Intertwined Hearts Series (4 book collection): (Intertwined Hearts, An Exceptional Twist, Tangled Paths & Grafted Vines)

by Kimi Flores

  The radio played in the background as Stella made sure to position herself between us, giving him the stink eye the whole way there. I normally got mad at her when she passed gas in the tight quarters of my truck, but I had to stifle a giggle when Eric gagged at one point. She looked pretty proud of herself, the little shit.

  We didn’t speak a word all forty-one minutes it took to drive to the coffee shop. All he did was mess around on his phone until it finally died. Just before he stepped out, I almost expected him to ask when I was coming back to get him. But he didn’t. Throwing the door open, he jumped out, then slammed it behind, causing the windows to rattle as he stormed inside.

  Well, that had been a lot easier than I thought. Good riddance.

  Pulling away, I realized something. Sometime when I was at work this week, he’d brought a bag of clothes into my place and he didn't have it with him now. I bit back a groan. I’d just have to plan a time to dump his crap off at the coffee shop the next time I was up here.

  I’d lied when I told Eric I had plans today, I just didn’t want him to take my truck. Before I’d volunteered to drive him up to Santa Ynez, I’d contemplated going to visit Leah and her new family, but my newborn niece was colicky and nobody in that house was sleeping. I loved my brother-in-law, Stefen, but he was one cranky man when he was tired.

  Now that I was in the area, I figured I may as well find something to do. Since Elle wasn’t sleeping through the night yet, either, Bri and Josh were probably also too tired to have an unexpected visitor.

  Times like these made me wish my mom still lived within driving distance. It had been so nice to see her a few weeks ago when she came to meet her newest grandchild. Now that they were in Sacramento, she was always busy helping my step-father, Sal, with his political career.

  A year ago, I wouldn't have given any of this a second thought. I would’ve just headed to the winery. But I didn’t feel comfortable showing up unannounced anymore. Plus, Saturdays and Sundays were the busiest days of the week for them.

  Checking the time, I had a thought and knew exactly where I was going. I made a U-turn and headed toward Oak Hills, a senior living community where one of my patients lived. Philomena was always up for an unscheduled visit and loved going out to breakfast.

  Since I was meeting Zachary tomorrow, that would be two calorie filled breakfasts I’d have to keep in mind when I worked out this week. I hated keeping track of everything I ate and every calorie I burned, but I’d made a commitment to myself and was going to stick to it this time.

  At thirty-two, my only option this morning for not eating by myself and feeling like all eyes were on the lonely fat chick, was to take a ninety-year-old, half-blind woman with me.

  I really was pathetic.

  ⁂

  Philomena patted the table top until she found her coffee and lifted it with shaky hands up to her lips. Like most of my female patients, she wore far too much make-up and left a gnarly bright pink lipstick print on the edge of the mug. “Thank you for picking me up to eat. It smelled like they were recycling last night's Salisbury steak and trying to pass it off as breakfast sausage again.”

  We both shivered in disgust.

  “I’m glad you were free to join me.” I bit into one of the aebleskivers I’d ordered. Lingonberry jam squirted out of the puffy round Danish pancake, straight into my mouth. I sighed happily, enjoying the tangy sweet flavor, and licked the powdered sugar off my lips. If I was going to have to burn off extra calories, I was going to make them worth it.

  “Sounds like you are enjoying the taste of whatever you’re eating.”

  I giggled. Philomena was one of my favorite patients, but I hated even calling her that. Besides the usual blood pressure issues that came from a high sodium diet, and the cataracts that had stolen most of her vision, she was the healthiest ninety-year old I knew. And in my line of work, I knew plenty.

  When I’d first met her, I quickly realized she wasn’t hiring my business to take care of her medical needs as much as she just wanted someone who was regularly scheduled to check up on her. Thankfully since Oak Hills was primarily filled with fairly healthy seniors and only had a handful of staff members, I was able to do business there as an independent contractor.

  In her younger years, she’d been an actress and a dancer, but she’d never married nor had children. Her friends had all passed away and the little family she did have didn’t visit, write, or call. Philomena kept her life very simple and loved to tell stories about the Hollywood men she’d once had illicit affairs with.

  One of her favorite pastimes was reading those super cheesy romance novels where they used phrases like ‘his manhood’ and ‘her bountiful bosoms’. Because her vision had become limited, she’d been ecstatic when I showed her how to download and listen to audio books. She’d bought just about all the books in the romance genre. Even I had blushed on several occasions when I’d walked in on her listening to them.

  The one good thing about getting old was that you could get away with a whole lot of crap you couldn't when you were younger. Thankfully, when I got there today, she wasn’t fully naked, dancing in her kitchenette again.

  Philomena scooted her cup to the side and turned her attention to me. “Well, child, would you like to talk about whatever is filling this place with gloom and doom?”

  I snickered at how observant she was, even with her restricted eyesight. “How do you know anything’s wrong? You hiding some secret power over there?” If their minds were still strong, old people were so damn perceptive. They’d already seen and done it all.

  “It doesn’t take a genius to know when a heart is breaking. Spill it. I am already over the hill, won’t be much longer before I take the final plunge.”

  I wrung my hands together, but finally decided to let it out, anxious to get advice from someone wise and outside my circle of friends. “When your friends—uh, moved on, how did you handle the loneliness?”

  “Well,” she made a smacking sound with her mouth then tapped her thin-skinned, wrinkly index finger on her lips as she thought. “To be honest, I had quite a lot of what I’d consider acquaintances and never really got close to many people. I was the girl with the reputation that husbands didn’t want their wives around.” She chuckled. “Course they had no problem with me when their wives weren’t looking, the hypocritical bastards.”

  I had to snicker at her openness. I could so see her back in the day whooping it up, enjoying life. “Was the silence deafening when you were alone? I mean, how did you keep from pondering the regrets? The should’ve, could’ve, would’ves?”

  She reached out to find my hand, a rare sense of seriousness in her barely seeing eyes. “Dear, you fill that silence with whatever you want. Life isn’t about reaching for what is not there, it’s about nurturing what is already there. If you have someone who can fill that pot hole in your heart, then damn it, girl, you need to go grab it and suck the life out of every minute you have. And don't regret one single second of going after what you want.”

  I gulped. How right she was. It was time for me to fill the deafening silence in my head with what I truly wanted, and since that wouldn’t ever be Zachary, I’d have to find comfort within myself and my future children.

  I sat back in my chair and smiled at her, even if she couldn’t really see it.

  I was making a choice. I was going to have a baby. Soon. Because I wanted to be a mother with the crying and lack of sleep and messy diapers. It would give me the purpose I so desperately needed. And I couldn’t wait to be needed by someone who would always be there to fill that silence and give me unconditional love.

  Chapter Four

  Zachary

  Dad had another rough night, so I was running a few minutes late this morning when I stepped into the diner and spotted Dani. She was still wearing her scrubs as she sat at a table by the window near the back. It didn’t matter that her hair was in some sort of disheveled bun thing or that she didn’t have any makeup on. She still look
ed beautiful to me. Her eyes were scanning a magazine and she sipped from a coffee mug. It had to be a good sign that she was waiting for me and not assuming I had stood her up.

  I approached the table, unsure if I should just slip into the booth or give her a hug. “Hey, sorry I’m late.” The look on her face said, I’d be better off just taking a seat.

  She yawned and set the magazine down. “No problem. I already drank a cup of coffee so I’m more coherent than when I first got here.”

  “Long night?” I was trying to tread softly until I could gauge her mood a bit more accurately. Hell, how had I let it get to this point? I missed the days when I could finish her sentences, knew what she was thinking and just what she needed. Now I felt like a pubescent boy trying to navigate his first date.

  A waitress approached, asking if I wanted coffee too. I nodded before turning my attention back to Dani.

  “Yeah.” One side of her lips lowered. “I don’t expect my patient to last through the day. My staff is basically there just to keep her comfortable until she passes.”

  She’d once explained to me that medical professionals had to separate themselves from the deeper thoughts of death and concentrate on either healing patients or, as she’d said, making them comfortable until they died. But it still surprised me how at ease she was speaking about a patient's impending death. To me, death was on a totally different, completely uncomfortable level than it was to her.

  I often wondered if she’d chosen this profession after her father died, in order to have another outlook on death. I never had the heart to ask her, though.

  The waitress delivered my coffee, filled up Dani’s, and took our orders before stepping away. I noticed that it was a real estate magazine she’d placed on the table when I got here. Since I hadn’t brought my reading glasses with me, I couldn’t see the small print that said which city it was for.

  “Are you moving?” Those old familiar feelings of my mother’s abandonment began to smother me again. That choking sensation of waking up and realizing the woman I’d counted on the most had moved away and left me alone, made the muscles in my throat feel thick.

  She used her thumb to fan the edge of the pages. “Yeah. I’ve got to get out of the condo before more college students move in for the coming school year. The noise level was hell last year. I’m planning on switching back to the day shift, and I need my sleep.” She took another sip of her coffee. “And there’s no way I’m going to live in that small place once—” She stopped herself and looked up, surprised. “You know, once I need to sleep at night and they want to party.”

  I’m sure that’s not what she really wanted to say, but she looked pretty tired and I wasn’t going to push my luck. Just trust she isn’t going to go far, dumbass. Don’t make this terrible by assuming the worst.

  She rested her arms on the table, not giving anything away with her expression. “So what did you want to talk about regarding your dad?”

  Ouch. She wasn’t giving me any wiggle room here.

  “Well, I’m sure you’ve noticed how much attention he’s beginning to require, which means I need more help.”

  Dropping her hands into her lap, she relaxed her shoulders. “Well, I’ll help however I can. You know that.”

  Clenching my hands under the table, I hated feeling so unsure around her. “Yeah, but the thing is, I need a lot more help. Like all day while I’m working and a few nights a week so I can actually sleep.”

  Suddenly, she sat up straight, taking in what I was saying as the medical professional she was. “His sleeping is off that much?” Reaching for her phone, she mumbled, “Maybe I should get some blood work done.”

  “You know how Dad feels so I definitely need you—” Ain't that the truth. I cleared my throat. “I’d like to hire you and your staff to take care of him. I’ll be around as usual, of course, but he just needs more than I can give him all by myself.”

  I hoped she knew how hard this was for me to admit my shortcomings and not jump to the conclusion that I was trying to play games with her. I wasn’t sure my emotional state would survive if I had to admit I wasn’t enough for my father.

  She went into work mode, raising her brow in that concerned way that she did sometimes. “Okay, besides him not sleeping, do you have any specific concerns?”

  The waitress brought our food, giving me a moment to think about it. Dani used to be around all the time and knew what was going on with Dad even before I did. It stung that she no longer held that spot in our lives.

  We both started digging in. That was something I appreciated about Dani. If she was hungry, she didn’t try to hide it and had no problem eating right alongside me.

  “Well, I’m not sure if his blood sugars are off or what, but he's been having strange hallucinations for a while and they’re so much worse at night. Especially since he was sick.” Admitting this felt like a betrayal to the man who had taken me in, loved me, and taught me everything I knew. But I had to accept I was more than a caregiver. I had become the parent. You did what was best for them, and right now Dani was what was best for both of us.

  She dropped her fork and sat back in her seat, chewing silently. I wasn’t sure if that should alarm me or not.

  I dragged my hand through my short, sandy-blonde hair. “Neither of us have slept much lately, and I have no idea how he’s even functioning most of the time. Samuel’s with him right now and said he’s taking a nap, but it’s been a little crazy at our house.” I wiped my mouth with a napkin to give me a few more seconds before I made my next request. “I have to insist that he becomes your patient officially, though.” Imploring her, I stared into her eyes.

  She seemed uncertain as she stared back with those beautiful, deep, coffee colored eyes that I loved so much. “Yeah, okay. Um, let me get some sleep this morning and I’ll come over later to check on him. We’ll definitely figure out what’s going on. I’ll take a little time to introduce him to my staff. Hopefully he won’t put up a fuss when they show up without me.”

  “Putting your personal reservations about me aside—”

  She interrupted me with a defensive look, “Your dad has nothing to do with what happened between us. Besides, it’s in the past. Over and forgotten. We don’t need to talk about it.”

  I blinked, taken off guard. “Is it? Over and forgotten? Because you sure do everything you can to avoid me, which leads me to believe it’s not forgotten.” I reached to touch her hand and she recoiled, which felt like a punch in the gut. “We were once close and that’s the only part I feel like is in the past.”

  She turned her head to look out the window, but I could see her swallowing the invisible lump that my words had created. Please, Dani, just talk to me.

  I sighed. “Listen, I’m sorry, but I’m so tired of this. I want us to get back to where we were, but I know I owe you an explanation.”

  She opened her mouth, and I knew she was about to interrupt me again. I held my hand up, stopping her as I went on. “This is really tough for me to talk about, but you’re right. You deserve to know what my issue is with us being together.”

  Looking surprised, she stayed quiet and waited. That was actually one of the many things I loved about her. She knew she was due an explanation. I was thankful she finally seemed like she was ready to hear me out.

  I put my arms on the table and shoved my plate to the edge for the waitress to pick up, then I took a deep breath. “I met my ex-wife, Tori, at culinary school, and we couldn’t stand each other. I mean, we really hated each other. We fought to be top of our class and were each other’s biggest competitors. She’d sabotaged me every chance she got. And in turn, I was a complete ass to her. Our classmates dubbed us the Ferocious Duo.”

  Just thinking about how many times we’d fought back then, irritated me. “Fast forward a year after graduation when we held our reunion at the vineyard.” I gave her a knowing look. “I hadn’t invited Tori on purpose, but she showed up just to spite me.”

  Dani tried to st
ifle a snort, but I could tell she was trying to picture Tori and the shit-eating grin she’d worn when I’d noticed her.

  “Well, all those years of pent up aggravation turned into an explosive night.” It was embarrassing admitting this to Dani, but it happened and I had to own up to it. “I obviously hadn’t been prepared for anything to happen and trusted her when she said she was on the pill.” Dani had thought I’d felt regret after sleeping with her but I felt guilty more than anything. Tori was the only woman I’d really regretted acting on impulse with.

  Tension began to build in my neck as I continued. “I was still young, deep into the beginning of my career, and having children was nowhere near my radar.” I sat back, bracing myself for the next part. “You can imagine my shock when she showed up a few months later, crying and announcing she was pregnant.”

  Dani gasped and placed her hand on her mouth. Yeah, this was the piece of the story that I didn’t like sharing. It didn’t matter how much I trusted her, I just hated reliving that part of my life.

  I sighed as I went on. “She’d had a rough upbringing and nobody to support her. That was the one thing we bonded over at the reunion.”

  Just like the Dani I had grown to love, she took a sip of her coffee, avoiding eye contact with me so I could maintain my composure. I loved that about her, she allowed people to keep their dignity, no matter what the situation was. Dani and I had spent many nights talking about our childhood memories so she’d already heard the sad story about my mom leaving me behind.

  Angling my body away, I leaned further against the booth. I didn’t need to take a defensive posture with her, but I never wanted to face this topic head on. “I talked it over with Dad and, after his initial shock, we agreed that the only responsible thing to do was for me to marry her.” I tapped my fingers against the table in between tracing the checkerboard pattern. Clearing my throat, I continued. “It was a struggle, but I figured if this woman was going to be the mother of my child, I had to find a way to make it work. We went to counseling and everything was going better than expected when—”