The Nurse's Not-So-Secret Scandal

by Wendy S. Marcus

  “No.” Roxie put her hands on her hips. “They are not staying. We talked about this. It took dozens of people four days to clean out this house. We both agreed we never wanted to go through that again.”

  “It’s only a few things. For the next time the boys come.”

  Not again. Please, not again. Roxie’s insides felt hollow except for a blistering hot ball of despair deep in her gut.

  Mami scanned the room. “We have plenty of space now. If it upsets you I can put them in the boys’ room.” She started to drag one of the bags down to the raccoon room, as she and Fig now referred to it.

  “Stop,” Roxie said.

  She did.

  Right then and there Roxie made a decision. “I won’t stay here if you continue to take in donations from the church. Either I load this stuff into my car this minute and I’ll drop it back at the church tomorrow on my way home from work, or I’m moving out.”

  “You won’t even know it’s here.” Mami dragged the first bag down the hall.

  Yes, she would. “You need help to deal with this problem, Mami.” Roxie’s eyes filled with tears. “I will drive you to counseling. I will shop for you and take you to the doctor and church. I will continue to pay the bills. I will hire on a person to stay here with you so you’re not alone. But I refuse to live here day after day and watch this house go to ruin. Not again.”

  Mami returned to the family room and dragged a second bag and then a third down the hall without further comment.

  Roxie went into her bedroom to pack.

  * * *

  Fig glanced at his watch. Again.

  “What’s up with you?” Kyle asked from across the kitchen table.

  “Today was Roxie’s first day back at work. She was supposed to call when she got home.” Two hours ago.

  “Did her dirtbag brothers cash their checks?”

  “Yeah.”

  Kyle shook his head. “Man, I don’t believe it. Forty thousand dollars gone like that.” He snapped.

  Not that Fig minded spending it, and its loss in no way impacted his life, but he’d honestly—and mistakenly, as it turned out—thought to entice her brothers with the money, but once they arrived and witnessed the devastation firsthand, they’d do the right thing out of a sense of family, not monetary gain.

  Wrong.

  “How’d she react to you having to pay her brothers to come home?” Kyle asked, taking another cookie and dunking it in his coffee.

  “She doesn’t know.”

  “I think she suspects,” Kyle said.

  Because she’s so smart and observant. “Maybe. But I fed her a story that I called each brother and told them I was the producer of a nationally syndicated hoarding show, and I was scheduled to begin filming on location at Roxie’s house. That I did a pretend interview with questions intended to enrage them and provoke them to return home to clean out the house before taping for the show began.”

  In fact he’d tried that scenario with Roberto. Who’d called him some—what he suspected were—choice names in Spanish, then told him to go to hell so there’d be no misunderstanding. But Fig refused to let Roxie down. So he’d spoken in the universal language of U.S. currency.

  Someone knocked on the door. Fig opened it to find Roxie, her eyes wet and rimmed in red, holding two overstuffed duffel bags, looking seconds from breaking down.

  At the sight of him she dropped her bags and lunged toward him.

  Fig opened his arm to catch her.

  She held him tight. “Do you think it’d be okay for me to stay with you for a few days?”

  Forever. “For as long as you want.”

  She said, “Thank you,” then started to cry.

  He eased her into the condo so Kyle could scoot out the door to drag in the duffels then leave.

  “I can’t do it,” she said in between hiccuping breaths. “Not again.” Fig calmed her down enough to explain what had her so upset.

  “Who’s with your mom now?” he asked.

  “I arranged for her friend from church to stay with her for a few days. But I’ll need to make more permanent arrangements.”

  “Tomorrow,” Fig said. “We’ll take care of it tomorrow.”

  He walked her to the couch and pulled her down onto his lap.

  “I like it when you say ‘we.’” She cuddled into his chest.

  “Well, I like saying ‘we,’” Fig said. And he liked being part of a “we.”

  Roxie looked up at him, her eyes sad. “Thank you,” she said. “For taking me in. For understanding me and knowing me—the real me—and still loving me.”

  “And thank you,” Fig said in return. “For taking me into your heart. For understanding me and accepting me—the real me—and still loving me right back.”

  Then, staring deeply into the loving brown eyes of the woman he planned to spend the rest of his life with, Fig knew no time would be more perfect. So without a care for germs or bacteria or sickness, with his full focus on showing the woman in his arms how much he truly loved her and wanted her in his life, Fig dipped his head and set his lips to hers.

  EPILOGUE

  Three months later

  “SI. Si. Adiós, Mami,” Roxie said, ending the call.

  Fig put down his book and watched her pad barefoot across the white tile floor of their two-week beachfront vacation rental to drop her phone in her purse on the kitchen counter. Then she joined him out on the lanai, bending beneath the huge umbrella to remove his baseball cap and kiss the top of his head. “Fight it all you want, my love. But in the three days we’ve been here, you have actually started to get some color.”

  Yeah. An unappealing, unattractive, uncool pink.

  She walked to the edge of their small wooden patio and stared out to the ocean less than one hundred feet away. “This is so much more beautiful than I’d ever imagined.”

  “It’s exactly as I’d imagined it.” Heat. Sand. Salty air. The beautiful blue-green water and palm trees he’d seen only in pictures. A completely relaxed Roxie wearing a teeny, tiny, hot-pink string bikini, showing lots of deliciously smooth, deeply tanned skin, adorned with a dangling gold belly button ring, sipping an iced strawberry margarita. Beautiful curves, enchanting smiles and contagious laughter. Perfection.

  “How’s your mom doing?” Fig asked.

  Roxie slid the wicker chair beside him into full sun and sat down. “The change is unbelievable. Marvela—” who now lived with Roxie’s mother and, in lieu of rent, supervised and assisted her “—has them both volunteering at a local day care twice a week. Mami is the on-site grandma for the three-year-olds.” Roxie sipped her icy beverage. “At an invite from Ali’s gramps, she’s attending activities at the senior center, and she’s knitting afghans and baby blankets for the women’s crisis center. I’ve never heard her so happy.” Roxie set her drink in a shady spot and reclined, tilting her face up to the sun. “It’s like my moving out improved her quality of life.”

  “Finally agreeing to attend therapy improved her quality of life,” Fig said. “You taking a stand shocked her into compliance.”

  “If only I’d done it sooner. All those years…”

  “Nuh, uh, uh,” Fig said. “The past is in the past. Nothing we can do about it today.”

  She held up a hand to shade her eyes and looked at him. “Stop throwing my words back at me.”

  He smiled. “They’re good words.” That Fig had needed to hear a few times himself—well, in addition to a couple of dozen counseling sessions—before he’d effectively tucked his past into a pocket of his memory, never to be lamented over or angered by again.

  “Victoria’s pregnant,” Roxie said. “Jake blurted it out when they had Mami over to dinner on Friday.”

 
Fig was happy for his friends. “That’s what she and Kyle wanted.” He eyed Roxie. “What about you? Do you want children?”

  She laughed. “Could you imagine me a mother?”

  Actually, yes, he could. “I think you’d make a terrific mother.” Loving. Attentive. Dependable.

  “I think I’d be annoyingly strict,” she said with a scowl.

  “Good,” Fig said. “I’ll be the fun parent.” She balled up her napkin and threw it at him.

  “I have a surprise for you.” He handed Roxie the rectangular box with the now flattened red bow he’d stashed in his shorts pocket that morning. “I thought maybe we could try out something new tonight.”

  Roxie smiled—bless her adventurous soul—sat up and plucked the box from his hand. She shook it and held it up to her ear. “Fur-lined nipple clamps?”

  Next time. “You’ll have to open it to find out.”

  She pulled one end of the ribbon to unravel the bow then undid the knot and dropped it on the table. She lifted the lid. At the sight of all the pink tissue paper stuffed inside she looked up at him like he was playing some type of prank. “Is there even anything in here?”

  “Keep looking.”

  She took out each small piece of crumpled paper until she came upon the one that contained her surprise and began to unwrap it.

  Fig went down on one knee at her feet.

  “Ay Dios mio,” she said in awe, at the two-carat teardrop diamond engagement ring he’d bought for her.

  Fig took it from her hand. “Roxie Morano, knowing you has changed my life.” He held the ring out to her. “I look forward to each new day, knowing you’ll be a part of it. I love you more than anything. And if you’ll do me the honor of becoming my wife, I will devote the rest of my life to taking care of you and making you happy.”

  Rather than the thrilled expression he’d hoped for, Roxie looked confused. “I thought you said this was for tonight?”

  “It is.” He kissed her knuckles. “I was hoping we could try out making love as an engaged couple. That’s something we haven’t done before. What do you think?”

  “Are you sure?” she asked, hesitantly extending her fingers.

  Fig looked up at her. “I’m sure.” He slid the ring into place. “I love you, Roxie. Will you marry me?”

  “Lord help you, Fig. I hope you don’t live to regret this.” She jumped up and pulled him up with her. “Yes.” She flung her arms around his neck. “Yes, I’ll marry you. And I promise to take care of you and try my hardest to make you happy right back.”

  Thank you. Fig let out a relieved breath and hugged her close. “I made reservations at the nicest restaurant in town so we could celebrate island style.”

  Roxie pulled back a bit to look at him. “I kind of miss our cozy dinners when you used to cook for me every night.” She caressed his head. “Do you think we could eat in tonight?”

  She rubbed against him.

  “Anything you want.”

  “I’d like that chocolate pudding pie you make for dessert.”

  He smiled, grabbing her butt with one hand and holding her still so he could do a little rubbing of his own. “The one with the whipped cream?” That she liked to “eat” in bed?

  “Yeah,” she said a little breathlessly as she rocked into his touch. “That’s the one. Ya know—” she set her fingertips to his shoulders “—you’re starting to feel a little hot. I think you need some more suntan lotion.”

  Their favorite tropical form of foreplay. Fig feared he’d go hard at the scent of coconut from now on. “But that always leads to…” he said innocently as he guided her to the sturdier of the two chaise longues, pulling at the strings of her top on the way.

  “Exactly,” Roxie said as she untied the strings of her bikini bottom, exposing the fist-size raccoon tattoo on her right butt check.

  Fig pushed down his shorts and stepped out of them, thankful for the good sense that prompted him to pay extra for the most secluded cabin available.

  And under the late-afternoon sun, to the sound of the ocean waves crashing into the shore, covered head to toe in protective SPF 50, Fig made love to his fiancée, in a way he was sure she’d never been made love to before.

  * * * * *

  ISBN: 9781459229945

  Copyright © 2012 by Wendy S. Marcus

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