Chapter Thirty
Pippa sat in a pool of warm sunlight. Chest rising and falling in a steady rhythm, Phi slept peacefully. Mom had finally agreed to go home for a few hours, and left Pippa in charge.
Tyler came in, smiled at Pippa, and went through the routine of checking on Phi. Her pen scratched across the chart as she made her notations.
“Did you always want to be a nurse?” Pippa kept her voice low enough not to wake Phi.
Tyler stopped writing and cocked her head. “Not always.” She glanced at Pippa, then finished her notations and slid the chart into the slot at the end of the bed. “I wanted to be a doctor, but halfway through my first year something changed.” Tyler clicked her pen and snapped it onto the top pocket of her duckling-yellow scrubs decorated with a swarm of bumblebees. “I discovered that I liked taking care of people more than I liked curing them. I like helping people.”
“I wanted to be famous,” Pippa said. “Like my grandmother. I couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket, didn’t like acting, so TV seemed the next best thing.” Wanted to shake the dust of this nowhere town off her, and show them it didn’t matter that she was different, didn’t matter that her father had left. She was somebody.
Shifting her weight, Tyler leaned her hip against the end of Phi’s bed. “I used to watch your show.”
“Did you?”
“I miss it,” Tyler said, and straightened. “I loved watching what happened to those women. It was like you gave them their own magic potion.” Tyler blushed, as if embarrassed by her statement, and jerked her scrub top straight. Bumblebees rippled across her chest. “I’ll see you later. I’ve got other patients to check.”
“Okay.” Outside Phi’s window a man stepped into the courtyard and lit a cigarette. His cheeks hollowed as he sucked on his smoke. He looked like he really needed that nicotine hit.
Pippa had started in television to be famous, but it wasn’t the fame she missed. She missed the transformations, the change she made in women’s lives. The magic—and the magic was worth fighting for. Her magic potion was worth any risk, and that potion was made up of many different ingredients. Family, career, home, and a man to share that home with her.
Without the thought having fully formed, she pulled out her phone.
“Pippa.” Chris Germaine answered almost immediately.
“Um, hi.” The man outside tossed his smoke and ground it beneath his heel. “About our last conversation . . .”
“Yes.”
“I’ve been thinking.”
“Dammit.” Chris barked down the phone. “Can’t you sort that out without me?”
Relieved laughter bubbled up Pippa’s throat. “I thought you were talking to me.”
“You haven’t said much yet.”
This was true. “I was wondering how set in stone your ideas for the show are.”
“In terms of what?” Chris’s tone sharpened.
“Me,” Pippa said. “I was thinking we could come up with something that suited both of us. A way in which I could be the best me along with the women we transform.”
“Do you know what the best you is?”
“I’m getting there,” Pippa said. “I know what it isn’t.”
Chris chuckled, her throaty laugh. “Just a minute.” The phone crackled as Chris moved it. “Shut the door,” Chris yelled. “Pippa and I are negotiating.”
Deep inside, a spark of excitement flickered into life. A tiny twinkle of pure magic.
* * *
Matt stopped so fast, Nate trod on the back of his heels. “You have got to be shitting me.”
“What the hell is she doing here?” Nate breathed deep.
They were on their way to Phi’s ward, to wait for Pippa to finish breaking the news about Laura. If there was a chance Pippa needed him, then by her side is where he wanted to be.
Matt’s mom sat in the large hospital reception area with a nurse handing her Kleenex.
“You must think I’m crazy.” Mom took the Kleenex and dabbed at her eyes.
The nurse heaved a big sigh. “Cressy, I’m a mother myself. I know exactly how you feel.”
Cressy, was it? Mom had been making time with the nurse, which didn’t answer the question as to what the hell she was doing here.
“My boys have always been so popular with the young ladies.” Mom’s top lip wobbled. She pressed the Kleenex to her eyes and dabbed at her tears.
“Fuck,” Nate breathed. Matt couldn’t have said it better.
“I just never thought my Matt would fall for a woman like this.” Matt’s blood pressure geysered up and a red haze covered his vision. His breathing sawed through his lips, hitting the air in a harsh grate.
Nate grabbed his elbow. “Take it easy. You know what she’s like.”
“It breaks your heart.” The nurse squeezed her arm and handed her another Kleenex.
“Mom.” Matt shook Nate off and entered the room. He was proud his voice still sounded vaguely normal. “What the fu . . . what are you doing here?”
Nurse Carver, by her nameplate, stood and buckled into her armor. You had to hand it to his mother, if she were a Christian in a Roman amphitheater, she’d find a lion to champion her cause. “Your mother came to check on the condition of Mrs. Philomene St. Amor.”
“I had to see for myself.” Mom shredded the Kleenex. “Ever since your father died, there’s nothing but drama with that woman. She’s always dragging you into it.”
“Nobody drags me into anything, Mom. I owe Phi everything, and I go because I want to.”
Mom gave a desperate wail and tears streamed down her cheeks. “You see how it is, Belinda?”
“Boys.” Nurse Carver, Belinda to his mother, apparently, threw him a look filthy enough to stain his shorts.
“Would you mind?” He didn’t exactly blame the woman but what he had to say to his mother wasn’t going to be pretty. “I need to talk to my mother alone.”
“Why don’t we wait out in the hall?” Nate threw down his pretty boy smile and Nurse Carver followed him out like she’d just sighted Nirvana.
“You’re angry with me.” Mom blinked up at him with damp eyes.
The old fix-it urge rose up in a chokehold. Matt breathed deep and channeled his inner Eric. “Yeah, Mom, I am mad at you. We might have lost Phi, and she and Pippa . . . they mean a lot to me.”
Mom’s breath hitched. “You see, that’s why I’m here. You’ve always put her above me. That ridiculous old woman.”
Inner Eric wasn’t helping right now, and Matt paced to the far end of the room. He had seen it with his dad, yelling didn’t work with her. Cressy would collapse into a mass of inconsolable jelly. “That ridiculous old woman is the kindest, most sincere and bighearted woman I know. She saved our asses giving me the job to build her house after Dad died.” See, he could do this. “There wasn’t any money, Mom. Dad died leaving us with a huge mortgage and the business about two steps away from the bank foreclosing on their loans. Nobody around Ghost Falls wanted to trust their construction project to a nineteen-year-old kid with no experience. Until Phi let me build that huge house. We all owe her, not only me.”
“Do you love her more than you love me?”
God, not even Jo with rampaging teen hormones had been this needy. “You’re my mom, and I love you. Nothing and nobody can change that.”
Cressy perked up a bit and a tremulous smile appeared on her face.
“But.” Matt needed her to hear him. “I can’t be your everything, all the time.”
Her face dropped so fast, it was nearly comical.
Matt crouched down in front of her and took her hands. “I’m always gonna take care of you, Mom, but that doesn’t mean there’s no place for other things in my life.” He squeezed her hands to get her to look at him. “You need to find a life outside of me, and the others as well. You make friends easily. Hell, you were only in here for five minutes and already you have Belinda ready to string me up.”
“She’s a very nice woman.” Mom sniffed.
“I’m gonna be building my own life, and some of that is not going to involve you.”
“Like the job with Eric?”
“Like the job with Eric.” He nodded. “I want this, Mom. I want my chance to do something outside of the legacy Dad left me. I’m excited about this, like I haven’t been excited about anything in a long time. And then there’s Pippa.”
Mom’s eyes flashed wrathful fire as she stuck her chin out. “I knew it had something to do with that girl. I suppose she’s been whispering in your ear, telling you to leave your mother and go off to LA with her. That spiteful woman—”
“Be very careful.” Matt rose and put some distance between them. “This is a nonnegotiable. Pippa is the woman I love, and I don’t care if you like her or not.”
“But, Matt—”
“She makes me happy. When I’m with Pippa I feel alive. I’m crazy about her and I’m gonna do whatever I can to make sure she stays in my life from here on out. If it means I have to travel to New York to be with her, or live in LA, that’s what I’m gonna do.” He met his mother’s startled stare. “I love her, and I need her around for as long as she’ll have me.”
“Are you going to marry her?” Mom’s eyes were like circular blades in her pale face.
“I haven’t gotten that far yet, but I will and I’ll do whatever I must to make sure she says yes.”
Mom got to her feet, her body vibrating with pent-up emotion. “No, Matt. I cannot accept that. You saw what she did on that television program. The whole world saw what I’ve always seen. She’s cunning and manipulative and controlling. That girl has hunted you for years. You didn’t see her when she was younger, always casting her lures your way. I won’t let you fall into her trap.”
“You don’t have a choice.” Matt hauled back hard on his fraying temper. “I won’t discuss that television program with you. If Pippa chooses to tell you, then you’ll hear the truth. But listen and listen well. Don’t make me choose, Mom, because you won’t like the choice I make.”
* * *
Nate appeared as Pippa said good-bye to Chris and hung up.
“Is the Diva okay?” He jerked his chin at Phi’s room.
“She’s amazing.” Pippa gathered her things and stood. “She’s a tough old broad.”
“It runs in the family.” Nate gave her a smile sweet enough to melt her bones.
“Did you just call me old?”
Nate blushed. “Never. Matt’s waiting for you downstairs.”
She and Nate left the ward, and took the long corridor to the reception. People bustled past them on a calm, steady hum.
As they turned the corner into the reception waiting area, the tension between Matt and Cressy was thick enough to cut.
“Hey?” Matt strode toward her and took her hand. “How did Phi take it?”
Cressy glared at her, arms crossed over her chest and chin stuck out.
No change there then. Pippa let Matt pull her into a warm hug. “Well. Actually, both Phi and my mother feel badly for Laura and are deciding which one of them is most to blame.”
Matt gave a soft huff of laughter, his eyes gentle. “That’s the Diva for you. The biggest heart in the world.”
“Then they told me to get off my ass and go for what I want,” Pippa said.
His topaz eyes gleamed at her, full of something that gave her hope her next negotiation would go as successfully as the last one. “And what is it that you want?”
“I think we should talk about that.” Behind Matt’s shoulder, Cressy sneered. No way she was doing this with that kind of attitude beaming at her. “Walk me to your car.”
As she walked out of the ward, Matt dropped into place beside her. “You doing okay?” He cocked his head, studying her. “You look . . . different.”
Butterflies grew into bats in her gut, flinging themselves around. “I feel different. I’ve made some decisions.”
Matt followed her into the elevator and pressed the button for the parking garage. “Good ones?”
“Yup.”
The elevator stopped and an elderly couple climbed aboard. The man nodded at Matt and her before the couple turned to watch the numbers above the elevator door.
Pippa used the ride down to get her stomach bats to stop. The doors swished open and they all stepped out.
“I’m doing the show with Chris,” she said.
Their footsteps rang through the dim garage.
Matt grunted. “It’s a great opportunity and everything you ever wanted.”
“Everything I ever wanted for my career,” Pippa said.
They reached Matt’s truck, and he beeped the locks.
“So, you’re leaving?” Matt caught hold of her arm and turned her to face him.
Everything was right there for her to reach out and grab. Her happiness, her future, her everything. A future she wanted to build for herself, certainly, but with this man by her side.
“I don’t want to go back to LA,” she said. “I called Chris and talked to her about how we could do this. I need to stay closer to Phi, and to my mom. Laura might not admit it, but she’s going to need me in the coming months and I want to be here for her.”
Matt gave his head a small shake. “And Chris went for that?”
“We haggled some,” Pippa said. “But we both walked away happy.”
“And this is what you really want?” He cupped her face in his palms.
“It’s part of what I want.” Pippa leaned her cheek into the warmth of his hand. “And I know you’re going to make this thing with Eric a huge success.” Pippa couldn’t bear standing here much longer and not being closer to him. She put her hands on his chest and stepped into him. “I’m done being scared, Meat. I want more than my career. I want everything life is offering me right now.”
Matt’s chest rose and fell on a huge breath. “Have we got to the ‘us’ part?”
“I’ve got a plan for us too.”
Another smile ghosted over his features. “Am I part of that plan?”
“The biggest part.” Pippa slid her arms around his waist. “My plan is that we keep this casual thing between us going.”
He groaned. “Pippa—”
“For the next twenty years or so. Then we can reassess and see if we have another twenty years in us.”
“I see.” He smirked and tugged her flush with him. “Would this include making an honest man of me?”
“In a completely casual way.” Pippa grinned back at him.
“Of course.” He lowered his head to whisper in her ear. “Only, I get to do the asking, Agrippina.”
“I wouldn’t have it any other way.” Pippa shifted her face into his neck and drew in a deep breath of Matt. “I’ll probably say yes.”
“Okay.” His grim expression transformed into a breathtaking softness. “Marry me, Agrippina.”
“Yes, Meat.”