The man’s broad face relaxed a little, but the pained darkness in his gaze remained. “Hey, we all have our peccadilloes-”
“Wow, you two look serious,” interrupted Lucy, sweeping into the kitchen dressed in jeans and a white shirt untucked at the waist. “Hope you’ve at least put the kettle on.” Before they could answer, she opened one of the cupboards and came up with a canister of tea leaves that Mark didn’t even know was there. In seconds she had them steeping, then continued to poke through the cupboards.
Fifteen minutes later they were refilling their cups and sitting down to a late supper of omelettes that she had whipped up from remnants of food she’d found in his refrigerator. “Only a month past the best before date,” she said of the ingredients, eating with the quick efficiency most doctors learn from having to grab a meal between calls. “And whatever kind of cheese you once had, it’s turned to a Roquefort look-alike. But I think we’ll live.”
“Mark keeps the take-out food industry going in this town,” Dan teased. “Even has his own table at The Four Aces.”
“Four Aces? Sounds like fun.”
“It’s Hampton Junction’s combination bar, home-cooking restaurant, and dance hall,” he added, giving Mark a wink. “I’m sure your host here will be glad to show you around.”
Lucy flashed that brilliant smile again. “That’d be fine. But my being here is bound to generate enough rumors as it is, so I’ll tell you right now, and everyone else in town, I’m strictly an aboveboard kind of woman. So you can assure folks their doctor will be safe with me. Besides, I’m engaged. My fiancé lives in New York.”
Dan blushed, his forkful of eggs halfway into his mouth. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to insinuate-”
“No offense,” Lucy said, waving off his apology and never missing a bite.
It didn’t make any difference to Mark. He’d no more think of dating a resident than his sister, if he had one.
That same evening
The Braden Country Home,
South of Hampton Junction
“What did I do to warrant such a moron of a son!”
Chaz Braden felt his head spin. The scotch he’d been nursing all afternoon had hit him hard as soon as he came in from the cold to the warmth of the house. Outside he’d kept himself just nicely topped off. “I only meant to scare the son of a bitch,” he said, trying not to sway in front of his father, loathing himself for feeling so beholden to him.
“Beware a father of spectacular ability,” Kelly had once told him in their early days together. “They never let you fail, always stepping in to take over, and that leaves you weak.”
He’d scoffed at the warning, having always relished growing up in privilege and figuring he deserved an edge in life.
He caught a glance of his hangdog face in a nearby gilded mirror. It reminded him of putty, and he immediately looked away. Yet he continued to stand there, fifty-five years old and pathetic as a fucking teenager being chewed out for screwing up again.
“You idiot. A bonehead play like that is so obvious. Who else will he think did it but you?”
It took all his concentration to come up with a reply. “Roper didn’t see me. And I had no car to spot. One of your men dropped me off – told him I just wanted to take a crack at the deer that hang around the ridge out there. On my way back to the highway afterward, I called him on my cellular to pick me up again, but closer to town. That way I made sure he didn’t see Roper’s wrecked Jeep.” Despite his best effort, he slurred his words.
“You’ll have left boot prints, tire tracks-”
“The woods are full of hunters with boots, and by morning the plows should have cleared the road-”
“It was stupid-”
“I know! But do you have any idea what I’m going through? The whispers at the hospital again. The other doctors shunning me again. Patients transferring out of my practice again. Secretaries and nurses afraid to be alone in a room with me. So to hell with you and your sanctimonious crap about what I should and shouldn’t do. Why shouldn’t I send the little fuck scurrying down the other side of the ridge with bullets at his heels?” The room pitched to one side, and he sat down on the nearest sofa. Christ, I shouldn’t have drunk so much, he thought, gripping his head between his hands and trying to stay the terrible swirling in his brain. In a few seconds it steadied. Without looking up, he could feel his father looming over him and sensed the man’s disgust. A wave of defeat swept through him as tangible as the effect of the alcohol. And as familiar. He’d mostly given up the latter, but had been succumbing to the former for years. “I’m sorry,” he muttered, defiance draining out of him. There was no point in fighting the man. Never had been, never would be. Nor of fighting to be free of Kelly. In the world’s eyes he’d always be her killer.
Between his fingers he could see the spacious room where he’d once believed he could be happy with her. Everything was decorated in beige, cream, and gold – the chairs, sofas, tables, lamps, even the walls and chandeliers – befitting a gilded lifestyle. Except it only reminded him of stale marzipan – ornate on the outside, hard and crumbly within.
His father sat down beside him. “Why, Chaz?” His tone of voice was surprisingly quiet, almost tender.
Good question. It had all been an impulse born of booze, lack of sleep, and being powerless to regain control over his life. “I’d gone off the wagon, had a few drinks, and listened in on the tap your men put on his phone. I heard Roper call that old busybody Nell and invite himself out there to ask her a bunch of questions about us. I lost it. It’s bad enough at work, but now, with him stirring up shit here…” He couldn’t explain the rage inside him. It was as if for that one moment Mark Roper had seemed responsible for all the innuendo, all the accusations of the last few weeks, and the temptation of taking a shot at the bastard, making it look like a hunter’s stray bullet, proved too hard to resist. Then seeing him take off into the bush, tail between his legs, it felt so damn good to have the upper hand, he couldn’t help but go after him. “Pow! Pow! Pow! All the way home. It would have been fantastic, having him in my sights, driving him like a scared rabbit. And I would have, too, if that other hunter hadn’t been there.”
“Thank God he was,” his father said, rolling his eyes at the ceiling. He stood up from the couch and, running a hand through his steely hair, started to pace. “Chaz, once you take over the family affairs after I’m gone, you’ll run things your own way, with the help of your mother if she’s still here. But there’s one practice of mine I advise you to adopt.”
Chaz groaned inwardly and sank back into the sofa, sending the contents of his skull into yet another death spiral. He couldn’t endure one of his father’s when-I-kick-the-bucket talks just now. And he couldn’t stand to hear him nonchalantly mention “mother,” the woman who had exiled herself to a permanent around-the-world cruise years ago rather than risk losing her share of the many family business interests in a messy divorce.
“Did you ever wonder why I only choose security people who are ex-military?”
“Because they’re trained to kill bad guys with a flick of their eyelashes?”
“Besides the obvious.”
Chaz said nothing, knowing his immediate role was to shut up and learn.
His father stopped by the fireplace, picked up a poker, and used it to stoke a bed of coals beneath a smoking log. “I find men whose particular skills were in special operations, the kind that involve entering premises by stealth and obtaining information with no one the wiser that they’ve even been there. That’s how we can keep abreast of potential problems like Dr. Mark Roper – with subtlety and finesse, not bullets and car crashes. Am I understood?”