Barefoot Brides (8 page)

“What? I don't have any plans to…And didn't you just tell me a few minutes ago not to let Kate boss me around? Now you think I'm going to go behind her back and—how'd you put it?—squeeze her out?” He laughed. “Where your sister is concerned, Mox, you don't even seem to know your own mind.”

“Oh, I know my mind.” It wasn't a lie. She did know her mind. It was her conflicting emotions toward her family that had her tangled in knots. She met his bewildered gaze with cool determination. “Whatever happens between you and this resident, promise me that you will deal squarely with Kate.”

“You know I will.”

“I want to believe that, Lionel. You've never given me any reason to think otherwise. But—” Moxie looked at Kate's lab coat hanging on the hook “—while I might complain about Kate and want to tell her to go eat a bug because sometimes she gets on my very last nerve, I will totally kick the behind of anyone who does anything to hurt her. Got it?”

“Yeah, I got it, Mox.” He laughed, deep and genuine and clearly a little bit at her expense. “Despite your every effort to avoid it, you're beginning to be a real—”

“Watch it,” she warned.

“Sister,” he concluded.

“Sister,” she whispered. Huh. She blinked a few times then cocked her head. “Ya think?”

“Yeah,” he muttered before coming to her and hugging her. “Take care of yourself, Moxie. It's been fun. You'll always have a special place in my heart and in my prayers.”

She looked up at him and mouthed a thank-you.

The briefest of kisses followed then Moxie turned and moments later stepped out into the bright November morning feeling lighter somehow.

Letting go of Lionel, walking away from that relationship which clearly hadn't served either of them for some time, emboldened her. So did the notion that she could stand up to her family and still be…

“A sister,” she murmured, somewhat awestruck.

She could do this. She could make more room in her life. More room for her dreams. Her work. Her life.

She'd start by steadfastly refusing to help Jo write that ridiculous letter to the editor.

The editor.

Just the thought of the man's title made her want to…

Well, do anything but what
he'd
suggested she do, write an article. Wasn't that basically
his
job?

Wait. He had told
her
to do that. Why had Jo suddenly horned in and taken over?

Not that Moxie wanted to write anything but R. Hunt Diamante had invited her to do it. Not Jo.

Once burned. Twice shy.

Wrong.

Moxie was anything but shy. She was going to tell her new family just that.

Breaking up with Lionel had created some much-needed space in her life. It also inspired her to make a little more. To ask these people who were closing in on her to back off. Although they were very important to her, they were making her feel…

“Moxie, I am so glad you're here!” Dodie hopped out of her car, flushed and frantic, which Moxie had come to suspect was the woman's natural state.

“Dodie, you didn't have to track me down. You could have just—” Her hand froze halfway to her cell phone as the older woman rushed to the passenger door, popped it open and a parrot feather stuck in a hat fell out.

“Come and help me with Billy J. I think he's having a heart attack.”

K
ate shut her eyes and sank back against the arm of the couch, not sure of her next move.

Her mother was terrified.

Billy J could well be experiencing a life-threatening episode.

Jo was who knew where.

Kate was stuck at the cottage.

She'd never felt so helpless in her life. At that moment her thoughts touched back on the evening before and the look on Vince's face when Gentry broke the news of his impending move. Kate had felt plenty helpless then, too.

She had wanted to show support for Gentry and tell him how happy she was for his new opportunity. But she didn't have to see the worried expression on Vince's face or suffer the virtual black cloud of his grim mood that settled over the rest of the evening to know he would have seen that as a betrayal. Or an intrusion.

Either way it would have forced a wedge between them that their relationship might not have recovered from. So Kate had reminded them all that her foot ached—not a lie, her foot
always
ached—and asked Vince to take her home early.

She'd gone to her room, not wanting to rehash the details with Jo or their mother, and tried not to think about any of it, about any of them. When she couldn't sleep, she'd taken some medication prescribed by her own physician—something she didn't do often—and conked out, oblivious to the comings and goings around here. She had awoken a little disoriented, dressed, then gone downstairs to see if a cup of strong coffee could chase away the last of her gloomy mood and grogginess from her medicine. Until Dodie had called on her way to the clinic moments ago, Kate had assumed both her mom and sister were still at home.

She sighed, then turned to make her way back to the kitchen and the phone so she could call the clinic and see if anyone could come get her or at least update her on the Billy J situation. Helpless did not begin to cover her feelings about that. First she hadn't had enough metaphorical backbone to stand up and speak her mind to Vince about the kids and now she couldn't come to Billy J's aid because she literally did not have strong enough foot bones to get herself to the clinic under her own power.

Her head hurt and the light from the window didn't help. She had just put her hand up to cover her eyes when the sound of a car engine made her jerk her head up. “Vince!”

The kids must have left Fabbie with Vince overnight, and he was bringing her home to them now.

She winced at the light but that quickly shifted into squinty-eyed determination. She lunged, flailed, almost fell, then lunged again and in two attempts had propelled herself to the front door. She swung it open, swallowed to keep the nausea and dull pain down and bellowed, “Vince! You have to take me to the Urgent Care Clinic right now. Mom is on her way there with Billy J—it's an emergency!”

Like a well-practiced troop of circus performers, everyone fell into step.

Gentry ran to get Kate's cane.

Pera got the baby out of her car seat, gathered up the baby's things, then held the door open for Kate to climb in.

Vince took the cane from Gentry, stashed it behind the seat then slid behind the wheel.

“Will Billy J be all right?” Gentry asked as he helped Kate into her seat.

“I don't know. Could be his heart.” Kate clicked her seat belt.

“His heart?” Gentry squinted. “Aren't you a foot doctor?”

“And an E.R. specialist,” Vince reminded him.

“More importantly, I'm family.” Kate took a deep breath, unsure how Vince, or Gentry for that matter, would respond when she added, “When your family needs you, even if it's not your blood relative, you drop everything and are there for them.”

“That's my cue,” Vince told his son. He slammed the driver's-side door, gave his son a “catch you later” wave and gunned the motor of his pickup truck.

“Thank you so much for doing this,” she said as they took off along the side roads of Santa Sofia.

“That's what families do.” He smiled.

Her stomach fluttered. “Is that how you feel? That we're family?”

“I guess the true test of that is whether you're willing to do for me what you're doing for your mom, Moxie and Billy J.” He did not throw it out there like a challenge but matter-of-factly. This is how things are. “If it comes down to it, Kate, and I need you to, do you think you might drop everything and be there for me?”

Propose.

She fixed her eyes on his and willed it.
Just ask me.
She couldn't very well say yes to the vagaries of “if it comes down to it,” “do you think” or “would you drop everything.”
Say the words. Ask me to marry you.

She shifted in her seat. She could not take her eyes off him. Her skin tingled with the anticipation more of what he left unsaid, the possibilities. The air in the truck cab practically crackled.

Propose now, please.

“Will you…”

Marry me.

“Need me to go on after I drop you off?”

“Yes!”

“All right then.”

Kate winced. “I just meant that…”

“No, I understand. You've got to focus on Billy J. On gathering your resources for helping him.”

She should. The healer in her felt a twinge of guilt that she'd let her focus shift to personal issues.

After Vince pulled into a staff parking space, he quickly retrieved her cane, handed it to her and got out of his truck.

He looked so strong, so sure of himself, so capable and yet so vulnerable.

She gripped the brass cat's head topper of her cane and swung her legs gingerly out the truck door. He stuck out his arm to lend her support as she climbed out. She pushed her door open and he finished pulling it open.

“I won't stay. But if you don't mind, I'd like to go in and find out what's going on with Billy J, and if I can do anything for Moxie.”

She started to tell him it wasn't necessary, that she'd call him when she knew more. But before she could find the words to say it without snapping and maybe showing just a hint of her disappointment that he had just blurted out his feelings, Jo and Travis came rolling into the parking lot in her bright blue PT Cruiser.

“It's going to get awfully crowded in the clinic if this keeps up!” She met Vince's gaze.

He smiled a little at her and took her hand to help her steady her injured foot on the ground. “That's what family does. When there's a need, they go. They don't let anything stand between them and their loved ones.”

She nodded and, even as Travis and Jo got out of her car and started up the walk, took a long stride toward the clinic. She really didn't think she needed to hang around for the extended version of a lecture on the lengths to which families go for one another. Especially when she wasn't sure who Vince counted as her family and just how far he wanted her to go.

“Don't y'all take another step!” Dodie came rushing out at them, her hands extended, her eyes wide, her usually perfectly coiffed hair windblown and about as stylish as a wrecked bird's nest.

“What's going on?” Jo asked.

She, Travis, Vince and Kate all completely ignored Dodie's decree and rushed forward. Apparently all of them adhered to that “not letting anything stand in your way” creed.

“I think only Kate should go inside.” Dodie stepped forward, tugged her oldest daughter by the arm and then gave her the gentlest of shoves toward the door. “Given the circumstances, she's the only one of us I think necessary, the only one that would be welcome.”

Kate couldn't help it—she felt a twinge of pride in being singled out. She didn't know where she stood precisely with Vince but clearly she was needed here.

Kate took another elongated stride, then reached for the door with her free hand, her head up in readiness to meet the situation both as a medical doctor for Billy J and as the designated comfort-giver to her youngest sister. She pulled the door open.

“I wouldn't go back in there for all the tea in China,” Dodie said.

As a blast of cold air whooshed into Kate's face, she heard her mother tell the group why.

“Right now, Molly Christina is so mad she could spit fire and I think if she
could
spit fire, she'd spit that fire at
all
of us.”

“P
lease, Daddy, please, hang in there. Don't…” Moxie couldn't bring herself to actually voice her greatest fears out loud.

Silently, though, deep in the places where she didn't have to hide anything, she offered her most profound prayers to her heavenly Father.
Don't let my daddy die. Not now. Not when things are so uncertain. Not when I still need him so much.

She gave Billy J's large, leathery hand a squeeze. Her throat had gone so dry it hurt. She could not seem to swallow. She blinked. Tears bathed the view of Lionel hovering over her father, applying sensors hooked to a heart monitor.

The nurse on duty moved quickly.

Moxie stroked her father's thin white hair to get it off his ruddy, round face. “Just
don't,
okay?”

Billy J started to speak but only managed to croak out her name before convulsing in a raspy, rattling coughing fit.

“Should I get some water?” Moxie twisted one way then turned the other, not sure what to do.

The nurse pushed past her and began to draw blood.

Moxie's knees went weak. She pressed the back of her hand to her mouth.

Lionel moved to the monitor then threw a glance at her over his shoulder. “Why don't you go check on your…”

Moxie rallied enough to glower at him, her only warning against him invoking “that word.”

“Why don't you check on Dodie?” he tried again, wisely circumventing the touchy topic of family. “You were awfully hard on her.”

“Can you blame me?” Moxie clung to Billy J's hand. “My father, the only father I've ever known, is having a heart attack and as she rushes him to the E.R., she calls everyone she knows in town but me?”

“First off…” Lionel took her by the shoulders firmly, much more firmly than he ever had while they were dating. Very confident. Very
doctorly.

Moxie had never seen this aspect of him. Well, not from this side of things, not as a patient or the patient's next of kin…next of kin. That's who they notified when the worst happened. “My father is having a heart attack, Li. Shouldn't you be doing something?”

“First off,” he began again. “Your father is not having a heart attack.”

Moxie exhaled in a whoosh, dispensing some of the gathering tension in her body. “What about the pain in his chest, the trouble breathing, his inability to focus?”

“We'll need more tests but all signs point to the pain and the breathing as lung-related.”

Billy J let loose with another barrage of racking coughs. When he finished, he heaved a weary sigh then asked the nurse if this was a “nonsmoking” emergency room.

“The inability to focus?” Lionel leaned in to make himself heard above Billy J's fit. “Well, are you really sure that's a new thing?”

The hair on the back of Moxie's neck bristled. “My father is possibly dying and you're making jokes?”

Lionel held her arms tighter. “Your father is not dying. There's definitely a problem, but he's not at risk from immediate death.”

She relaxed a little more. She wanted to believe him. “Are you sure?”

“I went to one of the best medical schools in the country, Mox. Trust that I learned a thing or two there.”

“About potential heart attacks?”

“No, about never telling a patient you know
for sure
about anything!”

“Lionel!”

His grasp on her transformed into a hug. “I wouldn't joke if I didn't think your dad was going to be all right.”

“Really?”

“Really.” He gave her a kiss on the forehead.

That's when Moxie realized he had quietly, compassionately and adamantly moved her from her father's bedside to the door.

“Do you have any idea what's wrong with him?”

“I'm thinking pneumonia.” He opened the door.

“Pneumonia?” In one way she felt relieved. “That's better than a heart attack, isn't it? It's treatable, right?”

“It's treatable, but still very serious, given his age and the generally poor state of his overall health.” He prodded her to go on into the hallway.

She held her ground as tension began to coil again through her body. “Will he be all right?”

A frown flicked over his face. He adjusted his glasses. “Pneumonia is tricky.”

That didn't answer her question. Or did it?

“I think, to be safe, after I check him out, maybe see if I can give him something to make him more comfortable, you ought to take him straight over to the hospital. I'll call over to let them know he's on his way and leave it up to the docs there to decide if they want to keep him or send him home with meds.”

Moxie tried to take it all in, tried to figure out what she needed to do for every eventuality. Take her father, get meds, bring him home, take time off work to take care of him.

“Why don't you go make whatever arrangements you need to and let me get back to your dad?”

Now she was the one having shortness of breath. First things first, she decided. Otherwise it would all overwhelm her. “Okay. Let's see, the hospital is over forty minutes away. You think he'll be all right for the ride?”

“Do you want me to order an ambulance?”

“Does he
need
an ambulance?”

“No.” Another insistent push and he had her outside the room. “Just thought it might be the easiest way to transport him. You can't exactly use your truck.”

“What's wrong with my truck?” She held her hand up. “Don't answer.”

“Moxie, I have a patient to tend to. The sooner I take care of him the sooner you can be on your way and then—”

“Then what, Li? I don't know how I can handle this alone.”

“You're not alone, Moxie.”

“That's true.” She clenched her teeth. “I'm
never
alone.”

“That's the way to talk.” He gave her arm a pat.

“I didn't mean it was a good thing. I meant that since the Cromwell family came back to Santa Sofia they are always—”

“I'm here!” Kate came practically careening around the corner. Her cane swinging in one hand, she used her outstretched arm to counterbalance. This kept her rocking gait rolling until she reached them. “Lionel? Where's Billy J? What do you need me to do?”

“Everything is under control.” Moxie looked to Lionel for confirmation.

He gave her a nod and disappeared into the room to see about Billy J.

Moxie drew a deep breath and pressed on. “So why don't you deal with Dodie? You can take her home, I'll stay with my dad and I'll call you later when we know more about what's going on.”

“What's going on, y'all?” Vince rounded the corner then pulled up short when Moxie turned to face him.

She must have looked a sight as he not only stopped in his tracks and in midsentence, but also threw his hands up to keep the people following close on his heels from coming any closer to her.

Jo all but smashed her pretty little nose into the man's broad back.

Travis had to make a quick side step to keep from plowing into Jo.

However, Dodie, wringing a tattered tissue in her plump little hands, bypassed them all. “I couldn't convince any of them to stay outside. The whole family insisted on coming in.”

“Family.” That word again! “
Family?
A couple months ago they were all strangers to me,
and
to my dad.”

“Molly, sweetheart, we only want to help.” Dodie sounded apologetic and yet firm in her conviction.

“I understand that, but do you always have to help from so close?” She laced her arms tightly over her chest and pulled her shoulders up. This kept her from actually swinging her elbows out to physically create more room and gave her just enough comfort to keep from bursting out crying. Moxie tried to keep her anger and frustration low-key but it wasn't easy. Her father's health scare had really gotten to her and the fact that she only learned about it by accident didn't ease her mind any. “It's just so…overwhelming.”

Travis stepped forward. “Look, I know you're under a lot of stress right now, Moxie, but Dodie and the girls only thought—”

“Of themselves.” She filled in the blank with quiet conviction.

“What?”

“Dodie and the girls only thought of themselves.” She spoke softly, saying what she thought had to finally be said. She did not lash out. She did not allow her voice to quiver. She took a deep breath and talked from her hurting heart to the people who claimed to want only the best for her. “You said when there is trouble, family goes—well, doesn't family also
include
each other? Don't they take the other members of that family into account?”

“Molly Christina, that's no way to talk to us when we only wanted to—”

“My name is Moxie.” She almost stamped her foot, just like a petulant child. “And don't try to pull that maternal guilt card on me, Dodie.”

Everyone seemed to take a quick gasping breath at that.

Moxie didn't care. Well, she
cared,
she just didn't see any other way to get her point across except to stop caring about how these people would feel and let them know how
she
felt.

“It was one thing when you simply crowded into my life.” She thought of all the examples she could give but decided that was not the point; the point was…“Today you tried to crowd me
out
of my dad's life or, worse, a threat to his life.”

“I am so sorry.” Dodie reached out to touch Moxie's cheek.

Moxie flinched, just enough that the woman's finger only grazed her hair instead of brushing her face.

“You thought my dad's life might be in danger and you called everyone…” Moxie pressed her lips together but they still trembled with the emotion she wanted so desperately to hold back. “Everyone
but
me.”

“It was a gut reaction, honey.” Dodie stroked her arm. “It made sense at the time. I called Kate because she's a doctor and then Jo because I knew she could find Travis and get him here.”

“Not because it mattered whether
I
knew or not,” Jo mumbled in a way that seemed half humorous and appeasement for Moxie's sake, half hurt little kid straight from her own heart.

“I was making calls fast and furious as I tried to get Billy J here,” Dodie went on. She sounded truly sorry about the oversight but not upset about Moxie's rudeness brought on by her injured feelings.

“I had to drive Kate,” Vince volunteered. “But you can bet your bait bucket that if I knew you and Billy J needed help, nothing could keep me away.”

“Thanks.” Moxie smiled at the man she considered a big brother to her.

“I came because I thought Lionel could use backup,” Kate snapped. “So I'm going in there to see what I can do to help.”

“No help necessary.” Lionel came through the door again with a file in his hand. “Though, if you'd like, you can go in, look him over and see if you concur with my diagnosis.”

“Diagnosis?” Dodie stepped forward.

Everyone else pressed in behind her.

“What is it?”

“Is he okay?

“What can we do to help?”

Moxie held her arms close in at her sides and shifted her feet to keep anyone from trampling her toes. It was as though they hadn't heard her diatribe about backing off at all.

“It's not a heart attack,” Lionel assured the group.

“Thank the Lord,” Dodie whispered, her hand over her heart.

Vince exhaled and stepped away to rest his back against the wall. “That's great news.”

“Jo and I prayed the whole way over here.” Travis took Moxie's hand and gave it a squeeze.

Suddenly Moxie felt just awful. They had come and crowded in and ignored her ugly reaction because they cared about her father and about her and she had acted so…“I wasn't really angry at you, just…”

“Scared.” Dodie did caress Moxie's cheek this time. “I know. And hurt.”

“Yeah.”

“And you had every right to feel that way.” Dodie's gaze searched Moxie's face.

Tears shimmered in the woman's eyes. Eyes that seemed to Moxie like those of a stranger and at the same time so familiar that she felt she had looked into them a thousand times and every one of those times found love and acceptance.

“You should have been my very first call, Moll…um…Moxie, sweetheart.”

“Thanks.”