"I suppose."
Dad never gave in so easily before. The two of them were about the same height, six feet, but his father always seemed bigger. Today, he seemed smaller. Than Nick. Than himself. “Everything will be okay, Pop."
"You haven't called me that since you were ten."
"This isn't the time to talk about it."
"We've got nothing better to do. I didn't want her to leave any more than you did."
"Then, why did you work so much?” Nick spoke softly, an eye on his father's heart monitor. He didn't want to upset him, but he'd waited a long time for answers. “Why didn't you spend more time with her? Show her you cared?” His voice rose, and he knew he had to stop. He'd held it all back so long. Why didn't you make my mother happy so she would stay?
Nick turned toward the window. The night sky teemed with stars, so high above they looked like fireflies. His memories of his mother were like that, so far away he couldn't see them clearly. But he remembered her singing, and the lighthearted way she danced around the house, sweeping him up for a kiss.
"She wanted to go to Paris, and I worked to save money. But in the end, she wanted more. Georgia was a dreamer."
He'd thought his father was asleep. “You're tired. It doesn't matter."
"I should have known better than to marry her. It was like caging a wild songbird. In the end, I couldn't keep her, but I couldn't tell her to go. I loved her. Too much.” His eyes fell shut.
"Dad. Are you okay?” Nick's voice rose. “Dad. Speak to me"
A nurse came running. “Why are you shouting?” she hissed at Nick. “He needs his rest."
His dad opened his eyes. “It's okay, ma'am. He's my son."
Nick thought his heart would burst. “I thought—"
"You were wrong. Now, calm down,” the nurse told him. “Or you'll be the one in this bed. He's stable. Go get something to drink before you scare him to death. No caffeine.” She shook her finger.
Nick walked to the cafeteria. Did hot chocolate have caffeine? He was shivering and needed something warm. Leaving without buying anything, he dialed Cee's number. He needed to hear her voice. The phone rang and rang but no one answered. He wanted her near.
* * * *
NICK HAD BEEN gone three days, and so had Suz. Meanwhile, Cee had been hovering on the brink of hysteria, but it wasn't getting her anywhere. Susan's friends said they hadn't seen her, and Mark's secretary said he'd gone on a business trip, alone. Cee thought someone was lying, but she couldn't be sure. She hadn't called the police because Suz left voluntarily, and some of her clothes were gone, but not many, which meant she'd wanted to make a fast getaway.
Cee had searched Susan's room frantically, looking for her cell phone. Susan frequently misplaced it, and she'd left in such a hurry, what if she couldn't find it?
If she had her cell, she could call anytime, but if she'd left it behind ... Cee panicked even thinking about it.
She flipped through blouses that awaited ironing, dug through a box of DVD's, and was about to breathe a sigh of relief—when she spotted the cell sticking out of Susan's pillow case.
Holding it in her hand, Cee talked herself out of panicking by focusing on the bright side. With so few clothes and no phone, Susan surely wouldn't be able to stay away long.
But three days exceeded her expectations.
A car pulled up out front, and she ran to the door. She stared at the man striding up her front walk. Dell. She ran to meet him. “Is Nick's dad okay?"
"He's being moved from ICU to transitional care today. Nick wanted me to come by and see how you're doing."
Cee felt a warm glow. He was worried about her. “I'm still looking for Susan."
"Is there anything I can do to help?"
"Dell, you naughty man.” Marianne waltzed up and laced her arm through his. “You haven't called me."
Cee watched in amusement as his face turned red and he shuffled his feet. The boy-next-door type, with sandy hair and a lightly freckled face, he bore no resemblance to the suave men Marianne usually dated, nor to his tanned, sapphire-eyed cousin Nick. “I wanted to, but you're beautiful and sophisticated.” Dell looked down at his white shorts and Nike shirt and shoes. “I run a sporting goods store and look like it."
Marianne flicked an imaginary piece of lint off her raspberry-colored blouse. Smoothed the crease in her matching linen shorts. “So, I run a boutique. Be a sport and give me a chance, and you might be surprised what lies beneath these designer clothes."
Dell threw back his head and laughed. “You're on."
Cee smiled. Marianne was as uninhibited as she'd always been. “Dell just asked what he could do to help find Susan, and you two could spend some time together if—"
"He and I search.” Marianne sparkled like a Roman candle as she turned to Dell. “Cee's driven around every day, but there have to be places she's missed."
Like quiet taprooms and starlit cliffs? As her best friend drove off with Nick's cousin, Cee was happy for them but felt very much alone.
* * * *
NICK WAITED IN his dad's hospital room for the nurse to bring him back from his walk. An attractive brunette, she wasn't the first woman to cozy up to Bart Dennis, but he remained unimpressed. Was Georgia the only woman he'd ever love?
Nick rose to help his father back in bed, but he waved him away and took a chair. “I'm going home soon. The doctor was in this morning. Gave me one of those lectures about taking care of myself. That balloon thingamajig seems to be doing the trick."
He'd lost more weight and still seemed to tire easily. Nick rested his elbows on his knees. “I hope you'll take it easy."
"I'm not taking a month off like he said. A week maybe. I've got a couple of big jobs I'll need to run from home."
His father described a high-priced home he was building. When he finished, Nick could smell and feel the wood and wished he could see the house. “Dad, where did Mama go?” It was the first time in fourteen years he'd used the word. When she left, she'd become “my mother” or “Georgia."
"To seek a career, singing. Last I heard she was making the circuit of piano bars in the south. New Orleans. Baton Rouge."
"Georgia left you and me to become a lounge singer?"
"Blows the mind, doesn't it? Especially when she loved us both."
He thought she'd left to do something wonderful. Marry a wealthy man who would show her the world. Dance with the Rockettes in Radio City Music Hall. Go to medical school. He used to dream up wonderful lives for her in places all over the world. Fury bubbled and churned in Nick's gut. “How could she!"
"I never understood it, but it was what she wanted, and I told myself that's what mattered. But I was wrong. You matter, Nicky, and I never could make up for what she'd done."
"I thought it was your fault. And you tried to protect me by not exposing her.” Like Celeste protected Susan. “That wasn't fair to you, Pop."
His father went into the bathroom, and Nick heard him blowing his nose. “Nicky,” he called. “You know how you used to coax me to visit Dell and I never wanted to go? That wasn't fair to you, but my brother and his wife were such lovebirds, I felt like a lonesome crow."
"Dad,” Nick said, moving closer to the door. “I'm coming home to take care of you until you go back to work."
"I can take care of myself. How about you taking care of things at work?"
Nick sat down again and folded his hands between his knees. He had a romance book to finish and a new mystery to write. He wanted to be close to Cee but wanted to live in Dell's cabin. And he wanted to help his father. Unlike playing the game, Today I Am, he couldn't do everything.
Dad came out of the bathroom. “If you want to stay with me, I'd like that. And if you run the business for a short time, I'd be happy. But don't do either out of a sense of duty."
Nick looked at his father and saw a man just as big as he'd always been. “What if I do both because I love you?"
His father's bear hug was as big as when Nick
was a kid. Love was a powerful word and feeling.
* * * *
"YOU'RE BACK!” CEE walked into Nick's arms. “I've missed you."
"Oh baby, I've missed you.” He held her away to look at her. “You're beautiful."
She touched his face. Cupped his jaw. The sunlight behind him bounced off his sun-bleached hair. His eyes were bluer than blue with little laugh lines crinkling the corners. “You, too."
He chuckled and kissed her, and she went squishy inside. He explored her body with his hands, touching her backside, squeezing, running his fingers up and down her spine. She shivered happily. “Good thing my neighbor, the handsome man in the carriage house, isn't home or he'd see you feeling me up.” Cee touched Nick's cheek one more time. “Want to borrow a cup of wine?"
He stepped inside, captured her hand, and kissed her fingertips. “I'll drink mine here, thanks."
Cee led him to the kitchen where she popped two beers. “Your preferred drink,” she said, handing him one. He shook his head to a glass and took a slug out of the bottle. “Dad was supposed to come home today, but they kept him another day for observation because his blood pressure was up."
Nick sat down at the oak table by the kitchen window, and Cee sat across from him. She loved the new table, the sunny yellow walls, and blue, sponge-painted cabinet. She loved the fact that Nick had taken part in the room's new look. She loved seeing him across the table.
"Dad was ranting when I left, saying it was because he was excited about going home."
Cee reached around to pull the sheer curtain over the window, and the soft knit fabric of her low-cut blouse pulled tight over the raised peaks of her breasts. She caught Nick looking and laughed. “The sun was in my eyes."
"Is that what did this?” He stroked one hard peak with his fingertip, and it hardened more. She dropped her head back and breathed deeply. “If you keep that up..."
"I take it Susan is out?"
Cee rose to return with two more beers. “I can't find her, Nick. Mark doesn't know where she is. I called everyone I know. I can't do anything more except wait and pray."
"She'll be all right as soon as she thinks things through. Harry's infidelity is hard for her to accept. She never expected her idol to be knocked off his pedestal, and when she's planning to marry a man she likens to that idol, the bar's raised and harder to hurdle.” Nick poured Cee's beer slowly down the inside of her glass.
She rose to open a box of pretzels, dump them in a basket, and set out a tub of port wine cheese dip. She'd worried about Susan until she'd almost made herself sick before concluding she was safe and needed this time alone. She still puzzled where the girl could be staying. Right now, the answer to one of her prayers was sitting at her table, and she beamed at him as she took her seat again.
He laid his hand on hers. “I have to go back to Indy tonight, C.J. If Dad's blood pressure is down, I'll drive him home from the hospital tomorrow."
"Spend the night, and I'll cook you dinner.” She leaned forward, teasingly tugging her blouse lower to show more cleavage. “Drive back to Indy early in the morning."
"If Susan chose tonight to come back and found me in your bed, it would jeopardize your relationship with her again.” Nick eased the neckline of her blouse back into place, and her heart sank. He might be right but she wanted to feel his body next to hers. Wanted to lie in his arms. Needed his comfort.
"C.J.?” He squeezed her hand. “I'll be away again, for a while. I promised Dad I'd stay with him in Ridgefield and run the business until he gets back on his feet."
She grew cold inside. Fear slid through her veins. “Is this about us, Nick? Are you trying to wean us away from one another before your actual departure?"
"This is necessary. It's not a pretense or preamble. Dad needs someone to rein him in until he's released to work again. He's a workaholic. I have to protect him from himself."
"Of course you do.” She felt the color rise in her cheeks and, ashamed of acting clingy, drew her hand away to run her fingers through her hair. “I'm sorry, Nick. My nerves have been on edge. You gone. Susan. Wedding plans hanging in the air while she's not here. I want things to be right with Suz and me, and you."
"For years, I wanted to know why Georgia—my mother—left, but Dad wouldn't talk about her, and I didn't want to think she'd willingly leave me, so I blamed him. Susan got angry with you when you told her the truth about Harry because she didn't want to believe her brother would hurt the woman who's been like a mother to her. She's angry with him, not you, but she doesn't want to blame someone who's not here to defend himself."
"Nick's platitudes are sounding more serious these days. Wiser.” Cee smiled sadly. “I should have told her the truth at the time of the accident, but I thought I was doing the right thing."
"And that's the best any of us can do—what we think is right."
"I wish I could believe your moving to the lake is best."
"You act like we'll never see me again after August 31."
"Will I, Nick?"
[Back to Table of Contents]
Chapter Nine
NICK OPENED THE door to his carriage house apartment, stepped inside, and sniffed. When a place was closed up for a while, it smelled stale. His smelled like chocolate donuts. The kitchen blind he always kept open was closed. He took a few steps. Listened. All he heard was the clock in the living room.
It wasn't so odd to close a blind when you left in a hurry because your father had a heart attack. But he kept close count on his donuts, and the box sat inside the kitchen cabinet, empty. Was he that preoccupied? He walked through the living room to his work area, and everything looked normal.
Shrugging, he sat down in front of the computer. He'd worked on plot development for his book, scribbling on bits of paper to keep his mind occupied during those early days at the hospital. Smoothing those notes out on the table, he began to type them into a rough outline he kept. “John doesn't want to leave Isadora but wants to support her in style."
Nick gazed out his apartment window, thinking about his father, working and saving to take his wife to Paris, only to have her leave him. Turning back to the keyboard, he wrote a few more lines. “Isadora has just been elected mayor of their little town, making it even harder for her to go with him. John needs a job with as much clout, if their relationship is going to work.” And it must.
Nick was nearing the end of his book and could finish it on Dad's P.C. He stuck the backup discs of the manuscript in his briefcase and reached for his romance writer's handbook. Chocolate? There was a chocolate thumbprint on the cover. What the? “Somebody's been reading my book."
He thought he heard a muffled laugh and whirled. “Who's there?"
A faint fluttering broke the silence. Cloth. He crept around the folding screen into the bedroom. The window curtains were parted and he flipped them back, but no one was hidden there. He pulled up the quilt that hung to the floor and looked under the bed. Nothing but dustbunnies.
The closet door stood ajar. He eased it open and saw his raincoat hanging askew on a hanger.
His raincoat had tanned ankles and Italian leather sandals.
Isadora, the mop lady, had a stick instead of feet and stood in the corner of the same closet. Face heating up, Nick barked, “Susan Harte, come out of there"
She stepped out, a grin on her face. “You sounded like Goldilocks."
"You are an intolerable snoop."
"Because I looked at your pink book?"
"You know what I mean."
She kept her glance straight ahead, but there seemed to be a magnet in Nick's head pulling it toward the mop. He darted a glance. Susan grinned faintly. He glared at her. She moved away from the closet.
"Somebody's been eating my donuts,” she said in a deep voice.
"And they ate them all up,” Nick snapped.
"Sorry. I'll buy you some more and replace the other food I've eaten."
"How long have you been here?"
"Ever since y
ou left. I took off without anything but sneaked back home to pack some clothes and saw you put your suitcase in the Explorer. I didn't have anyplace to go and figured you'd be gone for a while, so I holed up here. I've been keeping an eye out for your return and saw you arrive."
She'd seen them kissing. Seen him fondling C.J. “I'm sorry, Susan."
She averted her head. “Celeste seems to like you a lot."
"I feel the same about her."
"I planned to leave without your knowing.” So why hadn't she? Was she ready to be found out and return home? “Do you ever eat anything besides junk food?"
His face reddened. Corn chips, toaster pastries, pop ... he couldn't recall anything nutritious on his cupboard shelves. “Beggars can't be choosers."
"I borrowed, I didn't beg, and I like junk food.” She looked at the briefcase. “Are you going away again?"
"For a couple of weeks or so. What are you going to do?"
She was careful to stay away from the uncurtained window behind the computer as she wandered into the living room and plopped down in a chair. “If Mark forgives me for disappearing, I have a wedding to plan, but I'm angry at Cee.” She dropped her head, and her ponytail fell forward over her shoulder. “And maybe ... my brother."
"Are you angry because she told you the truth or because she didn't tell you sooner?” Nick asked. Without waiting for an answer, he sat on the sofa and told her about his experience and his father protecting his mother. “I was able to forgive him because I knew he did what he thought was best for me."
Susan didn't look at him or say anything.
"If you want to stay here while I'm gone, the place was yours first and I don't mind, but please let Cee know you're okay. She's worried."
"I've missed my cell phone, but I couldn't call anyone anyway. Whomever I talked to might have told Cee where I was. I wanted her to worry."
"I'd say you've let her stew long enough. No sense in being cruel to someone who loves you.” Nick started packing, and while he threw things in a suitcase, he listened to Susan walking around the apartment. Was she sorting out more than her brother's marriage? Was she thinking about her own? When he came out of the bedroom, she was sitting in front of the computer he'd turned off. Her knees tucked under her chin, her arms wrapped around them, she gazed toward the main house. “Why would my brother want another woman when his wife was so good?"
Finding Mr. Romantic Page 14