Someone To Watch Over Me

Two people died in the week before

I was supposed to turn in this book,

and I want to dedicate it to both of them.

My friend and carpool buddy of four years,

Laura Morrison, who fought bravely for

five years against breast cancer.

She would have endured anything to be here

to raise her two children, whom she loved

completely and of whom she was so proud.

I miss you, Laura. It’s so odd to be in

a world without you.

And ten-year-old Jessica Harris, who played

on my daughter’s and Laura’s daughter’s

soccer team, whose death is one of those

things I will never understand.

Soccer season is starting again, Jessica.

We miss you, too.

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Those of you who’ve read my work before are probably thinking, This is weird and You’re writing what?

Yeah, it’s weird to me, too, and definitely not something I ever expected to be doing.

What can I say? Life is strange. We never know what’s coming or where life will lead us. Mine has led me here.

The last few years have been scarier and more difficult, more uncertain and more humbling than any I ever imagined experiencing, and through them all, God has shown me unequivocally that He is with me, helping me and guiding me in ways I see as nothing short of a miracle.

He also sent many people to help me along the way—my amazing children, John and Laura, whom I love completely, my wonderful husband, Bob, the kind of friends who can get me through anything and did, Barbara Samuel, Christie Ridgway, Vicki Hinze, Gail Virardi, June Taylor and most of all, my grandfather, Joseph Haggard Jr. I wouldn’t have made it without all of you.

And—don’t laugh—my dogs. (I was lonely and asked God for some more friends. He sent dogs.) Fletch, a beautiful Australian shepherd we found at the shelter, who was the inspiration for Romeo; and the love of his life, a sweet, little mixed-breed named Sophie, who showed up at our door during an ice storm.

Also, special thanks go out to all the wonderful writers at my workshop in New Zealand, who helped brainstorm ways to complicate this story.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter One

William Jackson Cassidy had escorted this particular reprobate before, and it never failed. The two of them walking down the street side by side drew every female eye for a half a mile.

Heads turned. Slow, admiring smiles spread across faces of women young and old. A pretty, little curly-headed thing beamed at them from across the parking lot, and Romeo perked right up.

“Don’t even think about it,” Jax warned, giving a little tug on the line that held them together.

More than one woman had commented that they resembled one another, although Jax just didn’t see it.

Oh, they both had hair that was a little longer and blonder than most. Jax’s used to drag the top of his shoulders when it wasn’t pulled back into a disreputable-looking ponytail that more than one woman had claimed made him look dangerous in a very interesting way. He now had what was, for him, a fairly short, neat trim, the ends barely brushing his collar in the back. Romeo, too, had gotten a trim, since spring was coming on strong already in north Georgia, even though it was only March. Both he and Romeo were full through the shoulders and lean in the hips, and Jax wouldn’t deny that they both probably had a little swagger to their walk.

But Jax wasn’t nearly as conceited or as much of a flirt as Romeo, who was probably the most pathetic thing Jax had ever encountered. Jax chased criminals for a living. He’d seen “pathetic” before.

Romeo was a police academy dropout and now, a kept man. Kept, unfortunately, by Jax’s softhearted, dying mother, who was completely blind to every fault Romeo had.

“She probably left you every dime she’s got,” Jax complained, just imagining the way Romeo would strut then.

For the moment, Romeo just kept on walking, oblivious, as ever, to any insult Jax slung his way.

The security guard at the hospital’s employee entrance was an off-duty cop and a friend, who let them slip in the back way and up the stairs. Jax thanked the man and tried not to sound ungrateful for the patrolman’s offer of sympathy. He wasn’t ungrateful, not really, just trying as hard as he could to deny what was happening, which was hard when everybody he saw kept wanting to talk about it.

He knew they meant well, but it didn’t help to know everyone else felt lousy about what was happening. He felt lousy, too. That bit about misery loving company just wasn’t working for him. He thought he’d be better off if everyone in town would just let him wallow in his misery and pretended to be oblivious to the whole situation.

But they all knew his mother, and they all loved her. Most of them either had known his father or had fathers who’d known his father, through the job. A good number of them had dated one or more of his sisters, and the rest—the females—had dated Jax himself.

So everybody knew, and he supposed they all wanted to help, but the hard truth was, his mother was dying.

Nothing made that better, and he wasn’t sure how much more he could stand, watching her suffer this way.

They got to the third floor, and Jax held up a hand to signal Romeo to stop.

“Remember, be quiet,” he warned as he eased open the door, which led directly onto the hospice ward. “All right. Coast is clear.”

The three nurses at the nurses’ station obligingly looked the other way, feigning a sudden and unfailing interest in a splotch of paint on the ceiling of the hall. They were sweethearts. All of them. Any other time, and he would have been as charming to them as humanly possible, giving them one of the legendary smiles for which the Cassidy men were known.

He wasn’t being conceited. His mother had told him all about the power of a Cassidy male’s charm from the moment of his birth and sworn he wouldn’t be getting away with anything with her because of it. Supposedly he’d gurgled and slobbered on her, waved his fists madly and smiled with every bit of the charm she feared a male child of Billy Cassidy’s would have.

As his grandma Cassidy had told the story, his mother had promptly started praying that God would send her nothing but female children from then on, and she’d gotten her wish. Three times. Then she’d proceeded to try as hard as she could to raise her only son to think the ability to charm women was something of a burden, dangerous, unpredictable and a completely unfair advantage to wage against the women of this world.

It was the one thing she’d never convinced him of, despite the fact that they loved each other dearly.

Jax slipped out the door and into the hall. Romeo perked up as he spotted the women at the desk.

“You say a word to them, and you’ll sleep outside for a week,” Jax threatened.

He got nothing but a low growl in return.

Romeo had never met a woman he didn’t like. He saw a pretty one and everything else went straight out of his head.

“Just remember where we are, and that you’re not supposed to be here,” Jax reminded him.

As hospitals went, this wasn’t bad. It was in a nice, old, whitewashed stone building with a wide, elegant, wraparound porch and tall, white columns, which used to be the main hospital seventy years ago. Now, the real hospital lay off to the right, attached to the hospice unit by a pretty atrium.

They kept things quieter over here. It was dark and peaceful. The patients slept as long as they could in the morning and throughout the day, had as much medication as their systems could stand and as little pain as was humanly possible, although it was still too much.

Jax hated the place.

But his mother was in the room down the hall, and there was nothing on this earth that would keep him away from her now or at any other time in her life when she needed him.

His three little sisters were all exhausted from the battle they’d fought to keep their mother at home, where she’d asked to stay until the end. But in the middle of the night, forty-eight hours ago, her breathing had gotten so labored and the pain so bad and his sisters had cried so many tears and hurt so badly themselves, that maybe he’d just gotten too scared to let it end like that. Because he’d called 911, and they’d carted his mother off here, where, with the kind of strength she’d always possessed and he’d never understood, she still clung stubbornly to life.

She was one amazing woman. How could she do something as ordinary as die?

Pausing outside the door, he looked over to Romeo and shook his head in disgust. “Don’t jump on her or hang all over her. She hurts just about everywhere,” Jax said, then thought of one more thing. “And don’t you dare cry.”

Jax pushed open the door. The room was dim. His mother’s body nothing but a faint impression under the pretty quilt stitched by his own grandma Jackson’s hand, the woman whose family name he carried. William, for his father, although everybody had called his father Billy, and Jackson, for his mother’s family. William Jackson Cassidy.

His mother had realized right away what a mouthful it was.

She was the one who’d given him the nickname Jax when he was still tiny, when she’d been young and absolutely stunning, from the pictures he’d seen, and had what everyone must have thought was a long, happy life ahead of her. A husband she loved dearly, one who clearly adored her, a son who adored her just as much, and three beautiful daughters.

“Didn’t quite work out that way, did it, Mom?” he whispered.

Her pretty, honey-colored hair was long gone, her eyes sunk down into her face, dark circles under them, no color at all in her cheeks. She turned her head ever so slowly toward him and managed a weak smile.

Then she caught sight of Romeo and said, “Oh, baby. You made it.”

Romeo stood there and grinned like a fool. His tail swished back and forth in a move that he seemed to think made women swoon. Of course, he thought everything he did made women swoon, and Jax couldn’t deny it was pretty much true.

The dog had a way with women.

Especially Jax’s mother.

“Come here, sweet thing,” his mother said.

“I take it you mean the dog, and not me?” Jax said, taking the chair by her bedside and sitting down.

“You know I love you,” she murmured weakly, turning her cheek for his kiss.

He gave her one, trying to make it seem like any other greeting he’d given her over the years. Casual and easy, as if he had ages to say hello to her this way. As if this might not be the last time.

How could that be? The last time?

What were they going to do without her?

“You love the dog more than any of us,” he said, because it was a familiar argument, and he couldn’t stand to talk about her dying.

“You’re just jealous…because he’s prettier than you…women like him better,” his mother said, actually managing to make him grin when he wouldn’t have thought anything could. She was one of those who claimed he and the dog were way too much alike. Another subject he was happy to talk about, instead of what was going on here.

Romeo whined and put his front paws up on the bed, then stuck his cold nose against his mother’s cheek. She smiled and turned her face to him. “Come here, baby.”

The dog leaped up onto the bed.

“Romeo, what did I just tell you?” Jax reminded him.

The dog gave him a look that he could swear said, She does love me more than you, and I am prettier than you. So there.

“It’s all right,” his mother said, the words coming slowly, her breathing labored. “…been at this for a long time. He knows…to be careful. Come right up here beside me, baby.”

Her fifty-five-pound baby crept up very slowly, feeling his way, until he was as close to her as he could get, pressed against her side, all stretched out on the bed, his head on her right arm, his nose against her cheek. He whimpered softly.

“Yes. That’s my good boy.” His mother leaned her head against the dog’s and gave a contented sigh, then turned back to Jax. “Thank you for bringing him.”

“You know I’d do anything for you,” he said and worried he might be the one to start to cry.

“Yes, I know.”

“Sorry about bringing you here.”

“It’s fine…. Doesn’t hurt much now. The medication is…They keep the really good stuff here. I needed it.”

“If you want, we’ll take you back home.” And somehow they’d find the strength to see this through to the end. If she could do it, so could the rest of them.

“No…. Better this way,” she said, lightly caressing the dog who’d been her pride and joy for the last year and a half. Romeo had flunked out of K-9 school and Jax had brought him to his mother after someone had broken into old Mrs. Watkins’s house, three blocks down from his mother’s place. Romeo was supposed to protect her, although if anyone ever broke in, the worthless dog would probably try to charm them to death.

Romeo was practically purring now. Female attention of any kind did that to him. He was the most ridiculous excuse for a dog Jax had ever seen.

“Don’t worry,” his mother said. “Won’t be long now.”

Jax stiffened. How did she know that? How could she sound so calm about it? How could he want so badly to get up and run away? She was his mother, and she was the one who was dying. If she could handle it with such dignity and grace, surely he could find a fraction of her courage and strength.

“Did you run the girls off?” she asked, about to drift off. It didn’t take long to wear her out these days.

Jax nodded. “I told them you didn’t want anyone but your two favorite boys tonight.”

“Good. Done all they can. I know that. Make sure they do, too.”

“I will.”

She lifted her right hand off the blanket, a sign that he knew meant she wanted him to hold it. He did, wrapping both of his around hers, which was like ice. He thought it got colder every day.

“I know you’ll take good care of them,” she said. “You always have.”

“No, you have. You’ve taken care of all of us.”

He’d done what he could after his father died. Jax had been eleven, the girls eight, five and almost two. His mother hadn’t had a paying job since before Jax was born. Raising four kids, his parents hadn’t had any real savings to fall back on. Just living had taken everything his father made and then some. He’d moonlighted from his job as a policeman by working security at a furniture warehouse, and had been shot and killed after stopping late one night at a convenience store on his way home from his second job, killed by a stupid kid trying to clean out the till.

Just like that. Boom. No more dad.

Jax still remembered the way he’d screamed when they’d told him. Just for a minute. Then he’d pulled himself together for his sisters, who’d come running into the room to see what was wrong.

Life had changed in an instant.

It was like that.

You never knew when someone was going to snatch something you loved away from you, a lesson he’d learned young and taken to heart.

He really didn’t need to go over this ground again, and neither did his sisters, and yet, it seemed, that’s exactly what they were doing.

“Jax?” his mother said maybe twenty minutes later. She did that. Just drifted off without warning, scaring him every time she did it now. Because one time, it would happen and she wouldn’t wake up again.

“We’re right here,” he said, Romeo on one side, him on the other.

“I just wanted you to know…I’m not scared.”

Jax didn’t see how that could possibly be. She was dying. But then, she was a religious woman. He wasn’t a religious man, something she simply didn’t understand, although she didn’t pester him about it, either. She had complete faith that he’d come to his senses one day, as she put it.

“I’m glad you’re not scared,” he said, carefully skating around the whole religion thing. He wasn’t lying. He was grateful. He wasn’t sure he could have handled her being scared and facing something he couldn’t stop or change in any way. Anything that brought her comfort right now was fine with him.

She closed her eyes and smiled dreamily. “Guess who I saw last night?”

“Who?” She’d had all kinds of people dropping by.

“Your father.”

Jax stiffened. He doubted his dad had dropped by, since he’d been dead for nineteen years.

“He hasn’t been far away today,” his mother said as easily as she might have told him her cousin Ruth dropped by.

Okay. She was on a whole lot of morphine. The doctors had warned that it did funny things to people, that people said odd things and believed they saw odd things, too. The doctors had said not to be alarmed by it.

Sure. Jax could do that. He was not alarmed.

“So nice to see him,” she said. “He looked so good. Like always. In his day, he was even prettier than you and Romeo.”

“Oh,” Jax said. What else could he say?

“He’s waiting for me.” She smiled at that.

Jax gave a little choking sound, couldn’t stop it, and he really, really wanted to get up and run away. But obviously, it made her feel better to think his dad was there, waiting. Fine. She could see all the dead relatives she wanted if it made her feel better.

“But I’ll still be with you,” she said. “Always be with you. And the girls.”

“I know, Mom.”

“No, you don’t. But…that’s all right. You don’t have to believe for it to happen, Jax.”

“For what to happen?”

“For me to help you.”

“Mom—”

“Girls will lean on you…you’ll let them. But who’ll take care of you? Have to be me.”

He brought her hand to his lips and kissed it. “Whatever you say, Mom.”

The dog started to make this pathetic, whining, crying sound that drove Jax absolutely crazy.

Take it like a man, Romeo, Jax wanted to say. He hadn’t cried in years. Probably not since his father died.

“Want you to know…no regrets,” she said. “Except not more time…with you and the girls. With my grandchildren. I wanted a dozen. But even that…doesn’t sting the way it used to. No regrets…important to be able to say when you’re where I am. I want you to be able to say it, too. No regrets.”

“I’ll say it now,” he claimed. “I don’t have any.”

He lived his life exactly the way he wanted, and it suited him just fine.

“You don’t even know,” his mother said.

“Know what?”

“What’s really important. You need to make some changes, Jax. It’s time.”

“What do you want me to do?” he asked, because he’d promise her anything and he hated so much to think that she was disappointed in him in any way.

“Believe.”

“Believe in what?”

“Love.”

“I love you,” he said. “I love Kimmie and Kathie and Katie.”

“You’ll get it right. In time,” she said, moving from one subject to another, as she tended to do of late. “I know you will.”

“Get what right?”

“Try not to miss me too much. And don’t worry. I’ll be fine.”

No, she wouldn’t. She’d be gone. He didn’t care what she believed, what she thought she’d seen. There was nothing else. She’d be nothing.

“One more thing,” she whispered, her lips barely moving, the words slurring together. “One more favor.”

“Anything,” he said.

“Left you a job to take care of. In my will.”

“Okay. I will. Promise.”

“You know? Doesn’t really hurt anymore,” she said, and for a moment it was as if someone had taken the weight of the world off her emaciated body, eased all the stress lines on her face and put some color back into her cheeks. “Doesn’t hurt at all.”

“Good.” He sure didn’t want her to hurt.

“Billy,” she said, the faintest of smiles on her face.

That was his father’s name.

It was the last word she said.

She died with a smile on her face and his dead father’s name on her lips, Jax’s hand in one of hers, and the other buried in the dog’s fur.

Jax froze for a moment, staring at the quilt over her chest, willing it to rise and fall as she took more air into her lungs. But nothing happened. There was no more of the wheezing, labored sound of her struggling for one more breath, that hideous, hideous sound.

Romeo seemed to know what had happened. He looked at Jax, as if to say, Do something!

“I can’t,” Jax said. “I already did too much bringing her here, and she signed all the papers weeks ago.”

No one was coming to try to make her breathe again or get her heart going. Her choice, and he’d accepted it. No one would do anything.

Romeo whimpered pitifully. He licked her face frantically for a moment, until Jax got up and pulled him off. Romeo growled and showed his teeth. Jax swore and said, “She’s gone. Let her be.”

He thought for a minute, the two of them might go at it, right there in his mother’s room, and he wouldn’t have minded that. He was up for a good brawl right now. But all the fight went out of the dog. It was like his whole face just fell. He curled back up next to Jax’s mom, his snout laid over her chest, and started whimpering again. Jax sat back down in his chair and buried his face against her other shoulder, because he still needed to touch her, to not let go yet.

A nurse came in sometime later to check on her, halted in the doorway at the sight of him and the dog leaning over her.

“Go away,” Jax said, glancing at her briefly, and then pressing his face against his mother’s shoulder again.

“I…Is she gone?”

“Just go away,” Jax yelled.

Another nurse came in twenty minutes later, asking if she could do anything, if he’d like her to call anyone.

“Just go away,” Jax said again.

The girls would be mad that he hadn’t called, but what was the point? It was the middle of the night, and none of them had slept in days, and he’d screwed up and brought his mother here and sent the girls home.

“It wasn’t supposed to happen like this,” he said to no one but the dog.

Romeo whined, as if he agreed for once with something Jax said.

“And it wasn’t supposed to happen yet,” he yelled.

Romeo frowned, then laid his head back down on Jax’s mother’s chest, the two of them in complete accord. Neither one of them wanted to do anything but sit here and hang on to her and pretend she wasn’t gone.

Chapter Two

Jax and the dog stayed until morning came and with it Jax’s three sisters. Katie, the oldest, was twenty-seven, part owner of her own mortgage-finance company and a junior real estate mogul. She wore crisp, no-nonsense power suits with matching pumps, never a hair out of place, and she arrived issuing orders as usual.

“Jax! You haven’t taken the dog home yet? It’s seven! The place is full of people. The doctors will be making rounds soon—”

“Katie?” He stood up slowly, stiffly, every muscle in his body aching, and went to her, taking her by the arms.

“We promised we’d get him in and out without too many people seeing him—”

“Katie?” He looked her right in the eye. “It’s over. She’s gone.”