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Rosalyn was right.
He had the hots for Carly.
Although he’d been in several relationships since his divorce, they’d all been light, fun, about mutual pleasure. From the moment he’d met her, Carly had tugged at something deep that made him question the meaningless relationships he moved in and out of with the ease of a broken heart that didn’t allow anything more.
Memories of the past hit him, freezing him in place and making him question his interest in Carly.
Was she playing hard to get? Had he misread her? Or was there something more going on?
CHAPTER TWO (#u8c791de1-0a01-5d21-a209-100977a3f194)
“SORRY I TOOK so long to bring your medicine,” Carly apologized to the elderly man lying in the hospital bed.
Although partially dozed off, he wore a thick pair of glasses, along with oxygen tubing and a nasal cannula. He opened his eyes and stared in her direction, blankly at first, then with vague recognition.
Carly was used to that reaction. Wasn’t it one she saw with increasing frequency from her mother?
Just as she did at home, Carly pasted on her brightest smile.
“I don’t need medicine anyway,” the man muttered grumpily and without making eye contact.
“Your medicine helps keep your heart in rhythm and will help get you out of this place and back home soon.”
The man snorted. “I don’t have a home.”
Carly had been taking care of Mr. Taylor for three days, knew his personal history, and understood his frustrations that his family felt he could no longer live alone. With forgetting to eat and frequent falls, he couldn’t.
“That’s not what your daughter told me when she was visiting yesterday,” Carly reminded him.
“She lied.”
Carly handed him the plastic cup that held his pills. “You don’t live with her?”
He thought a moment, then shook his head. He didn’t say more, just took the medications.
“Is there anything else I can get you, Mr. Taylor?”
“A new body.”
Carly smiled. She’d heard that many times over the five years she’d been a nurse.
“I wish I could,” she admitted. She wished she could do a lot of things when it came to making someone well.
Especially with her mother’s Parkinson’s and dementia.
What she wouldn’t do for there to be a cure to such horrific diseases that robbed one of their mind and body.
She checked his vitals, made sure his nurse-call button was within his reach, and left his room to check on another patient.
Mrs. Kim. A lovely little lady who’d had a surgically excised abscess on her chest. Due to the amount of infection and her weakened system, she’d been admitted for a few days for intravenous antibiotics to make sure the infection was knocked and to build up her strength.
Mrs. Kim’s family had been taking turns staying during the evenings and night, but during the daytime her family worked and the woman was usually in her room alone.
Carly popped in frequently to check on her.
Most of the time the pleasant woman would be enthralled in whichever game show she was currently watching, but the vision that met Carly’s eyes had her pausing in the doorway.
Looking distraught, Mrs. Kim was crying. Stone was at her bedside, holding her hand, offering comfort. Carly couldn’t make out his exact words, but she could feel their soothing balm.
Could feel her own eyes watering in empathy at Mrs. Kim’s distress.
Mrs. Kim grasped his hand in hers and was voicing her frustration over the wound that refused to heal in her chest, over how it was keeping her from her very busy life, and how she missed her two cats.
Whatever he said, Mrs. Kim weepily smiled, pulled his hand to her lips and smacked a kiss there.
“Thank you.”
She said more, but Carly couldn’t make out the words, just saw the woman’s lips move and then Stone throw his head back and laugh.
A real laugh. One that reverberated through Carly. Made her long to share such a laugh with him.
How long had it been since she’d laughed like that? Carefree through and through? With all her worries set aside in the joy of the moment?
Since she’d felt any real, all-the-way-to-her-soul sense of joy?
No, that wasn’t fair. She was happy, appreciative that she had her mother to go home to every day. It was what she wanted, what she’d choose given the choice. Every day was a blessing and to be cherished.
She did cherish life. She was not just going through the motions.
Thinking she’d come back later to check on Mrs. Kim, she turned to go, but the movement caught Stone’s eye.
“Carly?”
Pasting a smile on her face, she stepped into the hospital room.
Ignoring Stone, she met her patient’s gaze. “Hello, Mrs. Kim. I wanted to make sure you didn’t need anything. I see you’re in good hands.”
Mrs. Kim’s hand was locked between Stone’s and the woman smiled. “Very.”
“Is there anything you need?” She checked the woman’s IV settings and vitals. Feeling Stone’s gaze, she did her best to breathe normally, to function normally, and not make some total klutz move.
“Just to get better so I can go home.”
“We’re working on it,” she promised, then wondered if she should have deferred to Stone.
She’d never gotten the impression he was one of those high-ego docs, but she’d only known him a month.
One month, four days.
Okay, so she was counting.
He didn’t seem to mind her having answered for him. Possibly because he was too busy watching Carly’s every move. As a doctor concerned about what his patient’s nurse was doing? Maybe, but his expression was more inquisitive, as if he was trying to figure out what made her tick.
Good luck with that, she thought.
Actually, she was pretty dull. She worked and she took care of her mother. There wasn’t time for anything more.
Just ask her ex-boyfriend.
“I’ll be back in a little while to check on you,” Carly promised, heading out the door.
When she reached for the handle, she couldn’t resist glancing back. Her gaze collided with brilliant green.
His gaze holding hers, Stone smiled.
Something kicked in her chest.
Hard.
It might have been her heart skipping a beat or giving the strongest one in its twenty-seven-year history. Either way, she felt a little dizzy.
Carly’s lips parted, because she should say something, right? The man moved her in ways she’d forgotten she could be moved.
Or had never known she could be moved.
But nothing came out of her mouth and she scurried out of the room, before she did something crazy.
Like admit that the problem with Stone was that he made her long to explore all the emotions sparking to life inside her.
But she wasn’t free.
She needed to forget Stone.
Which was easier said than done since she saw the hospital’s prized new surgeon every day she worked and every time she closed her eyes.
* * *
Stone wasn’t wrong. He wasn’t sure why Carly had said no to going to dinner with him, but she was as interested in him as he was her.
Desire had flashed in those eyes of hers.
Desire, longing, and so much more.
Which left him in a quandary.
He’d been rejected before, didn’t have any desire to set himself up for another woman to walk away from him. But he needed to know why she’d said no when her eyes were begging him to sweep her off her feet.
* * *
“Hello,” Carly called as she walked into her quiet house. The same house she’d grown up in. The same house she’d probably live in the rest of her life. “I’m home!”
She was. The small once white, but now faded, house was home, was where her heart and lots of wonderful memories were. Memories of better times when her mother had been well, full of spunk and energy, sharp-witted and capable of doing anything she wanted.
But those days were long gone.
For once Carly had gotten off work on time so hopefully her mother would still be awake, would hopefully be clear-minded, and not in the fog her memory often got enveloped by.
Joyce, her mother’s nurse, came around the hallway corner and into the living room. “Busy day?”
Carly smiled at the sixty-something woman with gray hair she kept cut short and in loose, no-nonsense curls. A pair of thin gold-rimmed glasses sat on the bridge of her nose. She wore a Rolling Stones T-shirt with a big tongue on it and baggy, faded, rolled-up jeans that exposed slim ankles and flat white sandals.
Carly smiled. She and Joyce had an agreement the nurse wouldn’t wear a uniform. She wanted her mother to feel she had a friend, not a medical professional. Joyce appreciated not having to don scrubs any more, too, as she’d done so for almost forty years prior to “retiring”.
“They all are,” Carly said, putting her handbag on the small dining table in one corner of the room. “But that’s okay. I like to be busy.”
“Which is a good thing because goodness knows you have enough on your plate for three people.” Joyce tsked, shaking her head. “You need to slow down a little, and enjoy life before it passes you by.”
“I’m fine.” She was. Really, she was. So why did Stone’s face pop into her mind and doubt fill her heart? She. Was. Fine. “There will be time for slowing down long before I’m ready.” Which squeezed her insides and put things into proper perspective. “Speaking of which, how was Mom today?”
Joyce’s expression tightened. “Not great. Getting her to eat is a major ordeal these days.”
Carly winced. She knew from her own attempts to get her mother to eat. She seemed to have lost the will to live. “But she did eat?”
“She got her feeding tube meals, but by mouth.” Joyce shook her head. “She just doesn’t want anything.”
Carly nodded, knowing the nurse would have done all she could to get as many nutrients into Carly’s mother as possible.
“She struggled to communicate today,” Joyce continued. “Not that she tried saying much, but, when she did, understanding her was more difficult than normal. And most of the day she called me Margaret.”
Carly’s grandmother, who’d passed away years ago.
Taking a deep breath, Carly nodded again.
“But in other news,” the older woman began on a false hopeful note, “Gerald texted to say he picked up ten lottery tickets and one was sure to be a winner this time.”
Rubbing the back of her neck, massaging a knotted muscle, Carly smiled. Joyce’s husband struggled with a lifelong gambling problem. These days, he limited himself to no more than ten tickets in each week’s Powerball lotto.
“He says when he wins we’re gonna put your momma somewhere real fine and move you out of this place.”
Carly shook her head. “First off, I’d never let you do that and, second, I don’t want to move. You know this is where Momma wants to be. I’ll keep her here as long as I am physically and financially able.”
Always. She’d always keep her mother at home. She hoped and prayed.
Joyce waved her hand. “You know what I meant.”
She did. Joyce wanted to help, as did Gerald, to lighten Carly’s burden. But Carly had this. Precariously, but she was making ends meet. She’d worry about sorting out all the tangles and knots later...hopefully, much later.
“Thank you for all you do. Nothing more is needed.” She hoped it never was. “Just you taking care of Momma.”
