she? It’s been a week, Dad.”
“Shhh, baby, don’t talk too much,” Joe said, stroking Sophie’s hair. “You need to rest now. You rest and get strong, and soon we’ll be able to go to the ranch and see everybody. All right?”
“She’s not coming, is she?” Sophie looked up at her father, willing him to answer. “Is she, Dad?”
“You know how she doesn’t like to leave Teddy—”
Sophie held up a hand, wordlessly begging her father not to make excuses for her mother. “Teddy’s eight years old, Dad. Surely she could leave him for two or three days to visit me. There are plenty of people on the ranch who would take care of him. Oh, never mind. Why should I think things would be any different now than they have been for almost the last decade? You know, Dad, there are times when I feel this overwhelming urge to call my mother and ask for her help, because something’s terribly wrong with my mother.”
Joe was rescued from having to find some way to respond to Sophie’s heartbreaking remark by the entrance of Dr. Hardy, who had come to remove the stitches in Sophie’s face.
“Good morning, Sophie, Senator,” the cosmetic surgeon said, handsome and imposing in his green scrubs. “Final unveiling today, Sophie. Are you ready?”
Sophie’s hand tightened around Joe’s. “I guess so,” she said quietly.
“Good,” Dr. Hardy said, nodding as a nurse entered and handed him a paper package containing a pair of sterile gloves. “Now remember, Sophie, this isn’t the completed look. You’re sort of a work in progress. You’ll be swollen, bruised, and the cut is still going to look red, angry. That’s to be expected. Later, in, oh, about six months, we’ll go back to the operating room for a little of my magic. Isn’t that right, Alice?” he asked the nurse. “Tell Sophie. I’m a magician.”
The nurse rolled her eyes, then grinned at the doctor, obviously the object of some substantial hero worship. “I don’t know about the magic part, Doctor, but I do know that Miss Colton has nothing to worry about. That scar is as good as gone.”
“Thank you, Alice, and there’ll be a little something extra in your paycheck this week,” Dr. Hardy said, winking at Sophie, then advancing toward the bed even as Sophie began to cringe against the pillows. “No, no, Sophie. We’re going to make this as quick and painless as possible, I promise. Alice is going to remove the bandages and then we’ll get those stitches out of there before they start to do more harm than good. And then, young lady, you, your crutches and your leg brace get to go home—at least that’s the word on the street. Okay? Is that a deal?”
“Dad?” Sophie said, squeezing Joe’s hand until his circulation was all but cut off. “You’ll get me a mirror. You promised.”
Joe nodded, his throat clogged with tears, with fear for how the scar would look, how its appearance would impact his daughter. She’d only allowed Chet to visit her a single time, and had kept her head averted during the visit, so that she hadn’t even asked him about the bandage over his nose. And then she’d made him promise not to try to see her again until she contacted him.
Joe wasn’t sure if she was angry with her fiancé, if she blamed him for her attack or if she was afraid that her appearance had been ruined, so that Chet would be disgusted with her, repelled by her scar.
No matter what Sophie felt, however, Joe had already made up his mind that any man who would stay away from the bedside of his injured fiancée because she told him to…well, he wasn’t the man for his Sophie!
Joe blinked, surprised to see that the bandage was already gone, and that Dr. Hardy was in the process of removing the stitches, his green-clad frame blocking Joe’s view of his daughter’s face.
And then it was done, and Sophie was nervously asking for the mirror.
“Maybe later, baby,” Joe said, only to be cut off by Dr. Hardy, who took a mirror from Alice and handed it to Sophie.
“Just don’t get used to how you look, Sophie, because that’s going to change—not that it’s looking so bad right now, in my opinion. You’re young, your health is excellent, and I expect the final scar to be almost invisible.”
Sophie held the mirror in front of her, slowly lifted her hand to tentatively touch the livid red wound that stretched from just below her ear, up and over her jawbone, then back down, so that it ran under her chin.
“He—he didn’t make a very clean cut, did he?” she asked at last, putting down the mirror. “I could be marked with a big S, for Sophie. Or for Scarred,” she ended, biting her bottom lip between her teeth.
Joe reached for her hand, but Dr. Hardy had already taken both of Sophie’s hands in his. “Look at me, Sophie,” he said, all traces of humor gone. “Look at me, sweetheart, and listen to me. It’s a scar. That’s all it is. And it will be gone soon, or as close to gone that you’ll forget it’s even there. But that scar, visible or not, isn’t you. Do you understand that? If that’s an S on your jaw right now, it stands for Survivor. Don’t forget that.”
Sophie nodded, and Dr. Hardy and his nurse left the room.
“Sophie? He’s right, you know,” Joe said. “You are a survivor. And you’re going to be fine. Five more weeks at your apartment with the nurse I’ve hired, until the orthopods take that brace off your leg, and then you’ll be with us, at the ranch. Six months from now, once Dr. Hardy is done with his magic, it will be as if this never happened.”
“But it did happen, Dad,” Sophie told him, a huge tear slipping down her cheek. “Every night when I close my eyes I remember that it happened. Every day, now that the bandage is off, I won’t be able to forget that it happened.”
She tugged her hand free of Joe’s and pulled the large diamond ring from her third finger, left hand. “Here,” she said, handing the ring to Joe. “Tell Chet I’ll see him in six months, not before then.”
“Oh, honey, don’t do this,” Joe begged her, while inwardly he relaxed, with at least one problem being solved for him. “I’m sure Chet will be banging down the door to see you, to change your mind.”
“Like he’s been banging down the door all week?” Sophie asked, her smile wry. “No, Dad. I just want to go home to my apartment, wait for this thing to come off my leg, and then come to the ranch. If you want me there?”
“If I— Ah, baby,” Joe said, folding his daughter into his strong arms. “All I want out of life right now is to have you home with us again.”
Three
H ome. It had never looked so good.
Sophie sat in the passenger seat as her father drove the car along the private roadway, past various ranch buildings, heading toward the huge, circular drive that fronted Hacienda del Alegria—the House of Joy.
She gave a small, lopsided smile as she remembered the day River had told her about another House of Joy, somewhere in Nevada, that had been a topnotch “pleasure palace” in its heyday, years earlier. Sophie had been highly affronted, saying that wasn’t what her parents had in mind when they’d named the ranch, and then minutes later had retold the story to her oldest brother, Rand, giggling as he looked shocked that his little sister would even know about such things.
River
