Jake hadn’t expected to see Charlie again so soon, but there she was, blue eyes wide with alarm at the sight of him. Her blond hair was windblown and half hanging out of a clip at the nape of her neck, where a rapid pulse beat. Looking mortified, she closed her mouth without a word.
What a day. He focused every cell in his body on looking cool, detached, and professional. I could care less about her, he told himself, and I am not intimidated by Kingston Nash.
I am not that confused teenager anymore. I don’t need his approval.
He’d be damned if he’d let either Charlie or this wrinkled old coot see him sweat . . . or guess that each of his feet had weighed a thousand pounds on the walk down the hallway to room 217. Part of him still felt sixteen, still felt guilty and helpless and lost. He guessed that around this family, part of him always would.
He kept his expression nonchalant, as if he hadn’t just caught her flying off a ladder. As if he didn’t remember the way her hair smelled like sunshine, or how soft her skin was. The way she’d felt in his arms.
She ducked her head and mumbled something unintelligible.
He tried very hard not to notice how her jeans and sweater clung to her curves as she balanced on those silly high-heeled boots and scrubbed something that looked like mayonnaise or pudding off the walls. “What happened here?”
“I threw something too early,” the old man snapped. “Could have aimed it at your head.”
“Nice. I’m happy to see you, too.” Of all the patients in the tri-county area, he had to get this one? Seriously? He could probably have weaseled out of it or traded shifts, but it stung his pride to do that.
I am not intimidated by Kingston Nash. He said it to himself yet again. Nash was just a crotchety old bag of bile and bones. He might’ve paid for the new roof on First Presbyterian Church, but he never had a kind word to say about anyone, and especially not Jake himself—even though he and his boys had physically put the roof on the church.
Seven guys in free lodgings, with benefits, on salary to lie around in their skivvies with their thumbs up their bums!
Old George would love that one. Jake tamped down his irritation.
“What in seven hells are you doing here?” the old man growled.
“You heard me,” Jake said evenly. “I’m here to help with your physical therapy. You’re on my rotation schedule.”
Nash snorted. “Get outta my room.”
“How ’bout you get outta that bed instead?”
The old man glared at him. “Which part of ‘get out’ did you not understand, boy? They need to send me a professional.”
“I am one. Had you forgotten? That’s what my degree is in. That’s why I volunteer here at the hospital, and not at the food pantry or the animal shelter or the rec center, like the other guys.”
“Get this pyromaniac away from me, Charlie, before I . . .”
Pyromaniac? That hurt. Jake raised an eyebrow. “Before you what, Kingston? Beat me to death with your plastic drinking straw?”
Kingston gaped at him.
“Come on, old man. What are you afraid of? Let’s get you out from under those covers so you can at least give me a good kick in the shins. What d’you say?” Jake moved toward the bed.
“I have somewhere better to kick you,” Nash returned. “Charlie, get rid of him.”
She stood up and tossed a wad of paper towels into the trash can near the door. “Granddad, you need to do the exercises in order to get better and walk again.”
“I ain’t gonna do ’em with that . . . that . . .”
“Very nice guy?” Jake suggested. “Model citizen?”
Charlie moved toward the bed and twitched the covers off her grandfather’s bare, pale, bony legs.
“Stop that! Get away from me!”
“You’ve already thrown food today, Granddad. Can you please stop acting like a toddler and behave? Do your therapy?”
“Not with him.” Kingston rang the bell for the nurses’ station. Charlie shot an apologetic glance at Jake.
Jake dragged a hand down his face, then leaned against the wall near the door. He flattened his shoulders against it, sighed, and tried to ease a kink out of his neck. No dice. They all waited in tense silence for a nurse.
Mia Adams, whom they’d gone to high school with, came into the room within seconds. “Everything okay, Mr. Nash? Hi, Jake. Oh, Charlie—hello!” She smiled warmly. “It’s been a long time.”
“Mia!” she exclaimed. “Yes, it has. How are you? I didn’t know you were a nurse.”
“She is a nurse,” Kingston growled. “That’s why she’s here in my room, wearing scrubs. And no, everything is not okay. I need a different physical therapist. Get this joker outta my room.”
Mia looked from him to Jake and then back again. She was a very pretty redhead, with cinnamon brown eyes and a smattering of freckles across her nose. She took in a deep, measured breath while Kingston glared at Jake and then turned his gaze back to her.
Mia exhaled. “I do understand that there’s some . . . history here . . .”
“History! Ha.” Kingston snorted. “You could call it that.”
“But if the hospital staff had someone else to send, they would have,” Mia said. “We’re short-staffed, so the options are very limited, Mr. Nash. We’d really appreciate it if you could work with us. With him. With, uh, Jake.”
Kingston fidgeted and avoided her gaze. He looked around, perhaps hoping to find something else to throw. He screwed up his mouth, tucked his chin, and challenged them all from under his bushy gray eyebrows. “My hip hurts something fierce. I’m not wiggling or rotating anything.”
“Are you in severe pain?” Mia asked him. As she moved into different light, Jake noticed that she had huge dark circles under her eyes.
“Nah. I’m getting ready to run the Boston Marathon. Of course I’m in pain!” He banged a fist on his tray. “That’s why I’m extra specially delightful today.”
Was he making a joke? Jake wasn’t sure.
Mia put a hand on Kingston’s shoulder. “Do you need some Percocet?”
“What I need is my youth back.”
“It’s on back order,” Mia told him with a straight face.
“Ha! Good one.”
“You won’t stay sharp, but a little Percocet would ease your hip some. How bad is it?” she asked him.
Kingston glowered at Jake. “Well, that depends on what this fool’s gonna do to me, don’t it?”
Well, well. What a surprise. The old man’s decided to cooperate. “Nice job, Mia,” Jake murmured. Kingston Nash’s reputation for being as sharp as a tack was a reputation he clearly didn’t want to jeopardize.
Mia smiled back at Jake; next to her, Charlie bit her lip and looked away.
Jake forced himself not to wonder too much if she was jealous. He focused on Kingston and gave the man a nod. “We’ll start with thirty minutes on a unicycle.”
“Ha!” The noise of appreciation escaped Nash before he could strangle it. He looked annoyed. “So you’re not only a drain on the taxpayers; you’re a comedian.”
“Yep, and since I lie around all day with my thumb up my bum, I have nothing better to do than torture old men.”
Nash snorted.
“So you might as well let me earn my keep.” Jake cast a professional eye at the withered muscles of Kingston’s thighs and calves. They’d start with some basic stretches and rotations, then move on once he proved his stamina.
“Stop looking at my legs, you pervert,” Nash groused.
“He can’t help himself, Mr. Nash,” Mia teased. “You’re quite a looker.”
Old Kingston rolled his eyes, but his cheeks went pink. Unbelievable. Jake began taking him through some simple exercises, trying not to look like he was eavesdropping shamelessly as Charlie and Mia caught up.
“So you’re still living in Dallas, your grandfather tells me,” Mia said.
“Yes. I work with a real estate development company. I stage properties, try to make them as appealing as possible before they go up for sale.”
“You like it?”
Out of the corner of his eye, Jake saw Charlie shrug. “It’s okay,” she said. “I like the interior design aspect. But sometimes they have restrictions; I’m here to attest that there is such a thing as too much beige.”
So she wasn’t thrilled with her job.
“Do you like nursing?” she asked Mia. “Except when you have to deal with my granddad?”
“I heard that!” Kingston snapped.
Mia laughed. “Yes, I love it, actually. And it pays the bills—unlike Rob. We got divorced.”
“Ha,” said King. “Not sure why you work. That palace of yours is almost as big as my place . . . was.”
Mia’s laugh disappeared completely, and creases around her eyes joined the shadows underneath them. She said nothing.
“I’m sorry,” Charlie murmured. “Wait, Rob from high school? Rob as in Robert Bayes, class president, right?”
Mia made a face, and then both women giggled like they were sharing a secret joke. “High school was kind of a high point for him,” she said. “I keep telling myself it’s not too late to meet someone really great.”
Jake took a moment to assess Mia’s attributes long enough to glean that she really had nothing to worry about. He caught Charlie’s gaze as she noticed, and watched in fascination for a second as another deep blush suffused his ex-girlfriend’s confused face.
Kingston cleared his throat. “We done?” he grumped.
Jake refocused on his task. “Not yet.”
Man, how was it that there was anything even left between them? Enough to make Charlie flustered when he looked at another woman. Enough to knock Jake off kilter, thinking that she maybe gave a damn.
“How about you? Married? Kids?” Mia was asking.
“Uh, no,” Charlie said. “I was engaged briefly.”
Jake’s hands tightened involuntarily on Kingston’s ankle.
Kingston yelped.
“Sorry,” Jake muttered.
“But,” Charlie continued, “it just didn’t feel right in the end. He wasn’t . . .”
Still working on Kingston’s leg, Jake racked his brain for the possible endings to Charlie’s sentence: “He wasn’t good enough.” “He wasn’t good to me.” Or even, “He wasn’t Jake.” What the hell was wrong with him? Why should he care if Charlie had been engaged? And clearly, she’d walked out on that guy, too.
Mia waited for her to finish.
“We were so different. He ran marathons, he was a health nut. He’d give me guilt trips if I put anything not organic or wholesome into my mouth . . . He wanted a size four Charlie, not a size ten one.”
Clearly, the man was an idiot. Her curves were perfect. Jake fought the urge to throttle the unknown jerk.
“I just had this feeling that he’d try to edit me ’til the day I died . . . I don’t know,” Charlie muttered. “I guess I’ve had a little trouble figuring out what I want out of life. When I was young, I thought I had it figured out, but then, well. Sometimes things don’t turn out the way you expect.”
Mia gave Charlie a sympathetic smile and nodded. “So you came into town early for the wedding?”
“Well, I came in to check on Granddad after the operation and spend some time with him, too. But, yes, Lila and Felicity also asked me to help with the wedding.”
“Isn’t Felicity a trip?” Mia laughed.
“Someone may murder her before she gets to walk down the aisle,” Charlie said with feeling.
“How long are you staying?”
“I-I’m not sure. I’ve banked a ton of vacation time, and things are kind of slow at work right now. So it just depends on how Granddad’s doing.” Charlie lowered her voice. “I’m kind of worried about him. He doesn’t seem to be improving that much . . .”
“Think I can’t hear you?” the old man hollered. “I’m right here in the room, you know.”
But it was true. Jake frowned as he helped Kingston rotate his leg. He should have taken some steps on his own by now. It was a simple operation.
“Sorry, Granddad.”
Engaged. Charlie had been engaged to marry another man. Jake couldn’t seem to bend his mind around it. But of course she’d been with other men. Just as he’d been with other women. But he’d never gotten friggin’ engaged.
“Well, I’d love to catch up more with you, Charlie,” Mia said. “You should think about staying a little longer. We could get some of the girls together. We always had a good time.”
Charlie looked at her grandfather and then back at her friend. “Actually, just today I was thinking maybe I’d stay a little longer after the wedding.”
Jake sucked in a quick breath, and Kingston Nash said, “I’m the one using up all my energy. What’s your excuse?”
“Fantastic!” Mia replied to Charlie. “We’ll get together.”
Charlie smiled that warm smile of hers. “Absolutely.”
“Okay, Mr. Nash, it looks like you’re in good hands,” Mia said. She looked between Jake and Kingston, her eyes narrowing in suspicion. “We’re good here? Nobody’s planning to throw any punches?”
Jake looked at Kingston with his eyebrows up, and his patient took the cue to answer. “Fine,” Kingston said curtly.
Well, that was at least a better answer than He’s trying to kill me.
“Then I’ve got to get to my other patients.” Mia and Charlie exchanged a hug.
“And I’ve got some errands to run,” Charlie said, casting an uncomfortable look toward Jake.
Errands, right. The only thing she had to run was away from him. He could still read her like a book, and he could flat-out sense how unsettled he made her. The flush in her cheeks that had appeared when he walked in was still visible. She’d done nothing but fidget while talking to Mia. And she’d been steadily inching toward the door.
As always, the Goodbye Girl was itching to get gone, at least when it came to him.
“Great to see you, Mia,” Charlie said.
“Yeah, it was. We’ll take good care of your grandfather.”
“I know you will. Granddad, I’ll check on you later.” Charlie walked over and kissed him on the cheek. She straightened and looked at Jake. “And thank you,” she said to him, backing away. “See you . . . uh, soon. At the rehearsal dinner.”
“Yep.”
Jake steadfastly kept his focus on Kingston’s scrawny legs, and—though he badly wanted to—refused to check out her rear view as she left.