LITMIR.BIZ

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stark relief above a black fringe of live-oak trees and was backlit by that violent, moon-dark, Texas sky.

      Heather was in there somewhere...maybe dying.

      His gut cramped in sick, demoralizing fear. Her powerful family would stop at nothing to keep him from seeing her.

      Let them try.

      He slammed on the brakes, got out of the car he’d taken without permission and ran, heedless of the soft rain that had begun to fall again, uncaring that he’d left the door wide open and the headlights blazing into the empty blackness like twin cones.

      With a callused brown hand, he shielded his eyes against flashing red and white lights of an ambulance. More sirens screamed from the distant interstate, jarring him in his panicky confusion as raced toward the E.R. entrance.

      His mouth twisted when he spotted the same scowling deputy who’d all but accused him of killing Ben a week ago. Ben, his best friend; Ben, Heather’s brother. Ben, whose lifeless head he’d cradled in his lap. Ben, whose grave he’d visited less than an hour ago to plead for forgiveness.

      Nod Smile at the uniformed jerk. Stay cool.

      Joey shot the officer a tense grin that must have passed muster. Then he shouldered his way through the sliding glass doors like a surly outlaw. Inside, heads swiveled as rain dripped off his black hair. He slicked the thick stuff back, out of his scalding eyes. A pretty teenager gasped coyly and then gave him one of those fluttery smiles all the girls gave him. He saw her father’s hand clench warningly on her slim shoulder and draw her out of Joey’s path.

      Half boy, half man, Joey moved too fast, as if he hadn’t quite grown accustomed to his long, rugged body. Still, he was hunky and gorgeous. His voracious sex appeal made him suspect with all parents and teachers, and with any other guy his age who had a girlfriend.

      “You’re every teenage girl’s dream lover and every daddy’s worst nightmare,” Coach Howard had teased him when he’d been voted Most Handsome in high school.

      “When I was your age I had pimples. I envy the hell out of you, kid. Looks like yours will open all sorts of doors.”

      Behind a cluttered desk a nurse ignored a stack of charts and blinking lights on her phone and licked pizza crust off her fingers.

      But she couldn’t ignore him.

      No woman ever could, especially if he smiled.

      But when he tried, the skin on either side of his mouth tightened painfully.

      “Save the fake charm. Visiting hours are over, sonny.”

      She obviously had a teenage daughter.

      Joey froze. “Please, Ma’am.... I’ve gotta find somebody.... She’s real sick.”

      The nurse shook her head in curt dismissal, sucked a last crumb, and then punched a button on her telephone to tend to more important business.

      Joey’s cold wet hand grabbed the receiver from her

      “Heather Wade,” he rasped, suddenly seeming older and scarier than his twenty years. “The senator’s daughter.... What room is she in?”

      “Your pretty face has got you way too cocky, sonny. You may be hot stuff to some little girls foolish enough to go for tall and dark and dangerous, but a Wade wouldn’t wipe her pretty feet on the likes of you...even if you did get her pregnant.”

      His broad shoulders sagged. Joey’s tough stance wilted. “Where—?” he pleaded in a desperate, breathless voice, a boy’s voice now.

      Her stare hardened. Then she seized the phone from him. “Get outta here, sonny, before you get yourself into real trouble. The senator’s been down here. He told me all about you and to be on the watch-out—”

      When Joey didn’t budge, she hollered off-handedly, “Officer! It’s him! It’s that Joey Fasano guy.”

      Joey took off in a dead run.

      So did the deputy.

      As Joey sprinted like a crazed rat through a maze of endless white corridors, the big deputy lumbered at his heels.

      The bastard would probably throw the book at him.

      Let him. All that mattered was finding Heather...before it was too late.

      Then Joey slammed through a double set of swinging doors only to find himself trapped in a dead-end hall on the seventh floor.

      His heart beat like a tom-tom when he pivoted wildly just as the deputy banged through the doors and smiled.

      Behind Joey, Senator Wade’s voice thundered, “What the hell are you doing up here, Fasano?”

      “I came to see Heather.”

      “Over my dead body, punk.”

      Shock and disapproval rippled through the grim clump of fashionably-dressed people standing outside Heather’s door.

      “You better let me see her!” Joey screamed her name like a crazy man. “Heather!”

      Heather’s mother opened the door. “She doesn’t want to see you.”

      “You’re lying!”

      Vaguely Joey was aware of her mother’s pitying gaze as he stumbled past her. Suddenly he felt that he moved in weird slow motion. The white walls closed in on him like a surrealistic nightmare.

      Was that frail, thin creature veiled in curtains and swaddled in white sheets like a mummy in that far corner really his lively Heather?

      The blinds were down. The room was gray and shadowy.

      “Babe.... What have they done....” He choked. His voice died. “Oh, God...what have I done?”

      Her amethyst eyes that usually brightened at the sight of him, were dull and painfilled. Dark circles of grief and exhaustion ringed them. She stared at him as if he were a ghost. Then she twisted her head away from him and lay as still as death.

      Even in this state, he thought she was the prettiest girl in the world. He sat down beside her and took her slim hand. A shock went through him. Her fingers cold and stiff and lifeless. Just as Ben’s had been.

      “You okay, babe?”

      “I’m fine,” she whispered.

      Fine? Her tone cut him. Ever after he would hate that word.

      There was scarcely a pulsebeat in her slender, blue-veined wrist. Her icy skin was almost translucent.

      She was so changed, so lifeless, fear squeezed his heart like a vice.

      “Please...just go away,” she whispered in a strange almost thready voice.

      He lifted her hand and laced his brown fingers through hers. “What about our baby?”

      Her voice broke on a sob. “There is no baby.”

      His own eyes filled with tears. Fighting them, he squeezed her hand and held on tightly. He gasped for air. He gasped again. He felt like a drowning man with nothing to hold on to. “But—”

      “I want you out of my life, Joey. It’s the only way.”

      “Heather.” He felt sick at his stomach and unable to breathe in the dark, airless room. “You listen to me. We’re still getting married—”

      “No,” she said in a rehearsed, robotlike tone. “I want to start over... fresh.”

      “With some rich guy like Roth that your daddy—”

      “Daddy says if this gets out, me having been pregnant, people won’t understand. They’ll judge him. He says that I’ve been difficult my whole life.”

      “He’s difficult and demanding. Not you. You’re not supposed to be some perfect doll who follows all his orders. You’ll shrivel up and die...if you do that.”

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