‘Oh, God.’ Lily buried her face in her hands, could actually picture his tired, grey face so clearly it was if he were right there in front of her. She wanted to reach out to him as she hadn’t back then, to take him by the hand and lead him to bed, replaying so many, many things in her mind now—the fistfuls of painkillers, the unsteady gait, the vile black temper, all that time he’d been ill! ‘Oh, Hunter.’ Tears were trickling through her fingers, thinking of him so tall and proud lying attached to some wretched machine so scared and ill. Whatever had gone on between them, whatever he felt about her, it couldn’t extinguish the love that burnt there—for Lily at least.
‘Oh, please.’ The disgust in Emma’s voice was blisteringly evident. ‘Save the tears for the press. I trusted you, Lily. I sat there and poured my heart out to you and all the time you must have been laughing inside. All this time you were lying about wanting to be here!’
‘Never! I genuinely cared for you, Emma.’ Lily looked at her sister-in-law, and it was like looking in a mirror—the raw pain of confusion and humiliation there, as it had been for Lily when she’d found the letters—and she listened as Emma replayed their time together with the wretched twist of deception.
‘You never cared. It was all a sham, your marriage, our friendship. I didn’t want a false friend.’ Emma was sobbing so hard she could barely get the words out. ‘I just wanted my brother to be happy, to find some peace!’
‘I want the same thing for him.’ Lily’s voice was so small it was barely there, the word whispered through pale lips. ‘You don’t understand—’
‘I understand this much.’ Emma stared at her coolly, her tears drying up, displaying some of the strength that had seen her through this most vile of years. ‘You walked out on a very sick man who happens to be a very wealthy one. Right now your filthy secret won’t leave this room, but I swear, if anything happens to my brother I’ll fight you to the bitter end—you won’t see a single cent!’
The horror of what she was accusing her of barely had time to register. The door opened and a red-eyed Abigail came in, followed by a doctor who introduced himself. They must have hauled him off the golf course because he was still wearing his spikes, and it was easier to focus on that than the horror of Emma’s words, easier to focus on incidentals as she braced herself for news.
‘We’re just starting to get some test results in. It would seem there’s an infection somewhere, but till we get the lumbar puncture and CT scan results back, I can’t tell you much more. He’s resting quietly in a private room at the moment.’
‘I’ll go and sit with him.’ Emma’s hands moved to the wheels as Abigail turned on her heel, clearly about to follow suit.
‘Just one at a time,’ the doctor said. ‘He’s heavily sedated at the moment—right now, more than anything he needs now to rest.’
‘I’ll sit with him.’ Lily almost didn’t recognize her own voice, despite the blizzard of emotion in her brain, despite the tears rolling down her face, her voice, in contrast, was measured and controlled.
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ Emma didn’t even deign to give her a glance as she wheeled her chair through the door, Abigail already marching on ahead towards the lifts. ‘Why on earth would we let you near him?’
‘Because he’s my husband.’ Wiping her face with back of her hand, Lily turned to the doctor. ‘I believe, as his next of kin, I have every right to be with him.’
Every legal right apparently, but as she saw the look on Emma’s face, as the doctor nodded and a nurse escorted her to the room where Hunter was being monitored, morally Lily wasn’t so sure. What right did she have to make this or any decision for him? What right did she have to keep his sister from him, to keep the staff he’d handpicked away, when perhaps he needed them most?
Tiptoeing into the room, she felt her heart spasm in wretched pain—tried to convince herself that he was just sleeping. Tried and failed, because sleep was restful, sleep relaxed and replenished, yet Hunter looked ravaged. Despite the sedation and the darkened room, his body twitched with tension, his face grey and lined, as if the world had moved forward a decade. Lily’s guilt multiplied, as if somehow this was her fault, as if somehow she’d done this to him.
To them.
She held his hand and it felt so cold she held it with two hands, tried to infuse warmth into him, stared down at the long slender fingers just as she had on the night they’d met, saw the bitten nails of whatever doubts plagued him and willed him to relax, to let whatever it was that was feeding from the drip into his body do its work, to take away his wretchedness, even for a little while.