The Coldwater Warm Hearts Club

by Lexi Eddings

  Besides, nothing looked better in wedding pictures than a groom in uniform.

  In my case, any groom would look good. No, wait. Scratch that.

  No guy in her life was better than the wrong guy. Heather told herself she was single by choice. Lacy always argued she was “single by choosy.”

  While Heather prided herself on being choosy, it didn’t put an extra place setting at her table. Or an extra head on her pillow.

  “The bridesmaids’ dresses will be navy, too,” Lacy went on. “Pink is just the accent color.”

  Heather silently blessed her friend. A navy dress would help her blend into the background. As gangly as she was, a pink one would make her feel like an overgrown flamingo.

  The curtain enclosing the waiting area ruffled and Mrs. Evans looked up expectantly.

  “Michael,” she whispered, but when she saw who it was, her smile turned brittle. Instead of her son, her future son-in-law stepped into the small space. Heather knew Mrs. Evans both liked and approved of Jake Tyler, but he wasn’t Michael.

  The one who isn’t here is always the one they want to see the most.

  Jake gave Lacy a quick kiss. “I overheard you talking about the wedding colors again. Isn’t it settled yet?”

  “The devil’s in the details,” Mr. Evans said morosely.

  “I tried to talk Lacy into jarhead camouflage, but she insists on navy. Navy, of all colors!” Jake shook his head.

  “Hey.” Lacy gave him a playful swat on the shoulder. “I could always go army green, you know.”

  Jake shook his head. “It’s enough to make a marine consider an elopement.”

  “I’ve got a ladder you can use, son,” Mr. Evans groused. “This wedding is gonna cost the earth.”

  “Now, George,” Mrs. Evans chided, “you know you’ll love giving Lacy away in style. After all, she’s the last daughter you have to walk down the aisle.”

  Heather had finished her nursing degree and moved back to Coldwater Cove to take a position at the hospital in time to be around for the wedding of the decade, the joining of Crystal Evans and Noah Addleberry. Years later, folks still talked about the event. The Addleberrys were one of the town’s first families, so everything had to be just so. Mr. Evans had complained loudly and often to anyone who’d listen, and a few who wouldn’t, that if the Addleberrys wanted to bankrupt someone over a wedding, they should start with themselves.

  But the real driver of overspending was his own wife. Mrs. Evans got her way in the end and the wedding was elegantly excessive. Guestimates about how much the wedding had cost became a prime topic of conversation in Coldwater Cove. On the low side of the gossip scale, Crystal’s wedding could have provided a substantial down payment on a house. If you took Mr. Evans’s complaints into consideration, the amount would have run a small country for a week.

  He disappeared behind his paper again. Lacy and Crystal and Mrs. Evans nattered on about the color scheme. Heather injected the sedative into her patient’s IV and waited for it to take effect.

  “It says here in the paper that Levi Harper needs a liver transplant,” Mr. Evans told Jake. The young Sooner quarterback was a rising University of Oklahoma star and one of Coldwater Cove’s favorite sons. Then he’d gone on a mission trip with his church group to some backwater country over the summer and come home with an exotic parasite that demolished his liver. Now he was forced to sit out his junior year.

  “That’s a shame.” Jake had been an all-conference halfback himself when he was in high school, so following college football was second only to following Lacy. “If Levi gets a new liver, will he be ready to play next year?”

  “Should be,” Mr. Evans said. “Comes from good stock. Think the Harpers are related to the Walkers, aren’t they, Heather? ”

  “Yes,” she said. “Levi is my cousin a couple of times removed. His mother’s uncle was my grandmother’s first cousin or some such thing.”

  Levi was eight or so years younger than Heather, but she remembered him from the big Walker reunions. Levi had been the self-proclaimed leader of a whole gaggle of little boys that styled themselves the “Monkey Troop.” They terrorized the great-aunts while they were trying to piece quilts and made off with the pies before the rest of the picnic things had even been laid out. No watermelon was safe from their predations. No jug of Kool-Aid stood a chance against their not-so-stealthy marauding.

  No one held those youthful indiscretions against Levi now. Since he was family, Heather had been tested for a possible partial liver donation. Unfortunately, she was not a match. If he didn’t get a liver soon, he’d have more to worry about than missing a football season.

  Heather focused back on the patient at hand. Mrs. Evans was trying to referee while Lacy and her sister wrangled about whether the bridesmaid dresses should be tea length or drape to the floor. Heather was grateful that their argument was distracting their mother. Once the box was checked to indicate whether or not the patient was willing to be a donor, no one going into surgery should be subjected to a prolonged discussion about transplants.

  Mrs. Evans was blinking more slowly now. It was time.

  Heather told the family. The good-byes took a while because there was a lot of kissing and hugging involved. Through it all, Mrs. Evans assured them that everything would be all right. She stared at the closed curtain once more, as if thinking hard about her son Michael would magically summon him. Then she sighed. “I’m ready, Heather.”

  Heather pulled back the curtain and started pushing the wheeled bed down the hall.

  Then Mrs. Evans waved her hand in the air and sang out gaily, “If anything happens, give my liver to that football player!”

  Behind her, Heather could hear the Evans family chuckling despite their tears. Shirley Evans was a wonderful human being. She so deserved the support of her entire family.

  If Heather ever ran into Michael Evans again, she’d happily lock him in an examination room with a first-year proctology resident and let the new doc practice till he got it right.

  However long it took.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Lexi Eddings is the pen name of multi-published author Diana Groe, who has written for Kensington, Sourcebooks, and Entangled. A classically trained soprano, she calls her historical work a cross between Grand Opera and Gilbert and Sullivan. Her historical romances have received glowing reviews from Booklist, Publishers Weekly, and RT Book Reviews.