[Kate's Boys 04] - Travis's Appeal Read online

  “What’ll I tell them?” she called after him, rising in her chair.

  “That there’s been an emergency,” was all he said before disappearing around the corner.

  Travis didn’t remember the drive. He hardly remembered getting into his car. The squeal of tires against asphalt echoed in his ears as he pealed out of his parking space and onto the street. The road was a blur of lights and he was vaguely conscious of eking through half a dozen yellow ones.

  He reached Shana’s house in record time.

  The ambulance, its rear doors hanging open, dominated the driveway. Travis pulled up to the curb just as the front door to the house opened. Two burly paramedics were propelling a gurney between them, and Shawn O’Reilly was strapped to it. Shana hurried along one side of it, holding on to Shawn’s hand and talking to him.

  Shawn wasn’t responding. As Travis got closer, he saw that the man was unconscious.

  The sight of her grief-stricken face tore at his heart. “Shana?”

  She turned then, using the wrist of her free hand to brush aside the tears that had stained both of her cheeks. She almost sobbed when she saw him. “Oh God, Travis, I’m so scared.”

  Very gently, the paramedic closest to her separated her hand from her father’s in order to load the gurney into the ambulance.

  Travis immediately put his arms around her, wishing he could protect her from the pain he knew had to be ripping her apart.

  “It’s going to be okay,” he promised, knowing that he had no right. But all he could think of was that he wanted to give her something to cling to, something that would kindle hope in her heart, no matter how irrational such a promise might be.

  The paramedic in charge turned to look at Shana after he and his partner had loaded Shawn and his gurney into the ambulance. His chiseled features softened in the face of her distress.

  “You can ride with your father if you like,” he offered kindly.

  A ragged breath escaped her lips. “Travis?”

  He wasn’t sure if she was asking him what to do, or if she wanted him to come with her.

  “Go ahead,” Travis urged, nodding toward the ambulance. “I’ll be right behind you in the car,” he said.

  Like someone lost within the sticky webbing of a deep trance, Shana barely nodded in acknowledgment of his words. Waiting for the gurney to be secured into place, she then scrambled behind it, not waiting for anyone to help her get inside.

  She looked lost as the doors closed on her, Travis thought.

  He turned to the second paramedic who had secured the rear doors. “How is he?”

  The attendant looked as if he debated answering, then finally shook his head.

  “It doesn’t look good, but you never know,” was all he said before hurrying off to the front of the ambulance and getting in behind the steering wheel.

  Travis ran to the curb and got into his car. The moment the ambulance left the driveway, he was right behind it.

  The whirling lights and high-pitched wail of the siren parted the traffic before them. Travis remained directly behind them the entire way to Blair Memorial Hospital.

  Mentally, he kept his fingers crossed, hoping that no police vehicles were in the immediate vicinity. Because of the speed he was maintaining, he knew he’d be pulled over and precious time would be wasted as he explained why to some officer of the law. Time that would be inadvertently taken away from Shana.

  He didn’t want her arriving at the hospital without him, didn’t want her facing the possible death of a father by herself.

  It turned out that luck was with him. Travis managed to reach the hospital less than two heartbeats behind the ambulance. Rather than find parking on his own, he pulled up to the valet booth and surrendered his keys to the parking attendant beside the hospital’s E.R. entrance. He all but tossed the keys to the tall, thin, blond-haired man as he hurried to where the ambulance had parked.

  “Name?” the attendant called out after him.

  “Marlowe. Travis Marlowe. With an E,” Travis shouted back. He never even turned around or broke stride.

  Travis reached the ambulance just as the rear doors opened again. He was there in time to help Shana get down after the gurney was unloaded. There in time to see her eyes red and swollen from crying.

  Instantly the worst occurred to him.

  Still holding Shana’s hand, Travis looked toward the first paramedic, a silent question in his eyes. The attendant’s expression was troubled, but he and his partner were still continuing to work over the unconscious patient.

  It was Shana who filled him in. “His heart stopped.” She stifled the sob that had almost escaped. “On the way over, his heart just stopped.” Again she paused, letting out a shaky breath as she fought to regain control over her emotions. “But the paramedic managed to get it started again.”

  Her lower lip trembled. Shana caught it between her teeth, stilling it. Trying desperately to pull herself together. If she came apart, she couldn’t do her father any good and he needed her right now. More than ever. Questions about his condition needed to be answered, medical history had to be given and she was the only one who knew the names of the doctors, the different medications. The only one who knew the various and sundry incidents that had brought her father here this morning.

  How was she going to be strong when all she wanted to do was cry? To shout and demand to know what he thought he was doing to her. He wasn’t supposed to die. Not yet, not today. Not now.

  Not ever.

  She wasn’t ready to be alone. To be an adult and not anyone’s daughter. She needed her father to go on living.

  I didn’t mean it, all those times I thought you were too old. I never meant it. You’re not too old, you’re younger than I am. In your heart. That same heart that’s giving you so much trouble now.

  Taking a deep breath, Shana squared her shoulders. They were going to get through this, she and her father. There was no other alternative.

  When she felt Travis’s arm go around her shoulders, she blinked.

  “I’m all right,” she told him, her voice distant.

  Breaking free, she followed Shawn’s gurney as the paramedics pushed it through the automatic rear doors of Blair Memorial’s Emergency Room.

  Chapter 12

  T hey lost no time closing ranks around Shana, gathering as if she were one of their own.

  Travis couldn’t remember ever being more grateful for his family. All it had taken for this to come about was telling Kate what had happened. She’d called him on his cell phone less than an hour after he’d arrived in the emergency room. That made it fifty minutes after Shawn O’Reilly had died without regaining consciousness.

  When he’d heard his stepmother’s concerned voice on the phone, asking how Shawn was faring, it wasn’t difficult for him to figure out the chain of occurrence. Bea had probably mentioned to his father that he’d flown out of the office like a bat out of hell after getting the call from Shana. His father, putting two and two together, had called Kate, and Kate, ever intuitive, had called him.

  But it didn’t end there, with an expression of concern followed by the request that he convey her condolences to Shana. Less than twenty minutes after terminating her phone call to him, Kate arrived at Blair Memorial. Reasoning, undoubtedly, that Shana needed the comfort of a mother, Kate silently took the grieving young woman into her arms.

  Startled, Shana resisted for perhaps an emotion-filled moment—if that long—then dissolved into tears and melted into Kate’s arms.

  Travis heard Kate murmuring soft endearments, most in English, a few in the dialect from the old country from which she originally hailed. All meant to soothe and give comfort.

  After several minutes, Shana drew back, trying to pull herself together. She was behaving like a child. And she was no longer anyone’s child, she thought sadly.

  “You must think of me as an idiot.” Her cheeks tear-stained and flushed with embarrassment, Shana’s words were addressed to both K
ate and Travis.

  “I think of you as someone who’s grieving,” Travis told her. Since Kate was here with her, he felt he could leave her alone for a few minutes. “I’m going to go see about the arrangements,” he said to Kate.

  Shana had drawn away from Kate and was now standing by Shawn’s gurney. There hadn’t even been time to transfer him to one of the E.R. beds. The moment his gurney had been pushed through the electronic doors, his heart had stopped again. E.R. physicians had quickly converged around Shawn, exercising desperate life-saving measures that ultimately failed.

  All but two nurses had retreated from the area after time of death had been called. The nurses now looked to Travis before taking care of the deceased’s body.

  Travis glanced at Shana’s face. She was completely focused on Shawn. “I think she still needs a little more time,” he told the older of the two women.

  The nurse nodded. “Tell the poor dear to take all the time she needs.” Pausing for a moment, she lowered her voice as she asked, “Do you know what funeral parlor she wants to use?”

  When he had dictated the terms of his will, Shawn had also been very thorough about his final arrangements. He’d left nothing to chance, choosing the casket he wanted and where to hold the service. He’d paid for everything ahead of time—something that he’d instinctively known was in short supply. The man had left a copy of all the instructions with him. Travis now nodded in response to the nurse’s question.

  As he gave the woman the name of the funeral parlor, he heard Shana’s whisper-soft voice behind him as she said her last good-bye to the only father she’d ever known.

  Travis turned around to see Shana holding Shawn’s hand in hers. “I forgive you, Daddy. I forgive you for leaving me. But it’s going to be a sad, lonely world without you in it.”

  Leaning over the man’s lifeless body, Shana pressed a kiss to his cheek, struggling to keep from shedding fresh tears. But one lone tear gave her away, sliding down her cheek onto his.

  Travis came up behind her, gently taking hold of Shana’s shoulders and turning her around to face him. Stifling a sob, she buried her face in his chest and remained there, lost in silence, trying to make sense of the large, cold new world she suddenly found herself in.

  “You’re coming home with me tonight,” he told her. “I won’t let you be alone.”

  Shana began to protest, but her heart just wasn’t in it. She didn’t want to be alone in the house she’d shared with her parents, not just yet. The silence would be unbearable.

  “You’re both coming home with me,” Kate informed them. Travis looked at her in surprise. He opened his mouth, but Kate was quick to silence any protest. “I’m not taking no for an answer, so you might as well just save your breath. Both of you.” She took Shana’s chin in her hand and lifted up the young woman’s head until their eyes met. “Travis can tell you that once I make up my mind, there is no changing it.”

  “It’s true,” he told Shana. “Dad calls her the most stubborn woman on the face of the earth, or did,” he amended, remembering what his father had said about his sister, “until Kelsey started talking back.”

  Shana knew they both meant well and she tried hard to smile at them in response, but the ache inside of her chest and stomach had formed a huge, huge bottomless hole and she felt as if she was free-falling.

  So she merely nodded and let herself be led off. Later she’d be the strong-willed woman her father had raised her to be. But right now, she was just his little girl, grieving because he was forever lost to her.

  Shana came for the night.

  She stayed for the week.

  Every time she would say something about going back to her own house, someone—Travis, Kate, Bryan, Kelsey, even his brothers and their wives—would come up with a reason why she needed to remain where she was. With them. His brothers and their wives no longer lived there, but they all seemed to make a point of dropping by, just to talk, to hang out for an hour or so, asking her how she was doing and if there was anything she needed. They all stood by her throughout the soul-wrenching ordeal of the wake.

  She’d never met a family like the Marlowes. They made her feel as if she was one of them. As if she mattered to them. It helped to gradually make the pain manageable.

  Shana kept the restaurant closed that week, although Kate, Travis and even Trevor and his wife, who had their own restaurant to run, offered to help keep Shawn’s Li’l Bit of Heaven open for her.

  The wake—Travis mercifully handled all the details—ran the traditional three days and every evening it was standing room only in the viewing room. Shana was touched to see just how many people had loved her father. But even with all these people who came up to her, offering their condolences, sharing stories about her father, she was acutely conscious of the one person who continued to be missing.

  On the third day, as the end of the viewing time approached, Shana watched the door intently, hoping against hope to see the person who counted most. Travis could sense the tension searing through her. Coming up behind her, he gave her shoulder a quick, gentle squeeze, silently assuring Shana that he was there for her.

  “She’s not coming,” Shana said more to herself than to him. Turning around, she looked up at Travis. “I had every newspaper in the state run the obituary so Susan could see it no matter where she was staying. I know she must have seen it,” she insisted, for once not bothering to bank down her anger. “How could she not come?”

  He didn’t want to sound as if he was defending Susan. He just wanted to soothe her anguish. “From what you told me, they didn’t leave things in a very good place. Maybe now she’s feeling guilty that she didn’t try to mend those fences before he died. That would make it hard for her to come see him like this.”

  “Maybe,” she murmured. “But she could still come,” Shana insisted. “Still pay her respects. He was her father.”

  “Guilt makes people act in odd ways,” he told her, thinking of his own guilt and how heavy it was becoming. He fervently wished that Shawn hadn’t shared his secret with him. Or that the man had told Shana before he died. “Maybe she’s afraid that you’ll hate her.”

  Shana shook her head. She wasn’t like that. “I don’t hate her. I hate the way she behaved,” she explained, “but I don’t hate Susan.”

  Travis slipped his arm around her and gave her the only bit of hope he could. “Maybe she’ll come to the funeral tomorrow.”

  “Maybe,” Shana echoed.

  She didn’t.

  Although there were throngs of people at the service and later at the cemetery’s grave site, and even though Shana gratefully found herself protectively cocooned by Travis and his family, her periodic search of the one familiar face she needed to see yielded no satisfaction.

  Susan didn’t come.

  “Maybe she missed the obituary,” Travis suggested as they rode back from the cemetery in the limousine. “People don’t usually read the obituaries until they think they’re old enough to be in one.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” Shana agreed hoarsely. There was no point in driving herself crazy. But she did need to let Susan know that their father was gone. “God, I wish I knew where to find her.”

  Maybe it was better this way, Travis thought. At least, for the time being, it pushed the confrontation he sensed would come to the fore. From the little that Shawn had told him, he definitely didn’t get a good feeling about the woman.

  Shana eased the front door closed behind her, then turned on the foyer light even though it was only early afternoon.

  The silence that emanated from all four corners was incredibly deafening. She kept expecting the sound of her father’s laughter or his footfall on the marble floor.

  There was nothing.

  Opening the restaurant for business again yesterday had been difficult enough. But there’d been enough noise there to fill all the empty spaces. To keep her from thinking.

  But coming here, knowing she would never hear his voice again, never s
ee him sitting before the television set, laughing at some inane sitcom, was almost too much for her. She came perilously close to falling apart.

  She was deeply grateful that Travis refused to let her do this alone even though she’d insisted she was up to this. Secretly, in her heart, she knew she wasn’t. It bothered her that she wasn’t stronger, that she didn’t live up to her own self-image.

  But Travis and his family, bless ’em, had all but pooh-poohed that away.

  “Strength only comes after vulnerability’s been conquered—which means you had to be vulnerable first in order to be strong,” Travis told her authoritatively, doing what he could to soothe her unrest. “And there’s no way in hell—or heaven—that I’m letting you walk into that big old house for the first time since Shawn died by yourself.”

  So far, she hadn’t had to. He’d purposely sent his sister to collect whatever clothes and other items she’d needed for her stay at his parents’ house. He wanted to spare her as much pain as possible, until the inevitable came to light.

  She turned toward him now and put her arms around his neck. There was a look in her eyes he couldn’t quite read. Apprehension slipped in, even as he tried to block it. “You know, I really don’t know what I would have done without you this last week.”

  He brushed aside a strand of hair that fell into her eyes, thinking how strange fate was and how much she’d come to mean to him. If Shawn hadn’t come into his office to put his affairs in order, he would have never known someone like Shana existed.

  And, by the same token, he wouldn’t be carrying around the burden of a secret that could very well pull them apart.

  “You would have gotten through it,” he assured her with conviction. “I have no doubts that you would.” God, but he loved her. He couldn’t imagine going back to a life without her. “But I am glad I could be there to make all this just the tiniest bit easier for you.”

  “More than a tiny bit,” she told him.