Beloved Wolf

“My problem, Wallace?” River repeated, dropping his hand and looking at Sophie’s fiancé. And then, before he could remember that he was, for the most part, a highly civilized individual, he planted his right fist square in Chet Wallace’s face.

Chet went down on his backside, holding a hand to his bloody nose.

“Problem? I don’t have a problem,” River said, settling his worn cowboy hat lower over his flashing green eyes. “Not anymore.”

Then he turned on his heels and headed for the elevator. He was not a happy man, definitely. But he was feeling somewhat better. Definitely.

For the next week, Joe Colton was never far from his daughter’s bedside. His many businesses didn’t suffer, because he’d been slowly withdrawing from those businesses, from his family, withdrawing from life itself. He’d allowed life to defeat him, again. Had it taken almost losing his daughter to wake him up, shake him up, force him to look at his life, possibly begin taking steps to fix it?

And when had it all begun to go so wrong?

Michael. Joe sighed, his heart aching as he remembered Sophie’s words that first day, her garbled thoughts that, to anyone else, would have seemed as if she were talking crazy because of her concussion.

But Joe knew differently. He knew what his daughter had meant, and was devastated that, as she struggled with her attacker, her thoughts had been of Michael. Of Meredith and himself. Of the family, and of how the Colton family couldn’t take another tragedy. Couldn’t lose another child.

In a way, Michael had saved Sophie, and that was how Joe was going to look at the thing. It was the only way possible to look at it.

Still, he had to look further than that, and he knew it. As he sat in the chair beside Sophie’s hospital bed, holding her hand, watching her sleep, he had to acknowledge that Sophie had been slowly slipping away from him these past years. All his children had been slipping away, visiting the ranch less and less, avoiding the family that was no longer a family.

At least not the family it had been, the family he and Meredith had brought into the world, added to with adopted and foster children after Michael’s death, family they’d formed into a solid, unbreakable, unshakable unit.

So when had it all begun to change? With Michael’s death? Should he at least start there?

Probably.

Joe and Meredith had been raising five children. Rand, the oldest. The twins, Drake and Michael. Sophie and the baby, Amber. Life was good, better than good. Joe Colton was a rich, self-made man, with oil and gas interests, major investments in the communications industry. Meredith had even convinced him that it was time he gave something back, so that he’d run for the United States Senate and been elected to represent California.

Life was so good. So very good.

And then Michael and his twin had taken their bikes out for a ride, and Michael had been run down by a reckless driver. Dead, at the age of eleven, and while his father was away in Washington, instead of being home where he belonged. Home, keeping his children safe.

Joe pulled a handkerchief from his jacket pocket and wiped his forehead. His body was hot, his muscles tired, his brain stuffed with memory toppling over memory, few of those memories good.

Joe had resigned from the Senate, come home and made a jackass out of himself. He didn’t see Meredith’s grief. He didn’t see Drake’s special loss, the loss all his children had suffered. All he saw was his own pain, his own guilt. And when Meredith finally suggested they have another baby—not to replace Michael, surely, but because having another child to love might help them all heal—another bomb had dropped into Joe’s shattered life.

He was sterile. How could that be? But it was true. He’d caught the mumps from a child at the nearby Hopechest Ranch, a home for orphaned children he and Meredith often visited, and now he was sterile. He could not give Meredith another child.

Was that when Meredith had begun to turn away from him?

No, that wasn’t it, and Joe knew it. Meredith had stuck with him day and night, even when he was being a selfish, self-pitying jackass.

And it had been Meredith who had finally convinced him that there were many, many children who needed loving homes, many children they could help, who could help them, for Joe and Meredith still had so much love to give.

Joe smiled slightly as he remembered how Meredith had jumped in with both feet, taking on the most troubled children at the Hopechest Ranch, opening their house and her loving arms to Chance, to Tripp, to Rebecca, to Wyatt. To Blake, to River, and to Emily. To Joe Junior, the infant who had been literally left on their doorstep.

Emily. Joe’s thoughts, which had begun to ease, now plunged him back into despair. Because the life he and Meredith had lost when Michael died, the one they’d rebuilt together—not a better life, surely, but a different one, a fulfilling one—had shattered again nine years ago, not six months after Joe Junior had come into their lives, on the day Meredith had driven the then eleven-year-old Emily into town for a visit with her natural grandmother.

Yes. That had been the day the light had forever gone out of Joe’s life, out of the Colton family.

It was a small accident with the car, although there were never any small accidents. Each took its own toll. This particular one had taken Meredith from him, his beloved Meredith. Not in death, but in a head injury that had changed her in some way.

Emily had said her “good mommy” had been replaced by an “evil mommy.” That was, of course, too simplistic, although even the doctors who had treated Meredith were at a loss as to why her personality had undergone such a dramatic change after the accident.

Change? No, that was too mundane a word to explain what had happened to Meredith. His sweet, loving wife, the concerned mother, had been taken from them, to be replaced by a woman who cared only for Joe Junior, a woman who ignored her other children, a woman who positively despised and shunned Emily. A woman who had turned hard, and selfish, and grasping. A woman who had dared to present him with her pregnancy a year after the accident and insist he was the father.

They’d separated then, for long months, but Joe had finally relented, let her come home, even claimed the child, Teddy, as his own.

But nothing was the same. Nothing would ever be the same again.

“Dad?”

Joe leaned closer to Sophie, who was looking up at him with Meredith’s beautiful brown eyes. “Yes, baby?” Now that she was recovering, she didn’t call him Daddy anymore. But she was still his baby.

“Did Mom call you back yet? Is she coming?”

Joe felt a stab straight to his heart. “No, baby, your mom couldn’t be here. She’s at home, taking care of Joe Junior and Teddy.”

“Oh,” Sophie said, disappointment dimming her eyes. “But she is coming soon, isn’t she? It’s been a week, Dad.”

“Shhh, baby, don’t talk too much,” Joe said, stroking Sophie’s hair. “You need to rest now. You rest and get strong, and soon we’ll be able to go to the ranch and see everybody. All right?”

“She’s not coming, is she?” Sophie looked up at her father, willing him to answer. “Is she, Dad?”

“You know how she doesn’t like to leave Teddy—”

Sophie held up a hand, wordlessly begging her father not to make excuses for her mother. “Teddy’s eight years old, Dad. Surely she could leave him for two or three days to visit me. There are plenty of people on the ranch who would take care of him. Oh, never mind. Why should I think things would be any different now than they have been for almost the last decade? You know, Dad, there are times when I feel this overwhelming urge to call my mother and ask for her help, because something’s terribly wrong with my mother.”

Joe was rescued from having to find some way to respond to Sophie’s heartbreaking remark by the entrance of Dr. Hardy, who had come to remove the stitches in Sophie’s face.

“Good morning, Sophie, Senator,” the cosmetic surgeon said, handsome and imposing in his green scrubs. “Final unveiling today, Sophie. Are you ready?”

Sophie’s hand tightened around Joe’s. “I guess so,” she said quietly.

“Good,” Dr. Hardy said, nodding as a nurse entered and handed him a paper package containing a pair of sterile gloves. “Now remember, Sophie, this isn’t the completed look. You’re sort of a work in progress. You’ll be swollen, bruised, and the cut is still going to look red, angry. That’s to be expected. Later, in, oh, about six months, we’ll go back to the operating room for a little of my magic. Isn’t that right, Alice?” he asked the nurse. “Tell Sophie. I’m a magician.”

The nurse rolled her eyes, then grinned at the doctor, obviously the object of some substantial hero worship. “I don’t know about the magic part, Doctor, but I do know that Miss Colton has nothing to worry about. That scar is as good as gone.”

“Thank you, Alice, and there’ll be a little something extra in your paycheck this week,” Dr. Hardy said, winking at Sophie, then advancing toward the bed even as Sophie began to cringe against the pillows. “No, no, Sophie. We’re going to make this as quick and painless as possible, I promise. Alice is going to remove the bandages and then we’ll get those stitches out of there before they start to do more harm than good. And then, young lady, you, your crutches and your leg brace get to go home—at least that’s the word on the street. Okay? Is that a deal?”

“Dad?” Sophie said, squeezing Joe’s hand until his circulation was all but cut off. “You’ll get me a mirror. You promised.”

Joe nodded, his throat clogged with tears, with fear for how the scar would look, how its appearance would impact his daughter. She’d only allowed Chet to visit her a single time, and had kept her head averted during the visit, so that she hadn’t even asked him about the bandage over his nose. And then she’d made him promise not to try to see her again until she contacted him.

Joe wasn’t sure if she was angry with her fiancé, if she blamed him for her attack or if she was afraid that her appearance had been ruined, so that Chet would be disgusted with her, repelled by her scar.

No matter what Sophie felt, however, Joe had already made up his mind that any man who would stay away from the bedside of his injured fiancée because she told him to…well, he wasn’t the man for his Sophie!

Joe blinked, surprised to see that the bandage was already gone, and that Dr. Hardy was in the process of removing the stitches, his green-clad frame blocking Joe’s view of his daughter’s face.