One of the aides bustled by with a tray of cookies and stopped when she saw him. “Hello, Alex! Our Emma's been waiting for you all day long.”
“Hi, Marlene. Hey, how's your grandson?”
The woman flushed and cleared her throat. `Aren't you sweet to ask. He's much better since he got to meet you. All he talks about now is sailing."
“You tell him I always got a place on my crew for a good man.”
Marlene reached out her hand, touching his arm. She blinked rapidly a couple of times. “Thank you. Really...thank you.”
The gratitude made him uncomfortable and Marlene seemed to know it. She smiled and patted him before stepping back.
“Listen, you don't really have to come to his birthday party,” she said.
“Are you nuts? And miss the cake? Besides, he's asked me to check out a girl for him. You know, see if she's got what it takes. Gotta have my boy's back. It's a guy thing.” Marlene looked as if she was about to melt again and he was relieved when she just put her hand to her throat, nodded and left.
It wasn't that he minded tears. He'd always felt, though, that if a woman cried in front of him, he had to fix whatever it was that had upset her. And some things, like what had happened to Marlene's grandson, just couldn't be made right. At least not in the ways that mattered, not in the ways that would ensure the kid grew up and lived a full life and passed gently into the grave at the age of ninety.
Frankly the gratitude was weird, as if he were doing her a favor. Like he would turn down a request from a child in a burn unit? Whose company he enjoyed?
“We're down here,” he said to Cassandra, nodding toward a corridor that stretched out to the right.
Every twenty feet there was a door, and some of them were open. Inside, residents watched TV from loungers or lay in bed reading or sleeping. Some of them looked up and the ones who did waved. He returned the greetings.
“Yo, martini!” he called out to one gentleman.
“Hiya, gin fizz!” the guy shouted back.
Alex paused in front of his grandmother's closed door. He made sure his shirt was tucked in smoothly. Adjusted his belt so the buckle was precisely in the middle. Ran his hands through his hair, noting that it had to be cut.
He took a deep breath. As he wrapped his fingers around the handle, he glanced at Cassandra.
She was staring at him with an odd expression on her face. “What?” He looked down at himself. “What's wrong?” “Nothing. I—you just surprise me, that's all.”
“Why?”
“You seem very human tucking in your shirt and smoothing your hair. That's all.”
“Human?” God, had ha**ng s*x with him convinced her he was some kind of animal?
The door was torn out of his hand before he could say anything else. The aide on the other side, a young woman with a blond ponytail, jumped.
“Oh! Hello!” She went breathless as she looked up at him and blushed the color of a Christmas ribbon. “Hi, Lizzie.”
“Hi— I mean—” She bumped into the doorjamb as she came out, her blue eyes fixated on his face. “Hi. Um, she's asleep.”
“Okay. I'll just hang for a minute or two and leave her a note. I shouldn't have come this late.”
“Do you want me to help you wake her up?”
“Nah. Leave her be” Alex motioned Cassandra inside with his arm.
“Will you be back tomorrow?” Lizzie asked, bringing her ponytail around her shoulder and petting it. “Because she likes to have her hair done for when you come. She and I have such fun when I put it up for her. She just loves that. And she loves seeing you.”
“I'll come the day after. And thanks for taking such good care of her.”
“I like her. A lot.”
Alex waved as the door eased shut. Hero worship coupled with a tender crush was as hard for him to handle as gratitude. In his mind, both magnified his faults to an unbearable clarity.
His grandmother's room was dim, lit only by a night light glowing in the bathroom. The furnishings were insti?tutional, like something you'd find in a college dorm, and the air smelled a little of disinfectant, but other than that, it was a very nice place. Lots of windows. Bright yellow walls. Everything was clean.
There were family pictures on every flat space in the room: the windowsill, the bureau, the bookcase by the door, the walls. A bouquet of fresh flowers, probably brought by Joy before she returned to New York City, was on a side table.
“Hello, grandmother,” Alex murmured as he ap?proached the bed.
Emma Moorehouse had always been beautiful, and in her gentle slumber, she was still lovely at age eighty-eight. Her wavy, white hair flowed around her, spilling onto the Frette pillowcase and her peach satin duvet. Her face was unlined and pale as cream, the result of careful tending, not plastic surgery: she'd always taken a parasol outside with her, and that classic, high-bred bone structure had with?stood the passage of the decades with grace.
He carefully picked up her hand. The skin on the back of it was translucent, so thin he could practically see the bones.
“It's Lexi, Grandmother,” he said softly, while he smoothed her fingers.
She stirred and turned toward his voice, though her eyes remained closed.
“I've brought someone with me. Cassandra. She's working on our house.”
Alex talked for a while, saying nothing much. For some reason, being around her eased him and the feeling was evidently mutual. When the dementia got bad, even with the drugs Emma was on, the nursing home would call him and he'd come running. All it took was the sound of his voice and she'd calm down.
It was odd to be the source of comfort for someone. But over the past month or so, he'd grown to need the sensa?tion he got from being needed by her.
Cass settled back against the wall and fought the urge to give Alex privacy. She just didn't want to leave. Seeing such kindness in him relieved the tension in her somehow, even though his compassion was directed toward another.
As Alex loomed over the bed in that black leather jacket, he didn't seem at all the kind of person who could be so gentle. But this massive, hard man had tremendous reserves of tenderness. He just kept them to himself a lot of the time.
And he was wrong about being awkward around people. Everyone at the facility adored him. The staff, the patients.
How could they not? He cut a stunning figure to begin with. Add to the looks his innate charisma and his calm confidence and he was the leader no matter what space he walked through or who was in it. She was quite certain he could rally everyone in the nursing home with a mere passing suggestion.
“I'm working on some of Dad's plans,” she heard him say. And then, “Do you think he would have minded?”
In the low light, Alex's face was mostly somber, but in his expression she caught a glimpse of something so sweet her heart cracked: a hint of the little boy he had once been.
An awful feeling came over her, something tanta?mount to dread.
No, it actually was dread.
She couldn't possibly be falling in love with him. No way. No. This was not happening.
Cass closed her eyes and let her head fall back. When it hit something, she turned around. The framed photo?graph was of a young man who looked like Alex. “My father,” Alex said softly into her ear.
Cass jumped and glanced over her shoulder. “Ah, you two look alike.”
He reached out and squared off the picture. His blunt fingers lingered on the frame.
“I'm sorry,” she said, abruptly.
He frowned, but didn't look away from the photo?graph. “Why?”
“For the loss of your parents. Gray told me how they died. It must have been very difficult for you. All of you.”
She expected him to shrug her off. Instead he murmured, “If Reese could come back, would you do anything different?”
Cass hesitated, the question catching her off guard. “Yes. Yes, I would.”
“What would it be?”
Oh, God, she thought. So much.
“I, uh, I would have let him know what I was thinking more often.” Even though it would have hastened the dis?integration of their marriage. If the infidelity had been out in the open between them, she knew in her heart she couldn't have stayed, and it was disturbing to realize that the subterfuge had been what kept her with Reese. Why lies were more binding than the truth just didn't make sense.
Didn't sit well with her, either.
Alex nodded. “Me, too. I would have told my father how much he meant to me. And I would have spent more time with him. My mother as well. Anyway... Let's go, okay?”
On their way out of the nursing home, they stopped so Alex could chat with the rehab specialist about his grandmother.
When they were in the Rover, Cass looked over at him. “You are so good with her.”
Alex's face tightened as he put his seat belt on. “It's weird. We weren't close when I was growing up. I thought of her as rigid and old-fashioned, but now I love her for those very things. The high standards of behavior. The Victorian code she lived by. When she dies, it's going to devastate me”
Cass stayed quiet, hoping he'd forget he was talking with such candor.
Fortunately, he kept going.
“Because of this leg of mine...I've had a chance to get to know her again.” He shook his head. “God, if I hadn't been forced to come home, I wouldn't have. Maybe not even for Frankie's or Joy's weddings. And how whacked is that?”
“Racing is a very demanding profession. I'm sure they would have understood.”
He looked at her. “But why should they have to? You know, I didn't realize how much slack the family cut me until recently. When I came back after the accident, all banged up, my sisters welcomed me with open arms, as if I hadn't run off and left them when they needed me.” He swore softly. “Success doesn't put you in a special class, it really doesn't. It just predisposes you to behaving badly. Or at least that's what it's done to me. Frankie raised Joy. Joy took care of Grand-Em. The two of them sacrificed their lives while I chased after finish lines. The only solace that I take is they both ended up with men worthy enough to love them and strong enough to take care of them. But still...it's a damn shame I can't replay the past. And I really wish there was some way to make up for the great void that is their brother.”
Alex frowned, as if he'd just realized how much he'd said.
Before she could get a word in, he said smoothly, “Do you mind if we stop at the supermarket on the way home?”
His sudden shift jarred her. One minute he was telling her things she'd never imagined hearing from him. The next, he was back to stone-cold normal.
“Cassandra?”
“Uh, no problem.”
“Thanks”
Man, this guy could close doors better than anyone she'd ever met, Cass thought as she put the car in gear. In an earlier life, he'd no doubt been a brass hinge.
When they were going down the Lake Road, he withdrew a thick envelope from his pocket. “Can we pull up to that mailbox by the stoplight?”
“Sure.” She eased over to the curb and eyed the snowbank. “Let me drop it in for you.”
He hesitated and then gave the thing to her. “Thanks.”
When she was at the box, she glanced down at the address he'd written in precise letters. Newport, Rhode Island. She didn't recognize the name.
The trip to the local Shop Rite didn't take long in spite of how much he bought. Alex was efficient. He knew exactly what he wanted and where to find it in the aisles. Six packs of Ensure. PowerBars. Chicken. Chicken. Chicken. Lettuce heads. Carrots. Vitamins. Orange juice. Yogurt. He worked the U-Scan like a flash, as well.
The bags were in the back and they were heading to White Caps, when Alex looked over at her.