The Mccaffertys: Slade

Slade’s back teeth ground together at the thought of her. He’d never expected to see her again; hadn’t wanted to. Still didn’t. He’d dated her for a while, true, and there had been something about her that had left him wanting more, but he’d dated a lot of women in his lifetime, before and after Jamie Parsons. It wasn’t a big deal.

“Why do I think you’ve been discussing me?” Randi asked as she appeared in the doorway to the dining room. She was limping slightly from the accident that had nearly taken her life, but her spine was stiff as she hobbled into the room and pried the baby easily from Matt’s arms.

“You always think we’re talkin’ about you behind your back,” Matt teased.

“Because you always are. Right?” she asked Slade.

“Always,” he drawled.

“So when’s the attorney due to arrive?”

Thorne checked his watch. “In about fifteen minutes.”

“Good.” Randi kissed her son’s head and he cooed softly. Slade felt a pang deep inside, a pain he buried deep. He touched the scar on the side of his face and scowled. He wasn’t envious of Randi—God, no. But he couldn’t help being reminded of his own loss every time he looked at his nephew.

And his sister had been through so much. Aside from the fact that she still moved with difficulty, wincing once in a while from the pain, there was the problem with her memory. Amnesia, if she could be believed.

Slade wasn’t convinced. Nope. He wasn’t certain his half sister was being straight with them. Her memory loss smacked of convenience. There were just too many questions Randi didn’t want to answer, questions concerning her son’s paternity. When her jaw had been wired shut and her arm in a cast, communication had been near impossible, but now she was well on the way to being a hundred percent again. Except for her mind. To Slade’s way of thinking, amnesia made everything so much easier. No explanations. Not even about the damned accident that had nearly ended her life.

What the hell had happened on that icy road in Glacier Park? All Slade, his brothers and the police knew was that Randi’s Jeep had swerved off the road and down an embankment. Had she hit ice? Been forced off the road? Kurt Striker, the private investigator Slade had contacted to look into the accident, was convinced another car, a maroon Ford product, had forced Randi off the road. The police were checking. Only Randi knew for certain. And she wasn’t talking.

The result of the accident had been premature delivery of the baby, internal injuries, concussion, lacerations, a broken jaw and a fractured leg. She’d spent most of her recuperation time in a coma, unable to communicate, while the brothers had searched for whoever had tried to harm her and her baby.

So far, they’d come up empty. Whoever had tried to kill Randi had taken a second shot at it, slipping into the hospital, posing as part of the staff and injecting insulin into her IV. She’d survived. Barely. And the maniac was still very much at large.

Slade’s fists clenched at the thought of the bastard. If he ever got his hands on the guy, he’d beat the living tar out of him.

But Randi wasn’t helping much. She’d emerged from her coma fighting mad and unwilling to help. If only she’d help them, give them some names, let them know who might want to harm her…. But no. Her memory just kept failing her.

Or so she claimed.

Bull.

Slade figured she was hiding something, covering up the truth, protecting someone. But why? Who?

Herself? Her baby? Little J.R.’s father, whoever he was? Or someone else?

“Hell,” he growled under his breath.

Maybe Thorne was right. Maybe they should enlist Jamie Parsons and the firm of Jansen, Monteith and Stone to try to locate the baby’s father and to take the legal steps to ensure that J.R.’s daddy wouldn’t show up someday and demand custody. If that was even possible.

Slade just wished the lawyer assigned to their case was someone other than Jamie Parsons.

Randi settled into the chair directly across the table from Thorne. “Since the attorney’s dropping by anyway, I want to talk about changing the baby’s name legally. J.R. doesn’t cut it with me.”

“Do what you want. We needed something for the birth certificate.” Thorne glanced at his nephew. “But I think J.R. fits him just fine.”

“So do I,” Slade agreed. “Since you were in a coma, we agreed on the initials.”

“Okay, okay, so it served a purpose and now everyone is calling him J.R., but I’m going to change his name officially to Joshua Ray McCafferty.” She glanced around the room, and if she saw the questions in her brothers’ eyes, ignored them.

J.R.’s paternity was a touchy subject. With everyone. Particularly Randi, who was the only one who could name the father. But she wasn’t talking. Unmarried and, to her brothers’ knowledge, not seriously involved with anyone, she refused to name the man.

Why?

“He’s mine,” she’d say when asked about the baby. “That’s all that matters.”

But it bothered Slade. A lot. He couldn’t help but think her reticence to name the man and the attempts on her life were related.

“He’s your kid. You can name him whatever you want,” Thorne said agreeably, “but I didn’t warn the attorney that we’d have more issues than the property division.”

“He’ll handle it.” Randi adjusted the drool bib around her son’s tiny neck.

“She,” Thorne clarified. “Chuck Jansen is sending a woman associate. Jamie Parsons. She grew up around here.”

“Jamie?” Randi’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully and Slade envisioned the gears in her mind meshing and spinning and spewing out all kinds of unwanted conclusions. Yep. She glanced his way.

“She lived with her grandmother outside of town.” Thorne winced as he adjusted his bad leg on the chair next to him.

“Nita Parsons. Yes, I remember. Mom made me take piano lessons from Mrs. Parsons. Man, she was a taskmaster.”

None of the men commented. They never liked to be reminded that Randi’s mother had been the reason their parents had divorced. John Randall had fallen in love with Penelope Henley, promptly divorced Larissa, their mother, and married the much younger woman. Six months after the nuptials, Randi had come into the world. Slade hadn’t much liked his stepmother or the new baby, but over the years he’d quit blaming his half sister for his parents’ doomed union.

Randi looked up at Slade and he felt it coming—the question he didn’t want to face. “Weren’t you and Jamie an item years ago?”

“Hardly an item. We saw each other a few times. It wasn’t a big deal.” He shoved his hands into the back pockets of his jeans and hoped that was the end of it. But he knew his reporter sister better than that.

“More than a few. And, if I remember right, she was pretty gone on you.”

“Is that right?” Matt asked, a smile crawling across his beard-shadowed chin. “Hard to believe any woman would be so foolish.”

“Isn’t it?” Randi said as J.R. tried to grab her earring.

“Funny. I wouldn’t think you’d remember anything.”

Randi’s eyes flashed. “Bits and pieces, Slade. I already told you, I just remember a little of this and a little of that. More each day.”

But not the father of her child? Or what happened when she was forced off the road?

“Then you’d better focus on who wants to see you dead.”

“You were involved with the lady lawyer?” Matt asked.

Slade lifted one shoulder and felt the weight of his brothers’ gazes on him. “It was a long time ago.” He heard the whine of an engine and his muscles tightened. He turned toward the window.

Through the frosty panes he caught a glimpse of a tiny blue car chugging its way along the drive. Slade’s gut clenched. The compact slid to a stop, narrowly missing his truck. A couple of seconds later a tall woman emerged from the car. With a black briefcase swinging from her arm, she hesitated just a second as she looked at the house, then taking a deep breath, she squared her shoulders and strode up the front path where the snow had been broken and trampled.

Jamie Parsons in the flesh.