Chapter Twenty-Eight
He should be grateful to be alive. This wasn’t the first time Jack had been knocked unconscious and had to endure the protocol for head injuries, but this groggy, drugged feeling was never easy.
He couldn’t remember the details of what happened, only that there’d been an accident at the golf course and it was bad.
His brain felt encased in sludge that made thinking a struggle.
And yet, here he lay, going through a series of questions with a neurologist. The flashing light measured eye response.
The neck brace kept him immobile, but at least his eyes could follow that pinprick of light, which was a good sign.
How long had he been under? His tongue felt coated in cotton as he mumbled the question.
“You’ve been out for six days,” the doctor said. “Can you give me a thumbs-up with your hand?”
He managed to do so with both hands. “Excellent,” the doctor said.
He’d missed his flight to Japan. There were so many people around his bed. Beeping monitors. IVs attached to both arms. Electrodes taped on his head fed data to a laptop monitoring his brain activity. A lady in scrubs watched the laptop data. Someone else stood behind his head.
“Alice?” he said.
“What was that?” the doctor asked.
“Is Alice here?” It was a long shot, but the room was crowded and the brace on his neck stopped him from looking around.
A nurse pulled aside, and suddenly Alice moved into view, her face radiant as she hunkered down where he could see her.
“I’m right here, Jack.”
She wore his favorite yellow dress, the one that brought out the gold in her warm brown eyes, and he smiled back at her. “Hey, pretty lady.”
The doctor gave a laugh. “Okay, I’ll mark you down as being able to recognize faces,” he said. Alice pulled back and the nurse watching the monitors took her place.
It was humiliating to have Alice see him like this, hooked up to machines and with the awful neck brace. There was even a tube and a bag so he could take a whiz without leaving the bed. No man wanted to be seen like this, and yet . . . he was so glad she was here.
“Alice,” he slurred again.
“Yes, Jack?” This time she stood at the end of the bed where he could see her perfectly. So perfectly pretty, like a long-stemmed rose. “What is it, darling? What do you need?”
“Nothing. Just saying your name.”
Alice stayed where he could see her for the duration of the tests, which drained what little energy was left in him. He didn’t like needing her, but for today, he was grateful she was here.
Jack’s mind was in better shape the next morning, which was a mixed blessing.
The fogginess had cleared, which meant he could focus on his dire financial situation.
The accident had postponed his trip to Japan and their patience was growing thin.
Repairs to the waterfall would delay the opening of the golf course.
The renovations at the Roost were going to be incredibly expensive.
Alice had been doing her best to set his mind at ease. “I already spoke with the contractor about the waterfall,” she said. “He’s going to fix the lining free of charge, so don’t worry about a thing.”
The contractor had to fix the lining because it was a shoddy installation from the beginning. They’d used the wrong grade of liner, which was why Jack had been having water problems from the beginning.
“I need to get in contact with the guy in Japan,” he said. “I’m going to need you to read the latest emails to me.” The plastic torture device encasing his neck made it impossible to look at his phone or even read a laptop.
“Jack, please don’t worry about these things. You need to heal.”
Easy for a rich person to say. “What else has been going on while I’ve been out? Are you seeing Sebastian?”
“Of course I’ve seen him,” she said. “He helped me clean out your hotel room. Oh! And I got Daisy to waive the hotel fees from your time in the hospital. That’s good news, isn’t it?”
He would nod if the neck brace would permit it but had to settle for a thumbs-up instead.
“Jack, I wish I didn’t have to bring this up . . . ”
All senses went on alert. Her Pollyanna brightness had dimmed, so it must be bad. “Yeah, what’s up?”
“I spoke with your stepmother,” she said, and like clockwork his heart started pounding faster. “She knows about your accident and I had a long talk with her.”
Sophie probably told Alice a sob story about his dad’s health. People always took advantage of softies like Alice.
“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “I’ve known my dad has been sick for a long time.
” And yet, the panic was setting in again.
He forced himself to breathe calmly, trying to release the tension that gathered in his muscles.
It felt like bands constricting around his chest, making it hard to even drag in a decent lungful of air.
“There may not be much time,” Alice said, her voice heavy with regret. “Sophie says that your dad’s lungs are so bad that his heart is going to give out soon. She thinks he only has a few weeks left.”
The words landed hard and he squeezed his eyes shut. Oh, Dad.
This shouldn’t hurt so bad because it was his dad’s fault for smoking two packs a day and being a lousy drunk all those years.
He opened his eyes to focus on a golf game on the TV. The first time Jack became interested in golf was from a hospital bed, and Frank Latimer explained the rules to him. No hospital stays were fun, but that one, in which he and his dad bonded over a PGA weekend, had been pretty good.
“Well, I’m sorry for that,” Jack managed to choke out, because his heart still hadn’t quit thumping like a freight train barreling down the tracks.
“Sophie says she would like to arrange a visit.”
“Absolutely not.”
Alice’s face transformed from pity to pleading in the space of a few seconds. “Don’t look at me like that,” he said. “You have no idea what it’s like to be sneaking into a laundromat every night to sleep because your dad would rather suck down a bottle of vodka than look after you.”
Alice looked away and nodded, although he knew she still disapproved.
“Will you be okay if I leave for a few hours?” she asked. “Sebastian needs a ride to the airport, but he can call a cab if you’d rather I stay.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Do you suppose he’s going to make another go for you?”
She laughed a little. “You never know with Seb, but trust me … I’m finally immune to Sebastian Bell.”
It was the only spot of good news Jack had heard in a week.
Sebastian flirted with her the entire drive to the small regional airport at Newport News. He was back to being his devil-may-care self: charming, arrogant, and vain.
She parked in the lot before the drop-off zone, and Sebastian made no move to leave the car after she turned off the engine.
“You need to watch The King’s Redemption,” he said in a playfully castigating tone. “I’m telling you, it’s the best work I’ve ever done. Filming on the second series starts next month.”
“What’s going to happen in the second series?” she asked. “I thought the story ends with Charles regaining the throne and his triumphal return to London.”
“It does, but the second season is going to be about the wicked aftermath. It’s going to be very Game of Thrones as he hunts down the men who killed his father.
Charles was willing to forgive most people who fought for Oliver Cromwell, but the fifty-nine men who signed his dad’s death warrant?
They went on the run, and he went after them.
You’ll have to watch the next season to find out what he did, but it was savage,” he said with a delicious leer.
Grisly executions never appealed to Alice, but the revenge plot would probably attract a lot of viewers. “So Charles had no forgiveness in his heart for the regicides?”
“None at all. There were hard limits to the king’s clemency.
” Sebastian began fiddling with the clasp on his bag, his brow furrowed in concentration.
His cocksure demeanor was gone, replaced with a contemplative look.
“I admire how he led the country in the years following the civil war. He forgave almost everyone, even though they put him through pure hell. Heck, I was miserable even filming some of the scenes hiding out in haylofts or crouching in streams to hide from Cromwell’s army, and I only had to deal with it for a few days.
Charles spent years on the run, starving and searching for a safe place to lay his head for the night.
Most of the roles I’ve played in my career are made-up characters, but Charles II was real.
I admire him, and come up short in comparison. ”
He paused and looked down, clasping his hands together. She waited, sensing he had more to say.
“Alice, I treated you shamefully,” he finally said. “Not many people are lucky enough to meet a woman so genuinely kind. I was the one who made a mess of my life, but you paid the price. Your career is in the toilet because of me, and I’m sorry.”
“Seb, I’ll survive.”
He gave a bitter laugh. “You deserve more than just ‘surviving.’ I let them hustle me into rehab to save my own reputation and never gave a thought to you. Instead of being consumed by my own selfish needs, I should have let the world know you were blameless for my shortcomings. I will be forever sorry about that. Will you forgive me?”
A wave of fondness swelled inside. It had been easy to despise Sebastian while he’d been AWOL and she hadn’t understood what happened or why.
Now she understood. She still wished he had been strong enough to have defended her, but at least he understood the magnitude of what his weakness had cost her.
“Of course I forgive you, and wish you all the best. I’ll even watch your movies.” He choked back a laugh, and she opened her door. “Come on. You’ll miss your plane unless we get moving.”
This would be the last time they’d ever see each other.
Maybe she would watch his movies in the years and decades to come, witnessing him grow older on film while she aged here in Virginia.
If Sebastian’s visit to Virginia brought her nothing else, it had restored memories of a fleeting courtship that would forever add a dash of glamour to her mild-mannered life.
She popped the trunk open, and he lifted out both bags. Sebastian turned to face her, then set down a bag. His expression mirrored her own: regret, affection, nostalgia. He cupped the back of her neck and leaned in to kiss her forehead.
“Take care, Alice.”
She nodded. “You too, Seb.”
She remained beside her car to watch him walk away.
A part of her would always love Sebastian’s charming, effervescent good humor, but they weren’t the right match for each other.
Sebastian looked amazing in a cravat and could recite a Shakespearean sonnet with ease, but those weren’t the things she was looking for in a man.
She needed someone like Jack, who rolled up his sleeves to get a job done, rain or shine, good times or bad.
Who defended her when she had no one else on her side.
Jack would never have Mr. Darcy’s polished manners or be able to recite Shakespeare from memory, but it was men like Jack who built the world.
Men who weren’t afraid to get their hands dirty and faced each challenge head-on, not with elegant words but with sturdy, unrelenting grit and know-how.
They didn’t just preserve what was good; they built it, protected it, made sure it would endure.
Jack was no romanticized hero out of a novel—he was real, solid, and someone she would forever admire.
Jack taught her resilience through humor.
With his rough hands and easy laughter, he had changed her in ways she couldn’t fully grasp yet, building her up as surely as he built all else in his world.
Even though he would leave soon, he would remain forever etched into the framework of her heart, a lesson in strength and joy she would carry forward always.