A Kiss, A Dance & A Diamond

God, he was so compliant. “I think we both know what I’d prefer, Doctor.”

“That I’d stayed away?”

“Exactly.”

“It’s my hometown, Nicola...just as much as it is yours. And I’m pretty sure it’s big enough for both of us.”

Nicola glanced around, arms crossed, temper surging. “It doesn’t feel like it right now.” She sucked in a long and steadying breath. “However, I do appreciate you looking after him tonight.”

She wasn’t about to tell him that it was the first time she’d seen Marco really respond to someone new since his parents had been killed. And of course she wasn’t surprised that Kieran had a great bedside manner. He’d always been too damned charming for his own good!

“We don’t have to be friends, Nicola,” he said evenly. “But we don’t have to be enemies, either.”

“I don’t want us to be anything,” she shot back. “Except strangers.”

“You’re my sister-in-law’s friend,” he reminded her. “This is a small town, and we’re bound to run into one another occasionally. I prefer we weren’t at war when we did.”

He was right. Her longtime friend Kayla had married Kieran’s brother, and they’d just had their first child. They would definitely cross paths.

But she resented that he was so cool, so logical...so incredibly infuriating about the whole situation.

A typical O’Sullivan trait. They were the wealthiest family in town. And the most entitled. They owned commercial and investment property and several businesses, including the hugely successful O’Sullivan’s Hotel. The eldest brother, Liam, ran the hotel and most of the other holdings, while the younger brother Sean was a movie and music producer in LA. Their sister, Liz, had passed away a few years earlier from some kind of heart thing, leaving behind three young daughters. And there was another brother, too, called Jonah, who they’d just discovered existed and was the reason his parents were now in the middle of a divorce.

And then there was Kieran—the brother who’d left to pursue his dream of a medical career. And he’d got exactly what he wanted. He was smart and charming and too good-looking for words. He’d once been her closest friend, her lover, her future. Now, all she felt was hurt and rage when she thought of him. Nicola tried to wrap up her temper and put it away where it belonged. But it was so hard.

Pull yourself together. He’s not worth it.

“Can we go now?”

Johnny’s voice. Jerking her back into the land of good sense and logic.

Nicola crossed her arms and moved quickly toward him. “Of course,” she said to her nephew. She glanced briefly toward Kieran. “Thank you for your help.”

She didn’t look at him again as she walked back into triage, quickly ushering both boys back through the corridor. And did her best to ignore Kieran. But he watched her. She could feel his gaze burning through her as she left. She made a quick stop at the pharmacy to fill the painkiller prescription and then headed home, her thoughts consumed by the last person she wanted to think about.

She was embarrassed that she’d lost her temper. But, hell and damnation, he pushed her buttons! He always had. In high school she’d been desperately in love with him.

After graduation day, she’d hated him.

That rage and anger had kept her going, made her stronger, gave her the strength to leave town and pursue her dreams. She’d headed to California and attended college in San Francisco, studied hard and graduated with a degree and a burning desire to climb the corporate ladder. Six years later, she was head of human resources at an organic food company. That was where she’d met Carl. He was the managing director of the East Coast division. He was smart and good-looking and recently divorced. They’d had a whirlwind romance. Despite her friends warning her she was his rebound relationship, within a year they’d bought a house, an engagement ring and made plans for the future. But three months later he left, claiming he still had feelings for his ex-wife. The house was sold and she quickly returned the ring.

Broken and hurt, Nicola had learned a valuable lesson—she was never going to be anyone’s rebound girl again.

“Aunt Nicola,” Marco said as they drove back through town, “can we have gelato when we get home?”

She glanced at the clock on the dash. It was seven o’clock, a little late for her nephew’s favorite treat. “Tomorrow,” she promised. “I’ll get Nonno to make your favorite strawberry flavor, okay?”

Despite his declining health, her father still insisted on making the gelato that JoJo’s was famous for. The pizzeria had been in her family for over forty years, since her grandfather had started the place a decade after he’d arrived in Cedar River. Back then, he’d planned on making a fortune mining silver, but instead Guido and Josephine Radici had turned their hands to doing what they did best—cooking the most authentic Italian cuisine this side of the Black Hills. And it was a family business in the truest sense of the word. Her father, Salvatore, had learned the business from his father and continued on alone after her mother’s death a few years earlier. Her late brother Gino had learned from their dad. Although she missed her mother, Nicola was glad her mom hadn’t had to endure Gino’s passing. It was bad enough watching her father slowly deteriorate through his grief at the loss of his beloved son, along with a series of minor strokes. And since her older brother Vince had moved to San Francisco years ago, now there was just her...trying to cobble together some sense of normalcy for Gino’s two sons.

But it wasn’t easy. With Marco’s emotional withdrawal and Johnny’s penchant for getting into trouble, she had her hands full. Both boys grieved in their own way, but it was Marco who really concerned her. He suffered from night terrors and had developed a severe fear of water. Although neither of the boys were with their parents at the time of the accident, the fact they were killed while sailing had profoundly affected Marco, and now he refused to go near water except for a quick shower at bath time. He’d always loved fishing but now resorted to hooking plastic toys from a bucket in the backyard.

Once they were back home, Nicola parked the car, grabbed her tote and ushered the boys from the back seat. The house was where the boys had always lived—Gino and Miranda’s home, which they’d bought when they got married. It was a few minutes out of town, on a wide, tree-lined street, with a swing set in the backyard and a porch out front. After her brother’s death, Nicola had quickly packed up her life in San Francisco and moved in, trying to keep the boys’ normal routine as smooth as possible—soccer on Saturdays, joining a couple of other parents in a carpool for school pick-up twice a week, family night on a Friday with a movie and popcorn in the rooms behind the restaurant. She even did her best to pack the same kind of lunches that their mother had each morning.

Her friend Annie Jamison was a nanny to three children, and she’d counselled Nicola to maintain as much of their old routine as possible to encourage emotional stability in the wake of their grief and loss. So she did. Normality was the key.

Even though, some days, she felt as though every moment was an uphill battle.

And tonight, she discovered about an hour later, was becoming one of those battles.

Johnny wanted to stay up late to play a computer game, and Marco refused to go to bed and was holed up in his room, hiding in the corner of his closet, rejecting her requests to come out even when she relented and offered him the gelato he’d asked for earlier.

“Please come out,” she pleaded, standing by the closet door, knowing she could wrestle him out of the small space, but she didn’t want to upset him any more than he already was.

Yeah...an uphill battle just about covered it.

“No,” he wailed. “You don’t care what happens to me.”

Nicola hung on to patience and remained by the door. “Of course I do. Please, Marco...it’s nearly bedtime. You have to get up for school in the morning.”

“I’m not going back to that stupid school!”

She sucked in a long breath. “Marco, please—”

“Everyone’s hates me. And my hand hurts,” he wailed. “No one is nice to me. Not you. Not Johnny. No one except that doctor.”

Except that doctor.

Nicola’s breath stilled in her chest. Kieran. She tried to ignore the way her pulse started to beat wildly. “Well, he’s not here. He’s at the hospital, and you don’t need to be there now. But I’m here, and I’d really like to talk to you. So, can you come out, and we’ll have some gelato and spend some time together...okay?”

Silence. The deafening kind. She heard movement and thought she’d made progress when he spoke again. “You could call him. Doctors come to people’s houses, too.”

Nicola hung on to her patience and took a deep breath. “I can’t do that.”

She heard him huff. “You never do anything I want. Only what Johnny wants.”

The pain in his voice was unmistakable. The boys had once been close, but over the past few months she’d seen the divide between them become wider.

The guilt landed squarely on her shoulders. She was a lousy parent. And she clearly needed help.

Nicola left the room and headed downstairs. She got to the living room and discovered the overhead light bulb had blown. Great...that’s all I need. She loathed heights and had no intention of bothering her neighbor for a ladder, even though she was sure the elderly man would help if she asked. Besides, her independent streak made her resist asking anyone for assistance. But as she got to the kitchen, filled the kettle and sat down at the table, Nicola admitted that she did need help. Right now.

A minute later she was calling the hospital, feeling foolish through to her bones. He’d probably left for the night, and she hoped he had. She didn’t want to talk to him. She didn’t want to ask for his help. But within seconds she was connected to the ER, and a moment later she heard his deep voice.

“O’Sullivan,” he said as a greeting.

She clenched the phone and sucked in a sharp breath. “Kieran...”

Silence stretched like brittle elastic, and then he spoke again. “Nicola? Is that you?”