Not Quite Forever (Not Quite series) (26 page)

They enjoyed a good laugh and Walt finished his beer. “We’ve talked about it. She doesn’t want to rush into anything because of the baby.”

“What do you want?” Glen asked.

“We’d already be married if it were up to me.”

“Sounds to me like you have some schmoozing to do, Doc,” Jason said with a smile.

“While the girls are enjoying some retail therapy in the city, I can hook you up with a certain jeweler I know.”

Glen shoved his brother. “Pushy much?”

Trent held up his palm. “Just offering.”

Walt pushed off the porch, turned toward the house. “Never hurts to look.”

Glen shook his head. “Another one bites the dust.”

Trent slapped his hand onto Glen’s back. “I’m not dead, brother.”

They waited until Saturday to invade the shops in Manhattan. After their first successful turkey, and only a slightly disappointing pie disaster, Thanksgiving was one of the best in recent memory.

“You do know normal people don’t land on rooftops for shopping trips, right?”

Mary had a point, but Dakota wasn’t complaining. Traffic into the city would have sucked and she’d never flown in a helicopter before.

Monica twisted in her seat to look at the three of them tucked in the back. “Have you met my husband?” They all wore earphones so they could talk to each other in-flight. Trent was navigating over rooftops as he made his way to the building where Fairchild Charters headquarters were located. “Believe me,” Monica continued, “I’d much rather drive.”

“Oh, you love it,” Trent said.

Monica shook her head but smiled when Trent looked her way. “I do it for you, Barefoot.”

Dakota found it highly entertaining that Monica had a fear of flying when her husband was one-third owner of the largest chartering company for private jets and helicopters. According to Monica, Trent would fly everywhere if he could just get clearance to land.

Trent set the helicopter down without so much as a thump. They waited until after he’d powered off the engine and the blades stopped rotating before they all jumped out.

The cold New York wind was blowing, making Dakota duck farther into her down coat.

Trent guided them to the elevator and down to the ground floor.

The building was virtually empty over the holiday weekend. Security watched them as they walked by.

“I have a car waiting to take you ladies wherever you want to go.”

Dakota grinned. “What, you guys don’t want to join us?”

Walt lifted one eyebrow. “For manicures and endless shoe shopping? How about we meet up with you for lunch?”

“Dinner at Bar Mesa. Lunch is only a couple of hours away and who knows where we’ll be.”

“So we’ll meet at the hotel by six?” Trent asked.

They were staying in the city until Monday so Dakota could take care of her publisher business and deliver a surprise package to her agent and editor.

They stepped back out into the cold and Walt pulled Dakota close. “Careful, the sidewalks are slick.”

“I’m a big girl.”

He kissed her briefly and touched the end of her nose. “You’re a tiny girl with precious cargo who might make you off your game. Be careful . . . for me.”

With a request like that, she was helpless to do anything but nod. “What are you guys going to do?”

“I think there’s a nudey bar on the east side,” Trent teased.

Monica, not missing a beat, said, “You enjoy that, Barefoot.”

“Any other woman would be jealous.”

“Of heroin-addicted anorexic bodies twisting around a pole? I don’t think so.”

Dakota laughed. “Sounds appetizing.”

Mary, in true Mary form, added, “I’m sure they’re not all addicts.”

Dakota shivered against the cold and laughed. “OK, Miss Literal. Let’s get our minds out of the stripper bar and on to some serious Christmas shopping. I have goals, ladies, and they don’t involve freezing my butt off out here.”

They climbed into the back of a limousine and drove off.

“Can I just say, for the record, that I seriously love the style in which you guys live.” Dakota sat back and stretched out her boot-laden feet.

“I still pinch myself,” Monica told them. “My sister and I grew up without much of anything. It’s taken Trent a few years to get me used to having money and spending it.”

The long car moved along the New York streets, horns blaring and pedestrians trying to outmaneuver the cars. Even though the temperature dipped into the twenties and snow was in the forecast, the city buzzed with energy and droves of people filled every cement corner.

“We had all we needed.” Dakota added her own experience with money. “Both parents, a house, food, and discipline but there wasn’t anything excessive. We took family vacations, national parks, big attractions, stuff like that. That’s all I really want for my kids.”

“But this is so much better,” Mary said.

“It doesn’t suck.”

The driver’s name was Nathaniel, and he knew his way around the city and managed to get them curbside for every store they wanted to patronize. Window shopping in New York consisted of real windows. Some of the most recognizable department stores decorated their windows with massive holiday displays. Bell-ringing Santas stood on every corner.

They walked passed Bulgari and Monica paused. “Let’s go in.”

Mary rolled her eyes. “Why?”

“I wanna look. Besides, Trent likes buying me stupid expensive stuff. I might as well figure out what I like and lead him in the right direction.”

They stepped into the warm jewelry store and Monica huddled close. “I have an idea.”

“Oh?” Dakota removed her gloves and rubbed warmth back into her fingers. Her thin California blood was showing.

“We distract them with you looking for the perfect ring, and I can shop in peace.”

“The perfect wedding ring?”

“Sure. Not a stretch with Junior on board.” Monica looked down at Dakota’s belly, which seemed to be expanding daily since she shopped for maternity clothes.

“Perfect idea,” Mary said.

Dakota rolled her eyes. “Fine.”

Monica laughed like a schoolgirl and headed to the wedding sets like a woman on a mission. “I’m telling you, this is the only place Trent shops.”

A very tall, very stacked, very attractive brunette approached them with a smile that spread for miles. “Might I help you, ladies?”

Monica took over. “Is Gill here?”

The lady’s smile waivered. “Of course.”

As Miss Plastic turned to leave, Dakota whispered, “You know someone who works here?”

Monica shook her head. “No, but Trent does. Talks about this guy all the time.”

“Why am I not surprised?” Mary asked.

“So here’s what we’ll do. Dakota, you look, play, fiddle. Mary and I will tag team at your side while I check out a few things in the store. Sound good?”

“How am I supposed to fiddle?”

“You’re a writer . . . you can figure it out.”

Mary chuckled while a tall, extremely attractive man stepped from the back of the store.

“Ladies?” He stopped in front of them and Dakota was sure the sound of Mary dropping an egg was heard over their collective gasps. “I understand you’re looking for me?”

“We are?” Mary asked.

“We are.”

Dakota leaned into Mary. “You like Glen.”

Mary shook herself and the temporary insanity created by masculine beauty eased.

“I’m Monica Fairchild,” Monica announced while she placed her hand in the jeweler’s. “My husband shops here . . . or so I’m told.”

“Trent. Yes, he does. We went to school together.”

Monica smiled. “Is that right? He didn’t tell me that.”

“Some secrets are meant to be held close, don’t you think?”

Monica’s eyes grew wide and looked Dakota’s way. “Well, we’re here to help my friend.”

Gill focused on Dakota and practically dismissed Monica.

“Maybe you know her. Dakota Laurens.”

Gill offered a blank stare, not that Dakota expected anything different. Men in particular weren’t her reading public.

The brunette who had searched Gill out lit up. “The author?”

Monica smiled and Dakota studied the floor.

“Yes, the author. She’s looking at rings.”

The entire idea started to give Dakota chills. “I don’t know about this, Monica.”

“C’mon. Gill is the best in the business. Trent only deals with the best. If there isn’t something you like here, they can have it made . . . right, Gill?”

Gill offered a thousand-watt smile. “We do custom work all the time.” He walked around the counter and shook Dakota’s hand. “I’ve never met an author.”

She smiled, shook his hand, and loosened the scarf around her neck. “I hope we’re not wasting your time.”

“Any friend of a Fairchild is a friend of mine.”

Funny how a jeweler wanted to be friends with a gazillionaire’s lady friends. “I really don’t know what I’m looking for.”

He led her to a counter and offered her a chair. “Monica said a ring.”

“She writes romance novels. The sexy kind that always end with big diamonds and lots of glitter,” Monica told him.

Gill laughed and pulled a platform of rings from the showcase. “A lady such as yourself must have an idea of what she’d like to see on her own hand.”

Dakota glanced at the rings sitting in front of her and sighed. “Actually, I’ve no idea. Every character has her own ideas of the perfect setting. Personally, I’ve never given it much thought.”

“Well then, we have some work to do.”

Monica and Mary stood close while Gill showed her several settings. Most of the solitary-diamond, traditional two-band settings did nothing for her taste buds. Only when she shooed her friends off did Gill bring out the more glittery rings that Dakota didn’t mind saying she liked.

He placed a large round diamond with double bands of smaller diamonds intertwined on her finger. “We can change the shape and quality of the stone,” he told her.

“This is lovely.”

“You have an eye for quality,” Gill told her.

Dakota knew how to read between the lines.

“Quality means money. Do I even want to ask what this costs?”

He smiled. “Probably not.”

She shrugged out of her coat and pulled her hair behind her. Dakota looked over her shoulder, noticed Mary and Monica looking at earrings.

“Should we talk budget?” Gill asked.

“Probably not,” Dakota mimicked his words. “But a girl can dream . . . right?”

She looked at the ring one last time, removed it, and set it on the counter. “What else do you have?”

Trent slapped a well-placed hand on Walt’s back. “Gill and I go way back.”

Walt watched Dakota on video.

Gill paused the video. “This is the only one she actually wore for any length of time and sighed when she took it off.”

Walt peered closer. “I know nothing about diamonds.”

Gill removed a box from his pocket and placed it in front of Walt.

“It’s three and a half carats GIA certified . . .” He went on to spout numbers and letters. None of which made any sense to
Walt
. “The minute I started talking budget, she took it off and asked to look at other rings.”

When Gill told him the cost, Walt understood Dakota’s hesitation.

Chapter Twenty-Three

A buzzer . . . a bell. No, an earthquake.

Dakota shook herself awake and recognized a phone ringing. It took several seconds to orient herself.

The Manhattan Morrison, a shared penthouse suite . . . and an annoying phone ringing in the dead of night.

She heard Walt’s sleepy voice as he answered the phone. “Hello? . . . This is.”

It’s insane how one can go from comatose to the world to wide awake in the blink of an eye. The way Walt spoke into the phone put Dakota on alert. She sat up and turned on a bedside light.

Walt was sitting up, his cell phone cradled to his ear, his eyes wide. “What was his Troponin level?”

She reached for his hand and held tight when he squeezed.

“I’m in New York. It’s going to take me a few hours to get there. All right. Good-bye.”

“What happened?”

Walt’s face was a shade of white she never wanted to see. “My father had a heart attack.”

Dakota blinked, felt her heart drop. “Is he . . .”

“Alive, in the ICU.”

“Oh, Walt.” She wrapped her arms around him, wished she could take some of the burden draping over him like a cloud.

“I have to go.”

Dakota leaned back. “We. We have to go. I’ll wake the others, you pack.”

Between arranging a flight and driving to the airport, it took them nearly seven hours to land in Denver. Walt had little to say as he held her hand and walked through the doors of the hospital.

They were led to the waiting room of the ICU, where they found Brenda curled up, her head in Larry’s lap.

Larry noticed them first. “Hey.”

Brenda woke slowly, her eyes were swollen, her clothes rumpled. “Oh, Walt.” She uncurled from the couch and moved in to hug her brother.

“How is he?”

“Sleeping. Mom is in there with him. It was awful, Walt.”

Walt kissed the top of his sister’s head and turned to the locked doors of the ICU. “Wait out here for me?” he asked Dakota.

“Of course.”

After announcing himself to the staff, they buzzed him in.

Dakota dropped her purse into a chair. “How are the two of you doing? Have you eaten?”

Brenda shook her head, her gaze moved to Dakota’s hand resting on the baby.

“So my mother was telling the truth.”

It was hard to find a smile. “Walt and I are having a baby.”

Without warning, Brenda pulled her into a hug. “That’s awesome. I’m so happy for you.”

Larry hugged her next, patted her belly the moment he let go. “For everything bad that happens out there, something good is there to take its place.”

Familiar beeps and dings filled the ICU as Walt walked through. Antiseptic mixed with more scents than should be possible filled his nose.

He thought he was prepared. It wasn’t like he didn’t know what a man in a hospital bed recovering from an MI looked like. Still, Walt hesitated at the doorway, feeling as if someone sucker punched him in the gut.

Walter Eddy II had aged ten years overnight. His face was drawn, his color matched the white of the sheets. Walt’s mother sat sleeping in a chair by his father’s bed, her head drifting to one side.

When his foot scraped the floor, his mother’s head snapped up. “Walter,” she whispered.

She unfolded from the chair and stepped into his arms. They stepped out of the room in an attempt to keep from waking his father.

“How is he?”

“Stanley said he’s stable. You remember Dr. Altman?”

Stanley Altman was a longtime consultant with his father. A man they both looked up to and trusted. It would make sense that his father would want Stanley to take care of him, and vice versa if their roles were reversed.

“Of course. Has he been in this morning?”

His mom nodded. “Before office hours. He’s waiting for you to arrive, said to call him when you got here.”

Walt glanced back inside the room, noticed the cardiac monitor, his father’s rhythm and basic vital signs.
Stable
was a relative term when someone was hooked up to as many drugs as his father was. Probably best the man was sleeping, Lord knew how he was going to react when he had enough energy to bitch.

Walt approached the nursing station and asked to speak with the nurse caring for his father. Millie was a tiny Filipino woman with very little accent. After he introduced himself he asked to see his father’s chart, requested she call Stanley and let him know he was there.

As luck would have it, Stanley had cleared Walt to look over his father’s chart.

He started with the ER report and traced the events. An ambulance arrived twenty minutes after 911 was called. Snow on the mountain and the remote location of his family home would always prove a problem for timely emergency response time. According to their records, his father had collapsed, crushing chest pain radiating down his left arm. All the classic signs of a heart attack. What surprised Walt was the record of medications his father was taking according to the triage report. From what he could tell, his father knew he had a predisposition for a heart attack.

“Dr. Eddy?”

Walt looked up, found Millie standing over him. “Dr. Altman is on the line.”

“Thank you, Millie.” Walt took the phone and turned the page in the chart. “Hi Stanley.”

“Hello Walt. I’d ask how you are . . . but . . .”

“No need for pleasantries. Thanks for taking care of my dad.”

“I’d do anything for him. You know that.”

With the niceties aside, Walt dove in. “So he went to the cath lab?”

Stanley told him about his blockages, the ones they had to open in the cardiac catheterization lab . . . and the ones they still needed to attack. “He needs bypass, Walt. I’ve been harping on him for over a year. Maybe now he’ll listen.”

“Jesus, Stanley, he never said a word to me about this.”

“We’re surgeons, Walt. Hard to take it when something goes wrong with our own bodies.”

“Hard to admit, you mean.”

“Very hard. Maybe you can convince him. Of all people he knows the risk and the gain. Your dad is stubborn.”

“You don’t have to tell me. I’ll do my best. When do you think he’ll be able to go under?”

“I’d like to see him stabilize, get a couple nights’ rest. Of course if he turns we’ll want to go right away.”

Emergency surgery was never an optimal choice. “I’ll talk to him.”

“You know where to find me. And make sure your mother goes home. I can’t kick her out, but she’s not doing him or her any good sitting there.”

“Got it. Thanks.”

Walt ran a hand over the stubble on his chin and closed his father’s chart.

He encouraged his mother to join him outside the room.

“Looks like Dad is going to be here for a few days.”

“That’s what Stanley said.”

“Did you know about his heart?”

His mother’s jaw came up and part of her normal mask reappeared. “We didn’t really talk about these things. He said something about taking medicine, but he didn’t offer any details. I assumed he would have said something if it were serious.”

That sounded about right. JoAnne liked her perfect world perfect, and his father often kept certain truths from her to keep her sheltered.

“He needs surgery.”

She offered a blank stare and blinked several times. “Open heart?”

“Yes.”

There was a pause. “And if he doesn’t have it?”

Walt glanced into his father’s room. “More of this. Hopefully the medics continue to arrive in time.”

“Then what are we waiting for?”

Sounded like his mother was ready to move forward with the right decisions. “We need him a little healthier first. A couple of days if we can hold off.”

His mom rubbed her forehead.

“You’re tired.”

“I’ve been tired before. I’ll survive.”

Walt placed an arm over his mother’s shoulders. “You need some sleep, a good meal.”

“I need to be here.”

“You’re of no use to anyone exhausted. Besides, Dad needs his sleep. When he has surgery, you’ll want to be close by. I looked at his chart and Stanley agrees, he’s stable. Let me take over for a while.”

He shoulders slumped. “You’re right. I know you’re right.”

She retrieved her purse from the room and followed beside him as they exited the ICU.

He found Dakota sitting alone in the lobby. She stood when they walked out and offered a smile.

His mother stiffened beside him. “I didn’t know you brought
her
along.”

How his mother could be anything but humbled, Walt would never know. Instead of honoring her words, he looked around the lobby. “Where did Brenda and Larry go?”

“Home. Larry said he’d be back in a few hours. They needed to recharge.”

Walt turned to his mother. “Is your car here?”

“It is. But I can’t go home now. I’m too upset to drive.” She turned back toward the ICU and Walt jumped in front of her.

“I can call a cab.”

“I don’t think so, Walter.”

“I can drive her,” Dakota offered.

Walt would have refused if it weren’t in Dakota’s best interest to avoid hospital lobbies. The last thing Dakota needed was to catch something hanging out in a hospital. As much as he wanted her by his side, Walt knew to diminish Dakota’s exposure to anything floating in the hospital. The fact she was pregnant and not able to combat simple bacteria or a virus would compromise her health. He had enough to deal with . . . Dakota becoming ill would gut him.

“You should both go to the house and get some sleep.”

JoAnne started to refuse and Walt raised his voice. “Mom. Please. I need to focus on Dad and not on arguing with you.”

She released a long-suffering sigh and walked out of the lobby.

Walt moved to Dakota’s side. “Thank you for taking her home.”

“Not a problem. How is he doing?”

He shook his head. “He’s sick. Needs surgery. It’s going to be a long week.”

“Let me know what I can do to help.”

Walt dropped his lips to hers. “Being here helps.”

“I’m a phone call away.”

“Text me when you get to the house.”

“OK.”

He kissed her again and watched her walk away.

Back inside the ICU, Walt took over where his mother left off.

When Millie came into the room to change his father’s IV solution and check his vitals, his father finally opened his eyes. “Leave me alone, Millie,” he told the nurse.

Walt laughed.

“Can’t do it, Dr. Eddy. I let you sleep an extra half an hour, but that’s it.”

“I’m going to remember this,” he threatened.

Walt met the eyes of the nurse and grinned. “He’s all bark, Millie.”

Walt’s father turned his head. “Well look who showed up. Thanksgiving was a few days ago.” He paused, pulled himself up higher in the bed, refusing Millie’s help. “You’re late.”

“If it meant this much to you, Dad, you could have just said so. Faking a heart attack to get me to fly in the dead of night is overkill.” He was smiling, enjoying the half smile on his father’s face.

“Good God,” Walter sighed. “A cardiac surgeon having an MI. What are the odds?”

“Really good according to your doctor. What the hell, Dad. You had to know this was coming.”

Millie took his dad’s temperature, and adjusted the amount of solution his father was getting in his IV. “I wanna see my lab work,” he told Millie. “Make sure Stanley isn’t overdosing me with Heparin.”

“He uses the same titration for his patients as you do for yours, Dr. Eddy.”

“Still wanna see my labs.”

“Of course, Doctor.”

Poor Millie. Walt made a mental note to deliver a bottle of good wine to every nurse having the
privilege
of caring for his father.

Millie finished her work and moved from the room.

“She’s one of the best nurses in the unit,” his dad said after she left the room.

“And yet you treat her like crap.”

He scoffed. “I send candy at Christmas.”

Far be it for Walt to explain hospital politics to his father. “Whatever works for you, Dad. I learned during my residency to respect the nursing staff and you’d never be jostled awake at two in the morning because your patient spiked a whopping 99.7 fever.”

“I need to know that stuff.”