James Bravo's Shotgun Bride Read online

  “No. No, it is not true. James is not my baby’s daddy. How many ways can I say it? How in the hell am I going to get through to you?”

  Levi made a humphing sound and flung out an arm in James’s direction. “If not him, then who?”

  By then, Addie’s plump cheeks were beet red with fury and frustration. She drew in a slow, hard breath. “Fine. All right. It is none of your business until I’m ready to tell you and you ought to know that. But if you just have to know, it’s Brandon. Brandon is my baby’s father.”

  Levi blinked three times in rapid succession. And then he let out a mocking cackle of a laugh. “Brandon Hall?”

  James fully understood Levi’s disbelief. A local poor boy made good who’d designed supersuccessful video games for a living, Brandon Hall was never all that hale and hearty. Recently, he’d died of cancer, having been bedridden for months before he passed on. It seemed pretty unlikely that Brandon had been in any condition to father a child—not in the last few months, anyway. And Addie’s stomach was still flat. She couldn’t be that far along. Uh-uh. James didn’t buy Addie’s story any more than Levi did.

  “Yes,” Addie insisted tightly. “Brandon is the dad.”

  “I may be old, but I’m not senile,” Levi reminded her. “There is no way that Brandon Hall could’ve done what needed doing to put you in this predicament, Addison Anne, and you know that as well as I do.”

  Addie fumed some more. “You are so thickheaded. Honestly, I cannot talk to you...” She turned to James and spoke softly, gently. Soothingly, even. “I am so sorry, James, for what my grandpa has done.” She gave him the big eyes. God, she was cute. “Are you hurt?”

  He nodded, wincing. “He got the jump on me, whacked me on the back of the head, hard, out at my new place. Knocked me out cold. I’m not sure how long I was unconscious, but when I woke up, I was here.”

  She hissed in a breath and whirled to pin her grandfather with another accusing glare.

  Levi played it off. “He’s fine. Hardheaded. All the Bravos are. Everybody knows that.”

  “You hit him, Grandpa.” She threw out a hand in James’s direction. “You hurt him. And you have restrained him against his will.” Levi started to speak. “Shush,” she commanded. “Do not say another word to me. I can’t even look at you right now.” She turned back to James. “I really am so, so sorry...” James sat very still and tried his best to look appropriately noble and wounded. She came closer. “Can I...take a peek, see how bad it is?”

  “Sure.” He turned his head so she could see.

  And then she was right there, bending over him, smelling of sunshine and clean hay and something else, something purely womanly, wonderfully sweet. “Oh!” she cried. “It’s a big bump. And you’re bleeding...”

  “I’m all right,” he said. It was the truth. The pain and the pounding had lessened in the past few minutes. And the closer Addie got, the better he felt. “And there’s not that much blood—is there?”

  “No, just a dribble of it. But blood is blood and that’s not good.”

  He turned and met her enormous eyes. “I’ll be all right. I’m sure I will.”

  She drew back. He wished she wouldn’t. It was harder to smell her now she’d moved away. “I don’t know what to say, James. I feel horrible about this. We need to patch you up immediately...”

  “Don’t untie him!” shouted Levi.

  Addie just waved a hand in the old guy’s direction and kept those big eyes on James. “Of course I will untie you.”

  “No!” Levi hollered.

  She ignored him and spoke directly to James. “I will untie you right now if you’ll only promise me not to call the police on my crazy old granddad.”

  “I’m not crazy!” Levi huffed. “I’m not crazy and he’s the dad—and you are not, under any circumstances, to untie him yet.”

  “Grandpa, he is not the dad. Brandon’s the dad.”

  “No.”

  “Yeah—and if you just have to have all the gory details, Brandon was my lifelong friend.” She choked a little then, emotion welling.

  Levi only groaned in impatient disgust. “I know he was your friend. I also know that’s all he was to you—nothing like you and lover boy here. Come on, Addie honey. I wasn’t born yesterday. I’ve seen the way this man looks at you, the way he’s been chasin’ after you—and though I know you’ve been trying to pretend nothing’s going on, it’s plain as the nose on my face that you are just as gone on him as he is on you.”

  “She is?” James barely kept himself from grinning like a fool.

  But no one was looking at him anyway. Levi kept arguing, “James is the daddy, no doubt about it. And, Addie girl, you need to quit telling your old PawPaw lies and admit the truth so that we can move on and fix what doesn’t need to be broken.”

  “I am not lying,” she cried. “Brandon was my best friend in the whole world and he grew up in foster care, with no family, with nothing.”

  “Stop tellin’ me things I already know.”

  “What I am telling you is that he wanted a child, someone to carry on a little piece of him when he was gone. Before he got too sick, he took steps. He had his sperm frozen...” Addie sniffed. Her big eyes brimmed. She blinked furiously, but it was no good. She couldn’t hold back her tears. They overflowed and ran down her cheeks. “And then he asked me if just maybe I would do that for him, if I would have his child so that something would be left of him in this world when he was nothing but ashes scattered on the cold ground...”

  By then James was so caught up in the story he’d pretty much forgotten his own predicament. Everyone in Justice Creek knew that Addie Kenwright and Brandon Hall had been best friends from childhood. People said that, near the end, she’d spent every spare moment at Brandon’s bedside. As the dead man had no one else, Addie had been the one to arrange the funeral service. She and Levi and her sister, Carmen, and Carmen’s husband, Devin, had sat together in the front pew, all the family that Brandon had.

  James asked her gently, “So, then, it was artificial insemination?”

  Addie sniffed, swiped the tears with the back of her hand and nodded. “We tried three times. What’s that they say? The third time’s the charm? Well, it was. But Brandon died the day after the third time. He died not even knowing that he was going to be a dad.”

  James realized he was in awe of Addie Kenwright and her willingness to have a baby for her dying friend.

  Levi, however, refused to accept that he’d kidnapped the wrong man. “That’s the most ridiculous bunch of bull I’ve ever heard. And I’m seventy-eight years old, Addie Anne, so you’d better believe I’ve heard some tall tales in my lifetime.”

  Addie only swiped more tears away and moved to stand behind James again. He glanced over his shoulder at her. She met his eyes and said softly, “I just hope you’ll be kind, that you’ll take pity on an old man who never meant to hurt anyone.”

  “I will,” he vowed quietly. “I do.”

  “Thank you.” Her cool hands swift and capable, she began working at the knots Levi had used to bind him.

  Levi let out another shout. “No!” He started waving the shotgun again. “Don’t you do that, Addie Anne. Don’t you dare. Under no circumstances can James be untied until I am absolutely certain that he’s ready to do the right thing!”

  Addie said nothing. She kept working the knots as Levi kept shouting, “Stop! Stop this instant!” He ran in circles, the gun held high.

  Just as the ropes binding James went slack, Levi let out a strange, strangled cry. He clapped his hand to his chest—and let go of the shotgun.

  The gun hit the floor. An ungodly explosion followed and a foot-wide hole bloomed in the ceiling. Addie screamed. Ears ringing, James jumped from the chair. Sheetrock, wood framing and kitchen flooring rained down.

  An
d Levi, his face gone a scary shade of purple, keeled over on his back gasping and moaning, clutching his chest in a desperate, gnarled fist.

  “PawPaw!” Addie cried and ran to him. She dropped to her knees at his side.

  Levi gasped and groaned and clutched his chest even harder. “Shouldn’t’ve...untied him...”

  “Oh, dear God.” She cast a quick, frantic glance in James’s direction. “Call an ambulance. Please...”

  James grabbed his phone off the side table and called 911.

  Chapter Two

  Once he got help on the line, James gave his phone to Addie so she could talk to the dispatcher directly. He scooped up his keys and wallet and stuck them in his pocket. And then he waited, ready to help in any way he might be needed.

  Addie pulled his phone away from her ear. “You can go.”

  He didn’t budge. “Later. What can I do?”

  She listened on the phone again as Levi lay there groaning. “Yes,” she said. “All right, yes.” She made soothing sounds at Levi. Then she looked at James again. “If you could maybe go up and get a pillow from his bed. His room’s off the front entry on the main floor. And get the aspirin from the medicine cabinet in the bathroom there?”

  He was already on his way up the stairs. He found the pillow and the aspirin and ran them back down to her.

  “Thank you,” she said. “And really. We’re okay. You just go ahead and go.”

  Levi was clearly very far from okay. James pretended he hadn’t heard her and eased the pillow under Levi’s head.

  Addie gave the old man an aspirin. “Put it under your tongue and let it dissolve there.” Levi grumbled out a few curse words, but he did what Addie told him to do. Addie shot another glance at James. “I mean it. Go on and get out of here.”

  Again, he ignored her. Not that he blamed her for wanting him to go, after all that had happened. But no way was he leaving her alone right now. What if Levi didn’t make it? James would never forgive himself for running off and deserting them at a time like this, with Addie scared to death and Levi just lying there, sweating and moaning and clutching his chest as he tried to answer the questions that Addie relayed to him from the dispatcher.

  At the last minute, as the ambulance siren wailed in the yard, James glanced up at the hole in the ceiling. He looked down at the rope abandoned on the rug at the base of the chair and the shotgun that had landed in front of the TV. All that was going to look pretty strange.

  He couldn’t do much about the hole, but he did grab the shotgun. He ejected the remaining shells and gathered them up, including the spent casing, which he found right out in the open in front of the sofa. He put the gun and the shells in the closet under the stairs and tossed the rope in there, too. The straight chair, he moved to a spot against the wall.

  “Thank you,” Addie said. He glanced over and saw she was watching him.

  He shrugged. “There’s still the hole in the ceiling. But don’t worry. It’ll be fine.”

  “Hope so.”

  “Just a little accident, that’s all.”

  She pressed those fine lips together, her eyes full of fear for her grandpa. “Would you go up and show them down here?”

  “You bet.” He ran up the stairs and greeted the med techs. “Roberta,” he said. “Sal.” They were local people and he’d known them all his life.

  Sal asked, “Where is he?”

  “In the basement. This way...”

  Roberta and Sal were pros. In no time, they had Levi on a stretcher, an oxygen mask on his face and an IV in his arm. James helped them get Levi up the stairs. As they put him in the ambulance, Addie ran back inside to grab her purse and lock up. Her sweet-natured chocolate Labrador retriever, Moose, followed after her, whining with concern. Addie told the dog to stay. With another worried whine, Moose trotted to the porch and dropped to his haunches. Addie climbed in the back of the ambulance with her grandfather and Roberta.

  Sal went around and got in behind the wheel. James trailed after him.

  “Who blew the hole in the kitchen floor?” Sal asked out the open driver’s window as he started the engine.

  “Levi was cleaning his shotgun.”

  Sal just shook his head. “You’ve got blood on your collar.”

  “It’s nothing. You taking him to Justice Creek General?”

  With a nod, Sal put it in gear.

  A moment later, James stood there alone in the dirt yard a few feet from Levi’s pre-WWII green Ford pickup, which had no doubt been used to kidnap him. Overhead, the sun beamed down. Not a cloud in the sky. It wasn’t at all the kind of day a man expected to be kidnapped on. Gently, he probed the goose egg on the back of his head. It was going to be fine. He was going to be fine.

  Levi, though?

  Hard to say.

  And what about Addie, all on her own at Justice Creek General, waiting to hear if her granddad would make it or not? At a time like this, a woman should have family around her. Her half sister, Carmen, would come from Wyoming. But how long would it take for Carmen to arrive?

  He just didn’t like to think of Addie sitting in a hospital waiting room all alone.

  As the ambulance disappeared around the first turn in the long driveway that led to the road, James took off toward the barn.

  A couple of the horses Addie boarded watched him with mild interest as he jumped the fence into the horse pasture and ran until he got to the fence on the far side. He jumped that, too, and kept on running. Fifteen minutes after leaving Addie’s front yard, he reached his quad cab, which was parked in front of his nearly finished new house. He had a bad cramp in his side and he had to walk in circles catching his breath, now and then bending over, sucking in air like a drowning man.

  There was blood on his tan boots—not much, just a few drops. He pictured old Levi, hitting him on the head and then dragging him to that green Ford truck of his—and not only to the truck, but then out of the truck, into the house at Red Hill and down to the basement. No wonder the old fool had a heart attack.

  As soon as his breath evened out a little, James dug his keys from his pocket and got in his quad cab. He checked his shirt collar in the sunscreen mirror. The blood wasn’t that bad and the bump hardly hurt at all anymore.

  He started the pickup and peeled out of there.

  * * *

  Addie needed to throw up. She needed to do that way too much lately. Right now, however, was not a convenient time. She sat in the molded plastic chair in the ER waiting room and pressed her hands over her mouth as she resolutely willed the contents of her stomach to stay down.

  She had James’s phone in her purse. In her frantic scramble to get in the ambulance with Levi, she hadn’t thought to give the phone back. And then she’d clutched it like a lifeline all the way to the hospital. She’d only stuck it in her purse to free her hands when the reception clerk had given her all those forms to fill out.

  Addie sucked in a slow breath and let it out even slower. Oh, dear Lord, please. Let PawPaw pull through this and let me not throw up now. Everything had happened way too fast. Her mind—and her poor stomach—was still struggling to catch up.

  Her own cell phone was in her purse, too. She’d barely remembered to grab it off the front hall table before racing out the door. She needed to get it out and call Carmen in Laramie. But the nurse had said Levi wouldn’t be in the ER for long. They would evaluate his condition and move him over to cardiac care for the next step. Addie was kind of waiting to find out what, exactly, the next step might be so that she could share it with her sister when she broke the terrifying news.

  A door opened across the room. The doctor she’d talked to earlier emerged and came toward her.

  Addie jumped to her feet, swallowed hard to keep from vomiting all over her boots and demanded, “My grandfather. Is he...?”
Somehow she couldn’t quite make herself ask the whole dangerous question.

  “He’s all right for now.” The doctor, a tall, thin woman with straight brown hair, spoke to her soothingly. “We’ve done a series of X-rays and given him medications to stabilize him.”

  “Stabilize him,” Addie repeated idiotically. “Is that good? That’s good, right?”

  “Yes. But his X-rays show that he’s got more than one artery blocked. He’s going to need emergency open-heart surgery. We want to airlift him to Denver, to St. Anne’s Memorial. It’s a Level-One trauma center and they will be fully equipped to give him the specialized care that he needs.”

  Her head spun. Denver. Open-heart surgery. How could this be happening? From the moment she’d caught sight of James Bravo tied to a chair in the basement at Red Hill, nothing had seemed real. “But...he’s never been sick a day in his life.”

  The doctor spoke gently, “It happens like this sometimes. That’s why they call heart disease the silent killer. Too often, you only know you’ve got a problem when you have a heart attack—but I promise we’re doing everything we can to get him the best care there is. You got him here quickly and that’s a large part of the battle. His chances are good.”

  Good. His chances were good. Was the doctor just saying that or was it really true? Addie sucked in air slowly and ordered her queasy stomach to settle down. “Can I see my grandfather, please?”

  “Of course you can. This way.”

  * * *

  In the curtained-off cubicle, Addie kissed Levi’s pale, wrinkled cheek and smoothed his wiry white hair and whispered, as much to reassure herself as to comfort him, “PawPaw, I promise you, everything is going to be fine. You’ll be on the mend before you know it.”

  Levi only groaned and demanded in a rough whisper, “Where’s James?”

  That made her long to start yelling at him again. But he looked so small and shrunken lying there, hooked up to an IV and a bunch of machines that monitored every breath he took, every beat of his overstressed heart. Yelling at him would have to wait until he was better.