stomach.
“It benefits breast cancer research,” she finally said. “We carry a whole line of pink accessories down at the shop.”
“I’ll make a note,” Goat said. “Maybe I ought to come check it out. You know, the whole… sewing thing.”
“Goat Jones,” Stella said coquettishly, batting her eyelids as well as she could, given the fact that they were swollen nearly shut and gluey with Noelle’s eye shadow and mascara. “Are you one of these pathetic men who can’t sew on a button to save his life?”
As she watched, Goat’s broad, handsome face slowly reddened, starting at his cheeks and spreading out to his ears and up to his lovely smooth scalp. He opened his mouth to say something and closed it again.
Then he shrugged. “Guilty.”
“Well, about time we take care of that, don’t you think?”
“You off erin’ me sewing lessons, Stella Hardesty?”
Stella smiled for real this time, searing pain in her lips be damned.
“I might be,” she said. “What have you got to trade?”
Goat grinned back. “I don’t know, Stella,” he said, his voice low and rough, just the way she liked it. “I have half a mind to paddle you out to this little spot I know.”
TEN
Stella was trying to nap the next morning, breathing the cloying scent of flowers and wishing evil on the nurses, who’d come in every few hours during the night to poke and prod her. With any luck she’d be out of here in another couple of days, but she planned to return, fortified with snacks and celebrity magazines, to set up camp in Chrissy’s room.
Apparently Chrissy had woken up for a few minutes early in the morning. Stella was torn between dismay at not having been there and enormous relief when the shift nurse described how Chrissy looked around the room and asked where she was.
The doctor said it would probably go like that for a while, little lucid periods and lots of sleep, while Chrissy’s body made up its mind to start rebuilding the destruction the bullet had wreaked on her innards.
Stella let her eyes flutter slowly open and noticed that there were even more flowers than when last she drifted off. Lots of her well-wishers had remained anonymous: Stella figured her past clients had heard about her troubles.
But the biggest arrangement was from Goat. It was a funny-looking thing, giant pink and green caladium leaves with white roses, delphinium, and Shasta daisies. “All my favorites,” he’d confided, embarrassed, when he stopped last night as he was heading home for the day. “I had ’em make it up special.”
Then they’d stared at each other for a while, not saying much, while Noelle watched from her chair, a knowing little smile on her face.
Noelle had finally gone home this morning after spending the night on a cot. She said she’d be back after a shower—with doughnuts.
Stella pressed the button to lift the back of the bed, slowly gliding to a more upright position. Her stomach, if possible, hurt worse today, but the shoulder throbbed a little bit less and her face was more itchy than anything. Noelle had removed the makeup carefully, dabbing with swabs and cotton squares, and then spent forever massaging cream in between the stitches. Stella hoped she wasn’t having some sort of allergic reaction; there’d be hell to pay with her doctor, who’d practically blown a gasket when she saw the makeup.
Stella was reaching for the clicker, figuring she’d see what the fuss over
Carrying a baby.
Stella’s mind did a loop-de-loop and then she recognized the familiar shock of white-blond fluffy hair and said, “Is that who I think it is?”
Noelle turned the little guy around in her arms. He was rubbing at sleepy eyes with a fist, yawning, showing a pair of tiny white teeth.
“Mama, a lady came by the house this morning and dropped this little fella off. She said I should bring him to you.”
“Holy shit.” Stella breathed, her heart leaping.
“Mama! Not in front of a child,” Noelle scolded, covering one of Tucker’s perfect little shell ears with her hand.
While they made their way down the hall, Stella going as fast as she could while limping and dragging her IV drip, Noelle said the lady looked as if she hadn’t had a decent meal in a year but was dressed nice and driving a new Escalade, and that she said Stella would know what to do.
“Where was she going?” Stella asked.
“I didn’t ask her,” Noelle said, exasperated. “I was still trying to figure out what to do with this guy, you know?”
Stella shut her mouth, but not before noticing that Noelle seemed to be finding her way around a baby without too much trouble.
Maybe she’d make Stella a grandma someday. The notion wasn’t entirely unpleasant.
Stella pushed open the door to Chrissy’s room, and Tucker took one look at the sleeping woman and made a sound that was half burp and half exclamation and then he leaned out of Noelle’s arms like he wanted to fly through the air to his mother.
Noelle sat gingerly on the bed just as Chrissy’s eyes fluttered open and then she saw her baby and cracked a smile that couldn’t have been lovelier if she’d been the Mona Lisa herself.
Stella, watching from the foot of the bed, holding her gown shut with one hand and the IV pole with the other, beaten and bruised and smelling of a couple hard days, got a little sniffly and figured she’d never seen anything prettier.
There was nothing quite as satisfying as honest hard work.
Acknowledgments
Endless thanks to: Lisa, Lynn, Trish, and Cyndy for all those years of friendship and guidance; my brother, Mike Wiecek, for sticking with me and cheering me on; my agent, Barbara Poelle, for seeing something special in my words; and my editor, Toni Plummer, for helping me make this book the best it can be.
Thanks, also, to Craig McDonald, for teaching me the handshake and many other industry secrets; to my Northern California MWA friends, for the warm welcome and for showing me the ropes; to David Rotstein, for creating a perfect cover; and to Frank Borelli of Borelli Consulting, for explaining gun stuff.
And finally, thank you, T-wa and Sal, for tolerating the demands of this new gig—I sure like having you two around.
Copyright
