As she simply stared at him, he pointed through the open door behind her. “I’m serious. What I need is alcohol. If you want to save me, get me some. Now.”
When Shelby Landis backed out of that bathroom and shut the door, she fully intended to get Edward what he’d asked for.
After all, she had a lot of experience with alcoholics—and even though she didn’t approve of any of it, she’d brought her pops his booze a thousand times, and usually in the morning, too.
At least that was her plan. In reality, however, she couldn’t seem to move, to think … even to breathe.
She had not been prepared for the sight of that man in there, his dark head bowed as if he were ashamed of his too-thin, mangled body, his man’s pride as shredded and unhealed as his flesh. He had once been a great force; her father had told her the stories of his dominance in business, on the track, in society. Heck, she had heard about the Bradfords since she was young: Her father had refused to drink anything but their No. 15—and so had most of the horse people she knew.
Putting her hands to her face, she whispered, “What did you do to me, Pops?”
Why had he sent her here?
Why …
“Shelby?” came the demand from inside the bathroom.
God, it was just like her father: The way Edward said her name with that hint of desperation … it was exactly the way her Pops had when he’d needed the drink bad.
Closing her eyes, she cursed out her breath. Then felt guilty. “Forgive me, Lord. I know not what I say.”
Looking across the space, she found a lineup of full liquor bottles in front of one of the shelves of silver trophies, and the idea of delivering that poision to him made her want to be sick. But he would just come out here himself—and probably fall and hit his head on the way. And then where would they be? Plus, she knew the way things worked. That terrible trembling wasn’t going to stop until the beast inside was fed what it needed, and his body looked so frail to begin with.
“Coming,” she called out. “What kind do y’all want?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
Blindly heading for bottles, she picked up some gin and went back to the closed door of the bathroom. She didn’t bother to knock, just walked right in.
“Here.” She cranked the top off. “Drink from it.”
Except with the way his hands were trembling, there was no way he could handle the bottle himself without spilling it everywhere.
“Let me hold it for you,” she muttered.
There was a moment of hesitation from him, and then he lifted his mouth like a newborn foal who had been left by its mother.
He took two or three deep swallows. And another. “Now, that’s warm.”
Putting the gin by the side of the tub so he could reach it if he wanted, she took a full-sized bath towel and submerged it in the water behind him. When it was soaked and dripping, she draped it over the protruding ridge of his spine and the strips of his ribs. Then she went to work on his head with a washcloth, getting his hair wet, slicking it back.
Without him asking, she brought the gin bottle up again and he took from it, nursing from the open mouth.
Washing him with the soap and the shampoo reminded her of caring for an animal not long rescued. He was flinchy. Mistrusting.
Half dead.
“You need to eat,” she said in a voice that cracked.
I don’t have this in me, Lord. I can’t do this again.
She hadn’t managed to save that miscreant alcoholic father of hers. Losing two men in one lifetime seemed more than enough failure to go around.
“I’m going to make you breakfast after this, Edward.”
“You don’t have to.”
“Yes,” she said roughly. “I know.”
FORTY-FIVE
“So are we doing this again?”
At the sound of the male voice, Lizzie stopped in the process of transferring yet another Hedera helix spine into a fresh pot. Closing her eyes, she took a breath and ordered her hands not to shake or drop anything.
She had been waiting for Lane to come and find her. It hadn’t taken long.
“Well?” he said. “Are we back at this thing where you hear something you don’t like and shut me out? Because if that’s the script we’re running here, and it sure as hell looks like we are, I guess I should just hop back on a plane to New York and call it quits now. So much more efficient and I don’t have to run up a phone bill leaving messages on your voice mail.”
Forcing her hands to keep going, she put the root system into the hole she’d dug in the pot and began to transfer fresh soil in to fill things up.
“Something I didn’t want to hear,” she repeated. “Yes, you could say that finding out your wife is pregnant—again—is a news flash I would have preferred not to hear. Particularly because I learned about it right after I’d had sex with you myself. And then there was the happy news that you were being arrested for putting her in the hospital.”