She slapped my arm and led me inside. “You don’t actually think we needed Samuel to gang up on you, did you?”
“Nope,” I smiled. “Between you and Kelly, I’m as castrated as they come.”
* * *
“So, you’re done?”
I was sitting in my father’s room, adjusting his bed as he watched me from his wheelchair.
“Pretty much,” I said.
Samuel nodded, clearly impressed. “Never thought you’d do it.”
“Really?”
He shrugged. “Thought I’d be getting a call one day telling me you to collect my orphaned granddaughter and the casket with my son’s body in it.”
I looked at him, meeting his eyes and trying to decide if he was joking or serious. “That’s a little dark.”
“Hey, kid, I know you,” he said. “That shooting you survived? I never doubted you’d jump right back into the line of fire if they let you.”
I shrugged. “I probably would have,” I said. “A part of me still wants to.”
“What changed?”
“Kelly, for starters,” I said. “We had a heart to heart. I don’t think I can put her through any more of my crap.”
“That’s mature,” Samuel replied. “And very unlike you.”
“Come on, dad, give me some credit.”
Samuel grunted. “Well, I’m definitely proud of you.”
“Thanks,” I said, bending down and looping an arm under his legs, carrying him off his chair and onto the bed. I fluffed his pillows, adjusted them, and made sure he was comfortable before rolling the wheelchair by the bed and propping his crutches up against the bedside table.
“So, what’s the plan?” Samuel asked.
“I’ll go back to Miami in a week or two, after I’ve made sure everything’s settled here,” I said. “Finish off the paperwork, finalize Kelly’s transfer papers, and if you’ll have us, we’ll make the remaining few years of your life miserable.”
Samuel smiled. “I love misery.”
“I had a feeling you might.”
Samuel laid his head back against the pillows, staring up at the ceiling for a bit before he chuckled and shook his head.
“What’s so funny?”
“How this whole thing played out, you know?” Samuel said. “I mean, I really thought that was it for this town. We were rolling downhill and picking up speed.”
“We’re not out of the woods just yet,” I said.
“Yeah, well, at least we’re not lost anymore,” Samuel mused. “And no one’s going to be knocking on our door trying to buy that piece of land, either.”
“Well, Garth’s behind bars, along with the rest of his crew, if you want to call it that,” I said. “Whether or not Hope Enterprises will stop trying to turn this town into a metropolis is still in the wind.”
“Nothing stuck to that Alexis woman, huh?”
I shook my head. “She keeps herself out of the dirty business, which is smart,” I said. “Would have been surprised if we had been able to link Garth’s drug business to her. And the company had reported those vehicles back in Miami as stolen, so again, nothing.”