Very Private Duty (3 page)

“Your doctor wants you out of bed.”

“He’s not here, so what he says doesn’t mean spit!”

Tricia struggled to control her temper. As a pediatric nurse she had encountered children with a variety of illnesses and deformities, but invariably she was always able to coax a smile from them. Jeremy wasn’t a child, but a thirty-two-year-old man who had chosen a career that put him at risk every day of his life. He was alive, and for that he should’ve been grateful, not angry and resentful.

“You will follow my directives.” Her voice was soft yet threatening. “You need me to feed you and assist you with your personal hygiene.” She knew he wouldn’t be able to feed himself easily because he was left-handed. “Growl at me one more time and I’ll take my time helping you to the bathroom. Lying in one’s own waste is not the most pleasant experience.”

Jeremy gave Tricia a long, penetrating look. How had she known? He and the three surviving members
from a DEA Black Op team of six had hidden out in a swamp in the Peruvian jungle for forty-eight hours before they were rescued. Not only had they lain in their own waste but they’d been bitten repeatedly by insects. His team leader had come down with a fever and died within an hour of being airlifted to safety.

He had no more fight left in him—at least not today. His head felt as if it was exploding. He wanted to tell Tricia that he knew how to use a pair of crutches and hobble, albeit slowly, to the bathroom, but decided not to antagonize her further.

“All right,” he said, deciding to concede. “You win, Tricia.” And she would remain the winner, but only until his pain eased. “I’ll get out of bed.” Closing his eyes, he clenched his teeth.

“Are you in pain?”

He squinted. “My head.”

“I’ll take your vitals, then I’ll give you something to take the edge off.” Ryan had left a blood pressure kit and a digital thermometer for her use.

Jeremy suffered Tricia’s gentle touch and the hauntingly familiar scent of her body as she took his temperature and blood pressure. She gave him a pill and a glass of water, watching closely as he placed it on his tongue. She recorded the readings on a pad and the time she had given him the painkiller.

“Drink all of the water.”

He complied, handing her the empty glass. Their gazes met and fused. “Thank you,” he mumbled reluctantly.

Her passive expression did not change. “You’re welcome.”

She was there, and then she was gone, taking her warmth and scent with her. And it had been her smell that, years ago, had drawn Jeremy to Tricia. She always wore perfume when the other girls on the farm smelled of hay and horses.

Sighing heavily, he closed his eyes. His father and brother complained they did not see him enough. And whenever he did return home it was never for more than a few days. There had been a time when Blackstone Farms was his whole world but after joining the DEA, the war on drugs had become his life. He always came back to reconnect with his family, but refused to stay.

He lay in the dimly lit room listening to the sound of his own heart beating. He hadn’t realized he had fallen asleep until he felt the soft touch on his arm and a familiar voice calling his name.

“Wake up, Jeremy. It’s time to eat.”

Seeing Tricia again, inhaling her familiar feminine scent reminded him of what he’d been denying for nearly half his life. He hadn’t returned to Blackstone Farms after graduating from college because of the memories of a young woman to whom he had pledged his future. He had loved her unconditionally while she had deceived him with another man.

Whenever he visited the farm a part of him had hoped to see Tricia, but they never connected—until now. And whenever he asked her grandparents about
her, their response was always, “She’s doing just fine in the big city.”

He shifted on the bed, groaning softly as pain shot through his ankle. Compressing his lips, he managed to somehow find a more comfortable position as Tricia adjusted the bed’s tray table.

The moment she uncovered a plate he closed his eyes. “I want some real food.”

She placed a cloth napkin over his chest. “This is real food.”

He opened his eyes, his expression thunderous. “Broth, applesauce and weak-ass tea!”

She picked up a soup spoon. “You’ve been on a light diet. It’s going to take time before you’ll be able to tolerate solids.” He clamped his jaw tight once she put the spoon to his mouth. “Open!”

He shook his head, chiding himself for the action. Each time he moved, intense pain tightened like a vise on his head. “No,” he hissed between clenched teeth.

Tricia bit down on her lower lip in frustration and stared at the stubborn set of his jaw. Broken, battered and bruised he still had the power to make her heart race. “You’re going to have to eat or you’ll be too weak to get out of bed.”

He glared at her. “Get me some food, Tricia. Now!”

She glared back in what she knew would become a standoff, a battle of wills. “I’m certain I warned you about raising your voice to me. Eat the broth and
applesauce and I’ll call the dining hall to have them send something else.”

“What?”

“You can have either Jell-O or soft scrambled eggs.”

“How about steak and eggs?”

“Not yet, hotshot. Once you’re up and moving around I’ll put in an order for steak and eggs. And if you actually cooperate, then you can have pancakes.” Everyone at Blackstone Farms knew how much Jeremy loved the chef’s pancakes. He opened his mouth and she fed him the soup.

“Is he giving you a hard time?” asked a familiar voice.

Tricia shifted slightly and stared over her shoulder at Ryan. He had entered the room without making a sound. “No.”

Jeremy swallowed the bland liquid. “She’s giving me a hard time. This stuff is as bad as castor oil.”

Ryan pushed aside the ottoman as he sat on the roomy leather chair. He smiled and attractive lines fanned out around his eyes. He ran his left hand over his cropped hair, and a shaft of light coming through the blinds glinted off the band on his finger. He’d married the resident schoolteacher last summer, and now he and Kelly awaited the birth of their first child together. Ryan had a five-year-old son, Sean, from a prior marriage.

“It can’t be that bad, little brother.”

Jeremy grimaced. “Worse.”

Ryan raised his eyebrows. “You better follow your nurse’s orders and get your butt out of that bed as soon as possible.”

Jeremy swallowed two more spoonfuls. “Why?”

“Kelly woke up this morning with contractions. They’re not that strong, about twenty minutes apart, but there’s a good chance she’ll have the baby either today or tomorrow, and I know when I bring your niece home you don’t want her to see her uncle flat on his back.”

Jeremy managed a smile, but it looked more like a grimace. “I thought Kelly wasn’t due until the end of the month.” It was now the second week in July.

“She’s farther along than was first predicted. Babies are smarter than we are. They know exactly when to make their grand entrance. Don’t you agree, Tricia?”

She nodded. The words she wanted to say were locked in her constricted throat. She wanted to tell Ryan that she had given Sheldon Blackstone his first granddaughter. A little girl she’d named Juliet to honor the memory of Jeremy’s mother Julia—a little girl who’d been undeniably a Blackstone.

Tricia wanted to run out of the room, leaving the brothers to discuss the upcoming birth of Kelly’s daughter. She drew a deep breath, forbidding herself to cry. Not in front of Jeremy.

“Ryan, could you please finish feeding your brother? I’d like to look in on my grandfather for a
few minutes.” She had to escape before she broke down.

She’d left Gus earlier that morning after Sheldon had come to the bungalow asking her help in caring for Jeremy. The look on the older man’s face spoke volumes. It was fear. There was no doubt he was afraid she would become involved with Jeremy again; she wanted to reassure her grandfather that would not happen a second time.

Ryan stood up, exchanging seats with Tricia. “Take your time with Gus. If I have to leave, then I’ll call my father to come and sit.”

She took a quick glance at her patient. His chest rose and fell in a measured rhythm. He had fallen asleep. Her gaze softened as she studied his face in repose. Juliet had been a miniature, feminine version of her father.

A shudder shook her as the import of what had become a reality for three short months struck her. She and Jeremy had been parents of a little girl who had righted all of the wrongs—a baby she loved with all of her heart.

Tricia found Gus sitting on the porch, rocking in his favorite chair, eyes closed. She stood on the lower step and stared at her grandfather. Tall and slender, there wasn’t an extra ounce of flesh on his spare frame and for the first time she saw him as an old man. He had celebrated his seventy-seventh birthday
that spring. She mounted the steps slowly, and he opened his eyes to stare up at her.

“How is he?”

“
He
does have a name, Grandpa.”

“Okay. How is Jeremy?”

“He’s going to live.” Smiling, she pulled over a rattan chair, facing her grandfather.

Gus returned her smile. The gesture took years off his face. “That’s good.”

“Is it, Grandpa?”

His smile vanished. “I’ve always liked Jeremy.”

“You liked him, but not for me.”

“I was trying to protect you, Tricia.”

“Protect me from what or whom?” she asked, leaning forward on the cushioned seat.

“I just didn’t want you to end up like your mother.”

Gus had attempted to protect Tricia, but she did end up like her mother. She’d gotten pregnant and had become a teenage mother. But unlike Patricia, she had not abandoned her baby.

“She could’ve aborted me, but she didn’t.”

“I’m thankful she didn’t, because who else would I have in my old age.”

“You’re not old, Grandpa.”

Gus sucked his teeth. “I’m old and you know it. And what bothers me is that I’ve become an old fool. If I hadn’t interfered with you and Jeremy, I know the two of you would’ve married years ago. And
there’s no doubt I would’ve had at least two or three great-grandchildren by now.”

Tricia stared at the climbing roses on the trellis attached to the side of the house. The roses had been her grandmother’s pride and joy. “What’s done is done.”

Gus stared at his granddaughter’s solemn expression. “You still love him, don’t you?”

Turning her head, she looked directly at him. “Why would you ask me that?”

“Because I need
you
to tell me the truth, Tricia. When you called your grandmamma and me to tell us you were marrying that lawyer fellow neither of us could believe it because you never mentioned his name whenever you called us. And when we came up to New York to meet him, the first thing Olga said to me was that you didn’t love him. That’s why we never told anyone at the farm that you’d married. Olga knew it wasn’t going to last. But what hurt most was that a stranger had to tell us that you’d had our great-granddaughter.”

“I told you why I did not want to tell you. At that point in my life I wasn’t equipped to listen to you preach about how I’d become my mother. What you failed and still fail to see is that I am who I am. I may look like my mother, but that’s where the similarity ends. Yes, I had a baby, but I did not desert my daughter.

“Even though I was a full-time student, I got a job, saved my money, passed all my courses and made
arrangements for child care before Juliet was born. I managed to hold everything together until the accident. Then, I didn’t care whether I lived or died. I’d lost my baby, and then Grandmamma died two years later. I carried a lot of guilt, Grandpa, because I kept telling myself that if I’d come back to the farm when I realized I was pregnant, my baby wouldn’t have died.”

Leaning back on the rocker, Gus sighed. “But you didn’t come back, because you didn’t want to hear me say ‘I told you so.”’

“That wasn’t the only thing, Grandpa. I wanted to see if I could make it on my own,” she half lied. What she had not wanted to do was use her child as a pawn to get Jeremy to come back to her.

Gus shook his head. “Olga, God rest her soul, always told me that I was better with horses than human beings.”

Tricia smiled. “That’s because horses don’t talk back.”

“Amen, grandbaby girl.” He waved a gnarled hand. “Don’t you think it’s time you get back to your young man?”

“He’s my
patient,
Grandpa, not my young man.” She stood up. “Did you eat lunch?” Even though her grandfather had retired at seventy-five he continued to live on the horse farm and rent the bungalow. The cost of meals was included in his monthly rental.

Gus patted his flat belly over a pair of well-washed denim overalls. “I ate a big breakfast.”

Leaning over, she kissed his cheek. “Don’t forget to eat dinner.”

“I won’t.” He waved his hand again. “Go on!”

Tricia drove the short distance back to Jeremy’s house. She was surprised to find Sheldon instead of Ryan sitting in the club chair. He stood up.