She didn’t have to be rash or in a hurry. After all, she thought, tossing back the rest of her champagne, it was well known that Padgett Long was a very patient woman.
CHOSEN TO DIE
449
*
*
*
“I thought I told you guys to stay out of trouble,”
Pescoli said, eyeing her recalcitrant children as they stood at the side of her damned hospital bed. Jeremy in oversized everything including his ever-present stocking cap; Bianca in her ski jacket tossed over a turtleneck and jeans.
They’d never looked so good to Pescoli. Tears burned behind her eyes, but she blinked them back, couldn’t let them see her break down or give them any indication that she was suffering from nightmares of drowning with Billy Hicks’s blue face looming in the water before her.
Fortunately, her injuries were relatively minor considering her ordeal. True, she’d almost died, but had been revived and, it seemed, examined by every doctor in the hospital. In the end she had more than her share of cuts and abrasions, bruised ribs, torn tendons in her shoulder that had been repaired, but all in all, she would live.
“We’re not in trouble,” Bianca ventured. She tossed her curls over her shoulder defiantly, but her skin was pale and the shadows under her eyes were real. She’d been worried. Scared.
“You were an angel when you stayed with Dad?”
Pescoli asked, trying to lighten the mood.
“Oh, Mom . . .” Bianca rolled her expressive Luke-like eyes. “I tried. ”
“Well, I know how hard that can be,” Pescoli admitted and scared up a smile on her daughter’s face. “What about you, Jer. I heard you took on Cort Brewster.”
“Maybe.” Jeremy’s gaze slid away.
450
Lisa Jackson
“He is my boss,” Pescoli reminded him.
“He’s a prick!” Jeremy stuck to his guns.
“Jer!” Bianca cut in.
Pescoli tried and failed not to chuckle. “Let’s keep that between us.” She was a little light-headed, the results of pain medication.
“Do we have to go back to Luke’s?” Jeremy tried to look as if staying with his stepfather was tantamount to sleeping in a den of hungry lions.
“Until I get out of here, yeah.” Pescoli wasn’t budging on this one.
Bianca said, “I don’t know if I can take it.”
“He’s your father.” Pescoli couldn’t let them run free while she was laid up, no matter how much they complained.
“He’s not mine,” Jeremy pointed out.
“The doc says I’ll be released in a couple of days. Until then, buck up. You can make a sacrifice for me, right?” When neither kid responded, Pescoli repeated, “Right?” again.
“I’m old enough to stay alone,” Jeremy protested.
“Not by the law, my man. Not yet.” Being a mother sometimes took more patience than Pescoli had.