One Night in Boston (26 page)

9:00 a.m.

“She isn’t here.” Dillon backed out of room six-oh-two.

“What do you mean? The guy downstairs said—”

He shrugged. “Maybe they took her somewhere.”

“You think they discharged her already?”

“Nah.”

“I’ll go ask.” Jack headed for the nurses’ station. “Gotta find a bathroom, anyway.”

Dillon leaned against the wall, restless. A nurse, a cute strawberry blonde in purple scrubs, walked by. A chart balanced in the crook of her forearm; a stethoscope hung around her neck. She didn’t look up. He checked the room number again. Then his watch. If what Jack had told him was true, then Mags would need every bit of help both of them could offer. He wondered if that stubborn streak he remembered from childhood still ran strong. He wondered, for the first time, what she looked like now, or if he’d even recognize her. He tugged at his ponytail, pulling it from the rubber band and smoothing back some stray hairs before winding it tight again.

She never liked my hair after I grew it long
. It was one of the last things she’d said to him, right before he left for California.

You look like a hippy freak.
You’ll never get a girl to go out with you
. She’d tossed the comment over her shoulder as the two of them stood in the kitchen washing pots and putting dishes away.

You wish. You probably just want to keep me all to yourself
. He’d tried to tease her, but it hadn’t worked. Nothing had worked, not really, since the afternoon he’d come home with bleeding fists only to find an angry Mags waiting for him. Not the grateful little sister he’d expected. Just a girl full of rage and blame and heartache.

The intercom squawked. A doctor walked down the hall and stopped in one room to comfort some family members. Dillon looked at his shoes and waited for Jack to return. At the murmur of female conversation at the end of the hall, he glanced up again. Checked out the blonde pushing the wheelchair. Admired her dress and the figure inside it. Then his gaze dropped to her fiery-haired passenger.

And I thought I wouldn’t recognize her.
A smile creaked across Dillon’s face. His kid sister looked just about the same as he remembered, small and bright-eyed, with pale freckles and a voice too big for the body it came from.

They rolled closer, and as Maggie looked up and saw him, she stopped talking. One arm darted out from her lap. She put a hand on a rubber wheel of the chair and stopped it. He heard the breath she drew in, a sharp whistle across her bottom teeth. Ten feet lay between them. That, and more than ten years of rough spots that needed smoothing. Maggie and Dillon stared at each other. Neither one moved.

“You need a haircut,” she said after a minute.

I could say the same thing about you
, he thought, looking at the curls that stuck out in all directions. He lifted his shoulders in a shrug, and when she didn’t say anything else, he went to her. Lifting her out of the wheelchair as if she were still a child, still the rebellious, resistant kid he remembered from the day their parents met, Dillon cradled Maggie against his chest. She tensed. Her shoulders heaved. Something shot him through the heart, jump-starting emotions he hadn’t faced in forever. He glanced up at the blonde.

Thank you
, he mouthed.

She smiled.

Without another word, Dillon carried Maggie back into her room. Big brother. Protector. The one thing he had tried to be, had wanted to be, so many years ago. Finally, this time, she let him.

“You’re here.” Maggie felt as if the room were filled with fog, as if one of those smoke machines had shot out dry ice and fuzzed up her vision. Was it really Dillon? She’d expected to see Jack standing outside her room. Not her stepbrother. Not the one person she’d come to Boston seeking in the first place. Not the person she’d almost given up on.

He leaned back in the too-small chair beside her bed. “I’m here.”

Maggie turned to Eden. “You called him too?”

Standing in the doorway, her friend grinned, eyes bright. “I found someone at the ball who had his number. What can I say? The guy gets around.” She shot a look at Dillon, who reddened a little. “Plus, hospitals always hassle you if you’re not a family member. I thought I’d better find one.”

Maggie barely heard her friend’s last words. She couldn’t take her eyes off Dillon. Curled up against her pillows, she stared at him. He looked different somehow, weathered, more solemn. He looked older and graver around the eyes and mouth. She wondered how much of that change she was responsible for. How much came from time. How much came from trying to shape a brand new life for himself.

“I’m sorry,” she said. She spread her fingers wide as if trying to indicate the sum of everything she wanted to apologize for. “For…for losing touch. And not calling. And making you come here on a Saturday morning.”
And blaming you when I should have blamed myself
.

“I was up anyway.”

“Yeah, right,” she joked. “You never used to get up before noon on the weekends.” The smile it elicited from him made Maggie feel good, like a familiar quilt draping itself over her shoulders. That, at least, hadn’t changed with time. It melted away the years, the tension, the strain, until her seventeen-year-old brother sat across from her again.

“How are you? Seriously?”

She let out something that might have been a laugh.
Physically? Mentally? Emotionally? Financially? You don’t want to know.
“I’ll be okay. Just a little banged up.”

“Heard the guy who hit you was DUI.” An edge of anger laced Dillon’s words, as if he might storm out of the room at any minute and find the striped-shirted idiot who’d plowed into Maggie’s car.

I’m practically thirty,
she almost said.
You don’t have to protect me anymore.
But something hitched in her chest. It had been over ten years since that night. It had been five or six since she saw him last. And still Dillon looked ready to stand up and fight for her today as if nothing at all had changed. As if she hadn’t said horrible things to him. As if she hadn’t blamed him for something that wasn’t his fault.

Was that what brothers did?

Maggie picked at the edge of her sleeve, and a thread unraveled little by little.
You don’t have to share blood to be family
. Why had it taken her so long to understand that?
I always corrected people when they called him my brother. As if the most important thing about our relationship was the word used to define it.

“I’m glad you came,” she said in a whisper.

Dillon scratched his bare knee. A pale quarter-moon scar she remembered from a childhood bike accident arced across his skin. “Me too.”

“Hey, what about me?” The voice came from behind her. “Don’t I get any credit for being part of the welcoming committee?”

Jack.
A tingling in Maggie’s toes began climbing its way up her spine, ivy stretching its tendrils along every nerve in her body. Her fingers dropped to the edge of the bed, where they gripped the mattress for support. She thought that if she turned too quickly, she might fall off the bed, through the floor and clear down to China. She squeezed her eyes shut. Send her to the moon and back, keep them apart for a hundred years, she would never forget the sound of Jack Major’s voice or the way it started up a fire inside her.

Oh, Jack, I love you. Tell me it’s not too late.

After a long moment, she dared to look at where he stood in her doorway. He still wore his rumpled tuxedo, missing its jacket and tie, and looked sexier than she might ever have dreamed. Bags puffed out under bloodshot eyes, and she knew that he’d been awake all night. Thinking of her. Following her. Rescuing her. Maybe loving her, too.

The thought stuck in Maggie’s throat. All the nights they’d spent together, all the murmured conversations they’d shared when everyone else in the dorm was asleep, all the heartache of saying goodbye in Vegas, all the years of wondering
what if
, all the minutes since she’d seen him at the ball and realized nothing had changed between them…they were the thousand little puzzle pieces that made up a love. Her love, her life, was Jack. It always had been.

“Yeah,” she said in a shaky voice. “You get credit too.”

Jack glanced at Dillon as he crossed the room. Smoothing the sheet, he sat down beside her. Maggie ran her fingers across the covers. She wanted to touch him so much that it hurt. He cocked his head. One hand moved to her collarbone and stroked the skin there. He traced the pattern of her racing pulse as if they were the only two people in the room. Electricity arced between them and Maggie drew a shuddering breath.

Jack leaned over, his mouth curving against hers, and kissed her gently. “Don’t ever do that to me again,” he said, the words a whisper.

“Do what?” she murmured.

“Almost get yourself killed. Leave me standing in the middle of the street. Decide for both of us that not having kids means the end of a relationship.” His lips moved to her ear. “Take your pick. But I’m not leaving. Not now. Not ever.”

Maggie tried to stop the fluttering in the back of her throat and found that she couldn’t. “I just…I wasn’t sure. About anything. I didn’t mean to…” She touched the eyes, the nose, the chin she knew by heart.

“I know.” He cupped her cheek with one hand and studied her. “God, I didn’t realize how much I missed you.”

It was as if he’d reached into her mouth and plucked out her words. She felt the stirring of fresh tears behind her eyelids and pressed her fingertips against his.
I have so much to tell you
,
so much that needs sorting out. Then maybe we can move on. Move ahead. Start fresh
. Maggie leaned closer to him, meaning to snuggle into his chest and dream away the morning.

But just as quickly as Jack had taken her hands, he leaned back. “There’s still something we have to talk about.”

Maggie thought she heard Dillon make a sound in his throat. She pushed her hair from her face. This didn’t sound good. She drew away and crossed her arms over her chest. “Okay. What?”

A mask, smooth and stoic, slipped into place over the melting green eyes and kind mouth. Jack the businessman replaced Jack the man she loved, and something dropped inside her.

“You still owe the bank upwards of fifteen thousand dollars. Bullieston still wants to buy your house before it goes to foreclosure.”

Maggie felt as though he’d slapped her. After all that had happened, he had the nerve to bring up her money troubles? “I already told you. I don’t want to sell it.” She made her voice flat, to match his. Her face grew hot. Leave it to Jack to resort to business, even at a time like this. She should have known she couldn’t trust him. She should have known he’d always wear the stripes of a Major, just like his father.

“I’ve already drawn up the contracts,” he went on. “All you have to do is sign them.”

Maggie’s jaw clenched. . How dare he try and take advantage of her? He was probably counting on her to be doped up and easy to persuade, she thought. “Forget it. Just because I’m in the hospital doesn’t mean I’ve lost my mind. I told you I didn’t want to sell my house to your company, and I meant it.”

Something like a smile creased the corners of Jack’s mouth. “I heard you.”

She wanted to reach over and peel that smile right off his lips. “Then don’t bother bringing me any contracts. I won’t sign them.” She didn’t care how much love he professed, or how much desire melted her bones. Her business, her house, was the one thing she had left.

Jack slid off the bed.

For a moment, Maggie thought he’d tumbled to the ground. She thought maybe he’d had a heart attack or lost control of the muscles in his legs. She was about to press the nurse’s call button when she took another look.

Jack knelt beside her, palms facing the ceiling, green eyes fixed on her. “Marry me.”

“Are you crazy?”

He shrugged. “Maybe.”

“Get up,” she said, embarrassed. “You’re not serious.”
Twelve hours ago, you were engaged to someone else,
she almost reminded him.
Don’t make a fool of yourself. And don’t make a fool of me.

“I’m very serious.” He shifted to the other knee but stayed put. “I’ll stay down here as long as it takes for you to say yes. Again,” he added.

“I never said yes the first time.”

“You don’t remember the first time.”

Maggie couldn’t argue with that. “You just want my house,” she said instead.

He actually laughed. “Mags, do you really think I’d be making a fool of myself on a hard floor at nine o’clock on a Saturday morning just to weasel your house away from you? A house that, by the way, the bank is going to take in a matter of hours?”

She didn’t know what to say. After a minute, he went on. “Anyway, Bullieston isn’t buying your house. I am.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m buying it so I can give it back to you.”

Maggie sat there, confused. This was the oddest marriage proposal she’d ever heard. “I don’t need your charity.”

“No, but we will need a place to live after you decide you’re going to marry me. And I want it to be that house.” His voice softened. “I want it to be the one you made your own, the one where you started your business. I want it to be ours. I want to live there with you. I want to grow old there with you.” He paused, and his voice grew rough with emotion. “Your life is mine, Mags. It always has been.”