She leaned against him as they rode the elevator up to the fifth floor where her father’s room was, doing her best to ignore the negative thoughts as the doors to the elevator opened and they stepped off, heading down the hall for room 537.
Boisterous laughter poured from the room—a sound that Celina had never heard before. Her father, she surmised, had probably charmed a few nurses. She slowly pushed the door open. “Mom?” she exclaimed when she saw Rena sitting at the foot of Thomas’s bed.
Rena stood up, hugged her daughter, and then smiled approvingly at Darius. Celina knew her mother had recalled their conversation from a few days ago and put two and two together.
“Is this little Darius McRae?” Rena asked. “You certainly aren’t little anymore.”
“No ma’am,” he said as they hugged.
Celina looked from her father to her mother. She hadn’t seen the two of them looking that happy at the same time since she was a child. Celina walked over to her father, who looked a lot healthier than he had when she brought him to the center.
“How are you feeling?” she asked as she kissed him on the forehead.
Thomas nodded. “Better, much better.” His gaze fell on Rena, who was catching up with Darius. Celina followed Thomas’s gaze. Part of her—the child that never grew up—was happy to see her parents together again. But why couldn’t things have been like this before? Maybe they never would’ve divorced. Then again, it took cancer for Thomas to curb his cheating ways.
“Mom, what are you doing here?” Celina asked, wondering how John felt about her rushing to her exhusband’s side.
“I came to check on you and your father. Is that a problem?” Rena raised her eyebrow.
“Not at all,” she said, knowing that it wasn’t the time to question her mother.
“John is at the hotel. I thought you could use a break and John and I decided to come and help you with Thomas,” she said. “But, Mr. Hart looks as if he is going to be just fine.” Rena walked over to Thomas and ran her hand over his forehead. Thomas looked as happy as a little boy in a candy store.
“Mom, can we talk outside?” Celina said, wanting to understand how her mother could be so civil to the man who crushed her heart.
Celina shook her head slightly as she and her mother walked outside and a few feet away from Thomas’s door.
“What’s wrong?” Rena asked.
“I don’t get this, Mom. You and Daddy divorced, but here you are. You don’t owe him anything and I’m sure that John can’t be too happy about you dropping everything to come down here.”
Rena reached out and stroked Celina’s hair. “Child, your father and I will always have one connection and that’s you. I never wanted Thomas to suffer. John and I prayed about our decision to come here and we felt as if this was the right thing to do. It doesn’t change how I feel about John. And speaking of feelings, you and little Darius look pretty cozy together. Was he the man you were talking about on the phone a few days ago?”
“What?” Celina said, though she couldn’t deny it—she was glowing and it was all because of Darius.
“He’s handsome, well-mannered. I remember how you two used to run around the neighborhood together. This is cute,” she said.
Celina smiled as her mother took her down memory lane.
Celina and Darius had been about seven years old and they ran into the house because Rena had been baking cookies and they smelled it from the backyard.
“Ma! Are those chocolate chip cookies?” Celina said, as she burst through the door.
“Is that how you ask for cookies?” Rena had said. “If you and Darius want to have some cookies, go wash your hands and have a seat at the table. You know, one day, you two are going to be baking cookies for your children.”
Celina and Darius looked at each other and stuck their tongues out. “No way,” they said in unison.
Rena knew what the smile on her daughter’s face meant and she couldn’t have been happier about it. “I’m glad Darius has opened your eyes to the wonders of love.”
Celina relaxed her shoulders and leaned against the wall. “Is that why you’re here? Because you still love Daddy?”
“Yes, and because I love you. Celina, you shouldn’t have been going through this alone. I should’ve been here sooner. It’s a good thing that you have Darius.”
Celina nodded. Darius was a special blessing that she hadn’t expected. He’d opened his arms to her and provided her with a shoulder to lean on. “Let’s go back inside before they realize that we’re talking about them,” Celina said.
When Celina and Rena walked into the hospital room, Thomas was sitting up in bed and Darius was pouring him a cup of water. Darius smiled at Celina as she walked in. “Is everything all right?” Celina asked.
Thomas nodded. “What about with you two?” he asked as he focused his gaze on his former wife. Rena walked over to Thomas and placed her hand on his shoulder.
“We’re fine. And I’m going to leave you in the capable hands of our daughter.” Rena bent over Thomas and kissed his cheek tenderly.
Thomas clutched Rena’s hand. “Thank you,” he said, his eyes glossing over with unshed tears of gratitude. “I’m really glad you came here.”
Rena patted the back of Thomas’s bony hand and Celina’s heart swelled because in that moment, she had her family back together. Then she began to wonder why they lost it all to begin with. If her parents still loved each other, why couldn’t they make it work? Was that just the way love went?
Darius walked over to her and wrapped his arms around her, bringing his lips close to her ear. “Are you OK?”
Celina turned around, thinking that she didn’t want love to turn into pain and she didn’t want to be hurt the way her mother had been by her father. How could she be sure that Darius wouldn’t break her heart?
“Can you give me and my dad a minute?” she asked. “I need to talk to him in private.”
Darius nodded and turned toward the door. “Can I get either of you something from the vending machines?”
“Nah, son, we’re fine,” Thomas said.
“When are you coming home, Daddy?” Celina asked when they were alone.
“Tomorrow, I hope,” he said as he made himself comfortable in the bed. “I have a few more tests to go through.”
Celina sat on the edge beside him, noticing that her father wasn’t coughing nearly as much as he had been. She wrapped her arms around herself and focused her stare on her father. “That sounds good,” she said. “You still love her, don’t you?”
Thomas smiled despite himself. “I never stopped loving your mother,” he said. “She is and will always be my first love.”
“Then what happened?” she asked. “If you still love her, why didn’t things work out for you two?”
Thomas shrugged his shoulders. This conversation was long overdue. He had always known that he’d have to answer for what happened between him and Rena. “Celina, I made mistakes. I won’t deny that,” Thomas said.
“But why? Why couldn’t you love us enough to keep our family together? I’ve struggled with this for years. I wanted to believe you loved me, but it’s been hard,” she said, her eyes sparkling with years of tears.
Thomas’s heart hurt as he looked at the pained look in his daughter’s eyes. “Maybe it was my ego, but I never thought your mother would leave. Celina, your mother and I were very young when we got married. I still had a lot of growing up to do. By the time I became a man, your mother was long gone. In Chicago, the first time I came to visit, I knew I was going to bring my family home.”
Celina nodded as she recalled the visit. She and Rena had been living in a modest two-bedroom apartment on the south side of Chicago. Until she and her mother had moved into that apartment, Celina had never seen a roach unless it was on the Discovery Channel. Celina had hated that apartment and she thought her father had come to take them back to Elmore when he showed up on their doorstep. Immediately, she went into her room and
started packing. Then Thomas had walked in and beckoned her to sit on the bed. When he told her that she wouldn’t be returning with him, her heart had broken into a thousand pieces.
“Rena was making a good life for you and for herself. She had that job at the art gallery,” Thomas paused and looked at Celina. He searched her face for understanding, but her expression was blank. He cleared his throat and continued talking. “That day, when I saw you and your mother, I knew you didn’t need me. So, I checked out of your lives. Rena asked me to stay in Chicago, thinking that a fresh start away from Elmore would fix everything that had gone wrong between us, but I was too afraid to start over. I had a good thing at home and I wasn’t about to give that up. Everybody knew my name, I had steady work and Chicago was just too big. I knew I couldn’t be what you and your mother needed. I couldn’t step up and be that husband and father that you and Rena needed. I thought I was doing the right thing.”
“The right thing?” she said. “Daddy, I needed you.” Celina blinked rapidly to hold back the tears that threatened to fall.
“And I’m sorry I wasn’t there, but when I saw how well you and Rena were doing without me—” He stopped talking and looked out the window, then said. “Celina, I made your mother cry so many nights. But that day, she looked so beautiful and so happy. I knew I wasn’t going to make her that happy because I was jealous of her. Your mother had the strength to get out of Elmore and I never could. I loved you and your mother so much, I just had to let you go.”
Celina knew what her father said should have made sense, but it didn’t. When he let Rena go it was as if he let her go, too. And if he loved her mother so much, wasn’t he supposed to fight for her and make things work?
“How can you say you loved us? Daddy, you abandoned us. You let your ego keep you from your family. That’s inexcusable and I don’t know if I’ll ever forgive you.”
Thomas turned away from Celina. “I don’t expect you to understand or even forgive me,” he said. “But I want you to know, that boy loves you.”
“What?” Celina said, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand.
Thomas smiled and stroked his daughter’s hand. “Darius McRae loves you. I can see it in his eyes and I know he isn’t going to run like I did. He’s a better man than I was.”
Celina looked away from her father and stared out the window, wondering if Darius’s love was fleeting or if he was there to stay. Was she ready to risk her heart and find out?
CHAPTER 10
Darius stood outside Thomas’s room, not knowing how Celina would be after speaking with her father. He knew that her father’s abandonment had a lot to do with how she felt about love and why she’d been holding back from him.
Come on, D, you have to let her work through this if you’re going to have a shot with her, he thought as he walked over to the window at the end of the corridor. As he looked over the Columbia skyline, his cell phone rang. Darius flipped the silver phone open. “Yeah?” he said.
“Where are you?” a female voice demanded.
“Who is this?”
The woman on the other end of the phone sighed heavily. “Now you don’t know me? Darius, I’m not going to be ignored.”
“Tiffany? Why are you calling me? I made it pretty clear that I don’t want anything to do with you.”
“Because you didn’t return my calls last night. I guess she let you in huh? She can’t compare to me. You’ll see.”
Darius snapped the phone shut. Seconds later it rang again. “Stop calling me. I don’t have time for your games.”
“Darius,” Richard said. “What’s going on?”
“Sorry, Rich. What’s up?”
“Well, we have another problem at the store,” he said. “I’m beginning to think that someone is targeting us.”
Darius clenched his jaw tightly, causing the muscle on the side of his face to twitch. He knew who was targeting his store and why, but she was going to stop.
“What happened now?”
Richard sighed, then began telling Darius about the fire that broke out in back of the store. Someone had broken into the storage shed and burned the azalea bushes. The fire destroyed the shed, but only caused minor cosmetic damage to the store’s siding. Darius muttered a string of curses.
“Calm down,” Richard said. “Boy, sometimes I swear you’re going to have a heart attack before you’re forty.”
“Rich, I’m sorry, but these childish games have to stop.”
Richard grunted. “You think you know who’s doing this?”
Darius nodded his head furiously before telling Richard he knew who was doing all of this. He might not have been able to link Tiffany to the fire and the vandalism at the store, but he knew it was only a matter of time before he could, and when he did, there would be hell to pay.
“I hope the police plan to look into this. Things are getting serious. Fire is nothing to play with. Someone could have been killed.”
“We’re lucky that someone didn’t get hurt. Who do you think is doing this?” Richard asked. “People are starting to talk and we’re losing business.”
Darius sighed heavily into the phone. “Tiffany is behind all of this and when I prove it, she’s going to jail. You’d think that a grown woman would know how to deal with rejection. I’ll see you this afternoon.” Darius closed his phone just as Celina walked out of her father’s room.
Her eyes were blurry and rimmed with faint red lines. She walked over to Darius and embraced him tightly.
“What’s wrong, sweetheart?” he asked, noticing her emotional state.
Celina buried her head in his chest and sobbed silently before saying, “My father and I had a long talk that stirred up some emotions.” She clung to Darius as he gently stroked her hair.
“Did it help?” he asked. Celina nodded. Darius kissed her forehead. “Then, that is all that matters. Isn’t that part of the reason you came home?”
Smiling though her tears, she knew that he was right. “I got some of the questions I had for the last twenty years answered. Maybe this will be the turning point in my relationship with him.”
Darius nodded and smiled at her, all the while wondering how he was going to keep Celina from getting involved in his mess with Tiffany. “The doctors are getting ready to take Daddy up for some tests. Why don’t we go get some lunch?”
Darius nodded and wrapped his arms around Celina’s waist and led her out the door. “You know,” he said. “I know a quaint little bistro near the mall where we can eat.”
“That’s fine,” she said as they walked out to the car.
Darius watched Celina as she slid into the car, reaching into her purse and retrieving her round sunglasses to hide her puffy eyes. Darius admired her strength and the class she displayed in dealing with her father’s illness. Watching her move through it without falling apart just solidified the fact that she was nothing like the clingy, self-centered women who had tried to wedge their way into his life.
Celina caught his intense stare as she snapped her purse shut. “What?” she asked.
Darius just continued to smile at her, finding himself at a loss for words. “Nothing,” he said. “I just admire you.”
“Admire me?” she asked.
“Yes, look at how you’re dealing with this situation. You’re a strong woman and that’s commendable. You didn’t have to come back and help your father, but you did. Put your career on hold and came back to a place that you don’t know to help a man who left you. How many other women do know who are that selfless?”
She wiped a tear from her cheek. “I don’t know. It just seemed like the right thing to do and I needed answers from him before it was too late.”
Darius started the car and reached for her hand. They rode in silence to the restaurant. He knew that Celina was consumed with thoughts of her father and he wished there was something that he could do to ease her mind and her pain.
Just love her, he thought as they pulled into the parking lot of the r
estaurant. He got out of the car and opened the door for Celina, who was still silent and deep in thought.
“When is your father coming home?” Darius asked as he opened the door to the bistro.
“Tomorrow, I think.”
They walked into the restaurant and sat in a corner booth. Darius took Celina’s hand in his. She sighed and cocked her head to the side. “You know,” she said, “this might not be the right time for this, but once my father comes home, I’m going to have to go back to New York.”
Darius’s heart dropped to his stomach. “Oh,” he said, not wanting to think about her leaving at all. He thought about the time that he and Celina had spent together, wrapped in each other’s arms, her lips against his. Her heart beating against his. His desire for her began to grow. Celina looked at Darius, seemingly reading his sexual thoughts.
“Are you OK?” she asked.
“Not at all,” he said. “Celina, you just do something to me. And thinking about you leaving or not seeing you again aren’t the thoughts that I want to have right now.”
She blushed underneath his comment and his hot stares.
“So, is that all I am to you? A really hot fantasy?” Celina probed.
Darius walked over to her side of the booth and pulled her into his arms. “You’re more than that,” he whispered, his warm breath tickling her ear. “I’ve never met anyone like you before in my life. What man can resist you? You’re charming, classy, strong, and brilliant.”
Celina pressed her hand against his chest. “Why don’t we go outside and eat, since it’s such a nice day,” she said.
“All right,” he said as he waved for the waitress and pointed to the patio.
Once they were moved outside to a table underneath a yellow umbrella, Celina turned to Darius and smiled at him. “I have a request.”
“What’s that?”
“Strip for me. I still want to paint you.”
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