California Girl (38 page)

She took a deep breath of relief, letting it flow through
her and sink in. After all these days of worrying, it felt good to know that
Mame was alive, and with luck would be for many more years. “She had three boys
to raise and you had a life to live. It’s good you’ve found each other now.
You’ll give her reason to stay healthy.”

Jock glanced at his coffee cup. “Yeah, I’ve got to give up
this stuff if I want to keep up with her. The doc says she can’t have caffeine,
and it’s probably not good for me either.”

“But she can fly balloons when she’s well, can’t she?”

He beamed. “That, she can. And we will. I got a place out
here where she can recover. I’m hoping by the time she’s well, she’ll agree to
stay with me.”

Alys raised her eyebrows. “What does Elliot have to say
about that?”

He grinned. “We ain’t told him yet. He’s got enough on his
mind right now, so we’re letting him figure it out for himself. Mame’s awake
and kicking. Why don’t you run back and see her for yourself?”

Alys didn’t need to be told twice. Following Jock’s
directions, she all but raced down the corridor.

“I’m not walking around on that thing like an old lady!” a
familiar voice cried from behind a partially closed door. “If I can’t walk on
my own, I’ll lie here and rot in the bed.”

Smiling, Alys shoved open the door. Mame stood beside her
hospital bed in a long blue robe, her red hair neatly arranged and her makeup
adeptly applied. At sight of Alys, she smiled hugely.

“There you are. Tell this tyrant you’ll lend me your arm,
and maybe she’ll take that repellent walker away.”

Throwing her bag of brochures onto a chair, Alys smiled at
the nurse, offered her arm to Mame, and kicked the walker aside with her foot.
“I want to be just like you when I grow up, Mame.”

“You are just like me already. You just don’t know it yet.”
With a glare at the nurse, Mame held her head high and proceeded to walk out of
the hospital room, one very careful step at a time. “It’s about time you got
here. Come along. We’ve some visiting to do.”

“Mrs. Emerson, you can’t go any farther than the nurse’s
desk!” the nurse called after her.

“Do
you believe that?” Mame said sotto voce.
“They think I’m old.”

“Nah, they’re following the rules. I don’t think any patient
is supposed to walk much after an operation. Besides, Jock is waiting out there
to take you back to your room. What room am I visiting?”

Mame looked at her through shrewd eyes. “You haven’t fainted
yet.”

“Don’t intend to,” Alys replied cheerfully. Waving at Jock
in the waiting room, she halted at the nurse’s desk. “I’ve chosen my future.
Now it remains to be seen where I’ll live it.”

“If Jock has his way, there will be a big old house sitting
empty in Springfield come spring,” Mame said as Jock came toward them. “Doing
things on your own has its place, but it’s even better sharing with someone
else.”

“For people like us, anyway.” Alys kissed Mame’s papery
cheek. “I’m learning that. It may take time to convince others.”

“If anyone can, you can. Elliot’s down on the next floor.
Someone convinced him he’s not indestructible.”

“He’s a stubborn man,” Alys warned.

“Show him your wounded wing. He always did like healing
injured creatures.”

Alys grinned. “He’s stubborn, not stupid. I’ll be back in a
little bit.”

Mame cackled. “I don’t think so.”

Puzzled over Mame’s parting remark, Alys ran back to fetch
her brochures, and set out for Elliot’s room.

In all her phone calls and visiting, she’d already learned
the famous Doc Nice had checked himself into the hospital last night.

The door closed behind the doctor, and Elliot gazed
blankly at the private hospital room his money could buy. Where did he go from
here?

He had his computer and cell phone in the closet. He’d
already called the radio station and told them to run a tape for next Sunday’s
show as well. His publisher wasn’t interested in scheduling another book tour.
He still had a deadline to meet, though. There was Mame to think about. And his
brothers.

He’d rather think about Alys, but it hurt too much. His
friends hadn’t called yet. She hadn’t delivered the Rover. Where could she be?

Exploring the Grand Canyon? Driving into Mexico? With a free
spirit like Alys, who knew? He would have liked to have shown her palm trees
and oceans.

A woman laughed down the hall, and he could hear Alys in the
laughter. He would be a basket case at this rate. Sitting up, he shrugged into
his robe in case a nurse was headed this way. He hated being on the other side
of the bed. He could almost understand what Alys and Mame had been telling him
about hospitals. The impersonal routine was daunting, even when he understood
the need for it. He liked his privacy.

Tying the belt, he swung his legs over the edge of the bed
just as the door swung open.

Alys stood there in all her glorious disarray. She carried a
jacket over her arm along with a canvas bag spilling colorful brochures. Her
sexy white blouse revealed the glorious curves of her breasts. He’d never seen
her wearing such sedate colors, but he liked the way the ruffle of her blouse
teased him with glimpses of what he longed to see.

The load on her arm tugged the blouse open wider as she
deposited the bag and jacket on a chair. She’d been running her fingers through
her hair again, and upturned ends stuck out in strange places. Sleek,
mink-colored hair sculpted her cheeks and emphasized her wide eyes as she
studied him.

“How do you feel?” she asked anxiously, her gaze darting to
the empty IV bag hanging on the far side of the bed, then down to the
unblinking monitors on the nightstand, before coming back to study him.

“You’re not about to sit on the floor and go into a trance,
are you?” he asked warily. He hated being caught in bed, looking less than a
hundred percent, but his perverse heart had just begun a rapid tattoo, and he
wasn’t certain he dared get up just yet. Just the sight of her had that effect
on him.

“Not unless I have a reason to,” she said pragmatically.
“I’ve decided what I want to be.”

Elliot sat back against his pillows, waiting with interest
to see where her fascinating mind had taken her this time. “A travel writer who
follows balloon festivals?”

To his surprise, she emptied her canvas bag across the
covers. Pages of information on nursing careers and education requirements and
universities spilled across his legs in a colorful array of slick papers.

“A nurse,” she said with satisfaction, pulling the chair to
the side of the bed and excitedly poking through the material. “Look. I can get
scholarships. And I have enough left from the life insurance for housing.”

He didn’t know whether to share her obvious happiness or
weep that he’d lost her for certain or laugh at the irony of her choosing a
profession that took her into the hospitals she hated. He tried to show
interest by picking up one of the papers she handed him, but he couldn’t tear
his gaze from the excitement dancing in her eyes.

“With your brains and persistence, you could be an astronaut
and go to the moon if you wanted. Why would you choose a profession that would
put you in the hospitals that you hate?”

She beamed. “Because it makes perfect sense. I love people.
Mame was right, and so were you. I’m a nurturer, a natural caretaker. It’s the
cold inhospitable atmosphere of hospitals that I don’t like, not medicine or
doctors. I can learn what you know about practical science, and apply what I
know about the spiritual nature that must be nurtured, and you can live
forever!”

Stunned, Elliot just stared. He wasn’t certain if he’d heard
her right, or understood what he’d heard.

She waved a hand as if to brush away what she’d just said.
“I know people don’t live forever. I’m accepting that. But you might live
longer. I can learn things like CPR and what’s healthy for you. You always
concentrate on the physical. I could feed you positive vibrations and—”

Elliot grabbed her hands to halt the spill of words before
she said anything she’d regret later. “You don’t need to do all that for me.”

The eagerness in her eyes didn’t flee but flickered with
uncertainty. “It’s okay if you don’t want me around. I still want to be a
nurse. But if you left me because you didn’t want to die on me, then I’m
telling you that doesn’t matter. I can handle it. I know what I’m getting into
and I’m prepared.”

He wasn’t the kind of man who cried, but he pulled her onto
the bed and hugged her against him so she couldn’t see the moisture building in
his eyes. She curled into his arms as if she belonged there, and Elliot thought
he might burst with love and pride. “I’m not going to die,” he told her. “Not
yet anyway.”

She tilted her head up. “You had a heart attack, just like
Mame.”

“And Mame isn’t dying anytime soon either, but that’s not
what I mean. My heart is fine. There is no sign of blocked arteries or
congestive failure. The doctor says I have the heart of a college football
player. Looking at my test results, I wouldn’t go that far, but I’m
conservative.”

Laughter crinkled the corners of her eyes, but she still
studied him, searching for the truth. “Then, what happened? The medics said
your heart failed.”

“You happened. I can’t explain it. I may spend a lifetime
trying to duplicate the results. Maybe I just had a raw ulcer and passed out
from pain and you cured it. There are no guarantees that it won’t happen
again,” he warned as excitement and happiness burned in her eyes.

“But I’ll be prepared next time,” she crowed, flinging her
arms around his neck and raining kisses across his cheek.

He was just getting into the soft crush of her breasts against
his chest when she suddenly pulled back and stared at him in horror. If he did
have a bad heart, it would have faltered right then.

“But then you don’t need me. I’ve been assuming you left
because of Fred, but if you’re fine, and you didn’t call, and . . .
” she stuttered helplessly, backing away. “I’ve made a fool of myself.”

“When has that ever stopped you?” Bursting with laughter and
delight, Elliot hauled her into his lap again. “I know it’s too soon, and I
can’t expect you to agree to anything just yet, but I know my own mind. And
heart. I love you. You’ve showed me a whole new world I would have missed if
you hadn’t come along. I don’t want to live without you. Could you give me time
to make you see things my way? Do you think you might consider nursing school
in St. Louis so we could see each other more often? If not, I could always—”

“Yes!” she cried, flinging her arms around him again,
landing in his lap, narrowly missing a vital part of his anatomy that was in a
particularly tender state right now. “I love you. I adore you. I want to spend
my life with you. I want to show you life isn’t just about diet and exercise. I
want—”

Flipping her back against the mattress before she could
totally unman him, Elliot shut up her nonsense by firmly applying mouth-to-mouth
resuscitation. With a twist.

“Marry me,” he said, coming up for air, then returning to
kiss her again so she couldn’t refuse.

She dug her fingers into his hair and wriggled under him to
a better position. Elliot immediately dived for the cleft between her breasts,
peeling back silk and lace and freeing her nipple. She gasped when he drank
there, but he could feel the heat and desire sweep through her. Maybe he could
bribe her with sex into saying yes.

She moaned and ran her hands beneath his robe and Elliot was
just beginning to wonder if they could do this without anyone walking in on
them when Alys suddenly grabbed his shoulders and pushed. She couldn’t budge
him if he didn’t want to be budged, but he was wary enough to stop what he was
doing to study her face.

“Why settle for California when I can have the moon?” she
replied, then tugged him back down to kiss him.

Elliot thought he might just have become engaged to be
married, but he’d ask questions later.

Right now, he preferred to reinforce his future wife’s
positive vibrations about hospitals. He’d give her something to smile about the
next time she walked into one.

Alys tucked mistletoe into the greenery of the arched
doorway between Mame’s front parlor and dining room. The outdoor scent of
evergreen permeated the air. Climbing down from the ladder to twirl around and
admire all the decorations, she hugged herself. The twelve-foot Christmas tree
in the bay window was amazing.

She still couldn’t believe this was happening to her. She
felt as if she were dancing on air.

A light coating of white covered the lawn outside the
window. Ice glittered in the bare maples, a perfect background for the
evergreen tree shimmering in red and silver and crystal. Stacked high around
the base of the tree and spilling over the perimeter onto the Victorian
fireplace were colorful packages tied in gaudy bows.

Wedding gifts they hadn’t opened yet.

From the kitchen drifted the aroma of baking cookies and the
roar of laughter. Mame and Jock were in full fettle, she thought, smiling to
herself, thinking of the love she’d seen between the two of them. She was glad
they had come back here for this. Elliot’s brothers had returned home for the
occasion, and the house was filled to overflowing with life and laughter. She
was loving every minute of it. This was what she’d needed, not loneliness. Not
even freedom. She needed the ties that bind.

At the sound of feet on the elegant staircase, she glanced
toward the foyer, her smile deepening as she waited for the man of her dreams
to walk into the room. He’d taped his farewell radio show just yesterday. He’d
turned in his manuscript last week. He’d spent these last weeks turning the
library and an adjacent bedroom into an office for the practice he intended to
build here in Springfield. She’d known he had to emerge from his study sooner
or later.