Hidden Riches

her heels.
    “He went to all this trouble just to be sweet. Why is he being so sweet? Look, a few days ago he sent me this bracelet.” She held out her arm and continued babbling even when Lea oohed and aahed over it. “And that silly cow, and the watercolor. Why is he doing this? What’s wrong with him?”
    “Love sickness would be my guess.”
    Dora sniffled and rubbed tears away with the sleeve of her robe. “That’s ridiculous.”
    “Honey, don’t you know when you’re being romanced?”Lea picked up a book, turned it over, shook her head. “I myself might prefer a slightly different style, but this certainly seems to have punched your buttons.”
    “He’s just feeling sorry for me. And guilty.” She hitched back tears, blinked them away. “Isn’t he?”
    “Honey, the man I saw haunting that hospital wasn’t there out of guilt.” She reached over to tuck her sister’s hair behind her ear. “Are you going to give him a break?”
    She laid a book on her lap, running her hands gently over the cover. “Before I was shot, I broke things off with him. I told him to move out. He hurt me, Lea. I don’t want him to hurt me again.”
    “I can’t tell you what to do, but it seems awfully unfair to make him keep suffering.” She kissed Dora’s forehead, then rose to answer the knock on the door. “Hi, Jed.” Lea smiled and kissed him as well. “Your surprise hit the mark. She’s in there right now crying over the books.”
    He stepped back automatically, but Lea took his hand and pulled him inside. “Look who’s here.”
    “Hi.” Dora brushed at tears and managed a shaky smile. “These are great.” Her eyes overflowed again. “Really great.”
    “Their value’s going to plummet if they’re water-damaged,” he warned her.
    “You’re right. But I always get sentimental over first editions.”
    “I was just on my way out.” Lea grabbed her coat, but neither of them paid any attention to her departure.
    “I don’t know what to say.” She continued to press The Hidden Staircase like a beloved child to her breast.
    “Say thanks,” he suggested.
    “Thanks. But, Jed—”
    “Listen, I’ve got the go-ahead to spring you for a while. You up for a drive?”
    “Are you kidding?” She scrambled to her feet. “Outside? All the way outside and not to the hospital?”
    “Get your coat, Conroy.”
    “I can’t believe it,” she said a few minutes later as she slid luxuriously down in the seat of Jed’s car. “No nurses. No looming thermometers or blood-pressure cuffs.”
    “How’s the shoulder doing?”
    “It’s sore.” She opened the window just to feel the rush of air on her face and missed the way his fingers tightened on the wheel. “They make me do this physical therapy, which is—to put it mildly—unpleasant. But it’s effective.” She jockeyed her elbow to a right angle to prove it. “Not bad, huh?”
    “That’s great.” There was such restrained violence in the statement she lifted a brow.
    “Everything all right at work?”
    “It’s fine. You were right all along. I shouldn’t have left.”
    “You just needed some time.” She touched his arm, letting her hand fall away when he jerked. It was time, she thought, to clear the air. “Jed, I know that we were in a difficult position before—well, before I was hurt. I know I was unkind.”
    “Don’t.” He didn’t think he could bear it. “You were right. Everything you said was right. I didn’t want you to get too close, and I made certain you couldn’t. You were one of the main reasons I went back on the job, but I didn’t share it with you because I would have had to admit that it mattered. That what you thought of me mattered. It was deliberate.”
    She rolled up the window again, shutting out the wind. “There’s no point in raking it up again.”
    “I guess it would sound pretty convenient if I told you that I was going to ask you to forgive me, that I’d have been willing to beg for another chance, before you got hurt.” He shot her a look, caught her wide-eyed stare then scowled back through the windshield in disgust. “Yeah, that’s what I thought you’d say.”
    “I’m not sure,” she said cautiously, “what another chance might entail.”
    He was going to try to show her. He pulled up in the driveway, set the brake, then rounded the hood to help her out. Because she was staring at his house, she moved wrong and bumped her arm against the car door.
    “Damn.” Her gasp of