Page 17 of Axel

She closed her eyes again before speaking. “Thank him for that. I don’t know what I’m going to do with it. I’m thinking that being an attorney will be more stress than I can handle anytime soon. And I’d still have to deal with Phil—a name he hates, by the way.” Kahana laughed. “He’s worse than you are when it comes to arrogancy. You are, you know that, don’t you?”

“I do. It’s saved me a great deal of time and energy when I’m dealing with idiots. Speaking of which, while you were getting some beauty rest, not that you need it, it’s coming out soon about Ronda West and her ex-husband.” He filled her in on what he knew. “There is going to be a huge article written in the newspaper which will more than likely be picked up all over the country if not the world. It’s a small wonder that you survived on what happened to you. Axel is hoping that you’ll press charges since you nearly died because of the woman.”

“She did make me feel stupid. That’s why I didn’t go back after that but tried to deal with it on my own. It didn’t work all that well…if they thought that I was faking my heart issues, then why did I get some nitro to use at home. It helped, by the way, but didn’t take all the pain away.” He told her what he knew about that. “So they were trying to cover their asses by giving me something so that I’d not come back. That’s pretty shitty if you ask me.”

“Yes, I agree with you.” He took her blood pressure when he realized that she’d not been hooked back up to it when she’d been brought back from her CAT scan. So far, he told her she didn’t show any signs of a lot of damage, and he hoped for the best outcome for her. “As I said, you’ll need to watch some things. You’ll have a list before you go home. Also, medications as well. There are a few that you’ll need to take just to keep this from happening again. And you’ll also need to get you one of those bracelets to tell that you have…never mind. We’ll go over that later. Do you still want something to drink? I have some crushed ice for you if you wish.”

He fed her several spoons of the cold ice and watched the monitor while she sat up better in the bed. So far, she was looking good, but he also knew that things could turn for her in a second’s notice. He kept telling himself that he should just let the doctors who knew more than he did about heart issues take over as he was only a general practitioner.

By the time he was ready to go home, she was sitting in a chair enjoying the sunlight. He’d never met anyone that loved the sun shining as much as he did and was glad to be able to leave her in the capable hands of the intensive care unit or ICU. He was about as exhausted as he’d been when doing rounds in college.

Like his brothers, he didn’t have a house. Axel did, but he didn’t want all that space bogging him down. The condo that he’d been living in since they’d been kicked out of their home by their parents—he loved that they did that too—he’d been staying in a condo that was close to the hospital. Now, he didn’t want that. He wanted to be able to have a little distance between him and his place of work.

Taking a shower, something that he’d not been able to get while staying with Debra, he fell into his bed after tossing his towel near to the laundry basket. Being clean and feeling relaxed, he fell into bed nude and closed his eyes. Getting up one more time, he called the service and took himself off of being on call but did tell the woman that if Debra Author were to call for him, then to put her through. He didn’t know why he’d done that and was trying his best not to look too deeply into it.

Sleep wasn’t coming on as well as he hoped it would. Finally, after tossing and turning for about an hour, he got up and dressed. That damned woman was on his mind, and he didn’t care for Debra invading his rest time. After several more tries to get her out of his head, he finally went to his office to have a little bit of filing and paperwork done that he’d been putting off since he’d met the woman.

Kahana was on his second cup of tea when he was just finishing up his last file. It felt really good to have his desk cleaned away and even more satisfying to be able to have all the backlog of notes in files finished off as well. He even had time to run a vacuum and a duster over the furniture in the lobby.

He didn’t exactly care for the office he was working in, he just realized. He’d been working out of it since he graduated from college. It was a place that he took so he’d have a place to work. It turned into, quite by accident, the place that he saw his patients in as well. It was old and had crappy furniture in it that he was ashamed to now realize that people might judge him by what they saw in the room. Getting back on his computer, it took him nearly five hours to not just arrange to have the carpets pulled up but the entire building revamped so that he could be proud of working here. And his new sister-in-law was going to give him a great discount on the job too.

His phone ringing startled him, and he nearly didn’t answer it. It was his dad, and he said that he was going to see Debra about the lawsuit that was coming up against the hospital.

“I wanted to make sure that she’s up for it. I don’t want her to have a relapse when I’m there. I’m to understand that she’s doing much better.” He told his dad to go slow and that she was doing better than he could have imagined. “Good deal then. I’m so happy that you were there when you guys were set to help her. Thank goodness for Mac, too.”

“Yes, there is no telling how long she might have been there without the proper care before she died. I hate to think about that, but that’s exactly what would have happened. And with her moving away, there is no telling how long before anyone would have found her. That scares me, too.”

After hanging up with his dad, Kahana made his way home again. He was exhausted; however, this time, he was physically drained rather than just mentally. As soon as his head hit the pillow this time, he was out.

Chapter 8

Axel loved the way things were moving along. His business was nearly finished, just waiting on furniture and some décor to make it look better than he thought it would look if he’d just left everything bare. Thank goodness for his mom, or he might well have never thought of the finishing touches that she put everywhere. Mac helped so she could find the things that mom was looking for, but she didn’t do foo-foo, as she called it.

After getting things in the filing cabinet, not that much right away, he looked around and felt very proud of what was going on in there. He might well never take on a partner, but he thought that the rooms, for one, were just as good-looking as the rest of the place was looking. That’s when his thoughts went to Debra.

She had been done wrong. Not only did she not get the money that had been promised her but the law firm that she was to get wasn’t even there anymore. The building, along with nearly everything in it, had been seized by the courts until such time as a hearing could be set up for Phil—he decided to call him that as well when he figured out that it pissed him off. He’d claimed the building that had been Debra’s uncle and had cleaned it out of every scrap of paper, file, and furniture. Claiming that it was all his before the will could be read seemed like a logical thing because Debra couldn’t be gotten in touch with at the time.

Axel had filed for Debra when she’d been in the hospital and had gotten a judgment against Phil and all parties involved in order for him to not take over the firm. Not that he could. Without at least a law degree, he couldn’t own the firm anyway. There were a lot of things going on that he didn’t care for.

First of all, it seemed that the firm that had been handling the will didn’t work very hard to find out where Debra was. However, they did notify her that the uncle had died. Also, and this one boggled his mind more, the firm handling the estate, which was quite large, allowed Phil to go in and take over the firm’s assets like he’d inherited it.

Then, there was the money as well as the home that she was to inherit. The firm, instead of holding the house in her name, had allowed Phil to not just move in but he’d been able to put his name on the deed as sole owner. Either he had something over the other firm, or they were about as incompetent as he thought. There was no way that he’d allowed any of the things going on to happen had he been in charge.

The past was the past, as his dad was so fond of saying, and put your foot forward and make it right from where you came in. And he planned on doing that. As soon as Debra signed off on him being her attorney. He was hoping to get that done today, as a matter of fact.

He didn’t know why he felt so protective of her. She was a nice woman and seemed to have her shit together. Intelligent too. He liked that they could have a conversation, and neither of them felt like they had to explain everything. It sounded arrogant, he knew, but it was nice. It was much like his own wife. They just seemed to click into place. He answered his phone when it rang.

“It’s Debra Author. I have a question for you. Well, several, but this one will make way for the others. How much will it cost me to have you represent me when I go to court in a couple of days? Remember, you know as much about my finances—more than likely more than I do.” He told her that he was doing this because he liked her. “I’m not sure if you understand this or not, but you won’t make any money by doing things like this for free. I mean, sure, you have all the money in the world compared to me, but I have to pay you something.”

“How about we work on that when you come over tonight for dinner.” She asked him if she’d missed something as she was still in the hospital. “I forgot about that. By the way, you sound so muchbetter than the last time I spoke to you. I’ll talk to you about it when you’re home. Right now, I’m filing judgments against the firm that represented your uncle and his estate, the state as well as your cousin. He won’t be able to do anything else until the hearing is over. Which a part of me hopes is a long time. He’s also been arrested. I think you know that. He’s been moved out of the house by the police as well, and all the locks have been changed. I have the keys here, as well as the judge who is presiding over this. I don’t want you to stress out or anything, but to me, this looks like it’s going to go all your way.” She asked him about the will. “They read the one that Phil had in his possession instead of getting the one that was filed. That’s going to cost them a great deal of money, if not put them out of business. I’ve seen parts of the will. The entire estate was to go to you with the stipulation that you marry within one year before or after his death. I don’t know your personal situation, but I’m having that looked into as well. He can say that you marry, but I don’t know anything about that, as I said.”

For whatever reason, Kahana popped into his head. Shaking his head, not sure why that came to mind, but he wasn’t going to go down that road right now. He could hear the stress building up in her voice and was glad that she started doing the breathing like she’d been taught. He could her stress begin to get to her and she did the breathing like she’d been taught to calm herself.

In through her nose and out through her mouth. She did that several times while she was supposed to be thinking of the most serene place that she could think of. He wondered where it would be. His would be home on the couch with Mac. Then again, Kahana popped into his head.

“Are you better?” After telling him what she was doing, except for the part where his brother was there in his own thoughts, he spoke to her again. “You take your time, Debra. Anything that I have to say to you can wait until you’re better. Just breathe.”

“You’re all so nice to me.” She started to cry then, and he knew that she was embarrassed. He would have been had it been himself in the hospital without anywhere to go when she came out. “I don’t know what I’d do without your family around. I know that you’ve saved my life, but you’ve become so much more important to me than that. Am I making sense?”

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