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“You’ve been told before, but I’m telling you again—if you don’t take care of yourself, you won’t be the Maxwell running Walking Stones Ranch. It’ll be Thea and Bobby—if he ever straightens out. And you’ll be six feet under.”
HE’D REFUSED TRANSFERto a hospital. But he couldn’t convince any of the young fools to take him home. Even Bobby and Beth refused when they’d come into the clinic after midnight.
Bobby had looked scared. Beth had looked...deeply worried, her forehead creased and her pretty brown eyes damp.
What nonsense had Jolie told them? That he was about to die?
Maybe Bobby needed something to shake him up a little, but seeing poor Beth upset had made him almost want to reach out to take her hand.And what would she think of that, you old fool?
Once the diuretic kicked in, he’d been glad he hadn’t tried the thirty-mile trip back to the ranch.
Stopping every five minutes at the side of the road with Beth and Thea and Jolie worrying over him would have been unbearable.
So he’d bullied Jolie into letting him stay in the small bedroom at the back of the clinic overnight, though she’d muttered darkly about violating state regulations the entire time it took to move him.
Robert reached up and punched at the unfamiliar pillow under his head and peered at the clock. Three in the morning, and he still couldn’t sleep.
Had to be those medications Jolie and Althea had forced him to take last night. He’d needed the urinal twice in the last hour, and each time he was just more awake.
With Jolie coming in to check on him every fifteen minutes he might as well be out of bed and reading that stack of livestock journals out in the waiting room.
Tomorrow he’d be exhausted from lack of sleep and the sheer stress of having someone—hisdaughter—constantly hovering. Taking his vitals. And tending to his most...basic needs.
The humiliation of lying in bed and handing a full urinal to his oldest daughter was beyond anything he’d ever imagined. He had to admit, though, that now he could breathe a lot easier.
He stared up at the ceiling and counted the flecks in the tiles from north to south, then east to west, trying to figure out why he felt so...adrift. So edgy.
And then he realized.
For thirty-five years, he’d slept in the same house, same room, same bed. With Helen for nineteen precious years. And then, just with the memories. Except for that hospital stay last fall.
He still missed her every single night. After she died, every last bit of joy had left with her, leaving only duty. Responsibility. And four young kids to raise on his own.
What had he known about dealing with teenage girls? Or a boy barely out of diapers?
He raised the best Angus cattle in the state but hadn’t had a clue how to raise children. They’d probably feared more than loved him, and he’d never known how to change that. Helen had understood his failings, and she’d done a wonderful job raising them.
But after she was gone, everything just went downhill.
Sometimes, in the darkest hours of night, he welcomed his failing health and imagined Helen awaiting him with open arms and that beautiful smile, made all the more radiant by the passing years.
But he couldn’t go yet. Not when their fool son was still making a mess of his life. Not when Bobby didn’t show even a fraction of the ability and devotion to Walking Stones that Thea had.
If she’d only been a boy...
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
AS JOLIE HAD EXPECTED, her dad still refused transfer to a hospital the next morning.
When Thea and Jolie refused to take him home, he promptly called Beth at the ranch and ordered her to bring his car.
Robert Maxwell was firmly back in control.
Pale with frustration, exhaustion, and anger after a night of staying up with Jolie, Thea finally gave in, but from the look on her face, she didn’t plan to mince words once she drove him home.
“He must have been desperate to let anyone else drive his car,” Thea muttered as they watched Robert laboriously transfer from the wheelchair into his dark blue Cadillac, Beth hovering at his side. He’d adamantly refused all assistance.
“He’s driven it since 1989,” Thea added. “And I don’t think it has more than twenty thousand miles on it. Every one of them has been to and from church. Did you call Cassie yet?”
