Sugar

by Karin Kallmaker

  She helped Gran get undressed and into the inadequate gown, then took her jewelry, which was hospital policy. The nurse returned as Gran settled into the bed, bringing with her a resident who was going to start Gran on her intravenous drip.

  "It's time for you to wait outside," the nurse said gently. "She won't be moved for about an hour."

  Sugar waited in the hallway for a few minutes, in case her grandmother called for her, but in short order that seemed point¬less. She consulted a hospital directory and determined where the ICU was, as well as the cardiac center. She'd take a stroll to those destinations once her grandmother was in surgery.

  With a sigh she settled down in the waiting-room chair.

  She woke with a crick in her neck. This time it wasn't Emily or Tree she was looking at when she opened her eyes, but Charlie.

  "Oh, my goodness." Sugar sat up, looking at her watch.

  "You've been out at least a half-hour. That's how long ago I spotted you. I wish I could sleep in one of these chairs."

  Sugar rubbed her neck. "Be grateful you can't. Why are you down here?"

  "Pop's having surgery. They think this last attack of angina damaged his mitral valve. Most people, that's not serious, but he's got a congenital defect. As he puts it, he was told when he was fif¬teen he'd wouldn't see twenty, so everything is borrowed time. He became a firefighter because he figured if he could die anytime, he might as well perhaps do it helping somebody else." She stretched her legs wearily in front of her. "Your grandmother's here today?"

  "Yeah, there was an opening, so we grabbed it."

  Charlie cocked her head to one side. "Isn't that big contest thing this week?"

  Sugar shrugged. Charlie continued to look at her with those incredible light brown eyes and she found herself blinking back tears.

  "Life had other plans, huh?"

  "Something like that. Let me go check in with the nurse, okay? I can't believe I fell asleep."

  The nurse assured her that her grandmother's transition to sur¬gery had gone as planned, and the surgery seemed to be progress¬ing normally. It would be several more hours before surgery concluded and there was any chance of her grandmother's being lucid again.

  She walked back across the waiting area to find Charlie watch¬ing her. It wasn't the bold, flirtatious stare she had received in the past, but it held warmth. There was something else, though, that Charlie seemed to damp down as she smiled in welcome.

  "All's well?"

  "Yes, apparently. Are you hungry? I'm starving. Gran couldn't eat and I didn't want to eat in front of her. Can I bring you some¬thing back from the cafeteria?"

  "I had something right after they took Pop in. I was on my way back when I spotted you doing that Sleeping Beauty thing."

  Sugar found herself fighting down a familiar blush. She didn't even think Charlie meant it flirtatiously. She looked tired and drawn. She must have had a hellish night. "I've got a spare paper¬back if you want to read."

  "Now that's tempting. I went home for clothes and forgot to pick up a book. I remembered some nutrition bars, if you'd like one. It's not a candy bar, but it's better for you."

  "Fair trade," Sugar said. She offered the book she wasn't cur-rendy reading and accepted the foil-wrapped bar Charlie retrieved from the small backpack at her feet. "I think this is the latest in die series."

  "I haven't read it. Thanks."

  They settled in side by side, turning pages and making the occasional critical remark about what they were reading, which led to odier topics. Sugar finished the nutrition bar and definitely felt less hollow. They talked so congenially that she found it hard to believe that Charlie and Tree hadn't been able to. They had just reached the engrossing debate of whether lesbians in the main-

  stream arts meant a loss of cultural identity when Charlie's cell phone rang. The nurse scowled as she answered.

  "He's fine so far. I can't talk here. I forgot to turn off the phone. Gotta go." She clicked it shut, then switched it off with an apolo¬getic look at the nurse. "My mother," she explained. "She's always had a horrible sense of timing."

  "Tree told me how she'd been a buttinsky, by the way."

  "Did she?" Charlie looked surprised. "One of these days I'll tell her that her being a buttinsky did lead to a cease-fire between my mother and me. Just a cease-fire, where we're happy to leave it. She still had no right to interfere, though."

  "No, she didn't. I'm not sure she's sorry, though."

  "That's the trouble with Tree. Your life needs fixing? She'll fix it." Charlie yawned and closed her eyes to rub them. "She's a good woman, just irritating as hell sometimes."

  "She said you two dated."

  Charlie's eyes flew open. "We did not. We met at agreed-upon places and argued."

  Sugar grinned. "That's about how she described it."

  "Are you seeing Tree now?"

  "Depends on what you mean by that question." Sugar didn't know where she found the energy to flirt, albeit mildly.

  "I mean exactly what you think I mean."

  "Oh, in that case, no. We're not seeing each other except as friends."

  "Oh."

  "I thought you were dating that blonde woman you were with."

  "Devin? Hell, no, that would be like dating my sister."

  Sugar was about to lead up to admitting that she and Emily were not an item either when the nurse interrupted.

  "Miss Bronson? Your father's out of surgery now."

  "That was fast." Charlie scrambled to her feet. "He's going backtoICU?"

  "Yes, he'll be up there in just a few minutes."

  Charlie turned to Sugar. "Would you walk up with me?"

  "Sure." Sugar wasn't sure she could read any more without falling asleep again.

  Charlie was quiet as they waited for her father to be wheeled past them to his room. It was only a few minutes, and he was com¬pletely unconscious, his face covered by an obscuring mask. The surgeon stopped to talk to Charlie in a low voice, then smiled broadly before walking away.

  "It went well?"

  "Yes, yes it did." Charlie's voice cracked and she burst into tears.

  Sugar drew her into an alcove and put her arms around her. They stood that way for quite a while, until Charlie found her composure again.

  "I'm just so relieved," she said finally. "I was so scared."

  "I know," Sugar murmured sympathetically. Charlie's body was as firm, lean and supple as she remembered, but now she could also feel the soft curves. "I know."

  "I'm not the crying type."

  "I won't tell." Sugar was relieved to feel Charlie laugh slightly.

  "Thanks. God, I feel like I can breathe again."

  "I think you could use some food."

  Charlie nodded as she gently pulled away from Sugar's embrace. "And so could you."

  Sugar was smiling in agreement when Charlie gently touched her hair. "I like this. Did you do this for that producer?"

  "No," Sugar said honestly. "I think I did it for me."

  "Best reason of all." Charlie's hand stilled for a moment and her eyes became hooded and intense.

  Sugar found she couldn't breathe. It was as if Charlie was invit¬ing her to do something but she kept missing the cue. Did Charlie want Sugar to be the one who made the definitive first move?

  The spell of Charlie's gaze was broken when Sugar's stomach growled loudly. "Come on, let's feed that beast."

  An hour later, stomachs queasily sated by cafeteria food, Charlie escorted Sugar back to the surgical waiting area. Gran was out of surgery by then, and in the recovery room, doing just fine,

  the nurse assured her. Charlie lingered while Sugar asked to talk to the surgeon but said nothing as the surgeon explained that every¬thing had gone as well as could be expected.

  "There was less healthy bone than I had hoped," he explained, "but enough to make a good bond. She will need to be reasonable in her physical activities to avoid dislocating it."

  Relieved, Sugar couldn't help sayin
g, "So no more high-jump-ing?"

  Charlie smothered a laugh, but the surgeon grinned openly. "Exactly. She won't be conscious for several more hours, and frankly, she's not going to know you're there. If I were you, I'd get some rest and come back later."

  "I want to be there when she wakes up so I can give her her Bible."

  The surgeon nodded understandingly. "I think if you're back by six you'll be fine."

  Sugar found herself walking to the hospital entrance with Charlie. "I'd go home, except traffic now would only give me an hour's sleep before I had to come back."

  "Same here. I was thinking I'd set my watch alarm and sleep in my truck."

  "Oh, it would be big enough for a nap, wouldn't it?"

  "You could stretch your legs out, but I can't quite do that."

  Sugar stopped walking. Maybe it was relief, maybe it was because she was so tired. She wrinkled her nose. "Are you offering me the opportunity to sleep with you in your truck?"

  Charlie gave a surprised hoot. "Well, when you put it that way, yes, I guess I am. I have to admit, though, I've slept in my truck with guys."

  "Have you now?"

  Charlie led the way through the hospital parking lot. Her truck was parked very conveniently in the shade of the building. "Trust me, if you've been working a fire line for twelve hours, you don't care who else is in your truck with you. You just sleep."

  "I can understand that."

  She unlocked the cab with the remote, then leaned in through the open door. "Let me move some of my crap." She glanced over her shoulder a few moments later. "I don't usually do this for my fellow firefighters, though. The front seat flips back and the con¬sole lowers, so . . ." She stepped back from the doorway to let Sugar see the inside. "Is this okay?"

  Sugar had been thinking they'd each take one of the rows, but the new arrangement would allow them to share the space. If she hadn't been so tired she might have entertained thoughts of the activities that would certainly be more than possible. But as it was, she simply said, "It looks better than heaven right now," and allowed Charlie to give her a boost up to the seat.

  They stretched out side by side, carefully not touching. After a moment, Sugar said, "I feel like I'm sliding toward my head."

  "Yeah," Charlie said drowsily. "Let's switch around."

  In the subsequent rearrangement it somehow seemed com¬pletely natural that Sugar curl up in the crook of Charlie's arm. The steady thump-thump of Charlie's heart was reassuring. She was asleep in moments.

  There was an annoying noise in her ear. She swatted at the source and someone groaned. It took a minute for Sugar to work out where she was, but when she did it seemed perfectly normal to roll over and find Charlie waking up next to her.

  Her stomach lurched as she watched Charlie stretch awake. Typical, she thought, now that you've had some rest your mind is back in the gutter. "Hi," she said softly.

  Charlie shut off her watch alarm, then relaxed again on the seat. "This beats those hospital chairs."

  "You can say that again," Sugar agreed. "I'm not seeing the pro¬ducer anymore."

  Charlie blinked. "Why tell me?"

  "Like you don't know the answer to that question."

  Charlie pulled herself up onto her elbows. Sugar's mouth

  watered at the long lean curve of her body. "Okay. Cards on the table. I thought that was what I got for being a gentleman. Snooze you lose."

  "Huh?"

  "She kissed you, right? The first chance she got?"

  "Well, not the first."

  "Close enough. Well, I wanted to kiss you really badly on the patio at your grandmother's. Really badly. It was hard not to. But I didn't."

  "Why didn't you?"

  Charlie made a noise like the answer was obvious. "You'd just had a big shock. I didn't think you were quite yourself. I thought I'd wait. I didn't know I'd get out-maneuvered by the redhead."

  "Cards on the table?" At Charlie's nod, Sugar said honestly, "She didn't take advantage of me. We had a very mutual heat for each other, I guess I'd say. And it feels a lot like the way I feel when I look at you."

  "A lot? Is that what we've got? Mutual heat?"

  Sugar chuckled. "In spades, if we're talking about cards."

  Charlie wouldn't meet Sugar's gaze. "I'm glad we're clear about that then. Mutual heat does cover it." Then she slid across the seat, opened the driver's door and got out.

  Sugar briefly reviewed their conversation and tried to figure out how it hadn't ended with at least a kiss. She had not a clue. She fol¬lowed Charlie out the door, trying to look something less than a major dweeb as she jumped unassisted to the ground.

  Charlie said nothing as they went back inside. At the elevator Sugar said, "Thanks for sharing your mobile hotel."

  "You're welcome."

  "Did I say something wrong?"

  "No. You put everything in perspective."

  The elevator arrived. Sugar pushed three. Charlie pushed six.

  "Thanks again," Sugar said as she stepped off at the third floor.

  Charlie didn't answer in the whole time the doors slowly closed.

  Fuming, Sugar stomped to her grandmother's room. It was an effort to calm herself. She sat down in the only chair very quietly, then remembered the Bible. She retrieved it from her bag and slipped it gently under Gran's hand. She didn't know if it was a reflexive motion, but Gran's fingers eased around it and she sighed.

  A few minutes later, her eyes fluttered open.

  "Everything went great," Sugar said slowly. "I'm here, Gran, and everything went just fine."

  Her grandmother nodded, then winced. She brushed her dry lips with her tongue and Sugar knew she had to be thirsty. "I'll see if you can sip some water. Be right back."

  She met the nurse at the door to the room. The nurse said small amounts of water were okay and went to get a pitcher and ice. Sugar fished a long-forgotten tube of lip balm out of her purse and carefully applied a very light coating to her grandmother's lips. "I hope that helps. Here's the water."

  She lingered for a few minutes as her grandmother slipped back into sleep. The nurse reassured her that everything was as it ought to be, and that between the painkillers and residual anesthesia Gran would be comfortable throughout the night.

  Realizing she had nothing more useful to do, Sugar knew she should head for home and get some real food and sleep. In the ele¬vator she wanted in the worst way to push the button for six, but what would that get her? Another royal brush-off from C. Bronson, Firefighter Who Blows Hot and Cold?

  She had better things to do with her time. She'd call her sisters the moment she got home. She'd prep ingredients for the morn¬ing's baked-goods production. She'd buy a laptop and a printer and call Noor to go on a clothing shopping binge. That's what she was going to do with her time, and damn Charlie Bronson and the fire truck she rode in on. Damn her for being understanding and seeming safe and oozing sex appeal and being able to walk away without so much as a good-bye.

  Chapter 10

  With at least a week to herself in her grandmother's house, Sugar set up her new laptop and printer at one end of the kitchen table. The first coffee of the day was brewing, the ingredients for the first batch of banana bread were set out, and she was going to check her e-mail surrounded by the comforts of home.

  She liked the little laptop and had fiddled with its setup the night before, until her body had screamed for sleep. It had been mindlessly engrossing, and she only thought of Charlie a half-million times. She still didn't know what she'd said that was wrong, or even if it was something she'd said. Maybe there was something she hadn't said, but it wasn't as if Charlie was meeting her halfway in discussing their feelings.

  She added more creamer to her coffee and was gratified to find an order from Julie, Emily's caterer, for the graduation party. Woo-hoo, she thought. It wasn't due for three weeks and they

  wanted a letterman's sweater and/or a rowing trophy. Photos were attached.

  She also had a note fr
om Patricia, saying she was going to be at the hospital today around eleven, and if Sugar was there she could sign the papers and get her check on the spot. The day was steadily improving, Sugar decided, especially when she got to that second cup of coffee. She had a brief pang as she thought of the fondant decorations she had planned to be working on this morning for the contest, but it slipped away without causing even a hint of tears.

  She would not think about Charlie while she mashed bananas and measured vanilla. She wouldn't think about her as she picked out clothes to wear to the hospital. She most assuredly would not wonder if she'd see a mammoth silver truck in the parking lot. Absolutely not. She had a life to live.

  Of course the scent of vanilla reminded her of the cake she'd made for Charlie's father. She couldn't wear the buttery yellow polo shirt again, because Charlie had already briefly seen her in it. And when she got to the hospital and saw a familiar silver truck parked in roughly the same place as the day before, she couldn't help but recall how right it felt to wake up next to Charlie.

  She had a loaf of banana bread for the nurses and a shoebox full of tart lemon squares for Patty. To her surprise, not one but all three of her sisters were in Gran's room. Rose was chatting casu¬ally with a nurse, who didn't look as if he minded that at all. Men tended to have that reaction to Rose, and Rose wouldn't notice anyone else while a nice-looking guy was around. Noor had joked that Sugar's sisters could be categorized as the Smart One, the Nice One and the Slut. She'd never said what that left for Sugar.

  "There you are." Patty gave her a big hug and then another when Sugar gave her the shoebox. She'd wrapped it in decorative paper and labeled the top with "Patty's Lemon Squares—Keep Out!"

  "I didn't know you were here, Quinn, so I didn't bring you any¬thing."

  Quinn shrugged. "Sure, sure, a likely story. I only stopped in for a minute," she added. "I've got a class this afternoon."

  "How's Gran doing?"

  "I'm strong as a horse," Gran croaked in answer.