A Kiss, a Dance & a Diamond

by Helen Lacey

  “I’ve arranged for a scrip for some painkillers you can fill at the hospital pharmacy, and I’d like to see him again in a few days, to make sure he’s free from infection,” he explained as they walked through triage, away from the two boys and through to the waiting room outside.

  Other than her nephews, the nurse on duty in triage and a couple of nurses in the reception area, the place was empty, and Kieran experienced a sudden and acute sense of discomfort. They were, in a sense, alone for the first time in fifteen years.

  And he could tell by the look in her brown eyes that he was about to get the telling off he figured was a decade and a half in the making...

  * * *

  Don’t do it...

  Nicola chanted the words to herself over and over. She didn’t want to make a scene. She didn’t want to spend any more time in Kieran O’Sullivan’s presence. But damn, it was hard. He was still too gorgeous for words...six foot two and a half, broad shoulders, brownish-blond hair that still flopped over his forehead when he tilted his head, glittering blue eyes and dark lashes. And the whiskery shadow across his jaw was too attractive for words. Not exactly a beard, but enough to give him a kind of rugged sexiness. She wished he’d grown up to be bald and pudgy. She wished he hadn’t decided to permanently return to Cedar River. She wished he hadn’t been so kind and considerate with Marco and that her nephew hadn’t actually responded to him—which was way more than he did with most people. She wished a whole lot of things. And in that moment she wished she could turn on her heels and leave the hospital as quickly as she could.

  But she couldn’t.

  She had Johnny and Marco to think about.

  A deep surge of grief coursed through her entire body when she thought about her older brother, Gino, and sister-in-law, Miranda. She loved her nephews but worried she wasn’t measuring up in the parent department. And along with running the restaurant and her father’s swiftly declining health, she had enough on her plate without adding an old boyfriend into the mix.

  But...she was mad.

  Seething.

  Kieran O’Sullivan had no right coming back to town! He’d set the rules on graduation day. He wanted a life and a career away from Cedar River. He didn’t want any ties. He didn’t want a girlfriend. He didn’t want to get engaged. He wanted to be able to screw around in college. He wanted his freedom.

  She should have seen it coming. In the weeks before graduation, he’d been distant and closed off and had avoided her like the plague. Ever since she’d suggested they make a real commitment to one another before heading off to separate colleges. And then, on graduation day, he’d dumped her, saying he didn’t want to be tied down...by her or Cedar River.

  But now he was back.

  And suddenly, all her pent-up rage, despair and resentment was pointing in one direction. And even though she knew that being angry was illogical after so many years, she couldn’t help it.

  “You’re a real jerk,” she said and waved her hands. “You know that? Why did you have to come back? Egoista, bastardo di cuore freddo!” she cursed in Italian, feeling her skin heat more with each passing second and fighting the urge to take a swipe at his handsome face. “Ti odio!”

  I hate you...

  They were strong words, and she knew he understood them. But he didn’t flinch. Didn’t speak. Didn’t do anything other than take her ranting at him as though he’d been expecting it. And that amplified her anger tenfold. She didn’t want him to be compliant and agreeable and ready for her insults. She wanted him to respond so she could go in for another round. And another. Until she was spent and done with all the pain she still harbored from her broken, seventeen-year-old-girl’s heart.

  “I know,” he said quietly. “I’m sorry.”

  Nicola tilted her chin. “Your apology is about fifteen years too late.”

  “I know that, too.”

  Nicola drew in a sharp breath. Typical of Kieran to be so damned agreeable! “I’ll take Marco to our usual doctor,” she said flatly. “That way I won’t have to see you again.”

  “If that’s what you’d prefer.”

  God, he was so compliant. “I think we both know what I’d prefer, Doctor.”

  “That I’d stayed away?”

  “Exactly.”

  “It’s my hometown, Nicola...just as much as it is yours. And I’m pretty sure it’s big enough for both of us.”

  Nicola glanced around, arms crossed, temper surging. “It doesn’t feel like it right now.” She sucked in a long and steadying breath. “However, I do appreciate you looking after him tonight.”

  She wasn’t about to tell him that it was the first time she’d seen Marco really respond to someone new since his parents had been killed. And of course she wasn’t surprised that Kieran had a great bedside manner. He’d always been too damned charming for his own good!

  “We don’t have to be friends, Nicola,” he said evenly. “But we don’t have to be enemies, either.”

  “I don’t want us to be anything,” she shot back. “Except strangers.”

  “You’re my sister-in-law’s friend,” he reminded her. “This is a small town, and we’re bound to run into one another occasionally. I prefer we weren’t at war when we did.”

  He was right. Her longtime friend Kayla had married Kieran’s brother, and they’d just had their first child. They would definitely cross paths.

  But she resented that he was so cool, so logical...so incredibly infuriating about the whole situation.

  A typical O’Sullivan trait. They were the wealthiest family in town. And the most entitled. They owned commercial and investment property and several businesses, including the hugely successful O’Sullivan’s Hotel. The eldest brother, Liam, ran the hotel and most of the other holdings, while the younger brother Sean was a movie and music producer in LA. Their sister, Liz, had passed away a few years earlier from some kind of heart thing, leaving behind three young daughters. And there was another brother, too, called Jonah, who they’d just discovered existed and was the reason his parents were now in the middle of a divorce.

  And then there was Kieran—the brother who’d left to pursue his dream of a medical career. And he’d got exactly what he wanted. He was smart and charming and too good-looking for words. He’d once been her closest friend, her lover, her future. Now, all she felt was hurt and rage when she thought of him. Nicola tried to wrap up her temper and put it away where it belonged. But it was so hard.

  Pull yourself together. He’s not worth it.

  “Can we go now?”

  Johnny’s voice. Jerking her back into the land of good sense and logic.

  Nicola crossed her arms and moved quickly toward him. “Of course,” she said to her nephew. She glanced briefly toward Kieran. “Thank you for your help.”

  She didn’t look at him again as she walked back into triage, quickly ushering both boys back through the corridor. And did her best to ignore Kieran. But he watched her. She could feel his gaze burning through her as she left. She made a quick stop at the pharmacy to fill the painkiller prescription and then headed home, her thoughts consumed by the last person she wanted to think about.

  She was embarrassed that she’d lost her temper. But, hell and damnation, he pushed her buttons! He always had. In high school she’d been desperately in love with him.

  After graduation day, she’d hated him.

  That rage and anger had kept her going, made her stronger, gave her the strength to leave town and pursue her dreams. She’d headed to California and attended college in San Francisco, studied hard and graduated with a degree and a burning desire to climb the corporate ladder. Six years later, she was head of human resources at an organic food company. That was where she’d met Carl. He was the managing director of the East Coast division. He was smart and good-looking and recently divorced. They’d had a whirlwind romance. Despite her
friends warning her she was his rebound relationship, within a year they’d bought a house, an engagement ring and made plans for the future. But three months later he left, claiming he still had feelings for his ex-wife. The house was sold and she quickly returned the ring.

  Broken and hurt, Nicola had learned a valuable lesson—she was never going to be anyone’s rebound girl again.

  “Aunt Nicola,” Marco said as they drove back through town, “can we have gelato when we get home?”

  She glanced at the clock on the dash. It was seven o’clock, a little late for her nephew’s favorite treat. “Tomorrow,” she promised. “I’ll get Nonno to make your favorite strawberry flavor, okay?”

  Despite his declining health, her father still insisted on making the gelato that JoJo’s was famous for. The pizzeria had been in her family for over forty years, since her grandfather had started the place a decade after he’d arrived in Cedar River. Back then, he’d planned on making a fortune mining silver, but instead Guido and Josephine Radici had turned their hands to doing what they did best—cooking the most authentic Italian cuisine this side of the Black Hills. And it was a family business in the truest sense of the word. Her father, Salvatore, had learned the business from his father and continued on alone after her mother’s death a few years earlier. Her late brother Gino had learned from their dad. Although she missed her mother, Nicola was glad her mom hadn’t had to endure Gino’s passing. It was bad enough watching her father slowly deteriorate through his grief at the loss of his beloved son, along with a series of minor strokes. And since her older brother Vince had moved to San Francisco years ago, now there was just her...trying to cobble together some sense of normalcy for Gino’s two sons.

  But it wasn’t easy. With Marco’s emotional withdrawal and Johnny’s penchant for getting into trouble, she had her hands full. Both boys grieved in their own way, but it was Marco who really concerned her. He suffered from night terrors and had developed a severe fear of water. Although neither of the boys were with their parents at the time of the accident, the fact they were killed while sailing had profoundly affected Marco, and now he refused to go near water except for a quick shower at bath time. He’d always loved fishing but now resorted to hooking plastic toys from a bucket in the backyard.

  Once they were back home, Nicola parked the car, grabbed her tote and ushered the boys from the back seat. The house was where the boys had always lived—Gino and Miranda’s home, which they’d bought when they got married. It was a few minutes out of town, on a wide, tree-lined street, with a swing set in the backyard and a porch out front. After her brother’s death, Nicola had quickly packed up her life in San Francisco and moved in, trying to keep the boys’ normal routine as smooth as possible—soccer on Saturdays, joining a couple of other parents in a carpool for school pick-up twice a week, family night on a Friday with a movie and popcorn in the rooms behind the restaurant. She even did her best to pack the same kind of lunches that their mother had each morning.

  Her friend Annie Jamison was a nanny to three children, and she’d counselled Nicola to maintain as much of their old routine as possible to encourage emotional stability in the wake of their grief and loss. So she did. Normality was the key.

  Even though, some days, she felt as though every moment was an uphill battle.

  And tonight, she discovered about an hour later, was becoming one of those battles.

  Johnny wanted to stay up late to play a computer game, and Marco refused to go to bed and was holed up in his room, hiding in the corner of his closet, rejecting her requests to come out even when she relented and offered him the gelato he’d asked for earlier.

  “Please come out,” she pleaded, standing by the closet door, knowing she could wrestle him out of the small space, but she didn’t want to upset him any more than he already was.

  Yeah...an uphill battle just about covered it.

  “No,” he wailed. “You don’t care what happens to me.”

  Nicola hung on to patience and remained by the door. “Of course I do. Please, Marco...it’s nearly bedtime. You have to get up for school in the morning.”

  “I’m not going back to that stupid school!”

  She sucked in a long breath. “Marco, please—”

  “Everyone’s hates me. And my hand hurts,” he wailed. “No one is nice to me. Not you. Not Johnny. No one except that doctor.”

  Except that doctor.

  Nicola’s breath stilled in her chest. Kieran. She tried to ignore the way her pulse started to beat wildly. “Well, he’s not here. He’s at the hospital, and you don’t need to be there now. But I’m here, and I’d really like to talk to you. So, can you come out, and we’ll have some gelato and spend some time together...okay?”

  Silence. The deafening kind. She heard movement and thought she’d made progress when he spoke again. “You could call him. Doctors come to people’s houses, too.”

  Nicola hung on to her patience and took a deep breath. “I can’t do that.”

  She heard him huff. “You never do anything I want. Only what Johnny wants.”

  The pain in his voice was unmistakable. The boys had once been close, but over the past few months she’d seen the divide between them become wider.

  The guilt landed squarely on her shoulders. She was a lousy parent. And she clearly needed help.

  Nicola left the room and headed downstairs. She got to the living room and discovered the overhead light bulb had blown. Great...that’s all I need. She loathed heights and had no intention of bothering her neighbor for a ladder, even though she was sure the elderly man would help if she asked. Besides, her independent streak made her resist asking anyone for assistance. But as she got to the kitchen, filled the kettle and sat down at the table, Nicola admitted that she did need help. Right now.

  A minute later she was calling the hospital, feeling foolish through to her bones. He’d probably left for the night, and she hoped he had. She didn’t want to talk to him. She didn’t want to ask for his help. But within seconds she was connected to the ER, and a moment later she heard his deep voice.

  “O’Sullivan,” he said as a greeting.

  She clenched the phone and sucked in a sharp breath. “Kieran...”

  Silence stretched like brittle elastic, and then he spoke again. “Nicola? Is that you?”

  She was shocked that he’d recognized her voice. “I... I...”

  “Is everything okay?”

  Her belly did a foolish loop-the-loop at the concern in his voice, and then words just blurted out. “Kieran... I need you.”

  Chapter Two

  Twenty minutes later Kieran was pulling up outside a two-story home on Grove Street.

  I need you...

  It had been fifteen years since he’d heard Nicola say anything so provocative.

  He glanced at the address scribbled on a crumpled note on the passenger seat and saw that he had the right place. It was ironic that she lived only a couple of streets from the apartment he’d rented. The large Victorian he’d moved into five days earlier had been divided into several apartments, and his was on the second floor. His sister-in-law, Kayla, had been the previous tenant so it had been an easy sublet, taking over the payments and dealing with the landlord. And he liked the place well enough. There was one bedroom, a combined kitchen and dining room, and a spacious living room—plenty of room for the few boxes and sparse assortment of furniture he’d brought with him from Sioux Falls.

  He got out, locked the Jeep and headed for the house. The porch light flicked on the moment he closed the white picket gate, and within seconds the front door opened. Once he was up the three steps and on the porch, Nicola was there, holding the screen door open and inviting him inside.

  “Thank you for coming,” she said quickly as he crossed the threshold and she closed the door. “I know it’s late and you’ve been working and I shouldn’t have
called but he was asking for you and I didn’t—”

  “Nicola,” he said, cutting her off as he followed her down the hall. “Slow down, you’re rambling.”

  She stopped and turned to face him. God, she was beautiful. His blood suddenly rumbled in his veins, and an old attraction spectacularly resurfaced, knocking him out. And in that moment he realized nothing had changed. He was still as attracted to Nicola as he’d always been.

  But he would never let her know it. There was no point. They were ancient history, and he was in no condition to get involved with anyone. Particularly a woman who clearly hated the sight of him.

  “Rambling?” she echoed, glaring at him.

  He nodded, biting back a grin. “Yeah...rambling. Take a breath and calm down.”

  “I am calm,” she shot back. “I’ve just had a crappy day. We’ll have to go to the kitchen as the light bulb in the living room has blown.”

  He glanced into the darkened room as they passed. “Want me to fix it?”

  “No,” she said and kept walking.

  “So, what seems to be the problem?”

  “I can’t get Marco out of the closet,” she said and then quickly explained how the boy liked to hide there. “And when he asked to see you, I just... I couldn’t think of anything else to do except call. He doesn’t generally take to strangers...which is good, I suppose. But he seemed to connect with you at the hospital, and all I could do was what he asked. Right now, I simply want him to come out of the closet and get some sleep. Plus, he said his hand hurts.”

  “He’s got a few stitches, so that’s not unusual,” Kieran said, realizing she was clearly frazzled and holding on by a thread. “I’ll talk to him in a minute, but perhaps you should fill me in on what’s been going on with him lately.”

  She nodded. “Sure.”

  Kieran followed her up the hall. “Where’s your other nephew?”

  “Bed. Johnny fights to stay up and play video games and then ends up flaked out on the floor in his room,” she said as they entered the kitchen. “He’s willful and defiant and doesn’t do anything I say. Unlike Marco, who is usually a people pleaser and hates getting into trouble. But tonight... I think he’s simply overwhelmed by his injury and after what happened at school...” She sighed and her voice trailed off. “It’s been one of those days.”