Chapter Three

 

With one hand pressed to the small of her back, Anne-Marie stretched work-stiffened muscles. Chasing after toddlers and preschoolers all day was hard work, she didn’t care what anybody said. Ear infections, pink eye, runny noses, head lice and all, she wouldn’t trade it for anything.

She couldn’t even comprehend why a person would want to be an adult doctor. What was the fun in that? Her father, God love him, couldn’t understand why she had chosen pediatrics. She linked her hands together and stretched them high overhead, before sighing with relief. Her nurse and best friend laughed as Anne-Marie bent down to touch her toes.

“You look like you just finished an aerobics class,” Jackie Smith said, taking her stethoscope off and tossing it on her workstation.

“I feel like I just finished an aerobics class,” she replied. “Let’s call it a night—oh, hell. Did Shelly forget to lock the door again?”

Behind the frosted glass window, a tall, dark shadow stood at the sign-in desk. “Can we kill her yet?” Jackie asked, a hopeful light in her eyes. “Please?”

“Be nice,” Anne-Marie replied. She picked her lab coat up and slid her arms back into it. Pasting a pleasant, and completely false, smile on her face, she walked up to the window and slid it open. The words Can I help you? died on her tongue as she got an eyeful of the most delicious man she had ever laid eyes on.

Tall, broad-shouldered with hair as black as sin, eyes the color of dark, melted chocolate, and a mouth that would have made a nun blush. High cheekbones and a hard, chiseled chin with a dent right in the center.

If his face looked like that, what kind of body did he have? If it was half as good, her heart would give out before she reached his abdomen. If it was a match, she just might start stripping out of her clothes right there.

Torn out of her trance by Jackie’s elbow in her side, she focused her eyes back on his face, on that sculpted mouth. But for the life of her, she couldn’t understand a word he was saying. Her heart had suddenly started doing this odd little jumping-around-in-her-chest dance and her knees were getting weak.

A soft little voice piped, “I got a owie.”

Anne-Marie shook her head slightly, frowning, feeling as though she had just come out of a trance, pulled out by the sound of the tiny voice.

The demigod bent, lifted a child that looked more like a cherub than anything. “She busted her head open,” he said, holding a blood-soaked pad on the child’s forehead. “Tripped over a box and hit the corner of the coffee table. I was taking her to the hospital when I saw your sign, the lights. It hasn’t stopped bleeding.”

The sight of blood and the distress in his eyes cleared the lust-induced fog long enough for her training to kick in. “You’ve not been here before?” she asked, motioning for Jackie to put them in a room. If he had, then he must have seen Jake because Anne-Marie would have remembered this guy.

Those dark eyes were familiar, the square jaw, the sculpted mouth. Where had she seen him before? Other than in her wildest fantasies, that is. The way her heart was racing and dancing around and leaping with joy–she had seen some seriously good-looking guys before but not a one of them had caused this kind of reaction. Of course, up until a few months ago, Anne-Marie had been too busy with medical school, her internship and everything else required to get licensed to practice medicine. So maybe all the guys had just slipped under her radar and she was too busy to notice.

Then again…maybe not. Something about the way this particular guy made that radar scream had Anne-Marie thinking this was a one-time occurrence—or at least a one-man occurrence.

“No. We just moved here and hadn’t gotten settled yet,” he said irritably. “Can you take a look at her or not? I can pay up front, if that’s the problem.”

Well, shit. He looked that good, Anne-Marie should have figured there was going to be some kind of problem. Gorgeous or not, it seemed he had a chip on his oh-so-delectable shoulders. Have mercy, don’t all the good ones have some kinda problem, she thought disgustedly as his insinuation that she was only in medicine for the money came through loud and clear. She’d only been in practice a few months now, partnering up with Jake midwinter but the innuendo wasn’t an uncommon one, not even in town where she knew half the population.

“I’m not concerned about the money just yet.” She kept her voice pleasant, even though that tone of his had already put her back up. “Come on inside and I’ll take a look.”

As head wounds went, it wasn’t bad, shallow and skinny, right near the hairline. “We need to clean this up a little, Jackie. Can you soak it for a minute or so? I need to take a closer look at it.”

While Jackie tended to that, Anne-Marie hunted up the paperwork she needed. Which took considerably longer than it should have. Anne-Marie was certain that Shelly LaCrosse had some good points, some excellent qualities, but secretarial skills were not among them. Which was odd, because talking on the phone was one of her finer abilities.

She made appointments and forgot to enter them into the computer. She scheduled five-year-old checkups before the patient’s fourth birthday. She expected the doctors to give answers to patient questions when she couldn’t even remember to write down the question. She scheduled prenatal interviews for a mother who had already delivered. She showed up on Sundays, but forgot to come to work on Mondays. And she had put the paperwork for new patients in a file that generally only held information on deceased and/or released patients.

No, Shelly was not medical receptionist material.

But she was Anne-Marie’s second cousin, and Anne-Marie was too nice to fire her simply for being stupid. At least, she had been. With a soft growl, Anne-Marie rose, staring at a phone note from a potential partner that Anne-Marie and Jake Hart had been waiting on. It was dated from three days before. It, too, had been filed away with charts belonging to former patients.

“Three more days, three more days,” she chanted. “Then Jake and Marti are back, and chaos will end. Three more days. Three more days.” Three more days and she could fire her empty-headed cousin.

“Three more days to what?” Jackie asked, stripping off the gloves as she slid the door shut behind her.

“Until Jake and Marti are back. And I’ll never let them take a vacation together again.”

“They’re married, hon. That won’t work,” Jackie said, grinning.

“So we’ll have them get divorced and all our problems will be solved.” She waggled the forgotten phone message in front of Jackie’s nose. “Wednesday! He called Wednesday.”

Glancing at the note, Jackie turned her eyes on Anne-Marie and smiled beatifically. “I told you we’d be better off hiring a real temp.”

Giving Jackie a quelling look, she muttered, “I don’t need to hear the I told you so’s.” Anne-Marie grabbed a clipboard from the wall just as the exam room door slid open, revealing the late-night patient and her surly father.

“Are you going to come in here any time soon, Dr. Hart?”

Too irritated to correct him, she thrust the patient forms at him. “We need these filled out, sir,” she said as she pulled on a pair of gloves. Anne-Marie was proud to discover her insides didn’t quiver as she walked past him.

At least, not much.

“Can’t it wait?” he demanded, tossing the paperwork an incredulous glance.

“Unless it’s life or death, I’m not allowed to treat your daughter without consent and some basic history. This isn’t life or death and even then, I would at least need a verbal consent to treat. Medical history is always nice—medication allergies, history of seizures. Also, I need to know if she lost consciousness.” Already aggravated by the addition to the long day, Anne-Marie was in no mood to put up with a surly, temperamental jerk.

No matter how good looking he was. Mouth wateringly, heart-stoppingly good looking. Nope, never mind that.

She’d been up since four a.m. when the hospital called about a newborn with breathing difficulties. Added to that was the irate family she had dealt with earlier. Imagine, they weren’t pleased to be released from the practice simply for an unpaid debt of $862.91. And, of course, having to deal with Shelly’s ineptness all day hadn’t helped.

Across the room, Jackie’s eyes widened but she continued laying out the supplies without a word.

“You have consent. She has no allergies, no history of seizures and no loss of consciousness. Anything else?”

“Is she allergic to latex?” Anne-Marie asked, keeping firm hold of her temper.

“No. She’s not allergic to latex or anything else, to my knowledge. Any other questions, doc?” he replied, narrowing those dark eyes.

“Not at this moment, no.” Yes, I do want to know one more thing. What bug crawled up your very excellent ass and died? she thought sourly as she soaked a cotton ball with saline and pressed it against the sullenly oozing cut.

“Y’know, if this is too much trouble, we can go on to the hospital,” he offered sarcastically when Jackie murmured an apology and whispered, “I’ll have to get some more supplies.”

“A good place to keep them would be the cabinet, wouldn’t it?” he snapped, glaring at Jackie’s retreating back. She paused for one brief second, causing Anne-Marie to hold her breath, but then she kept going without a word.

Keeping her voice pleasant was getting harder with every second that passed. Of course, it’s to be expected, I suppose. As good-looking as he is, it was only fair for God to skimp out on something. Something like common courtesy.

“Good and clean little cut, there,” she said. “Aw, sweetie, you’re such a big girl.”

“I know,” the little cherub replied, piping up for the first time since announcing her wounded condition at the front desk.

“What’s your name, honey?” Anne-Marie asked as she exchanged the bloodied cotton pad for a fresh one.

“Mariah,” she said, smiling sweetly. She reached up and brushed her hand across Anne-Marie’s chin. “You’re pretty.”

With her free hand, she pinched Mariah’s nose and said, “So are you. Does your head hurt, Mariah?”

“Uh-uh. Just when I fell down. Not anymore. I didn’t cry hardly at all, did I, Daddy?” she asked, smiling at the man who stood breathing over Anne-Marie’s shoulder.

“No, sweetheart. You’re a big girl.”

That same sweet, angelic smile on her face, she turned her gaze back to Anne-Marie. “Daddy cussed, bad. He said all sorts of bad words, he said the ‘s’ word and the ‘d’ word and the ‘f’—”

Chuckling, Anne-Marie said, “I get the point. I imagine you scared him quite a bit.”

“That’s what he said,” Mariah said. “Do you know what the ‘f’ word is?”

“Yep. It’s fudge,” Anne-Marie said, smiling as the little girl’s eyes rounded.

“It’s not fudge. It’s-”

“Fudge, I absolutely promise you. That’s what my daddy always told me the ‘f’ word was. Fudge.”

Mariah giggled. “Fudge,” she announced when Anne-Marie dabbed some peroxide on the shallow cut. “Am I going to get stitches?”

“Maybe one or two,” she said with a sympathetic smile.

Mariah made a dramatic little gulp. Then her lower lip started to tremble. Her voice was a small, terrified whisper as she asked, “Will it hurt?”

Gently, Anne-Marie brushed back a lock of hair from the girl’s face, tucking it behind her ear. It was pierced and the small silver unicorn in the girl’s lobe made her smile. Unicorns had always been her favorite—even now, she had little pewter unicorns dancing across the top of her desk at home. “The stitches themselves won’t hurt because I have special medicine. That special medicine won’t let you feel any pain at all.”

“Really?”

Big brown eyes gazed up at her and the trust Anne-Marie saw there made her heart clench. “Oh, absolutely. You will feel me touching you, and it will sting some when I give you the special medicine, but the stitches won’t hurt.” It was amazing, dealing with kids. The trick, though, was to be honest. A lot of people in the medical field still treated kids like they were less than people, never answering their questions, talking over them, about them, but never really to them.

Anne-Marie was big on being honest with her patients. If they were old enough to ask a question, whenever possible, she was going to answer the question as best as she could. Behind her, she could hear Jackie. A minute later, a gloved hand held out a small gauze square and Anne-Marie took it, cleaning the laceration a little better. In a low voice, she told Jackie the supplies she needed and then she leaned back and waited for Mariah to look up at her. “Do you think you can be a brave girl for a little longer, Mariah?”

Solemnly, she nodded.

Anne-Marie gave her a reassuring smile. “That’s a big girl. Now I have to tell you about the special medicine.”

That lower lip started to quiver. “You said that the special medicine will sting, right?”

From the corner of her eye, she could see the father moving closer and Anne-Marie held up a hand. Too many parents expected a doctor or a nurse to lie about shots, which was half the reason so many kids freaked about coming to the office. The vast majority wouldn’t hate the doctor so much if they didn’t have grown-ups lying about it. “It will hurt—at first. A little bit of a pinch but it only lasts a few seconds and then it’s done. After that, like I said, you’ll feel me touching you but it won’t hurt.”

Mariah looked at her father and then she looked back at Anne-Marie. She took a deep breath, one that made her thin shoulders rise and fall, then she looked down, tucking her chin against her chest. “Do I have to?”

“Well…no,” Anne-Marie said slowly, pretending to think about it. She took another gauze sponge and wiped at the blood. It was still oozing, although it was slowing down and Anne-Marie could tell it was starting to clot. She didn’t have to tell the little girl that, though. “We could just wait here until it stops bleeding. Might take a while. But I can’t let you go anywhere while it’s still bleeding.”

As if on cue, Anne-Marie heard the little girl’s belly rumble. She pretended she didn’t hear as she glanced up at the clock. It was pushing seven. “I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty hungry.” She dabbed at the cut again and sighed theatrically. “I sure hope it stops bleeding soon.”

“How long will it bleed?”

Jackie leaned around Anne-Marie and studied the cut. “Hmmm. I dunno, Doc. I think it’s going to take a while.”

They fell silent. The kitty cat clock on the wall ticked away the seconds and it seemed to get louder with each one. The cat had a yellow and blue tail that swung back and forth with the second hand and Anne-Marie counted thirty before Mariah looked at the bloodied gauze in Anne-Marie’s hand. “Is it still bleeding?”

Solemnly, Anne-Marie nodded.

Another huge sigh left Mariah’s lips and she whispered, “Okay.”

In less than twenty minutes, sporting a bright pink Band-Aid on her uninjured hand, and a wide smile, Mariah inspected her “owie” in the fun house-style mirror that hung on the far end of the wall. Behind her, the dad was finally doing the paperwork and Anne-Marie and Jackie cleaned up the bloodied gauze and the remnants of the sutures. The clipboard landed with a clatter on the counter behind her and Anne-Marie hissed out a breath.

She reached for the clipboard and gave it a cursory glance. “Mariah, I need to speak with your father a moment. Jackie can show you where we keep the suckers and stickers. I think we’ve got some unicorn stickers somewhere.”

Mariah squealed. “Oh, stickers!” She went skipping out the door and as she disappeared from view, Anne-Marie leaned back against the exam table. Slowly, she removed her gloves and folded one into the other. She tossed them into the trashcan and then looked at the man still glaring at her.

One black brow lifted arrogantly. “Is this going to take long? We’ve had a rough day.”

Her temper jerked at its chain and to give herself a minute, she pushed off the table and went to the cabinet hanging over the sink. There was an info sheet on head injuries and she pulled one for him. “You need to keep an eye on her for the next few hours. Any sign of confusion, she goes to sleep and is hard to wake up, you need to call right away.”

He took the sheet. “I’ve had a few hits in the head. I know the drill. Does she have a concussion?”

“A mild one, probably. Give her some ibuprofen when you get her home. She’s probably going to have a headache. Now… Generally, we make allowances for distraught parents. When your child is injured, it’s natural to be upset. However, I will not tolerate rudeness to my nurses.”

His brows arched up. “Was I rude? Sorry, but when a doctor’s office doesn’t have the needed supplies to take care of a hurt kid, it’s my place to question it.”

Anne-Marie narrowed her eyes and let some of the irritation she felt edge its way into her voice. “This is the end of a very long day for us and we generally restock on Mondays before the office opens. It’s a Friday night, well after hours and it took Jackie all of two minutes to grab some gauze. I will not tolerate somebody insinuating that I do not feel like doing my job or that my nurses are inept. Furthermore, I can’t provide medical care without knowing some basic information. Such things are vital in providing safe care.”

“You really needed to know if she takes her vitamins every damned day before you can look at a cut?” he snapped, jamming his hands in his pockets.

“No. But it is useful to know, oh, say if she has any latex allergies. A latex allergy can be fatal and allergies to latex are not at all uncommon. Such issues can be problematic—life threatening, even.  The same can be said for lidocaine.”  She smiled sweetly.  “That special medicine that I used to numb the area. That’s a fairly common medication allergy, as is iodine.  I’ve seen it with patients more than once. Had I used any of those on a patient who had an allergy, we wouldn’t be standing here now.  We’d been en route to the hospital.”

She tucked the clipboard under her arm. “We can bill you for today’s services. The receptionist has already left. I’ll want to see her back in a week, check and see if she is healing well. Remember to call if any problems arise, blurred vision, severe headaches, nausea, vomiting, anything at all unusual, or any concerns.  If you aren’t happy with the services, there’s a general practitioner in town. Jackie can get you the number.  There’s also a pediatrician’s office in Frankfort, about thirty miles from here.” On her way out the door, she gave him a card that had the answering service phone number on it.

“Dr. Hart?”

“Dr. Hart is my partner. He’s not in the office this week. I’m Anne-Marie Kincaid,” she responded. They kept forgetting to update the sign out front. In a town as small as Briarwood, most everybody knew Anne-Marie had accepted Jake’s offer to join the practice so they weren’t in a big hurry. She headed to the door and glanced at the paperwork without really seeing it.

A drink. Just a nice glass of white wine and something to eat, she thought. And my chair, she wished longingly. I want my chair. And chocolate…I really need chocolate.

“Annie.” The word was a whisper, a question almost too faint for her to hear.

Her eyes fell on the patient’s name. Mariah Delia McNeil. The mother’s name seemed to leap of the paper. Sheri McNeil-Deceased.

And the father’s name.

Jasper Wayne McNeil Jr.

Jazz.

Oh, dear Lord, she prayed, as her heart started to pound in a slow, deep rhythm.

Dazed, she turned around and met the black eyes she had dreamed about for a good part of her young life. The years since he had left fell away and she could see the boy she knew. His lean, lanky body had bulked up and filled out. Broad shoulders strained at the seams of his worn button-down and the denim jeans clung to legs that looked long and powerful.

Staring into those black eyes, Anne-Marie suddenly understood her body’s weird reaction when she’d seen him standing at the check-in window. Her body had recognized him, even if she hadn’t. He looked so different—harder, harsher—and tired. Very tired.

Jazz McNeil, back in town.

“Jazz, I didn’t recognize you,” she said, congratulating herself on her smooth, level tone.

“Me, neither.” His eyes roamed from her head to her feet and back again. Every inch between seemed to burn. “You’ve grown up.”

Her eyes filled with tears, remembered grief making her throat constrict. The awful night her father had woken her up and they had cried in each other’s arms.

“Jazz, they say it’s your fault he’s gone. Is it true?”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

A steel gray coffin lowered into the ground, next to the mother she had lost to cancer at the age of eight.

The night she learned Jazz wouldn’t be prosecuted, there had been tears of relief. Then tears of grief came three days later when Jazz left town for good. Angry and as bitter as Desmond was, Jazz’s leaving had done the surviving Kincaids more harm than good. Desmond lost two sons with that accident, and Anne-Marie had lost her hero.

Now, standing there, looking at him, she wondered how badly his armor had tarnished.

“It’s been a long time,” Anne-Marie said quietly, tucking her hands into the deep pockets of her lab coat. “I hadn’t heard you were back in Briarwood.”

“Just got here a few days ago. Annie, I’m sorry about the…”

“Attitude? Why, because we know each other?” she asked, inclining her head. “If you’re going to be sorry, be sorry for treating me and my nurse like shit, Jazz. But…you are forgiven, whatever the reason for the apology.”

“It’s no excuse, but the past few days have been rough. I just can’t stand to see her hurting.” His eyes were still the color of melted chocolate, and just as addicting. Over the years, his voice had deepened to a whiskey-smooth southern drawl that warmed Anne-Marie clear down to her toes. Shifting from one foot to the other, he looked uncomfortable, the way a boy would look when summoned to the principal’s office.

“No parent enjoys seeing a child suffer. We try to keep that in mind here.” An uncomfortable silence spread out as they stared at each other. She finally turned away, busying herself with the chart.

Quietly, Jazz asked, “Do you hate me, Annie?”

Taking a deep breath, she took in the familiar scents of candy, alcohol and disinfectant. Opening her eyes, she stared at the framed caricature of dancing mice on the pale blue wall in front of her. She closed her hands around the chart to still their trembling.

Hate you? Anne-Marie thought silently. How could she tell him hating him would be like hating herself? He was a part of her, every bit as much as Alex and her father.

Cautious, Anne-Marie turned and looked at him, studying that face, looking for some lingering remnant of the boy she remembered. With a sad smile, she answered, “No. No, Jazz. I don’t hate you. I never did. I miss Alex, and I always will. But Alex is gone. Nothing will bring him back. Some lights burn so brightly, they can only burn for a short time. And Alex was as bright as they come.”

His eyes, so dark and unreadable, met hers. “I’ve never had another friend like him. Not a day goes by that I don’t think of him.” The simple cotton button-down shirt stretched tight across his shoulders as he jammed his hands in his pockets. “Not a day goes by that I don’t wish I could undo that night.”

Tears burning her eyes, she turned her head. A lump in her throat made speech nearly impossible. “Jazz, I don’t have anything that I can say to you that will change things. I can’t offer you absolution. But I don’t hate you, and I’ve never wished you ill.”

Without another word, she left.

 

~*~

 

Little Annie, all grown up. And damn, but did she grow up nice. He hadn’t recognized her, not that it was too surprising. It had been sixteen years and she had just been a kid when he left.

Now she was a doctor.

Already.

Jazz did the math in his head and figured she’d probably graduated early. Not too surprising. Annie had skipped second and sixth grade, and that was before Jazz disappeared from her life.

No telling how many grades she’d skipped in high school, or how fast she’d managed to get through college. Briarwood was a small town and their school system wasn’t equipped to handle kids as smart as Anne-Marie had been. So instead of accelerated classes, Annie skipped grades. Alex had been like that too, although Jazz suspected Annie pushed harder. Would explain why she skipped grades as easy as some kids could skip stones, and why Alex had only skipped the fourth grade.

As he drove down the two-lane highway, Jazz realized coming home was going to be harder than he had thought. It might have been easier if Anne-Marie had looked at him with hatred instead of sadness. Hatred was so much easier to deal with than disappointment.

“She was pretty, wasn’t she, Daddy?”

Glancing in the mirror, he smiled at Mariah’s reflection. She sat in the patterned, pink booster seat with her favorite pink T-shirt splattered with blood and probably some ketchup from the hotdog she was chowing down on. “Not as pretty as you are,” he told her and he meant it sincerely. Thick spiral curls tumbled down her back, around her face, curls the color of midnight. That inky black came him from him but the curls came from Sheri. Her eyes were bluer than cornflowers and her skin was all ivory and peach. Those eyes and her complexion were another gift from her mother. Jazz’s skin was swarthy and dark and it had nothing to do with time spent out the sun.

His pretty little girl looked like a china doll. How something that beautiful had come from one brief, rowdy affair with a friend of his high-class editor was beyond his comprehension.

Giggling, Mariah said, “You always say that.”

“And I always mean it.”

“Am I gonna be ugly now?” she asked mournfully.

Muffling a chuckle, Jazz told her, “Honey, you could bump your head two hundred and sixty-two times and never be ugly.”

“’Kay,” she said, a yawn stretching her mouth wide. “Miss Jackie gave me a sucker. And she said Dr. Anne is the best.”

“I bet she is,” he said absently.

“Is she gonna be my doctor now?”

“I dunno. Maybe,” he said, stalling. He wasn’t so certain how Annie would feel about that, though. She wasn’t going to want to take care of the child of her brother’s killer. Not even sweet Saint Anne-Marie.

“Is that what y’all were talking about?”

Glancing down the highway, he moved into the opposite lane to pass around a slow-moving farm truck. “She was telling me how to take care of your pretty little head.” Jazz didn’t see how a parent could be a parent without telling little white lies from time to time.

“I hope she is my doctor. She smells nice.” Her voice was getting slower and softer, and in the rearview, he saw her eyes drooping closed. And lucky me, he thought wryly. I have the pleasure of waking her up every couple of hours now. He’d willingly wake up every two hours for the next ten years to make sure she was okay, but it was going to make for one long-assed night.

Jazz was faintly surprised that toddlers and preschoolers could even suffer head injuries. Their heads seemed rock hard. At least, Mariah’s did.

Passing by the bright lights of the Shell station, he flicked on his turn signal and took the turn that led to their new house. Bought outright, with money he had hoarded over the years. It was going to require a lot of work to make the house look the way he wanted. Built at the turn of the last century, it needed a new roof, needed new paint inside and out, and the wraparound porch was going to have to be completely redone. Not to mention the plumbing was outdated, and probably the wiring. It needed work and it was going to take time and a lot of money.

As fate would have it, Jazz now had plenty of both.

Jazz had always planned to come home, home to Briarwood, to face his past. He wasn’t going to fail on those plans, even if the local townsfolk decided they didn’t want him around.

He just hadn’t expected his reckoning to come so soon. He hadn’t expected to come back for a few years yet. He had wanted to settle himself a bit more, maybe have another baby with Sheri. But then her headaches had started, severe ones that nearly blinded her. By the time she had gone to the doctor about them, the tumor had grown to monstrous proportions. Surgery was out of the question and the chemo had failed. Within months, Sheri was dead, leaving Jazz alone with a three-year-old. Jazz and Mariah were the benefactors of a surprisingly large life insurance policy, along with a college fund Sheri had started.

Two years after she’d gone, Jazz woke up one morning and found himself staring at the condo they’d shared and he realized he hated it. He hadn’t liked it much when they picked it out, but it was close to the city and although Jazz could work from home, Sheri couldn’t. He looked around at the stark, sterile rooms and realized without Sheri there, the place felt empty.

It wasn’t a good place to raise a little girl. So here they were, the owners of a ramshackle, falling-down excuse of a house that needed more work than a ghost town needed ghosts. With a sigh, he pulled into the rutted excuse of a driveway. The driveway needed work, too. But first, the house.

Oh, man, the house. What in the hell had he been thinking? Even if he didn’t have to worry about the roof, the wiring, the painting or the porch, there were still the bathrooms, the carpet and the basement—oh man, he didn’t even want to think about the basement. Walls had to come down in some places and go up in others, and the kitchen was totally outdated.

In the faint moonlight, he studied the century-old farmhouse. Yeah, it was going to take a long time and a lot of sweat to make this place work. But, once he got going, it would be a sweet reprieve over the way he’d spent the past few years. When he wasn’t chasing after Mariah and being both Mom and Dad, he was trapped in front of a computer, facing his nemesis, Vance Marrone.

Vance Marrone, ace detective, lady’s man and general jackass, was the creation of Jazz McNeil’s mind, and his own worst enemy. Man, he hated Vance, hated writing about him, hated making money off of him. It hadn’t been so bad when he first started, plunking out that first story while recovering in a VA hospital when a training op had ended badly. Badly as in him nearly losing his leg and having to spend three weeks in the hospital and six months in rehab.

Back then, Vance had kept Jazz sane, but he made the big mistake of sending the book off to an agent. She sold it almost instantly, landing him his first modest advance. The second book hit a little better and each one garnered more and more readers and he ended up signing more and more contracts. By the fifth book, he was tired of Vance Marrone, but he still had four more books to fulfill his contract.

He would have been done with those five years ago and he had plans to write something else, but then—well, life happened. Sheri happened. The baby came along and then Sheri got sick. All the money in the world wouldn’t have been able to save her, but he’d tried anyway, agreeing to five more books. Sad thing was by the time he got the first part of the advance, Sheri was already dead.

He was now on the last book of that contract and he suspected it wasn’t going to go over well. Jazz was going to kill Marrone off. Maybe then he’d have some peace and quiet and could write something worthwhile. He even had a contract—a smaller house, one that focused on sci fi and fantasy. They couldn’t pay him anywhere close to the advances he’d gotten used to but he could write the story he wanted to write, instead of what he had to write. Every new Marrone book seemed to take longer and longer to write and he spent hours each in day in front of the computer, obsessing over a character he hated and not focusing as much as he’d like on the one important person in his life.

Now that he didn’t have to worry so much about the money, he was going to take the time to write the book he wanted, take more time to be the father he wanted to be to his little girl and work on the big old farmhouse, making it into a home for her.

With a sigh, he shut off the engine and climbed out of the Escalade. He slung Mariah’s bag over his shoulder and released her from her booster seat.

“Are we home, Daddy?” she asked sleepily, rubbing at one eye with a closed fist.

“Yeah, honey. We’re home. Your head okay?”

“Uh-huh. I’m sleepy, though.”

“Going to bed right now, girl,” he promised, shifting her to his right arm so he could dig out his keys. The door creaked loudly as he pushed it open, and that jumped to the top of his list of things to fix tomorrow. That and the leaking faucets in the kitchen and bathroom.

“Where are my jammies?” she asked.

“On your bed, where we left them this morning.”

“Are they dirty?”

“Not until tomorrow. We’ll go find some place to wash them then,” he told her, rolling his eyes. He couldn’t have had a messy child. No, he had a little lady from her head to her size six feet. She might spill stuff all over her clothes but the minute she did, they had to come off and clean clothes put on. Added up to a lot of laundry. Which was why getting a washer and dryer was one of the next things on the list tomorrow.

“What ’bout my bath?”

Sniffing loudly at her neck, like a puppy, Jazz announced, “Smell good to me. We’ll take a bath in the morning, okay?”

She nodded sleepily again. “’Kay. I’m sleepy, Daddy.”

She was out before he even got her buttoned into her Scooby Doo pajamas.

Resigning himself to another sleepless night, he headed for the makeshift office he had in the little alcove at the end of the hall. Might as well get some work done. As the computer booted, he jogged downstairs and started some coffee. Pausing in the doorway of the kitchen, one hand curled around the cup, he surveyed the mess spread out before him.

What in the hell are you doing here?

It wasn’t the first time he had asked himself that. Jazz doubted it would be the last and he still didn’t know the answer. He only knew the night sixteen years earlier haunted him, the lack of memories of that night haunted him. He needed some answers.

He prayed that in trying to find them, he wouldn’t cause Desmond and Anne-Marie any more pain.

 

~*~

 

 

“Daddy?”

Desmond laid down the medical journal he had been studying as he looked up to smile at his daughter. It only took one look for his smile to fade. “You do look terribly serious standing there, Anne-Marie,” he mused, studying his daughter. Her eyes were dark and turbulent. “What’s the matter, honey?”

“Jazz is back.”

Jazz.

Immediately, Desmond could see the boy Alex had befriended, tall for his age, sulky, defiant, with anger burning in those dark eyes. It had been sixteen years since he’d last seen Jasper McNeil. How many times had he thought of that boy over the years?

“Is he now?” he murmured, leaning back in his chair, folding his hands over a belly he kept flat with rigorous exercise. It wouldn’t do for a cardiologist not to be fit. He had people drive from all over the south to see him and he took that responsibility seriously. If he was going to lecture them on the benefits of a heart-healthy diet, then he could also follow his own advice.

If he snuck some doughnuts every now and then, a cigar here and there, well, every man was entitled to a few vices.

“Is he really?” he murmured, thoughtfully tugging at his lower lip.

Knowing he was not asking for confirmation, she remained silent, seating herself in the leather wing chair by the window. She studied her neatly trimmed and buffed nails, the small capable hands that had tended Mariah McNeil’s head wound the night before.

“You’ve seen him?”

“Last night. He has a daughter now,” she responded, explaining how he had come to the office after hours—and how Shelly how forgotten, again, to lock up when she left.

“Anne-Marie, I know that you’re feeling sentimental towards Shelly, her being your mama’s cousin and all, but don’t you think that you’ve made a few too many allowances for her?” he asked absently, while his mind turned over the fact that the boy wasn’t a boy any longer. No, now he was a father, apparently a good one, or Anne-Marie would have made that clear already. “You really do need to hire a temp until Marti gets back.”

“Marti’s due back this week. I can do three more days.”

Still pondering how he felt about Jazz, he said, “I imagine you can—but remember, next time, it is okay to tell family no.”

She grimaced. “Oh, I’ve learned my lesson.” She didn’t pry or mention Jazz again—that was his little girl. She knew him well—as she should. She was just like him. They’d talk about something when they were ready and not a moment before.

Jazz, however, might be an exception. Desmond certainly wasn’t ready to talk about his son’s best friend yet, and he didn’t know that Anne-Marie was either.

“So he’s come home,” he mused, shaking his head. “How does he look?”

Thinking back, Anne-Marie finally answered, “Tired. Haunted.” Gorgeous, she added mentally. She rose, then, wandered over to the window, running one finger over the polished pane of glass, smudging it. “I don’t hate him, Daddy. I never thought I did, but I always wondered how I’d feel if I saw him again.”

“And?”

“I don’t know,” she answered, resting her forehead against the glass. “But it still doesn’t seem right, after all this time. I can’t picture him driving into that tree.”

Turning around, she pinned her father with an intense stare. “Daddy, Jazz drove like a demon. Drove fast and always got tickets, but he was never once in an accident. Not once. It just doesn’t fit.”