Читать книгу Fortune's Cinderella - Karen Templeton - Страница 9

“Holy hell! Found ’em—!”

“They okay—?”

“Think so, although the gal looks like she’s stuck. Frank! Hernando! Get your butts over here, now!”

Jerked awake, Scott batted at the bright light searing his eyes … until it registered that was the sun shining in his face.

“Hey, buddy—how’re you doing?”

Scott shook the last remnants of sleep and disbelief from his brain as Christina stirred in his arms, then let out a little cry. Although whether from relief, surprise or pain, Scott couldn’t tell.

“I’m fine, but she’s—”

“Yeah, we can see that,” the rescuer said, his voice graveled with both age and what had undoubtedly been a very long night. “It’s okay, sweetheart, we’re gonna get you outta there in two shakes.” Then, to Scott, “You did good, keeping her warm like that. Can you walk?”

“Yes. At least,” he said as he tried to stretch out his cold, stiff muscles, “I could before I fell asleep—”

“Good,” the rescuer said as three or four other people appeared, bustling around Christina, “’Cause I need you outta the way so the paramedics can do their thing—”

“But—”

“Go check on your family,” Christina said, her voice rough, “they must be worried sick.” When he still hesitated, she shut her eyes and commanded, “Go.”

“I’ll be back. I swear,” he said, although he doubted she’d heard him.

Stooped over, he crawled through the tunnel the rescuers had made in the destruction, releasing a nauseous gasp when he emerged into what looked like the set from a disaster movie.

Momentarily paralyzed, Scott struggled to absorb the scene as dozens of rescuers, some in National Guard uniforms, swarmed around him—the odd wall, still inexplicably standing; the sunlight dancing across the glass-littered ground, glancing off twisted pieces of what Scott realized in horror was a small plane; rows of seats, the leather furniture from the lounge upended, mutilated, half-buried underneath what had been the second floor. And above it all, framing the destruction, the blue, cloudless sky, serene and still and contrite, as though denying the fury it had unleashed only hours before.

“Scott! Thank God!”

He wheeled around to see Blake and Mike striding toward him, dusty and muddy and scratched up, but otherwise okay, and his head snapped back to the present. Then his cousin, Victoria, her dark curls a tangled, filthy mess, appeared, squealing as she threw her arms around each one’s neck in turn, all of them talking at once.

“—ceiling caved in so we couldn’t get out—”

“—Javier’s in bad shape, they’ve already taken him to the hospital, Miguel’s with him—”

“—Dad’s in an ambulance, something about chest pains—”

“—Mom’s got a broken wrist—”

“—but they had to give her something to calm her down,” Victoria put in, tears brimming in her eyes. “Because, that flight attendant? She … she didn’t make it.” Scott swore as Mike laid a hand on Scott’s arm, the uncharacteristic gesture raising the hairs on the back of Scott’s neck. “They haven’t found Emily yet, either.”

For a moment, he couldn’t speak. Couldn’t think. Couldn’t, for the first time in his life, make a decision. Try to find his sister or go back for Christina? Honor a promise he’d only made a few minutes ago, or his duty to family?

Frowning, Scott glanced back over his shoulder, then sighed. Meeting his brothers’ gazes, he asked, “Where was Em when the storm hit?”

“Over there, talking to Aunt Virginia,” Victoria said, pointing to where the lounge had been, then shuddering. “But then, so was I, and I ended up way the heck over there.” Her arms folded across her ribs, she nodded toward the other side of the building, then started to cry. “Oh, God—what if Em’s …”

She burst into sobs as Blake wrapped one arm around her shoulders, a moment before a shout went up from about twenty feet away.

“We got her!”

Scott and the others picked their way through the wreckage as fast as they could, getting to Emily right as the rescuers pulled her free. Like the rest of them, she was dirty and debris-ravaged, but, other than a wonky ankle, she seemed none the worse for wear.

Physically, at least. Because Scott wondered what sort of psychological toll the last fifteen, sixteen hours would have on all of them, none of whom had ever been through anything even remotely life-threatening before. Certainly he would never be the same, he thought as he made his way back to where he and Christina had spent that long, cold, miserable night, only to find that she, too, was already gone.

“Where?” he asked a state trooper on the scene.

“Same place they took everybody else. San Antonio Memorial.” The trooper looked over at his brothers and cousin. “Y’all need a ride?”

“I … I don’t know.” Forking a hand through his hair, Scott scanned the surreal landscape. “The cars—”

“All totaled,” the trooper said gently. “Except for that Escalade over there. Some dings and scrapes, but otherwise intact. Probably drives okay. Strange, how these things happen. I’ve seen entire blocks wiped out, except for one house left standing, untouched.” Away from the mangled building by now, the officer nodded toward the SUV, which did indeed look virtually unscathed. “A rental, I’m guessing from the license plate.”

Scott nodded, his throat constricting. Around them, lights flashed, radios squawked from assorted emergency vehicles. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught Mike climbing into one of the ambulances, its siren bloop-blooping as it started away. “Yeah. Ours,” he finally got out as he took in the crushed Explorer lying on its side.

“Then you’ll be wanting these,” the trooper said, digging in his pocket and handing over the keys. “They were in the ignition, so I figured I’d better take ’em. Not that I expect anybody to come out here looking for trouble, but you never know.”

Scott nodded his thanks, then said, “My brothers, they said …” His stomach turned. “Javier Mendoza? Do you have any idea where he is?”

The grave, compassionate expression in the man’s gray eyes said far more than Scott wanted to hear. “That must be the guy they got to first, lying right past the doorway. He’s probably already at the hospital by now, they can tell you more when you get there.” The man rested a hand on Scott’s shoulder. “You okay, son? That bruise on the side of your head bothering you any—?”

“I’m fine. Or will be, soon enough. Thank you.”

The trooper’s radio crackled; with a wave he walked away, the same moment a reedy, but surprisingly strong, voice called out.

“Oh, Scotty—thank God you’re all right!”

Forcing a smile for his mother, Scott made his way through the angled vehicles toward her, the warm sun again giving the lie to the wicked, bizarre weather from the day before. Wrapped in a silver Mylar blanket and propped up on a gurney, her arm strapped to her chest, his mother accepted his kiss, then asked, with anxious eyes, if they’d found Emily.

“Yes. A few minutes ago—”

“Is she … is she all right?”

“She’s fine. Her ankle’s a little messed up, but you know our Em—can’t keep a good girl down—”

“And Jordana?”

Figuring whatever they’d given her, combined with the trauma, was playing tricks with their mother’s head, Scott said quietly, “Jordana didn’t come, remember? She stayed at the resort—”

“No, no—she called me on my cell about ten minutes before the tornado hit, said she’d changed her mind and was getting a ride to the airport with that Tanner person.” She grasped Scott’s wrist with her good hand, her eyes wide with fear. “Oh, God, Scott—if she was on the road—”

“I’m sure she’s fine, Mom,” Scott said evenly, even if his stomach didn’t agree.

“All righty, Mrs. Fortune, we need to get going,” the attendant said, adding, as another pair of EMTs wheeled Emily toward them, “Your daughter’s going to ride with you, how’s that?”

“Emily, sweetheart …!”

As the last ambulance finally pulled away with his mother and sister inside, Scott stood with his hands in his pants pockets, a light, chilly breeze ruffling his hair as he surveyed the decimated landscape—fences gone, trees uprooted or snapped in two, entire windbreaks felled like bowling pins. Oddly, the storm seemed to have inflicted far less damage to the flight school building behind him—it was still standing, at least—but Scott had overheard some of the rescuers saying that this tornado was only one of a series. That others—although not as devastating, thankfully—had also touched down in Red Rock itself, causing even more damage.

Blake came up beside him, one hand on his hip, the other cuffing the back of his neck. “Holy crap.”

“That about sums it up.”

“Think this is what’s known as one of those life-altering events.”

A lot more than you know, Scott mused, his thoughts drifting back to Christina—the heat of her hand gripping his, her trusting weight against his chest … the lingering buzz from that sweetly electric kiss. Still. Even in the clear light of day.

Crazy.

But damn if he didn’t feel as though somebody’d flipped a switch in his brain … a switch he hadn’t even known had been in the “off” position.

He looked back over Blake’s shoulder to see their cousin picking through the debris, wobbling on her high-heeled boots like a tipsy mountain goat. “What on earth is Victoria doing?”

“Looking for her luggage, she said. I suppose it’s giving her something to focus on so she won’t freak out.” Blake met Scott’s gaze. “She keeps talking about some dude in a cowboy hat pulling her out of the rubble then disappearing. Got any clue who she’s talking about?”

“None,” Scott said, thinking he had far more pressing things on his mind than Victoria’s mystery cowboy in shining armor. Like the woman who, in one night, had twisted him far more inside out than a tornado ever could. Not knowing how badly she was hurt …

Pulling the rental’s keys from his pocket, Scott called to his cousin. “Vicki! We need to get to the hospital.”

She looked up, shielding her eyes from the sun. The wind caught in her hair, whipping it around her smudged face. “But … my things …”

“Now, Victoria,” Scott said sharply, walking to the SUV, his brother and muttering cousin following suit.

“Sorry,” she mumbled after she got into the back. “I’m just hungry. And exhausted. And …” She let out a muffled sob. “And when I think—”

“It’s okay, honey,” Scott said as they slowly pulled away, the car’s shocks working overtime as they drove over the chewed up ground. “We’ve all had a rough time.”

And yet, he mused as they reached the highway, where it became much smoother going except for the occasional jagged branch or chunk of somebody’s shed, not once during their ordeal had Christina complained. Even though she had to have been in pain. And frightened out of her wits.

If anything happened to her …

He stepped on the gas.

Not surprisingly, the E.R. was borderline chaos, all the exam rooms filled, a pair of obviously harried nurses doing triage on the dozens of walking wounded flooding the waiting room.

“Scott! Over here!”

Emily was in a far corner, between a resigned-looking older man pressing a bloodstained towel to a gash in his head and a mother with worried eyes holding a sleeping toddler. His sister’s foot, wrapped in an ice pack, was elevated on a pillow on the glass table in front of her. Blake scanned the crowd. “Wow. Did San Antonio get hit, too?”

Emily shook her head, her pinched brow the only clue she’d been through hell. “No, just Red Rock. This is overflow from the Medical Center. Look,” she said, nodding toward the TV mounted high on the opposite wall, where a camera panned parts of the town, showing the damage. Considering what might have been, though, things could have been much worse.

For all of them.

He turned back to his sister. “Where’s Mom and Dad?”

“In treatment rooms. Mike’s been toggling between the two of them. I’d bug the desk for more information, except, one, I can’t exactly move and, two, I’m afraid of that nurse. Yeah, that one, in the pink scrubs. Don’t let the teddy bears fool you—she’s fierce.” The man with the bleeding head was called to see the doctor. With a heavy sigh, Victoria plopped into his vacated seat, laid her head on Emily’s shoulder. She smiled for her cousin, then said, “Eventually I’ll get into the inner sanctum and find out what’s going on, but …”

She glanced across the room, then whispered, “It’s Javier I’m most worried about, if the look on Miguel’s face is anything to go by.”

Scott twisted around to see Javier’s and Marcos’s brother, who’d come from New York for the wedding, sitting in a chair on the other side of the room, his head in his hands.

“Go on, talk to him,” Blake said. “I’ll check on Mom and Dad.”

Looking far more bedraggled than the rest of them, Miguel shakily stood at Scott’s approach. A small, tight smile strained his mouth. “Your family—is everybody okay?”

“More or less. Miguel—for God’s sake, sit, you look like you’re about to keel over. How is he?”

“It’s bad, man,” Miguel said, sinking onto the seat, strangling his still wet ball cap in his hands. “Real bad.” Terrified brown eyes lifted to Scott’s. “He’s … he’s unconscious, they don’t even know yet what needs fixing. His head, his legs …” The young man swallowed hard, obviously fighting for control.

“Damn …” Scott felt as though someone had put a stake through his chest. “You need me to make any calls—?”

“No, I already talked to Marcos. He’ll get in touch with everybody else.” He looked at Scott, obviously fighting tears. “I found him, right after the twister hit. I could tell he was in bad shape, but there wasn’t a damn thing I could do—couldn’t call 911 because the cell service was down, couldn’t go get help because the roads were trashed. Best I could do was keep the worst of the rain off him, but …” Shaking his head, he looked away, a tear tracking down his filthy, stubbled cheek.

“Hey …” Scott laid his hand on the younger man’s shoulder. “It’s going to be okay. He made it through the night. That’s got to count for something—”

“I can’t stop thinking,” Miguel went on, his left leg bouncing, clearly not hearing any voices except the nasty ones in his own head, “what if he didn’t get help in time—?”

“And you’re only going to make yourself crazy, worrying like that,” Scott said, even though his own voices, making him worry and wonder about Christina, weren’t doing him any favors, either. When he spotted Blake, he waved him over. “I need to go check on my folks, but Blake will stay with you until your family arrives. And listen,” he added as he stood, “you know we’ll help in any way we can. Whatever Javier needs, it’s his. Got that?”

Miguel looked up, hope and terror fighting for purchase in red-rimmed eyes. “Thanks.”

“No problem.”

Despite Emily’s warning, Scott had no choice but to confront the obviously frazzled nurse at the desk. “Yes?” she snapped, not looking at him.

“I’d like to see my parents. Virginia Alice and John Michael Fortune?”

“Rooms 1B and 1A,” she said, jabbing a pen over her shoulder, “right on the other side of the door—”

“And you have another patient who came in by ambulance around the same time, Christina Hastings? Can you tell me which room she’s in?”

“She a relative, too?”

“No, but—”

“Only family’s allowed to see the patients, sorry.”

“You’re not serious?”

She frowned up at him. “Do I look like I’m in the mood to kid around?”

Frankly, Scott guessed that was a mood she was never in. “Then can you at least tell me her condition?”

“No.”

Scott leaned over the counter, close enough to make the woman back up. “If it hadn’t been for my family,” he said in a low voice, “it’s highly unlikely Miss Hastings would even need to be here right now. So if you don’t mind—”

“Do you see all these people, Mr. Fortune? Do you also see how many more of them there are than us? Now, please, go see your parents and let us get on with what we’re supposed to be doing. Which includes taking care of Miss Hastings.”

When the woman turned her back on him to answer another staff member’s question, Scott realized he’d lost that round. Which did not sit well. But, he thought as he strode toward the exam rooms, damned if he’d lose the next one.

He heard Mike’s agitated voice before he entered their father’s cubicle. Sitting with his ankle crossed over his other knee, his brother was on his phone, conducting business as though his Gucci suit wasn’t filthy and ripped, his thousand-dollar loafers caked in mud. More than that, however, as though their father wasn’t dozing in a hospital bed six feet away, hooked up to an army of machines and looking more vulnerable—more human—than Scott had ever seen him.

Tearing his eyes from his father, he said to Mike, “Somebody’s gonna be all over your ass about that cell phone. If I were you I’d switch to text.”

Behind him John Michael snorted. “Took you long enough.”

Okay, strike the vulnerable part of that description.

“Been a little busy, Dad.” Scott glanced at his brother, getting to his feet and walking out of the cubicle, presumably to continue his conversation without interference. “And Mike’s been with you.”

Their father grunted, his eyes drifting back closed. “True,” he said, his breathing slightly labored. “I can always count on Mike.”

And some things never change, Scott thought, although frankly he was too worn out—and this was neither the time nor the place—to take umbrage. “How are you feeling?”

“I’ve been better. But it’s nothing a good night’s sleep and some decent food won’t cure.”

“So the pain in your chest—?”

His eyes opened again. “Gone. For the most part. It’s nothing, don’t know why everybody’s making such a fuss. They want to keep me overnight. Can you imagine?”

“I think that’s called doing their job.”

John Michael pulled a face. “Sticking it to my insurance company, if you ask me. I intend to fly back tomorrow, though. You’ll make the arrangements, won’t you? Might as well fly out from San Antonio. No sense returning to Red Rock.”

Scott crossed his arms. “Don’t you think you should wait to hear what the doctors have to say?”

“Flight’s only two and a half hours. If need be, I’ll hire a nurse to go with us. Which reminds me, how’s your mother?”

That he should ask about her as an afterthought was no surprise. That it should irritate Scott so much now, when it never had before, was. “I’m about to go look in on her now. Victoria said she was pretty shaken up—”

“No surprise, there. Virginia always has been emotionally fragile.”

“Dad. She just spent the night trapped in a tornado-demolished building. I think she’s entitled to be a little shaken up.”

His father gave him an unreadable look, then said, “Go on, tell Virginia I said to get some rest, but we’re going to be on a plane tomorrow. We need to get home, dammit. And send Mike in, I need to talk to him …”

Moments later his mother greeted him with a slightly dreamy, “Oh, hello, dear,” when Scott walked into her room. Leaning against the side of her bed, Scott took her good hand.

“How are you doing?”

“Better, now.” She frowned at the cast on her wrist, as if not sure how it got there, then yawned. “Although whatever they gave me for the pain makes me very sleepy. And apparently—” she yawned again “—I also got a nasty bump on the back of my head. There goes next week’s hairdressing appointment,” she said on a sigh, then crinkled her pale forehead at Scott. “The doctor said your father and I are going to be moved upstairs, that we should stay overnight. As a precaution.”

“I think that’s very wise. Don’t you?”

“I suppose,” his mother said on another puff of air. “Although I’d rather be home. In my own bed.” Virginia Alice grimaced down at the hospital gown. “Wearing my own things … oh, dear!” Her gaze shot to Scott’s. “Our luggage! Whatever happened to it?”

“I don’t know, to be honest. Could be in the next county, for all I know.”

“I see.” She thought a moment, then said, “Well, then, I suppose someone will have to pick up something for me to wear on the trip home. Since I certainly can’t be seen in public in this!”

Scott smiled. “Not to worry, Victoria and I will take care of it.”

Her eyes lifted to his. “Do you suppose they have size twos in San Antonio?”

“If not, I’m sure we can find a box of safety pins somewhere.” When she pulled a face, Scott chuckled, then said, “And by the way, if Dad gets his way you’ll be back in your own bed by tomorrow night.”

Virginia smirked. “And since when has he ever not?” Then she sobered. “Any word from Jordana yet?”

“No.” He squeezed his mother’s hand. “Sorry.”

She nodded, then pressed Scott’s hand to her soft cheek. They’d gotten her cleaned up, but without makeup she looked even more frail. “Thank you for not spewing out some platitude, telling me not to worry. Worrying is what I do.”

“No kidding,” he said, and she softly laughed, then lowered their hands.

“You know why I do, don’t you? Because your father doesn’t. Or won’t let himself, in any case. So I have to do his worrying as well as my own.” She shrugged. “’Tis my cross to bear.”

Smiling, Scott leaned over and kissed her forehead, getting a faint whiff of her familiar perfume, as though after using it for so long it was permanently embedded in her skin. “Get some rest, and I’ll check in again later. As he turned to leave, however, Virginia called him back.

“Your father and I … I know how our relationship must seem to you kids at times—”

“Mom, this isn’t the time—”

“I watched a woman d-die in front of me, Scotty. I thought we were going to die. That has a way of making you … think about things. About what matters. And what matters to me, right now, is that you and your brothers and sisters understand that, for all the … stuff your father pulls, I love him. And I know he loves me. Yes, there are times I want to smack the man senseless, for taking me for granted, for making me feel I come in a distant second to the business …”

She struggled to sit up straighter. “But I knew who he was when I agreed to marry him. Just like he knew I was a tenderhearted fool who jumped at the sight of her own shadow,” she said with a smile. “I also see a side of him he refuses to show to you kids, for whatever reason. Yes, your father’s the most stubborn human being on God’s earth, but deep down, he’s a good man who’s always only wanted the best for his children. And don’t you ever forget it.”

Virginia sagged back against the pillows, her eyes fluttering. For a long moment Scott simply stood there, stunned, until her breathing slowed into a deep, easy rhythm—she was asleep.

Nurse Ratchet was still at her post at the nurse’s station, sparing Scott the merest glance as she handed off a folder to another nurse.

“Your parents are being moved upstairs in about a half hour—”

“Not why I’m here.”

She sighed. “Still can’t tell you about Miss Hastings—hospital policy.”

But before “Screw hospital policy” could leave Scott’s lips, another nurse strode past, calling out, “Dr. Karofsky says to call County General, tell ’em we’ve got an orthopedic transfer.”

“Name?” she barked to the other nurse as she snatched up the phone.

“Hastings. Christina.”

Scott lunged across the counter to grab the phone out of her hand.

“Mr. Fortune! Don’t make me call security, now—”

He waggled the phone. “I’d like to see you try,” he said, and she huffed out a breath. “Why are you transferring her?” His gut twisted. “Is she … does she need some kind of special care?”

“No! She’s—” Apparently realizing she’d stumbled right into his trap, the nurse sighed heavily. And held out her hand for the phone, which Scott relinquished. “She’s fine. Broken foot, some bumps and scrapes, that’s it. But she’s uninsured. And we’re a private hospital. Although we’ll treat anybody who comes through that door, once they’re stabilized we transfer them to a public facility. She’ll be well taken care of there, I assure you—”

“She’ll be taken care of right here,” Scott said, yanking his wallet out of his pants pocket and throwing down his American Express card. “Consider her bills paid.”

With a Mama told me there’d be days like this eyeroll, the nurse picked up the card, slammed it back onto the counter lip. “Then go settle it with Admitting. Right on the other side of those doors.”

“Thank you.” He snatched his card and stormed back to the E.R. lobby, barely stating his case to the gal behind the glass when he heard a shrieked, “Scott!” behind him. He spun around to see a breathless, disheveled Jordana rush across the lobby, an equally disheveled Tanner Redmond right on her heels, Jordana’s luggage in his hands.

“Jordy! Thank God!” Scott said, all the air punched out of his lungs when Jordana threw herself into his arms, then launched immediately into a disjointed narrative about her changing her mind at the last minute and Tanner giving her a ride, except the car ended up in a ditch when he swerved to avoid flying debris, something about a shed, and the weather, that the National Guard guys who’d helped them pull the car out of the ditch had been at the airport and knew the family was here.