He laughs out loud.
“What’s so funny? My name?”
“No, your name is fine, just ironic. I was telling my niece a story about a princess named Victoria just days ago.”
Talk of a niece and stories of princesses softens him immediately. She smiles like she approves of him telling stories to a little girl.
“Victoria. Or shall I call you Vicky?” He can guess the answer before it is offered.
“Not if you want to survive your injuries.” She moves a bag of his clothes from a chair into the shelf by the window for no reason. “Your accent is wonderful. I love England.”
“You’ve been?” He is surprised. She sounds like she should have a few missing teeth and live in the woods. She sounds a bit raspy, like a smoker, but he thinks she probably is not. She sounds like she has just a few marbles in her mouth.
“I visited England years and years ago. When I was a teenager.” Her tone is dry. The memory obviously isn’t bringing a warmth to her heart.
He looks her over closer now. She does possess a natural sort of beauty, like she could model in soap commercials. Her light blue eyes are less piercing than her daughter’s, friendlier, more inquisitive. She has full, pink lips and if he felt better, he might have something to think about regarding those lips. He’s not even up for thinking about that though. He knows he’s been an unforgiving asshole. Her skin is like cream.
“I’m confused. Are you my nurse?” he asks.
“No. I’m just here to help. But I am a nurse. Talk about ironic.”
“But you have just been here watching over me?”
She shrugs. That is a language he speaks. He can’t help but be touched. “All along?”
She shrugs again.
“That is really very lovely of you. Can we start again? I may have been a bit of an asshole to you. Hi Victoria. I’m Callum,” he says.
She takes his cue and moves to the bed, and shakes his offered hand. Her hand in his is soft and small with no ring. She is lovely but too young and probably too single. Definitely not for him.
“Where does your niece live? Back in England?” She sits on the edge of his bed and tries to make small talk. Even in this post-surgical state, he looks damn good.
“I have a sister in South Carolina on Osprey Island. My two nieces are there.”
“I should call her. She would want to know,” Victoria says and reaches for her mobile.
“Please don’t.” He needs to explain or she is going to track down his sister and Anna will leave her kids and take the first plane across the country and upset her entire life for him and he’s having no part of it.
“I’ve only just met her. It seems we had some skeletons in our family closet. She is the greatest thing to happen to me in my life, but she’s got a husband and two little girls. One is just a baby, and I don’t want her to feel responsible for me.”
The fluorescent lights overhead flicker and buzz. Victoria frowns at this information, and he hopes she isn’t going to track Anna down even though he doesn’t want her to. Google is a powerful tool and she seems just nosy enough to do it. She finally nods, acquiescing to his demands.
“I understand Callum. I do. Responsibility can be a complicated thing.” Her comment is a little loaded. He waits for more. She pats his good leg and chooses not to elaborate further about her feelings of responsibility.
He thinks she may have a skeleton or two of her own. He doesn’t mind her hand on his arm. It is not sexual in any way, yet it is still nice.
“Callum, let me help you. Like I said, I am a nurse. Not here in Salt Lake but back in Park City. I work for an internist.”
He is surprised but shakes his head. “No. But truly thank you. If you can just get me back to my hotel when I am released, I’ll be fine.” He tries to imagine the hotel and can’t. “Shit, where am I staying?” slips out of his mouth.
“You were staying at Red Canyons, but Callum, you can’t go back there. You need some care. You can’t be on your own after a surgery like that. There is a rehab center in Salt Lake but trust me, you don’t want to go to a rehab center. We’ll take good care of you.” Her blue eyes are very serious. Her eyebrows are neatly plucked into shapely arches. They curve at her disapproval. “I have a house.”
His head falls back onto rough, under-filled, hospital pillows, and he misses the pillows on his bed back home. They are marvelous pillows, full and soft. Maybe he never should have left England. If he had stayed, where would he be now? Drunk. Alone. Homeless. Jobless. Motherless. But with plenty of money. Not the worst existence. No, he needed some distance. This is still better in every way.
“Victoria, you don’t even know me,” he protests.
“I can tell you’re a good guy,” she says.
He rolls his eyes. “I am not a good guy.” Fucking his way across American disqualifies him from good guy status. He is fairly sure that knowledge of his adventures might alter her assessment of him.
“I can see you’re a good guy, Callum,” she repeats, convincing herself or him, he wonders.
“Why? Because I’m weak and broken and you pity me?”
“Well yes,” she laughs.
“You can’t bring a strange man into your home, Victoria. You have a daughter.” He is actually appalled that she would even consider it. “Men are perverts and predators and rapists and most of the other horrid things on this planet are devised by men.”
“Are you a pervert?” she asks.
“No.”
“A serial killer? Rage problems? Drug dealer? Thief?”
“No.”
“Well okay then. I think we’re getting somewhere,” she smiles. “Have you ever forced a woman to have sex with you who didn’t want to have sex with you?” she asks more seriously.
“Everyone wants to have sex with me. Man, woman and beast.” He replies with perfect seriousness. Her small smile lets him know he isn’t wrong. She is joining the ranks of man, woman and beast.
“Let me rephrase. Have you ever tied a woman up?”
“Yes.”
“Have you ever pinned a woman down?”
“Yes.”
“Have you ever ripped a woman’s clothes?”
“Yes.”
“Have you ever wrapped your hands around a woman’s throat,” she says getting frustrated.
“Yes. But all in good fun.”
She stands silently with her hands at her sides, beaten.
“You are asking the wrong question. So far you are running through a typical Wednesday night in London.”
“Not the London I remember,” she frowns.
“You were young. Ask me if I am a rapist.”
“Well are you?” she asks.
“Not lately,” he tries to joke, but she doesn’t laugh. “I am a perfect gentleman when the situation requires. But it still isn’t safe to bring strange men into your home.” He’d never let a strange man near his daughter if he had one. He thinks about Clara. If he had a daughter, she’d be like Clara, sweet and giggling all the time, eating grapes with tiny fingers, climbing onto his lap and petting his face, listening to a story. He’s never having any kids though.
“Thanks for the parenting advice. You have kids of your own?” She doesn’t wait for his answer. “No, I didn’t think so. Let me tell you what I know, Callum. Number one, I can take you. You are in bad shape and I am pretty sure I could take you out with a feather right now.”
He nods because she is probably right. “Fuck with me or with my daughter and I will go all Kathy Bates in Misery on you and you’ll lose that other leg. All I’d need is a couple of two by fours and a sledge hammer which I’ll make sure to have in the garage just in case.”
“Point well made.” She probably would, too.
She smiles a sweet smile before continuing with her dark persuasion. “Number two, my daughter did this to you. I’m not sure how or why, but she did. She has been on skis since she was three years old, but she’s been going through some stuff and
I think you might be a victim of some serious teen angst. I can’t turn my back on you, on all that.” She picks at her cuticle while talking about her daughter.
“So what you’re telling me is that I’m the one in danger? Between your lovely daughter and this Kathy Bates threat, I am really dying to come with you.”
She ignores him. “Number three, I don’t bring strange men into my house. I’m a nurse not a hooker. I’m a single mom, raising a kid and working full time, plus overtime, and that doesn’t leave time for much else. Which brings me to number four.”
He nods to encourage her on. This is more fun than expected.
“No hanky panky.”
“You just said I am in bad shape,” he says innocently.
“Look Callum, you seem like a nice guy, but you are clearly trouble with that face and that accent and well… that body.” She averts her eyes from his well-defined, exposed chest. He notices the hospital gown is askew and he doesn’t bother fixing it.
He tries to manage a dashing smile, regardless of the previous vomit episode. He doesn’t do a terrible job. That smile has dropped a lot of panties in London. “Maybe I should be lecturing you about hanky panky.” He pulls the hospital gown tighter, killing her view.
“I’m serious Callum. No bullshit in front of my daughter. Things are complicated enough right now. I don’t want to make it worse.”
He briefly wonders what she means by complicated, but he doesn’t really care.
“I’m glad you swear. I was worried you were Mormon.” He says getting back to a little flirty flirty.
It is her turn to laugh out loud. “Far from it. Can we be like brother and sister?”
He thinks a moment and shakes his head. “No. This has been a big sister year for me with meeting Anna. I can’t have another sister. And we will probably eventually sleep together so that is very wrong. How about, how do Americans say it? Some absurd word for best friends?”
“Are you actually looking for the word besties?”
He finds the fact that she doesn’t deny the inevitable sex to be promising. “Yes, besties. Let’s be besties.” He can think of a thousand reasons why this is a bad idea, but he is intrigued and rather situationally screwed. “Jesus fuck.” He wonders aloud just how fucked he is.
“Excuse me?” she asks, obviously disapproving of his unique selection of words.”
“How fucked up am I? I can take care of my own washing and such, right?
“By and such I think you mean using the …”
“Jesus Christ, I’m English. There is no need to speak of it.” He is disgusted she would even consider voicing such things.
“You will be fine handling everything alone in the loo.”
“Christ!” he says too loudly and it shoots a rod of pain through his head. “Fuck!”
Victoria laughs at his embarrassment. “You can’t shower for five days though.”
“Might a sponge bath be in order?” he whispers with eyes closed tight, hopeful.
“This isn’t Penthouse Forum. This is serious Callum.”
She sounds exasperated, but he takes a peek at her smiling face and is assured that she still finds him to be adorable. Maybe it is the talk of sponge baths or maybe he is too high to argue effectively, but he feels himself giving into it. And he can’t help imagining her in a short, white nurse’s uniform with that little cap, straddling him for a wash.
“I appreciate your offer, Victoria, but just two or three days at most. Until the concussion clears.” That straddle does have a lovely appeal but no. You don’t shit where you eat. It does depend on what you are eating perhaps.
“You’d better bump that up to a week or two. It is a bad concussion and we have a long list of post-surgical instructions.”
“Are you sure you are comfortable with this?” If he agrees to it, he thinks he really will have to be a gentleman, a platonic bestie. He shouldn’t screw with motherhood. Mothers aren’t like the rest. There is something sacred about mothers with children present to Callum.
“I am absolutely comfortable with this. Are we good?” She raises her hand into the air.
He stares at it for a moment. “Are you wanting a high five?”
“Would you prefer a handshake? I’m flexible?”
He gives her hand a gentle slap. “Truly Victoria. Thank you.”
She shakes off his gratitude. It isn’t necessary. “I’m going to Red Canyons to get your stuff and check you out. I’ll come back for you in the morning. They’ll release you about ten o’clock.”
“I’d like to pay you. You are a professional nurse after all.”
“No. Thank you Callum, but this is me, one human being doing something for you, another human being, because this is what people do. You wouldn’t be in this mess without my daughter’s help anyway, so we are even. Okay?”
He nods, but he isn’t so sure this is what people do for each other. He thinks Elizabeth would have dropped him at the rehab facility under similar circumstances.
Victoria programs her number into his mobile in case he needs her. She takes his keys and goes.
He calls after her in the hall. “Vicky?”
She comes back around the corner. “Do. Not.”
He decides he’ll call her Vicky when she displeases him. “My cleaning was with the laundry service.” The thought of her packing his underwear is unappealing but seems unavoidable. “Can you track it down for me please?”
Victoria Bradley calls her daughter on the way out of the hospital and tells her Callum finally agreed to come home with them. She gives Marina instructions to change the sheets in the guest room and to clean up the bathroom. Usually, Marina would argue with the given instructions but not today. She rushes off the phone to get to work.
The insanity of this plan is not lost on Victoria. He is right. Bringing a strange man into her house is ludicrous but, under the circumstances, a little pro-active kindness might dissuade that gorgeous trust-fund, playboy from a lawsuit. She visited the rehab center and she wasn’t impressed. All she needs is an overworked, under-aged tech to forget his meds, let him fall, speak to him in a snappy voice and he’d be calling a lawyer in no time. No, she can care for him infinitely better in her own house. She decides to pick up a few canisters of pepper spray just in case.
Slipping into a small white SUV, Victoria forgets about Callum momentarily and her thoughts turn back to her father. All that time sitting in the chair by Callum’s bedside was good think time, but she still has no answers. She wonders what he looks like now. It has been fourteen years since she laid eyes on her own Dad.
Victoria wonders for the millionth time how she is going to tell Marina about George’s offer. Is it possible? Could she actually take Marina back home to Asheville? Marina has never met her grandfather. Victoria tries to assess if she even misses him anymore. In the beginning, she was so angry at him, but she missed him every day. Then, as the years passed, the anger dissipated somewhat and so did the need to see him. She got used to being without him.
When she left Asheville, her mother had just died. George wasn’t happy about his baby becoming a momma at such an early age. The pregnancy wasn’t exactly Victoria’s choice, but she decided to make the best of her circumstances. Not that she was against options, she wasn’t and still isn’t against choices for women. But she had just lost her mom and she couldn’t cope with another loss. George didn’t share her perspective, to put it mildly.
Victoria drives the highways winding though the Wasatch Mountains. Even now, after fourteen years in Park City, she can still see them. They don’t just blend into the background of her daily grind. The snow covers most of the mountain’s face but evergreens still show through. There is a golden glow from the warm sunshine and clouds encircle the peaks like crowns. Even though the day is cold, a high of fifteen, she wears just jeans and a buttoned sweater. She doesn’t like the bulk. She keeps a parka in her back seat with a hat and gloves in case of car trouble, but she prefers to feel unencumbered.
These mountains remind Victoria of the mountains surrounding Asheville. It is different here, higher, drier with more Mormons and fewer Hippies. But there are similarities between the hearty people of these regions. A surprising number of comparisons can be drawn between the Mormons and the Hippies. Both are tight knit groups of very happy people who share a kindness in their everyday attitudes. Victoria is neither a Mormon nor a Hippie. Even as an outsider, she has been happy in Park City, but Asheville will always be home.
She parks at Red Canyons and sits with the engine running, remembering her dad. They have spoken here and there and Victoria sends photos from time to time, but that has been the extent of their communication since Victoria left. Without her mom to bring them back together, they just stayed apart. Stubborn runs in the family and Victoria knows she has been stubborn. That awful day in the driveway, she was screaming and he was pleading. She took nothing more than clothes and $12,000 she had acquired from a lifetime of cash giving grandparents, all dead by then. She crushed her cell phone under her boot heel because she saw someone do it in a movie and she didn’t want anyone following her.
Her best friend Mindy came from next door, hearing the yelling. She thought Victoria was just going to cool her head. She tried to calm George. “She just lost her mother, she needs to run. Let her go.” Mindy didn’t know about the rape or the pregnancy. If George had his way, no one would ever have known. Victoria drove west and she never looked back. She refused to look back. She doesn’t know if she can look back, even now.
She goes over the plans in her head and knows she might be crazy for taking Callum. Marina did something. Marina isn’t talking, but Victoria knows she did something bad. She is too good a skier and too guilty for this to have been an accident. Victoria laughs to herself at the irony that the first man to stay overnight in their home, ever, is a man that her daughter nearly killed on the slopes. It is pretty damn ironic. Not a husband, or a boyfriend or even a relative, but some stranger that Marina knocked out. Well if this is how she is looking for a Daddy figure, she is probably a sociopath, but she certainly chose a cute one.
Damn he is good looking, Victoria thinks. She can admire him from across the room, but that is it. Her daughter is her first and only priority and something is going wrong. If she is being honest with herself and she isn’t entirely, she’d think that a lot of things are going wrong. Marina’s grades are bottoming out. She is moody, uncommunicative, angry, secretive. Victoria reads the parenting books, but she isn’t sure where the line falls between normal teenager and fucked up teenager. Being a single Mom makes it all the more complicated.
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