style="font-size:15px;"> He realized belatedly she was waiting for him to comment. “I came as quickly as I could,” he said awkwardly.
Her gaze was steady. “That’s nice. But I only called because I thought you should know what had happened. I can handle the situation.”
“I’m sure you can handle just about anything, but—”
“I can,” she reiterated. “You should have phoned first and I would have saved you the trip.”
“‘Saved me the trip’?” He repeated the words carefully. “I don’t believe I understand.”
“The way Vicki explained things, I didn’t think you’d care that much, one way or the other.”
Doubting Vicki had employed the truth in her explanation, Grant cursed under his breath. The real story could take her down as efficiently as it could him.
“Why don’t you tell me exactly what your sister said?” Grant said. “It might make things easier.”
“It might,” she conceded. “But I don’t intend to share her confidences. I think it’d be best if you left.”
“I’m not going anywhere. Kevin is my son.”
“That’s stretching it a bit, don’t you think?”
Grant put on a rigid mask, his chest going tight. “What are you implying?”
“I’m not implying anything. I’m making a point. You left Vicki and Kevin. You abandoned them. That’s not the kind of thing a loving father and husband does to his family.”
His relief outweighed the sting her words brought with them. Still, a dilemma remained. Should he go along with the assessment and look like an asshole or try to convince her that Vicki had lied? Either way, he’d lose.
He stalled. “Is that what Vicki told you? That I abandoned them?”
Andrea stared at him without answering.
“Well, I guess that answers that,” he finally said. “You’ve made up your mind. I won’t try to confuse you with the facts.”
IN THE FOUR YEARS Grant Corbin had been married to her sister, Andrea had talked to the man maybe half a dozen times. On the rare occasions when everyone managed to shake free from their busy lives and meet in Courage Bay for a family get-together, something seemed to come up at the last minute that kept Grant from attending. Each time, Vicki had excused him by saying crimes weren’t scheduled, but Andrea had always wondered.
Now she wondered even more. Accustomed to facing the unknown and dealing with whatever arose, she still felt a nameless anxiety building.
He was lying to her and she had no idea why.
“My sister gave me the facts. I know what happened.”
“I doubt you know it all….” he retorted. “There were things I did that I shouldn’t have, but the same could be said for Vicki. I love Kevin, though. Surely she didn’t say that wasn’t the case.”
Andrea started to answer, then heard her name. She turned to see her mother standing by the E.R. door.
“The doctor’s here,” she called out. “He wants to talk to us.” Seeing Grant, Karen Hunt motioned for them both to come.
They walked in uncomfortable silence to the door. Grant reached out for the handle but instead of opening it, he paused and looked at Andrea. She saw with shock that he had pain in his eyes.
“Look, before we go in, I have to ask you a question.” His whole body seemed to tense. “Can you put everything else aside for a minute and answer it?”
“What is it?” she asked stiffly.
“When you found Vicki…did it look like, well—”
Surprised he even cared, she instantly understood the question; she’d heard it asked more times than she wanted to remember.
“She didn’t suffer,” she said quietly. “I have a feeling the whole thing happened very quickly.”
Sympathy pushed past her anger as he flinched. He then nodded and opened the door and they went into the waiting room together.
To Andrea’s amazement, her mother and father both greeted Grant warmly, Karen wrapping an arm around his waist and hugging him tightly, Jack extending his hand. Vicki had obviously not told their parents what she’d told Andrea. Infidelity wasn’t a fault either of them would have brushed off.
Drawing Andrea’s attention away from her thoughts, the orthopedic surgeon began to speak. “The first X rays are back and I think we’re going to be able to avoid operating on Kevin’s foot at this point. He has a malleolar fracture but we can immobilize it with a plaster cast and that might do the trick….” His explanation continued, his words filling Andrea with relief. A broken ankle bone was a far cry from the internal injuries she’d been worried about.
Andrea’s gaze sought Grant’s. He had dark eyes, so dark they almost seemed black. She couldn’t read the emotions he hid, but she could feel them, their negativity seeking her out. He didn’t like her, she realized with a shock.
The knowledge unsettled her, but she decided swiftly it didn’t matter. The feeling was mutual.
STANDING BY ONE OF THE big windows in the emergency waiting room, Grant watched Karen and Jack Hunt leave a few minutes later. Now that they knew their grandson would be all right they had to deal with the sad details of their daughter’s death. Andrea walked beside them but she was going to return. She’d told him so and asked him to wait for her.
Grant turned away from the glass. He’d thought at first that Andrea had known everything but he decided he’d been wrong. Vicki had informed her sister of what she’d wanted to, making him sound like the jerk and her the golden princess. He didn’t really care what Andrea Hunt thought of him but he didn’t want her for an enemy. That wouldn’t be a good idea.
When she came back, she’d been crying. Her eyes were red-rimmed and wet, but she put aside her grief. “Let’s go to X ray,” she said. “You can see Kevin if they haven’t begun the cast.”
Grant wanted to say something about Vicki as they headed down the hallway, something appropriate and normal, something that ordinary people might say to one another when someone died, but he’d been out of polite society for so long, he’d lost the rule book. He didn’t know how to act around women like Andrea.
Staring at the floor as they walked, he finally said the only thing he could think of to say.
“I’m sorry about all this,” he said in a low voice. “I know you and Vic were close when you were kids. She talked about you a lot.”
He was an expert at reading reactions—if a good Vice cop wanted to live to be an old Vice cop he picked up the skill quickly. Andrea was taken off guard by his words; her voice reflected her reaction and so did her body.
“She talked about me?”
“All the time. She wanted
