Lisa Jackson - The Mccaffertys - Matt

The nurse left the room and Kelly stepped closer to the unmoving form on the bed. She wrapped her fingers around the cool metal rails, then touched the back of Randi’s hand, willing some life into Randi’s battered body. “Wake up,” she urged. “You’ve got so much to live for…a new baby, for starters.” And three stubborn, intense half brothers.

“Besides that you’ve got a lot of explaining to do when you wake up.” She squeezed Randi’s hand, but there was no response. “Come on, Randi. Help me out here.”

“She can’t hear you.”

Kelly released the comatose woman’s hand quickly and flushed. She recognized Matt McCafferty’s voice instantly. Her heart jumped.

“I realize that.” Turning, she found him in the doorway, still dressed in the jeans and shirt he’d had on a few hours earlier. His jacket was unbuttoned, his hat in his hands, his face not as hostile as it had been earlier, but there were still silent accusations in his dark eyes. Roguishly handsome and mad as a wet hornet.

“What’re you doing here?” he demanded.

“I met Detective Espinoza in the ER, then decided to check on your sister.”

“You should be checking out leads, trying to find the bastard who did this to her.” Matt stepped into the room, closer. Kelly’s nerves tightened and she silently chided herself for her reaction.

He stared down at his sister, and the play of emotions across his bladed features showed signs of a deeper emotion than she would have expected from the rogue cowboy, who had become, according to town gossip, a solitary man. Yes, there was anger in the set of his jaw, quiet determination in his stance, but something else was evident—the flicker of guilt deep in his near-black eyes. At some level Matt McCafferty felt responsible for his sister’s condition. He reached over the rails just as Kelly had minutes before and took Randi’s small, pale hand in his big, tanned fingers. “You hang in there,” he said huskily, his thumb rubbing the back of his sister’s hand, only to stop less than an inch from the spot where the IV needle was buried in her skin.

Kelly’s throat tightened as she recognized his pain.

“Your little man, J.R., he’s needin’ ya.” Matt cleared his throat, slid an embarrassed glance at Kelly, then turned his attention back to his sister. Obviously he felt more comfortable shoeing horses, mending fence or roping calves than he did trying to come up with words of encouragement to a comatose sibling. And yet he tried. Kelly’s heart twisted. Maybe there was more to Matt McCafferty than first met the eye, than rumor allowed. “And the rest of us, we need ya, too,” he added gruffly. With a final pat to his kid sister’s shoulder, he turned on his heel.

Kelly let her breath out slowly. Who was this man and why did she react to him—dear Lord, her hands were sweating, and if she didn’t know better, she’d swear her heartbeat accelerated whenever she saw him. But that was crazy. Just plain nuts.

Giving herself a quick mental shake, Kelly followed him through the door into the central hallway to the hub that housed the nurses’ station.

“Where’s Espinoza?” he asked, sliding a glance her way.

“Probably back at the office. He finished up here on another case, but he’s aware that you’re concerned. He’ll call you tonight, but I don’t think he can give you any more information than I have.”

“Damn.” They walked to the elevator and stepped into a waiting car. She ignored the fact that her pulse had accelerated, and she noticed that he smelled faintly of leather and soap. As the doors to the elevator shut and they were alone, his dark eyes focused on her. Hard. She wanted to squirm away from his intense, silently accusing eyes. Instead she stood her ground as he asked, “So why were you in Randi’s room?”

“Just to keep my focus. I hadn’t seen her for a while and after your visit this afternoon, I thought I’d see how she was getting along. I’ve kept in contact with the hospital, of course, gotten updates, but I thought seeing her might make me clearer on some points.”

“Such as?”

“Such as why was she up in Glacier Park? Where was she going? Who were her enemies? Who were her friends? Why did she fire the foreman of the ranch a week or so before she left Seattle? What happened at her job? Who’s the father of her child? Those kind of questions.”

“Get any answers?” he asked sarcastically.

“I was hoping someone in the family might know.”

“I wish. No one does.” He leaned against the rail surrounding the interior as the elevator car landed and the doors opened to the lobby. He straightened, his jacketed arm brushing hers. She stepped out of the car, ignored the faint physical contact. “What do you know about a book your sister was writing?”

“I’m not sure there is one,” he said as they crossed a carpeted reception area where wood-framed chairs were scattered around tables strewn with magazines and a few potted trees had been added to give some illusion that St. James Hospital was more than a medical facility, warmer than an institution.

“Your housekeeper, Juanita Ramirez, said she was in contact with your sister before the accident and that Randi had been working on a book of some kind, but no one seems to know anything more about it.”

“Juanita didn’t even know that Randi was pregnant. I doubt if she was privy to my sister’s secrets,” Matt muttered as he made his way to the wide glass doors of the main entrance.

“Why would she make it up?”

“I’m not saying Juanita’s lying.” The first set of doors opened automatically, and as Kelly stepped into the vestibule, she felt the temperature lower ten or fifteen degrees. Thank God. For some reason she was sweating.

“But maybe Randi fibbed. She’d talked about writing a book since she was a kid in high school, but did she ever? No. Not that my brothers or I ever heard of.”

The second set of doors opened and a middle-aged man pushed a wheelchair, where a tiny elderly woman was huddled in a wool coat, stocking cap and lap blankets. Outside the snow was falling, flakes dancing and swirling in the pale blue illumination from the security lamps.

Matt squared his hat on his head, the brim shadowing his face even further. “Talk to anyone and sooner or later they tell you about the book they’re gonna write someday. Trouble is that ‘someday’ never comes.”

“Spoken like a true cynic,” Kelly observed as she buttoned her coat and felt the chill of Montana winter slap her face and cool her blood, which seemed a few degrees higher than normal.

“Just a reality check. If Randi was writing a book, don’t you think one of us, either Thorne, Slade or I, would know about it?”

“Just like you knew all about her job and her pregnancy,” Kelly threw back at him, using the same argument he’d given her earlier about the housekeeper’s belief that Randi had penned some literary tome.

Matt was about to step off the curb, but stopped and turned to face Kelly. “Okay, okay, but even so. Big deal. So what if she was writing her goddamned version of War And Peace? What’s that got to do with the price of tea in China, or more specifically what happened to her up in Glacier Park?”

“You tell me.”

“ You’re the cop,” he pointed out, his eyes flaring angrily. “A detective, no less. This is your job, lady.”

“And I’m just trying to do it.”

“Then try a little harder, okay? My sister’s life is on the line.” With that he stepped off the curb, hunched his shoulders against the wind and strode through the blowing snow to his truck. Kelly was left with her cheeks burning hot, her temper in the stratosphere, her pride taking a serious blow.