Page 1 of Vengeful Seduction
Part One
Chapter 1
Kaye
Morning dew covered the rose bushes that grew along the sidewalk. With a skip in my step, I tried my best to break the melancholy mood that struck me most mornings as I went to work.
It always made me just a little bit sad to go to work.
Not because of the patients. I knew I was one of the rare people who didn’t mind working with people who needed hospice care. Most of the other nurses did it and did it well because it was their job, but there was always this air of resentment. Hopefully not about the patients, but about each other.
It’s never easy to know that every single one of your patients will die under your care. Terminal diseases would take them all, no matter how well you cared for them. It took a particular kind of person to withstand all that comes with facing death head on and helping others accept their fate.
For me, though, I found it fascinating to interact with people in their last days. Not only did I get a chance to help them and to ease their pain and suffering, but I got to hear the stories these people had in their heads. The times they’d lived through and all of the things they’d said and done—it was all there. With just a little bit of patience, these human beings had the most interesting things to say and insights to give from another time.
Theodore Black, however, had become my favorite patient, by far. It was sort of funny, but I could still remember how terrified I had been to meet him, since he was something of a local legend. He was the epitome of the local boy who had succeeded in spite of everything that was stacked against him.
He’d ended up being nothing but a teddy bear. An old, almost deaf teddy bear, to be sure, but one without a mean bone in his body. A sweet, gruff old man who had won my heart almost immediately.
So it wasn’t him. He wasn’t the reason I’d been sad to come to work. Or not the whole reason. I was sad that I was going to lose him, but I knew I’d be richer for having known him.
The reason I was sad was that, in all of the time I’d been going to see Theodore—as he had insisted I call him—I had never, not once, seen anyone with him who wasn’t a health care professional. No friends—not even any family.
This man was the richest person I knew, but that certainly hadn’t made him happy. And that was what really depressed me. It made me almost sick to my stomach when I thought about it.
No one should have to die alone, and if I were the only person who could be with him in the end, then I would be. Months ago, I’d made the request to be transferred full-time to Theodore, and I had never been given cause to regret it.
“Kaye?”
Theodore had been in a particularly sour mood when I first became his nurse, and it hadn’t taken me long to figure out he mostly wanted to be left alone. Upon entering his home, I often remained quiet and unobtrusive until he called for me. To find him calling for me as soon as I walked in was a novelty.
The cancer inside him was eating him alive, and he had become too weak to do most things for himself. He was once such a strong man, then cancer had turned him into an invalid who had to be diapered, spoon-fed baby food, and bathed by his caretakers. I blinked at the thought, trying to push back my tears.
The last thing a nurse should do was cry for their patients. Not in front of them, anyway. Though I knew when the inevitable happened, I would cry plenty. I had been doing this since I was twenty-two. Four years ago I started my career as a nurse for hospice care. During that time, I had seen far too many incredible people die.
Theodore was something else, though. I knew his death would be even worse than any of the others I’d nursed until they passed. But I wasn’t going to let that get in the way of giving him the best possible care. So I pasted a smile on my face and bustled into the room.
“Hello, Theodore! Are you hungry?” I didn’t really expect the answer to be ‘yes,’ though I was hoping it would be. In the year I’d been nursing him in his home, he’d never been a huge eater, but it had gotten to the point lately that he was eating almost nothing.
He looked at me, his dark eyes seeming to burn as they ran me over from head to toe. He was taking my measure, I knew, and I looked at him right back, wanting to seem like I was the sort of person he could trust.
“Kaye,” he repeated my name, and I fought the urge to bite my lip. He clearly wanted to know if he could count on me, and I didn’t want to show any sign of indecision.
“I’m here, Theodore,” I murmured, letting my voice become a soothing balm. “What is it? What can I do to help?”
For a moment, I thought he wasn’t going to do it—that his old habits of secrecy would go with him to the grave. I knew who he was—a big-deal businessman who had made a fortune and who had had two different wives try to take that fortune from him. I knew that only because it was pretty much common knowledge in Portland, though, not because he had ever spoken such things to me himself.
He had never spoken much about his past. The things I did know mostly came second hand.
His eyes had once been blue, from the photos I’d seen around his opulent home. They’d turned to such a pale color in his old age. Those pale eyes drooped at the outer edges. His lips quivered with the energy it took just for him to speak. “I need you to do something for me.”
I kept my smile firmly in place. I didn’t let it widen, no matter how much I wanted to. He’d finally asked for a favor. Before now, he wouldn’t have let himself be vulnerable like that.
“Anything.” I couldn’t think of a single thing he would ask for that I wouldn’t be willing to give him.
One hand pulled up from his side. A long, bone-thin finger pointed across the room. I followed the direction and saw he was gesturing to the landline telephone that sat on the dresser. “I need you to dial a number for me.”
My eyebrows wanted to rise, but I kept them schooled carefully. This was a big deal. He’d never asked me to make a phone call before, but I couldn’t act like it was strange or it could alienate him.
