The Season Of Love: Beloved

His eyes widened. “Excuse me?”

“There’s a mouse,” she said. “I’ve set traps and put out bait, and he just keeps coming back into my kitchen. After a couple of drinks, I remembered a scene in True Grit, where John Wayne shot a rat, and when I got halfway through the whiskey bottle, it seemed perfectly logical that I should do that to my mouse.” She chuckled a little weakly. “You had to be there,” she added helplessly.

“I suppose so.” He searched her bloodshot eyes. “All those charity events, anybody calls and asks you to help, and you work day and night to organize things. You’re everybody’s helper. Now you’re working on a collection of sculpture and still trying to keep up with your social obligations. I’m surprised you didn’t fall out weeks ago. I tried to tell you. You know I did.”

She nodded and sighed. “I know. I just didn’t realize how hard I was working.”

“You never do. You need to get married and have kids. That would keep you busy.”

She lifted both eyebrows. “Are you offering to sacrifice yourself?”

He chuckled. “Maybe it would be the best thing for both of us,” he said wistfully. “We’re in love with people who don’t want us. At least we like each other.”

“Yes. But marriage should be more than that.”

He shrugged. “Just a thought.” He leaned over and patted her hand. “Get well. There’s a society ball next week and you have to go with me. She’s going to be there.”

Tira knew who she was—his sister-in-law, the woman that Percy would have died to marry. She’d never noticed him, despite his blazing good looks, before she married his half brother. In fact, she seemed to actually dislike him, and Charles’s half brother was twenty years her senior, a stiff-necked stuffed shirt whom nobody in their circle had any use for. The marriage was a complete mystery.

“I don’t have a dress.”

“Buy one,” he instructed. She hesitated.

“I’ll protect you from him,” he said after a minute, having realized that Simon would most likely be in attendance. “I swear on my glorious red Mark VIII that I won’t leave your side for an instant all evening.”

She gave him a wary glance. His mania about that car was well-known. He wouldn’t even entrust it to a car wash. He washed and waxed it lovingly, inch by inch, and called it “Big Red.”

“Well, if you’re willing to swear on your car,” she agreed.

He grinned. “You can ride in it.”

“I’m honored!”

“I brought you some flowers,” he added. “One of the nurses volunteered to put them in a vase for you.”

She gave him a cursory appraisal and smiled. “The way you look, I’m not surprised. Women fall over each other to get to you.”

“Not the one I wanted,” he said sadly. “And now it’s too late.”

She slid her hand into his and pressed it gently. “I’m sorry.”

“So am I.” He shrugged. “Isn’t it a damned shame? I mean, look what they’re missing!”

She knew he was talking about Simon and the woman Charles wanted, and she grinned in spite of herself. “It’s their loss. I’d love to go to the ball with you. He’ll let me out of here today. Like to take me home?”

“Sure!”

But when the doctor came into the room, he was reluctant to let her leave.

She was sitting on the side of the bed. She gave him a long, wise look. “I wasn’t lying,” she said. “Suicide was the very last thing on my mind.”

“With a loaded pistol, which had been fired.”

She pursed her lips. “Didn’t anyone notice where the shot landed? At a round hole in the baseboard?”

He frowned.

“The mouse!” she said. “I’ve been after him for weeks! Don’t you watch old John Wayne movies? It was in True Grit!”

All at once, realization dawned in his eyes. “The rat writ.”

“Exactly!”

He burst out laughing. “You were going to shoot the mouse?”

“I’m a good shot,” she protested. “Well, when I’m sober. I won’t miss him next time!”

“Get a trap.”

“He’s too wily,” she protested. “I’ve tried traps and baits.”

“Buy a cat.”

“I’m allergic to fur,” she confessed miserably.

“How about those electronic things you plug into the wall?”

She shook her head. “Tried it. He bit the electrical cord in half.”

“Didn’t it kill him?”

Her eyebrows arched. “No. Actually he seemed even healthier afterward. I’ll bet he’d enjoy arsenic. Nope, I have to shoot him.”

The doctor and Charles looked at each other. Then they both chuckled.

The doctor did see her alone later, for a few minutes while Charles was bringing the car around to the hospital entrance. “Just one more thing,” he said gently. “Regardless of what Simon said, you didn’t kill John. Nobody, no woman, could have stopped what happened. He should never have married you in the first place.”

“Simon kept throwing us together,” she said. “He thought we made the perfect couple,” she added bitterly.

“Simon never knew,” he said. “I’m sure John didn’t tell him, and you kept your own silence.”

She averted her eyes. “John was the best friend Simon had in the world. If he’d wanted Simon to know, he’d have told him. That being the case, I never felt that I had the right.” She looked at him. “I still don’t. And you’re not to tell him, either. He deserves to have a few unshattered illusions. His life hasn’t been a bed of roses so far. He’s missing an arm, and he’s still mourning Melia.”

“God knows why,” Dr. Gaines added, because he’d known all about the elegant Mrs. Hart, things that even Tira didn’t know.

“He loved her,” she said simply. “There’s no accounting for taste, is there?”

He smiled gently. “I guess not.”