“Callahan, I wanna talk to you first. You and I can walk out in the hall while Ella helps her finish getting ready and gets her signed out.” Her uncle wasn’t growling, but he wasn’t exactly the tame pussycat either.
Rafe stared across Cami’s head at the older man, seeing more than simply the command in his gaze. Eddy Flannigan was pissed off, but he wasn’t pissed off with Cami or even with Rafe this time.
Rafe gave a sharp nod before bending his head, his lips pressing the top of Cami’s head. “Be good,” he warned her. “Don’t try to run on me.”
“Rafe, if I had to run for my life right now then I think I’d probably have to just go ahead and die.”
He doubted that. According to the doctor Rafe had talked to, she had put up one hell of a fight.
“I’ll be right outside then.” He let his fingertips caress down her back before he moved away and returned to the hall, the normally verbally abusive, smart-assed Eddy following behind him.
As the door closed behind them, Eddy held up his hand quickly as both Logan and Crowe straightened from their positions on each side of the door and glared at him fiercely.
“I’m not interested in fighting you boys, yet,” he warned them.
Rafer crossed his arms over his chest and stared back at him curiously. “Then what do you want?”
“Did she tell you about the phone calls she was getting?”
Had she told Eddy? “The sheriff did,” Rafe informed the other man. “Cami hadn’t mentioned the full extent of it.”
Eddy’s shoulders sagged a little as he rubbed at the back of his neck in irritation. “Likely he heard it from the same place I did: Jack Townsend?”
Rafe nodded.
Eddy shook his head at the response or whatever thought Rafe could see darkening his gaze.
“Her aunt just got off the phone with her father,” Eddy told them then. “Normally, this ain’t no business but Flannigans’, but I saw her face, and her daddy did nothing to keep his voice low enough that it didn’t carry on the phone.” He quickly went through the conversation, ending with the final insult to Cami when Mark had called her Callahan trash.
Rafe could feel the anger building inside him now.
“What the hell happened to him?” he sighed. “Mark Flannigan was a good man once.”
Eddy snorted at that. “No, my brother, unlike me, likes to hide his faults and appear perfect in public. Me, now this is what you have.” He held his arms out to his sides as anger filled his voice. “You’re stuck with me exactly how I am. Mark, he likes to have all those pretty words said about him; he always did. And don’t get me wrong; he loved Jaymi something fierce. Her death killed a part of him, I think. But Mark was never loving with Cami, Rafe. He was never a father to her. He resented her birth and he resented every time he had to balance buying for her with buying for Jaymi. Every time Jaymi had to share something, or couldn’t have something, he blamed Cami’s birth. The day of Jaymi’s funeral he stated it was unfair that his Jaymi was gone, that she had suffered. If one of them had to die like that—” Eddy seemed to shudder as he blinked back a sudden moisture in his eyes. “He said it should have been Cami.” Eddy lifted his gaze as Rafe fought to hide the horror that a father could ever say or do anything so atrocious. “And she overheard him.” He cleared his throat uncomfortably. “Like I said, this should stay Flannigan business.” He glared at Rafe as though it were his fault the story was coming out. “But that girl has enough on her shoulders right now; hearing her daddy call her trash wasn’t something she needed. One of these days, she’s going to accept to her soul that she doesn’t have a daddy, and when she does, if you’re there—” He broke off as though uncomfortable.
“There’s no if about it,” Rafe assured him. “I’ll be there, and I’ll take care of her.”
Eddy nodded sharply.
“Tell me something, Eddy. All these years you’ve poked and prodded and sliced at us with that smart-assed mouth of yours, and not even for a minute did you believe we hurt Jaymi. Why did you do it?”
“Who says I didn’t?” Eddy frowned, his gaze fierce and confrontational as he stared back at them.
“Because you would have never told me any of that if you thought for a moment one of us hurt her sister,” Rafe snarled back at, Eddy, his voice low but the fury raging in it loud and clear.
“And I would have never treated you any different even if your names hadn’t come up in her death.” Eddy was in Rafe’s face, glaring, his entire demeanor one of defensive anger. “You were arrogant little shits as kids who slapped away every helping hand extended to you. You only slap my hand once, Callahan. And count yourself lucky, because of that girl in there.” Eddy’s finger stabbed toward the hospital room door. “Because of that girl, you’re getting another chance. See if you can be appreciative this time.”
The man had lost his mind. “When did you ever extend a hand to any of us?” Rafe bit out in disbelief. “You stood with the rest of this county every damned time they wanted to accuse us of something.”
“And you made it so damned easy, didn’t you?” Eddy settled back on his heels with a tough, mocking smile. Like a banty rooster standing in challenge. “You little shits. You were ten.” He looked at Rafe. “Twelve.” His gaze met Logan’s. “And thirteen.” He inclined his head to Crowe. “And that damned chip on your shoulder was bigger than each of you were. I offered you a ride to school one morning.” He stared at Rafe expectantly, his look withering.
It was Crowe who nodded slowly. “It was snowing and damned cold,” he murmured, his golden-brown eyes sharp, intent. “You were driving that beat-up old four-wheel drive of your brother’s.”
And Rafe remembered it then.
“You saw me, not Mark,” Eddy growled, his gaze suddenly brooding rather than confrontational.
Crowe shook his head. “I saw Mark Flannigan, and I saw the day before as he came around that curve you drove around that morning. He came around it so fast that if Logan hadn’t jumped for the ditch he would have run him over. And he didn’t even stop to make sure he was okay.”
“That was the winter after our parents died,” Logan said quietly. “I don’t remember much of that year. Except that lawyer Rafe’s uncle got us to keep the Raffertys and the Corbins from stealing the inheritances our mothers left us.”
For a second, abject regret filled Eddy’s eyes. Remorse and shame flashed in his gaze before he hurriedly jerked his eyes away. When he turned back, it was with a sense of resignation and acceptance, though the remorse was still a heavy presence in his expression.
Eddy backed down. “Hell, I’m who I am,” he stated, obviously making the connection that what he had seen as childish arrogance had been lingering shock and grief. “An asshole on a good day, but I’m not stupid.” He turned to Rafe. “Jaymi and Cami both have defended you, against everything and everyone. When you were arrested for Jaymi’s murder, Cami just about went crazy. She swore every day you didn’t do it. She would sit up at night forming arguments for your lawyer, she said.” He shook his head and sighed heavily. “God help me if I’m wrong.” He turned his head, his gaze tormented now. “But that’s mine and Ella’s girl. We’ve done what we can to teach her to be smart, and to know her own mind. And she’s damned certain you’re a good man. And I’m damned certain I know every crime you’ve been accused of you weren’t anywhere around when it happened, except Jaymi’s death. And she wasn’t the only innocent young woman that died that summer.”
It didn’t make up for the years of the man’s confrontational insults and jeering attitude. But one thing Rafe could say in Eddy’s defense: he was one of the few who hadn’t called the cousins rapists and murderers to their faces, or behind their backs as far as Rafe knew.
Eddy was mocking, snide, sarcastic, and those were his good days, but he wasn’t cruel, and he had never gone out of his way to be mocking, snide, and sarcastic either. It was simply what you found when you found Eddy.
The sound of the door opening drew all their attention, and Rafe had to force back a growl of fury at the timid, cautious pace of each step and the proof that the blows to Cami’s body hadn’t been made as a warning. The attack had been meant to be deadly.
“Get a wheelchair!” he snapped to Logan, turning, only to see Crowe jerking one from the nurses’ station and wheeling it to her.
“Sit, baby.” It was an order, cloaked in silk, she thought as she hid a smile and sat down gingerly in the chair.
The bruise on her hip from stumbling on the stairs was actually the worst of the it. Well, except for the bruise the doctor said her skull might have.
It wasn’t so bruised that she wasn’t well aware of the fact that Rafe was in command mode.
Which was really rather amusing. Why bother to hide it now with that dark, husky male tenderness? It was like throwing a tablecloth over the elephant in the living room, she thought, struggling not to grin.
“I see that grin tugging at your lips,” he told her as he moved behind her and leaned close, his lips at her ear. “What’s so funny?”
She wasn’t touching that one with a ten-foot pole.
“So much for saving you from any more trouble,” she sighed instead. “I was hoping to avoid this for you, Rafe.”
“Trying to protect me, were you?” he asked as he knelt beside the chair, reached up, and brushed her hair back from her cheek.
Cami was tempted to close her eyes at the stroke of pleasure against her flesh, the warmth and calloused rasp of his fingertips against her skin.
“Maybe I was trying to protect us both.”
“Cami, I’ll be at the house this evening with your prescriptions and to check you out.” Ella moved from the room, her voice brisk and no-nonsense, her expression fierce as she moved in front of Cami.
Ella was all but glaring at Rafe as he came to his feet. “I will be keeping a check on her, Rafe Callahan.”