oak trees, using one of the trees for support so he could watch Lily Bannon’s memorial service taking place fifty yards away.
He acknowledged that part of the reason he was here was to see Heather again. To catch a glimpse of her brown, wavy hair tumbling down the back of her black dress. To mentally caress the curve of her face as she kissed a white rose and placed it on top of her sister’s casket.
There were only a handful of people sitting in the dozen or so white chairs set up in front of the gaping hole in the ground. Apparently Lily hadn’t had a lot of friends. And the lack of family members was almost embarrassing. He didn’t even know if Heather had any family, and that somehow bothered him even more than his guilt.
He’d loved her almost from the first moment he’d met her. And although he knew her personality, the goodness inside her, the work ethic that was as much a part of her as breathing, he didn’t know much about her past, what had shaped her into the person she was today.
He hadn’t taken the time to learn.
He’d chosen his career over her. And the only time she’d ever asked him for anything—
please save my sister
—he’d failed her, utterly and completely.
The service was over. He hadn’t planned on Heather seeing him there. He’d come to pay his respects, to offer a silent prayer, but he’d intended to step back behind the tree so no one would see him when the funeral came to an end. But he’d been too lost in his thoughts to remember to conceal himself.
Now it was too late.
Even from fifty yards away, he could see Heather’s shoulders tense when she looked his way. An older woman standing next to her put her hand on Heather’s arm, said something to her. Heather shook her head and started walking toward Nick.
He straightened away from the tree, gritting his teeth against the nausea that action caused and the tug of the material of his suit across the still-tender skin on his back. The explosion had singed the hair on his head and blistered the skin from the back of his neck to the back of his calves. Only his feet had escaped without burns because of his shoes. But thankfully Heather hadn’t received any burns. She’d had a concussion from when Luis had knocked her unconscious. And she had half drowned by the time Dante’s men had fished them both out of the water. But thank God she hadn’t been burned.
She came to a stop about three feet away, the same distance someone might give to a stranger, as if they’d never been anything more than that to each other.
Maybe they hadn’t. Maybe he was the only one who felt like his heart was being ripped from his chest every time he thought about the explosion, and how close Heather had come to dying. He certainly hadn’t realized how much she meant to him, not until she nearly died in his arms.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, her blue eyes flashing, her hands fisted at her sides.
“I came to pay my respects.”
She laughed harshly. “Your respects? To the woman you killed?”
He winced.
“Why did you do it?” Heather demanded. “Why didn’t you put me down and grab Lily? I could have run out of that house on my own two feet. You could have saved her. But you chose to let her die. Why?”
He felt the blood rush from his face. He stared at her, incredulous, shocked. Was that what she thought? That he chose for Lily to die? He shook his head. “I didn’t want her to die. You had a huge bump on your head and had lost a lot of blood. You’d been knocked unconscious—”
“But I came to. I told you to put me down. You chose not to. There was still enough time to save her.”
“You were pale, shaking. Your eyes were unfocused. I knew you had a concussion. I couldn’t risk you trying to run out on your own. You wouldn’t have made it. You couldn’t have run fast enough. The only
choice
I made was to save you. I couldn’t save you both.”
Her skin flushed and she opened and closed her fists several times, as if she were fighting the urge to slap him, or slug him. If it would make her feel better, he’d gladly stand there and let her.
She didn’t hit him. Instead, she drew a deep breath. “You saved my life, several times. I know that. And I thank you for that. But...” Her lips compressed into a hard line and she swallowed. The bright shine in her eyes told him how close she was to losing her composure.
It nearly killed him not to reach out and draw her close, cradle her against him. But he wasn’t sure he had the strength to take a step, even if she’d wanted him to hold her, which he knew she didn’t. The most severe burns, the ones on his right calf, were sending sharp jolts of fire racing across his nerve endings. It took every ounce of strength and stubbornness he had not to sag against the tree for support.
She blinked several times, fighting tears. She finally let out a pent-up breath, back in control. “I’m sure you feel like you did the right thing on that island, and I am glad to be alive. But I could never look at you again without seeing the face of my sister lying there in a drug dealer’s arms while you forced me to leave her there to die.” Her voice broke on the last word and she drew another shaky breath. “I don’t ever want to see you again.”
She turned around and marched across the grass, back to the only person still standing by the graveside, the older woman she’d spoken to earlier. The woman put her arm around Heather’s shoulders and led her toward the parking lot.
Nick prayed he wouldn’t disgrace himself by blacking out while he waited for Heather to get into her car. His legs started shaking violently, but still he fought against the white-hot agony. He didn’t want Heather’s sympathy, and he’d be damned if he let her see how weak he’d become.
When her car rounded a curve out of sight, Nick’s brother stepped from behind the cluster of oak trees and shoved the wheelchair up behind him. Nick collapsed into the chair, hissing when his back pressed against the hard vinyl.
“Thanks for waiting,” Nick said from between clenched teeth.
“I didn’t want you to look like any more of a fool than you already do,” Rafe said. “You know it was totally stupid coming here. You’ve probably set your recovery back a couple of weeks. She would have been really impressed with your intelligence if she’d realized you sneaked out of a hospital to go to a funeral where you weren’t even wanted in the first place.” Rafe pushed the chair across the grass toward their car.
Nick winced with each bump of the wheels. “I didn’t come here for her.”
“Yeah. Right.”
The agony pulsing through Nick’s back and legs was making his vision blur. But it was no worse than the pain of knowing that his brother was right. One of the reasons he’d insisted on coming here was that he’d held a small grain of hope that—if he had the courage to speak to her—Heather might be happy to see him. He’d hoped she might find it in her heart somehow to forgive him.
But now he knew that had been just a dream.
* * *
H
EATHER
SAT
IN
her car at the curb as she’d done every day this week, and the week before, doing nothing but thinking. Thanks to her sister’s one selfless act, she had the luxury of sitting and thinking, of doing nothing, because she could afford to.
Lily had purchased a life insurance policy, a rather large one, and she’d made Heather the beneficiary. The generous settlement seemed like Lily’s way of paying her sister back for everything she’d taken from her. It had certainly come in handy, because Heather couldn’t focus or concentrate on work ever since the disastrous trip to Key West. Her fledgling private investigator business was on hiatus, and she wasn’t sure she even wanted to start it up again.
Thanks to Lily, she didn’t have to.
The life insurance policy had been paid for in a lump sum. The only way Lily would have been able to do that was with money from one of the Gonzalez brothers. Heather had wrestled with her conscience for weeks before cashing the insurance check. She’d finally decided that since the Gonzalez brothers had helped to destroy her sister’s life, the least they could do was to make some kind of restitution, even if it was from the grave.
Heather had done a lot of looking back in the past few weeks, because she couldn’t move forward until she understood how she’d gotten here, why everything had gone so horribly wrong. Talking to her relatives had been, well, an enlightening experience. She’d learned things she’d perhaps suspected, but had never been completely sure of. She’d cried over and over in the days since, but the tears had finally dried. She’d finally made her peace with her sister, and herself.
But there was one more person she needed to make peace with.
That’s why she was sitting in her car on the curb in front of a house she’d never been in, hungrily watching the front windows, both hoping and fearing for the glimpse of a familiar profile. It had taken several trips and finally an all-out bribe at the DEA office to get Nick’s address. But now, she couldn’t seem to work up the nerve to even walk to the door.
Just like yesterday.
And the day before.
And the day before that.
She closed her eyes and rested her forehead against the steering wheel. Why couldn’t she work up the nerve to get out of her car?
“What are you doing here?”
She jumped at the sound of the voice beside her. Rafe Morgan was crouching down next to her open window. The frown and tension around his mouth told her he wasn’t a bit pleased to see her.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to intrude. I’ll leave.” She reached for the keys in the ignition.
“The hell you will.” He stood and opened the door. “Get out.”
“I’m sorry, what?”
“You heard me. Get out or I’ll drag you out.”
She blinked, and let out a shriek of surprise when he reached in across her and unbuckled her seat belt. He hauled her out of the car and started walking up toward the house with her in tow.
She pulled back, desperately trying to stop him. “What are you doing? Stop it right now. Let me go.”
He ignored her struggles and forced her all the way to the front door before finally letting her go.
Heather yanked her hand back and rubbed her aching shoulder, the one Nick had popped back into the socket. She was still going through therapy, and Rafe’s rough treatment had it throbbing.
His face flushed as he glanced at her hand rubbing her shoulder. “I didn’t realize I was hurting you. My apologies.”
Heather dropped her hand. “It’s an old injury. You didn’t know.”
He gave her a curt nod. “I couldn’t let you leave again without talking to Nick.”
This time it was her turn to flush. “Again?”
“I come over here every afternoon after work to check on Nick. And every evening about this time you end up sitting out front, trying to gather the courage to knock on the door. Well, I’m tired of waiting for you to develop a backbone. So I’m taking the decision out of your hands.” He turned the knob and shoved the door open. “After you.” He swept his hand out in front of him.
Heather balked at the threshold. “Wait, what do you mean you come over here to check on him? Is he sick or something?”
“Or something. He’s out back where he is every day at this time. I don’t mind telling you that I think you treated him like crap, and he doesn’t deserve that. I wouldn’t let you near him except that I know the idiot will be happy to see you. Mainly because he’s a little bit drunk and too stupid to know better.”
Heather’s stomach sank. “He’s...drunk?”
“Only a little. He just got started. You’ve caught him at a good time. Now go talk to him. I don’t care what you’re here to say. Just get it over with. Either make up with him or make sure it’s a clean break. Get it all out so he can move on with his life.” He wrapped his hands around her waist and physically set her in the foyer as if she were a doll.
She was too shocked to do more than blink at him and move her mouth like a fish, but no sounds came out.
Rafe shut the door in her face, leaving her alone in the darkened entranceway.
Heather reached for the doorknob, intending to step right back outside, but the pictures on the wall caught her attention. She slowly lowered her hand. There were dozens of photographs, family pictures, there could be no doubt. She recognized Nick in some of them, laughing or smiling, the Nick she remembered from when they’d first started dating, the charmer who called her darlin’ and made her heart melt.
Her breath caught when she saw a rectangular strip of pictures affixed to the expensive wallpaper with a thumbtack, a black and white collection of five pictures of her and Nick, taken in a photo booth at the local fair. She’d forgotten about that day, had assumed she’d lost those pictures somewhere. She never would have expected to find them on the wall in Nick’s house.
For the first time since she’d left him standing in the cemetery after saying those horrible things to him, hope flared inside her that he might yet forgive her. It gave her the courage she’d lacked all week, and had her walking through the house toward the sliding glass doors that opened onto the backyard.
She paused with her hand on the door handle. He was standing with his back to her, staring at the creek that ran behind his house.
Leaning on a cane.
Why did he have a cane? She shoved the door open and stepped onto the back deck.
Nick held up a half-empty beer bottle but didn’t turn around. “If you’re going to lecture me again, brother dearest, at least wait until I’m drunk to do it.” He tilted the bottle and took a long drink.
Heather stepped off the deck onto the grass, a flash of anger finally giving her the courage she’d been lacking. She marched across the grass and grabbed the beer bottle out of Nick’s hand.
His eyes widened, then narrowed as he tried to swipe the bottle back from her.