Twin Cowboys for Tamara (33 page)

“But I thought he suffered from diabetes,” she croaked, looking up at the doctor like a lost child.

The doctor shook his head. “Your father is terminal, Ms.

Carpenter. He didn’t want his family to know before now just how ill he was, I mean is…”

Before now,
Jess thought, focusing on the doctor’s words, his first time hearing the hard ugly truth about Bailey’s condition up close and personal. So the man had finally decided to come clean. Probably because he just didn’t have a choice anymore.

The doctor continued addressing Tamara. “But I assure you it’s not diabetes.”

“The seizure—”

“The previous and most recent seizures were side effects from brain edema or swelling. We’ve been treating Mr. Carpenter with a various course of therapies including steroids, anticonvulsants, Ebook piracy is stealing. It is a federal offense.

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radiation and chemotherapy, but despite our best efforts and your father’s fortitude, this type of tumor grows and spreads aggressively.”

“Surgery?”

“Isn’t an option in his case. I’m sorry.”

“How long?”

“Matter of days, a week at the most.”

Tamara gasped, and Jess saw the tears in her eyes, felt her struggle not to shed them before she finally asked, “How long has he had cancer? When did you diagnose him?”

“As I said, your father is a fighter. Initially, about a year ago, we gave him six, maybe eight months tops and—”

“That can’t be. Why wouldn’t he tell me this? Why?” Tamara asked, almost to herself then aimed her gaze at each man in turn.

Jess’s heart flipped over and stopped for the moment her eyes found his. He swallowed hard over the lump in his throat, praying she didn’t put things together, praying she didn’t ask why Bailey hadn’t told him, Jax and Jeremiah about his condition, praying that she wouldn’t soon see him as an enemy to despise and mistrust.

“So what you’re telling me is he’s dying.”

Jess heard the defiance in her voice, as if she marshalled her strength for a fight. Definitely Bailey’s daughter. She didn’t let anything get her down for too long.

“I’m afraid so.”

Tamara shook her head, stood and began to pace. “But you made a mistake once. He’s lasted much longer than you gave him.” She looked at all of them in turn before peering at the doctor as if for confirmation. “He’s been up and around roping and riding like usual.

He wouldn’t be able to do that and look so healthy if he were this sick, would he?”

“Some people often undergo a surge of vitality before the end. It’s like the calm before the storm, but it doesn’t change the final outcome or prognosis.”

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“There must be something else you can do, something you haven’t already tried.”

“We’re making him comfortable. That’s the best we can do.” The doctor put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed. “Go to him.” And just like that, he left, his job done.

But theirs had just begun, Jess thought, glancing at his co-conspirators and wondering who would break first.

Tamara shook her head, flopped down onto the sofa and buried her face in her hands. She sat like this for several moments, quiet and still. Her shoulders didn’t shudder, and Jess couldn’t detect a sob or a cry. She remained so quiet and still, in fact, he wondered if she had fainted or otherwise lost consciousness.

Then she took her face out of her hands to look at each of them, exercising the gentle force of her dark gaze, making Jess squirm just a little.

She knows
, he thought.
She knows and now she’s either trying to
figure out how much we know or how to confront us about that
knowledge.

Dad sat down and wrapped an arm around her shoulders as she looked at him with surprisingly dry eyes.

Jess waited anxiously, didn’t know what to do except take his father’s lead.

He looked over at Jax, and knew that his brother had decided to do the same. The silent reinforcements at his back felt good, but didn’t go too far in eradicating his guilt.

“How could he keep this a secret from us?”

Us—she’d included them all, giving them the same status of unknowing family members as herself. Christ, but he felt simultaneously relieved and sick at her acceptance of the circumstances.

“I don’t know, honey,” Dad said noncommittally.

Jess still held his breath, waiting for Tamara’s quick lawyer’s brain to kick in—unless shock and grief had dulled her senses.

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He could only hope, at least for the time being, that she wasn’t thinking straight enough to figure things out.

But what about later? Do you really want to wait for her to figure
it out and confront you, or do you want to just get it out in the open
and take your medicine?

He knew what he should do, but couldn’t gather the courage to do it, not now when Tamara already looked so defeated and small.

Besides, Dad handled the situation in his inimitable way.

“You know how your father is. Independent, proud, stubborn…”

“To the core.” Tamara nodded. “But something like this…I mean he’s
dying
. And I could have missed the last several weeks if you hadn’t called me.” She put her arms around him and held tight.

“Thank you, Jeremiah. Thanks so much for being here for him and being such a good friend. You’re like a brother to him.”

“It’s nothing he wouldn’t have done for me.”

Jess closed his eyes at the truth of his father’s words. As ornery and proud as Bailey laid claim, he could also claim fierce loyalty and would kill or die for those he loved, but woe to the soul that got on his wrong side.

And Tamara’s just like her father in that respect. What sort of
retribution would she seek once she found out?

Tamara pulled back to pat his dad on the leg. “Well, I’d better get in there and see what he has to say for himself.”

“Don’t be too hard on him.”

Jess couldn’t help thinking that his dad prematurely begged her forgiveness for the three of them.

Tamara smiled. “I’ll try not to, but I can’t make any promises.”

* * * *

He doesn’t look like a man who’s dying
.

Tamara paused outside her father’s private room, reluctant to go across the threshold, reluctant to stand by his bed and admit the truth Ebook piracy is stealing. It is a federal offense.

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despite his appearance. Sure, he looked slimmer than she was used to seeing him, his usual bronze complexion a little paler than normal, but he didn’t look like death. Maybe because she didn’t
want
him to look like death. Instinctively, she rejected the truth of what the doctor had told her. He was human after all, and he and his colleagues could have made a mistake.

“Well then, come on in. I ain’t gone bite ya.”

Tamara shook herself and stared at her father before slowly crossing the floor. She didn’t realize her legs capable of moving until she made it to his bed. She put her hands on the bedside railing just for something to hold on to and do with them, and her father proffered his hand. Tamara gladly took it and immediately noticed the coldness and frailty of it.

How had she missed this? How had she not noticed his condition?

True, she hadn’t been back that long, hadn’t seen him in even longer before her arrival, and had been avoiding being with him as much as possible since her return, yet she should have known. She should have recognized that he wasn’t well. But she hadn’t been able to get beyond his insensitive attitude to see that he covered a secret, and he really wasn’t himself.

“I know what you’re thinking, so don’t go blaming yourself. This ain’t
your
fault.”

“Maybe not, but I could have done something to make things easier, to make you more comfortable and—”

“To pity me?” Her dad shook his head and glared at her. “Thanks but no thanks.”

“No one said anything about pity but what’s wrong with giving a guy a break, huh? Even a grumpy old guy like you?”

“You forgot ornery and unreasonable.”

“Did I call you those?”

“Among other things.”

She grinned, surprised that she could and squeezed his hand.

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“Listen, baby, there’s some things we need to talk about before I go…”

“Dad—”

“Let me finish because this needs saying.”

She nodded. “Okay.”

He squeezed her hand and closed his eyes tight as if trying to garner his strength before he opened them to pin her with the intensity of his gaze. “I never meant to alienate you or to hurt you. And I certainly never meant for you to leave here and stay away so long without us speaking. Things just got out of hand.”

“I know.”

“Do you? Do you really?”

“I let it happen too.”

Her dad shook his head. “As the adult I knew better. It was up to me to bring an end to the stalemate. I let stubborn pride get in my way.”

“Ditto.”

He chuckled. “You know Jeremiah never stopped trying to get us to talking, to get us back together.”

“He’s a good friend.”

“I want you to remember that always.”

Tamara frowned. “Why wouldn’t I?”

“And as for Jess and Jax,” he began, ignoring her question, “it’s your life. Don’t let what anyone thinks define how you live it or who you want to live it with.”

She lifted her eyebrows, truly shocked and Dad laughed a hearty laugh that surprised her. “What could possibly be so funny?”

“Before you came in here, I sat here thinking just how his approaching death can make a man see things a lot clearer, make him a sight more high-minded and magnanimous than he might have been without death looming.”

“I’m sure you would have come around eventually.”

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“Well, now I ain’t got much choice. I can’t be bitter and interfering, not if I want to set things right with you and your mother and those boys.”

“My mother?”

“Let’s focus on one thing at a time.”

“You brought her up.”

“I know I did. I’ve got a lot on my mind, and I’m trying to clean house. Forget about her for now.”

Like she could ever do that. Even though her mother hadn’t been around or in her life for years, she still existed, always on the periphery of Tamara’s life and every decision she had ever made concerning her relationships with men. Tamara hated to admit the truth of that, but there it was.

Her dad peered at her. “So, you decide what you’re going to do about ’em?”

It took a moment for her to realize her father still talked about Jess and Jax, and once she did, she averted her eyes and murmured, “I’d rather not talk about them right now.”

“Why not? You think it’s going to send me into a tailspin?”

No, but it might send her into one though.

Tamara had yet to recover from his mention of her mother and the confrontation she had been in the middle of with Jess and Jax before Maria interrupted them. And practically on the heels of the boys’

proposal—and she still didn’t know whether it had been a decent or indecent one—came the news about her father’s catastrophic diagnosis. She figured she would be in denial until she saw his coffin go into the ground and the dirt shoveled onto it.

Tamara choked back a sob at the thought, but couldn’t stop the tears that instantly flooded her eyes, and her father reached up his free hand to thumb them off her cheeks when they spilled out of her eyes.

“Could you at least wait until I’m dead and buried before you start with the waterworks? I don’t need no reminders I won’t be around for much longer.”

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“I’m sorry, Dad. It’s just…I…”

“Is it the boys? Did they do or say something to hurt you? If’n they did—”

Tamara petted his hand reassuringly. “It’s nothing like that.”

“Then things are fine between y’all?”

“Define fine.” If fine meant she remained undecided about what to do—stay or go, be with both of them, one of them or neither—then she remained hunky dory.

“Do you love ’em?” he asked.

His questions instantly swept Tamara back to his bungalow when he had asked her the same thing right before his seizure.

She loved Jess and Jax with all her heart, but she’d be damned if she’d admit it to anyone yet. She refused to let a little thing like love and other emotions influence her decision-making processes where her life and career were concerned. She’d done this once with James and had been supremely disillusioned. She didn’t want to make the same mistake—feeling she needed a man to complete her—again.

“Would it ease your mind if I told you yes I love them and they love me too?”

“Hell no, not really.”

“Then why are you asking, Dad?”

“Because I want to know that you’ll be taken care of when I’m gone. And I’d rather leave you in the hands of those boys than any others. I know them. They’re good men. A little young for my taste, and you already know how I feel about that whole ménage threesome thing.”

“Dad…”

“I want you to be happy, Tamara. That’s all I’ve ever wanted for you.”

“I know,” she murmured.

But did she need him to step in and protect her now? Did her love for Jess and Jax blind her to logic?