by Amy Knupp
Back in the living room, Scott arranged all the snacks on the coffee table where Gemma could easily reach them.
“Wow.” She sat up, inspected the food stash like a toddler in a toy store. “For me?”
“You can get up to pee. That’s all. This should tide you over for a while.”
She went for the popcorn bag right away. Scott sat on the coffee table, waiting for her to settle again. Then he held out the water to her.
“Thanks,” she said, and took a drink.
He was about to stand, when she stopped him.
“So.” She opened the bag as she spoke. “Something happen between you and Mercedes again?”
Again? What had Mercedes told her? The denial that had been on the tip of his tongue disappeared. Instead, he said, “What makes you think that’s any of your business?”
She shrugged, took a handful of popcorn and held the bag out to him. He refused. “I can get the story from Mercedes.”
“I’m not telling you anything,” he said, knowing she probably spoke the truth.
“But I’m right. You two are involved.”
“No.” At least they shouldn’t be. And what was “involved” anyway? Gray area. Not that he needed to define it, because it wasn’t going to continue.
“I think it could work,” Gemma carried on. “Kind of a light-and-dark type of thing.”
“Light and dark. Let me guess. I’m the dark?”
“You sure as heck are not light.”
That made him smile. “Don’t waste your time on romantic notions. I’m leaving soon.”
She sobered and set the popcorn bag aside.
“Has…Dad tried to contact you again after that first time?” he asked. Part of him wondered if some kind of confrontation had added to her stress level.
“I don’t know. Somebody knocked on the door a few nights ago when you were at work. I didn’t answer.”
“He showed up once when you weren’t here.”
“What’d he say?”
“He wanted to apologize.”
“And you let him in?”
“I figured he’d keep coming back till I heard him out.”
“Probably. When was this?”
“Last Friday.”
“It was Sunday when he came looking for me. If it was him.”
“I’m guessing he had to head back to Houston or wherever he’s living now for the workweek.”
“Houston,” she confirmed. “What did you say to him? Are you best buddies now?” The anger in her voice took Scott by surprise.
“He wanted me to convince you to move in with him.”
Her shoulders tensed. “What’d you say?”
“Told him you don’t listen to a thing anyone tells you.”
“Nice. What a creep.” She met his eyes. “Him. Not you.”
“Better be him. I brought you cheese popcorn,” Scott teased. He stood. “You better keep your butt on that couch.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
He headed toward his bedroom, seriously talked out. As he reached the hallway, Gemma’s words stopped him.
“You know, I was worried at first,” she said. “About you being a jerk.” He faced her, sensing there was more. “You’re not so bad, though. Especially considering the jackass you have for a father.”
Scott battled a grin. “You’re not so bad yourself, kid. All things considered.”
He immediately regretted his overfriendliness and retreated down the hallway, out of sight.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“SHE’S IN THERE FUSSING over Gram,” Charlie said to whoever had just knocked on the front door. Mercedes glanced at her watch as she headed to the living room to intercede, Higgans weaving his way between her feet with every step. It was past 10:30 p.m. and she wondered who…
Scott. His words weren’t discernible from here, but just the sound of his voice affected her. Her stomach dropped and she couldn’t hold back a smile.
“Hi,” she said as she approached them. “I’m not fussing. Gram needed a drink. What’s going on?”
He hadn’t shaved and she became fixated on the thought of running her fingers over his rough chin again. Kissing him. More.
“Could we go outside?” he asked curtly, indicating the front of the house instead of the back, where they’d be more comfortable.
Obviously he wasn’t as happy to see her as she was to see him. No day-after-sex haze of contentment for him.
“Sure.” She smiled again for Charlie’s benefit.
“I’m going to put this in Gram’s room,” Charlie said, holding up a paperback.
Mercedes nodded absently and followed Scott outside.
He sat stiffly on the edge of one of the two rarely used chairs to the left of the front door. Mercedes took the other one, curiosity and confusion making her fidget.
“Hi,” she said awkwardly, harboring a futile hope that getting away from her sister would reestablish some semblance of the connection from last night.
“I picked up Gemma earlier—”
“Yes, thank you for doing that. Charlie was gone, Yoli called last-minute and I had no idea how long it would take to get Gemma settled.”
“Wasn’t a problem.” He drummed his fingers on his knee. “This isn’t going to work.”
The words hit her like a sock in the gut. She didn’t know what “this” was, exactly. Them? Gemma? Something else? Still, her insides knotted up.
“What isn’t going to work?”
“You need to convince her to go home.”
It took her a moment to process what he meant. “Gemma? She doesn’t have a home to go to. Her mom—”
“She’s not supposed to get up except to go to the bathroom,” he said. “Not to get herself food, a drink, to switch a movie. She’s stuck on the couch. I can’t be there with her every second. I told you guys, I’m not a babysitter. Besides, I leave in fifteen days.”
She stared at him, taken aback as if he’d struck her. The warm, tender Scott from last night was long gone. This version was cold. Distant. His jaw was locked stubbornly and he didn’t look directly at her.
“Okay,” she said, not bothering to hide her surprise. “I can stop by—”
He laughed coldly. “Mercedes, you can’t take care of two people in different places, not to mention work a full-time job. Be realistic.”
“I was going to say I could stop by a couple times a day. Maybe Charlie could help.”
He shook his head and looked at her as if she was crazy.
“She goes back to the doctor in a week, right?” Mercedes said. “He might release her from bed rest, or at least modify it a bit.”
“He might. Or he might not.”
“What do you want me to do, Scott?”
“I already told you. Make her understand this is no longer working out. She gave it a go and might even have made it work, but preterm labor changes the whole game.”
“Are you…kicking her out?”
“Where did you think Gemma was going to live when I’m gone?” He leaned his elbows on his thighs and rubbed his hands over his face. “Give me a little credit, Mercedes. I’m not going to put her out on the street. But it’s time for all of us to figure out the very near future. No matter how you look at it, Gemma needs help.”
“Her mom kicked her out. That won’t work. I’d take her in in an instant if she wasn’t allergic to my cats.”
Several seconds ticked by and the wind rustled the palm tree at the side of the porch. Mercedes barely registered it as she again racked her brain for a solution for Gemma.
“She needs to stay with our father,” Scott finally said. He said it like it was a prison sentence, and yet there wasn’t an ounce of hesitancy in his voice.
“I don’t think that’s going to fly, Scott.”
“It’s the only option.”
It was Mercedes’s turn to laugh in disbelief. “Do you think that little of her? You hate the man.”
“He wants her to live with him. He�
�s driven down here twice to talk to her. That’s…more than her mother’s done. She hasn’t even heard from the woman. Besides, he’s not hurting financially.”
Points in Mr. Pataki’s favor, but…
“Do you know what that would do to her emotionally? Her stress level?” Mercedes shook her head. “That’s the last thing she needs.”
Scott’s shoulders sagged a bit, as if he’d lost momentum for his argument. “Got any other ideas? Is there a bed available at the shelter yet? Can she stay there?”
“A couple have opened since she was there, but they’re full again. We can’t offer that kind of full-time help anyway. We can’t handle people with medical needs.”
He stood. “Well, let me know if you come up with anything. If you won’t talk to her, I will.”
“Then why’d you ask me in the first place?” Mercedes said, her volume rising as she also stood. This was so not the man she’d been with on the beach last night.
“Because she’ll listen to you more than she’ll listen to me.”
There wasn’t much space for him to walk past her, but he did so without touching her. Without looking at her.
“Scott.”
Once he was past her, he stopped, looked up at the starry sky.
“This is how you’re going to handle it? Really?”
“I never asked to handle anything to do with Gemma.”
“I’m not talking about her now,” Mercedes said quietly. “We had an agreement. No expectations. No strings attached. That’s what we both want. So why are you acting like this?”
“How am I acting?” Sounding bored, he watched a car turn in to a driveway down the street.
“Like you’re scared I’m going to try to put some claim on you.”
“Claim if you want. It won’t get you anywhere.”
“I don’t want, Scott! All I want is to be treated, I don’t know, like…someone who matters.”
“I never hid from you, from the day I met you, that this is the person I am. I need to go back to Gemma. Good night.”
Mercedes stared after him, speechless, as he strode purposefully toward his car. On some level, she understood his worry about Gemma, but that didn’t make it okay for him to treat her so coldly. As tough as the pregnant teenager’s problems were to solve, they seemed a lot less impossible than whatever was perpetually bugging Scott.
* * *
SCOTT WASN’T PROUD of being an asshole.
He hadn’t planned to act like one to Mercedes. He had a lot of things eating at him, but he’d thought he’d worked through most of it. After leaving Gemma on the couch with her snacks and a book, he’d burst into what he figured was maybe a bit of rage or panic. Who knew? Who cared? Whatever it was, it’d propelled him into packing everything he didn’t use on a daily basis and then emailing his new boss to let him know he could start anytime. Of course he hadn’t heard back right away and probably wouldn’t. And he realized there was little chance of starting early. But what the hell…he’d put it out there anyway.
All because he’d let himself get too involved. With Gemma. With Mercedes.
He shouldn’t have taken it out on her. Even if it would be easier to make her hate him now, that was the coward’s way out. He needed to apologize, treat her well until he left town—even if he did keep her at arm’s length—and get the hell gone.
* * *
MERCEDES HAD BEEN sidetracked by her thoughts, absorbed by worrying about Gemma and, yes, the way Scott had acted last night. But that was no excuse.
There was no excuse.
When she turned the corner toward home, the sight of the ambulance in their driveway still made her heart lodge in her throat, even though Charlie had called to warn her. She’d had to call the landline at the shelter—because Mercedes had forgotten to charge her cell phone. Hadn’t even thought about checking it that afternoon when she’d hurried out the door, nearly late for her shelter-volunteer shift.
She called herself another round of a dozen different names as she parked the car in the street and ran into the house. Charlie had said Gram seemed okay, but an eighty-four-year-old woman didn’t fall out of bed, lose consciousness and not suffer any consequences.
“Gram!”
Mercedes hurried toward the bed and barely registered that one of the paramedics was Scott. She barely registered anything except Gram’s weak smile and forced cheer when she said, “There’s my Sadie.”
Charlie was on the opposite side of the bed, at the head of it, out of the paramedics’ way. She held Gram’s hand.
“Her vitals are looking good,” Scott said with a glance at Mercedes. “Seems to be no worse for wear, with the exception of a nasty bruise-to-be on her arm.”
Mercedes nodded, unable to speak, and took Gram’s other hand.
“Your grandmother’s a hearty one,” the other paramedic, a female with thin brown hair pulled back in a ponytail, said.
“Gram…” Mercedes’s throat clogged up with so much guilt she couldn’t get another word out.
“Shh,” Gram said. “I’m okay, honey.” She squeezed Mercedes’s hand.
That her grandma was comforting her when it should have been the other way around only made Mercedes feel worse.
“I’m so sorry I didn’t answer my phone.” Again, that was all she could manage before being overcome. She fought to hold it together in front of everyone, and the only way she had a chance of doing that was to shut up. She bent over and kissed her grandma’s forehead, lingering there for several heartbeats.
“Mrs. Herman, are you sure you don’t want us to take you in?” the female paramedic asked.
Alarm made Mercedes straighten quickly and implore Scott with wide, questioning, probably fearful eyes. She didn’t think twice about how they’d left things last night.
He shook his head and touched her arm. “She looks okay, but it wouldn’t hurt for her to have a doctor check her out.”
“I’m not going to the hospital.” Gram was insistent, her voice stronger than it had been since Mercedes had come in. “As long as I have a say, I’m choosing to stay put.” She grinned at Scott. “Though I do recognize I would have a very nice escort.”
“We could do it your way, however you want, Mrs. H.,” Scott said, making Mercedes again wonder if they should be pressing Gram harder to get checked out. “Full lights and sirens if you want to arrive in style.”
Gram pursed her lips and shook her head stubbornly. Mercedes looked at Charlie to gauge her opinion.
“She said no,” Charlie reiterated. “If she has any problems, we can take her in ourselves.”
“As long as we can recognize the problems,” Mercedes said, not convinced.
Scott and his partner, Paige, according to her name tag, had been putting equipment away. It seemed they were now done, as they both returned their attention to the patient.
“Mrs. Herman, if you’re sure, I’ll just have you sign my form here saying you decided not to have us take you to the hospital.” Paige fiddled with a clipboard and multiple pieces of paper, sticking a pen in her mouth to free her hands.
Gram nodded and attempted to prop herself up.
“I’ll raise your bed,” Charlie said.
Normally, Mercedes would have been all over helping her, but she was still agonizing over whether they needed to take Gram in. What if she was bleeding internally or had some other issue that wasn’t readily apparent? She caught Scott watching her and nodded toward the hallway.
“Stop beating yourself up, Mercedes,” he said in a quiet voice the second they hit the hall. “You couldn’t have done anything.”
“If I’d been here in the first place, she wouldn’t have had to reach for her remote control. Wouldn’t have stretched too far and fallen.”
“No way to know that. The important thing is she’s okay.”
“Is she?”
“If I could see a reason for her to receive further medical attention, I would tell you.”
“If she was your grand
ma,” Mercedes said, “would you push her to go?”
He considered, then shook his head. “If she was my grandma, I’d watch her carefully for the next few hours. If she has any nausea or vomiting or seems disoriented at all, I’d advise having her examined.”
Mercedes stared into his eyes for a moment and understood he meant what he said. “Okay.” She nodded. “I trust your opinion.”
As he and Paige collected their equipment and headed to the door, Mercedes recognized that she trusted more than his medical training. Regardless of how much he’d upset her last night, she was glad he was the one to answer Gram’s call for help. What that signified…well, she chose not to ponder it. She returned to Gram’s side, where she should have been in the first place.
CHAPTER TWENTY
MERCEDES WAS OUT OF HER CAR practically before it came to a stop in the carport. If Charlie wasn’t here—and Mercedes couldn’t tell if she was or not since her sister still didn’t have a car—Gram would be starving. Seemed as if Mercedes was leaving her in the lurch more often than not lately. She had to do better.
She knew better than to schedule an appointment with talkaholic Morgan Billings, one of her most important clients, so late in the day. But truly, when Morgan called, she came running. He contributed to a significant part of her income.
“Hello?” she called out when she opened the front door. “Gram?”
“Hey,” Charlie hollered from Gram’s room. “We’re back here.”
“Let me help.” Mercedes rushed into the bedroom as Charlie got Gram from her wheelchair to her bed.
“We’re doing just fine.” Charlie began tucking the blanket around their grandma.
“Sorry I’m so late,” Mercedes said as she bent to kiss Gram’s cheek. “Morgan Billings.”
“I expected it, sweetie,” Gram said. She kept up on a lot of Mercedes’s clients and was plenty familiar with Morgan’s tendencies.
“I can go out and pick up some food if you two haven’t—”
“Of course we’ve eaten,” Charlie said. “You missed out on my specialty.”
Mercedes frowned absently as she did an inventory of Gram’s potential needs—pills, drink, TV remote, pajamas. “And that would be?”
