With Family In Mind (Saddle Falls Book 1) (7 page)

“Jake, I know you and your family haven’t had an easy time.” Rebecca deliberately avoided mentioning
his brother Jesse. “I understand you’ve had some bad experiences with the press in the past, and that’s unfortunate. I’m sorry for it—I truly am. I’m not saying all reporters are ethical or even care about the truth. They don’t. But like every profession, there are some good people and some not so good.” She shrugged. “No matter what you think of reporters, no matter what your own personal experiences have been, I can assure you that I take what I do very seriously. Honesty is my stock-in-trade, something I pride myself on, as well as the fact that what I do for the most part helps people, sometimes people who’ve given up hope of ever being helped.” Rebecca was thoughtful for a moment. “When I was a senior in college, I did an internship at the
Reno Sun.
I—”

“Is that where you’re from? Reno?”

“Yes,” she said with an absent nod, her mind on the story she was telling. Confiding in someone, sharing a part of herself with them, was uncomfortable for Rebecca. Now that she’d started, she wanted to continue. “Anyway, as an intern, I was assigned to do a short human interest piece about this little girl who was basically a medical oddity. It was supposed to be one of those feel-good Sunday inspirational pieces about this plucky kid from a single-parent home who’d survived terrific odds and yet still kept going because of her indomitable spirit.”

“Okay, so what’s the catch?”

“No catch, Jake. But it brought up a lot more than either me or my editor bargained for. At eight, this little girl had been hospitalized for most of her life, with all kinds of different ailments. She’d had numer
ous surgeries, emergencies, illnesses—you name it, this poor kid had had it. I did my homework on this, Jake, as I have with every story since, and I learned that this poor kid had suffered a great deal in her young life, and yet the doctors could never find any tangible reason why this little girl kept getting all these very strange and serious illnesses.”

“That’s weird,” he said with a frown, interested now in spite of himself.

“It gets weirder,” she admitted with a slow smile, feeling more relaxed now that they weren’t sniping at each other. “Her mother was a widow who’d lost her husband three years before, and the little girl was all she had left. It was clear she loved her daughter very much.”

“But?”
He heard the note of reserve in her voice and glanced at her, one brow lifted in question. Absently, he reached out and tucked a few strands of hair behind her ear, causing Rebecca to shiver at his unexpected touch.

Taking a deep breath, she tried to ignore the fact that he’d just touched her again and set off another riot in her pulse. “I just had a feeling, call it a gut instinct if you will, that something wasn’t right between this mother and child.”

Jake pulled into the parking lot of the Saddle Falls Hotel and turned off the engine, then turned to look at her with a frown. “What on earth would make you think that?”

She shook her head. “I honestly don’t know, Jake. I think it’s what the media call a ‘reporter’s nose.’ People think that’s just an expression, but it’s not.”
Her voice calmed as she explained. “It’s when you know something isn’t quite right, but you just can’t put your finger on exactly what’s wrong.”

“So you dig and dig until you find the truth?” he asked, not certain if she was telling this to him to calm his fears or arouse them.

“Yeah, something like that.” She watched as he adjusted his long legs more comfortably in the confined space. “Well, my editor wasn’t particularly interested in some college kid’s theories. All he wanted was five hundred words to fill the white space in the Sunday Lifestyle section.” She smiled in remembrance, aware that Jake had turned toward her and was watching her intently. It was a bit disconcerting to be the sole focus of his attention. “But I wasn’t ready to give up. I felt like I had a responsibility to get to the truth. To find out what was bothering me about this little girl and her mother.”

“And did you?” he asked, realizing he probably knew the answer before she even spoke. He’d already seen her sadness, but now, watching her, he saw beyond the sadness to something else—the passion.

She was obviously passionate about her work, and in spite of the fact that he didn’t like what she did, he had to admire her dedication to her craft.

Heat and passion, he thought, letting his gaze roam over that beautiful face. It was a helluva combination, making him wonder if she’d be that passionate, or use that heat, for anything other than her career. If she wasn’t a reporter, it might be interesting to find out.

“It took me three months, and almost cost me my graduation because I cut so many classes, but I
couldn’t give it up, Jake. I had to find out what was wrong in this situation. I had to get to the truth. There was something there, something that just didn’t add up.” Lost in the story, he watched her face become animated, losing some of its haunting sadness. “On the surface, the kid’s mother seemed totally devoted to her, attentive, loving, caring. She baked her daughter’s favorite cookies almost every day and brought them to the hospital, along with at least one of her daughter’s favorite meals, either spaghetti and meat-balls or chicken soup.” Rebecca shrugged. “Every kid’s dream of the perfect mother,” she added quietly, sadly, thinking of her own poor excuse for a parent.

Her gaze had grown cool and cloudy, and it was deliberate, Jake realized, so he couldn’t read her expression. Something about what she’d just told him had made her withdraw from him. What? he wondered. And more importantly, why?

Cocking his head, he thought about it, letting his gaze linger on that beautiful mouth of hers. It was definitely a mouth that begged to be kissed. “I hate to tell you this, Slick, but a mother who is devoted to her sick kid, and bakes and cooks the kid’s favorite foods—well hell, none of this sounds very suspicious to me.”

“No, on the surface, it doesn’t,” she admitted. “But there
was
something there. I could just feel it.”

“So you dug until you got to the truth.” His words sounded like an accusation again, and she had to quell her natural urge to get defensive.

“Exactly,” she said, forcing herself to meet his gaze and keep her voice neutral, even though her pulse
leaped like an Olympic vaulter every time she looked into his glorious eyes. Those eyes, she thought, ought to carry a warning label. “Have you ever heard of Munchausen syndrome by proxy?”

“Munchausen syndrome?” She’d caught him off guard. He was still thinking about what it would be like to kiss her, and he frowned in thought. “I think so, but I’m not sure I know what it is.”

“It’s when a parent, in most cases the mother, deliberately makes a child sick because of the attention it focuses on the parent.”

His gaze narrowed dangerously. “Are you telling me that this kid’s mother was deliberately making her kid sick?”

“Yes, that’s exactly what I’m telling you.” Shaking her head at the memory, Rebecca blew out a breath. “I knew there was something seriously wrong. Things didn’t add up. I kept digging until I found out the girl’s father had had a complete thyroidectomy and had to take daily medication until his death. I went to the doctors with my suspicions and at first they didn’t believe me until they did some additional tests and discovered the child had a thyroid drug in her system. The food the mother was bringing the child every day—the homemade cookies, the home-cooked meals—were laced with a wide assortment of various poisons, different things that were slowly causing the kid’s organs to shut down. The doctors knew something was poisoning the kid, but they thought it was something internal—you know, her own body turning on itself the way it does when, say, there is internal gangrene poisoning. They tested her, of course, for
any number of things, but there was such a variety of poisons in the food, things that were virtually untraceable unless you specifically tested for that type of poison.”

“So how the hell did you—did they—catch her?” His look of horror, of disgust, was clear.

“I think it was just pure luck. The mother got either very bold or very careless. We’ll never know which. She began crushing up tablets used for people who have thyroid problems, or who have had their thyroid removed. In the correct dosage, when this drug is prescribed properly, it can be a lifesaver, doing the work of the damaged or missing thyroid. But in a child with a normal, healthy thyroid, the drug can be an overdosing agent and causes extreme cardiac distress, even coronary thrombosis—a severe heart attack in some cases. The kid developed severe arrhythmia—something not normally found in an eight-year-old child.”

“Damn!” Shaken, Jake dragged a hand through his hair. “You mean she could have died?” Shock sharpened his eyes, his voice.

“She almost
did
die,” Rebecca corrected softly, averting her gaze from his simply because looking directly at him was too disconcerting, especially when he was so close. She took a deep breath to gather her thoughts. “Fortunately, this drug is easily detected in the bloodstream. Doctors discovered the poisoning within a few days.” She dared a glance at him. He was still watching her intently, causing her heart to knock against her ribs in a staccato rhythm. “They knew the only way the kid could have gotten a prescription medication like that into her system was
from something she ingested. Her medication was strictly monitored, as was her food. The mother was immediately suspect—she was the only visitor the girl had other than the family priest, and he was ruled out since he’d only visited once, a week before this final incident.” Acutely aware of Jake in the close, warm confines of the car, Rebecca nervously pushed her hair off her neck. “From my background investigation, I learned that the kid’s father had had a complete thyroidectomy three years prior to his death. He’d been taking this drug daily from the time of his surgery until he died.”

“My God.” Jake shook his head. “She was giving the kid the father’s medication?” At Rebecca’s nod, he blew out a breath and shook his head. She could see his anger in the sudden tenseness of his shoulders. “What the hell kind of woman tries to kill her own kid?”

“She wasn’t trying to kill her, Jake,” she said softly. “That’s the point.”

“Well, she did one hell of an imitation.”

“Yes, but killing the child wasn’t the object, getting the attention she craved via her daughter’s numerous illnesses was.” Rebecca paused. “The mother was as sick emotionally as her child was physically. Munchausen is an emotional and psychological disease, very real and very dangerous. It’s basically a parental cry for attention.”

“So because this woman wanted attention, she poisoned her own kid?” He scowled, causing those glorious eyes to darken. “I can’t even conceive of anyone deliberately hurting their own child, or someone they
love.” He shook his head again. “It’s inconceivable to me, and so foreign to everything I’ve been brought up to believe.” It was his turn to pause, and he turned to glance out the windshield as he struggled to get his emotions under control. “Family is sacred to me, Rebecca,” he finally said, his voice so quiet, so achingly sad it made her own heart ache, knowing how his family had suffered. “You love, cherish and protect your family at all costs.” He turned to her and she could see the pain etched in his face. It immediately softened her toward him. “At least that’s what the Ryans believe.”

Instinct took over, and without thought Rebecca laid a hand on his arm, not just to touch, but to comfort. That, too, was foreign to her, but just seemed so right somehow. “I know, Jake, and I understand that. Truly.” Her voice was a whisper. “Which is the whole point in telling you this story. I wrote it, and spent months and months researching and digging for the truth, because I truly believed something was wrong there, seriously wrong, and I knew that if I didn’t, no one else would. No one seemed to care about one poor little girl who was suffering unbearably because of her mother.” Her own words echoed in her ears and she realized she could have been talking about herself.

“But you cared,” he said quietly, looking at her in a new light and covering her fingers with his own. Her hand was small, delicate and feminine. And so soft it made him ache to touch her other places, to see if she was that soft all over.

Rebecca swallowed hard and forced herself to con
tinue. “Yes, I cared, Jake, not because of the sensationalism of the story, not because I wanted to hurt the mother or invade her privacy, but because I needed to get to the bottom of it, to find out what was wrong.”

“To find the truth?” He was beginning to think he’d misjudged her, and been biased and unfair, allowing his own personal prejudices to cloud his reasoning, which was not his way. He was usually thought to be a rather fair person, except when his family’s safety was at issue. Then all bets were off.

But still, hearing the pain in Rebecca’s voice, understanding the dedication it took to get to the bottom of this story, made him realize that perhaps Rebecca St. John was different from what he’d first believed her to be. Perhaps, just perhaps, she deserved the benefit of the doubt. It was something to think about.

She nodded. “Yes, Jake, to find the truth. But in order to get to the truth, someone had to get hurt. I had to invade the mother’s privacy, to delve into her past to see if my hunch was right. So yes, in this instance I did hurt someone, and I did deliberately invade her privacy—”

“Yeah, but Rebecca, that’s different—”

“Different?” One brow rose and she almost smiled, wondering if he realized he was now
defending
her and her actions. “How is that different, Jake?”

“Well…” He was trying to think, but she was so close and her hand was still on his and her touch was distracting him, interrupting his brain waves to the point where thinking was difficult. “It’s different be
cause…” His voice trailed off and he merely stared at her, feeling like a fool.

He hadn’t expected her touch to hit him in the gut with a sledgehammer of desire.

With great effort, Jake gave himself a mental shake and dragged his thoughts back to their conversation, even as his gaze settled on her soft mouth again—a mouth he wasn’t going to be able to resist much longer. “What you did, Rebecca, saved that kid’s life. So the mother got hurt. Big deal! Under the circumstances, considering what she’d been doing to her own kid, I’d say she deserved anything she got. If you hadn’t dug into the mother’s past that kid might be dead right now.”