“His dad died, too?” Aimee asked, taken aback and remembering the lack of fatherly pictures on Doyle’s shelves.
A shadow crossed Theodore’s expression. “No,” he said shortly. “He ran off.”
“What?”
“With their neighbor’s wife, no less.”
“Son of a—”
“Aimee Elizabeth Beasley!” Gram interrupted her.
She bit back the rest of her comment but not the sentiment behind it. “Sorry, Gram.”
But Aimee’s reaction seemed to improve Theodore’s mood because he chuckled. “Aimee, my dear, I do like you.” He gave her a speculative look. “And you know, I think you’re good for him.”
“Who, Doyle? I don’t think he sees it that way.”
“That’s because you make him nervous, my dear girl. Very, very nervous.”
“I know. I’m disruptive.”
“Oh, no. It’s not that simple.” After a moment, Theodore patted the edge of his bed in invitation. “Sit.”
She gingerly did as he requested, careful not to jostle him in any way.
“Don’t worry, my dear. I won’t break.” He smiled as if to reassure her, but then his smile faded. “Let me tell something about our boy Doyle. He was a very young man when my sister died, although he’d been forced to grow up fast with all my sister’s health problems. Too fast, really. And when she died—” Here Theodore’s voice grew husky, and he cleared his throat before continuing. “—it hit him very hard. He didn’t smile again for a very long time. Until, that is, he met Michaela.”
“Michaela,” Aimee repeated with the distinct feeling that she wasn’t going to like this woman much.
“Yes. She walked into his life, all laughter and light, and it was like the end of a long winter. He came alive again in a way I hadn’t seen him do in a long time, and for a while I thought she was a godsend.”
There had been no pictures of a young woman in Doyle’s apartment that Aimee had seen. Either he was not at all sentimental, or Theodore’s story was doomed to an unhappy ending.
“She was an adventurous girl. Very impulsive. Not unlike you in that way, my dear, although I suspect that’s the only way in which you’re alike. I think that may have been part of what initially drew him to her, that zest for life, but later it caused problems. She wanted to pull up stakes and travel the world, go wherever the road took her—but Doyle wouldn’t do it. I think,” Theodore added with a pained expression on his face, “because of me.”
Gram squeezed his hand again, and he patted hers in return with a grateful look.
“She left him,” Aimee said rather than asked.
Theodore nodded. “And I think she said something to him along the lines of it being his fault. That he was too cold and unfeeling, or some such nonsense. Fool of a woman,” he muttered. “Whatever she said to him, he wasn’t quite the same afterwards.”
“Oh,” Aimee said, suddenly regretting her choice of words with Doyle the other day.
It’s like you’ve got ice water in your veins…
“I know my nephew can be, well…” Theodore faltered.
“Prickly?”
“Maybe, after what she did to him. Withdrawn, quiet… But still waters run deep, you know.”
“Yes, they do,” Gram agreed with feeling. When she saw Aimee look at her with curiosity, she averted her eyes and began fidgeting with the hem of her sweater and picking at lint that wasn’t there.
Well, gee, that wasn’t suspicious at all. Aimee gave her a hard look. “Gram.”
“Yes?”
“Whatever it is with you and Doyle, I wish you’d spit it out already.”
“I don’t know what you—”
“Gram,” she said again, staring even harder.
Finally, her grandmother sighed. “All right. But I do not want you to mention any of this to your father, do you understand?”
“Okay,” Aimee said uneasily, wondering what on earth her grandmother could be about to say next.
The older woman released Theodore’s hand and clasped both of her own tightly together in her lap before clearing her throat and speaking again. “Last year I had, well…let’s just call it a health issue—”
Aimee immediately opened her mouth.
“—And don’t ask me for details, because it’s my own business, thank you very much,” Gram continued in a tone that brooked no argument.
Aimee reluctantly closed her mouth again.
“But in any case, it required medical care and the set-up of certain things in the apartment to assist me for a while.”
“What?” Aimee’s eyes widened, her mind conjuring up all sorts of awful possibilities. “Gram, why didn’t you tell any of us?”
“Because I knew exactly what your father would do, and I am not ready to be carted off to live somewhere else.” Her lip quivered. “I’m not ready to leave my home, Aimee.”
The emotion she heard in her grandmother’s voice kept Aimee from protesting further, and she was forced to swallow a lump that had appeared in her throat. “And Doyle? How does he fit in?”
“First he tried very hard to convince me to get my family involved.”
“And I guess we all know how well that worked.”
“Sarcasm isn’t very decorous, dear.”
“Neither am I. So then what happened?”
“So…” Gram sniffed and clasped her hands together even tighter. “I said I’d be fine on my own. Well, the truth was that I wasn’t fine on my own. And so Doyle stepped in so I wouldn’t have to be. If I needed help with something in the apartment, he took care of it. If I needed someone to take me to the doctor, he did it. I know, Aimee, that there will come a time when I will probably have to either move in with my son or… or go to some sort of facility, but thanks to Doyle, I didn’t have to do it quite yet. And I am very grateful to him for that.”
For a moment, Aimee found it difficult to speak. “Doyle did that?” she said finally, her voice thicker than usual.
Gram nodded.
Her eyes were suddenly moist, and she blinked quickly. “How could you not tell me? Oh, Gram, he was so nice to you, and all I did was spill paint on him, and threaten him with clog dancing, and bug the living crud out of him.”
“I wouldn’t say ‘bugged,’” Theodore objected. “More like ‘unnerved.’”
“Wonderful. That’s so much better.”
“Oh, but it is. His life needs shaking up. It’s just… once bitten, twice shy, you know.” He reached for her hand, and she let him take it. “Be patient with him, my dear. Trust me when I say you’ll find it worth the trouble.”
“I think you’re overestimating his interest in me, Theodore.”
He only smiled, and it made Aimee wonder for the very first time if Doyle might have turned and run every time he saw her for an entirely different reason than she’d believed.
“Listen,” Aimee said after a minute, getting up from the bed and feeling a need to absorb the last few minutes of conversation. “I’m going to check out the coffee in the lobby and give you two a few minutes without a chaperone. Don’t do anything too wild and crazy to him while I’m gone, Gram.”
Gram started to sputter, but Theodore merely said, “Nonsense, Delia. Don’t listen to her,” and Aimee started to laugh.
“I think this one might be a keeper, Gram,” she said.
“I’m very glad you think so,” Theodore told Aimee with a roguish wink, “because I was looking forward to having a Valentine this year, and I was rather hoping your grandmother would be it.”
Gram’s cheeks turned a becoming shade of pink.
“Of course, this wasn’t quite where I’d hoped to celebrate with you,” Theodore added, gesturing at his hospital room with a sigh.
“Don’t worry about that,” Aimee assured him. “I’ll take care of everything.”
“Yes,” said Theodore. “I’ll just bet you will.”
* * *
Valentine’s Day was not until tomorrow, but sev
eral university students appeared to be celebrating early judging by the number of passionately embracing couples Aimee passed on her way to find Doyle’s office. She sidestepped them neatly and was even tempted to cheer one or two of them on, given their obvious enthusiasm. But it was impossible to see them and not think of the way Doyle had kissed her back in his apartment. Except Doyle had done it so much better…
But that train of thought made it hard to focus, so she forced the thought from her mind as she opened the door to the building that housed the history department.
Not surprisingly, there were books everywhere, and maps. A few framed articles that—even if they weren’t the real thing—looked old and authentically faded. Turning down a hallway that stretched to her left, Aimee peered through the open doors of offices until she came to one that was closed. Of course it was, just like everything else about him, she thought as she read Doyle’s name on the door, but she felt a newfound flicker of empathy as she did so.
Raising her hand, she knocked.
“Come in,” she heard him say through the door, his voice as deep as ever and vaguely distracted. Turning the knob, she went inside.
“Hi,” she said, and he looked up at her in surprise.
“Hi,” he returned finally.
Shadows under his eyes were nothing new, but they looked darker today, as if he hadn’t been sleeping much. Maybe not at all, she thought with an inward twinge, peering at him more closely. “Can I talk to you, or is this a bad time?”
He glanced at the stacks of papers on his desk and the computer before him, but said, “No, it’s fine,” and motioned to the empty wooden chair across from him in invitation even as he avoided her eyes.
Aimee sat on the hard edge of the chair and wondered if the reason he wouldn’t look at her was because he was upset with her or because he was upset with himself. “Gram and I visited Theodore today. He looks much better.”
Doyle nodded wordlessly, still not looking directly at her.
“Hey,” she said, and maybe it was the softness of her tone that startled him into finally making eye contact. He had such intense eyes. The greyness of them had always reminded her of ice before, but today they were more like clouds just before a storm broke, and she caught a glimpse in them of emotions held carefully in check. Had it always been that way? Maybe she had just never looked closely enough before. “Gram told me what you did for her last year, Doyle.”
Again, he looked caught off guard by her words. “I tried to get her to tell your family—”
“But she’s stubborn, I know.” Aimee smiled ruefully. “What you did, it meant a lot to her. And that means a lot to me, so I wanted to say thank you. I realize you might not exactly be thrilled to see me right now, but—”
“I shouldn’t have said what I did at the hospital,” he interrupted her.
She blinked. “No?”
“No.” He took a deep breath. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking. What happened to my uncle wasn’t anybody’s fault. It’s age creeping up on him, and a lifetime taking its toll, and I was just…” He gestured helplessly.
“Freaked out,” she finished for him. “Happens when someone you care about winds up taking a ride in an ambulance. I’d lose it, too, if something like that happened to Gram.”
He nodded again. Then he cleared his throat and seemed to become intensely interested in the pen he held in his hands. “About what happened at my apartment—I should apologize for that, too.”
“Should you?”
“Yes, my behavior—” Then Doyle looked up sharply as her words seemed to sink in. “What?”
Before Aimee could respond, someone knocked on the doorframe of Doyle’s office, and both she and Doyle looked up to see a pair of slender coeds standing just outside in the hall. Their eyes were glued to Doyle, and their clothes revealed a surprising amount of skin considering that it was the middle of winter.
“Professor Berkley?” the blond one said, eyeing Aimee briefly before dismissing her and upping the wattage of her smile as she focused the entirety of her attention on Doyle. “Could we talk to you about the next research paper?”
“The paper—? Paper. Yes, of course.” But Doyle glanced at Aimee first as if checking to see whether or not she had anything else to add.
She did, but this was probably not the best time or place. “I should go,” she said, standing up. “But before I do, I wanted to invite you to a little Valentine’s Day party we’re throwing in Theodore’s room tomorrow afternoon. Nothing fancy—or strenuous,” she added with a half-smile. “We won’t have him doing any dance marathons or anything.”
“Try telling him that,” Doyle said wryly.
Aimee paused at the doorway, an impish impulse taking over. “Oh, and Doyle?”
“Yes?”
“I left my shirt in your apartment the other day. Could you drop it by sometime when you get a chance?” Then, without waiting to see his reaction, she slipped out between the two coeds whose mouths were now hanging open in a way that she couldn’t help but enjoy.
Just a little.
Chapter Nine
“Here,” Trish told Aimee the next day as Aimee was getting ready to leave the bakery. “Nadia and I made this for your grandma. It’s raspberry-lemon, her favorite.”
The heart-shaped tart she held out in the to-go box was drizzled with chocolate and beautifully decorated, and the sight of it made Aimee feel warm and fuzzy on the inside. “Thanks,” she said, genuinely touched. “She’ll love it.”
Nadia appeared in the doorway that led to the bakery’s kitchen. “We figured you needed a little something special for your party today, if the nurses will let you sneak it in.”
“It’s a lot better than what I would have fixed.”
“Which is?”
“Chunks of cookie dough charcoal, if the past is anything to go by. Thanks, you guys. Very much.” Aimee’s voice was getting thick, so she cleared her throat. “I’m guessing you both have plans this evening?”
Trish raised her hand. “Pizza by candlelight and then a DVD once Kelsey goes to sleep,” she said, referring to her boyfriend’s young daughter. She grinned sheepishly. “Although if you ask me anything about the movie’s plot tomorrow, I’m guessing I probably won’t be able to tell you much about it.”
“Ah. And you?” Aimee asked Nadia.
“Sorry, can’t tell you,” she said with a devilish gleam in her eye, “but it involves lots of chocolate and may be illegal in thirty-eight states.”
Trish made a coughing sound that might have covered up a laugh. “Enough said, thank you.”
“And what about you?” Nadia eyed Aimee speculatively and leaned against the doorframe. “Anything happening with your history professor?”
Aimee closed up the box that held the tart. “You mean, like if he shows up at the hospital today? Don’t know yet. I guess we’ll see.”
“At one point I believe the plan may or may not have involved jumping him,” Trish told her business partner.
“Jumping him? Nah, too ordinary. Come on, this is Aimee we’re talking about,” Nadia said. “Whatever she ends up doing to him, though, at least there’ll be plenty of medical personnel nearby. You know, just in case.”
“That’s a good point,” Aimee said thoughtfully.
Nadia started to laugh. “Give our best to Mrs. B, all right? And, girlfriend, you have yourself a wonderful Valentine’s Day.”
“Thanks,” said Aimee as she headed toward the front door, boxed-up tart in hand. “I’m going to give it my best shot.”
* * *
“One of these days I will learn to rein it in, I swear,” Aimee said, stepping back from the last of the paper hearts she had just taped to the wall above Theodore’s bed and glancing around the room at her handiwork. “Kind of looks like Cupid exploded in here, doesn’t it?”
“Nonsense,” Theodore insisted. “Looks perfect. Right, Delia?”
“Absolutely,” Gram agreed from where she sat beside his bed.
“The streamers aren’t too much?”
Theodore made a hmph kind of sound. “Not at all. Go big or go home. Isn’t that what they say?”
“You’re quite the hipster, Theodore. Hope you don’t mind a few classics, though.” Cuing up her iPod, Aimee watched smiles appear on both Gram’s and Theodore’s faces at the first notes of music that poured out.
“Sinatra?” Theodore asked.
Aimee nodded.
“Oh, Aimee, it’s all so lovely,” Gram told her, clapping her hands together with pleasure. “Thank you, dear.”
“Delia, when I’m up on my feet again, we’ll dance properly, but until then…” Theodore held out his hand, and Gram took it in hers. Together they hummed along and swayed their joined hands ever so slightly to the beat of the music, one or the other of them singing snatches of the verses as they remembered them.
And all Aimee could think was that if there had ever been a cuter couple, she certainly had never seen one.
She felt rather than heard the arrival of someone else and turned to see Doyle standing in the open doorway. His eyes were on the happy pair, and even though he still looked tired, his mouth curved slightly as he watched the couple sing to each other. Especially when Theodore hit a flat note—making Gram laugh—but then kept right on going.
Doyle seemed to grow aware of Aimee’s eyes on him then, because he moved his head abruptly to meet her gaze. She sensed his guard going up again as if the softness he’d inadvertently revealed when observing his uncle had been a slip on his part.
Don’t do that, she thought with a pang of regret, and maybe her feelings showed on her face because she could have sworn he wavered.
“Doyle, my boy—come in, come in! You’re just in time. The party’s only just started. Care for a pudding cup?” Theodore asked him, eyes twinkling as he nodded towards the dessert left over on his meal tray.
The Heavenly Bites Novella Collection Page 20