by Marie Force
In the driveway, he noticed the sleek Porsche that Jared brought with him whenever he came to the island. His comings and goings were always a mystery to David, who often didn’t lay eyes on his elusive landlord for months on end.
He took the stairs to his apartment, thinking about Daisy, hoping she’d be okay today and counting the hours until he could be with her again. Inside his front door, he stopped short when he saw his mother sitting on the sofa, nursing a takeout cup of coffee and flipping through the Gansett Gazette. How had he missed her car in the driveway? He’d been too captivated by the Porsche, apparently.
“Hey, Mom. What’re you doing here?” He’d given her an extra key in case he ever got locked out, but he hadn’t expected her to actually use it.
“I was concerned when I couldn’t reach you.”
David drew his phone from his pocket and noticed three calls from her that he’d missed when he’d been occupied the night before. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing other than I have no idea where my son has been the last few days.”
“I’ve been busy, Mom. I have a job and a life.”
“Too busy to call me once in a while?”
He wanted to remind her that he was thirty years old and didn’t need to check in with her the way he used to, but ever since the lymphoma diagnosis, she’d been hovering the way she had when he was younger. Since she and his sisters had gotten him through the worst of his illness and the treatment, he supposed she had the right to hover. But breaking and entering was taking it a bit far, even for her.
“I’m sorry to have been out of touch.” David went to the kitchen and moved through the motions of making coffee. “Things have been nuts.”
“What happened to your lip?”
David stopped moving and tried to think of a story she would be believe. “I punched myself when I was pulling on something and my hand slipped.”
Her raised brow indicated her skeptical reaction. “I heard you’ve been dating.”
His muscles tightened with tension that he was certain she saw because she didn’t miss anything. “Maybe. Some.”
“Were you going to tell me you’ve met someone, David?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. Eventually.” His parents had been enraged—and ashamed—over what’d happened with Janey. He hoped to never again give them reason to be ashamed of him, but he also had a right to privacy, as did Daisy.
“Who is she?”
“I don’t think you know her.”
“I’d like to know her if she’s important to you.”
She was important to him and becoming more so with every passing day, but that didn’t mean he was ready to bring her home to meet his parents. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Will you tell me her name?”
“Daisy.”
“That’s all I’m getting?”
Though he desperately wanted a shower and a shave and needed to get to work for nine o’clock appointments, he sat for a minute on the sofa. “Daisy Babson. She’s the housekeeping manager at the McCarthy’s hotel.”
His mother’s raised brow conveyed a world of disbelief. “She works for Janey’s parents?”
“Yes.”
“Well, you don’t do anything simply, do you?”
“Janey and her parents have nothing to do with this.”
“I heard you were called to her house last night.”
“Jesus! This island is unreal! Don’t people have anything to do besides mind other people’s business?”
“No, not really. And it certainly shouldn’t be a surprise to you that news travels fast around here.”
“I was called there in a professional capacity. I went in a professional capacity. I performed professional duties. I did my job.”
“What does your friend Daisy think of you running off to tend to your ex-fiancée?”
“My friend Daisy knows it’s been over between Janey and me for two years now, and that as the island’s only doctor, I’m obligated to care for everyone, regardless of what personal relationship I may or may not have with them.”
“She’s very understanding.”
“If she wasn’t, I wouldn’t be seeing her.”
His mother studied him for a long moment, during which he tried not to squirm under her scrutiny. “You never told me how it went in Boston.”
“Everything was fine.”
Before his eyes, she visibly sagged, and he regretted not telling her immediately that his test results had all come back negative.
“I would’ve told you if there was anything to worry about. You know that.”
“I’ve done my share of worrying over you in the last couple of years.”
“I know, and I’m sorry to have given you cause, but you have to believe me when I tell you I’m fine—physically and every other way, too.” In fact, he hadn’t been quite so fine in years.
“Was it weird to see Janey in her home, pregnant and all of that?”
“I’ve seen her pregnant before last night.”
“You know what I mean, David.”
“It wasn’t as weird as you might think. I’ve come to see that we both ended up where we were meant to be. She’s happy with Joe. They’re good together. And I’m figuring things out. Slowly but surely.” He had faith that he and Daisy would make a go of it—eventually—not that he wanted to share that thought with his mother. The relationship was too new, and after last night, too fragile to talk about just yet.
“You look good,” she said, taking another perusing inventory of his features.
“I feel good.”
“That’s all I want to hear.” She tossed the newspaper onto his coffee table. “You can have that. I’m done with it.”
He walked her to the door. “Shall we talk about the rules for the extra key?” he asked, keeping his tone light.
“You wouldn’t want me waiting outside in the heat when I could enjoy your perfectly comfortable sofa and your AC, now would you?” She went up on tiptoes to kiss his cheek. “Bring your friend Daisy over sometime. We’d love to meet her.”
“Bye, Mom.”
He closed the door behind her and shook his head, amused by the way she still could manage him like no one else ever had. In turn, she drove him bonkers and cracked him up, but he could never doubt her devotion. Sometimes he wished she were a little less devoted. In fact, he’d nearly turned down the offer to become the island’s doctor because he worried about the close proximity to his doting mother.
Until today, she’d been respectful of his boundaries, but he couldn’t blame her for coming to check on him after not hearing from him for days.
As he shaved, showered and got dressed for work, it occurred to him that she’d never asked him where he was coming from first thing in the morning. No doubt she’d put two and two together to get that he’d been with Daisy overnight. While he wasn’t sure he was ready for her to have that information, and he definitely didn’t care if she knew about Daisy, he was glad she hadn’t asked.
Thinking about Daisy and what’d nearly happened between them made him hard in the shower. He considered taking care of business right then and there but decided he’d rather wait for her. The two years he’d spent rebuilding his life had been put to good use if it meant he was now ready for her and for what they might have together. If it took her a while longer to get there, so be it.
In some ways, he felt like he was emerging from a long, dark winter into a spring filled with optimism and hope. She’d done that for him with her gentle, sweet disposition, her appreciation of the little things that others took for granted, her unconditional acceptance of his failings and faults. He hoped he could do the same for her.
He wanted to make her smile the way she had last night before things had gone wrong. He wanted to make her laugh. He wanted to make her happy. Making her happy made him happy.
Reliving the erotic thrill of holding her and kissing her had him hard and trembling with the need for more. He hadn’t felt thi
s way since he’d been newly enamored with Janey McCarthy half a lifetime ago.
Chapter 11
On the way to the clinic, he called the island florist, ordered two-dozen stargazer lilies and asked that they be delivered to Daisy’s home later in the afternoon. He’d love to send them to her at work, but that would set the whole island to buzzing, and he didn’t want that for her, especially since she worked for Janey’s mother. He wanted to be mindful of not doing anything to make her uncomfortable, so he tried to think of what to put on the card that wouldn’t give too much away. It occurred to him that he should’ve figured that out before he placed the call. “Just put, ‘Thanks for being you. David.’”
“Sure thing, Dr. Lawrence. We’ll take care of that for you.”
“Thank you.” David stashed his phone in the breast pocket of his dress shirt. “Thanks for being you? Jesus, how lame is that?”
He was still berating himself for the stupid card when he walked into the clinic, where Seamus O’Grady and Carolina Cantrell waited for him. Carolina looked like she’d been in a fight with an angry cat.
“What happened?”
“My poor love fell into a thorn bush last night,” Seamus said. He had his arm tight around Carolina, who seemed like she was annoyed and in pain. “She says she’s fine, but she’s feverish and ripped to shreds. I thought she ought to be seen.”
“Let’s get you into an exam room, Carolina,” David said, signaling for the receptionist. “We’ll get you fixed right up.”
“Thanks, Doc,” Carolina said. “I feel foolish for wasting your time over some cuts and scrapes.”
“Let me be the judge of whether it’s a waste of my time,” David said with a smile. He was continually surprised by how apologetic his patients could be for taking up his time with their concerns.
“Come on, love,” Seamus said, helping her to stand.
“Would you like me to get a wheelchair?” David asked.
“Absolutely not,” Carolina said, even though every step seemed to cause her pain.
By the time he got Carolina’s nasty scratches cleaned up, he was an hour behind on his appointments, so the morning flew by. He treated a case of tonsillitis, sent a boy with a potentially hot appendix to the mainland for immediate treatment and saw three people with flu-like symptoms that had him concerned about an outbreak on the island.
Victoria found him in his office, standing up as he downed a sandwich between patients and making frantic notes about the patients he’d already seen that day so he wouldn’t forget the information he need to add to their charts. “Crazy morning, huh?” she asked.
“Most of them are.”
“Janey was here. I had her on the monitor for an hour. The baby seems fine, but her BP is still a little higher than I’d like it to be. I agree with your plan for complete bed rest, even if she doesn’t.”
“She’ll do it. She’d never endanger the baby or herself.”
“I know, but it sucks to be stuck in bed all summer.”
“Yep. Did you dip her urine?”
“I did, and the protein counts are up, too.” She handed him the report.
“Shit,” he said as he reviewed the numbers. “I was hoping this wasn’t what it appears to be.”
“So was I.”
“We’ll have to keep a very close eye on her over the next couple of weeks. She’ll need to be on the mainland by thirty-six weeks.”
“I figured you’d say that, so that’s what I told her.”
“Good. Glad we’re on the same page.”
She handed him two other pieces of paper. “Messages from this morning.”
David scanned the two messages, his heart stopping at the sight of his oncologist’s name on one of them. What the hell did he want?
“Everything okay?”
“Yeah, sure.” Knowing his test results had all been fine, he put aside the worries about the oncologist for a moment to deal with a more pressing issue. “Could I ask you something?”
“Hit me.”
“I sent flowers to Daisy.”
“Ohhhh, things are getting serious!”
“I sent her flowers. I didn’t propose.”
“One often leads to the other.”
“Since when?”
Her smile told him she was enjoying pushing his buttons. She usually did. “What do you want to ask me?”
“I think what I put on the card is kind of lame.”
“What did you say?”
“Thanks for being you.”
Her wince validated his concerns. “Hmm. That’s not exactly an insult, but it could be better.”
The choice of words made him smile. He’d been hearing that a lot lately.
“What’s the occasion?”
“Occasion? There’s no occasion. I sent her flowers.”
“For no reason at all?”
He never should’ve involved her in this, but he desperately needed a woman’s opinion, and she was handy. “There might’ve been a bit of a… development… in our relationship last night.”
Her dark eyes lit up the way they did when she was on to a big scoop.
“It’s not what you think,” he said, hoping to shut her down before she got all crazy. “And that’s all I’m saying about it.”
“Oh my God, you did it! You bumped uglies, did the horizontal bop, the mattress mambo.” She tilted her hips provocatively to make her point, not that she needed visuals to make her point.
“Victoria, I swear to God—”
She surprised the shit out of him when she squealed and leaped into his arms. Thankfully he caught her and kept his balance, or they both might’ve needed medical care of their own. “Finally! You’re back! The protracted mourning period is over! Thank you, Jesus, and thank you, Daisy!”
Ready to wring her neck, he put her down and stepped back from her. “I’m going to muzzle you if you don’t pipe down right now.”
She clapped her hands together and continued to giggle and squeal as David sat in his desk chair, wishing he could take back the last ten minutes of his life. “We didn’t ‘bump uglies’ as you put it, but we bumped a few other things.”
“In that case, you’re right. That card is lame in light of recent developments. You need to do better. Can you still fix it?”
“I asked them to deliver the flowers late this afternoon when she gets home from work, so I guess there’s still time.”
She sat in his visitor chair. “We need to give this significant thought.”
“No, we don’t. I’ll think of something.”
She gave him a horrified look. “You thought ‘Thanks for being you’ was good enough!”
“You may have a point.” Her snort of laughter drew a smile from him. “So dazzle me. What should it say?”
“You were great last night, baby?”
“Victoria…”
“I love messing with you. It makes me happy.”
“I live to serve you.”
“How about, ‘I can’t wait to see you again.’”
David thought about that. “Does that send the right message?”
“Well, can you wait to see her again?”
As David scrubbed a hand over his face, the mostly sleepless night caught up with him. “God, I walked right into that, didn’t I?”
Victoria bounded to her feet. “It does the job and apparently it’s the truth, so call the florist.”
“I will. So what’s going on with the Irishman?”
“I’ll tell you all about him, but first I want to do something else.”
“What?” he asked, perplexed as she came around his desk.
She bent and kissed him on the cheek. “Welcome back. It’s high time you forgave yourself and decided to move on with someone else.”
“I wasn’t aware that I hadn’t forgiven myself.”
“You hadn’t. Until recently.”
“Well, thank you for letting me know. I appreciate that insight.”
“I’m serious. It
hasn’t been easy as your friend to watch you beating yourself up for a mistake you made two years ago while Janey and Joe and everyone else involved have moved on with their lives.”
“I haven’t been doing that, Vic.”
Hands on her hips, she tilted her head, calling him out on his bullshit without saying a word.
“Okay, maybe I did some of that.”
“A lot of it.”
“If you say so.”
“I do.”
He fiddled with a pen on his desk. While Victoria was often an annoying pain in his ass, she was also insightful. And she was female, and he desperately needed her perspective on what’d happened last night. “So, the reason we didn’t… was because she panicked at the moment, if you get my drift.”
“Oh jeez, really? What did you do?”
“Tried to comfort her, but it was bad. She was crying and trembling.” Just thinking about it made him ache for being the cause of such distress, even if he knew logically that he wasn’t the real cause. He could thank Truck Henry for the damage he’d left in his wake.
Victoria looked at him thoughtfully. “What happened after she panicked?”
“We talked it out, and I stayed with her.”
“Until she fell asleep or all night?”
“All night.”
“That’s good. You did the right thing staying with her.”
“I only left because I had to get to work, but I’m going back after work and tomorrow night and the next night.”
As he spoke, Victoria nodded. “That’s what you need to do. After a while, hopefully she won’t associate the act with him anymore.”
He glanced at her. “What if she always associates the act with him?”
“She won’t. You have to remember it’s only been a few weeks. She may be healed on the outside, but on the inside she has a ways to go. But just like the bruises on the outside faded with time, so too will the bruises on the inside—especially if she knows she has all the time she needs. That’s going to be really important to her.”
“I told her I’m not going anywhere and that I want to be with her.”