Yet for some reason it bugged her.
“Anyway,” Rory went on, “when I enlisted in the army, Mary took it real hard. She’d just turned thirteen and had become an emotional little thing. She started clinging to me and crying all the time, telling me she loved me and not to go.”
Ahhh, thirteen, the same age as Neve was when her world had been shattered. She felt an unexpected connection to poor Mary.
“Her birthday’s in April, and to cheer her up her mom decided to throw her a big party to take her mind off of the fact I’d be leaving the next day. My mother said Mary had been asking for a ring with her birthstone in it.” Rory looked down at Neve. “Her birthstone is a diamond. My mother bought the ring. It had a tiny diamond chip. She said it would mean so much to Mary if I gave it to her, something to remember me by. And when Mary opened the package, the ring did make her happy. So happy she said she’d never take it off and couldn’t wait to be old enough to get married.”
He rubbed a hand down his face. “I didn’t think much of that statement. I was just relieved to see her smiling instead of crying. Honestly, I was too busy thinking up a way to get the hell out of there. My friends were waiting for me, wanting to give me a grand send-off party.” He laughed. “And they did. I was so hungover the next morning I was in no condition to deal with Mary’s inconsolable hysterics when she said she had to talk to me in private, when she begged me to follow her to her apartment and promised to stop crying if I did. So hell yeah, I went, just to shut her up.”
He pulled a throw pillow onto his lap. “That’s when she told me she loved me and wanted to marry me and was going to wait for me. She was all of thirteen, for chrissake. A little kid. What eighteen-year-old guy takes the hysterical ramblings of a thirteen-year-old seriously?”
He brought his hand up to the back of his neck and rubbed as if to relieve some tension that’d built up there. “I tried to make a joke.” He shook his head. “Something like, ‘How about we wait to talk about getting married until you’re eighteen and I’m out of the army for good?’ I was sure she’d forget about me and fall in love with someone else, a few someone elses, in the time I’d be gone.”
He’d underestimated the power of first love. “But she didn’t forget about you.”
He shook his head. “And she turned eighteen this past April.”
“Then you came home for your mother’s birthday in July.”
He nodded. What a mess. “You had no inkling?” Neve asked him. “Not one, at any time during the last five years?” Hard to believe.
He shook his head again. “Mary used to be real shy and quiet.”
Based on her bold declarations and suggestions in the storeroom, it appeared she’d grown out of that.
“Probably we all sheltered her more than we should have,” Rory said. “Her mom was real down on men, always used to say she hoped Mary would marry one of the McRoy boys, because we’d all make good husbands.”
After being the lucky recipient of Rory’s attentive caring over the past few days, Neve believed that to be true. “Did she write to you?” An unwelcome chill of jealousy had her pulling up the covers at the thought of someone else corresponding with her pen pal.
“Of course,” he said, his beautiful blue eyes looking straight at her. “But nothing out of the ordinary, nothing that clued me in to the fact she had feelings for me more than a kid sister would have for a man she looked up to as an older brother. And her letters were certainly nothing like your letters.” He smiled. “I looked forward to your letters.”
That made her happy. “What about when you came home on leave?”
“Until this last time I really hadn’t seen much of her outside of Mom’s extended-family Sunday dinners, when there are lots of people around. I’d be busy working and hanging out with my friends, and Mary wasn’t allowed to hang out at the pub.”
“Until she turned eighteen…” Neve started.
“And Mom hired her on as a waitress in the restaurant area, mostly afternoons. Once she got the hang of that, some nights.”
“Even spending time with her, working together, you still had no idea she was in love with you?” Because based on the heartbreak on the girl’s face, she most certainly was.
“No.” Rory shook his head. “Not in a ‘let’s get married’ sort of way, I swear. I filled her drink orders. Sure we laughed and flirted, but I do that with all the waitresses…and customers, for that matter.” He looked out the window, appearing lost in thought for a few seconds. “I’d forgotten all about that ring until she pulled it out. Then the conversation we’d had on the morning I left for basic training played out in my head.” He turned back to Neve. “I would have explained right then and there, I swear it—”
“But I punched you in the throat.” Damn temper.
“And tried to force my nuts up into my windpipe.”
Yup, she’d done that too. “I have some anger management issues.”
“You think?”
At least he didn’t seem angry. “How’s Mary now?”
“Embarrassed. After you left we had a long talk. She pretty much avoided me aftah that. I’m sure it makes me sound like a total shmuck, but I was glad. Then, when I got back to Afghanistan, Mom wrote that my brother Derry, the nineteen-year-old, had taken an active interest in consoling Mary and had made it his personal responsibility to cheer her up. In Mom’s opinion—and Mom is rarely wrong—Mary got over me rather quickly.”
Well, thank goodness for that. Although Neve already had a pretty good idea, she couldn’t stop herself from asking, “And did your mom write anything about me?”
Rory stayed quiet.
Not good. But what did she expect? That a mother would find flowery praise and kind words for the slut who’d balled her son in the storeroom of their eating and drinking establishment? For sure Neve’s actions had violated the good girl moral code any Irish Catholic mother would want her son’s girlfriend to adhere to, and probably a health code or two.
Again, it shouldn’t have mattered. She wasn’t Rory’s girlfriend, would never be Rory’s girlfriend, especially now. Yet Neve kept at it, wanted to know. “I’m sure she had a lot to say that night.”
Rory nodded slowly. “Yup.” He let out a breath.
“Tell me.”
“No.”
“I want to know.”
“No, you don’t. Besides, what my mothah thinks doesn’t mattah. What I think is what mattahs. And I’m glad you came to visit me. I enjoyed every second of your little seduction.” He reached down and set his hand on the side of her head, smoothed over her hair, his touch so gentle. “I’d welcome you back for a repeat in a heartbeat.”
“But I’d have to sneak in the back so no one would see me.” She hoped he’d tell her no, that he’d be proud to welcome her in through the front door and introduce her to his friends.
But he didn’t. Just sat there looking down at his lap, hands fiddling with the ruffle of lace on the pillow he had resting there as he mumbled, “That’d probably be for the best.”
Like some dirty little secret he didn’t want his family and friends to know about. And she had no one to blame but herself. “That’s why you haven’t told your parents you’re home, because you’re with me.”
“That’s part of it,” he admitted. “But I really do wait to tell them I’m stateside until I’m ready to head their way.”
“I want you to call your mom. Today.” When Rory started to argue about waiting a few more days she told him, “Stop. When you were over in Afghanistan I thought about you and worried about you every single day. I’m sure your family does the same. It’s not right to keep them worrying when you’re safely back on U.S. soil. They deserve to know.”
After a few seconds he said, “Okay.”
“And if your mom wants you home, I want you to go.”
“I’ll go when I’m good and ready to go.”
“For me.” She tapped his leg to get him to look at her. “If your mom wants you home,
I want you to promise to go, right away. I’m not worth fighting with your mom.”
“You are—”
In a perfect example of perfect timing, the house phone rang, cutting him off and hopefully ending their discussion. “I need to get that.” She reached for the phone on her nightstand.
“They’ll call back.” He tried to block her hand.
“Watch out for my IV.”
Rory jumped off the bed like her arm had started throwing off flames and he didn’t want to get burned, even though the IV was in her other arm. With him out of the way, she grabbed the phone, shooting him a little smile as she slid her legs over the side of the bed and sat up. “Hello.”
The voice on the other end said, “Hey there, sweet thing.”
Neve smiled. “I’m not sweet and you know it.”
Rory stood with his arms crossed over his chest, eyes narrowed, staring at the phone as if focusing on it hard enough would show him who was talking on the other end. “Hold on a second.” She covered the receiver. “It’s my adagio partner, Luca. I have to take this. My cell is on the table in the kitchen. Use it to call your mom.”
“Lateah.”
“Now. She’ll be busy working later, won’t she?” He gave her a guilty smile. Yeah, she was smarter than she looked. “Go.” She pointed to the door.
When he did, she returned her attention to her call. “Sorry, Luca.”
“That your hottie brother? Give him a kiss for me.” He blew obnoxious kissy sounds into her ear.
“For the millionth time, Nate doesn’t swing that way. And you should be saving all your kisses for Frankie.” His boyfriend of eight months, Luca’s longest relationship in six years, since they’d met in a dance class in college.
“You’re no fun.”
No, she wasn’t. Not anymore. “Why are you calling my landline?” Her parents had insisted she get one because she had a tendency to let her cell battery go dead.
“Nate left a message that you were in the hospital and not to bother you until after you were discharged. So I’ve been trying your home phone every couple of hours for two days.”
Oh, Nate would most definitely pay for making her wait. “Why were you trying my home phone every couple of hours for two days?” Neve crossed her fingers, squeezed her eyes shut, and turned her face up to the heavens. Please. Please. Please.
“Cirque du Soleil called!” he squealed, in true over-the-top gay man form.
“Yes!” Neve threw her right fist up into the air. “This is really going to happen, Luca. Finally. When do they want us?”
The silence on the line replaced her excitement with dread. “When?”
“This weekend.”
“Shit.” There was absolutely no way she could perform in three days.
“I told them about your do-gooder surgery to donate bone marrow to your dying brother.”
“My half brother,” she clarified. Nate was her brother.
“Right. Your mysterious half brother. Anyway, I played it up big, surgery couldn’t wait, death looming, your altruistic sacrifice, and your need for time to recover so you could give them your best performance and all that. Well, you know when I get going.”
Boy, did she.
“Who can say no to me, right? Long story even longer, they agreed to move us from the top of the list to the bottom, which is not where we belong, mind you, and I made sure to stress that point. We’re only there because of circumstance.”
She had no idea how many other couples would be trying out before them, and she had to pray Cirque du Soleil didn’t fill their lineup and close auditions before they had their chance to perform. “How long do I have?”
“Nate told me you wouldn’t be able to perform for at least six weeks from the date you were admitted to the hospital, so that’s what I told them. We’re scheduled for December twenty-first, the Friday before Christmas.”
Neve glanced at the calendar on her wall. The audition was a little over five weeks away.
“Rehearsals for the show start January third.”
Her antibiotic therapy was supposed to last four to six weeks. Five days down, assuming she could get away with only four weeks, the earliest she could have her PICC line out would be December seventh. Which meant hard-core practice would have to wait until after that. “Six weeks is going to be tight.”
“Yeah.” Based on his tone, Luca knew it too. “That’s the latest they’d go.”
“I’ll make it work.” Even if that meant insisting on a change to oral antibiotics, for however long it’d be necessary, to have her PICC line removed after four weeks. Nothing would keep her from that audition. “Over the next three weeks I’ll work out, get my strength and flexibility back. Then we’ll get together and practice all day every day until we have to leave. It’ll work.” It had to. They’d been dancing together long enough, had plenty of great routines, any one of them good enough to earn a spot with the new Cirque du Soleil dance troupe—as long as they gave a flawless performance. Gulp.
“Sounds like a plan. I’ll be back in town—”
“Wait. Back in town? Where are you?”
“San Fran, baby. With Frankie.”
“Luca, you promised to wait to follow him out there. This is our last shot. You promised. However long rehearsals take, followed by one full year performing with Cirque, and then you’d move.” One full year for Neve to make some new friends and pick a new place to live from all the towns and cities they’d be visiting. One year for her to create a new life for herself.
“Relax, sweet thing. I promised we’d have one last hurrah, and that we will have. But since you’ve been sick and not up to practicing, I’m treating myself to some great sex and warm sunshine.”
“Three more weeks.” Luca had difficulty telling Frankie no and had only stood his ground about staying in New York because he’d wanted the shot at Cirque just as much as she did.
“Three weeks,” Luca agreed.
“And you’ll work out every day so you’re in top shape when you come back.” Luca hated to work out and rarely did without Neve nagging him.
He hesitated. Not good. “Luca!”
“Okay. I will make sure I am in top shape by the time I come back.” He didn’t agree to work out every day, but even if he had, it would have been a lie.
They talked for a few more minutes. And with an “I’ll reserve the dates at the studio” from Neve and a “See you on December eighth and not a day later” from Luca, they ended the call.
So excited she couldn’t wait to tell someone, Neve went in search of Rory.
Halfway to the kitchen she heard him say, “Stop calling her ‘that girl.’ She has a name. It’s Neve.”
She stopped short at his words, not sure if she should go forward or turn back. Then the sinking feeling in her gut hit. Rory’s mother thought so little of Neve that she refused to even call her by name. Ouch. She rubbed her breastbone, hoping to make the pinch to her heart ease up a bit. It didn’t help.
“I know,” Rory said, sounding angry. “And I will.”
Deciding to stay quiet and keep to the wall to avoid detection, Neve waited for the chance to return to her room.
He listened, started to pace, turned…and looked directly at her.
Busted. Not knowing what else to do, she raised her eyebrows, forced a grin, and gave him a little wave.
“I’ve gotta go.” He listened some more. “Okay.” His voice softened. “Love you too.” He moved the cellphone from his ear and ended the call.
“Well, that didn’t sound good.” Neve walked toward him.
He took a deep breath and blew it out.
“What did she have to say?” Neve tried to sound nonchalant, like it didn’t matter that his mother hated her. “Is she anxious for you to come home?” Stupid question.
He hesitated, but eventually answered like she knew he would. “Yup.”
Neve’s heart broke a little at the thought of him leaving and them never seeing each other again. When w
ould he go? Tonight? First thing tomorrow morning? How much more time did they have together?
“But she told me to get you out of my system before I do.”
Chapter 8
That night…well, more like very early the next morning…Neve turned to see the numbers of her clock glowing in the dark room. Eighteen minutes past three and here she lay, awake and alone and getting more riled up by the second.
Despite his mother giving him the go-ahead—in the form of telling Rory to get Neve out of his system before returning home—Rory didn’t seem at all interested in doing so. It rankled her to think he’d rather spend the night on a cold, lonely couch than in her nice, warm, cushiony bed…with her. Okay, she appreciated the good guy routine and his apparent concern for her health and worry over causing her any discomfort. But still, nice warm bed. Cuddly, willing woman.
Hello? What heterosexual guy turned that down?
None that she’d ever encountered.
Until Rory.
And while he slept like a baby down the hall, she’d passed the hours with her mind buzzing from topic to topic, her body restlessly tossing and turning. And now she was paying the price for all that physical activity. Hip throbbing¸ left arm sore, she could not find a comfortable position no matter how hard she tried.
Once again the thought of taking one of those high-dose ibuprofen horse pills crossed her mind. But since doing so on an empty stomach would cause her discomfort of a different sort and going to the kitchen for a piece of bread or a few crackers would require leaving her nice toasty bed, she stayed put…and continued thinking rather than sleeping.
Tonight she’d learned that accessing and flushing a PICC line in one’s own arm, even the nondominant one, was nowhere near as easy as doing it on a training mannequin. While the nurse had assured her it’d get easier with practice, Neve had her doubts. How pathetic to be dependent on Rory, a man she hardly knew, for help because her one dependable friend, Brooke, had to find love with a man who lived so far away. How irritating that she missed her best friend so much and that Brooke finding love had gotten Neve thinking about it and secretly wanting it.
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