Fifty Shades Freed (Fifty Shades 3)

"Of course."

"Are you staying in Portland?" Christian asks. Jose nods.

"Do you need a ride home?"

Jose frowns. "I was going to order a cab."

"Luke can take you."

Sawyer stands, and Jose looks confused.

"Luke Sawyer," I murmur in clarification.

"Oh . . . Sure. Yeah, we'd appreciate it. Thanks, Christian."

Standing, I hug Mr. Rodriguez and Jose in quick succession.

"Stay strong, Ana," Jose whispers in my ear. "He's a fit and healthy man. The odds are in his favor."

"I hope so." I hug him hard. Then, releasing him, I shrug off his jacket hand it back to him.

"Keep it, if you're still cold."

"No, I'm okay. Thanks." Glancing nervously up at Christian, I see that he's regarding us impassively. Christian takes my hand.

"If there's any change, I'll let you know right away," I add as Jose

pushes his father's wheelchair toward the door that Sawyer is holding open. Mr. Rodriguez raises his hand, and they pause in the doorway.

"He's in my prayers, Ana," Mr. Rodriguez says, his voice wavering.

"It's been so good to reconnect with him after all these years. He's become a good friend."

"I know."

And with that they leave. Christian and I are alone. He caresses my cheek. "You're pale. Come here." He sits down on the chair and pulls me on to his lap, folding me into his arms again, and I go willingly. I snuggle up against him, feeling oppressed by my stepfather's misfortune, but grateful that my husband is here to comfort me. He gently strokes my hair and holds my hand.

"How was Charlie Tango?" I ask.

He grins. "Oh, she was yar," he says, quiet pride in his voice. It makes me smile properly for the first time in several hours, and I glance at him, puzzled.

"Yar?"

"It's a line from The Philadelphia Story. Grace's favorite film."

"I don't know it."

"I think I have it on Blu-Ray at home. We can watch it and make out." He kisses my hair and I smile once more.

"Can I persuade you to eat something?" he asks.

My smile disappears. "Not now. I want to see Ray first."

His shoulders slump, but he doesn't push me.

"How were the Taiwanese?"

"Amenable," he says.

"Amenable how?"

"They let my buy their shipyard for less than the price I was willing to pay."

He's bought a shipyard? "That's good?"

"Yes. That's good."

"But I thought you had a shipyard, over here."

"I do. We're going to use that to do the fitting-out. Build the hulls in the Far East. It's cheaper."

Oh. "What about the workforce at the shipyard here?"

"We'll redeploy. We should be able to keep redundancies to a minimum." He kisses my hair. "Shall we go and check on Ray?" he asks, his voice soft.

The ICU on the sixth floor is a stark, sterile, functional ward with whispered voices and bleeping machinery. Four patients are each housed in their own separate area, attached to hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of hi-tech equipment. Ray is at the far end. Daddy.

He looks so small in his large bed, surrounded by all this technology. It's a shock. My dad has never been small. There's a tube in his mouth, and various lines pass through drips into a needle in each arm. A small clamp is attached to his finger. I wonder vaguely what that's for. His leg is on top of the sheets, encased in a blue cast. A monitor displays his heart rate: beep, beep, beep. It's beating strong and steady. This I know. I move slowly toward him. His chest is covered in a large, pristine bandage that disappears beneath the thin sheet that protects his modesty.

Daddy.

I realize that the tube pulling at the right corner of his mouth leads to a ventilator. Its noise is weaving with the beep, beep, beep of his heart monitor into a percussive rhythmic beat. Sucking, expelling, sucking, expelling, sucking, expelling in time with the beeps. There are four lines on the screen of his heart monitor, each moving steadily across, demonstrating clearly that Ray is still with us. Oh, Daddy.

Tentatively, I reach for his hand. Even though his mouth is distorted by the ventilator tube, he looks peaceful, lying there fast asleep. A petite young nurse stands to one side, checking his monitors.

"Can I touch him?" I ask her.

"Yes," she smiles kindly. Her badge says KELLIE RN , and she must be in her twenties. She's blonde with dark, dark eyes. Christian stands at the end of the bed, watching me carefully as I clasp Ray's hand. It's surprisingly warm, and that's my undoing. I sink on to the chair by the bed, place my head gently against Ray's arm, and start to sob.

"Oh, Daddy. Please get better," I whisper. "Please."

Christian puts his hand on my shoulder and gives it a reassuring squeeze.

"All Mr. Steele's vitals are good," Nurse Kellie says quietly.

"Thank you," Christian murmurs. I glance up in time to see her gape. She's finally gotten a good look at my husband. I don't care. She can gape at Christian all she likes as long as she makes my father well again.

"Can he hear me?" I ask.

"He's deeply asleep. But who knows?"

"Can I sit for a while?"

"Sure thing." She smiles at me, her cheeks pink from a telltale blush. Incongruously, I find myself thinking blond is not her true color. Christian gazes down at me, ignoring her. "I need to make a call. I'll be outside. I'll give you some alone time with your dad."

I nod. He bends, kisses my hair, and stalks out of the room. I sit and hold Ray's hand, marveling at the irony that it's only now when he's unconscious and can't hear me that I really want to tell him how much I love him. This man has been my constant. My rock. And I've never thought about it until now. I'm not flesh of his flesh, but he's my dad, and I love him so very much. My tears trail down my cheeks. Please get better, Daddy. Very quietly, so as not to disturb anyone, I tell him about our weekend in Aspen and about last weekend when we were soaring and sailing aboard the Grace. I tell him about our new house, our plans, about how we hope to make it ecologically sustainable. I promise to take him with us to Aspen so he can go fishing with Christian and assure him that Mr. Rodriguez and Jose will both be welcome, too . . . Please be here to do that, Daddy. Please. Ray remains immobile, the ventilator sucking and expelling and the monotonous but reassuring beep, beep, beep of his heart monitor his only response.