Hidden Riches

by Nora Roberts

  Dora smiled a little. “You nurses have ranks?”

  “I’m talking about Jed, dimwit. He’s financing this operation.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean you’ve got round-the-clock home care for as long as you need it, courtesy of Captain J. T. Skimmerhorn.”

  “But—I thought insurance was arranging it.”

  “Get real.” Chuckling at the thought, Mary Pat plumped the pillows, smoothed the sheets. “Now, get some rest. I’m going to go fix you something to eat.”

  “He shouldn’t feel guilty,” Dora murmured when Mary Pat started out of the room.

  Mary Pat stopped, looked back. “He feels a lot more than guilt where you’re concerned. Did you know he didn’t leave the hospital for the first forty-eight hours?”

  “No.” Dora looked down at her hands. “I didn’t.”

  “Or that he checked on you every night.”

  Dora only shook her head.

  “A lot of women wait their whole lives for someone to feel that guilty.”

  Alone, Dora reached for the music box. She opened the lid, closed her eyes and wondered what to do.

  At the end of her shift, Mary Pat passed her patient’s progress on to her replacement. But she didn’t consider herself off duty yet. Marching across the hall, she rapped sharply on Jed’s door. When Jed opened it, she jabbed a finger into his chest.

  “Couldn’t you find the energy to walk across the Goddamn hall and—” She broke off, scowling. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m packing.”

  Darts of righteous fury shot out of her eyes. “The hell you are.” Incensed, she stomped over and upended a box of books onto the floor. “You’re not walking out on her when she’s flat on her back and defenseless.”

  “I’m not walking out.” He struggled for calm. He’d convinced himself, very logically, that what he was doing, he was doing for Dora. “She asked me to leave. It’s only going to upset her if she finds out I haven’t moved yet.”

  Mary Pat fisted her hands on her hips. “You’re an idiot. I can almost accept that. But I never thought you were a coward.”

  “Back off, MP.”

  “Not a chance. Can you stand there and tell me you’re not in love with her?”

  He reached for a cigarette. Mary Pat snatched it out of his hand and broke it in two. He glared. She glared right back.

  “No, I can’t. But that’s not the point. The doctor was real clear about keeping her free from stress. She doesn’t need me hanging around upsetting her.”

  “Sit down. Sit down, damn it.” She gave him a quick shove. “I’m going to tell you exactly what she needs.”

  “Fine.” He slumped into a chair. “I’m sitting.”

  “Have you ever told her you loved her?”

  “I don’t see that that’s any of your business.”

  “I didn’t think so.” Impatient, she took a quick turn around the room, barely preventing herself from kicking his weight bench. “Have you ever picked her wildflowers?”

  “It’s fucking February.”

  “You know exactly what I’m talking about.” She turned on him, slapped both hands on the arm of his chair to cage him in. “I’ll lay odds you never lit candles for her, or took her for a walk by the river, or brought her some silly present.”

  “I gave her a damn music box.”

  “Not enough. She needs to be wooed.”

  Incredibly, he felt a flush creeping up on his neck. “Give me a break.”

  “I’d like to break your butt, but I’m sworn to heal. You almost lost her.”

  His eyes whipped up, sharp as a sword. “Don’t you think I know that? I wake up in a sweat every night remembering how close it was.”

  “Then do something positive. Show her what she means to you.”

  “I don’t want to push myself on her when she’s vulnerable.”

  Mary Pat rolled her eyes. “Then you are stupid.” Feeling sorry for him, she kissed him. “Find some wildflowers, Jed. My money’s on you.”

  The box arrived the following afternoon.

  “More presents,” Lea announced, struggling to shove the huge box across the living room to where Dora sat on the couch. “I’m thinking of getting shot myself—as long as it’s a flesh wound.”

  “Believe me, it’s not worth it. Get the scissors, will you? Let’s get the baby open.” She leaned down to study. “No return address.”

  “Ah, a secret admirer.” Tongue caught in her teeth, Lea attacked the packing tape. “Oh,” she said, deflating when she opened the lid. “It’s just books.”

  “God. Oh my God. Carolyn Keene.” She was down on her knees, rummaging. “Nancy Drew—it looks like the complete set. And first editions. Look, look. It’s The Clue of the Leaning Chimney, The Hidden Staircase.” All at once she clutched the books to her breasts and began to weep.

  “Honey, oh, honey, did you hurt yourself? Let me help you to bed.”

  “No.” She pressed Password to Larkspur Lane against her cheek. “They’re from Jed.”

  “I see,” Lea said carefully, and sat back on her heels.

  “He went to all this trouble just to be sweet. Why is he being so sweet? Look, a few days ago he sent me this bracelet.” She held out her arm and continued babbling even when Lea oohed and aahed over it. “And that silly cow, and the watercolor. Why is he doing this? What’s wrong with him?”

  “Love sickness would be my guess.”

  Dora sniffled and rubbed tears away with the sleeve of her robe. “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Honey, don’t you know when you’re being romanced?” Lea picked up a book, turned it over, shook her head. “I myself might prefer a slightly different style, but this certainly seems to have punched your buttons.”

  “He’s just feeling sorry for me. And guilty.” She hitched back tears, blinked them away. “Isn’t he?”

  “Honey, the man I saw haunting that hospital wasn’t there out of guilt.” She reached over to tuck her sister’s hair behind her ear. “Are you going to give him a break?”

  She laid a book on her lap, running her hands gently over the cover. “Before I was shot, I broke things off with him. I told him to move out. He hurt me, Lea. I don’t want him to hurt me again.”

  “I can’t tell you what to do, but it seems awfully unfair to make him keep suffering.” She kissed Dora’s forehead, then rose to answer the knock on the door. “Hi, Jed.” Lea smiled and kissed him as well. “Your surprise hit the mark. She’s in there right now crying over the books.”

  He stepped back automatically, but Lea took his hand and pulled him inside. “Look who’s here.”

  “Hi.” Dora brushed at tears and managed a shaky smile. “These are great.” Her eyes overflowed again. “Really great.”

  “Their value’s going to plummet if they’re water-damaged,” he warned her.

  “You’re right. But I always get sentimental over first editions.”

  “I was just on my way out.” Lea grabbed her coat, but neither of them paid any attention to her departure.

  “I don’t know what to say.” She continued to press The Hidden Staircase like a beloved child to her breast.

  “Say thanks,” he suggested.

  “Thanks. But, Jed—”

  “Listen, I’ve got the go-ahead to spring you for a while. You up for a drive?”

  “Are you kidding?” She scrambled to her feet. “Outside? All the way outside and not to the hospital?”

  “Get your coat, Conroy.”

  “I can’t believe it,” she said a few minutes later as she slid luxuriously down in the seat of Jed’s car. “No nurses. No looming thermometers or blood-pressure cuffs.”

  “How’s the shoulder doing?”

  “It’s sore.” She opened the window just to feel the rush of air on her face and missed the way his fingers tightened on the wheel. “They make me do this physical therapy, which is—to put it mildly—unpleasant. But it’s effective.” She jockeyed her
elbow to a right angle to prove it. “Not bad, huh?”

  “That’s great.” There was such restrained violence in the statement she lifted a brow.

  “Everything all right at work?”

  “It’s fine. You were right all along. I shouldn’t have left.”

  “You just needed some time.” She touched his arm, letting her hand fall away when he jerked. It was time, she thought, to clear the air. “Jed, I know that we were in a difficult position before—well, before I was hurt. I know I was unkind.”

  “Don’t.” He didn’t think he could bear it. “You were right. Everything you said was right. I didn’t want you to get too close, and I made certain you couldn’t. You were one of the main reasons I went back on the job, but I didn’t share it with you because I would have had to admit that it mattered. That what you thought of me mattered. It was deliberate.”

  She rolled up the window again, shutting out the wind. “There’s no point in raking it up again.”

  “I guess it would sound pretty convenient if I told you that I was going to ask you to forgive me, that I’d have been willing to beg for another chance, before you got hurt.” He shot her a look, caught her wide-eyed stare then scowled back through the windshield in disgust. “Yeah, that’s what I thought you’d say.”

  “I’m not sure,” she said cautiously, “what another chance might entail.”

  He was going to try to show her. He pulled up in the driveway, set the brake, then rounded the hood to help her out. Because she was staring at his house, she moved wrong and bumped her arm against the car door.

  “Damn.” Her gasp of helpless pain broke him.

  “I can’t stand to see you hurt.” Shielding her arm, he gathered her close. “I just can’t stand it. It rips at me, Dora, every time I think of it. Every time I remember what it was like to see you on the floor, to have your blood on my hands.” He began to tremble, all those honed muscles quivering like plucked strings. “I thought you were dead. I looked at you and I thought you were dead.”

  “Don’t.” She soothed automatically. “I’m all right now.”

  “I didn’t prevent it,” he said fiercely. “I was too late.”

  “But you weren’t. You saved my life. He’d have killed me. He wanted to, as much as he wanted the painting. You stopped him.”

  “It isn’t enough.” Fighting for control, he gentled his grip on her and stepped back.

  “It suits me pretty well, Jed.” She lifted a hand to his cheek. He grasped at it, pressed it hard to his lips.

  “Just give me a minute.” He stood there a moment, with the air cool and crisp, whispering through denuded trees and sleeping winter grass. “You shouldn’t be standing out in the cold.”

  “It feels great.”

  “I want you to come inside. I want to finish this inside.”

  “All right.” Though she no longer felt weak, she let him support her as they went up the walk. She thought he needed to.

  But it was he who was unsteady as he unlocked the door, opened it, led her inside. His nerves jumped as she let out a quiet gasp of pleasure.

  She stepped onto the welcoming Bokhara rug. “You’ve put things back.”

  “Some.” He watched the way she ran her fingertips over the rosewood table, the curved back of a chair, the way she smiled at the fussy gilded mirror. “My landlord kicked me out, so I took a few things out of storage.”

  “The right things.” She walked on into the front parlor. He’d put back a curvy pin-striped settee, a lovely Tiffany lamp on a satinwood table. There was a fire burning low in the hearth. She felt both a surge of pleasure and grief. “You’re moving back in.”

  “That depends.” He slipped her coat carefully off her shoulders, laid it on the arm of the settee. “I came back here last week. It wasn’t the same. I could see you walking up the stairs, sitting on my window seat, looking out the kitchen window. You changed the house,” he said as she turned slowly to face him. “You changed me. I want to move back in, and make it work. If you’ll come with me.”

  Dora didn’t think the sudden dizziness had anything to do with her healing injuries. “I think I want to sit down.” She lowered herself to the striped cushions and took two careful breaths. “You’re going to move back here? You want to move back here?”

  “Yeah, that’s right.”

  “And you want me to live with you?”

  “If that’s the best I can get.” He took a small box out of his pocket and pushed it into her hands. “I’d like it better if you’d marry me.”

  “Can I—” Her voice came out in a squeak. “Can I have some water?”

  Frustrated, he dragged a hand through his hair. “Damn it, Conroy—sure.” He bit back on temper and a terrible fit of nerves. “Sure, I’ll get it.”

  She waited until he was out of the room before she worked up the courage to open the box. She was glad she had because her mouth fell open. She was still staring dumbfounded at the ring when he came back in carrying a Baccarat tumbler filled with lukewarm tap water.

  “Thanks.” She took the glass, drank deeply. “It’s a whopper.”

  Disgusted with himself, he fumbled out a cigarette. “I guess it’s overstated.”

  “Oh no. There isn’t a diamond in the world that’s overstated.” She laid the box in her lap, but kept a hand possessively around it. “Jed, I think these past few weeks have been as hard on you as they have on me. I might not have appreciated that, but—”

  “I love you, Dora.”

  That stopped her cold. Before she could gather her wits, he was beside her on the settee, crunching several bones in her hand. “Goddamn it, don’t ask me for another glass of water. If you don’t want to answer yet, I’ll wait. I just want a chance to make you love me again.”

  “Is that what all this has been about? The presents and the phone calls? You were trying to undermine my defenses when I was down.”

  He looked down at their joined hands. “That about sizes it up.”

  She nodded, then rose to walk to the window. She’d want tulips out there in the spring, she thought. And lots of sunny daffodils.

  “Good job,” she said quietly. “Damn good job, Skimmerhorn. It was the books that really did it, though. How could I possibly hold out against a complete set of first-edition Nancy Drew?” She looked down at the bold square-cut diamond still in her hand. “You exploited my weaknesses for nostalgia, romance and material gain.”

  “I’m not such a bad deal.” Nerves screaming, he came up behind her to touch a hand to her hair. “I’ve got some flaws, sure, but I’m loaded.”

  Her lips curved. “That approach might have worked once, but I’m pretty well set myself, since I’ll be awarded a fat finder’s fee on the Monet. I might be greedy, Skimmerhorn, but I have my standards.”

  “I’m crazy about you.”

  “That’s better.”

  “You’re the only woman I’ve ever wanted to spend my life with.” He brushed a light kiss at the curve of her shoulder and throat and made her sigh. “The only woman I’ve ever loved, or want to love.”

  “That’s excellent.”

  “I don’t think I can live without you, Dora.”

  Tears burned her throat, thickening her voice. “Direct hit.”

  “So does that mean you’re going to fall in love with me again?”

  “What makes you think I ever stopped?”

  The hand he had in her hair fisted and made her wince. “And the marriage thing? You’ll give it a shot?”

  She grinned into the sunlight. It might not have been the world’s most romantic proposal, but it suited her. It suited her just fine.

  “We’ll need lace at the curtains, Jed. And I have a Chippendale bench that’s waiting to sit in front of that fire.”

  He turned her around, brushing her hair back so that his hands could frame her face. He only had to see her eyes for the nerves to vanish. “Kids?”