by Lexi Eddings
He knew it was a tease, but he enjoyed making her brows draw together a bit. Her brown eyes were usually warm and sexy looking, but now they were about to spit sparks. He decided not to tease her anymore.
“I never got married or anything, if that’s what you’re wondering. Not even close,” he admitted. “How about you? Anybody special in your life, Stilts?”
OK, maybe I’m not done teasing her yet.
Then she stiffened in his arms, and he wished she hadn’t.
“I really haven’t had time for a serious relationship,” she said.
“You should make time,” Michael said, realizing he was preaching to himself as well. “Time is all we really have, you know.”
“Says the man who couldn’t tell time well enough to get here before his mom went into surgery.”
Now it was Mike’s turn to stiffen. “I apologized to her for that already. I’m not sure I owe you one too.”
She lowered her gaze. “You’re right. You don’t.”
The message about his mother’s cancer surgery hadn’t even reached him until the wee hours of the morning. He’d woken his staff, canceled meetings, and had his assistant arrange for him to travel from the Big Apple to “Middle-of-Nowhere,” Oklahoma, almost as fast as if he’d been able to say, “Beam me up, Scotty.” He’d have explained his situation to his mother in more detail that afternoon, but his father had come back from his late lunch quicker than Michael had anticipated.
“I really wish I could have spent more time with her today,” he said.
“You mean that?”
He nodded.
Heather searched his face for a moment and seemed satisfied with what she saw. “Do you think your dad has gone home for the night?”
He released her hand to check his watch but kept doing a basic box step. “It’s after nine o’clock. If Dad isn’t in his pajamas with his feet up waiting for the news to start, it’ll be a first.”
Heather stopped dancing and grabbed him by the hand again. It was getting to be a habit with her. He was beginning to like it.
“Come on, then,” she said as she led him through the still-crowded dance floor and headed for the exit. “I’ll get you back into the hospital.”
As they left hand in hand, Michael saw that her parents were watching in bug-eyed horror. As far as they knew, the bad boy of Coldwater Cove was making off with their darling daughter. He couldn’t resist giving them a wave and a quick thumbs-up sign.
Mrs. Walker’s face paled to the sickly beige of a trout’s belly. If she didn’t faint dead away, Michael would be surprised. She’d always seemed the dramatic sort.
Someday, I’ve got to quit going out of my way to irritate people.
As if on cue, Mrs. Walker collapsed back into her husband’s waiting arms. Michael snorted.
Just not today.
Chapter 5
Life can change you into the person you swore
you’d never become. It depends on whether you
think your problems are roadblocks or speed bumps.
—On a plaque in Michael Evans’s
office at MoreCommas.com
I’m only here because of my patient, Heather tried to tell herself. She and Mike were no longer holding hands. That had only lasted as long as it took to get to her car. He’d wanted to see her on the back of his Harley, but there was no way she was climbing into a “bitch seat” wearing these heels. So Heather had driven them to the hospital in her clean but aging Taurus.
“Thanks for getting me back in,” he said as they boarded the elevator that would take them to the second floor of Coldwater General. The doors whirred closed.
“I’m doing this for your mother,” she reminded him. Those little flutters in her belly had nothing to do with it whatsoever. “She was anxious to see you this morning.”
Michael and Heather stepped off the elevator into a corridor whose lighting had been dimmed for the night shift. In addition to the intermittent beeping of monitors and the low white noise of the hospital’s HVAC, a soft popping sound was coming from the nurses’ station.
When the LPN on duty looked up and saw Heather, she guiltily shoved her phone into her pocket.
“Sorry,” she said, pulling it back out, realizing there was no point in trying to hide. The phone’s wallpaper was covered with what looked like Bubble Wrap. When the nurse’s thumb slipped onto it, the phone emitted a noise that sounded like a single kernel of corn popping. “I just finished rounds. Everyone’s resting comfortably so thought I’d take a quick break.”
“Glenda Scott was messing with that same thing earlier today,” Heather said.
Michael grinned, nodding toward her phone. “Kind of addictive, isn’t it?”
The LPN smiled back at him.
Well, what girl wouldn’t? The man is terminally attractive. Heather smacked down that opinion and reminded herself that he still called her “Stilts” every chance he got.
“Yeah, real addictive,” the nurse said, leaning an elbow on the counter and cupping her cheek in her palm, clearly smitten. “But you know, playing with it isn’t completely wasted time. It’s not like a regular video game. You don’t have to think about it while you’re popping away so you can think about other things. We’ve been having some issues with the supply closet and I actually thought up a new way to organize it while I was playing with this silly thing.” Then she glanced at Heather, straightened abruptly, and wiped the smile from her face. “I was only doing it for a little while. Honest.”
“It’s OK this time,” Heather said. “I hear it’s a good stress reliever, but save it for the break room from now on. If a patient’s family member catches you playing with your phone, they won’t be impressed, no matter how many supply closets you mentally reorganize with it.”
“Hey!” Michael objected. “It doesn’t bother me and I’m somebody’s family.”
“Then it’s time you acted like it.” She rolled her eyes at him and started down the hallway, not caring whether he followed or not. She never should have left the dance with him. This was a mistake.
So are these darned heels. My kingdom for a pair of white ScrubZones.
The offending heels clicked like she was pounding tacks into the linoleum with every step.
“Way to undermine my authority,” she whispered when he fell into step beside her.
“Your authority? What are you, head nurse or something?”
“Or something.” Her actual title was “supervisor of nursing” for the entire hospital, but since there had been cutbacks, she had fewer staff members to supervise these days. She hated to ask her parents to give the hospital another grant, especially so soon after they’d funded the new mental health clinic at Bates College, but she just might come round to it if more state money didn’t roll into the hospital coffers soon.
“If your mother’s asleep, you shouldn’t wake her,” Heather whispered.
“I won’t. It’ll be enough just to see her.”
How many times had Mrs. Evans checked on Michael at night when he was a kid, just to make sure he was still breathing? Now he was doing it for her. Heather wasn’t sure when that shift between parent and child happened in life, but she’d seen it demonstrated plenty of times. Eventually, the caretakers became the ones who needed care.
Michael seemed ready to step up for that. It raised him a notch or two in her eyes.
If only he’d stop calling me Stilts!
But Mrs. Evans wasn’t quite out for the night. Her bed was propped in the upright position. Lit by the flicker of a TV screen, she was breathing slowly, her eyes half closed, clearly skimming the surface of sleep, but not there yet. A reality show about people at a tattoo parlor was scrolling across the screen. Mike picked up the remote and clicked it off, plunging the room into semidarkness.
Evidently, the sudden silence roused Mrs. Evans. When she recognized Michael’s silhouette backlit by the slab of light that spilled in from the hall, she was instantly alert, and as bursting with
energy as a kid on Christmas morning.
She clicked on the room light with her call button.
“Oh, sweetheart,” Mrs. Evans said, lifting her right arm to him so he could hug her on that side. Her left would still be sore from where Doc Warner had removed about twenty lymph nodes. Michael gave her an unhurried hug and a kiss on the cheek.
A happy tear slid down that cheek.
Heather was glad she’d brought him there. Michael’s presence was the best medicine she could give his mother.
“I was so afraid you wouldn’t be back after what—” Mrs. Evans pinched her lips into a tight line to stop herself. “Dad didn’t mean what he said to you this afternoon.”
“Yes, he did,” Michael said.
Mrs. Evans’s head bobbed from side to side in a post-drug-induced version of a shrug. “Well, maybe you’re right. Your father can be awfully stubborn sometimes. He doesn’t like change.”
“Doesn’t believe I’m capable of it, you mean.”
Mrs. Evans waved her hand as if to wave away his comment. “But now that you’re home, I’m sure my two men will find a way to bury the hatchet. Sit, son.”
Mike didn’t agree with her, but he did sit on the end of her bed. Heather started to slip out of the room, but he caught her by the wrist, silently asking her to stay.
She understood. Sometimes it was easier for family members to deal with the illness of their loved one if a third party was present. Another beating heart in the room sucked the intimate awfulness out of disease and forced people to behave as if this horribly abnormal situation was perfectly normal.
“Don’t you look pretty, Heather. Kind of fancy for the hospital, though,” Mrs. Evans said with a confused expression. Then she brightened. “Oh, that’s right. The reunion dance was tonight, wasn’t it? Did you kids have fun?”
Heather nodded, though she wasn’t sure someone who was knocking on thirty still qualified as a kid. “We had a good turnout. Lots of alums from out of town.”
“Oh, how I wish George and I could have been there. We won the Lindy Hop competition last year, you know.” She smiled wistfully. “That man of mine can still cut a rug.”
When silence fell over them, Heather felt compelled to fill it. “How are you feeling, Mrs. Evans? Any pain?”
That might account for her still being awake.
“No, just a little indigestion,” she said, “but I suppose that’s my own fault.”
“I don’t see how. You didn’t eat anything except what the hospital gave you, did you?” Heather asked. Family members often smuggled in favorite dishes that were spicier or richer than postoperative patients should have.
Like possum pie.
“No, it was the ice cream at dinner,” Mrs. Evans said. “That sweet little nurse on duty brought me four cups since they’re small, two chocolates and two vanillas. That way I could share some with George when he came back this evening.”
Heather nodded. It sometimes stimulated a patient’s appetite if their visitor had something too.
“Well, I meant to just eat one and save the other three for your father,” she said to Michael. “But my taster has been a bit off today so I didn’t know which one I wanted.”
“Probably the aftereffects of anesthesia,” Heather said. “It can mess with things until it works its way out of your system.”
“I usually like chocolate best, you know,” Shirley Evans went on, “but vanilla was sounding pretty good to me. So I tried a bite of this one, and then a bite of that one. Even when I opened the third cup, I still couldn’t make up my mind which one I liked most.” She laughed and tossed her hands in the air. “Wouldn’t you know it? By the time I figured out that the vanilla tastes best, every bit of both of them was gone!”
Mike laughed softly with her and patted her blanketed shin. “I’ll sneak you in some Green Apple Grill homemade vanilla tomorrow. Jake served me some after supper tonight with warm blackberry cobbler. It’s the best stuff I ever tasted.”
“No, don’t,” his mother said. “According to Heather, I need to make healthy choices while I’m going through chemo and radiation.”
“That doesn’t mean you can’t have a treat sometimes,” Heather said. Chances were good that Mrs. Evans’s appetite would be dicey once she started treatment in earnest. She might as well enjoy a forbidden goody now.
“Well, if you won’t let me tempt you with the tastiest ice cream on the planet, what can I do for you?” Michael asked.
“Look, son,” Mrs. Evans said, suddenly serious. “I don’t know what finally caused the break between you and your father all those years ago. He never confided in me.”
Michael’s brows shot up for a second. Secrets were hard to keep in Coldwater Cove. If gossip were an Olympic sport, the town could field a world-class team every time. It wasn’t so much that people were nosy. It was that they were so interested in the lives around them.
That, and what else did they have to talk about besides what was happening to their neighbors and friends?
But if even his mother didn’t know, no wonder I never heard what happened.
“Whatever it was, I don’t need to know,” Shirley Evans went on. “What I do need is for you and your father to finally get over yourselves. If you want to do something for me, don’t bring me ice cream. Bring me peace.”
That had all the finality of a deathbed request to Heather’s ear.
“It takes two to make peace,” Michael said.
“But it only takes one to make the first step toward it. Say you’ll do this little thing for me, Michael,” his mother said, her eyes pleading. “Then whatever happens with the cancer, I’ll be fine.”
Heather got the feeling it was not so little a thing for Michael to do, but the way Mrs. Evans had framed the request, she didn’t see how he could deny her.
Evidently, neither did he. “I’ll try.”
“That’s all I ask, dear. Oh! Lacy told me Jake has made you his best man.” Mrs. Evans was all smiles again. “Isn’t that wonderful?”
Heather’s gaze darted to Michael at that news. As the maid of honor, she’d be walking the aisle with him in November. And there were plenty of prewedding activities they’d need to coordinate before then. She wasn’t sure she wanted to spend that much time with the guy.
Something about him . . . irritated her. The way she’d been aware of him watching her at the dance made her feel uncomfortable in her own skin. And her stomach hadn’t stopped doing weird little flips when he was around, usually when he caught her looking at him.
Oh, my gosh, could I be any more middle school? I may as well text him “If U me like I U, stop in the hall & nod.”
She gave herself a mental shake. This was so not like her.
“That best man stuff isn’t official yet,” Mike said.
“Well, there’s no time like the present. They want you in the wedding. I want you in the wedding,” his mother said with force. “Make it official now.”
Clearly, Mrs. Evans had missed her calling as a hostage negotiator. Cancer was a heavy club, and she wielded it with devastating conviction.
“All right, Mom. You win. I’ll do it.”
“Oh, good. I just knew you’d do the right thing,” she said as if she’d actually given him a choice. “It’ll be so wonderful to have you home now that fall is upon us. Remember how lovely Coldwater Cove is once the trees start to turn? And with any luck at all, I’ll be done with my treatments in time for the wedding.” She covered a yawn with one hand and slid down on the bed’s incline. “Won’t that be grand?”
Then she sighed contentedly. Her eyes closed, and she drifted away from them with a soft snore. Michael bent over his mother and brushed her cheek with his lips.
The simple gesture made Heather’s chest constrict. The bad boy of Coldwater Cove had a tender heart he didn’t let the world see.
If you want to know how a man feels about women, watch how he treats his mother. It was her own mother’s voice in her head, but this tim
e, Heather agreed with her.
She pushed the button that lowered her patient’s bed into a level position and tucked the blanket around Mrs. Evans’s chin. Then she slipped out of the room, with Michael on her heels.
“Good thing she fell asleep,” Michael said as he waited for Heather to board the elevator first. For a bad boy, he still had good-boy manners. “She’d have had me agreeing to move back to Coldwater Cove for keeps in another minute or two.”
“Would that be so terrible?” Heather punched the down button, grateful he hadn’t opted for the stairs. Up or down, the heels she was wearing would be a royal pain on that many steps.
“Coldwater’s not New York.” The elevator shuddered its way to the ground floor, and the doors wheezed open.
“That’s where you’ve been living?”
“For the most part.”
Heather had visited the Big Apple once for a nursing seminar on critical care. After the initial rush of adrenaline over being in such a gigantic metropolis, she found the city exhausting. Granted, there were great museums and plays and incredible architecture, but there were so many people all jostling against each other at all hours of the day and night. Her hotel was nowhere near Central Park, so she didn’t see anything green all week, not so much as a blade of grass. The rolling, forested hills around Coldwater Cove were restful to her heart, and even in the flat parts of the state, there was something majestic about a long horizon. She loved being able to see what she called “the edges of the earth” in all directions. When her plane landed back in Oklahoma, Heather had narrowly resisted the urge to kiss the ground.
“Doesn’t it get lonely in New York?” she asked.
“What do you mean? There are people everywhere. In case you haven’t heard, it’s the city that never sleeps.”
“It’s possible to be alone in a crowd.”
He nodded. “Yeah, I guess. But if you stay busy enough, you don’t have time to notice. You have to slow down to realize you’re lonely.”
“So have you?”