A thousand tiny spears of bitter disappointment jabbed Aaron; there was no denying the truth, not for a man being consumed alive by cancer. He had been a mean lover, a sorrier husband, and a pathetic excuse for a father while creating his empire. He had let Bonnie down in the worst way, his girls even more, and the pain of that realization was almost as lethal as the cancer in him.
The worst of it was that the cancer scared him to death, left him practically trembling in the dark at the prospect of what lay ahead. The coward in him needed Bonnie like he had never needed her before.
In the dim light, Aaron found the phone he’d thrown aside and dialed her cell. It rang three times before she answered it. “Hello?” The sound of crystal clinking in the background pierced his consciousness—Bonnie had her own life now. She wasn’t waiting for his call anymore. Hadn’t she made that abundantly clear?
“Aaron, I know it’s you, I have your number on caller ID.”
“Bonnie.” His voice sounded empty, hollow. “Bonnie, how are you?”
She covered the phone; Aaron heard her whisper to someone. “Ah, fine.”
“Good . . . good.” How exactly did one go about telling his wife he was dying? “How’s the weather in L.A.?”
Her sigh was full of tedium. “Aaron, I’m in the middle of something. What did you need?”
He cleared his throat, tried to force the ugly words out. “Actually, there is something I need to tell you—”
“Is it one of the girls?” she asked quickly.
“No, no, not the girls. I . . . I don’t know how to say this . . . .”
“Say what?”
He closed his eyes, squeezed them tightly shut against the burn of tears. “I’ve had some bad news. . . . I had a little thing happen this summer, and I went . . . well, I guess I don’t have to give you the blow by blow, but it’s . . .” He paused, pressed his knuckles into his eyes again, unable to say the words that would commend him to death.
He could hear Bonnie moving, the click-click-click of her heels on pavement. “Aaron,” she said low, her voice softer now, the way he remembered it. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
The burn of tears burst through his knuckles, slid hot down his cheeks. “I’m sick,” he whispered coarsely. “Really sick. And . . . and I know I don’t have any right to ask this, but . . . but I need you, Bonnie. I need you bad.”
There was no immediate response from her; Aaron caught his breath, felt the wet burn of his tears etch their grooves in his cheeks. He waited. Waited through the long pause in which he could hear the shortness of her breath, and when he thought he could not hold his own any longer, she said simply, “I will be there as soon as I can.”
Chapter One
HOUSTON
Everyone would always remember where they were the day they learned Aaron Lear was dying. For Robin, his oldest daughter, that day started off as usual—with a frantic search of her spacious, empty, and covered-with-dust Tudor mansion for a stupid shoe.
She was in something of a hurry, seeing as how she had a stack of reports six feet high on her desk, the result of having spent the entire month of January in London. And there was the business of the deal with Atlantic, an idea that had come to her at a cocktail party after the Atlantic rep had bought her several drinks. She had been working on landing them for four or five weeks now and needed the deal sooner rather than later because Dad didn’t like her region’s sales figures. Or anything else, for that matter.
Which was why she was a little worried about yesterday’s call from Mr. Herrera, the owner of one of LTI’s oldest accounts, Valley Produce. He had given her assistant, Lucy, quite an earful, complaining heatedly that an unacceptably large percentage of his produce LTI transported was arriving wilted and spoiled at the grocer’s destinations, and none of the LTI account reps seemed to want to do anything about it. Therefore, he had felt obliged to call the vice president of Southwest Operations (that would be her, Robin) demanding satisfaction. If he couldn’t rely on LTI to get his produce to the customer in the time or condition he required, he was very certain he could find a freight company that would.
What startled Robin about his call was not that he was unhappy, but how in the hell his unhappiness had escaped her. Valley Produce was one of the first companies to sign on with her father when he had begun his business some thirty-odd years ago, and she was very certain Dad would not be very happy to hear from Mr. Herrera right now. Especially since the last time they had talked, he had been very displeased with her handling of a similar situation in Austin.
Yeah, well, Dad was easily displeased; that went with the territory.