by Toni Blake
He met her gaze. “Good. Me, either.”
* * *
ZACK OPENED HIS eyes to the sun, aware he was cold in one way but warm in another. Cold because the fire in the hearth had gone out overnight. Warm because Suzanne was curled into the crux of his arm, her naked body pressed to his.
Damn, he hadn’t seen that coming. Sure, he’d wanted it—but he hadn’t thought it would really happen. He hadn’t thought she would let it happen.
And there was no denying it was the best damn thing to happen to him in a very long time—despite having a bum leg. He glanced down at her sleeping form, remembering the moment they’d clicked wineglasses earlier. Silver linings.
He’d slept better than he had most nights since the accident, and even if the wine had played a part in that, so had having a warm, sexy woman at his side. But he was cold, and he also needed a bathroom trip, bad. “Nurse,” he said, “I have to go to the bathroom.”
Her eyes fluttered open, allowing him to see the surprise there as she remembered exactly where she was. “Oh. Hi.”
He grinned softly. “Hi. And I’m sorry to break this up, but I really gotta go.”
She sat up—then hunkered back down under the covers. “It’s freezing in here.”
“I think the woman who tends the fire hooked up with some hunky guy last night and fell asleep on the job.”
A gentle laugh left her. “She should be sternly reprimanded.”
“Well, I might let it go if she can warm it up in here.”
“Tell you what,” she said. “I’ll make a mad dash for some cozy clothes in the bedroom, then we’ll get you to the bathroom, then I’ll work on the fire and some breakfast. Deal?”
“Deal,” he said with a short nod. Though he felt the need to add, “Sorry. That you have to do everything.”
She only shrugged. “Not like you have a choice.”
True, but after last night, well...maybe he just wished he could feel like he used to, like a capable guy who took care of things. He wished that all the time, but right now in particular, it would’ve been nice to take care of Suzanne a little.
He couldn’t deny enjoying the view as she scurried naked across the living room before disappearing into the bedroom. While she was gone, he reached around under the covers and came up with sweatpants, which he managed to get on, and located his hoodie on the floor next to the bed. She soon came back in leggings and a pastel hoodie of her own.
“Think it’s gonna be a shower day for me,” he told her, “once it warms up in here.”
“Sounds like a plan,” she said as he maneuvered his legs over the side of the bed and pulled himself up onto his left leg, balancing with the crutches. “And...I need to ask you a question. About last night.”
Uh-oh. It had been great, and he wouldn’t mind it happening again, and again—but not if she was gonna make a big thing of it. He’d just gotten out of a relationship like that with Meg, and he knew women liked to know where they stood and all that crap, but he’d just hoped this might stay as easy as it had felt last night. “Sounds serious,” he said—trying to be light, but also wary.
“It’s about...your hip,” she said.
His eyes narrowed. He had no idea what she was talking about, but maybe he’d jumped to the wrong conclusion? “Huh?”
“When we were...you know...were you, uh, able to lift your hip?”
“I...guess.”
“The reason I’m asking is—it seemed like you were...thrusting.”
He arched one eyebrow. “That’s usually how it’s done.”
“But that requires you move your hip. So this means you can use it. It moves. When you want it to.”
He blinked. “Oh. I guess so,” he said, seeing the relevance now.
“Could you before? Like a week or two ago?”
He tried to think. They’d focused so much on his leg, he hadn’t thought much about where exactly the feeling started or ended. “Not sure.”
She appeared to think it over and said, “Well, either way, it’s good.” Then she stepped closer and poked his hip with her finger, hard—and a jolt shot through him.
“Ow,” he said.
Then their gazes met—and they both smiled. “You can feel that,” she said.
“I can feel that,” he confirmed. “It tingled, though. And hurt more than you’d think.”
“Like nerve pain?”
He nodded. “Yep.”
At that, she poked his other hip in the same way. “Did that hurt?”
“Nope.”
She looked like she wanted to smile again but was holding it in.
“What?” he asked.
“I wonder if our hip rotations are reactivating those nerves,” she said. “I mean, maybe they’ve been like this all along, but...maybe they haven’t.”
Now Zack was the one holding back a grin, as unsure as she was. He didn’t want to get excited over nothing. That would be too damn easy to do here. So he just replied, “Maybe. And I’m about to explode, so...”
“Be on your way,” she said merrily, shooing him.
Of course, the whole time he was in the bathroom, he found himself poking different spots on his hip. Each poke produced different sensations, some more noticeable than others. And even if he didn’t want to get caught up in false hope, he came to the table feeling pretty good. Although the unexpected sex wasn’t exactly hurting his mood, either.
His seat provided him a view into the kitchen, where Suzanne flipped pancakes on a griddle. “Smells good, Suzie Q,” he said—just as his phone rang and he looked down to see his aunt’s face on the screen. He glanced to Suzanne before answering. “Dahlia.”
“This should be interesting,” Suzanne replied.
He swiped to answer. “Hey, Dahlia.”
“Zack, my boy, I’m so sorry. I’ve been ill, completely out of commission. And I’m still not back to full strength, but somewhat better and I’m just now getting your messages.”
He instantly believed her because she sounded...weak. “Sick how?”
“We suspect food poisoning.”
“Well, I hope you feel better.” He meant it. He couldn’t remember Dahlia ever being sick, so it threw him a little to hear her sounding frail. She stayed as chatty as usual, but he could tell she was tired. He added grudgingly, “And sorry if I got snotty.”
She let that go, proceeding to, “Now, how are you? Your messages worried me.”
He kept it simple. “I’m fine. Better than yesterday.”
“Good—I’m relieved to hear that. It’s easy to get down at a time like this—I know. But it’s important not to stay there. It’s important you pull yourself back up.”
“That’s what Suzanne said, too.”
He could almost feel Dahlia’s smile at his giving credit to Suzanne. “I trust that she’s taking excellent care of you.”
At this, an unplanned jolt of laughter leaked out.
“That’s funny?” Dahlia asked.
“No. And she is,” he assured her.
“Then what were you laughing about?”
“Nothing,” he insisted.
“Something. I didn’t just fall off a turnip truck, you know.”
He wasn’t sure how to respond, felt put on the spot. “We’re just...getting along fine,” he told her. “Better than I expected. That’s all.”
“Well, indeed that’s a surprise,” Dahlia said. “No more Nurse Ratched?”
“No. And that’s Ratchet,” he teased.
“Ratched, silly,” Suzanne said from the kitchen, hearing only part of the conversation. “Ratched, Ratched, Ratched.”
“She sounds merry,” Dahlia observed.
“I guess,” he said.
And a quiet moment later, Dahlia declared, “My stars. I never would have believed it, but there’s
something going on between the two of you, isn’t there?”
Damn perceptive woman. Then again, his own fault for laughing in the first place. “Uh, listen, Dahlia, breakfast is ready, so I gotta go.”
“Don’t you dare hang up on me, young man. I fully intend to find out exactly—”
“You’re breaking up, Dahlia—talk to you later. Bye.”
* * *
DAHLIA LEANED BACK her head and laughed. What unexpected and glorious news.
“Um, did you just laugh?” Giselle asked.
Dahlia smiled over from her bed. “Indeed I did. Listen to this. There’s romance brewing between Zack and Suzanne. Or sex. Or something in between—I’m not sure. I only know that it’s exactly what they both need right now, so I’m elated. A good love affair can sweep you off your feet, you know.” Then she stopped, frowning at her choice of words. “Well, perhaps I should have said that a different way under the circumstances—but regardless, it can take you away from your troubles.”
Dahlia looked back to her phone to send Suzanne a teasing text. I know what’s going on between you and Zack. Brava, my dear. Brava. She added a line of smiling emojis.
As she set the phone aside, feeling more joyful than she’d dreamed possible a few hours ago, Giselle asked cautiously, “Do you feel like getting up? Putting your toes in the sand?”
“Not yet, I’m afraid.” She pointed to a nearby table. “But pass me that album please.” She’d started to show Giselle some old pictures just before taking to her bed.
When Giselle placed the book on her lap, Dahlia ran her palm lovingly across the cover done in seventies psychedelic. “I’ve never been one to save a great many photos—I’m more of a live-in-the-moment woman—but just now I find myself glad to have these.”
She opened the book to the first page, to faded snapshots from her time in Montana. “There’s Pete,” she said, pointing at her sweet, young ex-husband. “Oh, and that’s Mulligan and Dobie on the horses.” She laughed, drawn back there again. “Dobie found that big straw hat in the bunkhouse and made it his. He wore it everywhere, even though it was too big on his head.”
“What did you do on the ranch?” Giselle asked.
“I cooked. That’s another thing my mother gave me—she taught me to cook. So—an interesting name and cooking skills—that’s two points for her. Needless to say, my love of cooking eventually led to the café.”
Having eased down on the bed beside her to see the pictures, Giselle let out a small gasp and pointed at one. “Is that you?”
Dahlia laughed. “Yes, I was once a blonde.” The messy golden locks fell loose over her shoulders as she sat next to Pete on the sofa in Hannah’s sprawling ranch house.
“I can just barely recognize you,” Giselle said. “It’s in your eyes. And your smile. The blond lights up your face.”
Dahlia studied the old photo. “I suppose it does at that. But for all things there is a season, and when my hair began to fade, I didn’t fight it.” She’d chosen to embrace her gray—a thought she knew some women found horrifying, others empowering, and still others just simpler. To each her own. For her, it had started out being about the ease—she’d never been one to trifle with inconveniences she could avoid; life was too short. But the transition to what had become a rather lovely shade of silver had, in a quiet way, brought an unanticipated strength.
“As women, we can become our hair, let it tell the world who we are, identify with it so deeply. Even when I chose to let go of that symbol of youth, I thought saying goodbye would be harder. But in the end, it was as simple as...letting it happen. And I suddenly felt like...me. Like some under layer of the real me had been revealed.
“And here’s a secret. People think you’re wiser with gray hair. They can see, I suppose, that this isn’t your first trip around the block, or maybe that you simply know who you are by this point. Regardless, they start listening more if you say what you think—as long as you do it with some sense, mind you.” She finished with a wink.
And Giselle said, “Or maybe you’re just actually wise.”
Dahlia laughed. “Yes, or that.” Then turned the page.
Her eyes fell on the ranch woman who’d been a blessing in her life, a mentor. “Oh, that’s Hannah. Dear Hannah.” Without planning, Dahlia found herself reaching down, touching the photo, as if she could touch Hannah’s face with her fingertips. “She was the most beautiful woman I’ve ever known.” She thought back. “She was in her fifties. And back then, many women that age resigned themselves to...a societal standard of aging where fashion and style were for the young. By the time they reached their forties or fifties, they had long since started cutting their hair into boring, sensible shapes and putting on frumpy day dresses and polyester pants. But not Hannah. I’ll never forget the moment I met her.
“She wore a long, tiered Western skirt with sturdy ranch boots underneath, and her ex-husband’s work coat, which was certainly too big on her and yet she sported it with total ease. Her hair was even longer than mine, somewhere between blond and gray, and her face was weathered and wrinkled and...still beautiful. How can I explain that?” she mused aloud. “I’d never before seen a woman with wrinkles who still exuded beauty and light and, oh, such confidence. She was...a woman of her own. And she taught me to be one, too.”
Unthinkingly, she touched Hannah’s face again, pulled back in time, feeling almost as if it were yesterday that they’d last talked. “Hannah taught me, among many other lessons, that youth and beauty are two very different things.” She looked to Giselle. “Such qualities really are in the eye of the beholder, you know?”
Giselle smiled. “Hannah would be proud of you if she were here. You make me see youth and beauty in different ways than I did before, just so you know.”
Dahlia’s heart warmed. “That’s a supreme compliment, my friend.”
She turned the page to find a photo of her and Hannah together. She’d forgotten it existed, but it made her heart dance. Did Hannah have a copy? Did she ever look at it? Did she remember Dahlia as fondly as Dahlia remembered her? But then, no. Probably not. For a rush of reasons that blew through her mind—just as Giselle asked, “Did you keep in touch with her?”
“No,” Dahlia answered, swiftly if a little sadly. “Back then, it wasn’t as easy. We didn’t have cell phones or computers. We had home phones, so the number changed whenever you moved. And we had pen and paper. It took effort. And someone like Hannah—well, much as I loved her, I think she was used to the transience of the people in her life. Ranch workers came and went. She was content, I think, to let go of people. I’ve largely been the same way myself. It’s that live-in-the-moment part of me. Even if, just now, I’m...wondering why. Why I never wrote to her. Why I never went back to visit.”
“Have you ever tried to find her online? On social media?”
Dahlia smiled grimly as a sad, strange truth set in. “She was forty years my senior. I’m sixty-five. So...she’s likely long since died. And you know, maybe that’s one way life is easier when you lose touch with people. You don’t have to know when they pass, you don’t have to mourn them. Up until a moment ago, Hannah had always, for me, been alive and vibrant as ever, in my mind, whenever she crossed it.” Then she scrunched up her nose and peeked over at Giselle. “Would it be utterly silly of me to keep it that way? In my mind? Let her just be alive and thriving there?”
“I think it’s a very nice idea,” Giselle said. Then she tilted her head. “What about the others? Pete? Dobie? The girls? Do you know where any of them ended up?”
Dahlia just laughed. “Not a one of them. And no, I don’t want to look them up online.”
“Because you prefer to live in the moment,” Giselle finished for her.
“Correct,” Dahlia said. “And besides, I don’t want to find out any of them have died, either. That way, they can just keep living on inside me, too.”
Dahlia thought back, turned another page. She let out a laugh, seeing that the album had just left the ranch years, right along with her thoughts. “Well,” she said, “Pete wanted to have a baby. I was only eighteen and did not. And I did a rather dastardly thing, because I wasn’t quite bold enough to speak my mind yet, because that doesn’t happen overnight when you’ve often been slapped for doing so. The birth control pill had just been legalized, so I went on the pill without telling him. Until I realized how futile that was, and with Hannah’s counsel, eventually told him I didn’t know if I ever wanted children. And though the marriage had been doomed for me from the start, that was finally the end for him. We divorced and he set out for greener pastures—literally. He was hired on at a ranch in Wyoming. Me, I loved Hannah, and cooking in that big ranch kitchen, and I thought I’d be content to stay there forever. But everything changed when Hannah introduced me to a man named Tom Delaney.”
“I trust he’s the man you’re getting married to in these pictures?”
“Yes,” Dahlia said, glancing down. Another barefoot wedding, but she looked so much more grown-up. “It was a sunset ceremony on Hapuna Beach on Hawaii’s Big Island.”
“I didn’t see that coming,” Giselle said.
“Neither did I,” Dahlia confided with another wink. Then she leaned her head back, sighed.
“You look tired,” Giselle said.
“Yes. I suppose my euphoria about Zack and Suzanne lifted me up—but now I’m feeling rather blah again. Would you mind if I take a nap?”
“Not at all,” Giselle answered, and Dahlia closed her eyes, vaguely aware of the photo album being lifted from her grasp.
* * *
DAHLIA LAY NEXT to a pristine swimming pool looking out over the bluest ocean waters she never could have imagined. She glanced over at the man on the lounge chair next to hers, a big hulking rancher who seemed to think she’d hung the moon. He was getting sunburned.
