Chapter Twenty
“You sure you don’t want to go home and grab a shower first?” Marti asked as she drove Elizabeth into the hospital drop zone. “You’ve been traveling, what…thirty hours?”
Elizabeth shook her head. “I won’t relax until I’ve seen for myself that Pat’s okay. You drop my bags home and go to work. I’ll catch a taxi later.” She climbed out of the Prius, keeping hold of the door until the slight woowoo of jet lag passed.
Her sister passed her the handbag she’d forgotten without comment. “Take this.” Marti shrugged off her coat and handed it over. “You’re in winter now. And phone me later when you’ve had some sleep.”
The coat was still warm and she snuggled into it gratefully. “Thanks for getting up at dawn to pick me up.”
“Love to Pat.”
Elizabeth waved until the car disappeared, then sank onto a nearby bench for a couple of minutes, waking herself up with gulps of crisp air. Her hangover had lasted until the stopover in Bangkok and she’d spent the last leg of the flight sleeping. Joggers emerged like wraiths from the early morning mist hanging over the park opposite.
Glancing at her watch, she did the time conversion. Zander would be at his Cardiff hotel, preparing to leave for the stadium. He’d been so lovely last—two—nights ago. The perfect person to get messy with because he didn’t pass judgment. She was in better shape to cope as a result.
Feeling more alert, she entered the hospital and followed signs through a labyrinth of corridors to the coronary unit.
Pat had undergone surgery as she’d flown across the world—stents to widen a narrowed artery; she’d ask for more details when her brain worked properly. At the nurses’ station, she inquired for his room number.
“He’s only seeing family,” said a male voice behind her.
Elizabeth turned to the guy sitting in the waiting area. Judging by his jeans and sweater he wasn’t a doctor. “I’m family,” she said. As good as.
“You’re not. I’ve never seen you before.”
“I’ve never seen you before either.” Although the jutting brows and coloring gave him away. Trying not to sound accusatory, she held out her hand. “You’re Pat’s son, Sean, and I’m Elizabeth, your dad’s neighbor. He had the attack when we were Skyping and I flew in from Lon—”
She didn’t get a chance to finish before Sean was on his feet and pumping her hand. “Thank you,” he said fervently. “If you hadn’t been around to call for help, it could have been so much more serious. Dad hit his head in the fall, that’s why he didn’t respond. He’s sleeping, but of course you can go in.”
Pat lay under the covers, his breathing sonorous, his brows upstanding and his color good. The last of her fear evaporated when Elizabeth touched his arm, warm and solid. Real. Pat’s eyes opened briefly, as blue as a glimpse of sky. “Muirnin,” he said and went back to sleep.
She had coffee in the hospital’s cafe with Sean.
“I’ve been trying to get him to move down to Palmerston North for months, to avoid precisely this kind of situation,” he said. “Neither of us could stand living with each other—we’re too alike—but there’s a terrific retirement village close by. Dad could buy a one-bedroom place and have all the independence he enjoys now and family ten minutes’ walk away. You’d think I was suggesting prison.” Sean rubbed the bridge of his nose. “We got to the point where he hung up on me if I brought it up—and I really hate being hung up on.”
“Who doesn’t?” she agreed.
“So we haven’t talked in months. Both of us waiting for apologies and the kids missing Grandpa.” He sighed and cupped his coffee mug. “It all seems so stupid now. The doctors reckon he’ll be discharged in five days and I’ve suggested he come to us to convalesce and take a look at the unit. I have to fly back for work tomorrow, but I’ll return on the weekend… If you could help me convince him?”
Elizabeth didn’t want Pat to move away. Well tough. She didn’t want another fright like this either. “I’ll talk to him.”
* * *
Pat clutched his chest.
“Stop that,” Elizabeth said sternly.
“I never thought you’d turn on me,” he said. “Take Sean’s side.”
“All I’m asking is that you look at a retirement village website.” She rested her laptop on the skinny legs under the hospital bed’s blanket and adjusted the blinds to deflect the light.
Pat closed the lid. She opened it. “I saved your life, you owe me.”
Taking his snort as consent, she clicked through the photographs. “I did some research and read the reports. This is a first-class facility.”
“Hmph.”
“You can’t tell me the gardens aren’t stunning.” She paused at a shot of a fountain surrounded by colorful garden beds.
“I can’t afford it.”
“I know what I paid for my house and yours is mortgage-free. You can cover the cost and have money left over for a trip to the Emerald Isles.”
“You’re trying to get rid of me, is that it? You don’t want a silly old fool to worry about.”
“I don’t want a silly old fool dying before his time. He means too much to me. I’ll come visit, you’ll come visit. Don’t you want a closer relationship with your son?”
“Hell no, we’re too much alike.” Funny how he repeated his son’s words almost exactly.
“Grandkids then, your daughter-in-law.”
His expression softened. “Fiona’s a good girl and the kids are corkers. But I’m not keen on living with a bunch of old people.”
“Some of my best friends are old people,” Elizabeth said. “Stop being ageist.”
He scowled. “New owners wouldn’t look after my garden.”
“They might not,” she said. “But when you stay with me, we’ll do midnight weeding raids and spray the greenfly on the cabbages.”
“If you’re even living here,” he said gloomily. “What if you marry that rock star fella?”
“I told you, we’re not serious.”
Pat snorted. “It wasn’t for the sake of my pretty blue eyes he learned the song. Clear as day he’s in love with you.”
“You met him for ten minutes,” she countered. “Your pretty blue eyes were full of tears for most of them and you were building up to a heart attack!”
“Sweet Jesus.” Pat rolled his eyes. “And you say I’m in denial.”
“I’m being very careful not to say that,” she retorted, “but you’re wrong about Zander. Neither of us is interested in something permanent.” It was the mantra that kept her grounded and she repeated it every day.
“You keep thinking that, muirnin.”
“Pat,” she said softly, refusing to be distracted. “We both know family is everything to you. What’s the real sticking point?”
He started fingering the edge of the sheet. “It was our house,” he said at last. “Mine and Kathleen’s. I can look at the curtains and remember her making them, the trees and remember us planting them. I’m worried she might not come with me if I move.”
“It’s only a house. Here’s where you keep her,” Elizabeth touched her head, “here’s where she lives,” she tapped her heart. “I think Kathleen would be saying, you’ll be seeing her soon enough. Until then, wouldn’t she want you spending that time with your son and grandchildren?”
He peered at the pictures on the screen. “They probably don’t take pets.”
“I checked and you can take Butterball.” She added dryly, “Apparently, as a cat, she qualifies as orderly and well-behaved.”
Pat chuckled. “We’d shake up the place I expect, the pair of us.”
“So you’ll think about it?”
“I’ll think about thinking about it.”
* * *
“I hope you’re being photographed with plenty of starlets and models,” were his biographer’s first words to him after three days apart.
Zander leaned against the headboard in his Glasgow hotel room and maximized his screen to bring her into better focus—his redhead sitting in her study in New Zealand. “I miss you too.”
She grinned. God, he loved that grin. “Let me start again.” Her gaze softened to something like shyness. “Hello, Zander.”
“Hello, Elizabeth.” A little awkwardly, they smiled at each other. Time zones and schedules had limited their previous communications to e-mails and texts. “Let me guess, you’ve been fielding some tough questions from local media since you’ve been home.”
Frowning, she raked fingers through her red hair and it bounced back into tendrils. “They start by inquiring about my progress on the memoir, but it soon turns personal. ‘Is he as sexy in the flesh?’ Notice however I answer, I’m agreeing you’re sexy. All leading to whether we fancy each other.”
“‘Fancy,’” he drawled. “Such a polite word for what we’ve got, don’t you think?”
She straightened her mouse pad and said lightly, “So I didn’t imagine us. It seems surreal, now I’m back in the real world.”
That bothered him. “And what makes your world more real than mine?”
“For a start it has bills, an overgrown garden, and supermarket queues. I have a lot more privacy in my public life and way less in my private life.” She’d barely finished talking when the door behind her opened and a slender strawberry blond appeared.
“Oh, am I early?” she said, surprised. “I thought you’d be finished with your interview by now.” She spoke to Elizabeth, but she stared at Zander.
“Forty minutes early,” Elizabeth retorted. “Zander, this is my sister Marti, Marti meet Zander. She and I are spring-cleaning Pat’s house while he’s in hospital.” Swinging in her chair to face her sister she added, “Shouldn’t you be wearing old clothes?”
“It’s so great to meet you,” Marti gushed, “I’m a big fan.”
Doc coughed into her hand. Zander could have sworn he heard “bullshit.”
“Thank you.” He laid on the charm, wanting Elizabeth’s sister to like him and curious about everything to do with his lover. It quickly became apparent they weren’t alike. Marti wore her personality—smart, sexy, sophisticated—like a brand, while Elizabeth’s reflected her character. Her sister assessed reactions and fine-tuned her approach to get the response she wanted, Elizabeth changed for nobody. If anything, Zander saw more of himself in Marti.
Their relationship was interesting though, Doc very much the proud older sis. “Marti convinced me to buy this house—she’s one of Auckland’s top real estate agents.”
Marti took the praise as her due, but didn’t reciprocate. At one point, when Elizabeth was laughingly recounting her siblings’ attempts at matchmaking, Marti shot him an apologetic, almost embarrassed smile.
And Zander thought with some surprise and a surge of protectiveness, she doesn’t get how special Doc is. The way Elizabeth talked about her family suggested they were close, but he wasn’t sensing the unconditional acceptance he experienced in his. On the other hand, his mother and brother had no expectations of him.
“We should get working,” Zander said after Marti had ignored a couple of Elizabeth’s hints.
“Of course.” She retreated graciously. “Great to meet you, Zander.”
“And you.”
“I knew you two would have a lot in common,” Elizabeth said happily after she’d left.
Yeah, neither of us really deserves you.
She activated her recorder, but Zander wasn’t ready to work yet.
“You really want to record us having Skype sex?”
Elizabeth glanced over her shoulder to check the door was closed. “Keep your voice down.” Her expression was both intrigued and regretful as she deleted his comment. “We’re on company time.”
Always so damn careful about separating state from personal.
“How’s your Irish boyfriend?” he persisted. How the fuck did one court a woman? He’d never had to do it before.
“Improving every day.” She hit pause. “Pat’s considering moving down country to live closer to his son and family.” She filled Zander in. “I brought in the big guns yesterday and set up a Skype link to the grandkids.”
“Has he realized yet he doesn’t stand a chance?”
“Yes, but he’s not going down easy.”
“Give him my sympathies.”
She laughed. “Listen, how would you feel if I stay another week? I’m spring-cleaning his house while he’s in hospital, but I could lift his sale price by a few thousand if I do some paint touch-ups and tidy the garden. We don’t need to interview as much while I’m writing the first draft.”
Reluctantly, Zander recalled Stormy’s advice. Put her interests first. Was that courting? “Sure.”
“I appreciate it.”
“I miss you,” he added, unable to help himself.
“You miss the sex.”
“I miss you,” he repeated. Fuck this indirect approach. “You miss me?”
The door opened. “Sorry to interrupt again.” Marti batted her eyelashes at him. “Elizabeth, if you give me Pat’s key, I’ll get started.”
If they’d been on the verge of a tender moment, it was lost amidst instructions on where to find the vacuum cleaner and fresh kitty litter. Ever the pragmatist, Zander reconciled himself to business talk.
“Let’s tackle another of those missing pieces,” she began. “Why did you and Devin wait until recently to reveal he cowrote your first hits?
He’d always known they’d have to address this eventually. “When Rage started out, we didn’t think we’d be taken seriously, admitting a sixteen-year-old coauthored our songs. So I took sole credit and Dev and I had a private arrangement on royalties. When he heard I was negotiating for our songs to be used in commercials, he sought recognition to kill the deal.” He’d never admitted that publicly before and her eyes widened slightly in appreciation of the scoop.
“Why didn’t you check with him before you said yes?”
“I didn’t think he’d object.”
“Even though he’s a recovering alcoholic and the campaign was for a liquor brand?”
Zander worded his response carefully. “I needed money for the tour and at that stage I expected Dev to rejoin Rage. Once he made his position clear, I scuppered the deal.”
“And the agency sued for breach of contract.”
“We settled out of court.”
Everything he said was true, but what he left out made Zander feel like a liar.
“The payout must have been a huge financial setback for the tour.”
Oh yeah. “I found other funding.” Mortgaging everything he owned.
To his relief, Elizabeth didn’t ask where. “How does somebody with such business acumen misread a contract—and his brother—so badly?”
“You have no idea how arrogant I was then.” High-handed. Selfish. And a crook.
Elizabeth chuckled, thinking he was joking, and Zander forced a smile. “Believe it or not, I’m new and improved.” Guilt he’d learned to live with, but shame had arrived with sobriety. “Anyway, you need to clean spring or whatever it is that helpful people do.” He found himself squirming under her clear-eyed gaze. “I’ll go flirt with a supermodel and create a photo op for the press.”
“It’s a tough job, but someone’s got to do it,” she teased.
“You know, a little insecurity would really help my ego,” he said half-seriously, but Elizabeth only laughed at him.
Zander’s answering smile faded when he cut the Skype connection.
He had no qualms about withholding his darkest secrets in the memoir, but he was starting to feel conflicted about what he hid from Elizabeth. The line between self-protection and misrepresentation wasn’t something he’d ever had to consider because he’d never let any woman get close. But he wanted—craved—intimacy with her.
And she would never understand his past actions. Lately Zander had been having trouble understanding them himself.
How do you explain to the woman you love that you defrauded your own brother?