by Diana Palmer
* * *
Mikey told Bernie about it when he took her back to the boardinghouse, reluctantly. “I’m sorry we had to break it up tonight,” he said gently. “But Paulie says we can watch pay-per-view at his place, whenever we want.”
“I’d like that,” she whispered as he drew her close.
“Me, too, baby.” He kissed her hungrily and then put her gently away. “I’m going back over to the house for a while. But we’ll make a new movie date later, okay?”
She beamed. “Okay!”
* * *
Later, over supper at the house, Mikey drank a second cup of black coffee. He was unusually quiet.
“What’s biting you?” Paul asked.
He shrugged. “I was thinking about Cotillo and his stooges. You know, I never stopped having Santi drive me in the limo. I’ve been pretty visible here...”
“Disguises don’t work with people like Cotillo,” Paul replied. “Besides, this is one of the safest places in the world when somebody’s hunting you. It saved Sari and Merrie.”
“It did,” Sari added to the conversation. “It will save you, too, and Tony, I hope. Merrie’s very fond of him, you know.”
Mikey smiled. “Baby Doll’s fond of everybody. It’s just the way she is.”
“That’s true.”
“Why are you so morose?” Paul asked his cousin.
“I worry about taking Bernie out now that I know I’m being watched by Cotillo’s hoods,” he said, pushing his coffee cup around.
“We told you that you could bring her over here any time you like,” Sari reminded him with a smile. “She’s so sweet. I love working with her.”
Mikey seemed to perk up a little. “You really meant that? You wouldn’t mind?”
“Not at all,” Sari replied. “There are plenty of places to walk within sight of the house. We have calves she can pet and cats in the barn, and there’s also the sunroom.” She cleared her throat and didn’t dare look at Paul, because some momentous things had happened there before the two of them married.
Mikey chuckled. “Okay, then,” he said. “Thanks.”
“No problem,” Paul told him, his dark eyes twinkling. “So. How about Saturday?”
“Saturday sounds fine,” Mikey replied. “You guys are terrific.”
“Thanks,” Sari said.
“You’re terrific, too, Mandy,” Mikey added when the housekeeper came from the kitchen with a cake pan.
Mandy grinned. “Nice of you to say that, and I baked you a chocolate cake, too!”
Mikey hesitated, looked guilty. His face drew up. He didn’t want to tell her.
“Mandy, he won’t say, but he gets terrible migraine headaches,” Paul told her gently. “Chocolate is one of his triggers.”
“Oh, my goodness, I’m so sorry!” Mandy began.
“You’re a sweetheart, and it’s the thought that counts,” Mikey told her with a smile. “I love chocolate. I just can’t eat it.”
“Well, I’ll make you a nice vanilla pound cake tomorrow. How’s that?” she teased.
“That, I’ll eat, and thank you.”
“It’s no trouble at all. You helped keep my girls safe. I’ll never forget you for it, not as long as I live.”
Mikey flushed a little. “They’re sweet girls, both of them.” He glanced at Sari. “Sweet women,” he amended.
Sari waved away the apology. “I don’t get offended at every single word people come up with. Besides,” she added with twinkling blue eyes, “I got called a whole new word in court by a man I was prosecuting for assault. The judge turned him every which way but loose.”
Mikey chuckled. “Good for the judge.”
“She’s a great judge,” Paul agreed. “I had to get a search warrant from her several years ago. We had a long talk about Sari’s mother. The judge was friends with her.”
“My mother was sweet, kind of like Bernie,” Sari said. “She loved to plant flowers and grow things.”
“My grandmother did, too,” Paul said.
“Yeah, she always had an herb garden, and she grew tomatoes out in the backyard,” Mikey added. “It was hard, losing her. She was the only real family Paulie and I ever had. Our parents weren’t around much.”
“Which was just as well,” Paul said grimly.
Mikey nodded.
“Well, I’ve got some research to do,” Sari said, rising. She bent to kiss Paul. “Don’t eat my part of that cake,” she warned. “I’ll be back for it later.”
“Would I do that?” Paul said with mock defensiveness.
“Of course you would,” she replied. She chuckled as she left the room.
“Damn, you got lucky,” Mikey said after she’d gone.
“I did. Maybe you got lucky, too,” Paul said. “Everybody who knows Bernie loves her.” He grimaced. “Shame what happened to her,” he added.
“Yeah, the arthritis is pretty bad,” Mikey agreed.
Paul frowned and had started to speak when his phone went off. He looked at the number and groaned, but he answered it. “Fiore,” he said.
He listened, glanced at Mikey, grimaced again. “I see. Yeah, I’ll make sure he knows. We’ll double up down here. No worries. I wouldn’t want to risk Carrera getting mad at me, either, but these guys aren’t playing with a full deck, if you know what I mean. Sure. Okay. Thanks.”
“Trouble?” Mikey asked.
Paul nodded. “Somebody made an attempt on Tony, a new one. He’s in custody and they’re hoping he’ll sing like a bird when they extradite him back here.”
“A break, maybe.”
“Maybe. If they don’t suicide him, like they did the other one.”
“Yeah.” Mikey drew in a breath. “You know, my life was going along so well up until now. I’ve got the hotel. I’ve got all the money I’ll ever need. I was really thinking about a home and a family. I guess I lost sight of what I’ve been, what I’ve done.” He looked up at Paul. “Maybe the universe is set up so that you get back what you give out, every time, in double measure. I don’t mind for me. I just don’t want to put her in the crosshairs. She’s the sweetest woman I’ve ever met.”
Paul didn’t need prompting to know that his cousin was talking about Bernadette. There was a look on Mikey’s face that his cousin hadn’t seen in many years. “We’ve got all our bases covered,” he told Mikey. “You have to remember, outsiders stand out here. There’s already gossip about that woman Jessie in Isabel’s office, and even Barbara’s new cook at the café. Outsiders draw attention.”
“Did you check out Jessie and the cook?” Mikey asked.
Paul gave him a sardonic glance. “What do you think?”
“Sorry.”
“No worries. But we dug pretty deep. I think we’d have found anything obvious, like an arrest record. Well, unless the guy’s working for one of the letter agencies,” he added, referring to the federal intelligence and justice community.
“True.”
“You going to bring Bernie over Saturday?” Paul asked.
Mikey chuckled. “What do you think?” he said, throwing his cousin’s own words back at him, and they both laughed.
* * *
Bernie couldn’t sleep. It had been raining all day and the pain was pretty bad. She had pain relievers, massive doses of ibuprofen for when all else failed, but she didn’t like it. The medicine messed her stomach up, even when she took it with food. Besides that, there was a limited amount of time that she could take it. It was so powerful that it could cause major problems with the liver and kidneys if people used it for a long period of time without a break. She was afraid of that.
But this was one time when she had to have some relief. She could barely hold back the tears.
She got out of bed painfully and pulled on her white chenille robe. She was going to have to go and get a
bottle of water out of the fridge. Mrs. Brown, bless her heart, kept it for her tenants, who were always welcome to anything to drink or any bedtime snacks they could find in her spotless kitchen.
Bernie walked very slowly into the kitchen and almost collided with Mikey, in burgundy silk pajama bottoms with a matching robe. His broad, hair-roughened chest was bare, with the robe open. He looked handsome and sensuous. Bernie’s heart jumped wildly at just the sight of him.
Mikey smiled. He could see all that in her face. She was totally without artifice, he thought. An honest woman, who never hid what she felt.
“You look pretty with your hair down, honey,” he said gently.
She did. Her long platinum hair waved around her shoulders and down almost to her waist in back. With her cheeks faintly flushed and her pale green eyes twinkling despite the pain, she was a dish.
She laughed self-consciously. “I was just thinking how gorgeous you look,” she confided with a bigger flush.
“What do you need?” he asked. He was holding a paper plate with crackers and sliced cheese on it, along with some slices of fresh pear.
“Just a bottle of water from the fridge and something to eat. I have to take one of the big pills. Pain’s pretty bad,” she said reluctantly.
“Here. Sit down. I’ll get you some cheese and crackers.”
“I can do that...”
“Don’t fuss, honey,” he said gently. He pulled out a chair and waited until she sat down. Then he fetched the water and sliced a little more cheese and put some more crackers on his paper plate. He sat down, too.
“The pears are nice,” he said.
“I like fresh fruit,” she said shyly.
They munched cheese in a pleasant silence. She washed it all down with her bottle of water, wincing every time she shifted in the chair.
“I’m sorry you had to have a disease that makes you hurt all the time,” he told her quietly.
“Life happens,” she said. “I learned to live with it a long time ago.”
He frowned. “You aren’t that old.”
“I’m twenty-four,” she reminded him. “But I’ve had it since I was about nine.”
“Nine years old!” he exclaimed.
“Some children are born with it,” she replied. “Arthritis isn’t just a disease of old people. There’s a little boy, five, who goes to the same rheumatologist I do. He’s got osteoarthritis and he has to take doses of ibuprofen just like I do.”
Mikey winced. “What a hell of a life.”
She nodded. “At least I’ve had it long enough to know how to cope with bad days and flares. It’s much harder for a child.”
“I can only imagine.”
“Why are you up so late?” she wondered.
He moved crackers around on the plate, next to his opened soft drink. “You mentioned that I was worried about putting people in danger by living here,” he said, recalling her uncanny perception.
She nodded. “You’re in some kind of trouble, aren’t you, and your cousin’s trying to help.”
“That’s about the size of it.” He leaned back with his soft drink in his hand. He looked gorgeous with his black, wavy hair tousled and his robe open.
He chuckled at her expression. “Your eyes tell me everything you’re thinking, Bernie,” he said softly. “You can’t imagine how flattered I am by it.”
“Really?” she asked, surprised.
He stared at her quietly. “I’m a bad man,” he said after a minute, and he scowled. “Getting mixed up with me is unwise.”
She just looked at him and sighed. “I never had much sense.”
It took a minute for that to register. He burst out laughing. “Oh. Is that it?”
She grinned. “That’s it.”
“Then, what the hell. I’ve got all sorts of people looking out for me. That means they’ll be looking out for you and everybody in the boardinghouse, too.”
“Okay,” she said, smiling.
He cocked his head. “Do you like chocolate cake?” he asked suddenly.
Her eyebrows arched. “Well, yes. It’s my favorite.”
“Mandy made me one and I couldn’t eat it,” he said with a grimace. “I get migraine headaches, real bad ones. Chocolate’s a trigger.”
“My dad used to get them,” she replied. She frowned. “Isn’t anything aged a trigger? I mean, like cheese?”
He looked at her and then at the plate of cheese and let out a breath. “Well, damn. I never thought about it. Every time I eat cheese I get a headache, and I never connected it!”
“Dad’s neurologist said everybody’s got more than one trigger, but sometimes they don’t recognize them. He couldn’t drink red wine or eat any dark fruit or cheese. And he loved cheese.”
“How about chocolate?”
She laughed. “He never liked sweets, so it wasn’t a problem.”
“Do you get headaches?”
She shook her head. “I had one bad one when I was about thirteen. Never since.”
“Lucky you,” he told her.
“I guess so.”
“Paulie says I can bring you over to the house to visit on Saturday, if you want.”
Her heart skipped and ran away. “He did? Really?”
“So did Sari. There are kittens in the barn and horses to pet. I think there’s a dog somewhere, too.”
“Ooh, temptation,” she cooed, and grinned at him.
He laughed. “I thought the kittens might do it.”
She cocked her head and her eyes adored him. “The kittens would be a bonus. Spending time with you is the real draw.”
He caught his breath. Amazing, the effect she had on him. He felt as if he could walk on air.
“It’s like that with me, too, kid,” he said softly. “I like being with you.”
She felt exhilaration flow through her. “The cane doesn’t put you off?”
He shrugged. “I’ll get one, too. We’ll look like a matched set.”
Tears stung her eyes. She’d never dreamed that a man, especially a gorgeous, worldly man like this, would ever find her attractive and not be put off by her condition.
“Aw, now, don’t do that,” he said softly. He got up, lifted her into his arms and sat back down with her across his lap. “Don’t cry. Everything’s going to be all right. Honest.”
She put her arms around his neck and snuggled close. “You think so?” she asked tearfully.
“Yes, I do.” He rubbed her back, feeling protective.
The sound of a door opening broke the spell. But he wouldn’t let Bernie up even when Mrs. Brown came into the kitchen.
“Oh, dear,” she said, taking in Bernie’s tears and Mikey comforting her. “Pain got you up, didn’t it?”
“Yes. I came to get a bottle of water so I could take one of those horrible pills, but I have to eat something first. I hope you don’t mind...”
“Bosh,” Mrs. Brown said. “That’s why I keep snacky foods and soft drinks in the fridge.”
“The cheese is really good,” Mikey said.
“It’s hoop cheese,” Mrs. Brown told him with a grin. “I get them to order me a wheel of it at the grocery store and I slice it and bag it up. I like it, too. I got peckish so I thought I’d get myself a snack. Is it bad, Bernie?” she added.
Bernie nodded. “I’m sorry if I woke you.”
“I don’t sleep much,” Mrs. Brown said quietly. “You didn’t bother me at all.”
Bernie got off Mikey’s lap reluctantly. “Thanks for the comfort,” she said, wiping her eyes. “I don’t feel sorry for myself, but the pain is pretty bad.”
“Go to bed, honey. Don’t forget your water,” he told her. “Saturday, if you’re better, we’ll go see the kittens in Paulie’s barn. Okay?”
Bernie’s eyes lit up. “Okay.”
“Want me to carry you down the hall?” he offered.
“Thanks,” she said, a little self-conscious at Mrs. Brown’s amused expression. “But I’m good. I hold on to the wall when I get wobbly. Good night,” she added to both of them.
“Try to sleep, sweetheart,” Mrs. Brown said. “If you need me, you call, okay?”
“I will. Thanks.” She glanced at Mikey, flushed, smiled and went out the door.
* * *
“She’s got grit,” Mikey told the landlady.
“Yes, she really has,” Mrs. Brown replied. “We all try to look out for her, as much as she’ll let us. She’s very independent.”
“I noticed,” he chuckled.
“You’re eating cheese,” she said worriedly. “Didn’t you tell us that you got migraine headaches?”
“Well, yes...”
“Cheese is a trigger,” she said. “Like red wine and chocolate.”
He made a face. “I can’t eat chocolate at all, but I never thought of cheese bringing on a headache.” He laughed. “You know, I used to get headaches all the time and never knew why. It was always after I’d been out with a colleague of mine. He loved cheese, so he always had a platter of it with his dinner, wherever we ate. I nibbled on it and then almost died in the night when the pain came.”
“Do you get the aura?” Mrs. Brown asked.
He grimaced. “Yeah. Flashy lights or blind in one eye until the pain hits.”
“Do you have something to take for it?” she persisted.
“Just over-the-counter stuff.”
“You should see a doctor and get something stronger,” she told him. “They even have a drug that can prevent them, if you don’t have drug allergies.”
“They do?” he asked, and was really interested.
“They do.” She laughed. “It’s why I don’t have them much anymore,” she confessed. “Cheese is one of my biggest triggers. But I haven’t had a migraine since back in the winter,” she added.
“Maybe I should do that,” he said. “They get worse as I get older.”