Page 85 of One Kind Hand

He gripped his sister’s upper arms. “We were hugging. She thought I was with another woman, not my sister.”

Morgan’s eyes widened as understanding filtered into her brain. “Oh.”

“Yeah.” He held up his phone. “Now she won’t answer my calls or reply to my texts.” He should have run after her as soon as he’d seen her. Why had he allowed himself to be talked into drinks?

Because it was easier than facing Charlie.

And now he’d created a bona fide clusterfuck.

“Okay, do you know who could get her to answer your calls?” Morgan asked. “Like her best—”

“Friend!” Austin snapped his fingers and hit Isabel’s contact on his phone. Surely, Isabel would know where Charlie was right now. Those two kept tabs on each other. Hell, Charlie was probably with Isabel.

“Hello, Austin,” Isabel said. “I was going to call you.”

“You were?”

“Yeah. Jackson and I are heading to the hospital. Charlie—”

“Oh my God, what happened to Charlie?” he interrupted, his heartbeat speeding up to dangerous levels.

“Whoa, there,” Isabel said. “Calm down. Nothing happened to Charlie, but her parents had a situation tonight.”

“Situation? What does that mean?” He relaxed a little knowing Charlie herself was all right, but what had happened with her parents? He recalled that night she’d had him pull over in front of her parents’ house and she’d explained about her mom’s condition. The night she’d shared the darkness in her world with him.

The night he hadn’t done the same.

“There was an accident on that ramp in front of her parents’ house,” Isabel said. “The one she’s been worried about. Her mother’s wheelchair broke through it and her mom fell out of the chair. Maggie, a nurse friend of Charlie’s, gave me a call to let me know Charlie was at the hospital with her mom. She’s there alone because A.) she didn’t call anyone,” Isabel said with exasperation, “and B.) her father’s in jail.”

“Jail? What for?” The hits kept coming for Charlie today, didn’t they? Austin was ashamed to be one of those hits.

“A few things apparently, but the cops thought he was a danger,” Isabel said. “He’s always been a grouchy asshole, but when he’s got some booze in him, the assholery is intensified.”

“Shit. Okay, I’m on my way.”

“See you there.”

Austin jammed his phone into his pocket and headed for the elevator.

“Wait!” Morgan snagged his arm. “Let me go with you. Your head’s all over the place, you have some alcohol in you, and it’s snowing out. I only had one drink. Let me get my coat.”

She left Austin in the hallway and it was as if he could hear the minutes ticking by. He needed to be where Charlie was immediately. He imagined she was pretty pissed off over the ramp failing and worried about her mother and father. He needed to be there for her.

Morgan came back into the hallway and hooked her arm around his. “C’mon. Claire called valet services to bring your car around.”

They rode the elevator down to the lobby, but Morgan stumbled to a stop when they spilled outside and Austin’s rented SUV was idling in front of them.

“An SUV? How . . . Vermont of you.” She shook her head then opened the driver side door. “Other side for you.”

Austin jogged around the hood and climbed into the SUV. “Ignore speed limits,” he said as he shut the door.

“It’s snowing out. I will not ignore speed limits,” his sister said, sounding way older than her twenty-eight years. “The last thing your Charlie needs is more people in the hospital to worry about.”

She was right, but the drive to Maplehaven took longer with her abiding by the speed limits and the falling snow slushing up the roadways. He pictured Charlie waiting for news about her mother in the hospital, worrying about her father in jail, and disappointed in him for not talking to her earlier today. She probably thought he’d been messing around with her all this time. Filling his nights with a warm body, while he was away from his actual girlfriend, or worse, his wife. It peeved him a little that she could think so lowly of him—that he’d cheat on a girlfriend or wife—but perhaps after his reaction to flying over water this morning, she felt she didn’t know him at all.

The thing was . . . she knew him better than anyone. He’d shared more of himself with her than he’d shared with any woman he’d ever dated. Hopefully she’d give him the chance to redeem himself—to make her understand why he’d freaked about water this morning, to tell her how he felt about her in his heart, and to introduce Morgan as his goddamn sister. Not girlfriend. Not wife.

“Don’t pull a muscle over there,” Morgan said, as the windshield wipers pushed snowflakes around.