Deep (Pagano Family #4)(59)

oOo



Aunt Angie was still fussing about the room, but now the lights were low, and Beverly was settled under the covers. His aunt came up and hugged Nick when he came into the room.

“I have a nightgown for her, but it’s just one of my old lady gowns, and I couldn’t figure out how to put it on her. So she’s not wearing anything under the covers. I hope that won’t upset her when she wakes.”

“If it does, I’ll help her get the gown on.” An old lady gown would probably be what she would want right now—though Aunt Angie was never anything less than glamorous, so he doubted her idea of an old lady gown was some flannel sack.

Angie leaned back and looked up at him, a skeptical lift to her eyebrow. “Or you call me or your mother to help her. Don’t push her, Nicky.” She stepped back and pointed to a fold of bright white cotton fabric. “It’s here.”

He crossed the room and pulled the floral armchair up to the bed. This room was done in blues and greens, and all the fabric was the same—the curtains, the bedding, even the upholstery of the armchair. All of it the same crème color with a pattern of small blue flowers on vines. An elegant septuagenarian’s idea of good taste.

His aunt left, pulling the door closed behind her, and Nick was left alone with Beverly in the dim room. Only a small lamp on the dresser, with a dark blue shade, offered any light.

He picked up her hot, limp hand, and she stirred. Her eyes fluttered open, closed, and opened again. “Nick.” She’d lost her voice entirely now; his name was nothing more than a breath.

“I’m here, bella. He put her hand to his face and kissed her palm. “I’m here. I’m so sorry.”

She smiled a little, then winced a little when the movement pulled her hurt lips. “You don’t have regrets. You said.”

“I regret this. Letting you get hurt.”

“It’s okay. I forgive you. I love you.”

Women had told him they loved him before. He had never returned the sentiment. He had been fond of the women he’d been with. He had enjoyed them. But he had avoided sentiment. Sentiment was messy. It was hot, and he strove always for cool. And with that thought, he understood that his uncle was right about Beverly. She had changed him. She had made him hot.

He loved her.

Still holding her hand, Nick laid his cheek on her palm. He wondered at the calm he felt at that simple, passive touch of her skin. “Ah, bella. Sei il sole della mia vita. Ti amo.”

“Pretty words,” she breathed, and then she was asleep again.

He would say them in English when she would remember that they’d been said.





14



Bev lay on the sumptuous bed in the pretty room and stared out the window. The view looked out over the water from high on Greenback Hill, so lying here she could see only the sky—a solid blue made brilliant by the late-morning sun. The window was open, and pretty floral curtains billowed out and in with the swaying sea breeze.

She could hear the ocean moving onto the beach, the gentle, rolling hiss and rush of calm waves. At a distance, gulls cackled—probably congregating at the harbor, as they tended to do.

It was a perfect May day. The kind of day to enjoy yoga on the sand, or a swim in the pool, and then walk to work with the sun on her face. Her favorite kind of day. A day to promise that nothing bad ever lasted, that no trouble couldn’t be shrugged off and sent into the breeze to float away.

Bev turned away from the window and closed her eyes.



oOo



“Bella. Dr. Kerr is here.” Nick stood in the doorway, his hand on the knob. Bev had sent him away earlier in the day, when she’d woken to find him sleeping in the chair next to the bed. In the hours since, he’d come in to check on her, and to make her take her meds, but when he’d asked if she wanted to be alone, she’d nodded, and he’d gone.

It wasn’t that she was angry, or that she blamed him. She had no idea whether she was, or if she did. She didn’t have the energy to know. She didn’t have the energy to feel any kind of emotion at all. All of her energy went to the pain. Physical and mental, the pain consumed her and was too big to be contained in any one feeling. It was not anger, or sorrow, or fear, or even self-pity. It was just pain. And she wanted to be alone with it.

Maybe she would have an emotion again, but now, on this day after, the night before running behind her eyes on a loop—every second, everything that had happened, everything that had been done—all she could feel was pain.

She was saved from having to try to explain any of this by her ravaged throat. So she only nodded and turned away from the door. Back to the window. She closed her eyes.

She didn’t know who Dr. Kerr was, but when a nicely-dressed man with thin grey hair and wire-rimmed glasses came in behind Nick, Bev thought he seemed a little familiar. Though the diner was crystal clear, the rest of the night was either hazy or missing. She hadn’t known where she was when she’d woken this morning.

“Good morning, dear.” Dr. Kerr set an old-fashioned black medical bag on the dresser. Then he turned to Nick. “When did she last have pain relief?”

Nick checked his watch. “About three and a half hours.”

“That’s off schedule.”

“She was sleeping. I didn’t want to wake her. Is it a problem?”