Someone to Watch over Me

William Jackson Cassidy had escorted this particular reprobate before, and it never failed. The two of them walking down the street side by side drew every female eye for a half a mile. Heads turned. Slow, admiring smiles spread across faces of women young and old. A pretty, little curly-headed thing beamed at them from across the parking lot, and Romeo perked right up. "Don't even think about it," Jax warned, giving a little tug on the line that held them together. More than one woman had commented that they resem-bled one another, although Jax just didn't see it. Oh, they both had hair that was a little longer and blonder than most. Jax's used to drag the top of his shoul-ders when it wasn't pulled back into a disreputable-look-ing ponytail that more than one woman had claimed made him look dangerous in a very interesting way. He now had what was, for him, a fairly short, neat trim, the ends barely brushing his collar in the back. Romeo, too, had gotten a trim, since spring was coming on strong already in north Georgia, even though it was only March. Both he and Romeo were full through the shoulders and lean in the hips, and Jax wouldn't deny that they both probably had a little swagger to their walk. But Jax wasn't nearly as conceited or as much of a flirt as Romeo, who was probably the most pathetic thing Jax had ever encountered. Jax chased criminals for a living. He'd seen "pathetic" before. Romeo was a police academy dropout and now, a kept man. Kept, unfortunately, by Jax's softhearted, dying mother, who was completely blind to every fault Romeo had. "She probably left you every dime she's got," Jax com-plained, just imagining the way Romeo would strut then. For the moment, Romeo just kept on walking, oblivi-ous, as ever, to any insult Jax slung his way. The security guard at the hospital's employee entrance was an off-duty cop and a friend, who let them slip in the back way and up the stairs. Jax thanked the man and tried not to sound ungrateful for the patrol-man's offer of sympathy. He wasn't ungrateful, not really, just trying as hard as he could to deny what was kept wanting to talk about it. He knew they meant well, but it didn't help to know everyone else felt lousy about what was happening. He felt lousy, too. That bit about misery loving company just wasn't working for him. He thought he'd be better off if everyone in town would just let him wallow in his misery and pretended to be oblivious to the whole situation. But they all knew his mother, and they all loved her. Most of them either had known his father or had fathers who'd known his father, through the job. A good number of them had dated one or more of his sisters, and the rest--the females--had dated Jax himself. to help, but the hard truth was, his mother was dying. Nothing made that better, and he wasn't sure how much more he could stand, watching her suffer this way. They got to the third floor, and Jax held up a hand to signal Romeo to stop. "Remember, be quiet," he warned as he eased open the door, which led directly onto the hospice ward. "All right. Coast is clear." The three nurses at the nurses' station obligingly looked the other way, feigning a sudden and unfailing interest in a splotch of paint on the ceiling of the hall. They were sweethearts. All of them. Any other time, and he would have been as charming to them as humanly possible, giving them one of the legendary smiles for which the Cassidy men were known. He wasn't being conceited. His mother had told him all about the power of a Cassidy male's charm from the mo-ment of his birth and sworn he wouldn't be getting away with anything with her because of it. Supposedly he'd gur-gled and slobbered on her, waved his fists madly and smiled with every bit of the charm she feared a male child of Billy Cassidy's would have. As his grandma Cassidy had told the story, his moHill, Teresa is the author of 'Someone to Watch over Me ', published 2007 under ISBN 9780373785827 and ISBN 0373785828.