Destiny's Whisper (8 page)

Aleksei looked at his son, recognized the fire of determination in his eyes, the set of his jaw and saw himself as he must have looked at the same age, ready to take on the world and the devil be damned. “Your mother’s going to skin both of us if you do something stupid.”

“Then I guess I’d better not do anything stupid, huh? I’d hate to be responsible for you sleeping on the couch!” Sergei stated, a devilish light glinting in the ebony depths of his eyes.

Aleksei shook his head in bemusement, understanding why Sergei made his coach crazy. Whittaker might as well have been dealing with Aleksei again for as much as Sergei was like his father.

“You remember that, pal, because if your mother kicks me out of bed, I’m taking yours and you can sleep on the couch!”

Good or bad, Aleksei couldn’t have been prouder of his son!

CHAPTER 5 

T
he low hum of a vacuum cleaner pulled Sergei to semi-consciousness. His eyelids felt leaden as he squinted at the clock on his bedside table, threw an arm over his eyes and rolled over with a groan. Six-fifteen! His mother was vacuuming at six-fifteen in the morning. When he and his father had returned home from the hospital late last night and explained the situation to Jordan, she had immediately demanded that upon her release from the hospital, Chloe would be brought home–to their home–to complete her recovery. With tests still to be run, it was uncertain exactly when Chloe would be released from the hospital, but obviously his mother wasn’t taking chances, and hence her cleaning attack on the guest room. It was just Sergei’s luck, his room happened to be next door.

Dragging himself out of bed, he made his way into the hallway, tripped over the trailing vacuum cleaner cord, pulled the plug from the wall and stubbed his toe against the baseboard. A low growl escaped his throat as his mother walked out of the guest room, complaining about stupid cords and bumped into him as he limped toward the bathroom. Her eyes widened in surprise at his presence and she smiled in welcome.

“You’re certainly up and about early,” she said, placing a gentle kiss on his slightly rough cheek; her baby needed a shave.

“Mom, do you know what time it is?”

“Earlier than you’d like it to be, obviously. But if Chloe’s coming home today, I want the room to be ready for her. You know how I get when there’s company coming.”

“Mom, we’re not having company, we’re having Chloe. She’s spent as much time in this house as Dani has. Remember?” Sergei asked quietly, leaning against the wall and closing his eyes. What he wouldn’t give for just one more hour of sleep.

“I know how frequently she’s been here; she may as well be family. But this is different, things are different,” Jordan tried to explain even as she tried to understand everything that she’d been told had occurred.

“You’re right, things are different. But I think, for now, we should try to keep things the same, at least around here. Chloe’s going to need things around her to be familiar. She needs to know that not everything has been turned upside down in her life.”

Jordan looked up at her son; tall, the image of his father at the same age, but his eyes held a maturity that surprised her. In their ebony depths she saw compassion and empathy and understanding and she smiled softly at Sergei. “Chloe’s lucky to have you for a friend.”

“I’m not her friend, Dani is. I just happen to be Chloe’s best friend’s brother, but with any luck, I’ll be her skating partner,” Sergei announced quietly with a sigh, pushing his hair off his forehead with one hand.

“You don’t sound exactly thrilled over the prospect of having Chloe for a partner,” Jordan expressed softly, her green eyes searching her son’s sleep-glazed ebony gaze, her arms crossing beneath her full breasts.

“In all honesty, the only thing that would thrill me right now would be knocking Manning to hell and back–twice!” Sergei growled quietly, rolling his eyes at his mother’s censorious look. “But, obviously, Chloe is my–our–immediate concern, so my desire to kick a little butt is going to have to wait; as much as I wish it otherwise.”

“Thank you,” Jordan offered with a small smile and gentle squeeze to his hand. “It makes me very happy knowing I don’t have to worry about you going after Manning, that’s up to the police.”

“Unless Chloe files a complaint with the police and presses charges, that’s not even an issue. And at this point, I don’t know that she’s ready to take that big a step,” Sergei pointed out.

“I can’t believe she’d let Manning get away with what he’s done to her,” Jordan argued.

“Mom, he’s been beating her down for at least a couple of years; both physically and emotionally. I don’t imagine it’s easy for someone who’s come to believe they deserve that kind of treatment to suddenly just stand up and say they aren’t going to take it anymore. I think Chloe’s going to need some time to realize she’s not alone anymore and that there are people who are willing to stand beside her and back her up, at any cost. Maybe then, she’ll find the courage to point her finger at Manning and hang him for the sleaze bag he is.”

“And if she never finds the strength to do that?”

Sergei lifted his shoulders in a barely perceptible shrug, “I don’t know. I’m hoping the obnoxious brat who told me to
fuck off
when she was ten is still tucked away safely in some hidden corner, and that I can find her again. For as big a brat as Chloe was at that age, she could have chewed Manning into little pieces and not even left splinters of bones as evidence. I want to see her that strong and sure of herself again.”

“And when she tells you to
fuck off
again?” Jordan asked optimistically.

Sergei pondered the question for a moment, trying to imagine Chloe, her blue eyes flashing indignantly, a haughty expression on her face standing toe-to-toe with him as they argued over some trivial point neither of them were willing to concede. He could almost hear her soft voice gently telling him to go
fuck himself
, and he smiled at the thought. “We can only hope that day comes, Mom, and when it does, we’ll have a party to welcome Chloe back and it’ll be a day no one will ever forget,” Sergei promised. Bending over, he retrieved the forgotten vacuum cleaner cord, handed it to his mother and brushed his lips across her cheek before limping on down the hall toward the bathroom.

Jordan watched the door close behind her son and thought about his words. She could only hope his prediction would come true and she knew that if anyone could bring Chloe back, it would be Sergei. She sent a quiet prayer heavenward, plugged the cord back in and returned to her cleaning.

Sometimes losing yourself in feather dusters, furniture polish and Windex was the only way to put a seemingly impossible situation into perspective!

Two hours later, the entire Rocmanov family walked through the doors of the hospital, their arms laden with gifts and necessities Jordan insisted Chloe would need. As his wife and children waited beside the elevators, Aleksei retrieved the room number Chloe had been assigned from the information desk attendant, whom Aleksei decided had to be at least seventy-two and smiled flirtatiously at him when he introduced himself. Their brief encounter left the elderly woman with his autograph, a kiss on her hand; the full force of Aleksei’s devastating smile and the remembrance of a handsome young man making her blush to the top of her head. She could barely wait for her lunch break to brag to her lunch mates about her magical encounter with the great Aleksei Rocmanov!

Aleksei returned to his family, Chloe’s room number in hand, and shrugged his shoulders, his hands spreading wide, “What? The dear lady wanted my autograph so I gave it to her,” he answered simply, catching the knowing look from his son that clearly said,
right, Dad
.

“Daddy, she was flirting with you,” Dani piped up, her voice filled with laughter.

The bell announced the arrival of the elevator and the elevator doors opened, the area inside vacant. The four moved forward and Aleksei pushed the button for the fifth floor.

“That happens all the time, honey; women just love your father to pieces,” Jordan stated, her eyes lighting brightly with mirth.

“Daddy, she was old enough to be your mother, maybe even your grandmother!” Dani persisted.

Aleksei looked at the numbers over the top of the door, watching them slowly move upward. Couldn’t this elevator move any faster? “So? Any woman that wants to flirt with me is more than welcome to. It’s good to know that I haven’t turned into an ugly troll yet!”

Dani rolled her eyes in disbelief, as if her father would ever get
ugly
! Even knowing his next birthday was going to bump him another step closer to fifty, he was still the handsomest man in the world to her. “Daddy, you’re gorgeous, and you know it!”

“Oh, please, you’re father’s difficult enough to live with now, don’t go telling him he’s gorgeous,” Jordan teased, blowing her husband a kiss and laughing at his half-hearted scowl.

“Whatever did I do to wind up with such a kind, loving, supportive family?” Aleksei teased back, pulling his daughter into his arms and placing a kiss on the top of her head, his gaze meeting his wife’s across the small space in the elevator; the message clear in her deep green eyes,
I love you
.

“Just lucky, I guess, Daddy,” Dani stated, wrapping her arms around his waist and giving him a quick squeeze.

“You’re right, I’m very lucky,” Aleksei agreed, his gaze touching and softening as he looked at his family.

The elevator finally signaled their arrival on floor five with a dull
ding
and the doors slowly opened, exposing the nurse’s station directly before them and a waiting area off to the right. The small group moved forward, Aleksei in the lead and Sergei bringing up the rear. Aleksei requested Chloe’s doctor and waited at the nurse’s station as he was paged, chatting easily with a nurse about inconsequential things while the rest of his family went in search of Chloe’s room.

Room five-eleven was found easily enough and Dani pushed the door open quietly, peeking in so as not to surprise Chloe and groaned as she encountered an empty room. “Sergei, are you sure this is her room? She’s not here,”

Sergei looked again at the piece of paper in his hand, the number five-eleven written in clear, strong lines. “This is the place, unless Dad’s girlfriend wrote down the wrong room number,” Sergei answered, looking around the small room, decorated in ‘hospital ugly’ that was suppose to have a calming effect on patients. Calm, hell, this decorating scheme made a patient want to sleep just so they didn’t have to look at it.

“Maybe we should ask again at the nurse’s station,” Dani suggested, looking at the others for support.

“What about the nurse’s station?” Aleksei asked as he pushed open the door and stepped into the room. His gaze swept the small room quickly, shaking his head slightly to dispel memories of days spent in another hospital room so many years ago after the accident that nearly claimed his wife’s life.

“Dani wants to double check and make sure this is Chloe’s room,” Sergei answered.

“No need to bother the nurses, they’re busy enough already. This is Chloe’s room, they’re finishing up her MRI, she should be back in about fifteen minutes,” Aleksei stated, sliding into a chair that had long since lost its padding.

“How bad is it?” Jordan asked quietly, her eyes silently searching her husband’s dark gaze for answers.

“What’s bad? How bad is what?” Dani and Sergei asked simultaneously, their voices quiet yet filled with urgency.

Aleksei looked at the three faces focused on him, saw their fear and concern and wished he could answer all their questions. “There were some shadows that concerned Dr. Pierce on her initial CT Scan so he ordered an MRI to see exactly what was going on.”

“A CT Scan; an MRI, Daddy, what’s that?” Dani asked, her eyes wide in fear, her face pale.

“They’re both basically full body x-rays. The CT Scan is a test that gives the doctors a general x-ray of the body, an MRI is more of an enhanced x-ray that will give clearer pictures of bones and internal organs so they can make sure everything is where it should be and there isn’t any damage.”

“Does it hurt?” Dani asked in a small voice, her hand suddenly slipping into her mother’s warm grasp, her eyes meeting her mother’s comforting gaze.

Aleksei shook his head no, his heart breaking a little at the thought of Chloe having to undergo these tests alone.

“What about the other test?” Sergei suddenly asked in a deep voice.

“What other test?” Dani asked fearfully.

“It came back normal,” Aleksei answered quietly, his gaze holding that of his son’s.

“They’re sure there’s no problem,” Sergei persisted.

“What other test?” Dani repeated, her tone rising a pitch as panic filled her voice, turning her face into her mother’s neck and hearing soft sounds of comfort that were wordless yet made her feel safe all the same.

“The EEG came back normal, Sergei. We have to trust the doctors know what they’re doing.”

“And if they don’t?”

“Don’t go borrowing trouble, Sergei. Chloe’s got a wonderful bunch of doctors making sure she’s going to be fine. Let them do their work and believe all those years of school taught them what they needed to know. You wouldn’t want someone asking you if you really know how to skate or just pretend to, would you? Let the doctors do their job and when Chloe comes home, you can take over the job as her caretaker!” Aleksei growled, his tone deep, his voice struggling for control as it quivered with emotion.

Jordan looked over her daughter’s head at her husband, surprised at his emotional outburst and recognized the look of uncertainty in his eyes. There was definitely something he wasn’t telling them, and with Sergei and Dani right there, she knew she wasn’t going to get the information out of him then. Time for a diversion. “Dani, Sergei, Chloe’s not going to be here for a bit yet, so why don’t you find a vending machine and get yourselves something to drink?” Jordan suggested, pulling money out of her wallet and holding it out to her children that looked from parent to parent and knew they were being asked to leave temporarily under the guise of getting sodas.