J.P. returned the favor.

  “Eric isn’t having a good day,” Sara told her ex, her voice quiet but firm. “Tomorrow might be better.”

  “I have a meeting in LA tomorrow,” Worth retorted grudgingly. “So I need to see Eric today. It’s important.”

  “Fine,” Sara conceded, very much in control of her emotions, which were raging inside her like a storm. J.P. knew this because he was standing in her energy field, and because she was shaking almost imperceptibly. “But I’m going to be there.”

  “Do you honestly think I’m a danger to Eric?” Worth demanded.

  “I think you’re basically a nonentity,” Sara answered. “Eric will figure that out on his own, sooner or later—he’s a smart kid—but, in the meantime, he’s still a minor and I will look after him, Zachary.”

  “I want a private word with the kid,” insisted the ex.

  “So you can try to convince him to ask your father to appoint you as Eric and Hayley’s trustee?” Sara’s voice was a sheet of ice, smooth and ice-cold. “I know about the trust funds, Zachary. If you try to interfere in any way, I’ll be happy to pass the word on to your brother. As I understand it, he’s been appointed executor of the will.”

  Worth, flushed before, paled. “I’m their father,” he blustered. “I should be the one to oversee their trust funds. Eric and Hayley will be rich in their own right, once their grandfather is gone, and I want to protect them!”

  “The hell you do,” Sara replied, somewhat tersely, letting her arm drop from J.P.’s waist to her side and straightening her shoulders. “You’re broke, you’re set to inherit very little money and you think you can make up for that, keep up your fancy lifestyle, by stealing from your own children. That is what you really want!”

  “That’s a lie!” Zachary barked.

  A nurse appeared in the waiting room doorway.

  “I’m sorry,” she announced, not sounding sorry at all, “but you will have to leave now, Mr. Worth. We can’t have disruption of any kind in this unit.”

  “I’m staying,” Zachary said, though not with much conviction.

  “I’ll have security remove you if necessary,” the nurse warned.

  She looked faintly familiar to J.P., though he couldn’t place her.

  Whoever she was, she had grit, like Sara.

  Eli appeared beside her in full uniform. “What’s the trouble?” he asked, eyeing his former brother-in-law with barely concealed dislike.

  “Mr. Worth has been shouting,” said the nurse. “Obviously, we can’t have that here.”

  “Obviously not,” Eli said dryly.

  His gaze moved to Sara, then J.P. Gave a very slight nod of acknowledgment.

  “I might have raised my voice,” Worth admitted lamely. His hands were knotted into fists at his sides. “I just want to see my son, that’s all. I’m leaving town tomorrow, and I’ll be gone for a while. So I came here to look in on Eric, find out how he’s doing.”

  “Took you a while to start wondering along those lines,” Eli remarked. “Some fifteen years, by my calculations.”

  Worth heaved a great sigh. Glared at Eli. “So now you and Sara are going to double-team me, right? Make sure Eric goes right on believing I don’t give a damn what happened to him?”

  “On some level,” Eli replied, “he already realizes that.”

  “Do you need security, Sheriff? As backup?” the nurse asked.

  Eli shook his head, glanced at J.P. “I have all the backup I need, thanks,” he said.

  “Let me stay,” Worth said, almost pleading now, looking winsome for the nurse’s benefit.

  She wasn’t buying it. “You can visit another time,” she informed him, “when your temper is under control. But for today, you’ve already created all the disturbance I’m going to allow.”

  Eli gestured toward Worth. “I’ll walk you out,” he said.

  It wasn’t an offer. It was a command.

  “I will tell Eric what happened here today,” Worth spouted, his gaze landing hard on Sara’s face, though he had the good sense to keep his voice down. “You can all be sure of that.”

  “Let’s go,” Eli reiterated with less patience this time.

  Worth was spitting mad, but he nodded sulkily and started toward the door, purposely knocking the nurse’s shoulder as he passed her.

  Sara turned to J.P. “I need to speak to my brother,” she said. “Would you mind looking in on Eric? Just to make sure he didn’t hear his father throwing a temper tantrum?”

  “I’ll sit with him until you come back,” J.P. assured her. “I’m not sure the kid will be glad to see me, though.”

  Sara gave him a wan smile.

  She’d been so bright and hopeful before Zachary Worth showed up. Now she looked tired and a little pale, and J.P. yearned to gather her to him, shield her from everything bad.

  Impossible, of course.

  Besides, Sara was an independent woman. She might enjoy tenderness and solicitude—especially in bed—but she also had a spine of steel.

  She’d shown that today.

  “If Eric says anything nasty,” she counseled, “don’t take it personally. He’s as grouchy as a bear with a toothache.”

  “I can take whatever he wants to dish out, Sara,” J.P. said. “And I can relate to what he’s going through.”

  Her face changed, and J.P. knew she was remembering the scars on his back and chest. She’d traced them, after all, not only with a fingertip, but with her lips.

  He felt a jolt of heat, recalling how she’d approached those scars, not as the ugly marks of a critical war injury, but as something to be respected. Honored.

  She gave him a small smile, then slipped away, following Eli and a reluctant, grumbling Zachary Worth out of the ICU waiting room.

  J.P. waited a few moments, then realized he didn’t know Eric’s room number.

  Obviously, he couldn’t go poking his head into other patients’ rooms, looking for the kid.

  “I’ll show you the way,” the vaguely familiar nurse said.

  Her name tag read Portia Reese.

  Ah, yes. They’d connected on Tinder approximately a year and a half before and gone on exactly one date—dinner at a restaurant over in nearby Silver Hills. And they’d decided over dessert that they were a definite mismatch.

  Zero chemistry.

  Portia was looking for marriage, and J.P. for a one-night stand, essentially.

  He’d respected the woman for telling him he was a dick for using the dating app as an escort service.

  It was a fair assessment.

  “I’m sorry about—the other thing,” J.P. confided as he and Portia moved along a gleaming tiled hallway lined with numbered doors.

  Portia gave him a sidelong look and a perky little smile. “No harm done, cowboy. I’m very happily married now, and my man and I will be starting a family soon.”

  “Congratulations,” J.P. said sincerely.

  “Thanks,” Portia replied, coming to a stop in front of room eight. “This is the Worth boy’s room.”

  J.P. nodded thanks of his own.

  Pushed open the door.

  Eric, with tubes entering practically every orifice, his injured leg supported by a sling, turned his head, saw J.P., frowned and asked the same question his father had minutes before in the waiting room.

  “What are you doing here?”

  J.P. raised both hands, palms out. “I come in peace,” he said. “Your mother asked me to keep you company until she comes back.”

  “Suppose I don’t want your company?” Eric rasped. His face was thin, sheet white and dappled with perspiration.

  J.P. ignored the question. “You’re in pain?”

  “Duh,” Eric replied. “I stepped in a fucking trap and it almost fucking cut my leg off.”

  “Shall I call a nurse?” J.P. asked. When it came to hospitals and surly patients, he was pretty unflappable, having spent several months in such places after the explosion in Afghanistan.

  Same old, same old.

  Eric shook his head. “This drip-thing won’t give me another shot of meds for fifteen minutes or so.” He paused, groaned, tried in vain to shift into a more comfortable position. “Make that thirteen minutes and twenty-four seconds.”

  J.P. drew up a chair, sat. “You seem to be recovering pretty quickly,” he observed. “They’ll probably move you out of the ICU and into a regular room pretty soon.”

  “Maybe the day after tomorrow, if I don’t get an infection,” Eric said. “I wish I could just skip that part—the regular-room part, I mean—and go home.”

  “Yeah. I don’t blame you.”

  Eric looked directly at him then, and his eyes were so like Sara’s that J.P. was a little taken aback. “Are you fucking my mother?” he asked.

  J.P. held the boy’s gaze. “If I were,” he answered, “it would be none of your business.”

  Eric flushed slightly, which was something of a relief, given his deathly pallor. “I was in the kitchen yesterday morning, when she sneaked into the house like a guilty teenager, carrying her shoes in one hand. I didn’t know who she’d spent the night with until Hayley told me she was seeing you.”

  “Okay,” J.P. said, noncommittal. And unfazed.

  “The worst part was my dad was there, too.”

  “So?”

  “So, it was awkward.”

  “I’ll just bet it was.”

  “You need to leave my mother alone.”

  “Do I?”

  “Yes,” Eric snapped. “Hayley and I aren’t in the market for a stepfather. We’ve got a father.”

  “You couldn’t prove that to me,” J.P. replied with a semblance of a shrug.

  “Maybe he was gone for a long time—our dad, I mean—but that was partly Mom’s fault. He made a mistake, but he apologized all over the place and she wouldn’t give him a second chance. Not even for Hayley and me!”

  “This is a conversation you should be having with your mother, not me,” J.P. told the kid, but gently. He understood the anger the boy felt, even though he’d been raised in a two-parent home.

  “My mother doesn’t understand!” Eric complained.

  “Calm down a little, bud,” J.P. urged. “You might just angst yourself into some kind of setback if you don’t.”

  “I’m hurting—a lot,” Eric ground out. “You don’t have a clue what I’m going through!”

  “It just so happens that I do,” J.P. countered. He stood up, hauled his T-shirt off over his head and revealed the splotchy scars that nearly covered his chest. Then he turned to give the kid a look at his back, which was even worse.

  “Holy shit,” Eric whispered.

  “Yeah,” J.P. said, pulling his T-shirt on again.

  “You were hurt in Iraq or Iran or—”

  “Afghanistan,” J.P. corrected without emotion. He’d pitied himself plenty, back when his wounds were fresh, but he’d gotten past that a long time ago.

  “I guess you know about pain,” Eric conceded.

  “We have that much in common, at least,” J.P. said, sitting down again.

  “I still think you ought to stay away from my mom.”

  J.P. sighed. Rested a booted foot on the opposite knee. “Tough luck, kid,” he replied. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  HAYLEY’S VOICE FLOATED from the speaker of Sara’s cell phone, cheery and full of bright energy, filling Eric’s room in the ICU like sunlight.

  “Mom?” she said. “You have a package. Shall I open it?”

  It had been three full days since Eric’s accident, and Sara had spent most of that time sitting with her son, keeping him company. Hayley had returned from Carly’s house just that morning, and it seemed she was home to stay.

  Which meant there would be no more sex with J.P., wild or otherwise, at least not at Sara’s place.

  “Hi, honey,” she greeted her daughter, distracted because she’d been revising her book on her laptop. Eric was about to be moved to a regular hospital room and, at the moment, he was downstairs, having yet another CT scan.

  Then, in an instant, Hayley’s words registered.

  A package.

  Very likely, the parcel contained something embarrassing.

  Like the crotch-less panties she’d ordered after J.P. had literally rocked her world that first time.

  Sara blushed. Tried to speak calmly. With casual disinterest.

  Ha.

  “Er—no, sweetheart. I’ll open it when I get home.”

  “Okay,” Hayley said, ready, as always, to move on to whatever came next. Eric might not have been so cooperative had he been in his sister’s place.

  And that scenario would have been a disaster.

  “How is my brother?” Hayley asked. “Nicer than he was yesterday, when Carly and I visited, I hope.”

  Eric’s mood hadn’t changed, at least not where his mother and sister were concerned. He was civil to Carly, his uncle Eli, and to Sara’s surprise, he seemed to get along well enough with J.P., who spelled Sara for a few hours every day, so she could go home to eat, shower and grab a nap, if she needed one.

  They usually played chess or cribbage, J.P. and Eric, but Sara knew few actual words passed between them.

  Now that Eric’s condition was improving, and Sara wasn’t so frazzled, J.P. spent less time at the hospital than he had at first. He had company, after all—his two nieces—and, of course, he still had a ranch to run.

  He visited Eric every afternoon, nonetheless, and he spent his nights with Sara. She was always wound up to the breaking point by the time she left the hospital, and J.P. was very good at unwinding her.

  Sara’s blush deepened at the memory.

  “Eric,” she replied belatedly, “is Eric. We’re looking into getting him a personality transplant.”

  Hayley laughed. “Good luck with that, Momster. With Eric, it’s systemic. He’s too much like the sperm donor for his own good.”

  “Don’t say that,” Sara whispered. “Please don’t ever say that again.”

  Hayley’s amusement had faded away. “You know it’s true, Mom,” she said. “Why else would he be so eager to fawn over a man who never cared enough to stick around and help raise his kids, divorce or no divorce?”

  “It’s transference,” Sara answered, clutching at straws. “I’m pretty sure Eric has a fantasy father. And he’s most likely projecting that ideal—and nonexistent—man onto Zachary.”

  “So now you’re a shrink?” Hayley challenged. “Mom, you might have a fantasy son. Is this one of those Reddit-worthy scenarios where Eric is the Golden Child and I’m the leftovers? The kid who never makes trouble and therefore is mostly ignored?”

  Sara was so stricken by Hayley’s words that she actually shot to her feet, nearly knocking her laptop off the small table in front of her.

  “Oh, my God, Hayley, is that how you feel? Ignored? Do you actually think I love you less than your brother? That simply isn’t true!”

  Just at that moment, J.P. entered the otherwise empty ICU waiting room.

  He paused just inside the doorway and raised one eyebrow in unspoken question: Go or stay?

  “Stay, please,” Sara mouthed, beckoning him with one hand.

  “I wonder sometimes,” Hayley admitted sadly.

  “Then you and I have some work to do,” Sara replied, sounding the way she felt: broken. “As soon as things settle down again, you and I are getting some counseling. Just the two of us.”

  “It’s okay, Mom,” Hayley answered, though there were tears in her voice. “I understand that you have to spend a lot of time with Eric right now and, I swear to you, I’m cool with that. It’s that time of month, and I’m worried about my brother, and my emotions are all over the place.”

  “I love you, Hayley. You’re precious to me.”

  “I know, Mom,” Hayley sniffled. “And I love you, too. Really.”

  “I’ve never doubted it,” Sara replied. “But your feelings matter, sweetheart. We’re going to work this thing through with a professional, ASAP. If that’s okay with you, of course.”

  “It’s okay with me,” Hayley said.

  Sara realized she was trembling and so, apparently, did J.P., because he gripped her gently by the elbows and lowered her back into her chair.

  He left the room without a word, and Sara and Hayley said their goodbyes.

  When J.P. returned, he handed her an ice-cold bottle of water.

  Sara unscrewed the top and drank thirstily.

  “Thank you,” she sputtered.

  J.P. pushed aside the table, borrowed from the medical staff, drew up a second chair and sat facing Sara, their knees almost touching.

  “I guess you heard,” Sara said. It was an inane remark, she knew, but she didn’t care. It was what she found when she reached inside herself for words.

  “I caught part of the conversation, yes,” J.P. admitted.

  “Hayley thinks Eric is the Golden Child in our family and she’s—well—second fiddle. It isn’t true, J.P.!”

  “I believe you, Sara. And you don’t need to explain anything to me. What goes on between you and your kids—you and anybody else, for that matter—is yours to deal with, as you see fit.”

  “Do you always know the right thing to say?” Sara asked, weary and relieved, before taking a big gulp from her water bottle, swallowing.

  J.P. grinned that wicked sex-against-the-wall grin. “Let’s just say, I work at it.”

  Sara sighed. Sex against the wall, one of J.P.’s specialties, was off the table for the time being, now that Hayley was back home.

  Even his place was out of bounds these days, because his parents and his two nieces were staying at the ranch house.

  Sara was overjoyed that her son was well enough to leave the ICU, if not the hospital, and she’d missed Hayley something fierce.