by Sara Daniel
“Of course.” His assistant slid the older man’s file across the counter. He picked it up, leaving the offensive divorce papers behind. Leading Ned away from the lobby, he pointed out changes in the facility since the surgeons had last visited.
Ned remained silent until they’d walked the length of one corridor and turned the corner into the next section of the Inn. “If your plan is to ignore what Armina wants in order to make her go away, why don’t you sign the papers so she will go away?”
Ian stumbled on the smooth floor. “Because that’s not my plan at all.” He stopped walking and turned to the man whose tweed jacket didn’t quite cover his round midsection. “I’ve changed. I’m not the same person I was when she left me.”
Ned thumped his cane on the ground. “How will she ever discover those changes if you never try to prove them to her?”
“Coming here wasn’t her idea, was it? You talked her into it.” Although disappointed, he couldn’t deny his relief that they had another chance, regardless of the circumstances.
Her uncle stared at him. “From here on out, if she still wants to walk away, you have to let her.”
His heart seized. “I don’t want to, but I will if we can’t make our relationship work. Thank you for giving us a second chance.”
“Don’t thank me. I didn’t do it for you. I did it for her. I want to see her happy again. The jury’s still out on whether or not she can achieve that with you.”
Chapter Two
Before receiving new devices the next morning, guests at the Inn were encouraged to take off their old prosthetics for the evening meal. The unorthodox approach led to the best memories and most satisfying outcomes with the new prosthetics in both Ian’s professional research and his personal opinion.
All the tables in the dining room were round and set with four place settings. Armina, Frank, and Lenny sat around one, with Ned’s place conspicuously empty. As tempted as he was to join his wife, Ian didn’t want to scare her off by trying too hard. Her uncle’s warning drove home the reality that he couldn’t make a mistake if he had any hope of resuscitating their marriage.
“I hate only having one hand,” Frank grumbled, stirring his soup with his left while his right arm rested on his lap, touching the old device he refused to give up possession of.
Armina reached out and brushed her fingertips over his blue-and-yellow plaid sleeve. Her smooth, light-brown skin seemed to glow despite the mediocre dining-room light. “I checked over your new prosthetic before I came to dinner. When you put it on tomorrow, you will love it.”
Ian stepped closer to the table. “Can I see your old hand?”
Frank glared at him, as if he were responsible for chopping off the limb. But Ian didn’t take it personally. Many guests developed separation anxiety. Taking away their limb took their sense of security with it. Reluctantly, Frank passed over the old prosthetic.
Ian turned the one-time state-of-the-art appendage in his hand. “You’ve gotten a lot of good years out of this, but I bet you can’t tie your shoes with it like you’ll be able to with your new one.”
“If I was smart, I’d wear shoes without ties.”
“If you were smart, you’d find yourself a woman with nimble fingers to take care of you,” Lenny retorted, adjusting the eye patch over the socket where his old prosthetic had been removed.
“If that’s the case, you haven’t been smart in two decades,” Frank shot back.
“Which is still a decade longer than you,” Lenny gloated.
Armina lifted her gaze, her brown eyes dancing with mirth.
Ian smiled, but as soon as he did, her amusement faded and she looked away. He returned his focus to Frank. “I understand you already have the new electrodes implanted.”
The man lifted his arm, showing off the healed stitch marks where the sensors attached to his muscles would allow him to control his hand through arm movements and flexing.
“Excellent. You are all set for your new appendage.” He set Frank’s old hand on a tray behind the table.
The man didn’t seem to notice, but Armina met Ian’s gaze and mouthed, “Thank you.”
He’d been doing his job, helping a guest separate from the old limb he’d formed an emotional attachment to. But her glance and special thanks reminded him of the connection they used to have where, from across the room, they could respond intuitively to each other’s thoughts.
When they’d worked in sync to meet their guests’ needs, they’d been an unstoppable team. Too bad he hadn’t had a clue what she’d needed from him when they solely focused on each other. He wanted to believe he’d changed enough to meet her needs. He had to believe it to have hope they had a future together.
“How is your room?” Cat had set her up in the visiting-staff accommodations rather than one of the guest rooms or his bed, as he would have preferred.
“It’s lovely.” She broke eye contact, glancing at her companions. “Lenny, what are you doing with your eye?”
Ian stifled a laugh. The man had his old prosthetic eye suspended between his thumb and index finger over his soup bowl, as if contemplating dropping it in.
“Eyeball soup. I’m going to serve it to Ned. Freak him out when he gets here.” He roared with laughter, his single eye patch bobbing.
“Lenny, you are not.” Armina gasped.
Frank grinned, evaporating the last of his moroseness over his missing hand. “I’ll buy you a flask of bourbon if he puts it in his mouth before he discovers it.”
“You’re on. Serves him right for being late.” Lenny dropped the old prosthetic eyeball, letting it splash into the bowl. He switched his bowl with Ned’s while the third surgeon shuffled into the room, squinting at the smart phone in his hand. He didn’t glance at the others as he settled into the last empty seat at the table.
Ian shifted his feet. He’d never witnessed such a direct sabotage of another guest before. As the Innkeeper, he had a responsibility to save the man from the ignominy of eating eyeball soup, not to mention head off a potential lawsuit.
Armina’s shared smirk with the other two surgeons stopped him. She’d grown up watching these men pull pranks on each other and apparently had no qualms over this one. He’d wait to step in until the situation reached the point of a potential choking hazard.
“My heart surgeon sent me the most amazing video.” Ned picked up his spoon, not making eye contact as he moved his finger around the screen of his phone. His buddies held their poker faces, but Armina looked ready to burst as she followed the progress of his silverware.
“This is going to blow your mind.” He rotated the phone toward her.
She stared at the screen, her face turning an unnatural shade of green. “What is that?”
“It’s a video of my heart surgery. This is the part where the doctor took my heart out of my chest.”
“Took it out?” Ian asked, sure he’d heard wrong.
Armina twisted the electronic away from her and in his direction, giving him a glimpse of the fist-sized organ.
“Heart transplant, but you knew that, right?” Ned glanced over his shoulder at him. “I thought you two were still together when I went into the hospital.”
“I left here to go to your bedside,” Armina said, her tone more frigid than when she’d confronted Ian in the lobby. “I haven’t been back since.”
Until now. Not for the first time, he sifted through his memories, trying to pinpoint the moment she’d left and what she’d said to him when she walked out, but he couldn’t. They’d never had any epic arguments that led to her storming out on him. Instead, he’d been so consumed with business he hadn’t realized she’d left him until much too late. “Did you tell me Ned was sick before you left?”
“I tried.” She looked resigned instead of angry or defensive. “If it didn’t have to do with the Inn, you weren’t interested in the details.”
“That’s not true.”
Her gaze called him a liar. Aloud, she said, “I left mess
ages on your phone. If you really cared, you’d have at least returned one call to ask about my uncle.”
And he hadn’t. He hadn’t even bothered to listen to the messages. No matter that he’d been in the middle of a multimillion dollar expansion and fending off a lawsuit that threatened to destroy not only his company but also his reputation, he’d been a complete douchebag of a husband.
“Forget worrying about me. Didn’t you wonder where your wife took off to?” Ned demanded, scooping up a spoonful of soup, a suspicious rounded lump protruding over the top.
“I did. I made a huge mistake in asking my staff to call her instead of doing it myself.” Of all the duties he’d needed to delegate, the responsibility for saving his marriage belonged to him alone.
“One of your mistakes.” Ned opened his mouth and lifted his spoon.
“One of many,” he agreed. He’d do penance, beg forgiveness, whatever it took to keep those hideous divorce papers from flying out of her purse at him.
“For goodness sake, Uncle Ned, look at what you’re putting in your mouth,” Armina shouted.
The eyeball touched his lips before Ned lowered his spoon.
“Why’d you stop him?” Lenny complained.
“Besides how unsanitary it would be to ingest that thing?” Armina shuddered. “He could have choked to death.”
Between the disturbing video and the haunting mistakes of his past, Ian hardly registered the prank playing out.
“What the heck?” With his thumb and forefinger, Ned picked the prosthetic eye from his spoon. “Lenny, this is the grossest thing I have ever seen.”
“I’ll take the eye, and I’ll get you a new bowl of soup, too.” With a napkin, Ian plucked the eyeball from Ned’s fingers then set it on the tray behind them. He handed the soup bowl to one of the servers. “Please dump this and bring Ned a new bowl.”
The surgeon shuddered. “Don’t bother bringing anything else. My appetite is gone.”
“I’m looking forward to that bourbon,” Lenny crowed.
“I don’t owe you anything,” Frank replied. “He didn’t put it in his mouth.”
“It touched his lips, so it counts.”
Ned rubbed a napkin over his lips then scoured his mouth with his sleeve.
“And he damn well would have swallowed it whole,” Lenny continued, “if Soldier had kept her mouth shut.”
Ian had forgotten about their nickname for her, another reminder of their affection and connection.
Armina rolled her eyes. “I’ll buy bottles of bourbon for both of you when we get home. But you can’t have any alcohol here while you’re undergoing implants and therapies.”
They grumbled with good-natured, if reluctant, acceptance. Ned pushed out his chair and passed the graphic video around to the other guests in the dining room.
Ian circled the table and placed a hand on Armina’s shoulder. She tensed beneath him. They’d once had such an easy relationship. He’d taken for granted the camaraderie would always be between them. It had come so naturally from the beginning, he’d never considered the need to nurture it to keep it alive.
He leaned down and whispered in her ear. “Can I talk to you privately?”
She stiffened more.
“Please.”
For a moment, she continued to sit. Then she folded her napkin and stepped away from the table, turning toward him only after they’d moved out of earshot, yet were still in direct sight of anyone who cared to look in their direction. He was damn sure the three surgeons were looking, and probably betting on the different ways they could torture him for screwing up.
“When you left me to go to your uncle’s bedside, did you intend to leave me for good, or did you plan to return?”
She eyed him warily. “You really want to plunge into a deep conversation?”
“No, I really want to take you to bed,” he admitted, opting for honesty and hoping to lighten the mood.
She stepped back. “Not going to happen.”
“I know. So, help me piece together the exact point where I lost you. The more I try to remember what you said to me, the more my mind comes up blank. I just remember being pulled in so many directions, all urgent issues with everyone wanting my attention at once.”
“I was one of those people clambering for you to notice me with no idea how to make myself stand out. Being your wife didn’t give me any edge.” Instead of accusing him, she sounded defeated. “Why did you marry me if I wasn’t special to you?”
His heart clenched. “You were. You are special.”
“You’ll understand if I have trouble believing that.” She turned away.
Terrified he’d never get another chance if he let her go, he reached for her, circling her wrist. “I made mistakes. I was a lousy husband.”
She faced him again but neither tried to correct him nor looked triumphant at his confession. “In answer to your earlier question, I didn’t plan to leave you.”
The single sentence sent hope swelling in his heart, along with disappointment in himself that he hadn’t acted to save their relationship sooner when it would have been so much easier to fix.
“I just left to visit Uncle Ned who’d been admitted to the hospital with chest pains,” Armina continued, her arm trembling despite his gentle hold. “His heart deteriorated rapidly over the next couple of weeks until it reached the point where he had to have a transplant. If he survived long enough to get a donor heart and the operation, he faced a long recovery.”
“Of course, you had to be there for him. He’s your uncle and your father and your grandfather all rolled into one.”
At last, she cracked a smile. “I hope you’re speaking metaphorically and not in a redneck sort of way.”
He laughed and slid his hand down her wrist to clasp her palm, needing to share the moment with her, not feel as though he held her captive.
She slipped her hand free and crossed her arms, her amusement gone. “Without Ned to lead them, Lenny and Frank didn’t have a clue how to run the prosthetics business. My original plan to be gone for a week stretched to two, then a month. At first I tried phoning you, but you never returned my calls.”
If only he had, he could have avoided disaster and maybe saved their marriage. “I became a victim of my success. My voice-mail box filled up, and I was so overwhelmed I deleted all my messages without listening to any of them and decided to start over.”
“Our relationship became the real victim.” Instead of beating him down for his terrible choice, Armina spoke matter-of-factly. “I decided I needed to start over, too, since you didn’t care about the trauma and emotional upheaval in my life. Uncle Ned asked me to take over the CEO position at his company, so I accepted and sent my official resignation to the Inn. I figured you didn’t care if your wife left, but you’d probably care that you needed to hire a new physical therapist.”
“You hate me,” Ian whispered, feeling more nauseous than if he’d ingested a prosthetic eyeball. How could she not hate him when she believed their personal relationship had meant less to him than an employment issue?
Armina gazed beyond his left shoulder. “I don’t hate you. I’ve never hated you. When we got married, I understood you had a strong work ethic combined with an unusual drive to succeed and a consuming passion for the Inn. I knew I’d come in second to this place.”
He opened his mouth, wanting to argue, but couldn’t. If she’d made him choose, he wouldn’t have picked her.
“I thought I was okay with it,” she continued. “After all, I loved the Inn, too, and wanted you to realize your vision for it. Turns out I wasn’t okay. I didn’t realize how distant second place actually was.” She shrugged her slim shoulders. “Live and learn, right?”
Not right. He wanted to take back the lesson and teach her about real love instead. “You never should have had to settle for second place. With me or with anyone else. No one has the right to ask that of you.”
“Agreed.” Her voice came out stronger, her shoulder
s squared, and she looked him directly in the eye. “Now you understand why I want a divorce.”
He skimmed his hand over her cheek, caressing her cheekbone with the pad of his thumb. He wanted a second chance to make things right, to save their marriage, and to rediscover their love. But he’d scare her away if he brought it up before he won her trust. He couldn’t afford to make any missteps, not when she brought the D-word and those hideous papers she expected him to sign into every conversation.
Chapter Three
With a full agenda for the next day, the three surgeons left the dining room to settle into their rooms for an early night. The other guests filtered out, too, and Ian disappeared with them. But Armina stayed and talked with Beth, the girl who’d been assigned as Frank’s physical therapist to acclimate him to his prototype hand.
“Tomorrow you’ll want to concentrate on basic thumb and finger movements, as well as wrist rotation. Once he masters that, he can exercise the muscles, allowing him to reach above his head and use each finger independently of the others,” Armina said.
“What an amazing prosthetic. I can’t wait to see it in action.” The girl smiled and picked a smart phone off the table. “Is this Ned’s?”
“Yeah. He must have lost track of it.”
She stood. “I’ll put it on the tray with the old prosthetics for Cat to return to him.”
“Sounds good.” If Armina returned it, he’d likely corner her into watching the gruesome video of his surgery. “How long have you worked at the Inn?”
“Not quite two years. I, uh—” Beth blushed as she reseated herself at the table. “Ian hired me to replace you.”
The girl had to be near her late twenties, but she looked so young Armina had trouble seeing her as a qualified equal. “Did you replace me in his bed, too?”
Immediately appalled at her unprofessionalism, Armina said, “Never mind. That was out of line and none of my business.” He could do whatever he wanted. She only cared about getting the divorce papers signed.
“Well, it is your business, since you’re his wife.” Beth sighed. “He hasn’t dated anyone the whole time I’ve been here. Trust me, he’s had plenty of offers and opportunities. You never have to worry about a guy like him cheating on you.”