LITMIR.BIZ

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heart beat slow and heavy with dread. Bart McCarthy had always been a strong presence in his life. His godfather. “Where?” He gestured toward the door beside his father. “In there?”

      Donald nodded and took the overcoat from Royce’s arm. “He wants to talk to you alone.” Bitterness laced his father’s words.

      Royce stepped around him and pushed open the door. Machines beeped and made wheezing noises as Bart McCarthy gasped for each breath. Tubes connected to his frail body: IVs, oxygen…

      Royce had once feared this man, until he’d learned his loud bark concealed his generous, loving nature. Now pity softened Royce’s heart. And something else. He blinked hard. “Bart.”

      Misted green eyes peered up at him. A voice rasped out. “You came.”

      Royce approached the bed, his wet rubber soles squeaking against the pristine tiles of the ICU floor. “What’s with the surprise?” He forced his mouth into a grin. “You had the old man call. I didn’t dare disobey.”

      And he’d wanted to come. He’d wanted to see this man again. But he didn’t want it to be for the last time.

      “Smart a…”

      “Hey, don’t waste your breath on insults. You need to save it. You need to fight.” He curled his fingers around the steel railing on the side of the bed.

      Pride lit the green eyes. “Fight…”

      Royce nodded. “You fight this. I want to know what happened last night.”

      When Bart opened his mouth, Royce held up a hand. “But you shouldn’t get worked up.”

      The pride burned brighter. “I got shot…but I…shouldn’t…get worked…up?”

      Royce’s laugh didn’t rise above the cacophony of the life-saving machines. “There’s some of that McCarthy spirit. Now, are you going to tell me what happened last night, so I can track down the SOB who shot you?”

      A wiry gray brow rose above those lively eyes. This man wasn’t gone yet. “Tracking…”

      Royce’s pulse quickened. “That’s what I do. Tell me everything you saw, Bart.”

      “Too dark. Didn’t see anything…”

      Frustration burned in Royce’s throat. He wanted whoever had done this to the old dragon.

      “I have to…ask you…”

      A cough wheezed out of his godfather’s frail chest, rattling the skeletal body and the tubes and wires connected to it.

      Royce winced and tightened his hands around the railing till his fingertips tingled. “Whatever you want, it’s yours. Ask me.”

      “Find…”

      The lids fluttered over the pale eyes, consciousness slipping away from him.

      “What? Who?”

      Thin fingers closed over his hand, biting with a fierce grasp. “Find Sarah…”

      Royce turned his hand over to clasp Bart’s, but his godfather’s fingers slid away. “Bart?”

      “Sarah…”

      A murmur rose from the bed. “Sarah Mars…”

      SARAH’S HEELS clicked against the new subfloor as she walked the maze of stud walls. Closing her eyes, she could envision how it would be when the builder finished. Hers. Something for her, not given to her, not inherited, not on loan. Hers alone. As only her son was.

      But she shared him now, as she should have years ago. A sigh slipped through her lips.

      “Something not right, Mrs. Hutchins?”

      The contractor hovered nearby with respectful interest in Sarah’s opinion. A woman. And an out-of-towner. Those were the only people who respected her. Strangers.

      “No, it’s fine.”

      “Hard to envision the finished product—”

      “No, it’s not.” She patted the woman’s arm. “It’s perfect.”

      A smile creased the young woman’s face. “I’m glad you think so. There’s a long way to go yet.”

      Sarah waved a hand in dismissal. “I understand and appreciate you taking this job so far from home. Why don’t you head back down now for the weekend since your workers have already left? I’ll check in with you some time next week.”

      The blond head bobbed. “Have a nice weekend, Mrs. Hutchins.”

      Sarah held in her next sigh until the woman’s pickup backed from the driveway. Nice weekend? She hoped so. She would enjoy her son’s soccer game. She enjoyed every minute with her growing boy. But when she was alone…

      She shivered despite the warm caress of the spring air. She turned to leave, her heel catching on a protruding nail. Grasping the stud wall prevented a fall, but a sliver drove in beneath her nail bed. A breath of pain hissed through her lips. “Just got that manicure, too.”

      She glanced at the rose-colored nails and the rings glinting in the late-afternoon sun. He was dead now. As a widow, she could continue to wear his rings, to perpetrate that lie of her marriage.

      Tears burned behind her eyes, and her heart contracted with pain. She missed him, her dear friend. But he’d never been truly her husband. She hadn’t felt a man’s passionate touch in many years.

      She closed her teeth over the jagged end of the sliver and tugged it free. Blood dripped from her hand to the new floorboards.

      Although the townspeople believed it, there was no proverbial blood on her hands. In fact, they’d be surprised if they knew who had really married whom for the money. Money had been little compensation for what she’d lost—loving, supportive parents, their hearts so big they’d first adopted one child and then a few years later, another. Her. They’d given her and her older, adopted “brother” a home. Family. But for Jeremy, that was all gone now. After taking one life, her brother had taken another, his own. And just a few years later, a plane crash had taken her parents, leaving her a single mother with no emotional support…only the life insurance money. So when as a young nurse she’d seen a patient struggling financially as well as physically, she had offered her help and been labeled a gold digger for her efforts. But that was the past. And where was the sense in looking back? Sarah had never found it.

      Whatever mistakes she’d made, she couldn’t change them now. Whatever tragedies she’d endured, she couldn’t alter fate as much as she wished she could. She had to concentrate on the future. And her son.

      If she dwelled on the past, she would open that folder her friend and business partner Evan Quade kept locked in a safe-deposit box, protected from her son’s curiosity and her own interest. If they wanted her to know who they were, they’d come looking for her. But after twenty-eight years, she didn’t expect them any time soon.

      Being careful of her impractical heels, she stepped down a couple of concrete steps and walked across the cement slab that would be the garage.

      Heat shimmered off the silver hood of her Mercedes as the late-spring sun shone bright in a clear sky. From behind a stand of trees with new leaves, Lake Michigan rushed to the sandy shore.

      Jeremy would have so much fun here as he made his awkward passage from early adolescence to adulthood. A passage she prayed he traversed with more grace and caution than she had. But if she hadn’t…

      No, no looking back, except to count her blessings, of which Jeremy was the biggest.

      A wave of stale air crashed against her as she pulled open the car’s driver’s door. She should have left the window down. Someday she’d learn to plan ahead.

      She slid onto the warm leather seat and reached for the keys she’d dropped in the console. Her nails scratched paper.

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