Hearts We Claim: A Steamy MM Dog Dads Firefighter Romance (Hearts of Texas Book 3) by Christina Berry

Author:Christina Berry [Berry, Christina]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: PVR Publishing
Published: 2024-12-19T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 17

MARKUS

At fourteen stories tall, the Baker Hotel is always the first thing you see when you come into Mineral Wells. Once upon a time, it was the first thing you smelled too. The hundred-year-old hotel was built back in the early twentieth century, when people were obsessed with bathing in mineral water. By the sixties and seventies, mineral spas in the middle-of-nowhere Texas had fallen out of favor with the traveling type, and the hotel sat closed and moldering for my entire life in this town.

All I remember about the place is decay. When the wind blew through its many broken windows, across rain-dampened carpets and wallboard, it stunk up this little town with the stench of neglect. Now, though, a company has come in to refurbish and modernize the old place. The spray paint tags have been power washed away, the windows replaced. The old hotel actually looks nice now, and it smells a lot better too.

“Wow,” Adam says as he takes in the sight of that sole skyscraper, scratching at the clouds.

And the sky is full of clouds now. From the south, it’s been a peaceful sunny day, but ahead of us, the front of a Blue Norther billows and boils with towering shelves of blue-gray clouds. The cold front charges across the plains, promising a violent night of lightning, gusty wind, and torrential rain. I ignore it, all of it. The hotel, the approaching storm—there’s already too much on my mind as it is.

Your father is dying. My mother sounded more exasperated than sad when she dropped that bomb. I was stunned silent by the news, so she filled the gap with all the terrible details. My addled mind could only capture bits and pieces. It’s cancer, pancreatic. Stage four, metastasized to his liver and lungs. He’s chosen to forego chemotherapy. He’s in hospice and only has a few days left. He wants to see you.

He wants to see you.

That last part is what keeps coming back to me, those words. My father wants to see me? Why? He’s dying. This is what people do when they’re dying; they tie up loose ends. Is that what I am? A loose end?

My father and I aren’t close. Nothing was ever the same between us after my parents sent me away to “therapy.” I stopped sharing my life with them, and they let me. They’d gladly sent me to a boarding school, and I’d gladly gone. When I started college, I left Mineral Wells for good.

I call my parents on Christmas. They call me on my birthday. Yet never, in all the years since I left, have they asked me to come visit.

They’re as disappointed in me as a child as I am of them as parents. This town isn’t my home, and my parents are just people I used to know. So why would my father want to see me now?

Adam’s fist curls over the top of his steering wheel, and he points at the Lone Star

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