A Race to Splendor (31 page)

“Hell,” came the short answer.

Chapter 24

Hell was certainly the place J.D. Thayer appeared to have visited while in Chinatown. Amelia felt a surge of pity well up in her chest, revolted that human beings should continue to treat each other appallingly. Hadn’t the earthquake and fire been cruel enough? Her heaviness of heart felt akin to the grief she carried for the loss of her father and grandfather.

Angus commanded Amelia as if she were still a nurse at the Presidio. “Here, get these filthy clothes off him. I’ll set up my medical kit.”

As she’d learned to do during the quake emergency, she efficiently divested J.D. of his garments, keeping her eyes glued to his face. Loy had fetched a bowl of warm water and two strips of cloth that she and Angus put to immediate use, washing J.D.’s bruised body from head to toe.

By silent, mutual consent, Amelia cleansed the grime from the patient’s torso while the doctor dealt with regions below the waist and applied a liquid tincture to the patient’s cuts.

“Like old times at the Presidio, eh, Amelia?” Angus said.

She nodded, gently scrubbing the filth from J.D.’s forehead where the scars from wounds made on the day of the quake reminded her of that terrible time the three of them had shared. The tanned flesh around Thayer’s eyes was turning purple and was already puffy. The shell of one of his ears was red from the beating he’d taken, and Amelia felt a surge of outrage against men like Kemp and his ilk.

An impulse to cradle J.D.’s head against her chest and try to ease his pain suddenly came over her, feelings she quickly reined in with a glance at Angus, who fortunately appeared intent on the tasks at hand.

J.D.’s eyelids suddenly opened as she patted his cheeks and chin with the moistened cloth. “Thank you…” he murmured, and closed his eyes again. “Funny how you’re the one who always does the rescuing…”

“Shhh…” She was buoyed by the conviction that his teasing words probably meant he would survive this terrible night. “Just sleep now.”

“Here’s a nightshirt,” Angus announced. “I found it on a peg. Let’s get it on ’im.”

A few minutes later, Amelia made her way to the hotel’s makeshift kitchen where Shou Shou had left a low fire burning in the stove and a tin of tea. Amelia brewed a pot, along with some bread that she lightly toasted on the hob. Heading back to the sickroom, she passed Angus in the hallway carrying the bowl of dirty water and a bundle of soiled clothes to give to Loy, who was waiting out back. She suddenly felt exhausted and longed for sleep.

“I’ll just give him this cup and then shall I drive you back to the Presidio?”

“No… I’d better keep a watch on him till morning. See if he’ll drink it. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

When she reentered J.D.’s bedroom, an oil lamp turned low on a side table cast the corners in deep shadow. The patient was now propped against pillows and was staring vacantly into space.

Amelia set the teapot on a packing crate beside the bed and poured a cup. “I thought you’d be fast asleep by now. Here, this might make you feel a bit better.”

“Thank you, but I doubt it. The way I feel right now might well be terminal.”

Amelia smiled at his attempt to joke and sat on the edge of the bed. “Well, at least those ruffians didn’t beat your sense of humor out of you. Come, just have a sip.” As she’d seen the Presidio nurses do, and had done countless times herself as a volunteer at the refugee sites, she put an arm around his shoulders and lifted the cup to his lips with her other hand. His own hands shook as he enveloped hers to hold on to the mug. “That’s it… there you go,” she murmured, and eased the rim to his lips.

He took a sip. “You made this?”

“Tea, coffee, and toast are the only things in a kitchen I know how to do. Is it drinkable?”

“It’s wonderful. Thank you.”

She broke off a bit of toast and fed it to him. “I’m happy to see they didn’t kill you.”

He arched an eyebrow. “You are? Are you sure?”

“J.D., for heavens sake!” She was uncommonly disturbed, somehow, that he might believe she took any pleasure in his most recent misfortune, despite their adversarial relationship before the quake. “Believe me, the one lesson I learned from April eighteenth is to value life over property. I was afraid tonight they’d left you for dead.” She deliberately caught his glance and held it. “I’ve just driven you home from that hellhole. I washed the filth off your body, and I’ve made you some tea. What else should I do to convince you I’m really, truly glad you’re still alive?”

He had the good grace to murmur, “Apologies, Amelia. I’d probably be dead if you hadn’t fetched Angus from the Presidio.”

“It was Loy who fetched
me
and then I fetched Angus. But there’s something I want you to know.”

She leaned forward to force him to look at her, amazed by her own forwardness. For some reason, she didn’t care about propriety. J.D. was alive and had cheated death for a second time. Maybe the fact they’d both witnessed so much destruction made her reckless. The night’s dramatic events had drawn her closer to this man, in spite of his unseemly life that embodied everything she wished to avoid in her own.

His eyes were clear now and staring into hers, and as she had felt when she found him in the rubble of the old Bay View, she had the eerie sense they were the last people on earth.

“What do you want me to know?” he asked quietly.

Before either of them knew what she was doing, she drew closer to brush her lips against his forehead. She could tell he was startled by her touch—and her candor—for he lowered his eyes to the coverlet that she’d pulled up chastely beneath his arms.

“It rather surprises me too, J.D.,” she murmured against his skin, “to discover how very glad I am to see you’re going to be all right.”

“Ah… Amelia.” She could see he was bone weary and slipping toward slumber again. “It would seem we make a habit of rescuing each other from the jaws of disaster.”

“Or so it appears.”

Amelia suddenly sensed someone was standing at the threshold to J.D.’s bedchamber.

“Well, well,” said a voice from across the room.

Amelia turned around on the edge of J.D.’s bed to see Angus leaning against the doorway. How long he’d been there, she couldn’t hazard a guess.

“Giving aid and comfort to the enemy?” Angus pushed his shoulder off the doorjamb and advanced into the room. “You are a true humanitarian, Amelia.”

Annoyed by his sarcasm, she removed the cup from J.D.’s hand, set it firmly on the table, and rose from the patient’s bedside. She quickly assumed her Nurse Bradshaw demeanor.

“Now that you’ve returned, good Dr. McClure, I shall take my leave,” she announced briskly. “I should think, Angus, that you’d be glad to see your two friends getting on so well for once.”

She glanced at J.D., who by this time had closed his eyes and appeared to have dozed off again. Loy stood behind Angus in the doorway, peering in at the patient.

“Workers not come here now,” he said with a worried look.

“Can you find new ones?” Angus asked.

Not easily after what happened last night,
Amelia thought. Who knew better than she the labor difficulties J.D. was up against?

“Maybe find some more,” Loy offered, but his face was the picture of doubt. “Mr. J.D. need pay more money, though. My friends afraid now.”

“Tell them I’ll stand guard while they work,” Angus volunteered. He appeared to have reverted to his usual good humor where J.D. was concerned and patted the pistol tucked into his belt. “The brass at the Presidio owe me some leave. I can help out here for a few days until J.D. finally uncovers his cistern. The sooner you get this hotel up and running, the better for everyone.”

Amelia reached for her shawl, musing that Angus and J.D. might be right—Kemp might very well prefer his former partner to disappear and somehow secure the hotel for himself.
Did J.D. still owe the man money
, she wondered. He’d paid off the original gambling club’s construction costs, but there were probably still some unpaid bills for wood used in the first reconstruction of the Bay View.

You’re just the architect, not the man’s nursemaid or accountant…

“I’ll leave you to sort this all out,” she said. “Good night, everyone.” She peered down at J.D. whose eyes were now at half-mast. “Feel better soon, Mr. Thayer,” she added primly, reverting to his second name.

“I take back what I said to Angus about your driving,” he murmured. “You didn’t do badly on those hills.”

“I’ll consider that high praise then. Get some rest.”

Angus declared. “I’ll see you home.”

“That’s not necessary, Angus. Good night.”

Amelia left Thayer’s room, striding toward the front door of the lobby. The rough cement walls were so very different from the hotel her grandfather had built. Everything felt utterly foreign without the tall, ornate mirrors that hung on the first floor lobby in the old hotel.

And without grandfather…

Had she built a folly? Would anyone like what she’d done, even when it was finished? The new gas lighting fixtures were already installed, though not yet supplied with fuel. She cast an educated eye at the window casements facing Taylor Street, which fortunately appeared perfectly in plumb. The seams on the granite slabs that formed the front steps lined up perfectly. In all, the construction work was first rate, which cheered her on this gloomy night. She continued outdoors into the moisture-laden predawn, surprised to sense Angus suddenly at her heels.

“Amelia. Wait a minute.”

By this time she was about to give the Winton’s starting crank a spin. Angus strode to the front of the car and insisted on doing the honors. Amelia took the driver’s seat and when the motor caught, he approached the vehicle’s left side, apparently anxious to make amends for his sharp words earlier.

“Take care now, lassie,” he offered, handing her the crank to stow on the floor of the passenger side. “I’d have you on my medical team anytime.”

She smiled, relieved that the chill between them had evaporated. Angus was a good friend and someone she would always admire. He had leapt to his comrade’s aid without question or qualm.

“Well, thank you, sir,” she replied and winked. “May I properly be called an ambulance driver now?”

“I’d call you a battlefield veteran, to be sure,” he murmured. Then, without warning, he bent forward to kiss her on the lips. Dumbfounded by this move, Amelia instinctively pulled back and stared into his pale blue eyes. “Surely,” he said, “it’s time for you to be in bed, lass. Let me escort you back to the Fairmont.”

“Angus, I—”

His kiss had not been at all brotherly and that disturbed her. She shook her head emphatically. “And neglect your patient? I wouldn’t hear of it.” She wanted Angus for a
friend,
not a suitor. She enjoyed his company but felt not a flutter of physical attraction for him. It would be cruel to allow him to think of her in any other capacity than a good companion, especially since his friend J.D. had kissed her and—

That has nothing to do with this!

“Loy can mind Jamie for a bit while I see you home,” Angus was saying. “I want to be sure you get back all right.”

She made a show of pulling her driving gloves on more securely while she searched for an answer to fend him off.

“It’s only four blocks, Angus. I’ve just driven thirty. I’ll be fine.” She put the car in gear and looked at him expectantly, willing him to take his foot off the running board. He did, with obvious reluctance, and she sped off into the night.

By the time she’d driven the short distance that separated the Bay View from the Fairmont, she felt bone-deep exhaustion. She came to a halt in the new garage at the back of the property where the construction shed was but a memory. Reflexively glancing into the shadows to be sure she was alone, she moved quickly over the terrain and inside the back door of the hotel. It had been a frightening, disturbing night and she locked the door securely, feeling as if some drugged predator from Chinatown might jump from the darkness to attack her.

Scolding herself for such silliness, she moved down the gloomy corridor and let herself into her small room off the kitchen, locking that door as well. She undressed, wondering if she’d be able to fall asleep before it would be time to drag herself out of bed and begin another long, arduous day.

It hardly seemed possible, but soon, the scaffolding would come down on this building and the owners of the Fairmont would host a gala anniversary reception. In contrast, the Bay View had yet to get its roof on and its second cistern completed, not to mention all the finishing yet to be done on the interior and exterior. This latest setback involving an attack on the Bay View’s owner would only delay them further, not to mention having to recruit even more workers and pay them higher wages.

If J.D. had intended the Bay View Hotel to beat the Fairmont’s scheduled opening by a week or more, as rumored, Kemp’s hooligans had certainly left that plot in disarray.

***

By noon the next day, J.D. felt well enough to rise from his bed and totter over to a straight-back chair. He’d half hoped that his erstwhile nurse would pay a call to see how her patient was progressing, but when Amelia didn’t appear, he assumed she was repulsed to have seen him at his absolute worst. It was positively uncanny how a woman who should be his permanent adversary had virtually saved his life—twice.