He stared at the sheet. The top one had a photo of a woman in a spandex unitard laying on the floor and another woman in hospital scrubs stretching her leg so that it pointed straight up. “Me?”
“Are you two married?” Julie eyed him. Closely. “If so, you’re her next of kin. We had planned to release her to Lark Taylor, but if you’re here, you’ll be the one in charge of her care.”
“We are married,” he said, feeling the full impact of those words. He’d sworn vows to her, vows to be there for her in sickness and in health, until death parted them. She’d wanted to break those vows, but because she’d been in a coma and he’d been in a different hemisphere, they hadn’t managed to do that just yet.
Then something else dawned on him. “I suppose you’re going to tell me that I can’t take her back to Houston?”
“That wouldn’t be wise,” Dr. Wakefield said, giving Jake a suspicious look. “I’d like to continue to monitor her recovery. I have colleagues in Houston that I could refer you to, but I’d prefer to remain her primary. Consistency of care can’t be overestimated at this point.”
He was going to have to take care of her. He was going to have to look at her and know he’d lost her and not tell her that. He couldn’t tell her about the slow way the spark had died or how she’d had him served with papers.
Instead, he was going to have to take care of a woman who thought she still loved him because she couldn’t remember how she’d stopped loving him.
And to do that, he was going to have to stay in the pit that was Royal, Texas.
How could this get any worse?
* * *
Jake had broken the cardinal rule. No matter how bad things were, never, ever ask how they could possibly be worse.
Because a man never knew when a dog was going to try and break through the door to get to him.
Jake stood on the front porch of a nondescript house in a nice part of town. He was pretty sure this was the address Keaton had given him. On the other side of the door, the dog was howling and scratching like a crazed beast. Jake debated getting back in the car. If the dog got out, Jake would prefer to have a layer of metal between the two of them.
Seconds ticked by more slowly than molasses in January. His fingers started twitching toward the doorbell to ring it again. They knew he was coming, right?
The dog still going nuts, Jake was just about to start pounding on the door when he heard the lock being turned. “Nicki!” Keaton shouted. “Knock it off! Back up!”
The barking ceased almost immediately, then the door cracked open and the first thing Jake heard was the wailing of a baby. An unhappy baby.
“About time,” Keaton grumbled, opening the door and standing aside. “You woke her up. Next time, just knock. That doesn’t seem to set Nicki off nearly as badly as the doorbell does.”
“Sorry.” And truthfully—with all that screaming? Jake actually was sorry.
Keaton got the door closed behind him. Jake’s eyes took a moment to adjust to the dim lighting. The blinds were down and in addition to the screaming he heard the sounds of...classical music?
“This way,” Keaton said, stepping around Jake. “Watch out for Nicki.”
Jake eyed the dog that was now sitting next to the door. The dog’s hackles were up and it was growling, but at least it hadn’t attacked. “Nice doggie,” Jake said as he stepped around the animal. Man, he hoped that thing was well trained. “Good girl.”
“Yeah, we just got her a few weeks ago. Australian shepherd. Nicki goes with me out to the ranch—I’m training her to keep tabs on the cattle. She’s really good at it.” As Keaton spoke, he walked confidently though the house. He led Jake—and Nicki—past large framed landscapes of Texas in all the seasons—bluebells in one, the bright summer sky in another. They walked past shelves that seemed to overflow with books, all of which looked uniformly well-read. This was not the pristine, almost sterile kind of house that Skye had grown up in. This was a home that seemed lived in. But it didn’t seem particularly feminine.
“This your place?” he asked, trying to keep his tone casual.
“It’s Lark’s. We’re building a place of our own.” Keaton didn’t offer any more details.
Jake had a lot of questions from that one statement, but before he could figure out how to ask them, they entered a room that had probably once been a tidy great room. Except now there were baby blankets draped everywhere, mats with mirrored things attached spread over the floor and more stuffed animals than Jake could count. There were bookshelves in here, too, but the books had been cleared off the lower ones and bins full of toys and things that Jake didn’t recognize now filled the space. Plus, there was an absolutely huge television along one wall that seemed out of place in the worst sort of way.
In the middle of it all, on a couch that was piled high with cloths and diapers, sat Skye’s sister, Lark, with a small, squalling baby in her arms. Lark was wearing medical scrubs. Maybe she was a nurse?
At the sight of them, Lark got a mean look about her—a look Jake recognized from days long gone. It was a look he’d seen more often on Vera Taylor’s face than on Skye’s, but the hatred was unmistakable.
“Babe,” Keaton said, crouching down in front of her. He rubbed his hands over her thighs. “You remember Jake, my—my brother?”
“No,” Lark said. But it didn’t sound as if she was answering Keaton’s question.
“Lark,” Jake said, trying to be polite about it.
The baby cried even more. Jake wouldn’t have thought that was possible, but it was. This morning, he hadn’t been a father. Now he was faced with a wailing infant.
Skye wasn’t supposed to have any shocks to her system. He wished someone had given the same orders for him because he wasn’t sure how much more he could take.
“Where have you been?” Lark snapped. Her eyes filled with tears, and Jake noticed the dark circles underneath.
“Babe...” Keaton said, touching her face. It was a tender gesture.
Jake wasn’t sure what part of this scene made the least amount of sense. Keaton had always said Lark Taylor was a stuck-up bookworm who thought she was better than everyone else—and Jake had never argued that point much. Lark hadn’t liked Jake. The feeling had been mutual.
“I was in Bahrain. I came back for Skye and for our daughter.” The words were coming easier now. But he stared at the little baby still crying in Lark’s arms and the room began to feel smaller.
“Oh,” Lark said. “So glad to see that you’ve decided to acknowledge her. Where have you been since she was born? Do you even know how old she is? Do you know anything about her?”
Before Jake could reply, Keaton spoke. “Lark,” he said in a soft voice, trying to draw her attention back to him. “We talked about this.”
“But you know him, Keaton. You know he’s
