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He clears his throat. “I don’t like how you’re talking to me.”
“Good. Maybe I’ll wake you up. You need to at least learn to fake being more sensitive or the press will eat you alive. And so will your opposing party.”
He’s silent a moment. “Fair enough. You have a point.”
“I’m glad we agree. Can I go throw up now and be left alone to get well for this weekend?”
“Yes. Yes, of course.”
“Goodbye, Gabriel.” I hang up.
“Fucktard?”
At Rick’s voice, I turn to find him leaning in the archway, his big, broad shoulders devouring the little ole doorway, in the most delicious of ways. “You heard?”
“Every word,” he assures me.
His lips, those punishing, perfect lips, curve with approval. “I’ll be sure and call him a fucktard right before I remove his balls. In a highly complex surgical procedure, of course.” He laughs. “Loved it, baby. I really will be waiting in the kitchen this time.”
“Did you come back for a reason?”
“Apparently to hear you call him a fucktard.” He winks and disappears into the bedroom.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Candace
The magic of Rick Savage is that hell could be burning at my feet and he could still make me laugh. Which is why I’m laughing when I turn to the bathroom sink again where his shaving cream and razor sit beside his cologne. It’s surreal and unbidden, my laughter fades into memories, surreal good memories, at least momentarily. One minute, I’m thinking of me and Rick right here at this sink every morning together, and the next, I’m thinking of us having breakfast with my mother.
Only, that didn’t happen.
That was his mother.
My mother was dead when I met Rick. I was denied the opportunity for the two of them to meet and love each other.
I grab the counter, and suddenly I’m back in the past, not to the day I heard she’d been killed, but to the funeral. There was rain. It seems every beginning and end in my life is drenched in rain.
I squeeze my eyes shut and I’m back there now, living the hell of the rifles cracking through the air, thunder roaring in reply. Anguish. Pain. It’s like a blade is cutting me over and over inside. And then the flag. They gave it to me. God, they gave it to me at my father’s direction. “I don’t deserve it,” he’d whispered to me.
I open my eyes and think about the guilt I’d heard radiating in those words: I don’t deserve it. I’d thought that was just pain speaking, and guilt because he hadn’t been with her. But was it more? No. No, I refuse to believe that. My father didn’t do anything to get my mother killed. I grab my purse and slide it over my shoulder, but then I’m flashing back again, lowering my lashes.
I’m back at our family home, right here in this neighborhood, with friends and family everywhere, all present to honor my mother. I remember it so very well. My father was missing. The rain had faded into a haze of gloom and I’d thought maybe he’d gone outside for air. I’d stepped onto the porch and spied a black SUV across the street. My father had exited the backseat. He’d started to walk to the house when another man had exited as well, behind him. My father stopped walking as if he’d heard his name, and there had been fury in his face. So much fury. The man had touched my father’s arm and when my father turned, I’d seen the other man, a big man, a bulky man who was dressed in a black suit as if he’d attended the funeral, though I don’t remember him, but there had been so many people there, too. My father had shoved the man. The man had laughed and then backed away before walking back to the SUV. I’d rushed down the stairs toward my father, meeting him on the walkway.
“Who was that?”
“No one I ever want you to know.”
“Did he know Mom?”
“Let’s go inside.”
“Dad—”
“I said, let’s go inside.” He’d stepped around me and left me there on that sidewalk, watching the SUV drive away.
My eyes pop open with a horrible thought that sets me in motion, all but running to the kitchen. Needing to be wrong, desperately needing to be wrong, I launch myself down the hallway and enter the kitchen to find Rick standing at the table where Adam and Smith now sit. “I need to see a photo of Pocher.”
Rick catches my hand. “You think you know him?”
“I just—I don’t know. I remember a man who angered my father on the day of my mother’s funeral. And Dad wouldn’t take the flag. He said he didn’t deserve it.”
“Here’s Pocher,” Smith says, turning the MacBook around for me to eye a photo of a thin, fifty-something man, with an air of elegance and refinement.
