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
