who had to go salmon fishing in Alaska, or another who had to go
to Italy on business, or yet another who had an appointment with
her lawyer to cut her husband out of her will. On and on it went.
Becca said from the doorway, “I’m happy to announce that
Adam asked me to marry him and I accepted. However, he was
hurting a lot. Maybe he won’t remember when he wakes up. If he
doesn’t, why, I’ll just have to ask him.”
“My boy will remember,” his father said, a man Adam resembled
closely. He grinned at her. “One of the first things Adam told us
when he could talk was that he is going to have that second bathroom
on the top floor of his house redone so you wouldn’t turn
him down due to ugly green tile on the counters.”
“Well, that certainly shows commitment,” she said. “Tell you
what, I’ll pick out the new tile and then we’ll see how fast I can get
him to the altar.”
She left them laughing, a very nice sound, and now they could do it more easily since their son would be all right. They seemed to
like her, which was a relief. His mom was something else. She
owned a Volvo dealership in Alexandria and was an auctioneer on
the side. His father, she’d been told by one of Adam’s older brothers
owned and operated a stud farm in Virginia.
Well, her father was alive, but that was all he needed to be, thank
you very much. Actually, she wasn’t at all certain what he did for a
living, but who cared? She thought briefly of his house, where her
mother had spent time. Now it was gone, just a shell left. It didn’t
matter. Her father was alive.
She took the elevator up to the sixth floor, to the ICU. She
could make that trip in her sleep, she’d gone back and forth so
many times now.
Thank God the hospital administration had managed to keep
the media away from this area. The doctors and nurses nodded to
her. She walked into the huge room with its hissing machines, its
ever-present mixture of smells that was overlaid with a sharp antiseptic
odor that reminded her of the dentist’s office, and the occasional
groan from a patient.
An FBI agent sat by her father’s cubicle.
“Hello, Agent Austin. Everything all right?”
“No problem,” he said and a grin kicked in that was positively evil.
You’ll like this. One enterprising reporter managed to get this far,
and then I nabbed him. I decked him, stripped him naked, and the
nurses and doctors tossed him in a laundry cart and wheeled him
down to the emergency room, where they left him, his hands and feet
tied with surgical tape, his mouth gagged. Ah, since then, no one else
has tried it.”
“I just heard about that,” she said, rolling her eyes. “One of the
doctors told me he’d never before been surrounded with such
laughter in the emergency room. Well done, Agent. Remind me to
stay on your good side.”
He was still chuckling when she eased around the light curtain
surrounding her father’s bed and sat down in the single chair. He
was asleep, not unexpected, and it didn’t matter. He was on powerful
medications and even when he was awake, his mind couldn’t
focus. “Hello,” she said, watching him breathe slowly, in and out
through the oxygen tubes in his nostrils. “You’re looking wonderful,
very handsome. I might have to give your hair a trim though,
maybe in a couple of days. Adam will be all right as well, but maybe
he’s not quite as good-looking as you are. He’s sleeping right now.
Oh yes, I’m sure you’ll be pleased to know that we’re going to get
married. But you won’t be surprised, will you?” White bandages
covered his chest. Tubes stuck out of him, and like Adam, he
seemed to have a score of needles in his arms. He lay perfectly still,
but he was breathing evenly, steady and deep.
“Now, let me tell you again what happened. Mikhail shot you in
the chest. You have a collapsed lung. They did what’s called a thoacotomy.