“You were snoring, Sleeping Beauty.”
“Thank you, Kayla,” Dr. Caleb West called. The orthopedic surgeon sat at one of the computer workstations that lined the back of the room. “I thought I was going to have to shoot him.”
Brett sat up in the recliner, trying to orient himself as to time and place.
“Man, you look beat.” Aaron pulled on a windbreaker as he prepared to leave for the day. “You should go home and get some rest tonight.”
Brett glanced at the wall clock. Ten after five. He had finished up at his clinic at three and come back to the hospital to check on his patients. Earlier in the morning, he had done three angiograms and two stent procedures. He had admitted a couple of patients for an overnight stay. The last thing he remembered was sitting down in the recliner.
He groaned as he tried to stand. Every stiff, sore muscle in his body protested. He clutched the arm of the chair for assistance and slowly managed to straighten his legs. Then his back.
“Are you okay?” Aaron asked, surprised.
Kayla stood in the doorway to the kitchenette with a cup of coffee. “What have you been doing?”
“Just stuff around the house,” was all he said. They wouldn’t believe he had been cleaning out gutters, hauling fifty-pound bags of mulch, and dusting chandeliers at the Castle House. He and Natalie had also polished the suit of armor in the foyer.
“I can write you a script for muscle relaxers,” Caleb offered.
“Thanks, but I’m good.” He trudged over to the coat rack as Aaron disappeared out the door.
“You’ve been keeping a low profile lately.” Kayla threw out a hook, fishing for gossip.
“Nah.” After he had managed to get his arms in the sleeves of his jacket, he stuck his stethoscope in the front pocket. “I’ve just been working.” Probably harder than he’d ever worked in his life.
“Marla and I were wondering if you’d met someone special for a change.”
He grimaced as his back muscles ached. “You and the other LaLa need to mind your own business.”
Kayla sized him up. “So it’s true! You’ve got a girl.”
How did women always manage to pull conclusions out of thin air?
Caleb turned from the computer. “Hey, you mean Hot Rod finally has a girl that doesn’t have a motor and wheels? That’s probably what’s wrong with your back, bro.”
“Screw you, Caleb.”
Caleb turned back to the computer, laughing, and Kayla wished him good luck with his new girl.
On his way home, he picked up a loaded medium pizza for his dinner. This was the first free night he’d had since the Layton ordeal had started two weeks ago. Yesterday evening, when he had been in the middle of moving an eight-foot shelf in Anna’s greenhouse, the matriarch had told him that they would be going to a church fellowship meeting tonight.
He had suppressed the temptation to shout hallelujah.
In his kitchen, he sat on a stool at the island and enjoyed the pizza, along with a cold beer. The pizza was good. Of course, he had been spoiled by Clara’s home cooking. She made the best shrimp scampi ever, and he loved her sweet potato casserole, not to mention every dessert she served.
For a moment, he actually missed sitting down to a home-cooked dinner with Natalie, Anna, and Clara. The two old ladies had insisted he call them by their first names. He had made the mistake of calling Anna “Miss Anna,” and she’d quickly informed him that she was not Miss anything. From then on, he referred to them as Anna and Clara.
Clara, of course, was still as friendly and welcoming as ever. Anna remained aloof, but she seemed to have decided his presence was tolerable, and he didn’t dare rock the boat by saying anything about medicine. The subject of heart disease was never mentioned.
Her cat, Pharaoh, loved to sit like a sphinx on the window seat and glare at him the entire meal. He had learned to ignore the cat, as Natalie advised. He didn’t even look in its direction, much less speak to it, for fear of severe repercussions.
However, he looked at Natalie a lot. She fascinated him. He had tried to figure why. It wasn’t just a matter of physical appearance. He thought she was beautiful, but for every woman he thought was pretty, another guy would have a different opinion. That was how nature prevented all the males from wanting the same female.
Was it the surprise of how she had evolved? Maybe she had been remarkable when they were in school and he had purposely overlooked any positive traits, which made it easy to detest her. He found her remarkable now. She was a combination of strength and fragility. He knew she carried a lot of pain inside her, but he hadn’t seen any evidence that she was letting it overwhelm her.
She could be funny, charming, sexy, and sometimes heartbreakingly honest, as he found out one evening when they were in the attic.
The attic at the Castle House could have furnished a museum. It had walls of wood paneling that smelled faintly of cedar, and it didn’t lack for headroom or space. Single lightbulb fixtures hung from the rafters and cast a glow on the main room, which was filled with everything from a wicker pram to a tin bathtub.
Brett had been investigating the old electronic equipment stacked on steel shelving when he found a cream-colored plastic radio that had to date back to the fifties.
“Wonder if it still works?” he said to Natalie, who sat on the floor, surrounded by old hats.
“There’s an outlet below the window.”
He sat on a creaky vanity bench and put the radio on the floor. “I hope it doesn’t catch fire.” He plugged it in. The old radio crackled with static. “AM,” he said, realizing the radio didn’t have FM capabilities. “I don’t know that we have any AM stations around here.”
“Hey,” Natalie called to him. She wore a monstrosity of a hat decorated with velvet, silk flowers, a bird, and ostrich plumes. “Catch.” She tossed a man’s hat in his direction. “It’s an Indiana Jones hat.”
He caught the brown wool fedora, which dated back decades. “Yeah, it looks like his hat,” he said. “Have you seen those movies?”
“A hundred times,” she answered. “I think I was about eleven when my mom bought my dad the set of movies for his birthday. So we had birthday cake and ice cream and watched Indiana Jones. I loved them, and by the end of the third movie, I told my parents I was going to be an archaeologist.”
“I’ve never seen any of them.” He tried on the hat. It was too small.
“We’ve got to have an Indy marathon. You’ll love those movies.”
“Here. You should wear his hat.” He tossed her the fedora. “And get rid of that one.” He frowned as he looked at the elaborate ladies hat. “Is that a real bird? Like a stuffed bird?”
She took off the hat and inspected the bird perched on the hatband. “I don’t think so. But these hats were very popular back in the nineteen hundreds. It’s what they wore on the Titanic.”
“No wonder it sank.” He turned the dial on the radio, searching for a channel. Suddenly, Adele’s voice filled the attic as she sang “Set Fire to the Rain.” Surprised by the reception, he said, “How about that?”
“That’s not the radio,” Natalie said as she glanced around. “It’s my phone. Wherever I left it.”
As she pushed to her feet, he retrieved the phone from the top of a wooden file cabinet behind him. “Here you go.” He handed her the phone and was surprised when she let the call go to voice mail. “Listen, if you need some privacy, I’ll go downstairs. I could use a cold drink.”
“No. That isn’t it at all.” She played the voice mail.
With the sounds of a pub in the background, a group of people greeted Natalie, and a man with a British accent had left a brief message. “Just giving you a ring to let you know your chums miss you, American Girl. Ian said he’d spoken to you, and we’re all hoping you’ll be a part of the team if you feel up to it.”
A chorus of voices agreed with him, and Natalie sighed as she shut off the phone.
“Those are the people you
work with?” Brett asked.
“Yeah. They’re a great bunch. I miss them.” She turned and walked over to the trunk, where the old hats were scattered on the floor. “But I’m afraid.”
“Of what?”
It was a few moments before she spoke. “Before I wasn’t afraid at all. It didn’t matter how dangerous the situation was. I was going there. I took the kind of risks no one else would take,” she said. “It wasn’t because I thought I was invincible. I didn’t think that at all. It was because I was angry.
“When I lost my mother, I felt sad and alone. But when I lost Aiden, it was different. I had such rage inside me. I was full of fury, not fear. If I went out in a blaze of glory, so be it. That’s how I felt until the time came and I chose to live. That decision cost me my rage.”
“Isn’t that a good thing?”
“Yes, but it means I’ve lost my nerve, and I’m not sure what I’m going to do about that.”
He scooped the fedora off the floor and set it on her head. “What would Indy do?”
She pushed the brim of the loose hat up, and a small smile created hope on her face. “That’s a thought. I’m sure he’d think of something bold and clever.”
“You’ll think of something bold and clever, too.” Brett had taken the opportunity to encourage her and to redeem himself a little for all the times he had put her down. “Whatever you decide, you’ll do well,” he told her. Then he gave her a quick kiss.
He had become a master of quick kisses. Just a touch of his mouth on hers. Otherwise, things might get out of control quickly, and that’s not what he wanted. He had made her a promise, and he kept his hands to himself.
He hadn’t been pushing things. Neither had she. Unfortunately. Brett dumped the empty pizza box in the trash and headed out to his garage. As he entered the building, he flipped a switch, and the overhead fluorescent lights cast a light over his Mustang, Firebird, and Road Runner. The Firebird’s motor still needed work, and he was going to put new spark plugs in her. Fiddling with his cars relaxed him in the same way that playing golf was a diversion for some men.
“Hi, girls,” he said to the vintage automobiles. There was a vacant spot where Cathy, the Camaro, was usually parked. He reached for the phone clipped to his waist and called Natalie. It was the first time today he had called her, even though the thought had entered his mind several times. For no good reason, he found that talking to her every day was necessary to his well-being.
The thing was, they were not in a relationship. They were like a couple in some ways, but mostly not. He wasn’t certain what they were. Accomplices?
“How’s Cathy?” he asked when she answered the phone. He ignored the way his mood elevated immediately, but he was developing a better understanding of how attraction and body chemistry worked together.
“She’s fine. I drove her around the neighborhood today. She’s still in one piece.”
“Great,” he said, and a part of him longed to ask her if she wanted to come over and see the other cars. Hang out. Maybe she’d like to spend the night and screw him senseless. Talk about a fantasy.
“Did you have a good day?” she asked.
“It was okay. Pretty much routine.” They were having a perfunctory conversation. What else could he expect? Natalie was at a huge crossroads in her life. In a few weeks, she might be back in London or even in Turkey. And he was trying to make it to the top floor at the hospital. He had to keep his objective in mind.
“I want to run something by you,” he said. “There’s a really nice new restaurant called the White Lily that opened a couple of months ago. I could get a table for four tomorrow night. I thought it would be nice to take Clara and Anna out to dinner for a change instead of Clara having to cook for us. What do you think?”
“I think they’d love that.”
“All right.” His smile broadened as his mind went places it shouldn’t. “Why don’t you wear the Elvis dress?”
“I don’t think so. I’d rather wear something a little warmer.”
“You look good in it.” And I’d love to keep you warm.
“I can look good in something else. Especially a dress with sleeves,” she insisted. Then her voice took on a lively note. “Guess what I found today! The Indiana Jones Complete Adventure Collection. All four movies! I was so excited.”
“I bet so.” He had to smile at her enthusiasm.
“We can watch two of the movies on Saturday and two on Sunday. Nana and Clara love these movies, too. So I’ll invite them to watch the movies with us. We can all hang out together.”
How lucky could a guy get? Another weekend with two old ladies and a girl he couldn’t have.
“Sounds like a plan,” he said.
Chapter 12
Amber draped a black hairstyling cape over Natalie and fastened it behind her neck. The wide mirror in front of the chair where Natalie sat reflected the small beauty shop that Amber owned. She worked in the shop by herself except on Saturdays, when an additional cosmetologist and a shampoo girl came in to work.
The shop was decorated with splashy, black-and-white portraits of beauty icons—Marilyn Monroe, Jean Harlow, Elizabeth Taylor, Rita Hayworth—hanging on dark red walls. Amber’s business goal was that every woman would leave her shop feeling like a movie star.
“All right.” Amber fluffed Natalie’s long hair. “We’re gonna give it some shape and highlights. And I’ve got some new makeup samples I want to use on you, too.” She smiled. “So how are things going in the world of fake romance?”
Natalie let out a sigh. “It’s getting a little too real for comfort.”
“Uh oh.” Amber reached for the scissors on the counter. “Don’t tell me you’re falling for Brett Harris.”
“No.” Natalie squirmed in the chair. “I’m not about to fall for him. I’m not his type at all. And there’s no point in it.” She spread her hands from beneath the cape. “In a few weeks, I’m leaving here, and a long-distance relationship wouldn’t work.”
“You’ve already fallen for him.”
“Maybe a little. Not much, though.”
Amber started snipping again. “I knew it. I knew you two would get together.”
“No, we’re not together. Not like a real couple. It’s all about helping Nana, and he’s making an all-out effort to win her over. He comes over every day, and Nana always comes up with something she wants him to do around the house. Brett and I have worked our asses off.
“I haven’t said anything, but I feel like Nana is taking advantage of us.” She told Amber how they had hauled the Christmas decorations down from the attic, dusted the chandeliers, cleaned out gutters, moved shelves in the greenhouse, and washed Nana’s Cadillac.
“Brett has never complained once, and I think Nana likes that about him. She’s always admired someone willing to work hard, and he doesn’t mention anything about medicine to her. He leaves that subject alone.”
“That’s smart.”
“He’s a smart guy,” Natalie said. “Clara loves cooking for him, but last night, he took all of us out to eat at a new place called the White Lily.”
“I love the White Lily. It’s beautiful.”
“It is. Nana and Clara enjoyed it so much, and Brett was so sweet. He gave each of us a long-stemmed rose. I think Nana was impressed.”
Amber glanced at the large mirror in front of the styling chair and grinned at Natalie. “From the dreamy sound of your voice, I think you were the one who’s impressed.”
“I am. Unfortunately,” she added, “I realize he has an end game in sight, and I’m definitely not naïve. But I’ve gotten to know him better, and he has his share of good qualities, which I never thought I’d say.”
“When a guy goes from asshole to awesome, you know where that road leads, don’t you?”
“It’s a dead end for me.”
“Or it could be a new beginning. You gotta think positive.” Finished with the trimming, Amber put her scissors down and began the foiling pr
ocess that would create flaxen blond highlights in Natalie’s dark blond hair.
“Dad called me this morning.” Natalie wanted to get her mind off Brett. “He says he’s going to have a huge surprise for me soon. I know it’s not a car since there was one waiting for me when I got here.”
“Could be a trip.” Amber began applying the lightener to Natalie’s hair. “Maybe to the Bahamas or Hawaii for the holidays. Wouldn’t that be cool?”
“I have no idea. You know, he’s nagging me about moving to Washington, so I’m hoping it’s not a house or something.”
“He’s widowed again, right?” Amber wrapped a piece of foil around a strand of Natalie’s hair.
“Yeah, he’s by himself, and he’s made a big effort to be there for me lately. Especially after the bombing.” Natalie had never been close to her father, but she had never been on bad terms with him either. Now she just accepted him as he was. That’s maturity for you.
The door of the salon swung open, and Amber’s four-year-old son, Noah, came through the door, followed by Amber’s tall husband, Josh, who carried four plastic bags filled with paper towels, foam cups, and other supplies for the shop. Both Josh and Noah wore camouflage pants and green jackets.
“Daddy bought me a fishin’ stick.”
Amber scooped Noah up in her arms as Josh dropped a couple of issues of the Lafayette Falls Daily on the table between the hair dryers and made his way toward the storage room.
“Your own fishing stick.” Amber gave her son a kiss on the cheek. “That’s good. Say hi to Miss Natalie.”
Natalie smiled at the little boy, who had his mother’s brown eyes and his father’s red hair. “Are you going fishing, Noah?”
He nodded and hid his face against his mother’s neck.
“He’s nothing like me,” Amber said. “Thank God.”
“Amen,” Josh called from the storage room.
Everything His Heart Desires Page 13
