Branded as Trouble
Or at least that’s what she liked to tell herself.
It was just as possible that he would have only added another level of weirdness. After all, he’d married Vita.
Still, Mila had some incredible memories of Frankie Michael Banchini. He’d done funny faces to make her laugh, had secretly eaten those much-hated Brussels sprouts that Vita had insisted on serving her. And he’d never turned her away when she wanted him to read her a story. Mila was certain that’s where her love of books had started, and being around them was a way of keeping her father close.
She had loved him. Always would. And she loved her mother, too. Sometimes, though, Vita didn’t always make loving her that easy.
“There’s an ill wind blowing,” her mother greeted her. She lifted her head, looked at the cloudless sky. There wasn’t so much as a wisp of a breeze. “Bad juju. That might help.”
Vita tipped her head to a small white box on Mila’s doorstep. The kind of box that someone might use to gift a small piece of jewelry.
Since the porch wasn’t that big, Mila leaned in and had a look. Not jewelry. It appeared to be a blob of some kind of animal poop. Chicken, probably, since her mother raised them.
“Sometimes, you have to fight caca with caca,” her mother added.
Mila could only sigh, and she sank down on the step next to her mother. She considered asking her if she wanted to go inside, but she’d left her Buttercup clothes on the sofa and didn’t want to have to explain it.
“So, what bad juju should I expect?” Mila asked.
“I had a vision. Within thirty days, your life will be turned upside down.”
Oh, this was such a cheery conversation. Mila hadn’t lied to Ian when she had told him she didn’t drink beer, but there was a bottle of wine in her fridge that she’d need after this visit.
It wasn’t fun to encourage this conversation thread, but her mother wasn’t going to leave until she had said whatever it was she’d come to say. Best to get that “say” started.
“Are we talking a tornado here?” Mila asked. “Or something more personal, like me tripping and falling?”
Vita lifted her shoulder. “The vision doesn’t always dot the i’s or cross the t’s. But in these same thirty days, you’ll be on a quest to find the truth.”
Well, she was sort of heading in that direction, anyway. The fantasy stuff just wasn’t working for her anymore. Lately, she’d been thinking about being kissed. For real. Not as part of some reenactment.
“And after thirty days, you’ll no longer be a virgin,” her mother added in a discussing-the-weather tone. Vita took something from her pocket—a foil-wrapped condom—and handed it to her. “Use this, though. It’s a rubber, and it’ll stop you from getting knocked up. You put it on the man’s secret place when he’s decided not to keep it secret from you any longer.”
Mila stared at her. “I know what a condom is.”
“Well, good.” Vita patted her hand. And kept on patting. It went on for so long that Mila had to stop her or else she was going to have a red mark.
“Is something wrong?” Mila came out and asked.
Vita nodded, got to her feet, but not before patting her hand again. “I need to take a little trip back to see my family.”
She might as well have announced she was going to Pluto. Vita never traveled. Heck, her mother never left Wrangler’s Creek. “To Romania?”
Another nod. “I want to see them while they’re still around to be seen. Just don’t hate me when the shit happens. I had my reasons for doing what I did.”
Color her confused. What did Romanians, upside down, devirgining and bad juju have to do with her hating her mother?
“All will be revealed in time,” Vita added, and she started to walk to her bicycle, which was next to Mila’s fence.
She was still confused. “Want me to give you a ride home?” Her mother owned a car but rarely used it. Instead, Vita preferred to pedal the two miles from her place and into town.
Vita shook her head and kept moving. Mila would have gone after her if her phone hadn’t rung, and she saw her best friend’s name on the screen. Sophie Granger McKinnon.
“I’m at the hospital,” Sophie said the moment that Mila answered.
That was not something she wanted to hear from anyone but especially one who was seven and a half months pregnant with twins. “Are you in labor?”
“No. I’m fine. It’s not me. It’s my mom. She had some chest pains so I brought her in.” It sounded as if Sophie was crying. “Mila, they think she might have had a heart attack.”
Oh, mercy. “Just stay calm. I’ll be there in a few minutes. Who’s with you now?”
“Clay.”
Good. Clay was police chief Clay McKinnon, Sophie’s husband and a rock under pressure. He would help Sophie rein in her worst fears. Still, Mila needed to be there, too. She’d known Sophie’s mother, Belle, her entire life, and while Belle wasn’t exactly Miss Sunshine, she didn’t put curses on people.
“Garrett and Nicky are on the way, too,” Sophie added. Her brother and his fiancée. “Garrett was off buying some cattle, but he should be here soon. Anyway, I’ve tried to call Roman, but he’s not answering. I hate to ask you to do this, but could you try calling him again for me? If he still doesn’t answer, would you drive to his house in San Antonio and tell him what’s going on?”
“Of course,” Mila said without hesitation.
“I know Roman and Mom are at odds, but he’ll want to know. Convince him to come home.”
“I will.”
Mila wasn’t sure she could do that. Roman wasn’t an easy-to-convince sort of person. Plus, she always got a little tongue-tied around him. But surely once he heard about his mother, Mila wouldn’t need to do much convincing. He would hurry to be by her side.
She scrolled through her “favorites” contacts, found Roman’s number and pressed it. Since he hadn’t answered his sister’s call, Mila expected this to go to voice mail, but she was surprised when he immediately answered.
“Mila,” he said.
One word. Her name. There was nothing unusual about it, other than Roman had been the one to say it. And, like any other time she heard him speak, her stomach did a flip-flop. She so wished there was some way to make herself immune to him.
Mila gathered her breath, ready to tell him about his mom, but Roman continued first. “It’s Tate,” he said.
Her stomach did another flip-flop but for a different reason this time. That’s because she heard the concern in his voice. “What’s wrong?”
“He ran away again, and I’ve been looking all over for him. By any chance, did he go to your place?”
It wasn’t an out-there kind of question. Tate had run away before, nearly two years ago, and he’d gotten someone to drive him to her house. That’s because Tate’s mother, and therefore, Tate, were Mila’s cousins.
Once Valerie and she had been close, too, since Vita had raised Valerie as her own. But it didn’t matter that Mila had once thought of her as a sister because she hadn’t seen Valerie in years. That didn’t matter to Tate, either. He just seemed to want a connection with anyone who was blood kin with his mother.
Something Mila understood, because she missed having that with her father.
Plus, Tate knew that Mila kept a spare key in the verbena plant so he’d be able to get into her house. She checked, and it wasn’t there now.
“I’m going inside to see if he’s here,” she assured Roman.
Mila got the door unlocked as fast as she could, and her gaze fired all around. Her house wasn’t that large—two bedrooms, a living room, kitchen and bath. So, it didn’t take her long to check out the place.
And spot him.
Tate was on the sofa, asleep on top of her Buttercup dress.
“He’s here,” she told Roman.
Roman said something she didn’t catch. Profanity mixed with a prayer, maybe. “Put him on the phone. I want to talk to him.” That didn’t sound like a prayer, though. More like the profanity tone.
Mila was about to tell him to take it easy on the boy, but she froze. “Oh, God.”
That’s because she spotted something else. Something in Tate’s hand.
A bottle of pills.
Tate didn’t have a firm grip on it. In fact, he didn’t have a firm grip on anything. His hand was limp, the bottle resting on its side in his palm, and he was as white as a sheet of paper.
“Call an ambulance,” she managed to say to Roman.
Mila dropped the phone and ran to Tate.
CHAPTER THREE
THAT WHOLE LIFE flashing before a dying person’s eyes applied to fathers, too. Roman now had firsthand proof of that.
In that moment when Mila had shouted for him to call an ambulance, Roman saw it all. His childhood on the ranch. His screw-ups. His arrest for underage drinking. Another arrest for reckless driving only a year after that. The arguments with his parents those things had caused.
He was probably being punished for all the crap he’d done, but Roman wished to hell that the powers that be had taken that punishment out on him instead of Tate.
In that life-flash, Roman had seen Valerie telling him that she was pregnant. They’d both been just eighteen and in their senior year of high school. He’d felt the sickening feeling of dread that this was yet something else he had screwed up. The feeling hadn’t lasted though, not after Tate had been born. The moment Roman held his boy in his arms, he knew he’d never love anything or anybody the way he did his son.
And now he might lose him.
Tate was breathing, that much he knew, and Mila had said something about Tate holding a bottle of medicine. Roman didn’t know what he’d taken or how much, but he knew what this meant.
His son had attempted suicide.
Hell.
Roman was damn perceptive when it came to his job, but he hadn’t seen that his own son was on the brink of doing something like this. It made the fight at school and being expelled fade way, way to the background.
“How far out are you now?” Mila asked from the other end of the phone line.
Roman wasn’t sure he could speak because his chest and throat were so tight. “About five miles. Anything from the doctor yet?”
Though he knew the answer to that. If there’d been something, anything, Mila would have told him. After he’d called the ambulance about thirty minutes ago, he had called her right back. She hadn’t gotten off the phone with him since then and had been updating him every step of the way.
The ambulance’s arrival.
The drive to the hospital, which thankfully was only a few minutes from her house.
And Tate and her going into the emergency room.
The medics had immediately whisked Tate away, but they hadn’t allowed Mila in there with him. Instead, she was outside the examining room.
“Nothing yet from the doctor, but I’m certain that Tate will be fine,” Mila said. It was hard to tell if she was BS-ing, but Roman decided to take her at her word. He just couldn’t wrap his mind around anything else right now. “Focus on your driving,” she added. “Make sure you get here in one piece because we don’t need another Granger in the hospital.”
That was for sure. One was more than enough.
He wanted to know if Mila had learned what meds Tate had taken. Or where he’d gotten them. But again, if she knew something she would have told him.
Unless it was bad, that is.
People kept all kinds of old meds in their bathrooms. Maybe Tate had even gotten into the Percocet that was left over from when Roman wrenched his knee. Or, hell, he could have gotten it from some kid at school or stolen something from the nurse who’d been cleaning his busted lip. Tate could have taken something that could kill him.
Roman heard his too-fast breath, felt himself losing focus, so he forced himself to keep talking to Mila. “Were you able to get in touch with Sophie and Garrett?”
Mila didn’t jump to answer that. Something that caused Roman’s chest to tighten even more. “Yes, Sophie’s here,” she finally said. Then Mila hesitated again. “You want me to put her on the phone?”
It was tempting because he loved his sister, and it might have soothed him to hear her voice, but Sophie was mega-pregnant, and there was nothing in his own voice that would soothe her. He damn sure didn’t want her going into early labor because she was upset.
“No. I’m taking my exit now,” Roman told her. “I’m almost there. Meet me at the ER doors so I know where to go. Oh, and try to get Sophie to sit down or something.”
He hit the end call button and started the last couple of miles. They crawled by. Too bad, though, that his thoughts weren’t crawling. Apparently, the life-flash was the only thing that was going to fall into the fast category today because his truck suddenly felt as if it were in snail gear. It didn’t help that Mila was right. He had to focus on his driving because it wouldn’t help anyone if he got in an accident.
It was the second time today that he screeched into a parking lot, and he hit the ground running as soon as he brought his truck to a stop. It took another lifetime for him to run to the ER, and just as he had known she would be, Mila was there.
“This way,” she said, and he pulled her into a quick hug as they ran. “The doctor is still in there with him.”
Roman got another hug from Sophie, who wasn’t sitting but rather pacing outside an examining room while she had her hands on her back. Roman didn’t knock. He just threw open the examining room door and went in.
Only to see Tate barfing into a bedpan.
His son was alive, conscious and sitting up. Roman wasn’t sure how many prayers of thanks he said in those next few seconds, but he had to have set a world record.
Tate wasn’t alone. In addition to the doctor, a nurse was there. Wanda Kay Busby, and she immediately smiled and winked at him. Roman hoped she had something in her eye to make her do that, because the last thing he wanted right now was a flirting nurse.
Or a cop.
There was one of those, too. His brother-in-law, Chief Clay McKinnon, was in the corner of the room, his back against the wall. Maybe Clay was there as family, but it was also possible he’d been called in because this was a suicide attempt.
Roman went to Tate and put his arms around him. He couldn’t tell if Tate was glad to see him because he was still heaving.
“Does your son have any known allergies?” the doctor asked. His name was Alan Sanchez, and Roman had known him most of his life. In fact, Dr. Sanchez had stitched him up a few times.
Roman shook his head and tried to think. “Sometimes dairy upsets his stomach.” Which probably wasn’t relevant here, but Roman’s thoughts were all over the place. He sorted through the tornado in his head and came up with some questions for Tate.
“Are you okay? What did you take? And why the heck did you do this?”
Tate couldn’t answer because he was still barfing.
Dr. Sanchez pulled a medicine bottle from his pocket and showed it to Roman. Not prescription stuff, but rather over-the-counter meds. Cramp Relief Nighttime, Roman read from the label. Beneath it was something that got Roman’s attention: “Nighttime relief of menstrual discomfort, PMS, bloating and headaches.”
“Tate took period medicine?” Roman asked, certain that he’d missed something.
“Well, it’s also a general painkiller,” the doctor explained, “and it has a sleep aid in it. A medicine similar to Benadryl. That’s why Mila wasn’t able to wake him when she found him in her house.”
“Period medicine?” Roman repeated. That told him just how bad off Tate was for him to down something like that. “Why did you do this?” he said to Tate.
Tate lifted his shoulder, which wasn’t an answer. At least not the answer Roman wanted to hear.
“He’ll be drowsy for a while,” the doctor went on. “We pumped his stomach, but that was just a precaution. We think he only took three. While that exceeds the recommended dosage, it’s not enough to be life threatening.”
All right. That was an answer Roman wanted to hear. Tate was going to be okay. The relief flooded through him, but it was quickly followed by another emotion.
Anger.
This was intentional. If he’d simply had a headache, he could have almost certainly found something else to take care of it, and he wouldn’t have needed three pills.
“Any idea how Tate got that cut on his mouth?” Dr. Sanchez asked.
That didn’t help with the anger that was quickly eating up the relief. “School fight.” Roman wouldn’t mention the other stuff about Tate being expelled and running away. No, that was something he would discuss with his son as soon as he quit puking.
“Why don’t we step outside and go over some paperwork?” the doctor added. “It’s going to be a while before Tate feels like talking.”
Yeah, and he might never feel like talking to his father. Well, that was about to change, because Roman was tired of sweeping all that teenage angst under the rug. It had brought them here, to this, and it was going to end.
Clay stayed put with Tate and the nurse, and Roman let the doctor take him by the arm and lead him into the hall. The moment the door opened, Mila was right there. No Sophie, though.
“How is he?” Mila immediately asked. “God, Roman, I’m so sorry. I swear, I didn’t know he would do anything like this or I wouldn’t have left that spare key in the verbena.”
Roman waved off her apology. “Thanks for finding him and getting him here. Where’s Sophie?”
Mila tipped her head to the other end of the hall. “Cafeteria. She’s getting a snack. But she’ll be back in a few minutes.”
Good. Then he’d make her sit. Maybe even talk her into going home with her husband. That would clear out the cop along with getting Sophie into a more comfortable place where she could get some rest.
Roman turned to the doctor. “Did those pills damage Tate in any way?”
“Probably not. At most he’ll have an upset stomach and be sleepy.” He looked down at a tablet where it appeared he’d made some notes on a medical form. “But I do need to keep him at least overnight. Tate will also need a psychiatric evaluation.”
Those two words felt like a punch to the gut. Obviously, the doctor thought this was more than teenager angst to request something like that.
“You’ll want to give Tate some time, too,” the doctor went on. “He seemed scared of what your reaction would be. Terrified, actually. When he first woke up, he asked me not to tell you. In fact, he said he didn’t want to see you.”
Roman felt Mila’s hand on his arm, probably because he was breathing like an asthmatic. His son was terrified of him. Great. Something else to add to his résumé of shitty screw-ups. He’d been right to worry about that when Valerie had told him she was pregnant.
“He’s a teenager,” Mila whispered to him. That was likely meant to comfort him and explain all of this away, but nothing could do that right now.
The doctor wisely gave him a moment by looking over his notes again. “It’ll take me a while to set up the psychiatric eval. A while to get him into a room, too. In the meantime, if you want to check on your mom, the nurse will stay here with Tate.”
Because Mila still had her hand on his arm, Roman felt her fingers tense. “I didn’t tell him,” Mila jumped to say. “I thought he already had enough on his mind for the drive here.”
Roman huffed. She was right, he had had enough on his mind, but he wasn’t someone who needed sheltering. “What’s wrong with my mother?”
Even now, just saying the word mother caused him to have a bad reaction. That’s because there’d been bad blood between them for so long that Roman’s go-to expression upon hearing her name was to scowl.
“Sophie brought her in a little while ago,” the doctor explained. “Belle was having chest pains, shortness of breath—”
“A heart attack?” Roman interrupted.
The doctor shook his head. “It’s called stress cardiomyopathy or broken heart syndrome.”
Roman just stared at him, wondering if this was some kind of sick joke. Apparently not. On the day his son had swallowed PMS meds, his sixty-year-old mom had had a broken heart reaction.
“It happens to some women her age,” the doctor explained. “We’re not sure why, but I’ll be keeping her for a day or two, as well. She’s in room 112, and you can look in on her now if you like.”
That was an offer that most sons could answer with a resounding yes, but he hesitated. “She doesn’t always have a good reaction when it comes to me. I don’t want to upset her.”
Again, like his son.
Roman was seeing a pattern here.
The doctor made a sound of agreement because he almost certainly knew all about Belle’s and his parting of the ways. A feud that’d come to a head when Roman and Valerie had refused to get married just because she was pregnant. His mother had considered that an embarrassment and a “slimeball” thing to do.
Her exact words.
It hadn’t helped, either, when Valerie had run out and left Roman to raise Tate alone. Ditto for not helping—the fact his mother and he were both mule-headed. But, by God, Roman had gotten plenty tired of having her judge him.
The doctor made some more notes. The way this was going, he might be scheduling a psych eval for Roman, too.
“Hold off on seeing Belle, then,” Dr. Sanchez said a moment later. “She might ask about Tate, and it’s not a good idea to tell her about him just yet. Let’s wait a few more hours until I’m certain she’s stabilized.”
Good idea. A few more hours might give Roman a chance to find level ground. The tornado was starting to spin in his head again.
The doctor looked at him. “I’ll need you to fill out some insurance paperwork.” He pointed to the reception desk at the front of the waiting room. “Just see the woman who’s seated there and she’ll get you started.”
Dr. Sanchez walked away, leaving Roman alone with Mila. He was too exhausted to figure out the right thing to say to her, but it was obvious she was worried.
“Bad day?” she asked. She didn’t crack a smile. In fact, Roman wasn’t sure he’d ever seen Mila smile. But this seemed to be some attempt at humor.
He didn’t smile, either, but yeah, it’d been a bad day. His son’s life was a mess, and Roman wasn’t even sure how to fix it. Now, his mother was having heart problems. A problem with a weird name, at that. And even though it was minor in the grand scheme of things, his side was hurting—bad.
“Maybe this means you’ve gotten all the awful stuff out of the way,” Mila added. “That’s what my mom always says, anyway.” She made a face. “Except she says you have to flush the toilet to get rid of the poop and have clean water. My mom says a lot of weird things,” she added in a mumble.
She looked at him, her expression changing, and Mila reached out for him. Not as some kind of comforting gesture, either, but with both arms. And she lurched toward him. At first, Roman didn’t know why she’d done that.
Until somebody turned off the lights in his head.
And he dropped to the floor like a sack of rocks.
CHAPTER FOUR
“I DON’T WANT whipped cream in my boxer shorts,” Roman mumbled. He wasn’t sure why, but it was hard to speak.
“All right,” someone agreed. “Seems like a reasonable request to me.”
It took Roman several moments to process the comment. It wasn’t easy because, in addition to it being hard to speak, it was also hard to think. His head was whirling like an F5 tornado. But, despite the whirl, he thought he might recognize the voice. Not Tiffany Ann, standing in his living room.
But rather his mother.
Hell. Even in a dream he didn’t want to talk to his mother about whipped cream sex, so Roman forced himself to wake up. Maybe there was glue or something on his eyes because he had to struggle to get them open.
Bad idea.
The light stabbed in his eyeballs and therefore his head. In addition to the whirling thoughts and dreams, he was also in pain.
“Would you like whipped cream somewhere else?” she asked. “Maybe like in some hot chocolate or on a piece of pie?”