“I’ve been wanting to remodel for years.” He glanced at Raven. “I could build a stage.”
“Dad, the place is still smoking—”
“Sometimes you have to burn down the past in order to get a fresh start.” Jethro’s eyes flashed, and he looked at Mack. Oh. Their conversation from hours ago about him leaving.
Jethro glanced at his daughter standing behind Mack, then back at Mack, and smiled.
So maybe the man had changed his tune.
“We’ll see,” Mack said. “I need to get a shower and some shut-eye.” And that’s when it hit him.
He had nothing. The meager belongings he’d managed to scrape up, including a change of clothes, had turned to ash.
Nice.
“Come home with me,” Raven said, as if able to read his mind. “I think we still have some of my brother’s clothes…” She looked at Jethro, who nodded.
And the gesture swept warmth clear through Mack’s body.
Before he could protest, Raven had him by the hand again and was pulling him out of the room.
The sun had cleared the horizon, sent a golden trail through the windows at the end of the corridor. She didn’t release his hand even as they stepped out into the sunlight.
Jimbo was standing on the curb, surrounded by a handful of press, giving a statement.
“Uh oh,” Raven started, but her warning came too late as one of the videographers spotted him. He turned the camera on him as a reporter pushed a microphone in his face.
“Mr. Jones, can you tell us how it feels to know you saved the life of a Medal of Honor recipient?”
What? He looked at Raven. She wrinkled her nose. “Sorry.”
“You think?” He looked at the reporter. A woman, short blonde hair, mid-twenties, a little fire in her eyes. “I…I’m just glad I was there. Right place, right time.” He glanced at Jimbo, wondering what he’d said.
“Will you be staying on to help them rebuild?”
“C’mon, Mandy, that’s too much,” Raven said. “He just survived a fire.”
Mack glanced at Raven, frowned. Then, “Yes, of course. Jethro’s pub will be back in business ASAP. In fact, we’ll still have a booth at the Harvest Festival, so make sure to stop by.”
Now it was Raven’s turn to frown. But Mack tugged her hand and headed out into the parking lot, hopefully in the direction of her car.
“Seriously, the Harvest Festival? That’s two weeks away.”
“Hopefully some of the beer in the kegs survived the fire.”
She dug out her fob and clicked the door open. Then she turned to him, over the top of her car. “You’re really going to dig in, help us rebuild?”
He looked past her toward the lake, the fire of the morning sun burning its way through the green-platinum waters, the rumple of mountains along the far horizon. Burn down the past… He met her eyes, warm in his. “I told you, I’m not going anywhere.”
She grinned, and it could almost gulp him whole with the sunshine in it. “Then we’re going to need pancakes.”
There was something magical about the morning hours in D.C. The way the sunlight streamed through the fading pink flowers of the autumn-blooming cherry trees that lined RJ’s street. The quiet of her neighborhood, the nip in the air that dissipated into the day.
It all conspired to hint at a hope that RJ desperately wanted to lean in to as she sat on her front steps and laced up her shoes.
Hope that she’d seeded into Coco’s smart brain.
The fact that her soon-to-be sister-in-law had also been awake this morning in Seattle, at the very early hour of 3:00 a.m.—three time zones away from D.C.—told her that neither of them wanted to admit the probable truth.
York really was dead.
And Damien Gustov, Russian assassin, was loose in America.
Or maybe that thought, along with the nightmare of York being burned alive in the mangled SUV, had only driven RJ out of bed to fire up her computer just as the dawn cracked through her blinds.
Coco was probably just catnapping beside the hospital bed of her son, Mikka, still in his induction phase of his leukemia treatment. So far he hadn’t suffered any infections or seizures from the cocktail of chemo drugs injected into his system, but he’d had two painful intrathecal injections and had already lost all his hair.
“What are you doing up?” RJ said when Coco responded to her ping and answered her video chat request.
Coco moved into the hospital bathroom, only the computer screen glowing on her face. She looked tired, her hair growing out red at the roots and now pulled back into a messy ponytail. She wore one of Wyatt’s Blue Ox hockey practice jerseys and a pair of leggings and leaned back against the tiled wall, drawing up her legs, the computer beside her on the floor. “Mikka was sick right before he fell asleep. I’m exhausted, but I can’t stop watching him, making sure he’s breathing okay, checking for seizures.” She scraped her hands over her face. “Your mother is coming by in the morning to relieve me.”
Wyatt had purchased a loft apartment near the hospital for family members to stay while his son underwent treatment.
“Where’s Wyatt?”
“In the next room, sleeping on the lounger. He has PT in the morning, and his hip is getting better. He’s leaving for a pre-season game in Nashville against the Predators tonight. I wish his coach would put him on the Injured Reserved list but he wants to keep him on the active roster. Last week it nearly wrecked Wyatt to leave Mikka. I rarely see him cry, but he was losing it when he got on the bus.”
Yes, well, he’d waited five years to find out he was a father. He didn’t want to lose another moment. But RJ didn’t say that.
Coco had her reasons for keeping her son’s existence quiet.
Namely, her high-profile father whose identity could put Coco and Mikka under a shadow of danger.
Another reason why Wyatt didn’t want to leave their sides.
“How is Mikka?”
“So far, it looks like the chemo is working. He’s going into remission, which means he’ll be ready for the second stage of treatment and maybe a stem cell transplant.” She offered a wan smile. “We have good doctors. And prayer.”
Yeah, prayer. RJ hadn’t exactly looked up for help. Maybe…except she seemed to have plenty of backup, thank you, Ford. And Tate. And Wyatt and... “So, I have a question…” RJ didn’t exactly know how to broach the topic but, “Last night—”
“That was me.” Coco made a face. “Not entirely, but yeah, I set up the tracker. Wyatt and your brothers asked me to set up a GPS to track your phone and…well, he put two and two together when he saw you casing Sophia’s place two nights ago. He told Tate, who told Ford, who was in DC, and Ford was supposed to intercept you before you went into the house, but…are you okay?”
RJ just stared at the computer. She wore her pajamas and sat cross-legged on her sofa, the computer on her lap, and just about gave in to the urge to slam down the cover. “You what? Put a tracker on my phone?”
“It’s because your brothers are all freaking out about you leaving the ranch—especially after, um, well…”
“After what happened to York. They think he’s dead.”