Texas Redeemed (2 page)

And he could hear Nathaniel now.
“Then come home to the States. There’s a position with your name on it
in Los Angeles. You’ll do well there. You’ll move into the family condo,
befriend the people I tell you to … live the life I planned for you.”

“Pretty words, son,” Nathaniel said instead. “But over
there you’re not close—nowhere
near
close—to
knowing what you walked away from. I won’t chase you anymore.”

“Why the change?” Peyton asked, not caring that he
sounded wary and even belligerent. It was better than giving in to the
gut-twisting concern that surfaced at the defeat in his grandfather’s voice.

“Frankly, I can’t chase anybody anywhere anymore.” A
pause, then, “Stroke, last year, and no, now’s not the time to talk about it.
And hell, I spent sixty years building an empire. I earned the right to have
what I want brought to me.”

“You want me to come home. Where? To Los Angeles and the
Turner condo?”
So I can soak up the
Hollywood high life and let the work I want to do take a backseat?

“Night Sky’s always been the place to put things in
perspective. If you want to see me, you’ll come here.” Nathaniel sighed, the
sound rough and slightly haggard. “I’m rewriting my will—soon. You’ll want to
be here when I do.”

Peyton frowned. Nathaniel had made noise about giving him
a place in Turner Menswear, but Peyton had assumed those plans were nixed the
day he announced his interest in medicine. He couldn’t possibly still be
considering … .

“Finish doing what you have to over there, then come
home. If you can’t do that …” His grandfather left the threat open but Peyton
felt the heaviness of it just the same.

Nathaniel disconnected the call, giving Peyton something
concrete and almost insurmountable to think about: returning to Night Sky.

Night Sky, Texas

“I
T
DOESN’T
WORK
.”

Valerie Jordan’s rain-dampened fingers fumbled over the
key fob as she tried to lock her Chrysler crossover and walk backward across
the east-wing lot toward the hospital entrance at the same time. “What
doesn’t?” she asked her daughter, Lucy, who stood on the other side of the
vehicle, burdened with a heavy backpack, an oversized hobo handbag and a huge
red-and-white umbrella that had seen better days.

“The chant, ‘rain, rain, go away.’ It doesn’t work
at all,
” the girl said darkly, her scowl
emphasizing the subtle slant of her long-lidded eyes. She tried the passenger
side door handle and rain splashed the interior when her grip and the blustery
wind hauled the door open wider than she’d intended. “Car’s still unlocked,
Mom.”

“Shut it, please, and let me try again.” Getting used to
a vehicle with so many gadgets that her old Grand Prix had lacked was a slow
process. Valerie tried the lock button again, pressing twice firmly. The
taillights flashed and the vehicle beeped, announcing that the doors were
locked and the alarm activated.

Lightning speared through the gray sky with a startling
crackle and thunder reverberated in the October air.

Lucy’s mouth contorted in a pout as she rounded the rear
of the car and joined her mother in just a few strides.

At twelve, she’d had one growth spurt after the other,
and was now as tall as her mother and the tallest girl in the seventh grade by
nearly a foot. She had the long-limbed, coltish build that Valerie had had as a
teen. But she had her father’s sulky look, his smoky eyes and a softly cleft
chin. Her toffee-brown hair had a curl to it, and she was known for sectioning
a triangle at the front and pinning it back with the old jeweled hairclip that
had belonged to her twin sister, Anna.

“I hate hospitals.” Lucy looked at Valerie in a way she
never had when she was a child and thought her mother could fix anything. “No
offense.”

“If you meant ‘no offense,’ you wouldn’t have said it,”
Valerie retorted. The hospital’s doors slid open and they stepped inside.

Lucy’s bad moods fell into either of two plain-and-simple
categories: quiet or loud. Ask any parent within a twenty-mile radius and
they’d disagree, but Valerie preferred the latter. A fired-up and vocal Lucy
was the devil that she knew. But it was the devil that she didn’t know—the Lucy
who could be withdrawn and deceptively calm like the eye of a cyclone—that
worried her. The girl was the product of two magma-hot-tempered bloodlines, and
Valerie knew that the only thing worse than setting anger free like a wild
horse would be to tuck it away and let it brew.

If serving after-school detention and then having a bus
splash her with muddy rainwater didn’t get stuck in the girl’s craw, missing a
get-together with her friends surely did.

Because instead of hanging out at the diner, scarfing
down one of Bud Frowler’s famous quarter-pound Angus cheeseburgers and Junie
Peera’s “tie-dye” milkshakes—which were the same as any other milkshake, except
they looked like victims of food coloring explosions—she’d be cooling her heels
at the hospital while Valerie attended a board meeting.

Between holding down the ranch and keeping up with Lucy,
Valerie hadn’t time for much else. Still, Night Sky Memorial Hospital’s
children’s foundation was especially important to her family, and she’d never
considered giving up her position on the board.

Valerie hustled to the nurses’ station to borrow a set of
scrubs for Lucy, and then checked the nearest mirror for smeared makeup.

She touched the silvery scar just shy of her left eye. A
makeup counter saleswoman had said the crescent moon gave Valerie’s face character.
But there was a story behind the scar many people probably wouldn’t want to
hear.

As Valerie and her daughter hustled toward the elevators
that would take them to Pediatrics, Lucy slapped at the construction-paper
cutouts of cartoonish spiders and ghosts that hung by strings from the ceiling.

“Can I please
not
hang
out in the kids’ ward today?” No surprise she didn’t like being in the place
where she’d spent three months sick with meningitis—the infection that had
taken away her twin and part of her hearing when she was six years old.

“There’s always the hospital library.”

“Not fun, Mom.”

Unlike her parents, Lucy wasn’t interested in medicine or
manning a ranch. Her niche was fashion. She was an artist, a wannabe designer,
and wanted to have her own label one day.

Lucy stomped into the Pediatrics waiting area restroom to
change, then emerged wearing scrubs, corduroy boots and a bold multi-colored
scarf. She plopped on the sofa and rooted around in her hobo for a green apple
and a paperback, then pulled out her cell phone and began to fiercely type on
the device’s keyboard with her thumbs.

“Who are you texting?” Valerie asked.

“Gramps.” She paused to adjust her behind-the-ear hearing
aid and continued texting.

“Gramps” was Nathaniel Turner, who’d been ready to move
heaven and hell to be involved in Anna and Lucy’s lives when he’d learned the
truth about the girls’ paternity during their illness. Family meant everything
to Nathaniel Turner and Valerie just knew that a man with his influence would
bring down anyone who tried to deprive him of grandparental rights. Peyton had
left town before she’d realized she was pregnant. And with him in no uncertain
terms out of the picture, she’d gone as long as she could without involving his
grandfather in a situation that she’d set in motion with secrets and lies that
had led Peyton to her bed.

No, her car, to be precise. The Grand Prix, for years,
had been a reminder, able to stir memories of a night of frenzied sex and dark
destruction … a night that shouldn’t have happened.

“Lucy, this isn’t about your birthday, is it?”

“I’m asking Gramps to get you to let me have the best
party ever,” the girl said bluntly.

Valerie sighed, checking her wristwatch. Two minutes
until the board meeting began. “I won’t be manipulated into changing my mind,
Lucy.”

Last night they’d had a heated argument about Valerie
turning down Nathaniel’s offer to splurge on a lavish weekend party for Lucy’s
thirteenth birthday in February.

Lucy snapped the phone shut. “Everyone at school keeps
asking me why I live like a farmer when my great-grandpa’s, like, the richest
guy in Texas.”

“It’s because you’re
my
kid, not his.” A fact she’d reminded Nathaniel of only weeks ago, when he’d
broached the subject of preparing Lucy for a place in his company—as the leader
of an entire division that didn’t exist yet. The man was waiting in the wings,
ready to deliver all her dreams on a platinum platter.

Valerie had turned him down, refusing to be strong-armed,
refusing to even clue her daughter in on what Nathaniel had in mind. Granted,
Lucy was creative, talented. Gifted, some said. But she was too young to be
cemented in a career—especially one that’d remove her from the ranch and the
lifestyle she knew.

And it was more than a little apparent that Nathaniel saw
Lucy as someone to take on business left unfinished by his son and grandson.

“Let me go to the diner tonight, Mom. Isn’t detention
punishment enough?”

Valerie kneeled down to be eye level with Lucy. “You
smart-mouthed a teacher. Not cool. Plus, you’ve a history test to study for.”

“Just wait. When I grow up, I’m going to be ridiculously
rich and famous,” she shot back. “I’ll move away, and go where I want when I
want.”

Valerie frowned. Peyton had also had a hankering to
travel. He’d been desperate to the point of recklessness to be rid of his
mother, who’d abandoned him but continued to pop into his life whenever her
pockets came up empty. All the while he was buying her affection, he was
slipping into a dark place from which only a few people could yank him back.
She had thought she herself was one of those people, until the morning she’d
come to the Turner mansion pregnant with nobody else to turn to, and found him
gone.

He’d disappeared, almost as if he’d never existed, and
neither she nor his grandfather could find him when the girls had been sick …
when Anna had died. “Well, until then,” Valerie said, because any mention of
Lucy’s phantom father always upset her, “study.”

W
ITH
THE
H
ILL
Country backdrop still visible
despite the thick storm clouds rolling overhead, and situated just beyond the
town’s Square, Night Sky Memorial Hospital was the same and yet different.
Peyton rested his wrists over the steering wheel of his Lincoln Navigator as he
waited behind another vehicle at the staff security gate.

He made no promises about putting down stakes here, in a
mountainous town that had remained the way he’d left it: geographically large
with room to roam, but populated with roughly forty-five hundred people who,
based on what he’d gleaned from old Sully Joe Keate during a quick stop at the
town’s only gas station, weren’t too keen on outsiders and Big Business setting
up camp in the place they wanted to keep strictly mom-and-pop. Night Sky’s
infrastructure worries couldn’t top his priority list, though. The truth was that
his grandfather had more years behind him than in front of him, especially now that
he’d endured a stroke, and after almost fourteen years away, it was time for
the prodigal son to return—even if temporarily.

Johns Hopkins had granted his request for a leave of
absence, giving him plenty of time to weigh his options in Texas. Doctor Miles
Lindsey, Memorial’s chief of staff, had penciled him in for a face-to-face talk
after they’d discussed a potential no-commitment visiting surgeon position. If
anyone could have a poker voice, Chief Lindsey had perfected his. Peyton
couldn’t gauge where he stood with him, but if he had a chance to practice
medicine while grounded in this town, he would take it. So he’d made sure he at
least looked the part, clean-shaven and decked out in a designer suit. But he
was bone weary from the trip from Maryland, since he’d opted not to take a flight.
He loved to drive every chance he got. He darted a glance at the rearview
mirror and could see the fatigue in his face. Still, there was business to be
done.