The Unsung Hero Read Online Free PDF

. . .
    Oh, God.
    Her father was lying, facedown, on the tile floor.
    Kelly knelt next to him, checking for his pulse. His skin was clammy and his eyelids fluttered at her touch, as if it were an effort to open his eyes.
    “ ’Bout time you got in here,” he wheezed. “Usually check on me first thing in the morning. Figures today you’d decide to rearrange the cans of spinach in the kitchen cabinets.”
    “I was putting away a few groceries,” she told him, her heart in her throat. Don’t die now. Don’t you dare die yet! She purposely made her voice sound matter of fact, knowing her upset would only annoy him. “What happened?”
    “Actually,” he said, “I’m practicing for my audition for that commercial. You know—’I’ve fallen and I can’t get up’?”
    Kelly lost it. “Daddy, for God’s sake, will you stop being a jerk for just thirty seconds and tell me what happened? Did you slip? Are you having chest pains? Did you hit your head when you fell? Is anything broken?” Was it a stroke? If it was, he hadn’t lost command of his speech center, that was for damn sure.
    “If you must know,” Charles said almost primly, “one minute I was on the commode, minding to my business, and the next I was on the floor. I don’t think I hit my head. And it doesn’t feel as if anything’s broken—except for my pride.”
    “We need to make arrangements to get a nurse to come in while I’m out,” Kelly said as she checked her father’s eyes, checked his head. “If I help you, do you think you can get up?”
    “No,” Charles said. “And no nurse. And don’t you even think about calling the paramedics. If they come out here, they’ll take me to the hospital, and I’m not going to the hospital. Remember Frank Elmer? He went in for minor chest pains—and he was dead the next day.”
    “That was because he had a massive stroke.”
    “My point exactly. Maybe he would have been fine if he hadn’t gone to the hospital. I’ll stay right here, thank you very much.”
    His head looked fine. He must’ve somehow caught himself on the way down, thank God. She checked his arms and legs, and he managed to pull away from her irritably, even though he couldn’t move far. “Stop that.”
    “I’m a doctor,” she reminded him. “If you’re going to refuse to go to the hospital when something like this happens—”
    “What happened?” he asked. “Big deal. I got dizzy, I still feel a little weak. That shouldn’t surprise you. I’m a billion years old and I’ve got cancer. Something tells me that the bathroom floor and I aren’t going to stay strangers.”
    “If we had a nurse—”
    “She would annoy me, too,” Charles finished. “Get Joe,” he ordered. “Between you, Joe, and me, we can get me back into bed.”
    Kelly stood up, but she turned back to look down at him. Wasn’t he even the tiniest bit glad that she was here? The question escaped before she could stop herself. “Is that really what I do? Annoy you?”
    Charles only briefly met her eyes. He opened his mouth to speak, but then stopped, shaking his head. “Just get Joe and get back here, all right?”
    Kelly hesitated, but her father closed his eyes, shutting the world—and her—out. God forbid they should ever actually talk. Trying hard not to let her hurt show—that would only make him more annoyed with her—she turned and hurried out of the bedroom, down the hall, back toward the kitchen.
    She pushed her way out the kitchen door, letting the screen slap shut behind her. Joe’s car was still in the driveway, thank God, and she hurried down toward the little cottage by the gate. “Joe! Are you home?”
    The shadow of a man was coming around the side of the cottage, and she changed her course, heading toward him, and . . .
    It wasn’t Joe.
    It was Tom Paoletti, Joe’s grandnephew.
    It was a big, tall, full-grown, man-size Tom Paoletti, with far less hair and far more lines on his still remarkably handsome face. His