Brooke Wentworth Randall calmed herself. She was the only person on earth who could get to Thomas. He was so stubborn. “Do you know who called me last night?”
Thomas gave her a look that said he wasn’t going to play guessing games. “My sister called to ask how I was getting on with her dear friend Madison.”
At that Thomas’s eyes widened in surprise.
“Yes, my sister,” Brooke continued. “Dr. Dorothy Oliver. You do remember her, don’t you?”
Thomas stood still, ignoring his mother’s sarcasm.
Frank stepped forward and put himself between his son and wife. He was the peacemaker in the family. “To us, this visit was just a normal thing of Scotty’s asking his old college friend to visit, but it seems that there was a lot that we didn’t know. Over two years ago when Roger was first injured, it seems that he called Scotty, as Scotty had mentioned that he had an aunt who worked with physical therapy. Roger told Scotty that he needed ‘the best.’”
“Which you know that my sister is,” Brooke said in pride.
“Yes, but . . .” Frank hesitated and looked at his wife. “Roger’s parents are . . .”
“Skinflints,” Brooke said. “I’m sorry to say it, but they are. What they did is . . . Well, it’s abominable. You tell it, Frank, or I’ll get too angry.”
“It seems that Roger’s parents consulted with your aunt Dot about their son’s massive injuries. They even flew Dot out to Montana, but after she told them what was needed to rehabilitate their son, and even then he might never walk again, and—”
“And how much it was going to cost,” Brooke added. “They told my sister, ‘Thank you, but no thanks.’ Dot said that it was six months before they paid her consultation fee.”
Thomas knew that his parents were going somewhere with this story, but he couldn’t guess where.
At times like this, when Brooke was so angry, it could be seen where her son got his scowl. “Dot thinks that Roger’s parents encouraged their son to call his old girlfriend, Madison—a girl he had crassly jilted, by the way—and beg her to return to Montana, just so she could be his free nurse. She’d had previous nursing experience, so they knew she could do the job.”
For a moment his parents were silent, and Thomas knew that he was to see something that he wasn’t seeing. “So?” he said.
“So she did it,” Brooke said. “That poor girl went back to Roger, married him, and has spent that last couple of years doing nothing but rehabilitating him.”
Thomas hadn’t graduated from medical school yet, but he had been interested in the extent of his brother’s friend’s injuries at the time, and he’d found out about them. Thomas knew the monumental amount of labor that must have been done to get Roger up on canes in a mere two and a half years.
Thomas gave a low whistle under his breath. He was impressed.
“Right,” Frank said. “And during the rehabilitation, it seems that young Madison and your aunt became friends. Three times Dot and her family flew out to Montana on vacation, and she always spent as much time as possible with Madison.”
“Smart,” Thomas said. “That way she could deduct most of the trip.”
Frank narrowed his eyes at his son in warning; then he continued. “Your aunt thought it was unethical to tell us about her clients, so we never knew any of this. However, Dot saw that her friend needed—and deserved—a holiday, so she planted the idea in Scotty’s head to invite his old friend Roger here to the cabin. Of course your aunt never dreamed that Roger wouldn’t have told Scotty about his marriage. The idea was to give Madison some time off—a rest.”
“I see,” Thomas said softly. “But now I have changed the situation.”
“So what do you propose can be done to change it back?” Brooke asked her son, her eyes narrowing into slits that resembled his.
“I will apologize to her, of course,” Thomas said. “It was really just a misunderstanding anyway. She was . . .” Now that he thought about it, her explanation that she had slipped behind a cupboard to escape being seen so she could go fishing early made sense. The truth was, Thomas had often climbed out his bedroom window in order to evade all the people his parents invariably had at the cabin, just so he could get to his favorite fishing hole early. “It will be a heartfelt apology.”
“And then what do you think she will do?” Brooke asked.
Thomas looked surprised. “I have no idea. I don’t know the woman. I assume she’ll unpack and . . . and do whatever it is that women like to do.”
Brooke shook her head at her son. How could he have lived this long and know so little about women? “Let’s see. She came here thinking she was an invited guest. But she found out that her husband hadn’t told anyone that she was coming. Actually, he hadn’t even told anyone he was married. Your sister, your cousin, and their little friend Robbie have done nothing but look down their noses at her since she arrived because, as even you have probably noticed, Madison is beautiful enough to make a goddess jealous. Then she—”
“Venus.” When his mother squinted her eyes at him in disapproval for his having interrupted, he said, “Botticelli’s Venus.”
“Well, I am glad you noticed,” Brooke said sarcastically. “In addition to the abominable way my other guests have treated her—as well as that philandering husband of hers—I find that my eldest son has done something so intolerable that she is now asking to leave. If it wouldn’t be too much to ask, could you please tell me what you said to her?”
Thomas looked down at the floor. His shoes needed to be polished. He looked back at his mother. When he was a child, she was the only person on earth who had ever been able to frighten him. And right now he felt about four years old and that he’d just done something he shouldn’t have. “Blackmail,” he said softly.
“I beg your pardon,” Brooke said, her voice full of disbelief.