The Girl Who Wouldn't Stay Dead

He sat on the rock beside her. Starlight shone on his handsome face. She knew him. “Connor.”

Gently and carefully, he maneuvered his arm around her. She should have put up a fight, but she didn’t have the strength, and she couldn’t believe Connor wanted to hurt her.

“I already called 9-1-1,” he said. “The paramedics will be here soon. I don’t want to move you until they arrive with their gear to stabilize your back and neck.”

He wasn’t here to kill her but to save her.

She leaned against him, rested her head on his shoulder and inhaled the scent of his leather jacket. Though he felt real, she couldn’t believe he was here. They’d talked yesterday. She’d been in Denver. He’d been in Manhattan. They’d both been summoned to the reading of her late ex-husband’s will in Aspen, and she’d told her lawyer, Connor, not to bother making the trip. She didn’t plan to attend. Why should she? She hadn’t expected to receive a dime, and showing up for the reading had seemed like a lot of bother for almost zero reward.

At the last moment, she’d changed her mind. This might be her final opportunity to face the Riggs family, and she had a few choice words for them. Emily had no reason to be ashamed. Early this morning before she left Denver, she’d texted Connor about her decision to go.

“Emily, are you okay?”

“No,” she mumbled.

“Dumb question, sorry,” he said. “I came as soon as I could. After I got your text, I caught a direct flight from JFK to Denver, then a shuttle flight to Aspen airport, where I grabbed a rental car.”

Though his deep voice soothed her, she couldn’t relax until she’d told him what had happened. But her throat was closed. Her eyelids drooped.

“If I’d flown in last night,” he said, “we would have made the drive together. You wouldn’t have had this accident.”

Accident? She wanted to yell at him that this wasn’t an accident.

She heard the screech of the ambulance siren. Her mind went blank.

* * *

IN A PRIVATE hospital room in Aspen, Connor Gallagher stood like a sentry next to the railing on the right side of Emily’s bed. She lay in an induced coma after four hours in surgery. Her condition was listed as critical. The doctors and staff were cautiously optimistic, but no one would give him a 100 percent guarantee that she’d fully recover. He hated that she’d been hurt. Emily had suffered enough.

Her breathing had steadied. He watched as her chest rose and fell in a rhythmic pattern. Her slender body made a small ripple under the lightweight blue hospital blanket. Though the breathing tube for the ventilator had been removed, it was obvious that something terrible had happened to her. There were three separate IV bags. Her broken left arm was in a cast from above the elbow to the fingers. A bad sprain on her left leg required a removable Aircast plastic boot. Bandages swathed her head. Her face was relaxed but not peaceful. A black-and-blue shiner and a stitched-up wound on her forehead made her look like a prizefighter who’d lost the big bout.

Being as gentle as he could, Connor held her right hand below the site where the IV was inserted. Her knuckles and palm were scraped. The doctors had said that her lacerations and bruises weren’t as bad as they looked, but a series of MRIs showed swelling in her brain. The head injury worried him more than anything else.

Bones would mend. Scars would heal. But neurological damage could be a permanent disability. She’d fallen unconscious after he found her on the ground close to the wreckage of her car. During the rescue and the ambulance ride, she’d wakened only once.

Her eyelids had fluttered open, and she gazed steadily with her big blue eyes. “I’m in danger, Connor.”

Her words had been clear, but he wasn’t sure what she meant. “You’re going to be all right.”

“Stay with me,” she’d said. “You’re the only one I can trust.”

He’d promised that he wouldn’t leave her alone, and he damn well meant to honor that vow. She needed him. Even if his presence irritated the medical staff, he would goddamn well stay by her side.

The emergency doctor who’d supervised her treatment made it clear that he didn’t need Connor or anybody else looking over his shoulder. The doc had curly blond hair and the bulging muscles of a Norse god. Appropriately, his name was Thorson, aka Thor’s son.

Thorson opened the door to her room, entered and went to the opposite side of Emily’s bed, where he fiddled with the IV bags and checked the monitors. Connor sensed the real reason the doctor had stopped by was to assert his authority.

Without looking at Connor, Thorson said, “She’s doing well.”

Compared to what? Death? Connor stifled his dislike and asked, “When can she be moved?”

“Maybe tomorrow. Maybe the next day.”

“Be more specific, Doctor. No offense but I want to get her to an expert neurologist.”

“I assure you that our staff is highly regarded in all aspects of patient care.”

Connor took his phone from his pocket. While Emily was in surgery, he’d done research. He clicked to an illustration of state-of-the-art neurological equipment. “Do you have access to one of these?”

“We don’t need one.”

“I disagree.”

Thorson glared; his steel blue eyes shot thunderbolts. When he folded his arms across his broad chest, his maroon scrubs stretched tightly over his huge biceps.

Connor wasn’t intimidated. At six feet three inches, he was taller than the pseudogod, and he seldom lost a fight, verbal or physical. Connor returned the glare; his dark eyes were hard as obsidian.

“Tell me again,” Thorson said. “What is your relationship to the patient?”

“I’m her fiancé.”

“There’s no diamond on her finger.”

“I haven’t given her a ring.”

Connor avoided lying whenever possible, but he’d discovered it was easier to facilitate Emily’s treatment if he claimed to be her fiancé instead of her lawyer. He’d already played the sympathy card to get her into a private room in this classy Aspen facility, where she wasn’t the wealthiest or most influential patient. The nurses had been touched by the tragic story of the pretty young woman and her doting fiancé.

“No ring?” Thorson’s blond eyebrows lifted. “Why not?”

“I’d like to explain in a way you could understand. But there are complex issues involved in our relationship.”

That was true. Emily used to be married to his best friend, and they both used Connor as their personal attorney. Her ex-husband, a hotshot Wall Street broker, had moved his business to a more important law firm. Six weeks ago, her ex died. Complicated? Oh, yeah.

Thorson pursed his lips. “I couldn’t help noticing her last name, Benton-Riggs. Any relation to Jamison Riggs?”

Aha! Now Connor knew why the doc was hostile. The Riggs family was a big deal in Aspen, and she’d been married to the heir, the golden boy, for seven years. She and Jamison had been separated for over a year, but the divorce wasn’t final until three months ago. “Back off, Thorson.”

“I should inform her family.”

Hearing the Riggs clan referred to as Emily’s family stretched Connor’s self-control to the limit. Those people never gave a rat’s ass about her. Years ago, when Jamison brought her to Aspen for the first time, Connor had tagged along. Why not? Jamison was his good buddy, a fellow Harvard grad. The two of them could have been brothers. Taller than average, they were both lean and mean, with brown hair and brown eyes. They also had the same taste in women. When Jamison introduced him to Emily, emphasizing that she was his betrothed, Connor felt his heart being ripped from his chest. She should have been with him.

The Aspen branch of the Riggs family accepted Connor, assuming that because he’d gone to an Ivy League school he came from good stock. They were dead wrong, but he didn’t bother to correct them, didn’t want to talk to them at all when he saw how snotty they were to Emily. She didn’t wear designer clothes, didn’t ski and didn’t know one end of a Thoroughbred horse from another. Her laugh was too loud, and her accent was a humble Midwestern twang. Connor thought one of the reasons Jamison had married her was to drive his family crazy.

Connor growled at Thorson. “Don’t call the Riggs family.”

“I’m sure they’ll want to be informed.”

“You’ve seen the advance directives for Ms. Benton-Riggs, correct?” In the first years of their marriage, Jamison and Emily had asked Connor to file their living wills, powers of attorney and proxy-care forms. They had named him as the decision maker, and those papers were in effect until the divorce and the dissolution of his friendship with Jamison, who had made other arrangements. Emily, however, had never bothered to make a change. “I’m in charge of her medical care, and I don’t want anyone named Riggs anywhere near her.”