“YOU DO REALIZE you’re acting like a damn fool,” Ben Harper told Seth three days later as they drove to the hospital to bring Caroline home. “Go out and grovel. Hell, get on your knees if you need to. Crawl naked down Water Street. Do whatever it takes to get her back.”
“Is that Dr. Blake speaking?” Seth asked.
“No. She’d probably nix the naked public crawling because it’d land you in the clink. But she would tell you that you’re the one at fault here.”
“Don’t you think I already know that?”
“You losing your wife was a tragic thing, I’m not going to deny that,” his father said. “But fate, destiny, God, whatever, has given you a second chance for happiness. It’s your responsibility to grab it with both hands and not let go. Then spend the rest of your life making up for your stupidity.”
“That’s a positive view of my possible future,” Seth said dryly.
“Okay, here’s this... Do you love her?”
“Hell, yes.”
“Then do something about it. Mike Mannion told me that if I didn’t get my woman back, he was going after her. That lit a fire beneath my tail, let me tell you. Your mother is the best thing that’s ever happened to me. You come in a close second, but I wouldn’t have you if she hadn’t been willing to marry me instead of that rich Southern lawyer or Mannion.”
“She and Mannion had a thing?”
“He tried. But I won. Then I almost blew it. But I’m going to make it up to her. Starting today. And after we get her home, you ought to get your ass out to the Mannion farm and do the same thing.”
That out of the way, he pulled up into the loading zone, cut the engine and said, “Let’s go get your mom.”
* * *
CAROLINE COULDN’T WAIT to get home. Oh, the hospital staff had been lovely, the view of the Olympics stellar and the food had been surprisingly good. Especially the couple bites of cake, which wasn’t on her approved dietary list, but which Ben had sneaked up from the cafeteria when she’d complained about missing chocolate. She’d been moved to tears when he’d told her about going to the therapist, which had scared him enough that he was about to go running out into the hall to call for a nurse.
“It’s okay,” she said, pulling a tissue from the box on the rolling table next to the bed. “They’re happy tears.”
“How does your heart feel?”
“Fine. And why don’t you stop asking me that? I have a better sense of the signs now and promise not to ignore them.”
“Okay.” He sighed. “I don’t know what I’d do without you, Caro.”
“You won’t have to,” she assured him. They still had years together. After all, everyone was saying the sixties were the new forties.
He’d stunned her by telling her about his therapy sessions. If there was anything more amazing—and undoubtedly difficult—he could have done to prove his love, Caroline couldn’t think of it. Dr. Blake might have opened his eyes to many things, but he’d always be a man’s man unable to fully understand the female mind. And, quite honestly, she wouldn’t want him any other way. She’d merely wanted to feel appreciated. Which he’d definitely done, refusing to go home that first night when the nurses told him visiting hours were over. Eventually they’d caved in and brought him a cot to sleep on. And except for those trips to the cafeteria, and outside to call and update all her friends on her condition, he hadn’t left her side.
She’d just finished dressing when the door opened.
“You’re looking great,” Seth said, giving her a careful hug that had Caroline wondering how long it would be before people would quit treating her as if she were made of crystal and easily broken.
“Thank you. I’m feeling great,” she said.
Her son, on the other hand, looked nearly as bad as he had when his wife had died. Ben had filled her in on that breakup drama, which she had no doubt would eventually work out, but it was painful to see the man who’d always, deep down, be her baby boy so miserable. She’d also heard, from a nurse who’d been at the pub, about the altercation that had given him that ugly bruise. Although she didn’t approve of violence, Caroline couldn’t really fault Quinn.
She turned toward her husband. “I’m also ready to go home.”
“The paperwork’s been all taken care of,” Ben said. “So, let’s blow this popsicle stand.”
Caroline wasn’t all that happy about the hospital’s insistence on patients being rolled out in a wheelchair, but apparently rules were rules.
The double doors opened, and there, beneath the canopy, was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen.
“Ben Harper, you didn’t!” The motor home was all shiny and new, painted in shades of smoke and gray and white with sweeping swoops that made it look as if it was all ready to drive them away on an adventure. A huge red plastic bow had been stuck on the hood.
“I know it’s going to be a while before we can take off and start seeing all those parks and other places, because the doc’s going to want you to stick around a couple months for those stress tests and such, but I thought maybe tonight, since we missed our date, you might want to try it out with dinner in the driveway. Luca made veggie lasagna and antipasto.”
“That sounds lovely.” Tears pricked at the back of her lids. Not wanting to scare the poor man to death, Caroline resolutely blinked them away. “Both the food and the company. And this is the most beautiful motor home I’ve ever seen.”
“It’s not real fancy, like those big buses people drive those days.”
“They look like they’d be so much trouble getting in and out of places, and then we’d need a car to tow, and there’d be more to clean,” she said. She’d never had one of those behemoths in mind. “This isn’t so small that we’d feel cramped in a sardine can. It’s absolutely perfect. I can’t wait to go somewhere in it.”
“I thought, while we’re waiting for you to get the okay to take off, we could do day trips around here,” he said. “Maybe spend some nights. The doctor said that’d be okay.”
“I’d love that.”
“Then there’s something else I was thinking maybe you’d like.”
He reached into the Gore-Tex jacket he’d put on for the spring rain and pulled out an envelope. Opening it, she gasped as she looked at the gleaming white ship floating on a cerulean blue sea.
“There are two tickets for a cruise to Hawaii,” he said. “For that honeymoon I promised you. It’s late, but—”
“It’s better,” she said. “Even without the money problems back then, we would have been too young to truly appreciate it. Now it’s going to be perfect.”
The aide had folded back the footrests, allowing her to stand up, twine her arms around his neck, and not caring who might be watching or if she embarrassed her son, she kissed this man who’d won her heart from the moment she’d seen him.
“Take me home, Ben Harper.” It was what she’d said to him the night he’d proposed.
“I’d be right happy to, Miz Caroline,” he said back to her. All these years later, the man still had the worst fake Southern drawl Caroline Longworth Harper had ever heard. Which was only one of the things she loved about him.