“I can’t hold a grudge against you, but you knew that or you wouldn’t have asked to come in. I take it you’re here with that son of mine?”
Erin swallowed hard and nodded. “He’s worried about you. He came as soon as the hospital called him. He dropped everything to be here.”
“He needn’t have bothered. I’m going to be fine.”
His voice trembled, and Erin knew his words were more bravado than real belief. “I’m sure you are. But on the off chance we’re wrong, do you really want to leave Cole with things left unsaid? Or worse, with his last memory of you telling him you didn’t want him here?”
Jed turned his head toward the window.
“I don’t know why you feel the way you do about him, and I don’t want to know,” Erin continued. “That’s between the two of you. But I’m having your grandchild, and if you want a relationship with him . . . or her . . . you’re going to have to forge one with your son first. Think about that for a minute.”
Only when she felt enough time had passed for Jed to use that brain of his, did she speak again. “Cole wants to see you before surgery. Based on your reaction last time, the doctor refused because your body can’t handle stress. Think you can manage to have a civil conversation with Cole?” Erin asked him.
Being a stubborn mule, Jed remained silent. As a prosecutor, Erin was used to waiting out a pigheaded witness, so she remained quietly seated, determined to get the outcome she wanted.
She wasn’t sure how much time had passed when Jed finally turned to face her. “You’re gonna wait me out, aren’t you?” he asked.
Erin only grinned. She was damned sure planning to try, but sensing that Jed was beginning to consider her request, she pushed a little more. “It would mean a lot to me if you talked to him.”
The older man eyed her, staring at her longer than she felt comfortable enduring.
“Son of a bitch. You’re in love with him,” Jed said at last.
Erin felt a hot blush cover her cheeks. “He’s a good man. Why can’t you see him for who he really is?” Since she had no intention of baring her soul, her reply was the best she could come up with.
And it turned the tables back on Jed, whose jaw worked back and forth as he clearly struggled for a reply. “I’ll see him,” he muttered, if somewhat reluctantly.
It wasn’t an answer to the question Erin had asked, but it was the one she’d come here seeking to begin with. If Jed’s condition weren’t so serious, she’d have done a small dance of joy.
“Thank you,” she said. Leaning over, she kissed his weathered cheek. “Good luck with the surgery, and I’ll see you on the other side. You’re going to be fine.”
“I have to be if I want to see that baby you’re carrying,” he said gruffly, his voice raw. And even a little scared.
At the unexpected realization, Erin’s throat grew tight.
She managed a nod at Jed. “I’ll send Cole in.”
As she headed back to the waiting room, Erin hoped her brief glimpse into Jed’s soul, or at least into the frightened heart of the man in the hospital bed, would lead to some kind of détente between Jed and Cole. And as she told Cole his father would talk to him, she prayed that this wasn’t the last chance either man would have to make things right between them.
• • •
Cole had approached mob bosses, murderers, and drug dealers with more ease than that with which he faced his father again. The weight of a lifetime—his lifetime—sat on Cole’s shoulders. He knew the old man was disappointed in him, and that truth had permeated every part of Cole’s life from the time he’d been old enough to understand what his father’s constant anger meant. As an adult, he’d reached the point where he was more comfortable pretending to be someone else than he was being himself.
For a long time he’d blamed Jed for that, but his time back here in Serendipity made him look at things differently. He couldn’t blame his father for who and what he was. But those deep thoughts, though raised because of his father’s serious condition, didn’t need to be dissected now.
He walked into the room, doing his best to ignore the beeping heart monitor, the IV drip in his dad’s arm, and the way his larger-than-life father seemed to be shriveled up in the hospital bed.
“Hi,” Cole said stiffly, coming up beside the bed rail.
“Hi, yourself,” Jed muttered, unable, it seemed, to meet Cole’s gaze.
“The doctor says they’re taking you to the OR first thing in the morning.”
Jed nodded. “At least it’ll be before I have time to realize I’m hungry, since they’re not feeding me beforehand.”
Cole managed a laugh. “Says it could be a long surgery, but he does it all the time.”
“I won’t know it.”