Suddenly Last Summer Read Free

wasn’t the pressures of his job that kept him away.
    Breathing deeply, he settled back in his seat, ready to catch up on news from home and promising himself that next time he was going to be the one who made the call. He was going to do better at staying in touch.
    “Hey—” he answered the call with a smile “—you fell over, smashed your knee and now you need a decent surgeon?”
    There was no answering banter and no small talk. “You need to get yourself back here. It’s Gramps.”
    Running Snow Crystal Resort was a never-ending tug of war between Jackson and their grandfather. “What’s he done this time? He wants you to knock down the lodges? Close the spa?”
    “He collapsed. He’s in the hospital and you need to come.”
    It took a moment for the words to sink in and when they did it was as if someone had sucked all the oxygen from the air.
    Like all of them, he considered Walter O’Neil invincible. He was as strong as the mountains that had been home for all his life.
    And he was eighty years of age.
    “Collapsed?” Sean tightened his grip on the phone, remembering the number of times he’d said that the only way his grandfather would leave his beloved Snow Crystal would be if he was carried out in an ambulance. “What does that mean? Cardiac or neurological? Stroke or heart attack? Tell me in medical terms.”
    “I don’t know the medical terms! It’s his heart, they think. He had that pain last winter, remember? They’re doing tests. He’s alive, that’s what counts. They didn’t say much and I was focusing on Mom and Grams. You’re the doctor, which is why I’m telling you to get your butt back here now so you can translate doctor-speak. I can handle the business but this is your domain. You need to come home, Sean.”
    Home?
    Home was his apartment in Boston with his state-of-the-art sound system, not a lake set against a backdrop of mountains and surrounded by a forest that had their family history carved into the trees.
    Sean leaned his head back and stared up at the perfect blue sky that formed a contrast to the dark emotions swirling inside him.
    He imagined his grandfather, pale and helpless, trapped in the sterile environment of a hospital, away from his precious Snow Crystal.
    “Sean?” Jackson’s voice came through the speaker. “Are you still there?”
    “Yeah, I’m here.” His other hand gripped the wheel of his car, knuckles white because there were things his brother didn’t know. Things they hadn’t talked about.
    “Mom and Grams need you. You’re the doctor in the family. I can handle the business but I can’t handle this.”
    “Was someone with him when it happened? Grams?”
    “Not Grams. He was with Élise. She acted very quickly. If she hadn’t, we’d be having a different conversation.”
    Élise, the head chef at Snow Crystal.
    Sean stared straight ahead, thinking about that single night the summer before. For a brief moment he was back there, breathing in her scent, remembering the wildness of it.
    That was something else his brother knew nothing about.
    He swore under his breath and then realized Jackson was still talking.
    “How soon can you get here?”
    Sean thought about his grandfather, lying pale and still in a hospital bed while their mother, the family glue, struggled to hold everything together and Jackson did more than could be expected of one man.
    He was sure his grandfather wouldn’t want him there, but the rest of his family needed him.
    And as for Élise—it had been a single night, that was all. They weren’t in a relationship and never would be so there was no reason to mention it to his brother.
    He made some rapid mental calculations.
    The journey would take him three and a half hours, and that was without counting the time it would take to drive home and pack a bag.
    “I’ll be with you as soon as I can. I’ll call his doctors now and find out what’s going on.”
    “Come straight to the hospital. And drive carefully. One