Total pages in book: 77
Estimated words: 73240 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 366(@200wpm)___ 293(@250wpm)___ 244(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 73240 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 366(@200wpm)___ 293(@250wpm)___ 244(@300wpm)
He jerked his head up. “Dad…?” His heart stopped, then started again.
His father’s eyes were open.
His eyes were open, and he was struggling to speak, coughing and choking around the respirator tube feeding down his throat.
“Dad!”
Ash shot to his feet, flinging himself toward the bed, fumbling at the thing in his father’s throat, fingers clumsy, his breaths coming so short and tight he might as well be choking on the goddamned tube himself. Then Brand was there—nudging him gently out of the way, his capable hands gripping the respirator tube, easing it back, slipping it past his father’s lips. Calvin Harrington coughed, his entire body racking, jerking, before he sank to the bed, breathing in deep, heaving, but clean gasps. Ash gripped the edge of the bed rail desperately, blurring beads of wetness turning his vision into burning prisms, silently begging this wasn’t it—the last moment before his father slipped away.
But his father only settled against the bed, blinking muzzily, breathing hard until it began to slow. His gaze darted around, then landed on Ash, a bit cloudy but there, life and presence in dark blue eyes shadowed by the tangle of iron-gray hair falling across his brow.
“…Ash,” he rasped, as if confirming something to himself. His voice was thready, weak, but God, he was talking, making sense— “Where…am I? And why—” He broke off in another cough, hollow and deep, but brief. “Wh-why…do I feel like I’ve been hit by a truck?”
Ash couldn’t help a bark of laughter that was more of a sob as his eyes spilled over, hot trails scorching down his cheeks. “You’re in the hospice center you fucking arranged because you didn’t tell me you had cancer, and you’ve been in a coma for almost a fucking week.”
His father blinked quizzically. “Oh,” he said, rather blankly. “That sounds about right. Explains why you’re looking at me like I was dying.”
Ash grinned. He couldn’t help it. He was fucking terrified, afraid his father was about to close his eyes for the last time right now after a few final words, but God he was awake and talking and lucid, and that had to be something, right?
“You were dying, you dick.”
Calvin Harrington let out a measured sigh, then shifted himself subtly, as if testing his body, before settling. “…not yet, I think. Not if I get a choice. Also, your language is atrocious.” Then he frowned, wrinkling his nose. “Do I have to stay here?”
“I see where young Master Ashton gets it from,” Brand said flatly.
Calvin Harrington’s gaze darted past Ash to Brand. “Who are you?”
“The valet.”
His father arched one dark brow. “So the company’s still in one piece.”
“Hey!” Ash spluttered, then laughed weakly and scrubbed at his cheeks. “Fuck. Barely. You dumped a lot on me, Dad. Including, you know, fucking dying.”
With an amused sound, his father fixed a wry look on Ash, gaze warm, tired. “And I don’t doubt you had it in you to handle it.” His emaciated shoulders bunched beneath his pajamas as he gathered his arms under himself. “But I think the obituary’s a bit premature. If you don’t mind—”
Ash realized he was struggling to get up—and too weak, but still trying, his entire body straining as if he’d snap himself like a twig in his stubbornness. Swearing, Ash gripped his shoulders gently, trying to push him back down.
“Lie down,” he said firmly—but his father only scowled and struggled against him weakly. “Dad, lie down!” Goddammit, he didn’t know how to do this without hurting his father, and he loosened his grip, flinging Brand a helpless look. “Brand—”
Eyes glinting almost in warning, Brand leaned over the bed and gently pressed his the flats of his palms to Calvin Harrington’s shoulders, holding him down with careful but inexorable strength. “Go fetch the doctor,” he said firmly. “I’ll watch your father.”
Nodding quickly, breathlessly, Ash retreated from the bed and darted for the door—but not without catching his father’s sardonically irritated voice drifting after him.
“From my son’s keeper to my jailer,” Calvin Harrington said. “And I don’t even know your name.”
“Brand Forsythe.”
“The Newcombs’ man.”
“Young Master Ashton’s man, now,” Brand corrected.
“I see,” was all his father said—before Ash ducked from the room and pelted across the grass, his heart pumping furiously as he ran for the main building.
Because he was afraid if he wasn’t fast enough, if he didn’t find the doctor and bring her back to tell him for sure his father would be okay…
The man would slip away, and Ash wouldn’t even be there to see him go.
CHAPTER SIX
BRAND FORSYTHE DID NOT LIKE feeling helpless.
But that was how he felt, as he stood against the wall in an unobtrusive place and watched as the elder Master Harrington was bundled into a wheelchair by attentive nurses. The man was a fragile bundle of sticks, clearly exhausted, drowsing and listing in his chair. Even Brand was worn out; it was almost dawn, after a long night of extensive testing, examinations, monitoring, and negotiating with the facility staff and doctors. Were the patient anyone else but one of the richest men in New York, the elder Harrington likely would have been told to go to bed and wait until morning and normal hours.