Jamison (Beautiful Mine #3) (23 page)

“Hello, Sophie. Dr. Garner.” I’d recognize Bledsoe’s voice anywhere. “Sophie, how you feeling?”

“I’ve been better,” I said dryly. “Wish I had my vision…”

“So, we got the results of your spinal tap,” he said. “It seems your aneurysm is bleeding, so we’re going to be taking you back for surgery here shortly. Dr. Fowler is in the building and he’s just gone over your results. The OR is being prepped, and Dr. Fowler will be performing the surgical clipping procedure I’d told you about before. Do you remember that?”

I remembered being in a daze when he was going over everything. That was about it.

“This is where they’ll have to remove part of your skull…” Jamison said. We’d discussed treatment options before as well, but I’d always tuned him out the moment he went into detail about how things were performed. He didn’t mean to upset me. It was just the way his surgeon brain worked.

“Will I get my vision back?” I asked. At that point, I was willing to do whatever it took. I wanted to see again. I wanted to paint. To stare into Jamison’s eyes. To live the life I’d been meant to live.

“You should,” Bledsoe said. “The hope is that if we stop the subarachnoid hemorrhaging, it should release the pressure on your optical nerve, restoring your eyesight.”

Jamison squeezed my hand. “It’s going to be fine, Sophie. This is a common procedure. My father can do this in his sleep. I could, too.”

I blinked away tears, afraid I might go to sleep and never wake up to Jamison again.

“I’ll be here when you get back,” he said. “Promise.”

***

My eyelids parted and the back of my skull radiated with remnants of surgical pain. Fluorescent light filled my pupils and I scrunched my eyes. My hand shot up to shield them, but got caught on a wire hooked to a machine.

“Welcome back, Sophie,” a nurse with gray hair and kind eyes said as she recorded my vitals. “Surgery went well. You’re in the recovery unit, but we’ll be moving you to the NSICU soon. Your family is here. Dr. Fowler is talking to them now.”

I stared around the room, never so grateful to see the stale white of a hospital room in my life.

“Where’s Jamison?” I asked, my mouth parched beyond belief.

“Only nurses and attendings are allowed in recovery,” she said. “You’ll spend twenty-four hours in the NSICU, and then we’ll move to an inpatient room in our neuro unit. You can have visitors after that.”

“So, I have to go another day without seeing anyone?”

“I’m sorry, sweetie,” she said. “It’s protocol.”

“How’s our patient of the hour doing?” a man’s voice said, bringing a new level of energy into the room. For a second, he almost looked like my Jamison.

“Dr. Fowler, she just woke up,” the nurse said, nearly giddy in his presence, which reminded me of what a big-shot he was in the world of neuro surgery.

He came to my bedside, staring down at me with a reserved smile. “You did well. Surgery went well. You’re going to be as good as new in a few weeks.”

“A few weeks?” I asked.

“You’ll be spending at least two or three weeks in the neuro unit, sweetie,” the nurse said before flitting back to the computer and typing in more notes.

“Jamison will take good care of you,” Dr. Fowler said. “He’s a good doctor.”

I couldn’t wait to tell Jamison what his father had said. Even something as simple as that would mean the world to him.

“He’s a very good doctor,” I said, staring up into his eyes which held the same shape as Jamison’s. “You should tell him that once in a while.”

Dr. Fowler laughed. “I’m sure he knows.”

“It’s still nice to hear it, especially from someone he looks up to so much.”

Dr. Fowler’s smile faded, and for the first time I suspected someone was telling him something he didn’t already know. “Really? He looks up to me?”

I rolled my eyes and threw him a half-smile. My energy was fading, and I wanted to sleep.

He placed his hand over mine, the way Jamison did sometimes when he couldn’t find the right words, and I got the feeling he wasn’t usually this warm toward his patients.

“You need to rest now,” he said. “Jamison needs you.”

I wanted to tell him Jamison needed him too, but by the time I summoned the energy to speak again, he was gone.

JAMISON

“Welcome home,” I said, leading Sophie back into the apartment she hadn’t seen in over three weeks.

“Feels good to be back,” she said, carefully stepping in.

I pulled her coat from her shoulders and took her bag. “Take it easy, Sophie. You’re going to be off work another couple weeks. It’s very important that you take things slow until your next follow up.”

She blew her hair from her face and rolled her eyes. She hated being slowed down, and she’d been itching to paint something new for weeks.

“Doctor’s orders,” I said.

She shuffled to the sofa, gently lowering herself and kicking her feet up as I tended to a knock on the door, which ushered in Mia.

“How’re you feeling?” she asked as she made a beeline for Sophie. She’d visited in the hospital several times, but covering the gallery had kept her away more than she’d have liked.

“Good,” Sophie said, her eyes lighting in Mia’s presence. “Ready for things to get back to normal.”

“I have some news.” Mia bit the tip of her manicured nail before turning to me. “Jamison, do you think she can handle some excitement right now?”

Sophie’s eyes pleaded with mine.

I smirked, knowing full well what the news was. “I’ll allow it.”

“So, all of your paintings have been purchased,” Mia said, bouncing up and down.

“By who?”

“Mayo Clinic,” Mia said. “A doctor named Fowler came in and wanted to buy every last Sophie Salinger original we had hanging in the gallery. He’s going to put them in his neurology research facility.”

Sophie stared over at me, and I nodded, validating Mia’s story.

“He wrote me the check for a hundred grand and everything,” Mia said. “I’ll need your help shipping them… when you’re better, of course.”

Sophie sat, beaming but stunned. “I’ll have to thank him in person. What would make him want to help me out like that?”

I wasn’t sure what Sophie said to him after her surgery, but whatever it was brought out a different side of my father. He stuck around a bit after her procedure, and in the twenty-four hours she spent in the NSICU, my father palled around the city with me, catching up on decades-worth of the things he’d missed.

I stepped aside, letting Sophie and Mia catch up as I made myself busy and counted down the hours until I could have Sophie all to myself again.

The second Mia left, I settled in on the sofa next to Sophie and placed her feet in my lap. “Glad you’re back.”

“Me too,” she said, gazing at me with a dreamy look in her eyes.

“What are you thinking about?” I asked her.

Her cheeks blushed ever so slightly and she ducked her head down. “The future.”

“Speaking of the future,” I said. “I booked our Paris trip.”

“You did?”

“We’re stopping in Italy first,” I said. “Evie and Jude suddenly decided to move up their wedding.”

Her lips curled into a half smile and her eyebrow raised. “Shotgun wedding?”

I shrugged. “He didn’t quite say, but I suspect that’s the case. That, or he wanted to nail her down before she realized she was making a horrible mistake marrying a Garner-Willoughby boy.”

“That could never be a mistake,” Sophie said coyly, slipping her finger into the corner of her mouth.

“Is that so?” I asked, leaning toward her. I could only steal a kiss as she recovered, but my mind ran rampant with all the dirty things I wanted to do to her. I tasted her candied lips and breathed in her fragrance, absorbing her into every part of me. I stood up from the sofa and lifted Sophie in my arms, carrying her to her bed. I crawled in next to her and pulled the covers over top of us as she nuzzled into my arm.

“I missed this,” she said, dragging her fingertips across my arm and leaving a trail of goose bumps. “Laying with you.”

“My favorite place in the whole world,” I concurred. In all of my days, I’d never met a girl more beautiful than Sophie Salinger, inside and out. And in all those nights spent walking the neighborhood and peering into her apartment as she painted, never once did I think that girl would someday be mine.

SOPHIE

Four months later…

We stood in a tiny sixteenth-century church in some village in Italy I couldn’t begin to try and pronounce. Mere feet away stood Evie and Jude, hand in hand and gazing into each other’s eyes with goofy smiles on their faces. Evie’s short shift dress with an empire waist indicated she wasn’t trying to hide the fact that she was easily six months pregnant.

I smiled, admiring her gumption. She seemed like a girl who lived life in her own sweet little way.

Flanked by a leggy blonde who held her bouquet of calla lilies, Evie seemed like a girl who’d finally found her happy ending. Jude stood stoic and rigid, but his face said it all. He was in sheer Heaven finally making Evie his own. I saw them whispering back and forth a bit, but I never did figure out what they were saying.

The entire ceremony was in Italian, and apparently Evie and Jude had taken lessons in the months leading up to their big day. I nodded and smiled as I pretended to have a clue as to what the man was saying. The second they kissed, we all erupted in cheers and laughter and followed them outside the church grounds for photos. There weren’t more than ten of us total. I’d never been to such an intimate ceremony before, but it was one of the most beautiful ceremonies I’d ever witnessed.

“Want to go for a little walk?” Jamison asked me after an elegant dinner in a restaurant overlooking the Tuscan coast. I glanced over at Evie, who had tired written all over her face, and Jude who was very much drunk in love and itching to get her all to himself.

“Yeah, let’s go,” I said, scooting out from the table. We said our goodbyes to the group and headed down to the beach.

With the pale half-moon above and the velvety sand beneath our feet, we had all the makings of a romantic walk along the shore.

“This is a far cry from our city walks,” Jamison said as we slid our shoes off.

“It’s a nice change,” I agreed. “Though I must say, I’m thoroughly looking forward to walking the streets of Paree.”

“I know you are,” Jamison laughed. “Trust me. I know. I can’t wait to show you the city.”

“I want to see everything,” I mused, inhaling the warm sea breeze and tasting a hint of salt on my tongue.

“I plan on showing you everything,” Jamison said, as I felt his eyes resting on my face.

My hand flew up to his arm. “I don’t want this trip to be all about me, though. I want us to do some of the things you want to do, too.”

He smiled, kicking his feet into the sand. “Thank you.”

Jamison stopped me, pulling me into him and pressing his mouth against mine. Our lips danced and our tongues played, his fingers running through the underside of my hair and gently resting on the base of my neck.