What the Heart Wants

by Cynthia Reese

  “Sorry...I didn’t get much sleep last night.” Allison liked Dr. Wells, who was nice to the nurses and didn’t stand on ceremony. “It does feel weird for the ER to be this slow. I keep thinking I’ve forgotten to check in on a patient or three. And the time just drags by.” She picked up her sandwich and absently took another bite as she tried to make sense of the complicated legal jargon the ordinances were worded in.

  “Yeah, I saw the paint in your hair. How many rooms have you got done?”

  “Paint?”

  Dr. Wells gestured to a particular corkscrew curl, and Allison examined the strand to find a telltale streak of sage green she’d painted the living room and library.

  Dr. Wells seeing the paint in her hair made Allison think of Kyle and the day they’d stood outside his house. Since their argument last week, he hadn’t called. Or dropped by.

  And she didn’t want to focus on how sad that made her feel. No, regardless of what her best friend, Melanie, kept telling her, she did not miss Kyle. Really, it was that he’d completely given up on her—on Belle Paix. She’d been proved right, she guessed. Now that she’d drawn a line in the sand and declared, “This far and no farther!” he’d written her off.

  Belle Paix’s restoration had been his only interest in her.

  “Want some coffee? It might keep you awake. What are you researching, anyway? From the way your eyes are glazing over, it could be my old advanced-molecular-biology textbook.” Dr. Wells pushed her chair back to cross over to the coffeepot.

  “City ordinances about historic districts. I’m trying to see what most cities with historic sections have in place. If I’m going to convince the council to repeal that stupid paint law, then I need some ammunition.”

  “What’s the fuss about paint, anyway? I mean, how expensive is a bucket of paint?” Dr. Wells asked. “So, coffee? Or no?”

  Allison looked up to see thick, tarry hospital coffee glugging out of the carafe into Dr. Well’s mug. She shuddered. “I’ll pass, thanks. That stuff resembles toxic waste. And yeah, one pail of paint isn’t that expensive, although you’d be surprised—sixty bucks a gallon for custom historic colors. But Belle Paix is huge, so it will take lots of buckets of paint. Plus, how many shades do you have on your house?”

  “Well...” Dr. Wells squinted and slurped the coffee. Her responding shudder matched Allison’s, and she promptly dumped two packets of sugar into her cup. “You’re right. Definitely toxic waste. Pity that’s the only source of caffeine around here. Somebody stole my cola out of the fridge. As for my house, it’s two tones—the main color and the trim. I did talk Mike into painting the door a different hue, but he wanted the shutters to match the trim.”

  “City ordinances here state you have to choose a paint scheme that matches the—and I quote—historical accuracy of the home’s original era. And since Belle Paix is a Second Empire, really high Victorian, that original paint scheme calls for five colors.”

  “Five? Get out!”

  “Yep. Different portions of the trim were painted different accent colors to highlight the architectural details.”

  “But nobody does that anymore,” Dr. Wells protested. “It would cost a fortune in labor, because you’d have to paint the trim one color, then wait for it to dry and break out another one.”

  “Exactly.” Allison was gratified by the woman’s quick grasp of how the paint scheme ratcheted up the labor costs. “I mean, I’ve gotten quotes, and some of them said they wouldn’t do it for less than twenty thousand bucks. I’ve even looked at trying to paint the house myself.”

  “Oh, no. Trust me. It took Mike forever to paint our house, and it’s just a normal-sized deal. He started out all gung-ho, with a ladder and a paintbrush. Climbing up and down that ladder got old in a hurry, let me tell you. But, man, renting the scaffolding was expensive, and every day, it was another trip to the hardware store. Oh, no, if your house is as big as you say it is, well, it’s well worth the money to hire someone to get it done.”

  “I know. I figured up the scaffolding costs myself. I even looked at buying a set of scaffolding. But then there’s the question of having to move it, you know? Still, twenty grand? I can’t afford that.” Allison stared down at the table and its coffee stain rings that hadn’t completely come up with an earlier swipe of a damp napkin. Her sandwich suddenly held all the appeal of a bucket of sawdust.

  “So tell the city they can cough up the money if they’re so fired up about wanting your house to be historically accurate,” Dr. Wells suggested. “Sounds to me like it’s almost a tax on people with historic homes, an unfunded mandate.”

  “Amen. I’ve got to remember that—it’s a great argument.”

  Just then another nurse popped her head into the room. “Dr. Wells, I know you’re on break, but we’ve got a multicar pileup on the interstate, with at least one unrestrained passenger ejected from a vehicle. EMS is bringing them in now and says they need at least two trauma bays.”

  Dr. Wells nodded and gulped down her coffee with a wince of displeasure. “Better put down that tablet, girlie,” she told Allison with a wry smile. “Because it looks like we complained too much about it being quiet.”

  * * *

  THE CAR ACCIDENT had been the signal for the floodgates to open, because after that, Allison didn’t have a chance to grab anything beyond her half-eaten sandwich. By 11:00 p.m., every bay was full, the waiting room overflowed with crying babies and at least one raving drunk, and the last of the car accident victims was either out the door and to a trauma hospital, or upstairs on the floor.

  Dr. Wells saw her coming out of a bay and tapped her on the shoulder as Allison shuffled through a sheaf of papers in her hands. “Hey, help me out here...I’ve got Sheila making calls to find a bed for one of our lovely guests, but she’s left Melba the frequent flier in bay four, and a hand laceration waiting in another bay. I’ve got to get that cut stitched up, but it needs to be cleaned first. Gotta warn ya, the hand’s a beaut. But if you’ll do that, I’ll go handle Melba in the meantime.”

  “Oh, all right. I don’t mind a little blood. And Melba doesn’t like me very much.”

  Dr. Wells laughed. “It’s just that you called her out last time on mixing herbal remedies and her prescription meds.”

  “It’s gonna kill her one day, but she won’t believe me. What’s the deal with the laceration?”

  “Get this...guy was carving some sort of decoration and slipped with a chisel. A pretty deep gash.”

  “Ouch.” Allison pictured a grizzled old lumberjack type, complete with a plaid shirt, a beard and a baseball cap—and probably an attitude to match. “Just stitches?”

  “Yep, thankfully, because we’d have to transfer him out if he needed hand surgery. He’ll require something for the pain—I’ve got the orders in, but Sheila didn’t get a chance to give the medication to him. You got it?”

  “Consider it handled. Let me go irrigate the old coot’s wound.”

  “Nope, not an old coot, he’s very much swoon-worthy. Name’s, er—Kyle? Yeah. Kyle Mitchell, a professor over at the college. Shh...don’t tell Mike about the swoon-worthy bit. He’d never understand I’m just window-shopping.” Dr. Wells pointed at a unit down on the end. “He’s all yours. I’m off to lecture Miss Mabel about how herbs really can screw up meds.”

  Outside the bay, Allison drew in a deep breath, then pushed aside the curtain. There indeed was Kyle, sitting on the edge of the bed, holding up a tightly swaddled hand.

  “Oh,” he said, spotting her. His face tightened, but she couldn’t translate what the expression meant. “I forgot about you working here... So you’re the one who’s going to stitch me up, huh?”

  “Nope, that’s Dr. Wells’s job. I’ll just get things started.”

  Allison forced herself to plaster a professional smile on her face, as though Kyle was just a
nother patient, not the man who hadn’t spoken to her in a week.

  She didn’t want to, though. She couldn’t get past the anger that ate at her. He’d told her to sell Belle Paix, as though she was some inferior owner who Kyle had totally given up on.

  Allison swallowed back the words she really wanted to say, and concentrated on doing her job. The quicker she did it, the quicker he’d be out of her sight and...well, back to wherever he’d been for the past week.

  She accessed the computer screen that would let her begin inputting things. She was grateful that Sheila had done the actual intake. It would have felt odd to have to ask Kyle the standard battery of questions. While she’d wound up taking care of friends before, she’d never taken care of a person she...

  What? What do you feel for Kyle?

  Pushing the thought from her mind, she crossed the room to examine his hand. “So what happened?”

  Just taking his hand in hers and unwrapping the gauze felt hugely intimate. Sure, they’d worked side by side before...

  And admit it, every time, it takes your breath away.

  “I...” He ducked his head. At first she thought he was averting his gaze from the fairly spectacular laceration across his palm; he was lucky he would just need stitches. A few millimeters more and he would have required a hand surgeon to repair tendons.

  “Yeah?”

  Then she saw him stare down at his hand without the slightest bit of squeamishness, but more than a little guilt. “It will be okay?” he asked. “I need my hand for typing...and, well, working. I’ve never met a one-handed carpenter.”

  “You very nearly ended up being one—or at least losing the function of your fingers,” she retorted. “What on earth were you thinking?”

  He drew his brows together, the corners of his mouth digging deep into his cheeks. “Obviously, I wasn’t thinking, or I wouldn’t have hurt myself, would I?”

  “What, trying to recreate some arcane historical detail to make your house ultraperfect? News flash, Kyle—whatever money you saved on trying to do it yourself, well, you’ve blown that here in the ER.”

  “I couldn’t find it to buy it,” he snapped. “Or else I would have just bought it.”

  She irrigated the wound with a little more force than she might have, and felt only a small twinge of guilt at his wince. “I thought by now you would have had your house perfect—oh, except for the digital clocks.”

  “I wasn’t working on something for the house, thank you very much. I was working on something for you—”

  He broke off and clamped his jaw tight, the muscles in it working hard to control whatever words he might have wanted to say.

  “For me?” More than a little shame permeated Allison. Her hand trembled as she squirted antiseptic into the wound. “What—”

  “There’s a piece of the detail missing on the front staircase. I noticed it the day we did the tomatoes, and I’d tried to find a replacement piece. But I hadn’t had any luck.”

  “So...you tried to whittle it?” She gaped at him, stared down at the angry gash on his hand and felt sick that he’d done this to himself on her behalf.

  “I’ve done carving before, lots of times,” Kyle said. “Ow! That stings! Could you take your anger out on something else?”

  “But I didn’t ask you...” She knew the piece he was referring to. It was high up on the inside corner of the stairs, just at the turn of the landing. “Leave it to you to notice it.”

  “It was just...something I was fooling around with. For you. I’d found a pattern in a book, and it didn’t look that hard. Plus you had your hands full with...” He trailed off.

  Now she was the one overcome with guilt. He was hand-carving a piece for her? When she was trying to take down his precious ordinances?

  Maybe he’s changed his mind, she thought. Maybe this is his peace offering.

  Gently, she laid his hand on the table. She was astonished at how bereft she felt at the lost connection once her fingers slipped from his. She turned so he couldn’t read her expression. “Let me get you some pain meds.”

  “Now that you’ve stopped torturing me, I’m okay,” he muttered.

  Allison glanced over her shoulder and chuckled. “If you think that was torture, wait till Dr. Wells starts stitching you up—especially without meds.”

  “Oh, all right. But don’t give me anything that will make me too loopy. I drove myself.”

  “What, Herbert or some other fellow committee members wouldn’t come to the aid of their comrade-in-arms?” she sniped.

  “I didn’t ask them. I’m sure Herb would have, but I didn’t feel the need. It was just my hand.”

  She stood at the opening of the bay, gripping the curtain in exasperation. “Kyle, that’s a bad injury. Historical accuracy is not worth getting hurt over.”

  He shrugged. “Maybe not to you. But it bugged me...the missing piece, I mean. And it was in my power to fix it.” Now his eyes held a challenge she couldn’t mistake. “My hand will get better. And I’m almost finished with the carving.”

  She shook her head and snatched the curtain closed. She couldn’t talk with him, not with any success at getting him to use sense, anyway. Didn’t he see the costs of being such an idealistic stickler for detail? Money and time and now his hand?

  Dr. Wells saw her as she was signing out Kyle’s meds. “Wow. I should have given you Mabel. You look positively steamed.”

  Allison compressed her lips. “I know him, that’s all. He’s a—a neighbor.”

  The doctor lifted an eyebrow. “And he seemed so nice...”

  “He’s...he’s just...” Allison glanced at her helplessly. “He got hurt because of me. He was making something for Belle Paix.”

  “Aww...now that’s better than chocolates, in my book. Can I send Mike over to get him trained? Hey, look, let me just give him a local. That will get in his system faster than the other. And since he lives alone and you’re obviously his favorite neighbor, why not check on his stitches and dressings in the morning for me?”

  Allison was speechless at first. But then she saw the doctor waiting expectantly for her answer, so she gave a grudging nod. “Sure, if he needs me.”

  Dr. Wells punched her on the shoulder. “That’s the spirit, girl!” And then she turned and headed toward Kyle’s bay.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  THE MORNING SUN spilled golden pools of light over Kyle’s front lawn as Allison put her car in Park at the curb. She stared at the house for a few minutes, trying to decide why she was even bothering with this.

  And don’t con yourself with the idea that it’s because Dr. Wells told you to, she ordered herself. It had been a long and busy night in the ER, and Dr. Wells clearly didn’t expect her to go out of her way for a wound that was probably okay on its own—and on a patient who had all the appearances of good common sense.

  If he’d had common sense, he wouldn’t have been whittling that thing in the first place, Allison groused to herself. But there was a secret part of her that thrilled to the idea that he’d made her something with his own hands...even when he hadn’t been able to bring himself to pick up the phone and call her.

  It took him a few minutes to answer the door, and when he did, he didn’t look at all like Kyle. His face still held the shadow of a beard, his button-down shirt was open, revealing a V-neck T-shirt, and a little cowlick stuck up on the crown of his head.

  “Oh! Hey! I—is something wrong?” Kyle asked.

  She held up the kit where she kept gauze and tape and scissors. “Thought you might need some help with that dressing.”

  He glanced down at his hand and colored slightly. “Uh, yeah, probably. Since I soaked it in the shower this morning. Stupid, huh?” Kyle opened the door and gestured her in with his bandaged hand. “Thanks. I hadn’t got that far along, but I k
new trying to bandage it one-handed was going to be a challenge.”

  His house, just as it had the first time, surrounded her with that back-in-time sensation. And just as before, it awakened all her feelings of inferiority about her own plans for Belle Paix.

  As she followed Kyle through the dining room he called over his shoulder, “Come on...I’ve just got the bacon started, and I did manage to get coffee on.”

  And there was that picture-perfect kitchen. This time, it had a slightly more lived-in look, with a coffee cup on the butcher-block worktable and a frying pan on the stove. “Oh, shoot!” He muttered something else under his breath.

  She closed the gap between him and the stove. “What?”

  “I burned the bacon. Well, not exactly burned, but...”

  Allison stared down into the pan and saw that it held a curious mix of raw and burned-to-the-point-of-charcoal bacon. “Sit,” she ordered him. “You’ve rescued me enough times. Now let me pay you back.”

  He dragged out a stool from under the table and sank down on it. “I think, just for this morning, I’ll let you. Unless you tell me it’s a highly addictive choice and I’ll never want to cook bacon on my own again.”

  Allison laughed in spite of herself. “I think you know you can resist me.”

  An awkward silence followed her words, broken only by the sound of the scrape of fork against pan as she raked out the burned bacon. Now why had she said that?

  It’s true, she thought as she busied herself with finding more bacon in the fridge—which was hidden behind decorative panels to match the cabinetry. He hasn’t called me in a week. He’s never once tried to kiss me without hesitating first.

  When he did speak, it was on a totally different subject. “Did you—did you come by here to see the medallion? I can get it for you.”

  She looked up from the bacon she was adding to the pan. “No...I just...” Somehow she couldn’t bear to tell him that she’d wanted to see him, so she fell back on Dr. Wells’s request the night before. “The doc suggested I come over and look in on you.”