suite and his brothers had, by instinct, claimed the bedrooms where they’d been raised. But when he’d awoken this morning he’d been alone in the house.
During the intervening hours, he’d called the hospital, hoping for a report of improvement in Randi and the baby’s condition. As far as he could tell, nothing had changed. His sister was still comatose and the baby, though stable, was still in danger. He’d hooked up his laptop computer to the antiquated phone lines and looked up everything he could on little J.R.’s condition. From what he could determine, everything that could be done to counteract the meningitis was being done at St. James. He’d even managed to call the office, check in with Eloise and tell her that he hoped a portable office would be set up here, in his father’s den, by the end of the day. He wondered what John Randall would’ve done in a similar situation and, thinking about his father, removed the gift he’d been given from his pocket. The ring winked in the sunlight and Thorne folded his hand over the silver-and-gold band.
“I want you to marry. Give me grandchildren.” John Randall’s request seemed to bounce off the walls of this old pine-paneled room that still smelled faintly of the elder McCafferty’s cigars and Nicole’s image came to mind, the only woman he’d ever dated that he’d considered as a mother for his children. And that thought had scared him nearly twenty years ago. It still did because nothing had changed. Oh, there had been a lot of women since he’d dated her; Thorne hadn’t been celibate by any means, but no one woman had come close to touching his heart.
Until he’d seen Nicole again.
Not that he wanted a wife or mother for his children or—
What was he thinking? Wife? Children? Not him. Not now. Probably not ever…and yet…the reason he was thinking this way was probably because of his father’s dying request, his father’s wedding ring, and the fact that his own mortality wouldn’t go on forever. Randi’s situation was proof enough of that.
Oh, for the love of God. Enough with these morbid thoughts. He looked around this room again and wondered how many deals had been concocted here in the past. How many family or business decisions dreamed up while John Randall had puffed on a black market Havana cigar, rested the worn heels of his boots on the scarred maple desk and leaned back in a leather chair that had been worn smooth by years of use?
This damned metal band had been his father’s wedding ring, a gift from Larissa, Thorne’s mother, on their wedding day. John Randall had worn it proudly until Larissa had found out about Penelope, the younger woman whom her philandering husband had been seeing. The woman who had broken up a marriage that had already been foundering. The woman who had eventually given John Randall his only daughter.
And now Thorne’s mother, too, was dead, a heart attack just two years ago taking her life.
Thorne slid the ring into his pocket and reached for the phone again. He dialed Nicole’s number and hung up when her answering machine picked up. Drumming his fingers on the desktop he wondered if she’d managed to get her car towed, if she’d found another means of transportation and how, as a single mother of four-year-old twins she was getting along. “Not that it’s any of your business,” he reminded himself, bothered nonetheless. He wondered about her marital state—about the man who had been her husband, then forced himself to concentrate on the problems at hand—there were certainly enough without borrowing more. Nicole was a professional, a mother, and a levelheaded woman. She’d be fine. She had to be.
He heard the sound of the front door opening and the heavy tread of boots. “Anyone here?” Slade yelled, his uneven footsteps becoming louder.
“In the den.”
Slade appeared in the doorway. He was wearing beat-up jeans, a flannel shirt and a day’s worth of whiskers he hadn’t bothered to shave. A denim jacket with frayed cuffs was his only protection against the weather. He held a paper coffee cup in one hand. “Good mornin’.”
“Not yet, it isn’t.”
Slade’s countenance turned grim. “Don’t tell me there’s more bad news. I called the hospital a couple of hours ago. They said there was no change.”
“There isn’t. Randi’s still in critical condition and the baby’s holding his own.” Thorne rounded the desk and snapped off his laptop, turning off his link to the outside world—news, weather and stock reports. “I was talking about everything else.”
“Such as?”
“To begin with, your friend Striker hasn’t returned any of my calls, Randi’s editor at the Clarion is always ‘out’ or ‘in a meeting.’ I think he’s avoiding me. I’ve talked to the sheriff’s department, but so far there’s nothing new. A detective is supposed to call me back. The good news is that the equipment I ordered for this office is due to arrive today, and the phone company’s gonna come in and install a couple of lines. I’ve talked to an agency specializing in nannies as we’ll need one when J.R. gets home—”
“J.R.?” Slade repeated.
“I call the baby that.”
“After Dad?” Slade asked, obviously perplexed.
“And Randi.”
Slade gave out a long, low whistle. “You have been busy, haven’t you?”
Thorne elevated an eyebrow and remembered that this was his youngest brother, the playboy, a man who had never settled down to any kind of responsibility.
“All I’ve had time for this morning is a call into Striker and a couple of cups of weak coffee down at the Pub’n’Grub. I ran into Larry Todd down there.”
“Why does his name sound familiar?”
“Because he was the man who ran this place when Dad became ill.”
Thorne settled into his father’s chair and leaned back until it squeaked in protest.
“Get this. Randi kept Larry on when she inherited the bulk of this place.”
Thorne remembered, though he hadn’t paid much attention at the time. He’d been in negotiations for the Canterbury Farms subdivision at the time and had been dealing with land use laws, an environmental group, the city council and an accounting nightmare because one of his bookkeepers had been caught embezzling off the previous project. On top of all that, John Randall had died and Thorne, though he’d known his father was dying, had been stricken by the news and assuaged by grief. He hadn’t cared much about the sixth of the ranch he’d inherited and had left Randi, who owned half of the acres and the old ranch house, to run the place as she saw fit.
“But just last week, Randi called Larry up, told him she didn’t need him any longer and that she’d pay him a couple of months’ severance pay.”
Thorne’s head snapped up. “Why?”
“Beats me. Larry was really ticked off.”
“When did this happen?”
“A day before the accident.”
“Did she hire anyone else?”
“Don’t know. I just found out about it.”
“Someone would have to come and look after the stock.”
“You’d
