Carla Neggers - White Hot

Her eyes widened in irritation. “Are you still keeping an open mind about me? You think it’s possible I’m lying?”

He frowned. “Mollie, I simply said I hope you’ve just been in the wrong place at the wrong time. You can take that at face value.”

“Then you don’t suspect me,” she said stubbornly.

He scooped up a handful of water and flicked it playfully into her face. “Go up and get dressed. If I go up with you, we might not make it back down here until morning. I promised Croc I’d be back this evening.” He eased to his feet, felt the day’s dramas all the way to his bones. “I still can’t get my head around the little bastard being a rich kid.”

“You took him on his own terms. Maybe that’s all he wanted from you.”

“Maybe.”

She climbed out of the pool and grabbed her composers’ towel, so caught up in her own thoughts she didn’t notice him watching her. Her wet suit clung to her curves, her flat stomach. Water glistened on her arms and legs. She slung the towel over her shoulders. “I’ll be down in ten minutes, tops.”

She made it in seven. She had on a little sheath of a sundress, in dark blue, and sandals, her legs bare, her hair pulled back and still damp. She’d dabbed on pale lipstick and a touch of mascara, and Jeremiah couldn’t imagine what had possessed him to put this woman on a plane to Boston ten years ago. Except that if he hadn’t, there’d be no hope for them now. She’d needed those ten years. Probably so had he. And that still said nothing about the next ten years.

They took the Jaguar to the hospital, and Mollie, saying she was tired from her swim, let him drive. “You just want to see if I can really handle this thing,” he said, grinning at her.

“Not true. If that truck of yours doesn’t intimidate you, nothing will.”

On their way, she told him about her “spontaneous” cocktail party tomorrow night. She, Deegan, and Griffen had worked on it that afternoon. “Deegan didn’t stay-he went back to the hospital to see his brother.”

“You’re baiting him,” Jeremiah said.

She glanced sideways at him, mystified. “Who, Deegan?’ ”

“The thief. If he’s still out there, this ‘spontaneous’ party is a way of baiting him.”

She sat back, miffed. “So what if it is?”

He shrugged. “So what is right. Let’s just not be disingenuous.”

“I.e., don’t lie to you.”

“I.e., don’t bullshit me. And don’t bullshit yourself.”

“You do feel free to speak your mind, don’t you?”

“Always, Mollie,” he said without remorse. “Not just with you.”

“Must be from growing up in a swamp. I mean, if you’re surrounded by poisonous snakes and alligators and big ugly bugs, you learn pretty quick to tell it like it is.” She glanced over at him, the glint of the devil in her eyes. “Am I right?”

He smiled. “From a certain point of view.”

When they arrived at the hospital, he was surprised to find it wasn’t crawling with reporters. Word was out about the police finding Leonardo Pascarelli’s necklace on “Blake Wilder,” but not that Blake Wilder was Michael and Bobbi Tiernay’s long-missing older son, Kermit. Helen Samuel was either being remarkably discreet or not tipping her hand. Knowing her, Jeremiah suspected the latter.

Croc was looking marginally better, definitely more alert. His father, still in his business suit, was at his son’s bedside and when he glanced at Jeremiah and Mollie, tears shone in his eyes. The resemblance between father and son was there, in the way their eyes crinkled, in the lines of their jaws. Jeremiah just hadn’t seen it when he’d met Michael Tiernay at his mother-in-law’s cocktail party.

“We can wait outside,” Jeremiah said.

“No-no, it’s all right.” Michael smiled tentatively. “You’ve been a better friend to Kermit in the past two years than I have. Please, stay. I…well, there’s no excuse. If I’d wanted to find my son, I could have found him.”

Croc moved the arm with the IV in it. His lips were swollen and cracked, but he managed to say through his wired jaw, “Forget it.”

“Kermit, whatever you need-a place to stay, an attorney, anything-you let me know. You tell me.” His voice faltered, and he blinked back tears. “I’m in it for the long haul this time, son. It won’t be so easy to get rid of me.”

“Dad…” Croc spoke haltingly, barely able to get the words out. “Thanks.”

Mollie took a step forward. “What about his mother?”

“She got as far as the elevator before she had to turn back,” Michael Tiernay said without looking around at her. “It’s difficult…I don’t know if you can understand, or I can explain. We were afraid he was dead. We would believe it one day, and then decide it couldn’t be true the next.”

“He never got in touch with you?”

“No. We’d made it clear we didn’t want him to unless it was on our terms. We thought-” He broke off, a proud man fighting for composure. “We thought we were doing the right thing. Helping him become independent.”

“Mr. Tiernay,” Mollie said gently, “I’m not in a position to judge you.”

“You should judge me, Mollie. We cut our son out of our lives. We insisted our friends and family do the same and cut him out of their lives. He was a troubled nineteen-year-old boy, difficult, hypersensitive, recalcitrant, failing at everything he did, refusing to live by our rules and standards. We didn’t see another choice.”

“What would have been another choice?”

Such a simple question, Jeremiah thought. Michael Tiernay gave a bitter laugh. “Love him.”

“But you didn’t stop loving him-”

He shook his head. “I don’t mean love as a feeling. I mean love as something we do. And we stopped. If he had been engaged in criminal activity, drinking and doing drugs, perhaps our alternatives would have been starker. But he wasn’t. He was simply…” He smiled meekly, turning back to his son. “He was simply a pain in the ass.”

Mollie was frowning, not fully understanding.

Michael Tiernay touched his son’s hand. “I’ll let you visit with your friends. I’ll be right out in the hall. It’s a clean slate, Kermit. In my eyes, we’re starting fresh.”

“Croc.”

“What?”

“You can call me Croc.”

His father laughed softly, his pain almost palpable. “Then Croc it is.” He turned to Jeremiah and Mollie. “Please, take your time. I’m not going anywhere.”

“The police know anything more?” Jeremiah asked him.

“Not yet.” His gaze went steely, and Jeremiah could see his pride, the core of a man who’d built Tiernay & Jones into a formidable force in international communications. “But it doesn’t matter what they find out. I’m here to stay.”

He left the room in long, determined strides, and Jeremiah glowered at Croc. “Blake Wilder. You lying little shit.”

Croc gave him a crooked, miserable grin and flipped him a bird.

Jeremiah laughed. “I guess if I had a name like Kermit, I might head to fantasy land myself.”

“I’m named after my grandfather,” Croc said slowly, laboriously, “not the frog.”

“Kermit Atwood,” Mollie supplied. “Diantha’s husband.”

“Well.” Jeremiah straightened, felt the emotional and physical agony Croc must be feeling. “You’re here. You’re alive. And your father’s at your bedside eating some crow. You going to forgive him?”

“Already did.”

“Were your parents authoritarian? Did they beat you, make you toe the line?”

But Croc sank deeper into his pillows, drifting in and out, his pain medication, fatigue, and injuries taking their toll.

“We were disengaged,” Michael Tiernay said from the doorway. He walked into the room and adjusted the blanket over his son as if he were still a small, innocent boy, not a young man with a policeman outside his hospital door. “He would do anything to get our attention. And did. Positive, negative-it didn’t matter what kind of attention he got. When we finally did focus on him, we decided he wasn’t worth our effort and kicked him out.”