Healed Under the Mistletoe

by Amalie Berlin

  He shifted to rest his cheek against the side of her neck, his chin touching her shoulder, unable to get any closer without rearranging her legs again. “I’m an old man.”

  She laughed. “You’re, what? Thirty-five?”

  “Thirty-seven.”

  “Oh, yep, you’re a geezer now. The geezer-fication process begins at thirty-six.”

  “When you’re relaxed, you get silly.”

  “When you’re relaxed, you get Scottish.”

  “Do I?” He tried to remember the last thing he’d said before this.

  “You said ‘cannae.’” She tilted her head. “‘I cannae go again yet.’ Which was a lie too, because you did. But, just saying, you either get more Scottish when you’re tired or when you’re turned on. I’ll need more research to figure out when.”

  “So, I’m a test subject now?”

  “Afraid so.”

  “I suppose I’ll submit, if it’s in the name of science.”

  She laughed then, an unreserved belly laugh that jiggled his arm and his heart.

  “I meant what I said. I want to spend Christmas with you and the red underwear, or all the lingerie you’ve got packed up.”

  “Good.” She patted his arm and rolled to face him, settling down again when her lovely face was propped on the pillow in front of his. “Angel invited me to come upstate with her and Wolfe. I want you to come too.”

  Lyons groaned, closed his eyes and rolled to his back.

  Angel. It had to have been Angel’s invitation, all the time they’d been spending together.

  “How about you stay with me at my place, and I’ll even put up a tree and buy you something nice for all the gifts you gave. No shouting involved.”

  “Tempting.” She made big eyes at him, clearly not even slightly tempted. “You don’t have to shop. I’d just be happy to have you with me there.”

  “Ye fight dirty.”

  “Aye,” she said, teasing him with just one word, but then grew far too sober. “You should spend Christmas with your family, Lyons. You don’t know when you could lose him.”

  He sighed, the sentiment he’d been hearing and ignoring from his own conscience. “Fine, but I’m driving, not riding with them. I’m not eager to be trapped there if it gets miserable.”

  “You won’t be miserable.” She scooted back to him, following his change of position to prop her cheek on his chest. “Can we sleep now? This old guy I went to bed with exhausted me.”

  He felt himself grinning, but folded his arm over her shoulders to keep her close.

  This wasn’t a set-up. Just a normal request. Just a normal request from a girlfriend to spend time with him, and who’d lost too many people.

  * * *

  Sunday morning, he woke up with her watching him, her lovely features still soft from sleep, with that kind of bewildered expression she’d had for two mornings now, framed by wild, wavy, bed-mussed tresses. A vision he absolutely adored.

  He could get used to waking like that.

  “I want to go back to Ramapo,” he said, because, after her, that was his second thought. And it set a little frown in her eyes.

  “Again?”

  “You don’t have to come with me this morning.” He leaned over to kiss away that little frown, but she pulled back.

  The little frown deepened, a spark of anger lighting it. “You don’t seriously think I’m going to be all right with that, do you?”

  He’d hoped she wouldn’t be all right with it but couldn’t bring himself to ask it of her. She’d already given him so much this weekend. This week. Hell, she’d started giving to him the day after they’d met. Maybe the same day, depending on how he looked at it. He couldn’t ask any more of her, even though it meant something to him to have her go too. She made him stronger.

  “I thought I should give you an out.”

  “Well, that’s nice and all, but I don’t want an out.” She didn’t kiss him, but she did rise—gloriously naked—from the bed, making him regret having announced he wanted to go in the morning.

  She didn’t take time to make any fancy breakfast, just assembled toasted panettone, threw in some meats and cheese from Friday’s antipasto, and made coffee.

  They were on the road within an hour, and this time the drive flew by.

  Parked on the roof again, because it was the last place he’d have parked when working there and that built in a kind of buffer that made it easier to go forward. He had to go forward. For some reason, he felt time ticking loudly this weekend as though, if he didn’t get through this now, he’d lose his window. And his self-respect.

  This time, when he stood with her little hand in his before the bank of elevators, he pressed the button.

  There was still a knot in his belly, and it was possible that he might pass out if his pulse got any higher, but today was the day.

  Although he didn’t want to see worry on her face, once in the lift, he looked at her and saw her counting under her breath, in time with his pulse.

  He looked down to where their hands joined and focused on where their fingers joined. She used hand-holding to monitor his vitals.

  “I’m all right,” he said, more to calm her than anything else.

  It wasn’t true. He was still on his feet and he didn’t feel as if he was going to throw up the morning’s breakfast, but he couldn’t say for how long. At least he felt certain he’d have time to find a seat if the world started to go black around the edges.

  “If you hit one-sixty and are still on your feet, expect to be tackled,” she muttered, and he saw her check her watch and continue counting.

  “What am I now?”

  “One thirty-six.”

  He nodded, and through the front lobby of the hospital they went.

  He’d never entered that way, not once while he worked there. Maybe that was why it was easier.

  “One forty-five,” she murmured as they stopped at the security station.

  The guard, who’d worked there for at least ten years, laughed and stood up. “McKeag, you jerk, where have you been?”

  Belle didn’t want to let go of his hand, but Lyons squeezed and pulled free, so he could hug the guard who rounded the station and gave him a back-slapping hug.

  “Working in Manhattan.” Lyons slapped back, and then returned to her. “Thought I’d swing by for a visit, but I don’t have a badge anymore. I suppose protocol might’ve changed since I was here. Is it allowable to buzz us in?”

  The guard’s smile faltered at the oblique reference to how the man with the gun had gotten back to shoot him and Eleni, but Simms hadn’t been the one to buzz him in, probably only because he’d been off for Christmas.

  “Introduce me to your lady and I’ll think about it,” the guard said.

  * * *

  Being referred to as Lyons’s lady gave Belle the sort of rush she suspected was something like the feeling people used drugs for—euphoric, thrilling, with a dash of pure terror. Still, she smiled, and it became wider when Lyons introduced her to the man called Simms and didn’t correct that she wasn’t his lady.

  “They’re busy back there. Might want to get some coffee before you go in,” Simms added just as he buzzed the door.

  Lyons’s pulse, throbbing between her fingers, kicked back up as they walked into the department, but he looked better. There was none of the morning’s grimness in his handsome face, and a much more subtle version of yesterday’s pallor.

  What she’d seen in Simms’s reaction to Lyons’s arrival was mirrored in the face of every single person in scrubs as they walked hand-in-heart-monitoring-hand into the bustling heart of the Ramapo emergency department.

  When Lyons had worked at this hospital, he’d been different.

  She didn’t need these people to tell her that; all she had to do was compare the way they greet
ed him with the way he was received at Sutcliffe due to the way he behaved at Sutcliffe. She’d expected being shot had changed him; how could it not? But seeing how much...she’d never have predicted that.

  More people hugged him, everyone gushed and patted his shoulder, and he always returned to her hand until a tall, reed-like man approached, looking dour.

  This was it. She braced herself, sending a silent plea to Noelle for the courage and fire to shred this tall man with her words if he said the wrong thing.

  “McKeag...” He didn’t sound happy to see Lyons, but the pulse throbbing between her fingers slowed anyway. Not a sign he expected confrontation.

  She swiveled her gaze from the tall doctor to Lyons and found him smiling again. “Nigel.”

  “You’re late,” Nigel said.

  “Was I on the schedule?”

  Lyons gave a tiny tug, and she stepped closer to him, focusing on the tall doctor even though it was Lyons’s face she wanted to look at.

  “You’re actually still listed as having privileges,” Nigel said, half shrugging as if it didn’t matter at all, but the slow slide of his gaze to her said he was measuring—either his own reaction or whether she changed the equation.

  She smiled, although it was given she had no idea what was going on.

  “Who is this?”

  “Ysabelle Sabetta.” Lyons used her whole name. “She’s a nurse practitioner. And, Belle, this jerk is Nigel Benet.”

  Nigel offered a hand and an explanation. “Former best friend.”

  For the first time, Lyons’s smile faltered. “Nigel—”

  “Do you have time to see a couple patients?” he interrupted. “I’m serious. We’re stacking them like sardines—flu and bronchitis running rampant this December. You won’t be paid for it, but it would go a distance to keeping your friends glad to see you after a year of unreturned calls and texts.”

  Lyons hesitated, shifting his gaze to her. She could see he wanted to. And it seemed like such a positive turn compared to yesterday’s aborted visit, all she could do was nod.

  “Nige?” Lyons called, because Nigel had already moved on, wherever he’d been going. “Your office the same?”

  “Yep.”

  “Belle’s going to take a load off there.”

  “Sure.”

  The man stepped into a room, and Lyons guided her through the department to a small office in the back, turned the lights on and found a small, portable heater under the desk. One he knew was there, because he knew his friend’s office would be cold.

  “Are you sure you’re all right with this? I’ll try to keep it short. An hour or so? Do you have anything to read?”

  “Don’t worry about me.” Within the safe, private confines of the office, she kissed him quickly and asked, “Are you sure you’re okay with it?”

  He looked as astonished by his reaction as she was. “I...expected my heart might explode before we got in the door, but it was better... It was all right. I’m all right.”

  There were little pauses between every statement, as if he was taking some internal inventory of his vitals before he committed to the words.

  “I’ll read my field guide, then.” She pulled the phone from her pocket—he’d returned it to her that morning before they left—and sat down in front of the heater.

  “Three doors down is a break room, if you’re looking for the world’s worst coffee.”

  “I’ll wait for The Roast.”

  He plowed into a cabinet on the door, pulled out a still-boxed stethoscope, found a notepad and pen in another drawer, and went out to it.

  This man who smiled, who people loved, was so different from the Lyons she’d known, it was as if she’d just met a stranger. But then, she’d actually seen glimpses of him here and there.

  Should she be relieved, or worried that, now he’d gotten over this hump in his recovery, he’d be done with her?

  Her heart squeezed, and although she knew it would hurt, she didn’t think it would destroy her.

  She’d lost everyone she loved because they’d died. If she had to lose him, maybe it could just be because he left this time?

  Then she could know he was still out there, and hope he was happy.

  Be glad he survived her.

  That would be better. She could survive that.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  LYONS FOUND NIGEL leaving a patient’s room and got his directives.

  It was a little harder to walk into the treatment rooms—and he was quietly relieved that the room where he and Eleni had been shot wasn’t one he’d been assigned.

  Nigel had either given him the new doctor cases, or he was serious when he said they were overflowing with flu and bronchitis, because he had exactly one of each before they met up again in the corridor.

  “Your neck got thicker,” Nigel said, a nod to their old manner of ribbing.

  “I took therapy to the next level.” He hadn’t ever been lax with his fitness, but since the shooting he’d put on a good thirty pounds of muscle, while his friend remained rail-thin. “It comes in handy sometimes in the ER.”

  “Does it?” Nigel looked at him a little longer. “Ysabelle probably doesn’t mind it.”

  “If she does, she hasn’t said anything.” Lyons could see new lines on his friend’s face, noted the thinner hair, but he couldn’t return fire, not when he was so deep in the red.

  Besides, they were circling the subject of his changes since he’d last been there because of how he’d been before. And it stared him in the face just how wrong it had been to cut Nigel, of all these friends, out of his life after the shooting.

  It was a harsher version of what he’d done with Wolfe, or maybe gentler. He still spoke to his brother. Kind of. He still saw him, but any camaraderie they should’ve had was gone, but then they’d never had the kind of closeness Belle had enjoyed with her sister. They’d both grown up guarding their words, protecting their vulnerable spots from everyone, especially family.

  Since the shooting, Wolfe had been trying to change things; Lyons was the one blunting it now.

  “I’m sorry I disappeared,” he said abruptly.

  Nigel gave a slow nod. “I get it. I’m really surprised to see you here. I don’t know if I could’ve come back.”

  “Because she died?” he asked, not really wanting to hear the answer.

  Nigel gave him an odd look. “Because you almost died too. I’m still not sure how you survived.”

  “Me either.” He’d seen the files and imaging records. “Maybe I shouldn’t have. But I did, and hate being reminded of how close it came.”

  Nigel glanced across the main floor toward his office, and back to Lyons. “She the woman who’s finally getting you to turn your back on your heartless bachelor ways?”

  Yes.

  He heard the word bouncing through his whole body but didn’t say it. He wasn’t ready to say it. And if he ever got ready, it should be to her first.

  “Maybe.” The answer lacked volume, but it still rang in his ears.

  Nigel slapped him on the back again. “Well, better get her before she gets bored with your thick neck and looks for a man with a long, delicate, flamingo-pink neck and oversized, hyper-masculine Adam’s apple.”

  Lyons laughed despite himself as Nigel described his own neck, ribbing himself since Lyons hadn’t. “She’s angling for a trip to The Roast.”

  “She’s a keeper, then.”

  Lyons could only nod, his chest as full of gratitude as it had been full of mud earlier.

  “If you want to come back, I’ll see to it. Otherwise, I think your privileges expire mid-year. Just to keep in mind.”

  Lyons nodded again but couldn’t really get his mind around the offer. “Thank you. It was good to see you.”

  “Send me an invitation to the wedding. I’ll ke
ep my schedule open.”

  Now Nigel was just messing with him, but he still smiled.

  A few minutes later, he knocked on the office door out of habit, and stepped in.

  Whatever she’d said about spending her time reading, she was doing anything but. Her phone sat on the desk, and she sat across the room on the small loveseat.

  “Everything okay?” she asked, scooting to the edge of the leather seat to stand as soon as he came in.

  “It is. Is your phone grounded?”

  “I almost emailed Noelle, so I thought I better put it over there.”

  “Did you have a picture to send?” He couldn’t imagine what kind of picture she’d have gotten in that dismal little office.

  “Just wanted to talk,” she whispered, and in the next moment she was pressed against him, her arms around his shoulders. “But you’re okay?”

  She’d wanted to talk. He should ask what about, but he needed a little time first.

  He might not be good yet, it was all too tricky and barbed. “I’m better than I have been for a long time.”

  She stayed against him and he wrapped his arms as fully around her as he could, overlapping to the point he almost touched his own ribs.

  “Where is she buried?” he asked, into her hair. He hadn’t ever asked because the subject seemed so fraught.

  “Arizona.”

  “Where you’re from?”

  She nodded.

  “Maybe after Christmas, you should go visit.” He couldn’t have suggested that even a day ago, but today he could, and went further. “I’ll go with you, if you like?”

  “Maybe,” she whispered.

  Not ready yet, and maybe it wouldn’t be so bad for her to keep emailing her sister if she felt the need to talk. It wasn’t that much different from pouring your heart out at a grave site.

  Except that it let her pretend everything was normal, that her sister was somewhere, reading whatever she sent.

  “We should go get some coffee and go home. I need to pack a weekend bag. You need to pack too.”

  She leaned back then, her arms still around him, and despite the sadness she still struggled with, she smiled at him. “Are you going to sleep at my apartment tonight?”