A dozen deep red roses poked into the room, followed by Sean MacNeill, his dark hair tied back and his stunning face concerned.
"Hiya, beautiful. How are you doing?"
His breezy entrance provoked her chuckle. She coughed. Silently, Con handed her the water bottle on the bedside table.
"Better," she croaked.
"How did you get in here?" Con asked.
Sean waggled his eyebrows. "It's visiting hours, bro. Besides, I know one of the doctors. Here, these are for—" He caught Con's eye, changed direction and continued smoothly. "The boy genius, here."
He surrendered the bouquet to Con.
Con took them, frowning. "I can buy my own flowers."
Sean shrugged. "So, I just saved you a trip."
"Fine. I owe you."
"Damn straight you do. Sixty bucks."
"Sixty?"
"Flowers and commission," Sean explained promptly. Val laughed. It hurt her throat.
"Saved me, my butt," Con said. "Thanks. Now, get out of here before you upset the nurses and get us both kicked out."
Sean grinned. "Oh, they wouldn't do that." He bent, and his warm lips brushed Val's cheek before he stepped back. "I told 'em I was family," he whispered loudly.
The door closed behind him.
"Hell." Con looked embarrassed.
His obvious discomfort eased her own. "That was nice of him."
"Sean specializes in nice. I come by it secondhand." Con slid the cellophane-wrapped flowers toward her, along the bedside table. "Here."
Beneath the dry humor, she sensed his tension. Did he think because they were lovers, because, she admitted to herself, she loved him, that she expected pretty words to go with his pretty flowers?
"Thank you. They're beautiful."
"I can do better." He pulled an envelope from his breast pocket and handed it to her.
She recognized the red and blue printing from the bank, and the pale tomatoes and acid dressing lurched in her stomach. "What's this?"
"My bonus check. From your father. I want you to have it."
"Why?"
He shrugged. "You did as much as I did to earn it."
"And you made the bargain with my father. No."
"He's already given me what I wanted. References, recommendations … I'm Edward Cutler's new fair-haired boy. Take the check. It will help you rebuild."
"I have insurance for that. I won't take money from my father."
"It's not your father's money. It's mine."
She was shaking. "And what do you want for it?"
"Nothing. No strings, Dixie."
He knew her too well. "I don't want it. I don't need it."
Con went very still. "You mean, you don't need me."
"I mean, I won't be bought by some grand sacrifice on your part. I won't be the unequal partner in this relationship."
His eyes narrowed. "It seems to me the real inequality here is that I'm ready to make a commitment and you're not."
She waved the envelope at him, suddenly furious. "This isn't a commitment. This is a payoff. 'I'm leaving for Boston, but I don't want to worry about you, so here's a check.'"
"You could go with me."
The temptation he offered terrified her. "What?"
"You have to start over anyway. Start over with me, in Boston."
He didn't know her at all. She couldn't give up everything she knew and thought she wanted to live with him in a strange city and be dependent on him for every need.
"And do what?" she demanded. "Live in your apartment, entertain your friends, fit my business in around your schedule?"
She choked and coughed. Grim-faced, he handed her the water bottle and waited until the fit subsided. Her dependence on him while she was so weak and he was so cold was an almost unbearable indignity. If he'd even once told her he loved her…
But he didn't.
"I'm not into playing the available, compliant female," she rasped. "And I've tried the big-city routine on my own already. It's no good, MacNeill."
His face was white, his nostrils pinched. "And that says it all, doesn't it? You're so damned afraid of being taken over, everything's your way or no way at all. Well, you've taught me that doesn't work in consulting, Dixie, and I can tell you it doesn't work for me, either."
He stood, enormous in the tiny hospital room, frustration rolling from him in waves. "I've got an early flight tomorrow morning. Keep the check. Spend it or burn it or give it back to your daddy … I don't care."
The door swung and bumped behind him. Val sat upright in her hospital bed, grief weighing on her chest and burning at the back of her eyes like smoke.
* * *
The sky was heavy with humidity, the dawn a gray promise along the horizon. The lit sign for Beyer's Motel gleamed ghostly above the metal rail that guarded I-40.
Val reached forward to touch the cabbie's shoulder. "There."
"I see it. I know Beyer's Motel." He pulled off the highway. In the silence, Val could hear the roll of the cab's tires and the rush of a passing car traveling west. Her driver glanced in the rearview mirror, his dark eyes alight with small-town curiosity and kindness. "You sure you going to be all right, miss?"
She flushed. "Yes, thank you."
"I mean, you just getting out of hospital and all."
She peered down the row of units to Con's room. The heavy lined curtains were rimmed with light. So he hadn't checked out yet. She wasn't too late.
Her heart hammered. "I'll be fine. Down there. Number twenty."
She handed her fare and an extra ten over the cracked vinyl seat back.
"You want I should wait?" asked the driver.
She took a deep breath and almost coughed. Either she was risking it all, or she wasn't. "No, thank you."
But the cab sat idling anyway, its taillights gleaming like the lions' eyes above her desk, until she gathered her courage to knock on Con's door.
It opened, and she was staring at his broad, hard torso in a buttoned-down blue shirt. She forced her gaze up and made herself smile.
Con's face was impassive. "What are you doing here?"
"I discharged myself. It took a call to Kate, but I did it. May I come in?"
He stepped back to admit her to the rundown hotel room, uninspiringly decorated in shades of beige. "That explains why you're here. Why are you … here?"
She recognized her own emphasis from their first morning-after. Here in my space, he meant. Here with me. He wasn't making this easy for her. But then, maybe she didn't need him to.
"I came to make you a deal," she said.
"Now, where have I heard that before?"
The dry humor in his voice gave her hope. "So, I'm my father's daughter."
He crossed his arms against his chest. "I'm listening."
She reached to finger an earring, but her earrings were gone, lost in the fire or taken from her in the ER. She let her hand fall and squared her shoulders.
"You told me I was a survivor," she said. "But last night I let my fear control my choices. I acted like a victim."
He uncrossed his arms. "Dixie—"
"Let me finish. I figured all this out, and I practiced it on the drive over here, and if I don't get it said now, before you leave, I may never say it."
He froze into a pillar of marble, leaning against the dresser.
Her palms were clammy, her heartbeat too fast. Panic seared her breathing. But she wasn't chickening out now. "My aunt Naomi would be proud of me. I have goals and means and independence. When the insurance check comes through, I'll have money. I have control of my life. But I don't have the two things that make everything else worthwhile."
His eyes were brilliant as gemstones in his still face. "What two things?"
She risked it all. "Love. You."
He was silent. And she thought, Oh, my God, I blew it, and something inside her squirmed and bled.
"Where did you think I was going?" he asked at last, very quietly.
"To the
airport. To Boston."
"I was coming back to the hospital to talk to you." He turned and opened a dresser drawer. "See? Unpacked. I was throwing things into a suitcase last night when it occurred to me that everything I wanted was right here."
Her heart pounded and sang. "And you always get what you want."
His smile showed he remembered. "Usually." He moved away from the dresser and crossed the room to her and took her hands in his, holding them palm to palm between his own. "But in your case, I'm prepared to wait. You've got reasons not to trust me yet. But I'd be a fool not to trust how I feel for you. How you make me feel. I'm not letting you throw me out of your life, Dixie."
He gathered her to him carefully, mindful of her burns and bruises. They kissed, long and sweetly, until his arms trembled and her head spun.
"So, what's this deal you're prepared to offer me?" he asked, tender laughter in his voice.
She moistened her lips. "I want the bonus my father paid you. On one condition."
His expression shuttered. "You want me to sign something? Fine."
"No. Oh, no. I trust you."
"What, then?"
"I don't believe you're bargaining for a share in my business. I know you're not angling for a role in my life. But I want you in both. I'll take the money on the condition that you become my partner in my new restaurant."
Well, she'd surprised him, at least. His handsome face went blank.
"Are you buying my involvement, Dixie?"
She laughed shakily. "I don't know. I don't think so. I mean, I should know better than anyone it doesn't work that way. But I want you in my life. As my partner, as my lover, as anything you want to be."
There. She'd said it. She'd offered him everything.
Con appeared to consider. "These long-distance partnerships … generally, they don't work."
She'd swallowed her pride. Now she nearly choked on her disappointment. "It doesn't have to be long-distance. I can open anywhere."
"No. No, I don't think so." The wry note in his voice dragged her gaze up to his. And the light she found there ignited a hope inside her that spiraled and glowed like a sparkler on the Fourth of July.
"I love you," Con said deliberately. "I want to be involved with you in every way there is. I want to be your partner. I want to be your lover. I want to be your husband. So, if running a restaurant in North Carolina is part of the deal, I'd say I've found a bargain."
Her heart did a slow roll in her chest, making her dizzy.
"Husband?"
His dark brows lifted. "It's the logical solution. But, like I said, I can wait if you need time to get used to the idea."
Rising joy wrestled with doubt. "What about your big comeback?"
"I'd rather come home. To you."
"What about Boston?"
"What did you call it? Doing work I don't care about among people I dislike?" He shook his head with the quick decisiveness that was so much a part of him. "I'd rather be my own man."
The man she loved, she thought. Competent and certain, straightforward in his thinking, honest in his dealings, a little irritating in his Yankee confidence.
She stood on tiptoe to touch her lips to his chin. "How about being mine?"
He drew a sharp breath. His chest expanded. Her heart swelled with love. He framed her face in his big hands, making her feel infinitely precious, and kissed her again with hunger and tenderness and love.
Her fingers curled into his shirt. The ache in her throat owed as much to joy as swallowed smoke. She coughed slightly, to relieve it. "Will it be enough for you, being a consultant?"
"Yeah, it will. I like the work. And it will leave me more time for us."
"And a family." She liked the idea, liked the thought of re-creating the scene on his brother's porch with more babies, more laughter, more MacNeills. "I better warn you. I think I might like a large family."
"Yeah?" His fingers grazed her cheek, his touch impossibly tender. "And what do you expect me to do about that?"
Love welled inside her, rose as laughter to her eyes and spilled as challenge in her smile. She tossed her head, making her braid fly over her shoulder. "I've already defined the problem for you, MacNeill. I'll leave it to you to solve it."
* * * *
THE COMEBACK OF CON MACNEILL Page 22
