Nick’s stare locked on Grace Marshall’s beat-up silver Camry parked in a slot near the front doors. He hadn’t anticipated coming in contact with her here. Still, he wasn’t sure he could attribute her presence as the source of his agitation.
He fell in behind Nolan and Harlan, keeping his senses on high alert as they headed for the main entrance. Trevor Lewis hadn’t acted alone, and Nick couldn’t help but feel no one was safe in Freedom until his accomplice was identified and captured. He wouldn’t relax until they were inside the hospital and out of the open.
The double set of extra-wide automatic doors ground open and Nick’s gaze connected with Grace Marshall’s on the other side of the gap. A moment of recognition passed between them and she smiled.
Nolan and Harlan walked past her, headed for the elevator bank on the opposite side of the hospital’s lobby. A wave of attraction swelled inside of Nick as he approached Grace and stopped.
“Grace.” He focused a degree of surprise in his voice. He was glad that Harlan had ditched the black hoodie and sweats. He was convinced that along with her level of caution there was no doubt a level of observation she practiced on a regular basis.
“Nick Cavanaugh. I had no idea you were following me.”
A stream of guilt flooded his insides, but he forded it with a grin. The elevator bell chimed in the background and he glanced up to where Nolan and Harlan waited for him. Making eye contact with Harlan, he nodded slightly, certain that Harlan had recognized his purse-snatching target from earlier in the afternoon and was more than happy to duck for cover inside the elevator.
“I’m checking in on someone. Visiting hours and all.” He took the opportunity to look down at the little boy sitting in the wheelchair that Grace had been pushing to the exit, and now clung to.
Her sweet smile faded as she reached down to brush her hand across the top of the little boy’s head. “Caleb, this is Mr. Nick Cavanaugh. Nick, this is my son, Caleb.”
“Hey, buddy.” He bent over, reached out and grasped the little boy’s hand, giving it a gentle shake. The child’s line of sight started at his boot-clad feet, went up his jean-encased legs and eventually ended with Caleb staring up at him with eyes the same heavenly blue as his mother’s.
“Are you a cowboy, Mister Nick?”
Nick straightened, amused by the little boy’s power of observation. “Hmm. Yeah. You could say I’m a cowboy.”
“Gotta horse?”
“A few.”
“Can I ride one? My friend Zachary-G says it’s fun. He rides horses all the time.”
Caution raked over Nick’s nerves. He hadn’t considered the connection that might exist between Zachary Giordano and Caleb Marshall. They did both attend Cradles to Crayons, and Grace did work there part-time as a preschool teacher. Maybe he should have enlisted another team member besides Harlan McClain to pull off the ruse, but hindsight was always twenty-twenty.
“Maybe sometime your mom will bring you out to the ranch and I’ll saddle one up for you.”
“Really?” Caleb’s eyes widened to the size of silver dollars. “Wait till I tell Zachary-G!”
The air was suddenly charged with vibes Nick could almost feel. He straightened, dialing in on Grace’s face, on the way she pressed her lips together as if she were about to cry. His heart twisted in his chest. Instinctively he reached out and brushed his hand against her upper arm—a mistake, he realized, when a jolt of heat passed between them. She pulled away.
“Let me.” He was glad when she stepped aside and allowed him to take the handles of the wheelchair. “Where’s your car?”
She pointed to the Camry and fell in next to him as they pushed through the sliding doors, across the breezeway and out into the parking lot.
Caleb began to hum, his tiny voice picking up the vibrations from the asphalt as the wheelchair wheels bumped over the uneven surface.
Nick swallowed hard, sucked into the emotion coming from the woman next to him. Caleb Marshall was a very sick little boy. How sick? He didn’t know. But he intended to find out.
“Here we are, tiger.”
Grace moved past them to unlock the car, then pulled the right rear passenger-side door open.
Nick eased the chair to a stop, stepped around to the front, squatted down and flipped up the footrest pads. “Need some help?” he asked, studying Caleb’s handsome little-boy face.
“Nope.” Determination gripped Caleb’s features as he put his tennis-shoe-encased feet firmly on the ground, grasped the armrests and pushed up from the seat, where he promptly wobbled and fell forward into Nick’s arms.
Grace let out an audible gasp and was next to them in a heartbeat. “Caleb, you know you need to take it easy after your treatment.”
“I want to do it myself.”
“Come on, buddy, I’ll help you.” As if he were holding a fragile sheet of glass, Nick guided Caleb into the backseat of his mother’s car and supervised him as he buckled himself in his car seat.
“What color is your horse, Mister Nick?” he asked, staring with a huge grin on his face. “I wanna tell Zachary-G.”
“He’s a bay.”
“Bay?”
“It’s a reddish-brown color, with a black mane and tail. Beautiful.”
Caleb nodded and laid his head back against the seat. “A bay,” he said again as he closed his eyes. “Red-brown.”
Nick stepped back and closed the car door before turning to face Grace.
“Thank you,” she whispered, some of the tension visibly leaving her body in a shoulder shrug. “He always overestimates his strength after every transfusion. It takes a day or so for him to bounce back.”
“You can’t fault him for trying.”
She swallowed and shook her head. “Sometimes I marvel at his will to survive, to go until he can’t go anymore.”
“What’s wrong with him, Grace?” Caution brought her chin up as she studied him and he witnessed the battle between suspicion and trust as it warred across her delicate features and settled in her blue eyes.
“He needs a bone-marrow transplant. He has aplastic anemia and has to have a blood transfusion every two weeks, but his doctor informed me this afternoon that his condition is worsening. We need to find a bone-marrow donor as soon as possible or he’s going to…” Her voice faltered.
Die? Nick mentally finished the horrific statement and reached out for her, folding his arms around her slender shoulders. Sympathy leeched from his insides, but he felt her stiffen and pull away.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “This isn’t any of your concern.” She went around to the driver-side door. “But thank you for your help.” She climbed into the car and fired the engine.
Nick stepped back as she maneuvered out of the parking space and drove away. He stared after her for a moment, snagged the empty wheelchair and turned for the hospital entrance.
Grace Marshall was clearly desperate. Hell, he’d be desperate, too, if he had a dying child, but desperate people did desperate things. Was it possible the donor she was seeking for Caleb was the governor? He didn’t know much about donor matches, but Lila Lockhart stood a good chance of being a blood relative to Caleb Marshall.
Worry needled him all the way back into the hospital and followed him into the elevator. Was it possible Grace knew the governor could be her birth mother? Was she willing to blackmail Lila into donating bone marrow to her dying grandson, or she’d…she’d what?