“You make a lot of assumptions for someone who doesn’t know crap about the situation.”
“Are you always such a jerk when you’re scared?” Dennis asked.
“I’m always a jerk,” Grant said. “Remember?”
“Well, maybe you’re always scared, then,” Dennis said. “That would probably explain a lot.”
“Keep your psychoanalysis to yourself,” Grant muttered, watching as they wheeled Leo’s gurney into the room.
He saw Jameson lean over and say something to Leo, and Leo’s head pivoted toward the observation room. Grant could make out a small smile. Then they put the balloon over Leo’s face. Grant counted down from ten in his head, and when he reached seven he saw the nurse’s nod.
“He’s under,” Grant murmured.
“Relax,” Dennis said. “He’s going to be fine.”
Chapter Six
Nine Months Ago
Halloween was not one of Grant’s favorite holidays. Well, not since he was a kid and he could go door to door, staring at people menacingly until they gave him chocolate.
With the orange and black streamers festooning the hospital hallways, he decided to try the menacing glare on some nurses who were hording the chocolate kisses for the patients’ families. It didn’t work.
His glare just made them cry. Well, one of them cried, and the other put her arm around her friend and dragged her away from him, assuring her that Dr. McGraw would never let Dr. Anderson fire her over some candy.
And yet they did not give him candy.
Grant wasn’t sure how it had all gone so wrong.
“Why do you always make Sadie cry?” a small voice said.
Grant turned around to find Leo’s kid, Lucky, sitting alone in a waiting area chair with a pile of chocolates and an iPad.
“She has faulty tear ducts,” Grant replied. “They leak with very little provocation.”
Lucky put out her hand, a silver-wrapped Hershey’s kiss in the middle of her palm. “Here.”
Grant took it from her, unwrapping it and popping it into his mouth. “Who said I always make her cry, anyway?”
“She did. When she saw you coming, she said, ‘Oh, no, it’s him. He always makes me cry.’ And then she covered her mouth like this,” Lucky demonstrated. “I don’t think she’s very smart. She let me have ten of these. My dad only lets me have two.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be…” He couldn’t really tell how old she was, so maybe she wasn’t in school yet? She looked to be about four but her mouth made her seem much older. Maybe she was small for her age. “Isn’t there someone watching you?” Grant didn’t think a hospital corridor was the right place for a child, no matter how old.
“Carrie was watching me, but she had to go do something for Mr. Baumgartner, and she said she’d be right back. Then Sadie said she’d watch me. But I guess she forgot.”
“Don’t you have a hundred relatives in this town? No one could watch you for a few hours?”
“Nope,” Lucky said in her high-pitched voice, popping another chocolate into her mouth and chewing it messily. She held one out to him, this time with orange foil.
Grant let the chocolate melt on his tongue. He studied the girl: cut-off jean shorts, t-shirt with a cartoon monster on it, and a braid that had obviously started out well enough, but had come partially undone through the day. She was clean, but there was something earthy about her, like she was a carrot grown in a garden, with a bit of wholesome dirt left in the crevices, even after a good scrubbing.
Lucky jabbed at her iPad and Grant looked over to see what she was doing. It was a numbers game of some kind with brightly animated characters and a lot of pinging sounds. Lucky sighed and poked at the screen, making the right choice every time.
“Fun game,” Grant said.
Lucky shrugged. “I know all the answers.”
“I noticed.”
He noticed other things, too, like the way that Lucky swung her feet slowly in a rocking rhythm, as though she was soothing herself, and the way that she looked so out of place in the hallway of Appalachian Medical, like that little carrot from the garden was placed on a shiny, industrial plate. Incongruous—that was the word he was looking for, and he muttered it under his breath.
And yet, despite the film of the country glossing her, Lucky was obviously very smart. Her fingers touched the right answer almost as soon as the screen announced the question. She was also clearly bored.
“Can I see it?” Grant asked.
“I guess,” Lucky said, handing the iPad over to him.
Grant closed the app and opened another. He showed her the screen again. “Ever played chess?”
“No,” Lucky said, handing him another chocolate and opening one for herself. Her hands were messy, but Grant didn’t care. She looked up with bright hazel eyes and said, “Is it hard?”
“Sometimes,” Grant answered. “Wanna learn?”
Her face took on an immediate joyful interest that Grant could barely remember experiencing. Lucky’s interest was pure, and his desire to teach her to play surprisingly strong. He had some time between rounds, and when Carrie arrived looking terrified and shocked, Grant waved her aside, intent on demonstrating to Lucky the art of sound opening moves.
Chapter Seven
A few days later Grant turned around in the middle of the corridor to try and escape Leo who was heading right toward him.
Leo’s presence in the hospital three days a week was starting to wear him down. No matter how hard he tried to avoid the guy, Grant always ran into Leo, who inevitably tried to chat. Or he found himself sitting across from Leo in the cafeteria while Leo ate his incredibly bland, renal-failure diet, and talked about whatever came to his pretty little head like Grant wanted to hear it.
And what was worse, Grant did want to hear it.
He even found himself hoping that Leo would be in the cafeteria when he escaped long enough to make it down there himself, and was annoyed by his own disappointment on the four days a week Leo wasn’t there.
It was becoming harder and harder to not feel things for Leo, and when Leo would smile at him, Grant’s dick would take notice. The formerly palpable attraction between them hadn’t faded with time, and the fact that Grant found the pre-dialysis rings under Leo’s eyes sexy clued him in to his dire need to go to Asheville, find a hook-up, and get laid.
Today, Grant had patients he needed to get to, though, and he had no desire to linger in the hallway and let Leo flirt with him. Well, perhaps the desire was there, but the time was not, and so he turned on his heel without looking back.
“Wait up,” Leo called out.
Grant sighed, rolling his eyes so hard that his entire head followed.
Leo’s smile was bright and Grant narrowed his eyes against the light of it. “So, Lucky told me some doctor that makes nurses cry has been teaching her chess.”
“Strange,” Grant said. “Sounds creepy. You might want to report that to security.”
“C’mon, Grant. I know it was you.”
Grant shrugged. “And? Should I not converse with small children left alone in the hallways of my hospital, which is, as I’m sure you’re aware, against regulation, and—”
“Grant, shut up,” Leo said, exaggerating the words like a petulant child. “I wanted to thank you. I couldn’t believe Carrie left her alone. Anything could have happened to her.”
“Yeah, well, you were lucky that it was just me who convinced her to share her chocolates. Don’t leave her alone in my hospital again.”
Leo glanced down at his shoes, his eyelashes shimmering on his pinked up cheeks, and then back to Grant. Clearly he was freshly dialyzed. “I won’t. I’ll make sure of it.”
“Good,” Grant said and tried to move on.
“Hold on,” Leo said, grabbing Grant’s elbow. “Could you just wait a minute? I wanted to ask if you’d like to come out to the farm this weekend? We’re having a Halloween party for the kids. Bobbing for apples. Apple pie. Costumes
if you want. Hay rides. And a big potluck dinner. Alec will be there with Dennis and Mina—”
Grant put his hand up. “You had me at pie.”
Leo grinned. “Glad to see your appetite still drives you to do things that would otherwise make you uncomfortable.”
“Believe me, my appetites have gotten me into plenty of trouble over the years.” Grant thought Leo might be the ultimate example of this. He’d wanted the man in his bed so badly six years ago, but Leo had wanted to take things slow. They’d never gone beyond first base and yet somehow Leo had gotten under his skin permanently. “My stomach, though, has yet to do me wrong.”
Leo’s eyes glowed with seductive warmth and Grant’s gut curled with a returned heat. Leo licked his lips, saying, “Hopefully, it won’t steer you wrong this time, either.”
“Let’s hope not,” Grant agreed, and then he broke away, his mind racing far away from the patient he was headed to see.
Chapter Eight
As Grant pulled up the gravel drive toward the small barn, the half-dozen kids running around dressed up in costumes and fueled by too much candy made him doubt the directives issued by his stomach. Though the wariness provoked by the children’s antics was nothing compared to that brought on by the adults wearing idiotic outfits and clearly fueled by too much beer.
Grant nearly backed back down the drive, but Alec spotted him and came toward the car with a brilliant grin on his glitter-covered face, and Grant didn’t see how he could get out of it now. Besides, there would be pie. Leo had said so.
“Hey, stranger,” Alec said wrapping his arm through Grant’s, the giant fairy wings on his back flapping behind them both. He tugged Grant toward the knot of people outside of the barn. “I’ve missed you! Why don’t you answer my calls?”
“I’ve been busy,” Grant said. “Some of us have actual jobs.”
The excuse was only partially true. He did have several new patients, two with demanding diagnoses that required close monitoring in hopes of finding the perfect window of opportunity to go into surgery. But the other reason he’d avoided Alec’s calls was because Dennis had told him all about Alec and Mina’s recent play dates with Leo and Lucky. And maybe Grant had been a little jealous.
“I know I’m lucky to spend my days being the stay-at-home daddy to my stepdaughter, but, believe me, it’s a job,” Alec sniffed. “One I’m not sure you could handle.”
“Well, her mother certainly couldn’t.”
“Shh, don’t diss Pamela. She had a hard time when Dennis left her for me. She didn’t even know he was bisexual. It was traumatic for her.”
“But it was her choice to leave Mina.”
Alec sighed. “Let’s not argue. It’s a party! And, c’mon, you haven’t been too busy for my calls. You’re just jealous that I’ve been spending so much time with Leo and Lucky, and you’re not.”
“Whatever.”
“Why don’t you come over to our place next Friday night for dinner?”
“Let me guess, it’ll be a surprise double date with Leo?”
Alec grinned. “You really think I’m going to try to set you up with him? After everything that happened before and all your weirdness since he came back to town?”
“Well, aren’t you?”
“Of course!” Alec replied, his eyes were almost as blue as the sky, just a little darker.
Grant rolled his eyes.
“But, hey, it looks like I don’t have to,” Alec said, indicating the barn, the white clapboard house, and the small field of running children. “You’re here all on your own. Seems like your heart is making choices that your brain is still denying.”
“Who gave you moron flakes for breakfast?”
Alec shoved him, his fairy wings flapping against Grant’s back.
“Hey, Grant! You came!” Leo called, stepping from the darkness of the barn with a smile on his face that made Alec’s look dim.
Grant cleared his throat, trying to ignore the rushing pleasure that suffused him. He especially didn’t want Alec to see that he was affected.
Leo was dressed as a farmer—overalls, a straw hat, and big, brown farm boots. He held a water bottle in his hand, and indicated a row of coolers lined up against the barn. “Beer, water, wine, cola, whatever you want is here.”
“I’ll be right back,” Alec said, darting into the barn, making a show of looking around for someone. Grant figured it was probably supposed to be Dennis or Mina.
“Beer’s fine,” Grant said, and Leo reached down to grab one, handing it over. Leo’s fingers were cold and wet from the melted ice in the cooler as they grazed Grant’s. His eyes, though, were challenging and hot. A flirt, a tease.
Grant popped the twist-off cap, lifted the beer in a toast to Leo, and took a swallow. It was a local brew. Nice, not cheap at all, and Grant was surprised, though he guessed he shouldn’t be, that Leo would have it out for a Halloween party. He took another swallow in appreciation of the caramel, woody taste.
“Good?” Leo asked.
“Wouldn’t you like to know,” Grant said, unable to keep the innuendo out of his voice.
“Oh,” Leo laughed gently. “More than you can imagine. I’d love to know. The beer and maybe the other thing, too. But especially the beer.”
Grant had a strange moment of wishing he’d chosen water, or a cola, anything except this thing that made Leo long for what he couldn’t have. The idea of Leo yearning created an urge in Grant that he didn’t understand, a throb of want down in his gut, a restless need to make it better for him.
Grant cleared his throat. “So, where’s the food?”
Leo laughed. “It’s around. There’s a lot of it.” Leo’s eye caught something over Grant’s shoulder. “Oh, hey, sorry. My dad needs me. I’ll see you in awhile? You won’t leave without telling me, will you?”
“Yeah, no. I can’t really make that promise.”
Leo laughed again and clasped Grant’s shoulder in a friendly way, before heading off to join his father in studying a cart of hay that was hitched to a tractor. Chuck Garner was a wide, tall man with gray-gold hair and a sun-lined face. He and Leo seemed to be debating whether or not there was enough straw for the hayride.
There were too many people at the farm. People that Grant knew and a few that he even—well, ‘liked’ was a strong word, one he usually reserved for Alec. But there were a few that didn’t bug him so much.
Like his fellow apartment dwellers, Jill and Tom Weinstein, both of whom liked to chat with him across the balconies while watering their plants. He raised his beer to them in acknowledgement, relieved when they didn’t wave him over to talk.
He figured it was only a matter of time, though, before someone did, and he wanted to be mostly through a plate of food by then. He wasn’t fond of socializing with Blountville’s natives on the best of days, but, at the moment, he knew he was in dire peril of being roped into a conversation. So he planned to find the promised food as quickly as possible, eat it, and skedaddle while the skedaddling was good.
Someone small bumped against him, and Grant looked down, narrowly avoiding spilling beer on his favorite small child—a distinction earned simply by the fact that Alec was her stepfather. There was something to be said for shared affections.
“Uncle Grant,” Mina said from underneath her pirate patch, which seemed to be made from a glitter-covered orange peel. “Watch this!” And she struck the air mightily with a plastic rapier. “Don’t I look awesome?”
Since the only answer Grant could imagine giving to that question was “No, you look ridiculous; don’t your fathers love you at all?” Grant said nothing.
But Mina didn’t mind, at least not from what Grant could tell, since she ran off hollering at the top of her voice and chasing what looked like a red-haired, blue-eyed, little-girl-shaped Harry Potter.
Grant grabbed another beer from the cooler, tucked it under his arm for later, and continued looking for the promised pie. The sooner he got it in his tummy, the sooner he c
ould leave this place. “Come on, pie. Where have they hidden you?”
“There’s gonna be apple pie after the fireworks,” Lucky said from down around his elbow.
Grant stared at her massive headpiece of plastic snakes, noticing her grey, baggy, barely-held-together dress made from a dyed sheet and giant safety pins, and the green fingernails on her small hand that grasped one tiny can of cola.
“That late, huh?” Grant said.
“Yeah, it’s tradition,” she said. Her young tongue mangled the word, but Grant still knew what she meant. “Fireworks, then pie, then hay ride, and then everyone goes home.”
“I thought maybe your father had lied to me about the pie.”
“No. Daddy doesn’t lie,” Lucky said, but it was slow, like she was holding something back.
Grant wondered why she wasn’t being entirely honest. “Spill it,” Grant said.
Lucky looked up at him in confusion, but then twisted her wrist, dumping her soft drink on the ground.
Grant laughed, bringing his hand down on Lucky’s shoulder to shake her a little.
She grinned up at him and said, “Now what?” A curiosity lit her face, like she was anxiously awaiting the next step in whatever game Grant was playing.
“Now you tell me where the food is and I eat as much as I can without exploding.”
Lucky looked down at her spilled cola and shrugged. “But why spill it, though?”
“Get me some food, kiddo, and I’ll explain it to you.”
Lucky took his hand and led him to a table behind the barn that was the answer to all of Grant’s prayers, the very substance of his dreams. There on the long table were hot dogs, hamburgers, casseroles that were cheesy and hot, and others that were cold and filled with marshmallows. There were cookies, and sweet potatoes, and deviled eggs. There was a ham salad that made Grant’s mouth water just looking at it, and there were three cakes, and two pans of brownies, and a selection of potato salads to choose from. Grant didn’t know where to start.
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