That Burke Man

“A little.” She took a slow breath. “I hate being helpless.”

“You won’t always be,” he reminded her. “One day, you won’t have to worry about traction and pills. Try to think of this as a temporary setback.”

“I’ll bet you’ve never been helpless in your whole life.”

“I had pneumonia once,” he recalled. His face hardened with memory. He’d been violently ill, because he hadn’t realized how serious his chest cold had become until his fever shot up and he couldn’t walk for pain and lack of breath. The doctor had reluctantly allowed him to stay at home during treatment, with the proviso that he had to be carefully watched. But Marie had left him alone to go to a cocktail party with his best friend, smiling as she swept out the door. After all, it was just a little cough and he’d be fine, she’d said carelessly. Besides, this party was important to her. She was going to meet several society matrons who were potential clients for her new interior-design business. She couldn’t pass that up. It wasn’t as if pneumonia was even serious, she’d laughed lightly on her way out the door.

“Come back,” Jane said softly.

His head jerked as he realized his thoughts had drifted away. “Sorry.”

“What happened?” she persisted.

He shrugged. “Nothing much. I had pneumonia and my wife left me at home to go to a cocktail party.”

“And?” she persisted.

“You’re as stubborn as a bulldog, aren’t you?” he asked irritably. “You’re prying.”

“Of course I am,” she said easily. “Tell me.”

“She went on to an all-night club after the cocktail party and didn’t come home until late the next morning. She’d put my antibiotics away and hadn’t told me where, and I was too sick to get up and look for them. By the time she got home, I was delirious with fever. She had to get an ambulance and rush me to the hospital. I very nearly died. That was the year Cherry was born.”

“Why, the witch!” Jane said bluntly. “And you stayed with her?”

“Cherry was on the way,” he said starkly. “I knew that if we got divorced, she wouldn’t have the baby. I wanted Cherry,” he said stiffly.

He said it as if it embarrassed him, and that made her smile. “I’ve noticed that you take fatherhood seriously.”

“I always wanted kids,” he said. “I was an only child. It’s a lonely life for a kid on a big ranch. I wanted more than one, but…” He shrugged. “I’m glad I’ve got Cherry.”

“Her mother didn’t want her?”

He glowered. “Marie likes her when she’s having guests, so that she can show the world what a sweet, devoted mother she is. It wins her brownie points in her business affairs. She’s an interior designer and most of her work comes from very wealthy, very conservative, Texans. You know, the sort who like settled family men and women on the job?”

“Does Cherry know?”