One More Chance Read online

  As he read his letter she examined her reactions to him. It astonished her to acknowledge that she found him exciting. She almost never allowed herself to respond to men in sexual terms and hadn't for a very long time. She was accustomed to being in control of both situations and feelings—an impossibility when it came to sex. So she had simply decided sex was superfluous.

  Other attributes were much more important in a man than sex appeal anyway, qualities like ambition and drive… social status and money.

  She couldn't see any harm in a little innocent speculation, however, and she tried to remember what she'd heard of Ben over the years. It was precious little. He'd been married, but he'd come back to Summerhill a couple of months ago alone, so maybe he was divorced. He didn't wear a ring. She seemed to recall that he'd been a policeman, but she didn't think that's what he was doing when his mother died. Some kind of social worker? That seemed so incongruous that she had to smother a laugh.

  Not that it mattered. If he were ambitious, he wouldn't be wasting his time fooling around with avocados on some of the most valuable real estate in Southern California. And yet, misguided as he appeared to be, Ben Ware was a man to reckon with.

  He glanced up from the letter, his expression pleased. "Lil's promised to come visit first chance she gets. She wants to see for herself how I'm adapting to the life of a gentleman avocado rancher."

  She groaned. "Give it up, will you? The gentleman part is pure fantasy. I devoutly hope you'll have come to your senses and dumped this place long before she gets here."

  He raised his eyebrows in mock horror. Reading his sister's letter seemed to have put him in a much better mood. "And sell my birthright?"

  "Hey, remember who you're talking to." She leaned forward, clasping her hands before her on the table. "As I recall, your folks didn't even buy this place until you were a senior in high school. You couldn't wait to blow the old homestead when you graduated. As far as I know, you never looked back."

  "Words to live by—don't deal with folks who knew you when." He spoke with wry humor.

  He seemed to be letting down his guard so she decided to push a little further. "Ben, take the money and run. Trust me. I shouldn't tell you this, but Cary Goddard is so obsessed with owning this land that he'll go even higher."

  "Trust you. You sound like a used-car salesman." All the relaxed good humor evaporated. "My mother trusted you, I suppose." He turned the coffee cup around and around with big, competent-looking hands. He glanced up unexpectedly. "Thanks for the flowers."

  She shifted uncomfortably, well aware that he'd changed the subject. "It was nothing."

  "That's true. I'm just being polite. But you also came to the funeral. I appreciated that, and so did Lil."

  She wanted to wriggle beneath his candid gaze. Her motives had been fairly pure, but not pure enough for her to face him with a completely clear conscience. "Ben, please don't put this on a personal level," she said, feeling uncomfortable. "Friendship just doesn't mix with business."

  "I'm no more interested in relating on a 'personal level,' as you put it, than you are, Juliana Maria Malone Robinson. But you can't deny we go back a long way, you and me." He looked disgusted, as if she'd disappointed him somehow.

  "Good." She spoke with finality, even as her stomach clenched. "Let's talk some business."

  The shrill ring of the wall-mounted telephone cut her off. Impatiently she settled back as he rose to answer it. She saw him frown, heard him mutter, "Yeah, she's here."

  He offered her the phone and she took it with a shrug that said, "I can't imagine." The extra-long curly cord stretched to accommodate the exchange.

  "Hello?"

  "Hi, Juli. It's me, Pete."

  "What do you want?"

  "Now, don't freak. I wonder…I wonder if you've given any more thought to what we talked about last week? You said you'd get back to me and… Well, I thought maybe you'd tried and missed me."

  She'd always hated that wheedling tone. Her jaws tightened, but Ben was watching so she spoke calmly. "There's nothing to think about, Pete. Frozen yogurt is on its way out. A combination pizza-yogurt store won't fly. It's not a good investment."

  A brief silence, and then he flared, "Well, what if I think it is?"

  "You're entitled to your opinion, however erroneous. Just don't expect me to invest my hard-earned money in another of your schemes."

  "You didn't lose a penny on that deal."

  "I didn't make a penny, either."

  "I don't suppose the opinions of my banker or my accountant would mean anything to you?"

  "You suppose correctly."

  "How about ten years of marriage?" he flared. "Naw— that wouldn't mean diddly. Let me speak to Ben."

  As much as she hated to do it, she passed the receiver back to Ben. "He wants to talk to you."

  Ben's side of the conversation wasn't very revealing. A few "a-huhs," several glances in Juliana's direction and a final "Yeah, we'll talk later." He hung up the receiver.

  He looked at her impassively, his square chin characteristically out-thrust. "Jeez, you're one tough cookie," he said.

  "What did Pete say about me?" Damn—she hadn't wanted to stoop to asking.

  "Not much. Something about keeping my back against the wall."

  She glared at him. "And you believe him?"

  "Well, hey… if it swims like a shark and bites like a shark…" He shrugged and gestured, palms up. "I just heard you give the shaft to a man you used to sleep with, the man who fathered your only child, and you didn't blink an eye. Yeah, I probably believe him."

  Her growing anger surprised her. She knew she was considered driven and difficult in some circles, but no one had ever dared speak to her so bluntly. Well, you had to be tough in business or you ended up on welfare or close to it, like a few people she could name. "It was a bad investment," she said somewhat petulantly. "Sentiment has no cash value. I could have lost money on the deal."

  He raised his brows, the picture of innocence. "I heard you had more money than you'd ever need if you never made another cent."

  "And I wouldn't if everybody was like you."

  "But how much is enough? You can only spend it so fast."

  "Give it a rest, Ben." She tried to lighten things up. "Don't you know you can never be too rich or too thin?"

  "That's the dumbest piece of bull… What a stupid thing to say. I'm beginning to think a little human compassion wouldn't hurt you a helluva lot."

  "That's not the issue." She tried to stare him down and failed. "You know who finishes last, don't you?"

  "Yeah. Nice guys like your father and your ex-husband."

  That observation stunned her. She snatched up her purse. "You mind if I smoke?" she demanded brusquely, surprised and discomfited that she'd let him upset her this much.

  "As a reformed smoker, I'm not crazy about the idea."

  She gave him a so-what glance and lit up, drawing the smoke deep into her lungs. "I'm not hooked, you know. I'll quit one of these days." She exhaled slowly. "I've cut way back," she added, trying to justify what she privately considered a weak and filthy habit, "but every once in a while I just have to give in."

  "Hell, it's probably your only weakness of the flesh." His scorn stung her.

  The usually soothing effects of the nicotine weren't reaching her today. "Are you trying to make a point?"

  He shrugged. "Only that you seem to know the price of everything and the value of nothing."

  "Hey, that's very original. I come here to buy land and I get platitudes." She pulled up a sheet of newspaper and gapped ashes onto it. She started to rise but her equilibrium seemed suddenly out of kilter. She swayed and caught herself with her hands on the tabletop. "I'm…I'm…"

  "Take it easy. This is a purely intellectual discussion. I've decided to explain to you why I won't sell this land to Goddard, now or ever."

  "It's… I—" She looked at him through a halo of light that wavered and shimmered around him. She tried to form a
coherent sentence in her brain, in her mouth, and failed.

  He stared down at his hands on the table, a faint, grim smile playing around his lips. "The direct approach leaves you speechless, I see." He hesitated. "I don't suppose you've ever needed a second chance."

  "Why I—I—" Something exploded in her skull and she blinked and gasped for breath. It felt as if the top of her head had been torn away. Agony, too intense and blinding and all-pervasive to be labeled pain, ripped through her, leaving no cell of her body untouched.

  "Well, I do and this is it." He looked out the window, his expression bleak. "I should have come home a long time ago but I couldn't—I wasn't ready to face all the unfulfilled potential. Maybe I'm still not ready, but I promised my mother I'd try. If I go down this time, I'll never get up again."

  His words made no sense to her; they were so much noise. Nausea rose in her throat. She couldn't see, the light hurt her eyes and they refused to focus. She was going to be sick right here at—where the hell ever she was. Coherent thoughts could not surface through the drowning sensation that accompanied the hellish pain hammering inside her skull.

  His voice continued, expressionless. "I'm willing to work, sacrifice, whatever the hell it takes. But I don't want that slimy bastard Goddard nosing around here anymore. He's like the snake waving the apple under my nose and saying 'Try it, you'll like it!' With that kind of money there's not a damned thing to keep me straight. I'd be back in the gutter with a vodka bottle in my hand before you could say 'idle rich.' Hell,, he knows what he's doing—he sent a private investigator to find out."

  The cigarette fell from her numb fingers and bounced off the table and onto the floor. I'm dying. Just like that, she knew it. Nobody could survive this. She would die and never even know what killed her. Had she been shot? Had someone fired a bullet into her head?

  "Juliana? Juliana, what is it?"

  The voice meant nothing. Nothing meant anything except this debilitating agony. She lifted her hands to her head and pressed, her lips parting in a silent scream.

  She'd always been a fighter, but she couldn't fight this. Her eyes rolled back in her head and she toppled over in groggy borderline consciousness.

  2

  Ben reached her as she collapsed. He'd been a policeman, he'd seen people die, he'd felt pain, witnessed pain and even caused pain, but he had never seen anything strike like this.

  For a moment he stood in the middle of his kitchen, holding her in his arms and wondering what the hell he ought to do. His own inadequacy overwhelmed him.

  He could try to Turing her around. For a moment he toyed with that idea, even though he knew he was stalling. He just didn't want to take her to the hospital. People went into those places and never came out—not alive, anyway.

  His arms tightened spasmodically and he stared down at her. Against the frame of that thick copper hair, her face looked completely bloodless. She seemed unconscious, maybe in some kind of coma. But then she groaned and her eyelids flickered; for a moment he stared into pinpoint pupils before she went slack again.

  Gone was the self-satisfied superiority he'd found so irritating in her earlier, swept away by the pain as her hand had swept away the crumbs from his table. She looked exposed and vulnerable now, and he did not like being a party to it. Her fallibility was none of his concern.

  He'd take her to the hospital and let the doctors worry about her. But still he hesitated, immobilized by memory.

  He hated hospitals. People died in hospitals. His wife and son had died in a hospital while he paced the waiting room trying to bargain for their lives with an unreasonable god. He'd be damned if he'd go through that again, not with this woman, not with anyone.

  He glared down at her, something very like hatred surging up to choke him. Why did this have to happen here? He didn't want to accept responsibility for her or for anyone ever again. He refused to get involved.

  She groaned and her fingers plucked ineffectually at his shirt. If he didn't get medical help for her pronto it would be too late—he felt sure she would die. Regardless of his misgivings, he realized he had no choice.

  Tightening his grip on her, he barreled to the doorway and through it, heading for his pickup at a trot. Get her to a hospital and he could wash his hands of her, let someone else worry. He put her in the passenger seat and fastened the seat belt. She whimpered, but didn't open her eyes. He was thankful for that. He didn't want to confront that naked suffering again.

  Would she die before he could get her some help? His heart hammered erratically in his chest. No, damn it! He was committed now—not through choice, through necessity. Her life depended upon him. He groaned. People who depended on him tended to end up dead.

  Driving like a maniac through the hills and canyons, he talked to her without really knowing he did so.

  "You've got a hell of a nerve, barging into my house and keeling over. Jeez, I'm just an innocent bystander. Why didn't you give that creep, Goddard, the honor of saving your life?"

  She groaned. Ben swallowed hard. "So help me God, if you die before I get you to emergency—!" He gripped the steering wheel so hard his knuckles whitened. "Hang on, damn you—it's not much farther."

  He laughed, a harsh, dissonant sound in the small cab of the vehicle. "Suffering builds character, dammit. Looks like you're gonna have more damn character than you'll know what to do with when this is over."

  "Just don't die on me. Don't even think about dying— You hear me?"

  The emergency room doctor hesitated in the wide doorway. Ben, alone in the hospital waiting room, sprang to his feet, his mouth dry and his hands icy and shaking.

  "Dr. Lindeman? I'm Ben Ware. I brought Mrs. Robinson in?" Even those few words took an enormous effort.

  "Oh, yes. Thought for a minute there you'd gone."

  The two men shook hands.

  Ben licked his lips, afraid to ask about her. He should have left the minute the doctors took over, gone to a bar and steadied his nerve with a good stiff drink. Why the hell was he still here? He cleared his throat and forced himself to speak. "How's Juliana doing, Doctor? What's wrong with her?"

  The young doctor pursed his lips. He countered the questions with one of his own: "Her daughter's not here yet?"

  Ben's stomach lurched and a muscle jumped in his jaw. "I asked Juliana's secretary to meet the girl at home and bring her over. She's a student at San Diego State."

  "Okay. As soon as she arrives—"

  The doctor was already turning away. Ben clamped a hand around the man's forearm and squeezed—not as hard as he wanted to, but hard enough.

  "Dammit, Doc, I gotta know what's going on."

  The raw emotion must have pierced the doctor's preoccupation. He looked up quickly, then hesitated as if considering. "We're afraid it may be meningitis," he said finally. "We're running tests and should know soon."

  "But—" Ben felt completely adrift. "Meningitis… that's serious."

  Dr. Lindeman's arched brows provided verification. "Mrs. Robinson's condition is extremely grave."

  "When can I see her?" He didn't know why he had asked that. He didn't want to see her, not really. If the doctor didn't think she was going to make it, why risk further involvement?

  "Just what is your relationship to the patient?" The doctor's sharp eyes pinned Ben down.

  Well, what was it? Old friend? Business acquaintance? Adversary? No self-respecting sawbones would let any of those into the room of a woman on the verge of death.

  "Fiancé," Ben said curtly, the lie heavy on his tongue. "We were together when it happened."

  "I'm sorry." The doctor's manner warmed noticeably. "Look, as soon as her daughter arrives have one of the nurses track me down. We should know something by then, and you two might as well hear it together."

  Dr. Lindeman patted Ben on the shoulder and hurried out of the waiting room. For a moment Ben stood there, shoulders slumped. A middle-aged couple entered, their faces tense with worry. The man half supported the woman, wh
o looked up at him with tears in her eyes.

  Ben turned toward the window. He hated this. Damn, he hated this! He clenched his hands into impotent fists and gritted his teeth until his jaw ached. But he couldn't hold back the memories…

  The guy robbed a bank, they said, and was trying to make his getaway. With San Francisco's finest in hot pursuit, he ran a traffic light and plowed into the side of a station wagon.

  The ensuing explosion killed the fugitive and a twelve-year-old boy riding in the station wagon. The driver of the wagon died, too, but not right away… that would have been too clean, too easy.

  Melanie Ware lay in a coma. Ben, her husband of fourteen years, paced the hospital corridors and waited…and waited. Her parents came over from Stockton, but their presence made it even harder, because they blamed Ben for everything. Why, he couldn't imagine, except that he'd married their daughter. All he knew was that her mother turned her face away when he entered the room.

  His son was buried and Ben wept. Then he returned to the hospital and waited some more:

  He knew things were going badly because everyone was so nice to him. Nurses gave him comforting smiles and pitying glances while doctors shook their heads and patted him on the shoulder. Visiting hours meant nothing; he came and went as he pleased, spending at least twenty of every twenty-four hours at the hospital.

  Finally the neurologist took Ben aside and explained that it was time to talk about taking Melanie off life support.

  "No!" Ben recoiled in horror. He had never given up.

  "I know this is difficult," the doctor said gently. "Rest assured, we'd never do anything without making absolutely certain that her brain is no longer functioning."

  "Then you're not a hundred percent sure." Hope really did spring eternal.

  "Mr. Ware, I'm ninety-nine-point-nine percent sure right now. If we unhook the machines, her heart may continue to pump for minutes, even hours or days. But there is no pain response or gag reflex. She has a flat-line EEC Mr. Ware, from my perspective, Melanie is already dead."