Chapter 14
Chapter Fourteen
Jeremiah stepped through the door first. Ethan came in right behind.
He was struck by the big brown eyes of the woman in the hospital bed.
She gazed at him from within a mass of wavy brown hair and skin the color of almonds.
She looked past him, and he remembered Ethan and moved in further to make room for his brother to enter.
She wasn’t smiling, exactly. She looked nervous and sleepy. Even in the state she was in, injured and traumatized, she was pretty. Her brown eyes reminded him of Ethan’s.
She said, “They tell me you two big Texans are my brothers.”
“Seems like,” Ethan said.
Jeremiah couldn’t find words, and when he did, they were dumb. “Are you okay?” Of course she wasn’t okay, she was laying there in a hospital bed.
But not near death. Not even close, from what he could tell, though she might have inside damage, he supposed.
“I think I’m gonna be fine. They can’t keep anything from me, I’m a doctor.”
Ethan elbowed Jeremiah. “Our sister’s a doctor.”
“We get no credit for that, brother.” Jeremiah went closer to the bed, and Ethan came with him, standing beside him. “I’m Ethan,” he said.
“Jeremiah.”
“I’m Elena. I want to get to know you. I want you to sit down and tell me everything about yourselves. But I’m afraid I can’t keep my eyes open much longer. If I drift off, it’s not because you’re boring me.”
“My wife Lily says gettin’ hurt bad like this takes the vigor right outta you,” Ethan said. “She’s an R.N.”
Jeremiah hitched his chin at him. “This guy just likes saying the words ‘my wife, Lily.’”
“Yeah, I do,” Ethan drawled with a grin.
“Yeah, you do,” Jeremiah said.
“Newlywed?” Elena asked.
“This summer. She’s expecting a baby in early spring.”
“You work fast.” She smiled, but her voice was getting softer, her eyes less wide. “I already know you’re a country singer. My parents have been fillin’ me in. You met them, right?”
“All three of ‘em.” Ethan said.
“And what do you do, Jeremiah?” she asked, shifting her gaze to his. The way her eyes moved over it made him feel exposed.
“For the moment, I’m a bouncer at Ethan’s honky tonk.”
“He’s been busy romancin’ my cousin, Willow, and tryin’a keep it secret,” Ethan said.
Jeremiah sent Ethan a quick look that must’ve shown the knife in his heart that statement had just twisted. Ethan’s smile froze and faded, while his eyes asked what was wrong.
“I know Willow. You have good taste,” Elena said. “Gosh, I never imagined…my birth father was a criminal. I don’t know how you deal with it.” Her eyelids fell closed but popped open again. “And I never imagined I had brothers. I’m so happy…about that.” Her eyes fell closed again.
The brothers exchanged a soft smile, then walked quietly back into the hallway, where Jeremiah let his smile die. He kept on walking, but Ethan stopped, grabbed his shoulder and turned him around.
“You don’t believe her mothers, do you?” he asked. “You think she really was the one fighting you for the inheritance.”
Jeremiah shrugged. “I’m ready to breathe some air that’s not antiseptic-scented.”
Ethan gripped his forearm and dragged him down the hall. Elena’s three parents were still in the waiting room. Jeremiah pasted a smile on his face, and waved as they passed. Willow was nowhere around, and maybe she’d left already. He wondered what she’d done with Beans.
Ethan didn’t slow down until they were outside on the sidewalk, then a few yards down it, where a wood-and-metal bench sat under a light on a pole with a halo of bugs.
Ethan let go of his arm and faced him. “Why would she pretend not to have known we existed? Why would she even think of deception on the worst day of her life?”
“I don’t know.”
“And Willow? You’re not giving her the benefit of the doubt, either.”
“You want me to give her the benefit of the doubt? After all her snooping and withholding information?”
“Yes, that’s exactly what I want you to do.”
“Why? Why the hell would I do that, Ethan?”
“Because she’s done the same for you. You’ve been sneakin’ around and keeping secrets, don’t tell me you haven’t.”
“I had cause.”
“Too freakin’ bad. Forgive her anyway. You love her, you idiot.”
He could have punched him in the face and stunned him less. Jeremiah rocked back on his heels as if he had.
“And she loves you back.”
“She does not—”
“And I know for a fact she loves me, and she had a damn good reason for keeping quiet about Elena. She thought she was doin’ the right thing, or she wouldn’t’ve done it.”
Jeremiah didn’t know if he could argue with that line of logic.
“I know she snooped. She’s a cop, it’s in her nature, and she’s in love with an ex-con who’s actin’ suspicious A F, to put it crudely. What’s she supposed to do?”
Jeremiah shrugged.
“You’ve got a real problem trustin’ folks, brother.”
“Yeah, doin’ time for another man’s crime’ll do that to ya.”
“On the order of your own father.”
“Our own father.”
“Not mine. I traded up.”
Jeremiah nodded. “That you did, Ethan. That you did.”
“So have you. You’re here now; you’re with us now.
A part of this clan. You can relax your defenses, brother.
When part our family has a problem, every Brand and Brand-adjacent human from here to Big Falls, Oklahoma closes ranks around ‘em. We take care of our own. And I don’t know how you don’t know it yet, but you’re one of our own. ” Ethan clapped him on the shoulder.
Jeremiah’s phone chirped. He didn’t pick it up right away, because he was too choked up by Ethan’s declaration to speak. Then Ethan lowered his hand, nodded at the phone.
Jeremiah and he picked it up. “My lawyer,” he said. He’d ignored several calls from the guy. Now there was a voice message. He tapped play.
“The judge ruled earlier today. I’ve been trying to reach you. The plaintiff is your half-sister, Elena Montrose. She was granted half.”
Jeremiah lowered his head shaking it slowly.
“As you know, everything’s been liquidated at this point, and the judge ordered the money deposited to your respective accounts immediately. It’s probably already there. Call me if you have questions.”
He sighed heavily as he put the phone back into his pocket. “You know what’s ironic? If Elena had just come to me and asked, I’d’ve split it with her happily. She didn’t need a lawyer to get her share.”
But Ethan was shaking his head. “This doesn’t make a lot of sense, Jeremiah. Her mothers both said they’d’ve known if she was contesting de Lorean’s will. Juanita claims she only told her who her father was last night. And she told us herself she was surprised to find out about us.”
“She was medicated,” he said.
“Makes her more likely to tell the truth, not more apt to come up with elaborate deceptions. Besides, Willow says she didn’t know, and Willow wouldn’t lie.
” Ethan poked him right in the center of his chest with a forefinger.
“Not about somethin’ like this. Not to me, she wouldn’t.
Not to you, either. And if you’d been payin’ attention, you’d know that. ”
He looked up. “Somebody’s lyin’, brother.”
“Maybe. But it ain’t Willow.”
Willow hadn’t wanted to be there when Jeremiah got home.
She’d taken Beans with her to the hospital, and then back to the cabin.
She knew when Ethan and Jeremiah left the hospital, because she’d asked her cousin to text her an alert.
That gave her a half hour, so she walked around picking up the boxes and bags they’d unloaded from the Jeep earlier.
Anything left within the puppy’s reach might wind up becoming a chew toy.
In the bedroom she bent to gather up the blankets and sheets, but she could smell their lovemaking in the bedding. She brought the covers to her face and wet it with her tears. It seemed like a lifetime ago they’d been entangled in these blankets and each other.
Flinging the bedding to the floor, she left it there and settled for closing the bedroom door to keep the pup out of mischief.
She made sure the bathroom door was closed too, triple checked the living room and kitchen for items Beans could reach and chew, gave him food and water, and kissed him goodbye.
Then she drove home and cried herself to sleep.
At seven a.m. She had a text on her phone from dispatch, forwarded from one of the Texas Rangers.
Ranger Stevens: Montrose’s alibi checked out. Couldn’t hold him.
She pulled her head out of her heartache long enough for her cop-brain to kick in, rolled onto her back, and realized she needed to get back to that hospital to talk to Elena Montrose in an official capacity, and to hell with the Texas Rangers claiming jurisdiction.
She got up fast, hit the shower, and put on her uniform. She didn’t even turn on the kitchen light, just grabbed her keys on the way out her front door.
An hour later, she was leaning into a hospital room, smiling at Elena Montrose.
“Hello, Elena.”
“Deputy Brand. How nice to see you again.”
“I wish it was under better circumstances. Are you up to answering a few questions about the hit and run?”
“Sure.” Elena raised her bed so she was more upright. Willow went into the room and sat down in a blue-padded chair beside the bed. There were flower arrangements on the windowsill, and get-well cards thumbtacked to a cork board opposite the bed. She didn’t have an IV or anything.
“You were contesting your birth father, Vincent de Lorean’s will, correct?”
Her dark brows came together. “What?”
“Um, yes, Vincent de Lorean, your birth father? The records show you contested his will.”
“No, no, that’s a mistake. I didn’t know who my father was until night before last.” She shook her head rapidly. “I was so in my head about it, I think that’s why I didn’t see the truck that hit me.”
“So you blame yourself for the accident?”
She nodded. Then she stopped nodding and frowned, and then said, “Well, it did seem like they were way too far to the right, you know? Almost like it veered toward me.”
“It veered toward you.”