The Unsung Hero Read Online Free Page A

the lab and found out that Betsy’s blood sample had been shipped in a van that had been totaled in an accident. In fact, the entire day’s blood tests had to be redone. All those patients—Betsy included—would have to come back in. The results would be returned to Kelly stat. Tomorrow, they’d promised. Provided a new blood sample got to them today.
    It was at that point she’d put the entire matter into the very capable hands of Pat Geary, her administrative assistant. And Kelly had given up on the paperwork and headed back here, to be near her father.
    Who wanted nothing more than for her to leave him alone.
    So she’d probably spend her day at home running around town, doing errands, trying to show him that she loved him in the only way she knew how. By being dutiful and obedient. By staying out of his way.
    She gave the car door a hard push with her rear end, slamming it shut.
    He’d always been a selfish bastard. What had he been thinking, anyway, having a kid when he was so damn old? He’d always been old—old and cynical and so jaded and sarcastic.
    Kelly couldn’t imagine what he’d seen in Tina, her mother, other than her youthful body and pretty face. She knew, however, what Tina had seen in him. Charles Ashton was an elegant, beautiful, seemingly sophisticated, and very, very wealthy man. Even now, at eighty, he was remarkably handsome. He still had a thick shock of hair—though pure white now instead of golden blond. And his eyes were still a bright piercing blue, though by all rights they should be bleary, watery, and shot with red, thanks to the gallons of alcohol he’d consumed through the years.
    It was only his soul that was ugly and shriveled.
    And it was only now, when he was dying, that he’d finally stopped drinking. Not because he wanted to be sober, but because he was having trouble eating or drinking just about everything. The whiskey that had once been his cure-all now was too harsh on his cancer-ridden stomach.
    The irony was intense.
    It took looming, imminent death by cancer to remove him from the clutches of the alcoholism that had been slowly but surely killing him. At one point, Kelly had been sure the DTs would do him in, but the old man was tough and he’d made it through.
    And now, for the first time since Kelly could remember, her father was sober all the time and capable of carrying on meaningful conversations.
    Except he didn’t want to talk to her.
    Charles didn’t need her, but dammit, she needed him. He had three months left—if that. And she needed to use that time to reach some kind of an understanding, if not with him, then at least about him. Even if all they managed to do was sit in a room together without one of them getting a rash, that would be more than they’d shared in the recent past.
    He might be stubborn, but she was stubborn, too. It wouldn’t be easy, because she was, after all, an Ashton—raised to keep every emotion she was feeling carefully, politely inside.
    Kelly went into the house and put down all her bags on the kitchen table.
    The place was silent, but that didn’t mean a thing. This monstrosity that had been the Ashton summer home for the past hundred and fifty years was so vast that Charles could be in his TV room with the set turned up deafeningly, and she wouldn’t hear it in the kitchen.
    Kelly began putting the groceries away as loudly as she possibly could, hoping—as futilely as the little girl she’d once been had hoped that her straight As on her report card would make her worthy of her father’s love—that for once Charles would hear that she was home and come say good morning.

    On the other end of the phone, Adm. Chip Crowley was silent. And when he finally sighed, Tom knew this was not going to be easy.
    “Tell me again who this Merchant is?” Crowley asked.
    Tom couldn’t keep his voice from sounding tight. “Sir. I’d appreciate it if you did not patronize me.”
    “I’m not patronizing you, Tom, I’m trying