Heart of Hope: Books 1-4

by Williams, Ajme

  After my shift, I headed to my house to change and go for a run. My home was rustic and small, but it sat on the edge of the lake nestled in the woods. It was perfect, especially since it was only me living there. My parents had offered to sell me their home, the one I grew up in, but that was a family home, and I didn’t need the space. Not now. Maybe not ever.

  I headed out onto the deer trail in my shorts and running shoes, taking in the crisp clean mountain air. I ran about four miles and then topped off my run with a dive into the lake. It was summer, swimming weather, but the lake was filled with snow water, so even at the height of summer, it was brisk.

  Once I was done with my swim, I headed inside my place, grabbing a beer as I headed to the shower. I washed and dressed in my favorite pair of well worn jeans and a white t-shirt. I went to my deck, sitting to enjoy the early evening as I called Mia’s dad, Jim Parker. I tried to get over to his place at least once a week, but I had to do it when Eli wasn’t around since he never forgave me for being with Mia. Tonight, I knew he’d be home soon, so I opted to call Jim.

  “Nick,” Jim’s jovial voice came over the phone. “How many did you save today?”

  It was a question that always surprised me, considering the hospital hadn’t been able to save his wife. It was a testament to his glass-half-full outlook in life despite the fact that his glass seemed to have a hole in it.

  “I saved them all, Jim. How are you?”

  “Good, good. My baby girl is home.” His voice was softer, and on occasion slurred, a symptom of his Parkinson’s.

  “Yes. You didn’t tell me she was moving back.”

  “Didn’t I? It was last minute. I think Eli is worried about me. She probably half expected me to be on my deathbed. I wish you two were still friends. She needs help lightening up.”

  “I wish that too. I’m sorry I—“

  “The heart wants what it wants, right? At least he doesn’t hold it against Mia.”

  I had to agree. It suggested that Eli thought I took advantage of a young and innocent Mia, which wasn’t the case. Granted, she’d been a virgin, but she knew what she was doing. And when it was clear our friendly feelings had morphed into more, I’d taken my time with her so I knew she’d be sure. In the end, she jumped me wanting to know why I was taking so long to sleep with her. Still, I was glad her and Eli were able to maintain their relationship.

  I was relieved that neither Jim nor his wife had the same reaction that Eli had. They liked me and my family, and so didn’t see my relationship with Mia as being bad. With that said, I could see how Eli would feel betrayed. He’d asked me to watch out for Mia, not sleep with her.

  “How’d she do on her first day?” Jim asked.

  “I only saw her for a second. She works on a different floor.”

  “I’m sure she did fine. She’s a smart girl. Listen, when are you going to come play chess? Are you avoiding me because I kicked your ass last time?”

  “You didn’t kick my ass, Jim. You demolished me. My ego is still shattered.”

  He laughed. “Come redeem yourself.”

  “I will soon,” I said.

  After our chat, I headed into the house and grabbed a quick dinner before going down to the Ole Miner. It was a Monday night tradition that emergency room staff not on duty go down for a few drinks.

  I walked in and looked to our usual corner, seeing Peggy, two other nurses and Dr. Comstock, a middle-aged doctor who recently started joining us after his wife left him. A front desk staffer and two CNAs were there as well. But I’d only barely noticed them, because my attention immediately went to Mia. She was still in her work clothes, although she’d taken her coat off. Her thin light pink blouse hugged her fantastic tits. Immediately, my brain, or maybe it was my dick, flashed to all the times I’d lavished attention on those magnificent globes. They’d always been so responsive, her nipples hardening to peaks that begged to be sucked.

  Down boy, I said to my dick.

  “Nick, hey,” Peggy said waving at me.

  I nodded, but stopped by the bar.

  “Hey Nick,” Julie, the bartender, said. She always had a smile for me that suggested she was willing to get naked with me again. As fun as that had been a year or so ago when we’d spent a week snowed in at my cabin, by the time I dug us out, I was ready for solitude. “Your usual?”

  “That’d be great.” I headed back to the group occupying two tables.

  “I hope you don’t mind I included Mia. It seemed like we should welcome her home,” Peggy said.

  “I don’t mind,” I took a seat that put me across from Mia. “How was your first day?”

  “Not bad.” She took a sip of sort of a froo froo looking frozen drink. I nearly rolled my eyes. “What?”

  “City girl,” I said grinning as I sat back while the waitress set my beer in front of me.

  “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

  I laughed. I’d always loved how Mia would own her quirks and interests, even if they were different. She was a woman who knew herself, which was why I hadn’t been able to convince her to come home with me four years ago.

  “It’s not bad, Nick. I may have one the next round,” Peggy said. “What do you suppose Joyce drinks?”

  “I’m sure we’ll find out,” Candace, a CNA said. “She’s shown up here a few times looking for Nick. I don’t know why you don’t put her out of her misery and give her a little taste of what she wants.”

  I sipped my beer as I glared at Candace. “You gonna give old smokey Joe a taste of what he wants?”

  She made a face at my mention of the grizzled old man that used the ER as his primary care provider and had a special fondness for Candace.

  “What’s wrong with Joyce?” Mia asked. “She’s pretty enough. She’s well-endowed. What’s not to like?”

  I could only gape at her.

  Peggy snorted. “Those tits are store bought and our Nick here prefers natural girls.”

  I turned my glare to Peggy. “You do know that I’m here, don’t you? I don’t need you talking about my sex life in public.”

  Peggy shrugged. “Word is you don’t have a sex life anymore.”

  “Jesus.”

  Mia pulled her lips in like she was trying not to laugh. “This sort of thing doesn’t happen in the big city.”

  “What? Sex talk?” Peggy asked.

  “Everyone knowing if and when you’re having sex … or not.”

  As a man, I felt the need to defend my sex life and yet, I didn’t want to come off as a horn dog either.

  “I haven’t had sex in a while either, Nick,” Candace said. “Unfortunately, you and I aren’t compatible in that area or we could help each other out.”

  “Tell me again why I hang with you guys?” I quipped.

  “Because you love us. And we think you’re adorable. Isn’t he adorable, Mia?” Peggy said putting her arm around me.

  “He’s adorable,” Mia said, but she didn’t look at me.

  “What was your sex life like in L.A.? Movie stars?” Tracy, one of the front desk staff, asked.

  “No movie stars. I did date an agent once though,” Mia replied.

  I wanted to kick that agent’s ass. Even as I thought it, I knew it was ridiculous to be jealous. Mia and I had been over for years. Still, maybe it was because we’d been young, or that I’d been her first, a part of me still thought of her as mine. Maybe it was because she was the first woman, the only woman, I’d ever loved.

  “Have you met movie stars?” Peggy asked.

  “I’ve seen them, but I don’t know any of them.” Mia wiped condensation from her glass.

  “We get the occasional movie star up here,” Candace said.

  “Don’t you get bored going through all that legal mumbo jumbo?” Dr. Comstock said. His inability to stick to the conversation at hand may have been one reason his wife left him.

  Mia shrugged. “It’s not mumbo jumbo to me. And no. Today I read through vendor contracts and saw all the p
laces you’re potentially screwed.”

  “What?” We all said.

  “Take your EMR system—”

  “I don’t want it.” Peggy’s face pinched into disgust.

  I had to agree. The software was a pain in the ass. “What about it?”

  “In the contract, the hospital indemnifies the software manufacturer of all liability,” Mia said.

  “What does that mean?” Candace asked.

  “It means if the software fucks up, they can’t be held liable,” I said, wondering why the hospital would agree to something like that.

  “Has it fucked up?” Mia asked, surprising me as the woman I remembered didn’t use the f-word.

  “There was the time the biopsy of cancer was entered on the wrong patient,” Peggy said. “It was figured out pretty quickly, but the woman did spend three agonizing hours thinking she had cancer.”

  I winced. “Mostly the system is a pain in the ass. We spend way too much time taking notes and filling in information. In an ER, we can’t be wasting our time on all that, especially on a system that isn’t user intuitive.”

  The other members of the staff nodded their heads at my statement.

  “What about the person who did have cancer. If they went without necessary treatment based on EMR error—“

  “I think that was a lab submission error,” Peggy said.

  Mia shrugged. “The point is, if the software messes up, the hospital is liable. You could be liable. At my firm in L.A., we always negotiated some sort of shared liability. The EMR companies don’t want to do it, but like you said, they’re not infallible and they need to be motivated to make sure the software is up-to-date and working.”

  “So are you going to do that for us?” I asked her.

  “That wasn’t the vendor contract that the hospital is currently renegotiating, but it is on my list to talk to the hospital administrator about.”

  “It’s so good to have you home, Mia.” Peggy gave her another hug.

  I had to agree. Seeing Mia again was nice. To know she was well and happy. I watched her interact with the others, and while she’d been gone for many years, she seemed to have settled back into life in a small town. I had the desire to get her alone to talk with her and find out how she really was. Before, she hadn’t wanted to return to small town living. Was this a hardship or was she ready to change her lifestyle?

  I leaned forward. “Wanna dance?” I asked it before I assessed the wisdom of it.

  Mia’s eyes flashed with surprise.

  “Go dance with him,” Peggy urged.

  “Yes, okay.” Mia finished her drink.

  I stood and waited for her. We made our way to the tiny dance area where two other couples were dancing. The music was a fast dance song from the 1980’s. It was too loud to actually talk to her, so I danced, taking in every sway and shimmy of her body.

  I leaned forward. “Remember that night we went to the dance at one of the frat houses at Stanford and won the dance contest?”

  She laughed. “Oh God, that’s right. I’d nearly forgotten. I hadn’t realized you had moves, Nick.” There was a flare of heat in her eyes that made me wonder if she was remembering other moves I had.

  The music ended and slow song from the 1990s came on. Before she moved to go back to the table, I reached out for her.

  “One more?”

  Her body tensed slightly but then she nodded. “Sure.”

  I pulled her in, trying not to groan as her soft body and sweet scent assaulted my senses. “I didn’t get a chance to tell you how sorry I was about your mom when you were here last. Eli didn’t want me around.”

  Her smile was bittersweet. “I should have sought you out, but I wasn’t here very long. I heard you were there when she was brought in.”

  I swallowed the lump as the memory of Jane Parker’s battered and bruised body was wheeled into the emergency room filled my brain. “I was.”

  “Was she conscious?”

  I nodded. “Yes.”

  Mia’s eyes filled with tears and I hated that this reunion was veering down a sad path. “Did she know … that she was going to … you know.”

  I closed my eyes. “Everything that could be done—“

  “Did she know?”

  I inhaled a breath. “She knew it wasn’t good.”

  Mia laid her head on my chest, and I gave her a soft kiss on her head. So soft, so she didn’t feel it, but I knew I’d given it.

  She pulled back and looked up at me. “You were with her?”

  “Until she went to surgery.”

  She gave me a wan smile. “I’m glad you were there. That someone who cared for her was there.”

  I waited for her to blame me like Eli did, but instead, she rested her head on my chest again and simply swayed with me to the music.

  “Get your fucking hands off my sister,” Eli’s voice echoed through the bar.

  Instead of releasing her, I gripped her tighter and moved her back, away from Eli’s menacing advance on us.

  “Eli!” Mia stepped away from me.

  “You keep your perverted hands off her,” he said, giving me a shove.

  I held my hands up in surrender. The last thing I needed in the local newspaper was my being in a bar brawl. Eli’s store could probably benefit from that type of publicity, but my boss wouldn’t like it. Then again, maybe it was Eli’s goal to get me fired. For the life of me I couldn’t figure out why he was so angry. I didn’t fuck her and then leave her. I loved her. And it was over four years ago. Okay, so maybe we’d never be friends again, but the intensity of his dislike for me seemed beyond what was normal. I wished I could figure out what was going on with him.

  4

  Mia

  “Eli, knock it off,” I said, coming around in front of Nick. “What is wrong with you?”

  “You’re supposed to be home with Dad,” he said pointing a finger at me.

  “No, I told you since this was my first day, I was coming here with some colleagues.”

  “You’re letting him touch you.”

  “God, Eli, what’s your problem? Nick is a colleague and old friend. And over there,” I said jabbing my finger toward the table of people, “Are more colleagues. Are you going to attack them too?”

  There was one thing I never had to worry about in L.A., and that was small town gossip. Yes, it was nice to come home to a place where people knew me, until my brother made a scene.

  I couldn’t decide, though, if I welcomed his intrusion or not. Dancing with Nick had been nice. Too nice. He felt manlier than I remembered. Stronger. Broader. He was still sweet and kind, and I meant what I said in that I was glad he was there with my mom since my dad and brother hadn’t gotten to the hospital in time. But swaying to the music with him brought back memories I’d worked four years to push away. Memories of him holding and caressing me. Of feeling like I was the center of the world. Or at least his world. But that was then and this was now. Now we were old friends. Work colleagues.

  Still, Eli had some nerve. “You know I’m a grown woman, right? I was a grown up four years ago when I was with Nick. What is your problem?”

  Eli leaned closer to me, and I felt Nick crowd in like he was ready to get between me and Eli. Eli was acting over the top, but I didn’t think he was dangerous, so I put a hand out to stop Nick.

  “You’re here to help with Dad. Not party. This isn’t L.A. where you can spend your nights out.”

  I stared at Eli, wondering what the hell was up with him. “You don’t know my life here or in L.A. I told you and Dad that I was stopping by here. And yes, I’m here for Dad. Not you. If you think you can boss me around, you’re going to have a very difficult time of it.”

  I turned to Nick. “I’m going to head out. Thank you for the dance.”

  He nodded, his green eyes narrowed at Eli.

  “I’ll leave this numbnut to you,” I said to Nick, and then headed to the table. “Sorry people, I’ve got to run.”

  “What’s up
with Eli?” Candace asked.

  “I don’t know.” I picked up my purse. “See you at work tomorrow.”

  I hurried out with Eli on my tail. “Don’t talk to me, Eli.” I said as I got in my car. “Go home. I’ll go to Dad’s.”

  I slammed my door and started the car. He was lucky I didn’t drive over his toes I moved out so quickly. He’d have deserved it.

  By the time I got to my dad’s house, I’d taken a lot of deep breaths and had calmed down. Something was up with Eli, and heaven help us if our lives were going to be full of this drama.

  “Hi Dad,” I called as I came in. He was sitting in his special recliner that tilted forward when he wanted to get up.

  “How’s my girl?” He’d greeted me like that since I could remember. “Did you have fun getting reacquainted with your friends?”

  “I did, until Eli came by and ruined it. What’s up with him?”

  “Oh,” my father made a dismissive sound. “He’s just a little lost.”

  I sat on the couch, kicking my shoes off and tucking my legs underneath me. “That’s not a little lost. Something is seriously up his butt.”

  My father chuckled. “What did he do?”

  “I texted him that I was going to have a drink with friends, and he comes storming in. Telling Nick to keep his hands off me and ordering me home.”

  “Nick had his hands on you?” My father’s bushy brows rose.

  “We were dancing. Like normal people do.”

  “So you and Nick—“

  “No, Dad. It was just a chance to talk alone. I get that Eli felt betrayed by me and Nick, but that was years ago. Surely he’s over it.”

  My dad shook his head. “Eli and Nick aren’t friends.”

  “After four years though, you’d think that type of intense hate would be gone. Seriously Dad, what’s wrong with him?”

  My father sighed. “I think he’s jealous that Nick got the life he wanted. Couple that with Nick’s past relationship with you and his being the last one to talk to your mom—“

  “He’s jealous?” It still seemed over the top to me. “If he’s unhappy, change his life. Don’t come storming in the bar and embarrassing me.” I huffed out a breath.