by Carol Voss
He stood, hands on hips, watching her.
“Am I doing something wrong?”
“You’re doing great.”
She smiled, her legs feeling a little unsteady. Not a good thing, perched on the ladder as she was. “Get to work, Stefano.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He bent over the sawhorses, the buzz of the machine raking the sweltering air.
She turned back to work, humming her little tune. Finally, she climbed down just as Tony finished sawing. Her legs a tad rubbery, she walked over to grasp another heavy board.
“What is that song you keep humming?” he asked.
“Does it bother you?”
“No, it just sounds familiar. What is it?”
“‘Side by Side.’”
He gave her another one of those half grins of his. “Yeah, that’s it. You used to sing that a lot when we were kids.”
She nodded, happy he remembered.
By the time they’d nailed a bunch of the long, heavy boards in place, Maggie’s muscles were weak with fatigue. And it was only 9:00 a.m.
“Let’s take a break.” He laid his eye gear and hard hat down and shoved a hand through his tousled hair as he peered up at their work. “I couldn’t have done that without your nailing the opposite end, Maggie. We make a good team.”
“You’re a good teacher.” She crumpled to the floor, stretching her legs out in front of her and laying her gloves, eye gear and hard hat beside her. The sun shone down through the open roof like a laser.
Tony walked to the stairs and rubbed a towel over his glistening face and hair. He lifted a canteen to his lips, then gave it to her.
Taking it from him, their gazes locked and held. His black eyes seemed to peer into her soul. Would he lean down and kiss her? Her heart did a flip.
Not good. She shouldn’t be thinking about kissing him. And her heart should not be so happy that she was. What was wrong with her?
He turned and walked away.
She closed her eyes. Her arms shouldn’t be aching to hold him close either.
He couldn’t stay. He’d never misled her about that. She drank from the canteen, the liquid cooling her parched throat.
His back to her, he busied himself with details.
She loved watching him work, loved working beside him. In fact, there wasn’t a place in the whole world she’d rather be than in this steamy attic…with him.
* * *
Tony strode down the rehab center hall, Maggie at his side. He could ride for days with her behind him on the Harley. Or nailing beams beside him like she’d done today. She’d worked like a trooper in the sweltering attic heat, and they’d accomplished a lot.
But the more time they spent together, the tougher it got to keep his emotional distance. He liked being with her. Always had. Even now, he longed to put his arm around her shoulders just to keep her close.
Instead, he followed her into Nonna’s room and over to the bed, actually looking forward to seeing his grandmother, especially with Maggie at his side.
Nonna looked better. More energy in her posture. Her room resembled a flower shop, plants and vases of flowers setting everywhere, their mingled scents filling the room.
With a soft flutter, Maggie bent, hugged the older woman and planted a kiss on both her offered cheeks. The women smiled at each other with so much affection his throat closed. Maggie stepped back to allow him access.
He bent and wrapped his arms around Nonna in a gentle hug.
“Caro,” she murmured in his ear. “Maggie tells me you are working night and day on the house. But I miss you when you do not come to see me.”
Her endearment warmed him. She’d missed him? He wanted to believe she meant it. Straightening, he glanced at Maggie.
Her mouth softened in a smile. She had such a glow about her.
Tearing his eyes away, he set the pie he’d been carrying on the bedside table. “Della sent a rhubarb pie for you, Nonna, to celebrate the birth of Rachel’s twins.” And he’d stuffed another donation in Della’s jar for the hungry. A satisfactory exchange for both of them, he supposed.
“I stopped in to see Rachel and her babies yesterday. They are so adorable,” Maggie said.
“Please convey my congratulations. And my thanks to Della.” Nonna looked from Tony to Maggie and back again as she drew herself up a little straighter. “You both look tired…but very happy.”
Now that Nonna mentioned it, under Maggie’s radiance, she did look a little tired. She’d worked too hard. But didn’t she always throw herself totally into whatever she did? “Maggie helped me work in the attic today.”
“Ah. How are the repairs coming along?”
Repairs? More like a complete overhaul. Maggie must be playing down the demolition to keep Nonna from worrying about it. He decided to change the subject. “Things are good. How is your therapy going?”
“Jim says I am mastering the walker.”
“Fantastic.”
“What does Dr. Peterson say?” Maggie sounded jubilant.
“He says I cannot go to the dairy breakfast tomorrow. And I must build more strength in my muscles before I can come home. Perhaps two weeks.”
“Two weeks?” Tony stared at his grandmother. He hadn’t believed she’d ever come home, but Maggie had. He’d never been more glad to be proven wrong. “That’s great!”
Maggie grasped Nonna’s hand. “I’m so glad.”
Tony ran a quick mental check of all the things that had to be done to make the house functional for a woman with a walker. The most looming problem was the half-finished downstairs bathroom, but getting the roof on was even more urgent. He’d accomplished a lot over the past couple weeks in the attic while he had daylight and in the downstairs bathroom at night.
But even if he worked around the clock with Maggie helping him whenever she could… “I don’t think we can get the house ready in two weeks.”
Both women focused on him as if he’d alighted from a distant planet. “Of course it will be ready,” Maggie said. “If not completely, we’ll do some improvising.”
Improvising? He opened his mouth to ask her how you improvised a roof and a bathroom, glanced at Nonna, decided to hold his tongue. Probably best not to spoil the celebration. He could worry silently, he guessed. He was beginning to get used to worrying lately, almost resigned to it.
“I will make do,” Nonna said. “My home always gives me what I truly need.”
Another thing Maggie had been right about.
Maggie laid her small hand on his arm and smiled her soft, radiant smile. “Stella and I will choose fresh wallpaper for the little room off the kitchen.”
“Your office? No,” Nonna protested.
“I’ve been thinking about moving my office into my old house.” Maggie focused on Tony. “Thanks for giving me the idea.”
Tony couldn’t help smiling. She’d listened to his idea more than he thought.
“The room will make a perfect bedroom, Stella. We’ll put a commode in the closet if the bathroom isn’t ready. The most important thing is getting the ramp built so you can get into the house.”
The ramp she’d been trying to build the day he’d arrived. She’d had her priorities straight then, too. He guessed everything would come together eventually. Anything seemed possible when Maggie smiled that smile.
Grinning like a fool, he cast good sense aside and plunged right in. “You concentrate on getting well, Nonna. We’ll have the house ready for you.”
Maggie’s smile turned dazzling.
He knew he had a silly grin planted on his face, but he didn’t know how to squelch it. All he could do was drink her in. He really needed to get a grip.
“I must discuss something with yo
u, Anthony.” Nonna’s voice came as if from a distance. “Maggie, if you will find an aide and ask her for plates and forks, we will share Della’s pie.”
Maggie gave him an I-don’t-have-any-idea-what-this-is-about shrug and glided away.
He wanted to follow her. He missed her hand on his arm. He didn’t want to experience the emptiness of the room without her in it. Trying to figure out what he’d done to warrant Nonna’s need to talk to him alone, he turned to face her.
She studied him narrowly.
The look that said he was about to get the third degree, and he’d better come up with the right answers because she already knew what those answers should be. Oddly, his stomach knotted just as it had when he was a kid. “What is it, Nonna?”
“I have been putting my affairs in order.”
He frowned, not sure he was following her. “But you’re doing better, aren’t you?”
“Much better. But it is time for me to update such things. I am almost eighty years old, Anthony. Even I cannot live forever.”
“I hope you’ll be around for a long time, Nonna.”
“It will not matter to you whether I am around or not unless you stay.”
He narrowed his eyes. She never changed her tune. “Nonna…I’m staying until I get the house fixed up. That’s all I can manage.”
She shook her head. Obviously, he’d given her the wrong answer. Again. “Does Maggie know you plan to leave?”
“Of course she knows.”
Shaking her head, she patted the bed beside her.
He sat where she’d indicated.
She reached for his hand and clasped it tightly. “Who will take care of her when you’re gone? When I’m gone?”
He shook his head. “That’s not going to happen for a long time.”
“And when it does, who will she have?”
He attempted to ignore the knot tightening in his stomach. “She’s pretty good at taking care of herself.”
“She is. But she has no family.”
“She has you and Hannah.”
“Anthony…”
“Practically the whole town is her family.”
“But she needs a good man.”
He squinted at her. Nonna had moved him into her “good man” category? She’d even attached taking care of Maggie to it? Wouldn’t competent, independent Maggie be thrilled Nonna thought she needed a man to take care of her?
“Jim has been Maggie’s trusted adviser through my illness. I don’t know what she would have done without him. And I can see he’s grown to care for our Maggie. He’s kind, considerate and would be very good for her.”
Feeling sick, Tony clenched his jaw. Nonna had her physical therapist lined up for Maggie?
“Have you nothing to say, Anthony?”
“What do you want me to say?”
“Perhaps the obvious…that Jim is not right for Maggie.”
Tony’s sentiments exactly.
“You and Maggie were so close as children, and I see how you look at each other now. It is clear you are meant to be together.”
Tony swallowed, his throat dry as sandpaper.
“That’s why I have willed my house to the two of you.”
“What?” He shook his head. “I don’t want the house. Give it to Maggie.”
She smiled. “I am very happy you want to take care of her. It confirms how you feel about her.”
He wasn’t about to let her bait him. He’d definitely missed something.
“You think I don’t notice you are in love with her?”
He stared at his grandmother. Growing up, he’d often suspected she could read him like a book. Was she right about Maggie? Was he still in love with her? No question, he admired her, loved being with her, couldn’t stop smiling when she was near. But…love? As…in love?
“I could not be more pleased.” She patted his hand.
She was pleased?
“Now you will stay and make her happy.”
“I’ve never stayed anywhere, Nonna.”
Her eyes widened in apparent surprise. “You will take her away with you?”
He couldn’t keep up with these huge leaps Nonna was making. His head was still ringing with her first statement. Was he in love with Maggie?
“Anthony? You will take Maggie with you?”
“She’d never be happy on my construction sites. She’s totally into making a success of her businesses. Plus she’d miss you and people in Noah’s Crossing.”
“You wouldn’t leave her.”
He grabbed on to the side of the bed as if that would keep this conversation from spinning out of control. “Nonna, Maggie knows I’m going back. I was always going back.”
She pursed her lips and glowered as if she couldn’t understand. “You criticize your papa for leaving you behind, but he never left his Celia.”
“He married my mother.”
“And you will not marry Maggie?”
Chest heavy, he shut his eyes against her accusing tone. Marriage had never crossed his mind as a possibility. Not for him. He did his best to clear his head. And reached for reality. “Maggie doesn’t need me any more than you do.”
“What?” Nonna pressed her fingers to her forehead. “I have never needed you?”
Swallowing, he shook his head.
Nonna closed her eyes for a long moment. Finally, she opened them and met his gaze. “When Salvatore died, I grieved deeply. For him and for me. I was all alone, you see. You and your parents never came home. Salvatore’s and my families were in Italy. I thought about moving to be near them, but I could not leave the life Salvatore and I had built in America.” Tears filled her eyes. “I wanted desperately to join him in death.”
He hated seeing her like this. He’d hurt her. He hadn’t meant to, but he had. Why else would she be putting herself through memories of that horrible time? He clasped her hand. “I’m sorry, Nonna. Don’t think about that time.”
“You must understand, Anthony. After Salvatore and your mother died, it was as if the light in the family had gone out. We had all lost our happiness. Grief was unbearable.”
He blew out a breath, his own eyes moist. “Please, Nonna, this isn’t good for you.”
“But I must explain to you. When your father brought you home to me, you became my reason to go on. My reason for living, really. I needed you more than I should have.” She raised his hand to her lips and kissed it. “And I still need you.”
He swallowed. His chest feeling like it might explode, he rubbed his fingers against his jaw. How had he gotten things so wrong about her? Had he held on to the pain and resentments of a little boy and never even thought to consider things might be more complicated than he remembered? That they might be different? “I love you, Nonna.”
A soft smile lit her face. “I love you, too, my child. More than you can possibly know.”
Chapter Fourteen
The hazy sun hovered on the horizon, anticipating its dive behind the curve of the earth. Wind buffeted Maggie on the motorcycle, an occasional bug pinged off the helmet visor covering her face and she had the sensation she was flying through space on a low rocket. All she could do was keep her arms around Tony and hang on for dear life.
He’d seemed distracted while they ate pie with Stella. Now she could feel the tension in his muscles, and he was going faster than usual. What had his nonna talked to him about?
The roar of the motorcycle was too loud to ask. But as soon as she stepped on terra firma again, she was going to find out.
He turned into the driveway, stopped and sat there, motorcycle vibrating.
She waited for him to switch off the engine and lights.
“Y
ou can climb off,” he yelled over the idling machine. “I’m going for a ride.”
Apparently, Stella had brought up things he wanted to think over. But he was too preoccupied to go riding off by himself. Besides, he probably wouldn’t come back until after she was in bed, which meant she wouldn’t get any answers tonight about his talk with Stella. Not gonna happen. “I’ll go with you,” she yelled back.
He turned his head to look at her. “You’re too scared.”
“Not anymore.”
“I have the bruised ribs to prove it.”
She gave him the I’m-onto-you look that always got results. “You’re trying to get rid of me?”
“Hang on.” He took off out of the driveway.
Success, of sorts. He hadn’t left her behind, but now, she was flying through the twilight, hanging on for her life again.
The engine of the giant machine droned on, mile after mile after mile. Dusk faded to evening. All she could do was relax, trust he’d keep them safe and hold him close, as if he belonged to her.
Finally, he pulled onto a narrow, gravel service road along Rainbow Lake, stopped and shut off the motor and lights. The lap of the waves on the lake and the din of frogs and crickets filled the night.
Drawing in the fresh scent of the spring-fed lake, she looked around. Lights from the few houses along the shoreline reflected off the water, but with the moon playing hide-and-seek with the clouds, it was too dark to see much else. “What are we doing here?”
“Not sure. But as long as we are, let’s see if the old diving platform is still hanging in the tree.”
“Where is it?”
“A mile or so ahead.”
“I’ll come with you, provided my legs ever stop vibrating, so I can crawl off this thing. Of course, then there will be standing on them.” She unwound her arms and maneuvered herself off the machine.
He climbed off, too, and towered over her as if ready to pick up the pieces if need be.
“I’m standing,” she said in triumph. She removed the heavy helmet and handed it to him, then shook out her hair.
He stood there, watching her, a questioning look on his face.