Lawman by Diana Palmer Read Free Book Online

intensive care unit, in the waiting room, until very late. Coltrain found her there, alone, when he made his last rounds.
    He ground his teeth together. “Grace, you can’t work all day and sit here all night,” he grumbled, standing over her.
    She smiled. “If it were your grandmother, you’d be sitting here.”
    He sighed. “Yes, I would. But I’m in better health than you are…”
    â€œDon’t start,” she said curtly. “I take very good care of myself and I have a terrific doctor.”
    â€œFlattery doesn’t work on me,” he replied. “Ask Lou,” he added. Lou was his wife.
    She shrugged. “It was worth a try.” Her eyes became solemn. “The nurse said there’s no change.”
    He sat down beside her, looking worn. “Grace, you know that heart tissue doesn’t regenerate, don’t you?”
    She grimaced. “Miracles still happen,” she said stubbornly.
    â€œYes, I know, I’ve seen them. But it’s a very long shot, in this case,” he added. “You have to get used to the idea that your grandmother may not come home.”
    Tears pricked her eyes. She clasped her hands together, very tightly, in her lap. “She’s all I’ve got, Copper.”
    He bit his tongue trying not to say what he was thinking. “Don’t make her into a saint,” he said curtly.
    â€œShe was sorry about it all,” she reminded him with big, wet eyes. “She didn’t mean to get drunk that night. I know she didn’t. It hurt her that Mama went off without a word and dumped me in her lap.”
    â€œIs that what she said?” he fished.
    Her face closed up. “She wasn’t a motherly sort of woman, I suppose,” she had to admit. “She didn’t really like kids, and I was a lot of trouble.”
    â€œGrace,” he said gently, “you were never a lot of trouble to anyone. You were always the one doing the work at your house. Your grandmother sat and watched soap operas all day and drank straight gin while you did everything else. The gin is why her heart gave out.”
    She bit her lower lip. “At least she was there,” she said harshly. “My father didn’t want kids, so when I came along, he ran off with some minor beauty queen and never looked back. My mother hated me because I was the reason my father left. And no other man wanted her with a ready-made family, so she left, too.”
    â€œYou looked like your father,” he recalled.
    â€œYes, and that’s why she hated me most.” She looked at her clasped hands. “I never thought she cared about me at all. It was a shock, what she did.”
    â€œIt was guilt, I imagine,” he replied. “Like your grandmother, she had a high opinion of her family name. She expected what happened to be in all the newspapers. And it would have been, except for your grandmother playing on Chet Blake’s soft heart and begging him to bury the case so nobody knew exactly what happened. But it was too late to save your mother by then.”
    She swallowed, hard. “They never caught him.”
    â€œMaybe he died,” Coltrain replied curtly. “Or maybe he went to prison for some other crime.”
    She looked up at him. “Or maybe he did it to some other little girl,” she said curtly.
    â€œYour grandmother didn’t care. She only wanted it hushed up.”
    â€œChief Blake was sorry because of what happened to my mother,” she said absently. “Otherwise, I expect he would have pursued the case. He was a good policeman.”
    â€œIt was more than that,” he said, his expression solemn. “The perpetrator thought you were dead. Chet thought you were safer if he kept thinking it. He didn’t mean for you to live and testify against him, Grace.”
    Her skin crawled at just the memory. She wrapped her arms around herself. “Do you suppose he kept