Total pages in book: 72
Estimated words: 68033 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 340(@200wpm)___ 272(@250wpm)___ 227(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 68033 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 340(@200wpm)___ 272(@250wpm)___ 227(@300wpm)
“Walsh, I don’t have to tell you how crucial these negotiations are.”
“No, Dad, you don’t. There are some things I could get done from here, but some of it has to be face-to-face. I know that.”
“What’s so important? Something with your mother’s estate?”
“No.” Walsh clipped the word. He couldn’t think about his mother dying with Kerris still fighting that battle only yards away. “Look, I don’t know if you’ve met Cam’s wife.”
“Kerris.”
Her name so readily on his father’s lips robbed Walsh of speech for a moment. Not only had his father apparently met Kerris, but remembered her name. There were employees who had retired from Bennett after twenty years of service whose names eluded his father.
“Uh, yeah, Kerris. You’ve met her?”
“I met her when you were kidnapped.” Martin skimmed over the event as if he’d met Kerris at a Christmas party. “She recognized your hands. Or, rather, what were not your hands.”
“Huh?”
“Those shitheads from Haiti? They sent us a finger with some of your belongings, implying that it was yours.”
“It was Paul’s.” Walsh’s heart sagged beneath the familiar guilt over the missionary his captors had murdered right in front of him. Needlessly.
“Yeah, well, your mother and Jo and even Cameron were all set to start moaning about it.” A touch of humor entered Martin’s voice. “That little lady, not bigger than a minute, frowned and said, ‘That’s not his finger.’”
Walsh swallowed, closing his eyes. What woman recognized a man’s fingers if she didn’t love him just a little bit?
“And then she looked at my hand and said, ‘Those are his fingers.’”
Martin gave into a full-bodied chuckle, sounding somewhat delighted.
“Can you believe that? Intense little thing, isn’t she?”
“She’s been in a car accident.” Walsh tried to ignore the stingers of pain in his chest, expelling the next words. “She was pregnant and has already lost the baby. It’s bad. I’m not leaving until she’s out of the woods.”
“You there to support Cameron?” Walsh knew his father was more than merely curious.
“I’m here for her.” Walsh slathered the remark with defiance. He was not in the mood to defend his feelings for Kerris.
“That’s good. Don’t worry about Kassim. I’ll put Miller on it.”
Walsh wired his jaw shut, squelching the protest that sprang to his lips. Andru Miller, a few years older than Walsh, was ambitious and hungry. He looked for any chance to prove to Martin that he was just as capable and more deserving than Walsh. The thought of Miller cozying up to the sheikh, taking credit at the last minute for the relationship Walsh had spent the last six months cultivating…
“Sounds good,” Walsh forced himself to say. “I’ll call Trisha so she can get Miller up to speed.”
“Hey, son,” Martin said. “She’s an exceptional girl. Kerris, I mean.”
Walsh couldn’t speak. Had he ever heard his father apply the word “exceptional” to a person? Steaks were exceptional. Opportunities were exceptional. The coffee he had flown in from Colombia was exceptional. But a woman his father barely knew?
“I know I’ve always wanted you to marry Sofie,” Martin said into the silence Walsh couldn’t find a way to break. “But if you married a girl like Kerris, I’d be pleased.”
Walsh swallowed the emotion burning and pressing against the inside of his throat.
“Bye, Dad.”
“Bye, son.”
Chapter Seven
She’s breathing on her own,” Meredith said into her phone, lowering her voice. She sat down in one of the waiting room’s now-too-familiar plastic chairs.
It had been a week since the accident, and the doctors had been justifiably concerned that Kerris still wasn’t consistently breathing on her own. The punctured and collapsed lung had definitely complicated things, but this morning she had drawn clear breaths on her own ever since they took her off the ventilator. The doctors seemed to be leveling with them when they said Kerris should be waking up any day now. They couldn’t be sure how severe the head injury was until she was awake and they could assess her speech, lucidity, memory, and functionality.
Meredith waited for Walsh’s response on the other line. He had stayed away. She knew what it had cost him, but since Mama Jess’s rebuke in the room last week, Walsh had not darkened the hospital door again. In exchange, he demanded daily updates.
“That’s incredible.” Meredith could hear Walsh’s voice, nearly devoid of breath and loaded with relief. “That’s my girl. She’ll wake up soon.”
“That’s what we’re hoping for.” Meredith noticed Cam getting off the elevator and walking toward her. “Look, I gotta go.”
“Cam?” It sounded like Walsh had tightened a belt around the name.
“Um, yeah. I’ll let you know if there’re any changes.”
“You do that,” Walsh said. “And when that happens, I won’t stay away. I’ll have to see her for myself, awake and responsive, at least once before I go back to New York.”
“Gotta go.”
Meredith didn’t acknowledge his assertion before hanging up. The next time she was lonely on a Saturday night and feeling sorry for herself, she’d remember that having two men in love with you might be worse than having no one at all.